#nobody talks about beard catastrophe

[rikan-oo]

Rogue cultivator SY AU [ 1, 2, 3, 4 ]

Shen Yuan comes back to Cang Qiong Peaks after a year of travel for his research. Shen Qingqiu is excited until he finally sees him.

SQQ: What is THAT?

SY: I'm happy to see you too *beaming eagerly with badly grown beard and mustache* It is a year of my hard work. I wanted to show you it so badly *proudly touches his beard* Impressive, isn't it?

SQQ: You're getting rid of that immediately.

SY: Huh?

SQQ: I say, you have five minutes to get rid of that abomination yourself, or I'll do it. *drawing the sword*

SY: W-what? Wait! I can't do this, I spent so much time growing it, so it looks good!

SQQ: And clearly, you have failed. Shave it. NOW

SY: You're just jealous I did while you couldn't. I look manly!

SQQ: I just don't want to kiss Mu Qingfang twin. At least he saw the reason and shaved it off.

SY: He did?! Oh, no. Shidi lost his wings!

SQQ: A-Yuan, I'm starting counting. One-

SY: Okay-okay! Does it really look so bad? *mumbles*

SQQ: Yes. *gets closer and takes his chin in his hand* You'll look so much better without it. Believe me. *leaning closer as it to kiss him on lips, but in last moment bits his nose*

SY: AW! YOU-*tries to back off*

SQQ: After you do this, you'll recieve a welcome kiss. Understand? *pinches his cheek*

SY: Yes! Stop doing it!

In the background:

LBH: I'd kiss him anyways, with beard or not.

NYY: Ning Yingying thinks Shizun would too. But Shifu looks better without it. He just needs proper motivation.

MF: Obviously, Shizun doesn't want to repeat "Beardgrow remedy catastrophe," which happened half a year ago. *shudders*

LBH: Didn't you also-

MF: I don't recall anything of the sorts.

P.S: For a moment, Shen Jiu thought left it be. Maybe it would work better than weil, getting rid of potential flies flocking to honey. But they would see SY's smile anyway, the way he crinkles his eyes, a playfull glint in them, blush on his cheeks and-

It won't work.

[parasiticstars]

To Teach an Old Dog: #1

re re re re re re uploaded bc tumblr keeps fucking it up

TW: BBU/pet whump, casual mentions of dehumanization, institutionalized slavery, and suicide idealization, and me being very pretentious

Kavan’s back hurts. Of the numerous things wrong with his situation, this is what he decided to focus on in an attempt to stave off the impeding sensory overload— and this is the only familiar, non-Pet-fuckery problem he has.

The bit was fastened too tight and digs in the corners of his mouth. He can feel drool starting to crust his beard. He’s disused to the shoddy buzzcut his masters captors gave him in an attempt to make him presentable before auction; he'll certainly never take the feeling of hair on his ears for granted again. The ear tag is pulling on already mutilated earlobes, adding to a budding headache just behind his eyes. The concrete floors look and feel like they haven’t been cleaned ever. The auctioneer’s voice is solidly the fourth most irritating sound he’s ever heard in his life.

Alas, nothing Kavan attempts to focus on staves off the visceral, skin-crawling feeling of too much. No matter how many times the man gets shuttled in and out of auctions and captors like a head of livestock, he’ll never truly get used to the non-personhood, the sheer objectification of it all. Nor will he get used to an audience leering and inspecting him and the other Pets people around him like the products they’re advertised and sold as.

Nobody seems to be interested in him, thank god. Kavan’s getting too old for most people’s tastes— even as a labor Pet, being above thirty is automatically considered a liability, as if he’d crumple into dust the second he set foot onto a construction site or a plantation or wherever the hell else. Has he felt close to it? Definitely. But that didn’t mean he would; even though some places, water and breaks weren’t a given.

(Why would they be? Employers and contractors who use Pets rather than workers don’t need to abide by silly things such as OSHA and basic human decency.)

But regardless.

With the slowly increasing amount of times he’s talked about like his expiry date has run out, Kavan wonders when he’s going to just be taken out behind the shed.

He wonders if he’ll do it himself one of these days.

A prod to the small of his back forces him to straighten, making him nearly drop his sign in the process. His attention snaps back to the crowd, all crammed together in this dingy-ass building in those dingy-ass folding chairs betting on dingy-ass people.

Long had Kavan lost the naïvety that Pet owners were this special type of evil, so impossibly cruel and uncaring that they simply couldn’t be human. Regardless, the fact that everyone here is so unassuming still screws with him. He could hypothetically see any one of them, say, at a Starbucks bitching at the barista about their overpriced order, or shopping at Trader Joe’s, or working in their cubicle, or at a PTA meeting. That in particular jars him.

Nobody around them would know that said person was willingly participating in legalized slavery, lacking even the flimsy pretense of “rescuing” their aunt’s-grandma’s-brother’s-husband’s-neighbor’s-girlfriend’s-niece’s Pet or whatever else they’d want to virtue signal on their Facebook wall or status or whatever else.

(Are Facebook statuses still a thing? God, Kavan’s been out of the loop too long. He doesn’t even know how long.)

One woman in particular has set sights on him. Judging by the fine cut yet plain color of her coat, the disgusted-holier-than-thou glances she’d occasionally give whoever she was seated near whenever they did anything particular crude, the brand name Ceilos, she’s probably fuck-off rich trying not to look fuck-off rich. What would someone like her want at a low scale labor pet auction like this? Why is she eyeing him in particular? Why are her irises barely darker than #FFFFF?

Catastrophizing is, it seems, a very time consuming activity. It muffles the rest of the auction, the auctioneer’s droning that would soon settle the man’s fate, the assistant taking away the sign Kavan was holding and tugging at the rope attached to his collar.

He stumbles as he’s led off the platform and into the pen for inspection. Through the buzzing of his ears, the sound of heels clicking follows.

[fabricated-misslieness]

♡〜Can you write a fluffy headcanon with Tony Stark where he remembers the first time he met the reader? You can choose how they met.-@teenagemutantninjangel​〜♡

Tony Stark x gender neutral reader

So first I thought about working at the shawarma joint with your family, cause it seems like a family thing, then I thought that I shouldn’t assume gender, then thought about being a random worker and that just felt weird, and finally I remembered that Thor is a himbo.

Also my math might be wrong and I’m not sure where the rich part came from.

Idk why you would want this to be a headcanon so it’s a oneshot

Requested: Yes

Word Count: 1,293

About 14 years ago - the phrase makes you feel extremely old - the Avengers had saved the world from a bunch of aliens. New York was absolutely wrecked in the process, though you’d brushed it off as a side effect. Your life over your material possessions, right? Though, miraculously, out of all people, your possessions weren’t destroyed.

You thought yourself to be lucky. Out of all of them: blonde men with either hammer or shield, a man in a mechanical suit, some extremely muscular green man, a man with all different sorts of arrows, and a woman with a gun; none had wrecked your car.

You thought it was a miracle, especially with the fact it was parked outside. All you had to do was clean it, although it was no easy task with all the dust on it.

Then, one night as you walked to your car to get home from your awful job, you’d spotted a familiar blonde man. With a hammer in hand and an alcohol bottle in the other, you could easily tell who he was: Thor, the blonde Avenger.

You’d always expected him to be a heavy-weight, not that you even thought about it, but he just gave away the energy. The sight of him struggling to even walk properly, swinging his hammer around and nearly hitting walls or lamps, was utterly disappointing. If he could save the world, how could he not handle his alcohol? Though, for the record, you hadn’t seen how much he drank.

All your thoughts about his alcohol were washed away when he walked close to your car. Then you were panicking, because he was in striking range and your car had survived the catastrophe. And then you ran, because it’s either a dent in your bank account or a dent in your stomach; a dent either way with the healthcare system, but you weren’t thinking.

You hadn’t made it in time, how could you?

You stop in your tracks, nearly tripping over your feet, when his hammer strikes down on the hood of your car. By the looks of it, you are not driving that car anytime soon.

“THOR!” Said god merely turns in the attention of the voice, which is where he’d come from. He leaves the hammer on the hood of your car.

“Oh my god, Thor, what the fuck?!” And you see Tony Stark. With all the parties he threw, you knew he was a heavy-weight, so you were extremely thankful that he’d looked somewhat sober. Tony looks around, at the hammer and then down the sidewalk, where you are. He can clearly see your stunned face, and you can see his beautiful one.

“Yes, I am a god.” Thor replies, lifting up a finger as if he were a kindergartener.

Tony doesn’t pay any mind to his comment, instead, turning to you. “Is this your car?” He half-shouts, pointing at it.

“Y-Yeah.” You never thought you’d find yourself in this predicament. A wasted Thor and a panicked Tony Stark. Well, he doesn’t actually look very panicked. He can pay for the damage - you know that - he just looks more concerned about Thor than you.

“Good.” He nods, taking out his wallet and handing you much more than you’d need to fix your car. “What’s your name?”

“(y/n).” Thank god he’d asked you a question you could still answer in your state of shock.

“Alright, (y/n), I’m sorry, truly.” You don’t actually think he means it. “Keep the change.” He pats you on the shoulder, hoping to be reassuring. He is not reassuring.

He was basically calling you a peasant with the ‘change’ part.

Now, 14 years older - once again, that hurts - you were successful. Not as rich as Tony Stark, but you were somewhere in that list of wealthy people.

While most people only found devastation after half the population of Earth was wiped, you found success and devastation.

It was 2023, the world was once again saved by the Avengers. Not that you’d find out about that until the news spread around the world, since apparently they hadn’t fought in a city this time. That was a good thing, because the people certainly did not want to fix a big city such as New York. Oh, and apparently they’d brought everybody back.

Out of everything in the world - yes, even the blipped people coming back - you did not expect to feel deja vu.

Once again, you were walking to your car from your not awful job. It was different from the one you had 14 years ago, one of the many ones you had. Boy, you liked being rich. People stopped and looked because, well; you weren’t exactly a nobody, nor did you look like a nobody.

“THOR!” This time you didn’t see a god, but you did a few seconds later.

Thor had… changed. His hair is messier, beard way longer, and he’d put on some weight. You weren’t sure if this was Thor or some random hobo until you saw the axe - and bottle-  in his hands. Somehow, it looked like an upgrade from his hammer.

“Huh?” He turns to the voice, though the rest of his body doesn’t. Carelessly, he drops his axe, right on the car of your hood.

“Jesus Christ, Thor, not again!” Tony Stark rounds the corner, looking about ready to smack the shit out of his alcoholic norse god.

“I once challenged Jesus to a battle to the death.” Thor takes a swig of his bottle while absentmindedly staring at the wall nearby. “The coward didn’t show up.”

Tony groans, massaging his temples with his hands. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

With a sigh, he turns to you. “Your car?”

“Mhm.” You hum in reply. This time you hadn’t been very worried about the repairs, since you were doing just fine economically.

“Good.” He doesn’t seem to take into account the model of your car or your face as he takes out his wallet. He does the same thing he did 14 years ago, take out a wad of bills and hand them to you with a similar phrase. “Keep the change.”

“Stark,” You say, which actually catches his attention. He looks you up and down, finally taking in who you are. “I don’t need the change.”

“(l/n), (y/n).” He says with his charming business smile. Saying the first name seems to make him remember. “Hey didn’t Thor wreck your car 14 years ago?”

You were surprised he remembered, and it clearly showed on your face. “Yes.”

“Deja vu, huh?” He laughs heartily.

You nod with a laugh. “Deja vu.”

“You know, I did not expect to see you in the news when I came back to Earth.” He leans against your car subconsciously, completely forgetting about the damages. “I was glad you made it big.”

“Back to Earth?” You raise an eyebrow.

Tony shakes his hand dismissively, “You don’t want to know about it.”

“Anyway, Stark, is that empty talk or do you really mean it?” You cross your arms, also forgetting about the condition your car is in as you lean against it.

“You got me there.” He laughs that business man polite laugh. “I was more worried about your rivalry with my company!”

“Oh really?” Your companies were in very different industries. “Well, Tony, I sincerely doubt anybody would be able to overthrow your throne.”

You share a mutual laugh before Tony speaks up again. “Hey, we’re having a party down the block.” He grabs Thor by the shoulder, who looks just about ready to pass out. “Do you want to come?”

You shrug, glancing at your car. “I guess that can be fixed later. Sure, why not?”

[dameronology]

the come and go {obi-wan x reader} - two

back to you 

in this chapter: several months after leaving the temple, you’re beginning to make a name for yourself outside of being a jedi. when a job takes you back to coruscant, your curiosity gets the better of you and you end up slipping right back into the grips of obi-wan kenobi

warnings: implied smut, swearing

the song for this chapter is why we ever by hayley williams! i hope you enjoy :D 

- jamie

The galaxy beyond the four walls of the Jedi Temple was much darker than you realised. 

You could handle it - of course you could handle it. You had the wit and the determination to make the galaxy your bitch if you tried hard enough. Having witnessed enough atrocities in your time as a Jedi, you’d grown a thick skin and learnt to deal with even the toughest of times. Even now, without your lightsaber, you could handle it. You could handle anything. 

You’d been to Yavin. You’d been to Tatooine. You’d been to Naboo. Heck, you’d been to any planet with less-than-stellar cantinas, any planet where gang members and the scum of the galaxy frequented. Your combat skills that you’d learnt in your training were useful for doing their dirty work - 500 credits here for chasing up a debt, 500 there for beating up a guy who slept with another’s wife. It wasn’t solid work nor was it legal work - but it paid the bills and it was a good go between until you’d found your true calling. 

It felt like Obi-Wan Kenobi was your true calling. Every time something good happened, you wanted to call him and tell him. Every time you felt like the galaxy was chewing you up and spitting you out whole, you wanted him to hold you in your arms and hold you till you were better. But you couldn’t. He was back at the Temple in Coruscant and you were on the other side of the galaxy, as far from as you’d ever been. You could certainly feel the distance now. Being far away from him was the only proven way to weaken your Force connection - or at least you were trying to convince yourself of it. 

You eventually settled on Corellia - settled was a strong word, actually. You rented a small apartment in a high-rise tower block, intending it only to be for a few weeks until you’d worked out what you were doing. Your future had become a lot more uncertain now - until a few months ago, you weren’t convinced you’d ever have the courage to leave. You’d certainly thought about it (all the time in fact, assuming you weren’t daydreaming about a certain Jedi) but you didn’t think you’d ever do it. 

Meanwhile, life in Coruscant went on. Things were practically the same as they had been before you left - just much quieter. There was no-one to yell at the Council or stomp around or to slam doors. Your quarters were now left empty and Obi-Wan felt his chest tighten slightly whenever he walked past them.

He had a lot of regrets. He regretted not letting you have your way with Kit’s killer. He regretted telling you to separate your emotions from your work. He regretted not convincing you to stay - or maybe he regretted not going with you. Above all, however, he regretted letting himself think that you were a permanent fixture in his life; that someone as fleeting and evanescent as you would ever stay in a place as restrictive as the Jedi temple. Obi-Wan didn’t know if you were a free soul or a lost soul. Either way, you were gone. 

Almost seven months to the day that you left, you ended up taking a job that would lead you to Coruscant. That hadn’t been part of the original plan but the person whom you were tailing for unpaid debts had fled Corellia and you needed this pay out. Your rent wasn’t cheap and jobs were far and few. If you had to hitch a lift to your former home planet to catch the guy and get your wages, you were willing. 

Besides, it wasn’t like anyone would recognise you. You were in downtown Coruscant, surrounded by the sort of cantinas and motels that nobody from the Jedi temple would ever willingly go near. The people you used to know remembered you in your neat robes and with your lightsaber; your hair was longer now, more unruly and tied back off of your face. Despite wearing your kyber crystal on a chain around your neck, the weapon was long deserted. 

You followed the man to a small bar - it was closer to the temple than you were comfortable with but you’d come this far. He was sitting a few booths away from you, engaged in conversation with a woman who you were almost certain was being paid for her time. You were closely watching him, your cold beer resting in one hand and the other gently tapping against the table. 

This wasn’t good for your Force connection - no, this was bad. A catastrophe, in fact, because you could feel Obi-Wan Kenobi the minute you stepped onto the planet and you knew you were in trouble. But your need to finish the job outweighed that - you had to live and you had to eat. You’d ignored your feelings for seven months; how hard could a few more hours be? 

Hard. Very fucking hard indeed.

The temptation to up and ditch the job was almost overwhelming. You were so close to him - an hour's walk from the temple at most, less if you could find a speed bike. What if you just went to check on him? You didn’t even have to talk to him. You just wanted to see him, to make sure that he was okay and -

Stop, dammit. 

You couldn’t. You shouldn’t. You wouldn’t.

Unless -

-No. 

But just a tiny peak? 

Yeah, let’s go with that. 

It wasn’t like it was hard. Your Force connection was still achingly strong, even seven months after you left this planet. All it took was you thinking of him and you could feel his emotions, clear as the day you had left him. 

You regretted it the minute you did it - his feelings were clear and strong; pure and put together, as they always had been. The only time you could recall them being jumbled was during the first month or two of your relationship; after that, they were crystal clear and bright as day - filled with love and lust-

-Wait. Love. 

As far as Obi-Wan was concerned, you were miles away. Worlds away, in fact. It had been seven months and there was no way his feelings for you were still that strong. Equally, how likely was it that they were feelings for someone else? Which was worse? You weren’t sure. It wasn’t any of your business anyways, you were no longer together. You were here to focus on the mission, not on your Jedi. The Jedi. He wasn’t yours anymore. 

But letting go wasn’t your strong point. 

That’s exactly why you were standing outside of the Jedi temple fifty-seven minutes later, heart pounding in your chest and fists balled up into your palms; your target back at the bar was long forgotten and so was the payment. This was more important. 

You didn’t know where Obi-Wan was. The temple was big but more to the point, you couldn’t go inside to check. All you could do was reach out via Force connection and hope - pray - that he would pick up on it, that he would feel you. 

‘What are you doing here?’

A small gasp escaped your lips when a warm hand touched your shoulder. You spun around on your heel, eyes widening. 

(That solved that problem at least). 

It was Obi-Wan Kenobi in all his bearded glory, looking as wonderful as ever - perhaps a little more tired but still undeniably handsome. His hair was a little longer, a few strands falling at the front into his blue eyes. Your natural reaction was to reach forward to push them back, a gesture that was all-too-familiar for both of you. The only thing that stopped you was the presence of a woman on his arm. 

‘Obi-Wan.’ You hadn’t said his name in months. It felt alien on your lips. ‘I - hi.’ 

For a split second, you thought he might have purposefully sought you out; that he’d felt your connection and tried to follow it. It wasn’t a far-fetched thought either; it was quite literally what you had done. 

But then you realised that you stood in front of the entrance to the Temple; if there was somewhere where you were going to cross paths, this was it. The chances of him being because of you were much lower than him being here simply because.

‘What are you doing here?’ Obi-Wan asked. 

Don’t falter. You’d made it this far.

Crossing your arms over your chest, you quirked your eyebrow and gave him a small smile. ‘It’s nice to see you too.’

Was he angry that you were here? Mad, because you’d rocked up after all these months without so much as a warning or a message? 

Obi-Wan had initially doubted himself when he’d felt your presence back on Coruscant. He’d told himself he was simply imagining it, that it was a figment of his grieving. But it was you. You were here, stood outside the temple, your forehead littered with beads of sweat as you panted to try and catch your breath. The lights of the building reflected off of your glistening skin, illuminating you in a golden glow; the same light you’d been cast under the first time he realised he had feelings for you. 

He couldn’t find the words. What the hell was he meant to say? It was a moment he hadn’t stopped thinking about for the last seven months, but now that you were, stood in front of him in all your sarcastic beauty he’d lost the ability to talk. It wasn’t the first time you’d done that to him.

‘He asked you a question.’ The woman - whose presence you noted, but put a pin in for later - cleared her throat. 

You broke your gaze with Obi-Wan, eyes falling to her. She was a tall woman - blonde and boney with a sort of skeletal grace. She was wearing an intricately decorated dress, clearly something to imply that she was in a position grandeur. It made you take a look at your own torn jeans and muddy boots, making you feel as though she were the Queen and you were simply the jester of her court. Fucking brilliant. 

‘Work.’ You simply replied, eyes barely leaving her form as they trailed it up and down.  ‘I had a spare moment and I had to see you, Obi. I know turning up after seven months of nothing is fucked up, and I know-’

‘- this isn’t a conversation we should have out here.’ The Jedi cut you off.  ‘I’m happy to see you. I really am - you just caught me at a bad time.’

‘Right.’ You murmured. ‘Who’s your pal?’

‘Satine Kryze. Duchess of Mandalore.’ The woman stuck her hand out for you to shake. You simply looked at it, giving her a curt nod. 

You didn’t like her. You didn’t like her one bit - maybe it was because she was clinging onto the arm of the man you loved most in the galaxy. Maybe it was the way she looked at you with pity, nose turned up at the sky as if to say what a poor little girl. It was probably irrational to make your mind up about her so soon. 

But rationality had never been your strong point. 

‘Nice to meet you.’ You replied. 

You knew exactly who she was. She was the leader of Mandalore, a high-ranking politician and the first woman that Obi-Wan Kenobi had ever been in love with. 

‘I’ve heard lots about you.’ Satine replied.

‘I’ve heard nothing about you.’ You smiled. 

Obi-Wan glanced between the two of you, wondering how such venom could be hidden in such polite words. God, women could be fucking terrifying. 

‘Just...wait.’ He stepped forward, the cogs and gears in his brain finally accepting that this was reality and not an odd pipe dream. ‘Give me ten minutes - wait here and we’ll talk. Please?’

‘Right.’ You nodded. ‘It was nice to meet you, Sabine.’

--

Fifteen minutes later, you were perched on the end of Obi-Wan’s bed as he paced in front of you. His room was still quintessentially the same - a little emptier now that you’d cleared all your things out - but it was still warm and familiar. The temptation to fall back into his bed and fall asleep was bordering on overwhelming. 

‘You can’t turn up after seven months and be so rude and so jealous and to royalty no less - are you even listening to me?’ 

Truthfully speaking, you’d just been watching his mouth move. His words had simply gone in one ear and out the other, floating off into the air, never to be heard or acknowledged. Your brain still hadn’t processed the fact that he was here, that he was standing right in front of you. Everything you’d wanted over the last few months was right here. 

You were the closest you’d been since you left - yet, between the presence of the Duchess and Obi-Wan’s sudden iciness towards you, you’d never felt further apart. You’d preferred being on the other side of the galaxy to this because being together physically but apart emotionally was fucking with your head, sending you into overdrive and wondering if leaving the Order had been a good idea at all. 

What if you’d just stayed? What if you’d just sucked it up and swallowed your pride for Obi-Wan? 

‘No.’ You shook your head. ‘I’m not.’

‘You are so frustrating.’ He declared, running a hand through his hair. It was a little bit longer now. 

‘Yeah, we covered that quite well.’ You reasoned. ‘I wasn’t even going to come here. I was here for work-’

‘-work?’

‘That’s something for another time.’ You replied, before standing up to step closer to him. ‘I wasn’t even going to think about you but I could feel how close you were and I thought if I just reached out for a moment that it wouldn’t hurt but it did. It really fucking hurt.’

‘I knew you were here the minute you arrived.’ Obi-Wan admitted. ‘You came at the worst time.’

‘Look around.’ You flailed your arms over-dramatically. ‘No time is a good time right now.’

‘So why did you come here?’

‘This is going to sound so fucking ridiculous but I could feel through the Force that you were...you know. With someone else.’

‘That was I what?’ It was his turn to take a step closer to you now. 

‘In love.’ You gulped. ‘Now I see why - Satine is here. She was your first love and it makes sense.’

‘Oh, darling.’ Obi-Wan reached out a hand, letting it gently ghost against the side of your cheek for a moment. They were soft - perhaps a little calloused from years on the job. ‘You’ve got it all wrong.’

‘I literally saw you with my eyes!’ You reminded him. ‘You and her, canoodling.’

‘Satine is here on business.’ He explained. ‘She’s still quite fond of me but I am not in love with her.’

‘That’s worst, then!’ You swatted his hand away. ‘You’re in love with somebody else and flouncing with around-’

‘- it’s you, you idiot!’ He cut you off. ‘I’m still in love with you. That’s what you were feeling. My love for you.’

Oh. Well that certainly complicated things. 

You dropped your arms to your side, mouth forming an O-shape. This was not an eventuality you had prepared for. The whole way over here, you’d been preparing yourself for the worst; for seeing your man with somebody else. You never anticipated the fact that you might have been the source of his love. 

‘But I hurt you.’ You murmured. ‘I packed my shit and I left and I hurt you, Obi.’

‘I know.’ He replied. ‘I have not stopped thinking about you. I have not stopped wondering about you or daydreaming about you or hoping that you would come back.’

Your eyes fell to the floor. ‘Why?’

‘Because it’s you.’ He gave your hand a light squeeze. ‘You’re stupid and you’re brash and you’re wreckless - not to mention rude to people you’ve just met - but it’s you. That’s the only way I can possibly explain it and that doesn’t even scratch the surface.’ 

‘So you love me and not Satine?’

‘What’s your problem with Satine?’ 

‘Don’t act like you wouldn’t take issue with my first ever love suddenly rocking up on my arm.’ You muttered. 

‘Why would I take issue with myself?’

That was when Obi-Wan finally kissed you, any or all fucks about the past, present and future having gone out the window. So what if you had spent the better part of half a year trying to move on? So what if you swore you would never do this again? 

‘I love you.’ You murmured against his lips, hands gently playing with his hair. 

Saying it was a bad idea, because you were supposed to be leaving again in the morning. You had a whole new life on Corellia - a job, an apartment - but your old one was dragging you back. It had sunk it’s claws into you and yanked you into the past, right back into the irresistibly warm arms of one Obi-Wan Kenobi. 

(And right back into his bed as well). 

-- 

You woke up the next morning practically on top of the Jedi. You were strewn across him; chest to chest, skin to skin. He had one arm wrapped around your back, hands clutching onto you as though you could have slipped away again at any moment. His chin was resting on top of your head, your face buried in the crook of his neck. 

For a split second, you thought that you were dreaming. The moment was too perfect; there was a cool breeze blowing the curtains back, the morning glow of the Coruscant sunrise streaming through the window and casting Obi-Wan in an almost angelic glow. Fitting. 

Last night was the best night of your life. 

(It was also the biggest mistake of your life.) 

Would it have been inhumane to slip from his grip now - to sneak out the temple and hitch a lift from the port back to Corellia? You could have left last night as the perfect goodbye. The final chapter in the story of you and Obi-Wan. There would be no sequel; just a closed book with a heartbreaking but hauntingly realistic ending. 

‘Good morning.’ Obi-Wan mumbled into your hair. 

No, you couldn’t leave. Not now. Maybe not ever. 

‘Good morning indeed.’ You peeked up at him from your position on his chest, offering him a sleepy smile. He glanced over at the clock on his nightstand, body untensing slightly when he realised it was still early. ‘You got somewhere to be, Kenobi?’

‘Satine is leaving today.’ He replied, large hand softly pushing back a few strands of your hair. ‘I promised I’d have breakfast with her.’

‘She does know that you’re not together, right?’ You asked. 

‘She knows.’ He nodded. ‘I suppose I should ask you the same about us.’

You sat up, pulling the sheet over your torso as you did. You wanted to answer the question with an enthusiastic yes, to forget about the last few months and just continue as you had - but it wouldn’t work. You couldn’t come back to Coruscant and you certainly couldn’t come back to the Temple. Everything that made you break-up in the first place still existed; you’d just chosen to ignore it for the sake of one night. 

‘You know the answer to that question.’ You murmured. 

‘I don’t think I do.’ Obi-Wan softly replied. 

‘I...I can’t come back here.’ Dropping back against the headboard, you let your eyes wander up to the ceiling.

If you did come back, if you gave up everything - your dreams of exploring the galaxy, dreams of finding your place outside of this godforsaken Jedi order - then you’d forever kick yourself for it. You were a lot of things but you were never going to be the girl who strayed away from her own choices in pursuit of a guy...even if he was the greatest one in the universe. At the same time, however, you would always kick yourself for walking away from him. 

You’d tried to turn your back on him, to walk away - and given how you’d woken up naked in his bed, you could see for yourself how well that had gone. Terribly. Awfully. It probably couldn’t have gone worse if you tried but at the same time, you weren’t sure if it could have gone better. 

You didn’t know who was in charge of this stuff - in charge of fate and love and destiny. Was it a higher power? The maker of the universe? An all-knowing, ominous son-of-a-bitch who decided that you were going to have it hard? Whoever they were, you were convinced of one thing: they were a huge fucking moron for sending you tripping and falling back into the arms of Obi-Wan Kenobi. 

‘We could try.’ Obi-Wan murmured. ‘We should try.’

‘How?’ You tilted your head to face him. ‘How could we possibly do that?’

‘We’d find a way.’ He replied. ‘You have a way of bending the rules - of bending reality - to get what you want.’

‘Why should we have to...bend reality to get what we want?’ You asked quietly. ‘Just talking about it is exhausting.’

You stood up from the mattress, wrapping the sheet around your waist as you did. The white material fell around your feet as they hit the floor, traipsing across the ground as you fumbled about to find your clothes. The sooner you got dressed and got out, the less time Obi-Wan had to convince you to stay. 

‘You didn’t come all this way to Coruscant for a one night stand.’ You heard his feet on the floor as he followed you to the other side of the room, forcing you to turn and look at him. 

‘I don’t know why I came to Coruscant.’ You replied. ‘I was so afraid of you being in love with someone else that I forgot all the reasons why you shouldn’t be in love with me.’

‘I can’t think of a single reason why I shouldn’t love you.’ His words were soft, barely a whisper and you could feel them more than you could hear them, gently floating through the air like butterflies against your cold skin. 

‘I’m stubborn-’

‘- passionate-’

‘- and rude-’

‘ - fiery-’

‘- and impulsive-’

‘- spontaneous.’

You lightly whacked him in the shoulder. ‘Stop doing that!’

‘If you saw yourself the way I saw you then you would understand why I want this to work.’ Obi-Wan softly ran his hands down your arms, intertwining your fingers. ‘And I know you want to give the whole I need to work out who I am speech but...have you ever considered that you might be able to work it out on Coruscant?’

‘Say if I did stay.’ You said. ‘How would it work? I can’t live here. Mace Windu would drop kick me out the window if he saw me.’

‘You could get an apartment.’

‘I can’t afford an apartment.’

‘We could get an apartment. I’ll pay half, you pay half.’

‘I can’t get a job here.’

‘There are plenty of jobs here. It’s Coruscant.’

Obi-Wan was smart - quick-thinking, responding to every one of your concerns with something that made a painful amount of sense. His words were fast, almost like bullets from a gun that blew a hole in any reason you had. 

Damn him for making so much fucking sense.

It couldn't have hurt to try. You weren’t staying because of him - you were staying because Coruscant had a lot to offer. You’d initially left in such a rush that you hadn’t considered what else the city had to offer. You could give it a chance - give him a chance. 

‘What about the code?’ You asked. ‘It was okay back then because I was breaking it too but now-’

‘- I’ll meet you halfway.’ He gave your hands a light squeeze. ‘You leave Corellia for me and I’ll disregard the code for you.’

‘...I guess that’s fair.’

‘So you’ll do it?’ Obi-Wan sounded almost as though he were in disbelief. 

‘I’ll make you a deal.’ You said. ‘I’ll stay here for two months. Explore my options and my relationship with you - and if it isn’t working then we call it a day. No more Force connection. No more checking in on each other.’

‘And if it goes well?’

‘Then I’m all in.’ 

[wheremytwinwatches]

[Where My Twin Watches]: Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood Episode 39

Last time: The Blondes finally met back up with the Brunettes, Yoki was an idiot who tried to burgle the Leto-damned ARMSTRONGS, and Scar either kidnapped or “kidnapped” Winry. Onwards!

New Intro! We’ve got the two young brothers separated by wind, then the title drawn in sand before it’s white text with a glowing red TC and the brothers running in opposite directions. Are we going to have a Party Split? Nevermind, they just slowed down to the middle of the screen. Bright light, Ed should have brought a hat to this sunny bunch of rocks. Then he looks off all dramatic like as camera goes to Al trudging through a desert before he too does the Dramatic Protagonist Stare. Both brothers back to back against the Xerxes mural ok seriously betting on a Party Split here with all the opposite directions going on. Now the Elric Brothers are running at each other and yep just phased through to become Red (Ed) and Blue (Al). Looking around for each other? Whatever happens I guess Al is with May since he has Shao on his shoulder and her gripping his hand, Ed’s got Winry in unzippered gear on his side. Camera pans out to show Al with May, Scar, and Marcoh to the left, Al, Winry, and Granny Rockbell to the right. Then a bunch more people start popping up? Can’t tell who is on which team anymore. Short image of Al’s Body in the whitespace, becomes a Stone which shatters to show a smug-looking Pride. Now Ed’s running about striking shadow blades in a forest (Ed vs Pride fight?), Al’s in the rocky desert fighting more toothy Pride blades. Wrath in what looks like a basic longsleeve shirt and vest (no uniform?) fighting LING YES TURN AGAINST THE GOTHS MY GREEDY LITTLE PRINCE Envy’s in Titan form getting sliced up by YES BRING BACK BADASS NINJA BODYGUARDS. Now it’s Armstrong The Great looking serious, Sloth burst out from snow to be used as target practice by Sideburns and a bunch of tanks but Kimblee swoops in and blows the shells up. Beard’s walking along with his briefcase frowning towards Central in the distance. Ed and Al stand back to back in a TC in the desert (not as rocky as the one Ed was in, but not as sandy as the one Al was in), shot of the Door of Truth opening and shattering, ends on the Alchemist Watch covered by the title and silhouettes of the Elric Brothers. Back where we left off: It’s a cloudy and windy day in Baschool, where Scar is carrying Winry’s limp form and glaring down at Kimblee. The Ishvalan comments on how they’ve changed positions from the last time they met, the Alchemist says he shouldn’t be so confident. Episode 39 - “Daydream” Oh no Winry’s in trouble so Ed is grabbing Kimblee’s coat and yelling at him for letting his mechanic get captured, Kimblee tells him to move aside while pulling off his gloves (hey, he’s kinda Roy’s opposite in that regard), Ed blocks his arms so that he won’t hurt Winry by attacking Scar. The Ishvalan then shatters the building, creating a nice big dust cloud to walk away in. Kimblee’s about to chase after him but a mustached soldier says that it’s too dangerous to go close to the damaged building, they need to fall back. Oh, and there’s a snowstorm incoming so they have to find shelter! Man, it has just not been Kimblee’s day, has it? Ed, Sideburns, Al and some soldiers are walking along, Miles compliments Ed on his performance aha, called it! Ross Deception! Ed’s not happy about having to play along with the “stupid charade”, though. Flashback! Scar isn’t apologizing for the death of Winry’s parents. She has every right to pass judgement on him. Winry… walks away, reaches into a box, and pulls out some cloth. Oh, wow. It it wasn’t already clear, Winry is Best Girl. Bandaging an injury on her parent’s killer? Ed and Scar are equally shocked at her compassion and what. What is that face. I’m sorry, this is a sweet and touching moment and all, but Scar? What is going on with your face here?

That is quite possibly the best Does Not Compute face I’ve ever seen. Just, Scar has no idea how to process this. Winry’s saying that if her parents saved his life before, then there must have been a reason. But like Leto does this mean that she’s forgiven him for his murders. She’s not gonna cry though, she promised… wait, I thought it was Ed who promised that the next time she cried it would be tears of joy? Ah whatever. Ok, you’ve got Scar bound up. Angry boyfriend proclamations aside, time to make him decipher the book NO DON’T CALL HEADQUARTERS YOU IDIOTS. Aaaargh. Wait Scar’s asking Sideburns what he meant by “one of your people”, can’t understand how an Ishvalan could stomach being part of the Amestrian military. Sideburns responds that he’s working on the inside to change Amestrian views of Ishvalans, Scar is shocked at such an idea, and that it was an Amestrian that set Sideburns on the path. Scar can only look down. [Scar]: “Look at me. I am a festering wound of hatred born of the Ishvalan War. I am thankful that there is someone like you out there.” Aaargh but just as Scar is realizing that maybe wanton murder isn’t the way to go about things the call goes through, and Kimblee is on his way to “deal” with Scar. This drives Marcoh and May to reveal themselves. Finally! Oh, and now May can patch up Scar’s arm! Outside the Mustached Mook is noting the stormy clouds, Kimblee tells them to hurry up (gee, I wonder if he’ll get there in time?). Marcoh and May are yes thank you for Leto’s sake it took long enough they’re saying that they’ve got groundbreaking Alchemy/Alkahestry research but the only one who can read it is Scar. Sideburns notes that May is the Alkahestry girl they’ve been searching for as well, says that she needs to come back with them to Fort Briggs. Add in that Scar’s needed to read the notes and it’d be just as bad for Marcoh to be recaptured, looks like all three need to go back to the Fort. Ed’s just a mite unhappy with needing Scar’s help, Sideburns knocks him upside the head with the fact that the Goths are pulling some sort of giant TC shenanigans, they need all the info and help they can get right now. Ed stands down after the suggestion that with Scar’s help they can disgrace Kimblee and get Winry away from his clutches. One Ishvalan Oath later Scar’s judgement is postponed… and the Chimeras are waking up, uh oh. The kids balk at Sideburns’ orders to kill them, the Chimeras sadly agree with Sideburns, saying that they can never go back to their old lives. Al tries reasoning with them, appealing to their families but they’ve been told they’re dead. And it’s not like they can go back like this, we’d just be imitating the 2005 Fantastic Four, and nobody wants that.

But Al does get them to yell that “of course they want their old bodies back”, when they quite reasonably say that it can never happen Al does the helmet remove to show his Soul Armor state. [Al]: “Well I’m going back. No matter how long it takes. I’m not giving up.” Ooh, is Al getting some followers? Watch him form an army out of Chimeras tossed aside by the Goths, take them down with their own creations. Unfortunately the snowstorm’s coming in, meaning that they can’t reach the Fort until it passes. And Kimblee’s on his way, so they need a plan- [Yoki]: “This is a mining town, isn’t it? Why don’t we just go into the underground tunnels?” [Everyone]: *turns in surprise to the secret tactical genius in their midst* [Yoki]: “W-what’s wrong? I mean, this is a pretty large mine, right? So surely there’s a tunnel that can take us beyond the mountains, uh… I think?” [Everyone]: “That’s it!” [Yoki, Tactical Genius]: “H-hey, give me some credit; this is what I did for a living!” Ha! Way to finally pull your weight, you C-tier flashback antagonist! Confirming that the tunnels go past the mountains- wait. Wait wait wait. Isn’t the whole point of the mountains that they are between Amestris and Drachma? Ooh, do we finally get to see another country?! Please let my dream of missionary Drachma’s with Leto pamphlets be a reality! Sideburns gives Marcoh notes for any Briggs soldiers the meet after the tunnel (watch them run into Drachmans first and cause all sorts of problems: “These people have notes written in Amestrian! They must be spies from Fort Briggs!”). But what about Winry? If she just up and vanishes with them then Kimblee will suspect the Elrics of foul play! [Winry]: “Um, I hate to be the one to suggest this, but, uh… What do you think Kimblee would do if I was suddenly taken hostage by Scar?” Whoa, so kidnapped!Winry was Winry’s idea? Props to you, mechanic! Mid-ep pictures of Winry Rockbell and human Jerso/Toad and Zampano/Boar. Ed and Al are understandably uneasy with the plan, but Winry shouts them down about being able to at least choose her captor if she’s a hostage either way. Come on Protagonists, learn that you don’t have to or can do everything by yourselves! Scar again promises to protect Winry before Ed lets him loose, when the Chimeras as to be taken along as well. They’ve failed which means Kimblee’s going to kill them either way… [Boar]: “Besides, we don’t want to give up either.” Look at you go Alphonse, already with your two inhuman followers! Also, they’re just a little confused and upset about all this talk of this band of misfits trying to stop some catastrophe that threatens their families along with all of Amestris. Y’know, just a minor detail. Kimblee’s inbound, better hurry. Sideburns asks wait what they’re back to human? Uh ok, with all the talk about being monsters I was kinda assuming that their beast forms were permanent, not something that they could consciously deactivate. Kinda undercuts the whole “we want our human bodies back” if they can shapeshift back like this. The groups are splitting up (to my surprise it’s not the Elric Brothers who are going different ways, at least for now), a soldier remarks that Winry needs to remove her earrings ok what. Seriously, what? This just totally broke my immersion, you cannot tell me that now is the moment when having metal earrings in the frozen north would cause discomfort and haven’t been an issue yet, especially when she came up north specifically because her boyfriend’s metal arm was seizing up. But whatever, she gives them to Ed for safekeeping before promising to see him back at the Fort. Ed gazes up after her, clenching his fist and probably crushing those precious earrings that he was just trusted with. Nice going, kiddo. Explosion! Acting! Snowstorm! Those left in Baschool are sheltering in a building, alternately looking at girlfriend’s jewelry, wondering where their fellow Chimeras have gone, and arguing for planning the next leg of the search. Then Sideburns gets a call from the Fort? Ooooooooh, right. There was that whole “forces from Central showing up to look for Raven” thing going on last time. And our guys are walking right into that mess. Whoops. Down in the tunnel Marcoh’s going on and on about how the Rockbell Doctors were widely respected during the Ishvalan War, how they helped all without regard for themselves. Meanwhile Scar’s walking in the back having flashbacks to Winry’s “I don’t forgive your wanton murdering”, an Ishvalan Elder telling Scar that while he should never forgive the Military’s “wanton murder” that he must abide it-

-to break the chain of hatred, and his brother saying he studies Alchemy to replace hatred with understanding. And here is Scar, following the orders of an Ishvalan who willingly works in the Military to change it, representing the ideals of Scar’s brother and Elders. So what does that make him? Yoki’s having the group stop in an underground office, to pick up a more detailed map of the tunnels. Man, who’d have thought that freaking Yoki would be the most useful party member at this point. Or ever? Inspired by Al, Toad and Boar are pestering Marcoh about any clues in the journal (that he can’t read), they banter with each other about their families. Aw, they’re actually friends! Nice to show that even the Central forces have loved ones, hopefully for real this time after that infuriating Bradley & Selim fakeout. May? What’s wrong? Oh. Oh yeah. Her whole mission was to learn the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone, only to find out it’s based on suffering and the obtaining of immortality for one at the expense of so, so many others. And His Imperial Highness, aka her father, apparently would make one without a moment’s hesitation using any number of his people. So apparently he leans more towards Wrath’s philosophy of leadership than Ling’s. But if she doesn’t bring back the secret of immortality, her clan is in danger from all the others. Marcoh says that the notes might have the humane secret to immortality, they just need to hurry up get to the Fort so Scar can get a-translating. [Ed]: “What do you mean, ‘the Fort is no longer safe’?!” Welp. Just when we get Armstrong The Great as an ally, she’s been summoned back to Central and a Military Officer’s getting put in her place, along with a bunch of other Central forces. So now the Tunnel Team is walking into a hostile environment without knowing. They have to be warned, but how? Ed wants to go but he’ll freeze before he gets anywhere close… [Al]: “There is a way! Listen: send someone who doesn’t have a body. That storm won’t freeze me to death!” Uh, Al? Sure I guess you wouldn’t catch hypothermia, but you’re still a giant suit of steel armor. Remember how there was that whole “Ed’s arm freezing up” problem that was fixed by replacing his entire arm? You don’t have body heat like a living person, your limbs are just gonna ice up. Actually, how the Leto hasn’t that happened yet? Huh. I guess Souls act as armor heaters too, Al’s having more trouble just seeing where he’s walking in the blizzard than actually moving. He sees the path but the winds picks up and the screen whites out from the snow GAH ZOMBIE AL! Oh shit how did Al end up in the Whitespace? Uh, well you’ve found your body? Quick, grab it and let’s get wait no it was an illusion. What, you getting snow madness buddy? Oh. Oh shit. We’ve got a flashback to Barry musing that foreign bodies can’t hold souls for too long, Al’s freaking out about his body trapped in Whitespace, pulling on his soul as it’s rejected by his armor… he can’t think about that right now, he has to hurry. Without the map now, since he dropped it after that vision. Oh hell it’s this asshole. [Uncle]: “Alphonse Elric. Edward Elric. And also… there’s… Van Hohenheim. Izumi Curtis, she’s a possibility-” Aside from all the awfulness of listing off Potential Sacrifices, which is looking a lot more like ‘killing all of these people, not just one or the other’, did you just purposefully knock over Izumi’s piece? Rude, and I can’t wait to see her punch you. “That leaves one more.” New end credits! Rapid guitar music as we race through a 3D hallway/tunnel, outside looks like Ed’s standing in the ruins of the Elric house, Al’s somewhere else standing among some tall square rocks. Flashes of red-eyed Envy, Gluttony, Wrath, Pride, and Uncle (what, no Lust, Greed or Sloth?) A look at Riza’s scarred back with that strange symbol before she turns and I am very sorry for walking in while you were changing ma’am, I’ll be going now. Roy’s still in his eveningwear outfit probably trying to get someone to take all those flowers off his hands, Beard is oh Leto what is happening with your face, are you actually smiling. That looks so weird, stoppit. Oh hey it’s Mama Elric, so sad that we lost you before we could fully appreciate your snark. Ah there’s the scowling Beard that we know, go kick Uncle’s ass. We’ve got Ed jumping and Al and LING YES BRING HIM BACK and a lion and monkey oh my Leto is Al actually going to build a Chimera Army this is the best thing of all time yeah there’s Toad and Boar we are totally getting Rebel General Al. Also there’s Alchemist-Slayer Scar on their side now but who cares CHIMERA ARMY ok fine we also get May and oh Marcoh’s getting in on the action looks like he lost a few teeth wait Yoki no we need you as the secret tactical genius get off the front lines. Selim’s there looking all cute and innocent in his little schoolkid guise until his shadow gets teethy and attacks Ed. Winry’s power walking through a hallway (can’t see if she got her earrings back). Then a bunch of hands reaching up, one larger one grasping a smaller one (which ship will sail?!) before we’re back in the tunnel, shots of Ed and Al and Beard before a final map of the country-sized TC.

[mikamangata]

If BTS attended Hogwarts (Hyung line)

Just a little something I had inside my head for waaaaay too long. Enjoy!

Here pupils go to Hogwarts from the age 14 to 24 (I have a weird brain but it fits nicer with the ‘story’) and the whole thing is set before the Hogwarts battle

—

Kim Namjoon

Fifth year Ravenclaw (you guessed it)

Both parents are muggles; his mother works as a maths teacher and his father owns a bookshop

His mom says Namjoon got his intelligence from his dad because she still has hers (they’re that kind of quirky family)

Best student at Hogwarts (highest grade point average)

His IQ is probably higher than the Hogwarts towers but he’s still an idiot

Sucks at potions (“Kim Namjoon is that a dead rat in your love potion?!” “I’m not sure but it’s definitely not alive anymore.”)

Best friends with Min Yoongi (“You’re the person I hate the second least in this school” “Uhm thanks Yoongi-hyung.”)

Going out with Kim Seokjin since his first year, they’re the power couple of Hogwarts and bicker like they’ve been married for at least ten years

Confessed to Seokjin by accidentally sending him a howler at dinner: “WILL YOU GO OUT WITH ME PLEASE, I THINK I’M IN LOVE WITH YOU!” (To which Yoongi eloquently commented: “By Merlin’s fucking beard can’t I even eat dinner in peace you egg-face ass looking son of a witch.”)

Clumsiest person you will ever meet; lovingly nicknamed by his friends as 'god of destruction’ and 'Jesus Christ don’t touch that’ (Although he is not sure if the last one is a name; people just say it a lot around him)

Once sneezed in transfiguration class and accidentally transformed Hoseok into a banana (Professor McGonagall immediately turned him back but the poor guy hasn’t been the same after that)

Argues with professor Trelawney about the existence of destiny and fate on a regular basis (“I’m sorry professor, but I just don’t think that these tea leaves look like a house elf riding a unicorn so I’m sure I won’t die within the next three minutes please calm down.”)

Wanted to be part of the Ravenclaw quidditch team but after he set his broom on fire and destroyed a quaffle at the first practice he didn’t make it on the team (thank god, people could have died)

Mostly hangs out in the library or in a certain Hufflepuff’s room (if the weather is nice, you can also find him at the lake)

Currently hides about fifty books under his bed (His room was raided by a bunch of teachers a month ago and he lost over seventy books, he’s still searching for the person who told on him but he’s pretty sure it was Taehyung that little shit)

Is a sucker for cute things; owns a dark purple pygmy puff who he lovingly named 'Monnie’ and he takes that little guy everywhere (that thing is just as clumsy as Namjoon; it once nearly drowned after it fell into the toilet)

His patronus is a spider monkey (they have a weird resemblance if you ask Seokjin)

-

Kim Seokjin

Seventh year Hufflepuff prefect

Pureblood; both of his parents are well-known members of the Ministry of Magic

Absolutely fascinated by muggles (“You just stick it in like that and then it’ll get all hot inside? Won’t that feel weird Joonie?” “No Hyung, you have to take your hand away before you switch on the toaster or you’ll end up getting burned.”

Most beautiful person at Hogwarts if you ask him (and he’s right)

Drinks tea with professor McGonagall every Thursday afternoon and nobody knows what they talk about; Taehyung believes they hid a few muggles somewhere at school and whenever they 'drink tea’ they’re actually feeding them (“What is wrong with you, Taehyung?”)

Him and Namjoon always get free butter beer whenever they visit Hogsmeade because Madam Rosmerta adores Seokjin (I mean who doesn’t?)

Got nearly suspended once for turning his black robe pink and going to class like that (“I don’t care about the dresscode Minerva I look fabulous!”)

The mom of their little rag-tag group of friends

Calls the maknae line his babies (“Are you cold baby? You can have my jacket if you want, we wouldn’t want our dear Jiminie to get sick!” “Thanks Hyung, I’m okay though.”)

Nice and charming character but if you hurt one of his babies he becomes mama-bear and will “wingardium leviosa your ass to wherever it fucking came from”

Always let’s Jimin, Taehyung and Jungkook use the prefects’ bathroom whenever they ask because he can’t say no to the maknaes

Has an adorable sugar glider called 'Odeng’ who’s best friends with Namjoon’s pygmy puff Monnie

Even though he violates the dresscode on a regular basis with different variations of pink, he still scolds the others whenever they don’t put on their uniforms neatly (“Roll your sleeves down Joonie, I won’t go to lunch with you like this.” “I accidentally burned them off in potions class.” “Ugh.”)

Absolutely loves food, nearly as much as he adores Namjoon and the others (“By Merlin if you give me another piece of this pumpkin pie I’ll sacrifice my firstborn to you.” “Jin-hyung please stop, I think you’re scaring Kookie.”)

Does fairly well in all of his classes

Outstanding in herbology and best friends with professor Sprout (“You won’t believe what happened today Ponoma!”)

All the teachers adore him (and most students do too)

Gets tons of Valentine’s Day letters and reads them together with Namjoon (“Isn’t that one cute Joonie?” “Yeah but he spelled beautiful with a "p” and that’s just a no-go for us.“)

His patronus is an armadillo (cute and sweet but extremely protective of the ones he loves)

-

Min Yoongi

Sixth year Slytherin

Pureblood: his parents are extremely rich and were well-respected members of society

But Yoongi had a rough childhood: the first wizarding war happened and his father is now in Azkaban for being one of Voldemort’s most loyal death eaters

Hates his parents and desperately tries to proof to everyone that he’s not like them (they’re both awful people that despise muggle-born wizards and did horrible things during the war but only his father was convicted because there wasn’t enough evidence against his mother)

Pretends like he doesn’t care about his family but his friends know how much his parents’ doings hurt him

Most students at Hogwarts are intimidated by him even though he’s just a smol bean that likes to act tough

Best friends with Namjoon

Dating Hoseok since second year ("Be careful at the next game, Hoseok-ah.” “Love you too, Hyung” “W-whatever.”)

Hoseok is the only person that’s able to reduce him to a blushing, stuttering mess within seconds (“Do you like that, Hyung?” “No I-” “But I feel the goosebumps on your back.” “Y-your hands a-are c-cold.”)

Has a huge soft spot for Jungkook (who doesn’t, that kid is adorable)

Once tried to poison professor Trelawney for saying Hoseok was going to be eaten alive by a thestral in the next hour (Yoongi had to calm him down, the younger was crying hysterically)

Spent his last three Christmas and summer holidays at Hoseok’s place since his mother “didn’t want him back home if he continued to hang out with these mudbloods”

Got a necklace from Hoseok after two months of dating and in his opinion it’s the only thing in his possession that has value (Yoongi cried once in fourth year because he thought he lost it, after they found it he never took it off again)

Most people think he’s antisocial but he’s almost always around at least one of his six friends

Discovered the room of requirements in his second year after searching for a quiet place to sleep and started using it regularly as a place for all of them to hang out at (and sometimes him and Hoseok spend the night there but that’s another story)

Does surprisingly well in most of his classes (except for herbology but Seokjin always helps him out with that)

Second best student in DADA but only because his parents forced him to learn all kinds of curses and defence spells when he was a child

Is the go-to person for the maknae line when they have troubles with a spell or curse (or a person; Yoongi once nearly cut off a student’s tongue after he called Jimin a mudblood)

Is almost never in the Slytherin common room, said he didn’t like most people there

His patronus is a small, white fox (clever and good at adapting, but easy to hurt once you catch it)

-

Jung Hoseok

Fifth year Hufflepuff (what else could he be really?)

Halfblood: His mother is a witch who owns a small bakery in Diagon Alley and his muggle-father works as a woodworker near the leaky cauldron

Has five younger sisters and one older one (they’re all muggles though)

Grew up in both worlds so he knows his way around them well

His parents adore Yoongi and treat him like a second son (“Please take good care of him Hoseokie, he looks so thin! Does he even eat enough? Ah that poor sweetheart!” “Yes mom, I’ll take care of him don’t worry.”

Whenever he smiles somewhere the sun rises (yeah that’s a real fact fight me)

Hates Gucci with a passion (“Get that thing away from me Taehyung or I’ll curse your ass like there’s no tomorrow!”)

Has an absolutely catastrophically idiotic owl named Mickey (“Hobi-hyung, what did Mickey just drop into your oatmeal? Is it a package? Did you get something from your parents? What is it?” “…I think it’s a shoe, Kookie, my sisters are probably having a mental breakdown right now.”

Loves all of his friends to bits and is dating Yoongi since his first year after his owl accidentally landed on Yoongi’s head (and Hoseok landed in his heart…sorry)

Shares a room with only Seokjin because of the older’s prefect status; Hoseok enjoyed it until he walked in on Namjoon and Seokjin once (“By Merlin somebody please erase my memory or just kill me.”)

Quidditch captain and the team’s keeper (even though he’s a sweetheart, when it’s about quidditch he doesn’t play)

Does okay in all of his classes, could do better if he concentrated a little less on quidditch but he’s a great captain so that’ll never happen

When they studied boggarts in third year and the McDonald’s clown came out of that creepy closet Hoseok had a lot of explaining to do (“I once nearly suffocated because of a fry when I was like four, I guess I’ll never forget Ronald holding me upside down until I spit it out. That was scary.”)

Once got scared by his own shadow and tried to curse it (“It could’ve been a death eater! You never know!”)

Gets into trouble with the maknae line regularly (especially with Taehyung, that kid is always up to no good)

Sometimes when Yoongi is sad, Hoseok flies them onto one of the many roofs and they watch the stars until it’s morning (and Hoseok would only take a thin blanket with him to make Yoongi cuddle with him)

His patronus is an otter (it 'swims’ through the air like Hoseok does, just without a broom)

—

Author’s note: Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! If there are any grammar or spelling mistakes, please tell me so I can correct them and learn from it! Constructive criticism is always welcomed!^^ Here’s the Maknae Line

[catastrophe-conglomerate]

Elemental Affairs - session 7 summary

With Kauthrien having left a very, very frantic part of the Catastrophe Conglomerate in the tavern in Trestyr, and with that bitch having also enchanted Trick to completely shatter her mind and personality, the next session starts. Hadall has been filled in on what happened to Trick although the group that stayed behind in the tavern knows almost nothing: all they saw was that Kauthrien said something rather threatening and Trick just bolted out of the tavern, after which Kauthrien left them with the parting message that she’d see them again very soon. This group inside the tavern, consisting of Rei, Laraëssil, Cassandra, Hadall and Auk, now rushes outside to hopefully still catch a glimpse of Kauthrien before she disappears. Rei, with their elven eyes, spots Kauthrien’s form suddenly shift into a smaller form before seemingly flying off and then vanishing into thin air.

Lynnae is still holding Trick in the middle of the road, both immensely panicked. Lynnae tries to recall anything about the spell Trick was hit with, and initially hits a wall, but suddenly she feels a sudden warmth in her chest that she can’t quite identify. Luckily she now remembers. She doesn’t know exactly what the spell is called or what the countermagic is but she heard horror stories about magic that’s able to wipe someone’s mind like this.

The rest finds Lyn and Trick. Lyn tells the others of Trick’s symptoms and that she knows there’s magic that can do this, but she’s too stuck in her panic to be coherent. Lara quickly casts Detect Thoughts on Trick to see if there’s anything at all going on inside her brain: she senses nothing but raw, unbridled F E A R, more like the instinct of an extremely scared wild animal than the Trick we all know and love. No thoughts in her mind whatsoever. Lyn decides on calling Kara once they’re back to safety.

Rei at this moment in time is trying to give chase to Kauthrien, as soon as they see her form shift. They just start running, but this smaller form is fast and Rei soon loses her.

The others fill Lyn in on what they saw happen in the tavern after Hadall and Lyn fled to the ruins with Blatrenn to leave him there. Especially the fact that Kauthrien knew Trick’s name freaks Lynnae out because that means she might also know Kara’s name. Lyn then starts dragging Trick back to the tavern but the small tiefling is anything but cooperative in this state and it costs Lyn a lot more trouble than one would expect. Hadall walks after to help her out, Lyn rents a few rooms in the tavern to stay the night and they drag Trick upstairs, Auk follows.

Lara, Rei and Cas stay outside, Rei tells Lara and Cas about how they saw her disappear and flee to the south of Trestyr. They start checking for tracks in the ground. Rei, again with their epic elven eyes, see tracks leading to the south. They stop quite suddenly and the last two tracks are deeper, as if she was taking off in a way.

Now from the south, they start seeing someone coming towards them. It’s actually Blatrenn, and he apologizes profusely for not staying in the ruins as he’d promised but he was super concerned and didn’t feel safe there, alone. He asks about Kauthrien but we know fuck-all about where she went, they do tell him what happened to Trick and he seems very worried. Cassandra takes Blatrenn back to the tavern while the elves patrol the town.

As Cas and Blatrenn head back to the tavern, Blatrenn is staying behind Cassandra a little. Suddenly, Cas feels a blade slip right through her chest and she falls unconscious immediately – Blatrenn stabbed her. As Cassandra falls to the ground limp, Blatrenn starts screaming out for help, just standing next to Cas with his bloodied blade. Rei immediately tries to tackle him but Blatrenn insists they help Cassandra instead, and Rei takes their healing potion and pours it into Cassandra’s mouth, bringing her back from death’s door. Blatrenn dematerializes his sword as Cas wakes up, but she’s hella pissed and with good reason. Rei ties Blatrenn up to one of those posts outside the tavern where they keep horses as their owners stay the night and leaves him there.

Blatrenn keeps apologizing, but when Lara asks him what the big idea was and if it was Kauthrien’s doing with the spell, he just shakes his head. Upon being asked if he can’t speak about it because of the spell, he gives a nod. He also doesn’t seem intent on hurting anyone else. Rei gets between Cas and Blatrenn to prevent Cas from killing him.

As this is going down, Lyn calls Kara through her crystal. She tells Kara about what happened in Trestyr, how the group was attacked and how Trick is now basically Hei Hei from Moana. She asks her if she can remember the mind-shattering spell from the stories they heard as kids and Kara instantly knows this is the Feeblemind spell. She’s horribly worried about her little sister now since this is insanely powerful magic, and she tells her to get to a cleric as soon as she can. Lyn promises to do that and next describes Kauthrien so that Kara can run if she sees her. On the topic of fucky spells, Lyn also asks Kara if she knows what Blatrenn might be affected with. Kara is able to confirm that this is a very powerful Geas curse. Knowing Kauthrien might know who Kara is, Lynnae asks her sister to flee the Soot Seminary together with Hadall’s brother. Kara objects to this at first, as she’s writing her dissertation and it’s in the middle of the school year, but she soon gives in and says she’ll run. Lynnae tells her to get rid of her crystal, “meet at Malory in ten days”, and after an exchange of I love yous, breaks contact.

Lyn tells Hadall about a plan to get rid of the effects of Feeblemind and Geas: when she was 13 she died in a boating accident in Port Yketan but she was brought back to life by a cleric named Agatha Mistral. She thinks that if a cleric can bring someone back from the dead, they can also probably remove powerful curses like those. She knows there’s also a good cleric in Parshyr but she doesn’t dare go near that place since she, yaknow, burned that place down. Hadall calms her down a little and says they’ll think about this more in the morning. It’s late and we’re dead-tired. Lyn asks Hadall to go get the others, and as Hadall does so he stumbles upon the scene outside. After bringing everyone (except Rei, they’re keeping watch) inside, Cas tells Lyn, Hadall and Auk what just happened outside. Lyn takes off her glove and lights her hand but Cas manages to coax her into putting it back on. Lyn then tells her what she learned about the spells cast on Trick and Blatrenn.

Trick, right now, is underneath the bed with her fox Trouble, softly humming to herself. Lara kneels down to check on her and entertains her a little with small illusions.

Lyn takes everyone’s crystals and tries to puzzle them together to hopefully form a bigger picture but that doesn’t work. She strikes a theory she’d written down in her adventure book through three times and leaves it at that.

Lyn also asks Cas if she’s going to be okay, Cas assures her so and tells her that this happened before and she’s had worse. She doesn’t want to answer any further questions Lyn throws at her, though she reminds Lyn she was an assassin.

The group goes to bed while Rei patrols, but Lyn gets up in the middle of the night to go to Blatrenn, not even giving a shit that Rei is watching this. She kicks Blatrenn awake and questions him about some things, though Rei warns her beforehand that he can’t talk about almost everything that pertains to the cult. She’s wondering since Vurryl was apparently traumatized by one of the four disasters mentioned on the slip of paper found in every base so far, that another disaster holds some kind of significance for Blatrenn. It does not. She also asks if he could hear Kauthrien’s voice while the cultist leader was calling “Aerith” back on the way to the Corvinius Manor but he couldn’t. When asked what happens to the bodies of the sacrificed children, Blatrenn finds himself unable to answer as the Geas pulls at his mind. He’s also unable to tell her about the visions about the Many Eyed, other than that it was like a very confusing dream. Especially the part about what the Many Eyed looks like is bothering him a lot, but he can’t talk about it. It also seems like Kauthrien caught up to our method of using games of hangman to figure out the things Blatrenn can’t say, because now he can’t do that anymore either. Frustrated to shit, Lyn goes back to bed as Lara takes the second watch.

Kauthrien doesn’t return, thank the gods.

 Morning rolls around as we all slowly come back to consciousness in the tavern, some having had a more restful sleep than others. Luckily Trick slept like it’s nobody’s business, but she also wakes up rather early and shakes the rest of the people in that room awake by banging on the door and screaming hysterically. We don’t untie Blatrenn for breakfast resulting in what might just be the most awkward way of an old-as-balls man trying to eat his freaking food but he’s trying his best. Lara helps him though.

After breakfast Cas walks outside, walks over to the prisoner and clocks him across the face with a Nat20, breaking and misaligning his nose in an instant. There were crumbs in his beard, now there’s blood in his beard. Lynnae walks outside with a screeching Trick in her arms, looks at Blatrenn, laughs and then ignores him.

The group tries to get Trick to stop screaming but that doesn’t go well at all until we put the very feisty houseplant on the ground instead of holding her. For some reason this works perfectly, so from now on we decide to hold her hand instead of lifting her up.

Rei unties Blatrenn from the wooden post but does keep his hands restrained. They also get his nose back in place. He’s still bleeding but at least his nose looks relatively okay again considering Cas just Nat20d his nose to hell.

Lyn proposes to go to Port Yketan next to get Trick fixed up and then slay Falk and their asshole underlings, but there’s one problem: on the way there are two towns she’d rather avoid, namely Parwyn and Parshyr. Parwyn is where the cultists from Blatrenn’s and Vurryl’s group still are and Parshyr is Lyn’s hometown, which she set fire to when she was 15. There is, however, also a cleric in Parshyr where we might be able to get help for Trick, and it’s also the safer route. With Lyn outvoted by literally everyone else, we decide to go to Parshyr.

Keeping Trick under control during the journey proves harder than imagined. The tiefling picks up a rock at some point and just starts chewing on it, but Lara makes her spit it out and replaces it with a prettier rock because of course Lara has a prettier rock on her for Trick to chew on.

That night, at the campfire, Lyn takes Rei and Lara to the side and asks them for help with something. She has been trying out some new things with her magic and she wants to practice with someone. Rei gets pretty nervous for a bit but eventually both elves agree. Seeing how extremely uncomfortable Rei is in this weather, Lyn casts Prestidigitation on their clothes to cool them off – which Rei greatly appreciates after sweating their ass off for two weeks. Next she tries to put the symbol of Pelor on their forehead and she attempts to follow a tune on Rei’s flute with her magic but the latter goes horribly wrong and it comes out as discordant kazoo noises.

Lyn next asks Lara for help with figuring out how a spell works: the sorceress has been trying to learn Counterspell for months now but she’s not making any progress, so she asks Lara to cast Eldritch Blast on her. Lara declines; she’s wholly uncomfortable with that since Eldritch Blast is just about her strongest spell and she could kill Lynnae, which technically wouldn’t be a problem if Trick were in the right mind but Trick is currently not. Rei then suggests Vicious Mockery instead and casts it.

Counterspell fails, Lynnae takes damage from seeing Rei make this sign 👉🏻👌🏻 and completely and utterly defeated and sad, she goes back to the campfire, crawls in her bedroll and falls asleep.

Trick in the meantime is entirely enamored by Blatrenn’s beard and keeps grabbing and pulling on it. Blatrenn dislikes. Trick doesn’t give a rat’s ass and she’s making happy noises. Lara carefully drags her away from Blatrenn and puts her to bed as well.

At this point Rei realizes they could have cooled themselves off all this time because they’re a Monk of the Way of the Elements and they can manipulate elemental energy. Cas laughs at them, Rei takes a swing at her and misses, Cas ponches back and hits. Suddenly they’re sparring but Rei bravely reclaims their honor as, with just a few punches, they take Cassandra to the ground. She embraces defeat. Rei reigns superior (geddit geddit). Trick has been laughing and clapping at the entire thing. She probably thinks it’s greit (geddit geddit).

Imma stop with the puns now we take a long rest okay.

 The next day, around dusk, we arrive in Parshyr, a medium-sized city all the way up north of Suald, with a forest surrounding it (just about the only forest growth in Suald). Although Lyn burned down a part of the city six years ago, it seems to have recovered well from the blow; everything has been rebuilt and repaired.

Regardless, Lyn doesn’t trust it. She casts Alter Self and turns herself into a halfling woman she names Lena. Cassandra, knowing she’s wanted in Sudh, also disguises herself just to be on the safe side.

Hadall takes Blatrenn to the nearest inn, the Stag’s Leap, because walking into a temple with a tied-up man is less than ideal despite the fact we have walked into other places with a tied-up man before but hey look at us being responsible for once. The rest of the group takes Trick to the temple, which is built into the surrounding forest. It’s a pretty open temple that lets in a lot of sunlight and is absolutely filled with flowers and other plants. Trick is entranced by the flowers and runs off a few times but Lyn manages to take her to the priestess after Lara picks some flowers so the tiefling stops running off. Just as we reach the priestess in charge, Trick spots a flower within reach and eats it, much to Lyn’s shock as the human tries plucking the flowers out of Trick’s mouth. The priestess assures them that the flowers aren’t poisonous, after which Trick eats another one.

The priestess, a wood elf woman named Elissa, luckily knows the required countermagic to heal Trick’s mind and offers to help her out in exchange for 100 gold pieces. Cassandra immediately pulls out the money and pays since she feels incredibly guilty for Trick’s condition: Trick did basically take a bullet for her, after all. The priestess takes out a satchel with diamond dust, rubs a little on her hand (Trick licks her) and touches the tiefling’s forehead. A burst of warmth rushes through Trick’s body, she feels a sudden clarity in her mind. The red of her sclera fades back into black, which is… surprisingly normal for Trick. The mark on her forehead doesn’t fade entirely, but it’s less than before. Her mind is restored.

Trick, still with flower petals between her teeth, is very confused for a bit and she’s absolutely exhausted, but she seems to have recovered well. The group hugs her, Lara and Lyn crying a little, and we then take her back to the Stag’s Leap.

Cas takes Trick to the side and asks her what the hell she was thinking, why she took the blame for Vurryl’s death knowing full well Kauthrien could harm her. Trick brushes it off saying it seemed like a good idea at the time. Cas thanks her nonetheless, asks her not to do that again and tells her that she can take care of herself. Trick then casually reminds her that she got destroyed by Rei in that sparring match, and Cas admits duels aren’t her strong suit.

Lyn in the meantime sits down to write a letter to her parents, which she intends to leave in their mailbox. As she gets up to deliver it Rei asks her why she doesn’t just visit them and Lyn gets defensive as always, but Rei says they’re certain her parents would love to see her, that they’ve probably forgiven her. Cas casually drops in that she once caused a housefire to make an escape during a contract gone wrong, but that it was okay since the dude was already dead.

Lyn admits she secretly kinda wants to know how many people died in the fire due to some morbid curiosity, and because she wants to know if she’s beyond redemption or not, but Lara and Rei quickly talk her out of that as knowing the details won’t help her and that no one’s beyond redemption. “You can’t change your past, you can only influence your future,” Lara tells her. Lyn takes those words to heart and finally decides visiting her parents is the right thing to do. Lara and Rei come along for emotional support while the rest stays behind to play cards in the tavern.

Lyn’s old home is no longer the same; since its destruction it has been completely rebuilt. Before Lyn has a chance to object, Rei walks up to the door and knocks. Lyn is still in her halfling disguise by the time Lonán and Joselin Laroche open the door but with some not-so-gentle coaxing from Rei (they elbow her in the head) she turns back into herself. Her parents hug her immediately and start crying, greeting their daughter again after six years, after which they take the three inside with Lyn muttering apology after apology.

After calming down a little in the sitting room Lyn’s mother gets some drinks for the group and her parents ask her about her adventures, where she’s been, the friends she’s made along the way, and Lyn tells them many stories, leaving out everything that pertains to danger and cultists. Lonán asks her if she’s seen Kara at all and Lyn tells him of the meeting in Sudh and how proud she is that Kara was accepted into the seminary. As kids, Lyn and Kara wanted to go to the Soot Seminary together but things just didn’t work out, and with her own attention span being equal to that a pineapple Lyn says it’s for the better that Kara walks that path alone.

Joselin proposes to go out for lunch with the entire group but Lyn is entire uncomfortable with the idea of going out in public, she’s still afraid despite the fact her mom assures her the people have forgiven her. Especially Isowyn Enran, the lawmaster, scares the everloving crap out of Lynnae. With Isowyn’s methods of containing the young sorcerer that’s not so weird, and Lyn apparently has some lingering trauma from that, but her mom assures her Isowyn was just trying to protect Lyn from herself despite her methods being rather unorthodox.

To break the tension, Lyn briefly introduces her parents to her pet ball python Azran and she spends the rest of the evening recounting stories about the antics of the Catastrophe Conglomerate. Eventually it gets very late – Rei and Lara return to the tavern while Lyn decides to stay home for the night and she sleeps in Kara’s room instead.

Trick absolutely demolishes everyone at poker – she’s back in business as if nothing ever happened.

 Lyn wakes up to the scent of fresh breakfast: her mom’s cooking and since she’s a baker, there are some seriously delicious pastries here. As Lyn’s devouring some blueberry tarts, the rest of the Conglomerate wakes up in the Stag’s Leap and Trick walks over to Blatrenn.

She knows how to remove the Geas from his mind. With a touch of her hand she casts Remove Curse and lifts the spell. For the first time, we can see clarity in his eyes and he comments – in shock – that Kauthrien’s pressure is gone. Hadall unties him, and to test the waters, we ask him for a fact about Kauthrien. Rei, remembering some of the questions Lyn asked Blatrenn in Trestyr, asks him again about what the cultists do with the bodies of the sacrifices. Blatrenn immediately tells them that they burn the bodies to leave no trace. Rei then asks how Kauthrien can talk to us through the leaders’ crystals without the use of a crystal herself. Blatrenn doesn’t know. Cas now asks if the attack on her was specifically targeted towards her or just any random member of the Catastrophe Conglomerate. Blatrenn was instructed to kill anyone in the group he could catch off-guard and alone. He didn’t stab anyone else because his job was done after he attacked Cas, and he didn’t want to cause any more harm. He also suspects he was instructed to kill only one in order to take one out of the equation, weaken the group one at a time. He doesn’t know if Kauthrien found out he failed. Rei remembers another question Lynnae asked Blatrenn before, and now that he can finally answer, they ask him what his visions of the Many-Eyed looked like. He hasn’t seen an actual creature, nor can he remember most of the dreams – they were too vague. He saw eyes staring down at him. He doesn’t know who the Many-Eyed is, much less what he is. Kauthrien never told him either. The cultists worship him, however.

This isn’t going anywhere, so we ask how we can infiltrate Falk’s base, and what we can expect. Blatrenn explains that the base is in a burned out library in the eastern district of Port Yketan, and that Falk loves puzzles so he assumes the place is filled with puzzles and traps. He also doesn’t know how many cultists to expect there. Falk also knows magic, pretty powerful magic. By this point it’s also pretty safe to assume Falk knows Blatrenn is on our side.

Hadall now asks if Kauthrien can hear through all of the crystals and not just the leaders’ crystals. Blatrenn isn’t sure, but it’s possible. Trick says it’s better to assume she can. We also still don’t know if she can locate us through them, or if she has magic for that. The four leaders were given the crystals by Kauthrien herself, she said they were communication devices. Blatrenn doesn’t know how she got them or if she made them herself.

We ask about her weaknesses: Ana was one of them. Kauthrien was very fond of Ana, they even seemed to be in a relationship (we murdered the bae ☹). When Rei asks him if he’s willing to fight on our side, Blatrenn agrees. To make sure Blatrenn is completely free of Kauthrien’s restraints, Auk casts a spell, and confirms that Blatrenn seems to be safe for now. Blatrenn also assures us he has no intention to hurt us, and we decide to trust that statement. He also apologizes to Cas again but Cas is definitely not sorry for breaking his nose.

But Rei tells Blatrenn one last time that if he fucks us somehow, they’ll be coming for his ass.

Rei asks more: how Kauthrien gets in contact with him (she always came to him or contacted him instead of the other way around), if Blatrenn ever had to go somewhere for her (nope), and if she has any vanishing spells or transformation spells (she can teleport short distances, and he has seen her turn into a bird before). He also knows that she can mind-control people, read people’s minds.

Trick’s a little concerned she might have cast something else on her as well, some way to know that she was lying about being Ana’s killer. We have no way of knowing, however.

Rei asks what the type of magic is that Kauthrien most often uses, but Blatrenn doesn’t know shit about magic. It’s different from the magic he was gifted, however. Blatrenn also doesn’t know if Kauthrien is her real name, but it was the name she told him and the only name he knows her by. He has, however, seen her turn into other people on occasion, and he gives some very vague descriptions, but he’s obviously not good at remembering most of them. Most of the time she’s in the form we saw her in, though. She’s also a skilled musician, and a user of Arcane Magic rather than the Divine.

The party has no more questions for Blatrenn and decides to go pick up Lynnae from her parental home. The scent of pastries is wafting around the house and Lara knocks on the door of the house, at which Lynnae opens the door with a big smile and a cheerful greeting. Cas is immediately intrigued by the pastry scents, and Lyn remembers Cas likes baking – since her mother is a baker, she introduces them to each other and then brings the rest in as well. Cassandra and Joselin Laroche happily talk baking for a while, exchanging recipes too.

Rei in the meantime signs everything the group learned from Blatrenn to Lynnae, who takes it in and goes through her notes to hopefully figure out some stuff about Kauthrien’s magic. She doesn’t get very far, however, knowing that the transformation spell is probably something in the same vein as her own Alter Self spell, but since that spell doesn’t allow one to change into an animal she can quickly rule that out. She takes some notes and puts her book away.

We quietly discuss our next steps, keeping our voices hushed so Lyn’s parents don’t pick up on it (Rei’s player, OOC: “Can we roll stealth for talking?”). Trick suggests to get rid of the crystals somewhere. Hadall suggests to tie the crystals to an animal and send it running to send Kauthrien on the wrong track in case she can locate us through the crystals. At this point Rei remembers they have Bøbiël the Squirrel still trapped in their bag but upon opening their bag they find Bøbiël dead. Like super-dead. Like decomposing-rabid-animal-dead.

Before heading into the Parshyr Forest just outside the city, Lynnae asks if she can leave her snake Azran with her parents. Her mom used to keep a snake herself, so she’s perfectly fine with it, and since Lyn loves her python but doesn’t want him in any more danger. Azran seems content with being with Joselin and so it’s settled.

The tying-the-crystals-to-a-wild-animal-plan doesn’t go through as we can’t actually seem to catch a goddamned animal, so instead we decide to bury them somewhere.

There are a few crystals that we don’t bury: Rei keeps Vurryl’s Master Crystal, Cas keeps Hykaril’s Master Crystal, and Lynnae keeps one of the crystals from the cultists in Vurryl’s base to spy on the cultists from her group that are currently in the nearby town of Parwyn. She also promises to tell the rest if she hears anything, and this is a filthy lie but no one notices (the ball python is gone but there’s still a snake in the group #iconic). Rei closes the hole with the crystals in it and puts a rock on top of it with the dead body of Bøbiël on top of it to mark it, just in case we ever need them again.

Now that Trick has been healed we can actually rather safely go to Parwyn, or at least check it out, see if we can do anything. We decide to split up the party. Auk, Hadall and Lara stay in Parshyr with Blatrenn, Lynnae goes halfway, and Trick, Cas and Rei go to Parwyn while Trick has Pass Without a Trace active. They’re sneaky motherfuckers.

There’s a large camp on the outskirts of Parwyn, but the three check out the home of the local town elder, Kirrita, first – per Lyn’s request. Everything seems fine in the house of the town elder. Cas is a bit wary of the camp, of course, and she doesn’t want to get any closer. She stays on the lookout further off while Rei and Trick sneak closer and try to get a closer look.

Rei notices about fifteen cultists walking around the camp, though some are standing guard around three small, tied-up figures – children. It’s a pretty big camp however, big enough for a distraction. It’s just the three of them there, though, which is definitely not enough to take on that many cultists. Time to reconvene.

Lyn’s getting impatient and quite hungry for answers at this point, so she is starting to close in on Parwyn now. She’s definitely not sneaky so Cas notices her and asks what’s up. Lyn says she was getting worried about the three and that she wanted to check up on them, but Cas catches her lying. Lyn then admits she actually wanted to visit Kirrita herself. When Cas asks why, she refuses to answer, and Cas keeps her by her side since she doesn’t trust Lyn at all.

Trick and Rei speculate about ways to break the children out: they come up with an idea to pretend to be cultists from Blatrenn’s group who survived the onslaught in Tyressil, but only Rei has a Walkie Crystalkie. That’s when they spot Lyn and Cas in the distance, and they move over to tell of their plan – Lynnae also carries a crystal which could prove useful in the impersonation trick. Still it would be better to have the entire Conglomerate with us.

While Lynnae and Trick hide in a nearby tree, Rei and Cas run back to Parshyr as fast as they can in order to fetch the rest. They return to Parwyn with the rest of the Catastrophe Conglomerate in tow, including Blatrenn. We wait until evening falls and cook up a plan.

Trick and Lynnae are to create a distraction: Lynnae has to set fire to the tents in the back with a tinderbox, the furthest away from the children, while Trick will make wyrmling noises with Thaumaturgy. Cas, Rei and Auk will then sneak to the children, pick off the guards and untie the children, and then escape from the camp. Hadall, Blatrenn and Lara will stay for backup, Hadall and Blatrenn will rush in should anything go awry and Lara can snipe like an absolute motherfucker with her Eldritch Blast, so she stays in a high tree where she can oversee everything.

And because this is the Catastrophe Conglomerate, the plan goes wrong immediately. Lyn doesn’t follow the plan, instead following Trick’s suggestion to cast Burning Hands to make it look more like a wyrmling’s fire breath. A few tents catch flame and cultists come running to investigate and put out the fire, and when Rei, Cas and Auk move towards the kids to kill the guards and rescue the children, Auk trips over a rock and falls flat on their face.

The few cultists that are there are alerted immediately – battle is inevitable.

Trick and Lynnae join the fight soon enough and Hadall and Blatrenn, noticing something went wrong, also come running. Luckily, not all of the cultists are there since most are preoccupied with the fire in the back of the camp. However, once they realize they’re being attacked, more and more start pouring in. Although we manage to kill eight of them, we then decide it’s best to grab the kids and escape. Rei and Lynnae each grab a fire genasi child while Auk concerns themselves with the water genasi girl they seem to know.

We run back to Parshyr and while debating where to go with the children, we decide it’s best to go to Isowyn Enran, the lawmaster Lynnae dreads so much. The sorceress puts the good of the children in front of her own, however, and so we go to Isowyn’s office.

The lawmaster, a half-elven woman with burns all over her body, is almost done for the day and is wrapping up when Lynnae breaks down her door screaming hysterically while Trick lights up her eyes bright red with Thaumaturgy. Isowyn has never been so fucking tired in her life. Lyn anxiety-rambles a string of apologies for burning down Parshyr and then starts explaining what took place in Parwyn until Isowyn shuts her up by simply holding up a finger. The lawmaster then asks who the children are and where they’re from. Although we have no clue about the fire genasi twins, Auk actually happily announces that the water genasi girl is Sylt, one of the missing children from Pasekar. Isowyn promises to alert the guards about what happened and find a safe place for the fire genasi twins to stay, as Auk wants to spend some more time with Sylt. Instead, we take her along to the Stag’s Leap.

As evening rolls around and almost everyone has gone to bed, Lynnae takes Hadall to a quiet corner. She wants to come clean about her lies and secrets in order to get on the party’s better side, and since she trusts Hadall the most she hands him the journal in which she writes her letters to Mystra every night. She says she has never lied to Mystra and that journal is the complete, uncut truth about her. Hadall starts reading.

He notices some strange patterns in her writing, but that’s not all: he reads that a massive fire to the party’s camp Lynnae caused (pre-campaign) was actually not an accident or a surge of Wild Magic, but instead the result of something Lynnae calls the “urge”. Prior to this entry, another entry states that this urge is in fact another word for pyromania, a word Lynnae detests. The journal also reveals Lynnae actually doesn’t have a clue about the origins of her powers, even though she told the party that it’s a family blessing. All she knows is that she was born during a heavy storm on the moment of Sualdian double dawn: when the sun of the solar system and the sun in the Fire Plane align at dawn. There’s a much more recent entry about Blatrenn that reveals that the second time she tried to kill him was not a surge at all but an actual murder attempt.

One thing keeps returning in the journal: Lynnae has an almost obsessive desire for control.

Luckily there’s also happy entries. The journal reveals how much Lynnae admires and loves the group, how she trusts Hadall and Cas with her life, and how much she looks up to Trick despite the fact Trick can really grind her gears. Yesterday’s entry states that Lyn’s afraid, and that Kauthrien attacking Trick has taught her a valuable lesson: that she can’t make it on her own and she needs the party.

Hadall wants to be angry with her, he really does, but he’s also glad that Lynnae came clean about so many untruths. He still wants her to tell him the truth without having to do so through a journal. He has a Prime Dad Moment™ here as he tells Lyn how badly he wants her to play with her cards on the table, that lying in a group like that is unnecessary and it’s only going to come out. Lyn says her reason for lying about Parshyr and the reason she left was fear for being kicked out of the party. Hadall says that if he wanted to kick her out he’d have done it ages ago, and he was very close to doing it when the party found out she’d sent her crystal to Kara, and again later when she tried sneaking out to contact Kauthrien.

Here’s where Lynnae comes clean about something else: she tells Hadall she never intended to tell the others if anyone from the cultists in Parwyn were to speak to her through the crystal from Vurryl’s group that she still has. Exasperated, Hadall asks what Lynnae’s problem with Parwyn is, to which she answers it’s just that she’s not on good terms with the town elder. Lyn and Kara went to Parwyn often as kids and Lynnae soon got a reputation for being a troublemaker after some “magical mishaps”. It wasn’t at all on the same scale as what happened in Parshyr but Lyn’s still very apprehensive about it all.

Lyn says she also feels bad about lying so much, but that she felt there was no other way. Hadall asks her to just stop – he’s rather worried about Lyn’s compulsive controlling behavior and he thinks the lies are a part of that, for she controls what others think and know of her. The fact those lies aren’t holding is also making her lose a lot of control. If she wants control, she’ll have to trust the group more. He also says it’s quite ironic she’s a pyromaniac, since fire is uncontrollable.

Lyn seems to get angry for some reason but she holds herself back in time, and she asks Hadall not to tell anyone about that. She also pleads him to not tell Cassandra that the fire in the camp she caused was on purpose: Lynnae melted Cassandra’s favorite dagger that night. Hadall says she’ll have to tell the others herself. If she wants to learn from her mistakes, she needs to face the consequences and be forthright.

Once again he asks her to verbally speak about it with the group to which Lyn answers her throat sometimes blocks up and she can’t speak anymore, she has considerable trouble verbally voicing her thoughts sometimes when it concerns bad things she does. She thinks it’s because of how Isowyn treated her when she was a kid, when she had to come clean about something she was guilty of. Hadall eventually gives in and just says writing something down will also work in the event she can’t get herself to speak. He suggests she shows the journal to the party the next morning, and she reluctantly agrees.

Lynnae apologizes again, promises to not let it get this far anymore and goes upstairs to sleep. However, just as she walks up the stairs, Auk holds her back and asks if they can talk in private. They sit down in a quiet place and Auk tells Lynnae that they’re feeling lost. Lyn asks if they want to go home, and they want to take Sylt home, but they can’t go home yet: there’s another reason they joined the Catastrophe Conglomerate. Of course they wanted to find the children, but they reveal to Lynnae that they’re looking for their mother – she disappeared a couple years ago. She was an adventurer before Auk was born, but a couple years ago a few of her old friends came to her, saying they needed her help, she went along and never returned. She said she wouldn’t be long, but she hasn’t been seen since. Auk doesn’t even know in which region of Hruhkis she is or where she went. Auk had been wanting to look for her ever since she vanished but they were afraid of going alone, and when the Catastrophe Conglomerate came along they thought this was their chance. Lynnae promises she wants to help find their mom, but Auk’s feeling conflicted as they promised to take Sylt back to Pasekar too.

Auk has always wanted to be like her, going on adventures, being brave, and Lyn tells them they’re so much more like her than they can ever imagine. She thinks they’re super brave for even going along with us in the first place: it’s not like we’re the most un-dangerous group in existence. At this point Lyn reveals to Auk she’s been lying a lot, but they don’t believe her until Lynnae gives them their journal. They read through it a while, then say they still think Lyn’s a good person. Lynnae really wants to prove herself, and Auk’s all like “I know this and I love you”, and they forgive her for lying. There’s hugging!

Lyn cheers Auk up a little by telling them how great of an asset they are to the team, and how much she appreciates having them here. She’s fascinated by the way they weave healing spells into their music, to which Auk says their mom taught them that. As for Sylt, Lynnae suggests to leave her in Parshyr with her own parents until they can return and take her back to Pasekar – her parents work most of the day but she’ll at least be safe and she trusts her parents more than Isowyn. They decide to ask them in the morning before they head out to Port Yketan.

Lynnae compliments Auk for confiding in her, and the two head upstairs to sleep.

 Lynnae gathers the party the next morning and – after exchanging nods with Hadall – passes around her journal for her friends to read. Cassandra reads the passage about the fire Lynnae caused, where she lost her favorite dagger, and rams the knife she was holding straight into the table. Her eyes hold a barely contained rage and her tail’s swishing from side to side. She gets up, turns around and walks out the tavern. Lyn follows, but as soon as Lyn taps her on the shoulder Cas snaps at Lyn and heads off to the forest to take out her rage on a tree.

Hadall finds Cassandra stabbing a tree angrily in the Parshyr Forest, and he manages to placate her anger a little, saying how Lyn’s trying to learn from her mistakes. Cas says she just needs to calm down a little and that she’ll be back soon, and Hadall leaves her be.

Rei and Lara sit down next to Lyn and assure her they’re still cool, much to Lyn’s relief. To be fair, they weren’t there when Lynnae lit up the camp, as this happened before the two of them joined the Catastrophe Conglomerate.

Auk and Lyn go to Lyn’s parental home with Sylt in tow. Joselin’s still home but Lonán has already left for the blacksmith. Lyn explains the situation by telling her mother Sylt was abducted from her home, and that we can’t bring her back just yet so we need a safe place for her to stay. Joselin happily takes the child in – as far as raising children goes she’s basically prepared for everything, seeing as she had to raise Lyn. Lyn says goodbye and promises to be back soon.

Lyn and Auk swing by the blacksmith to say goodbye to Lonán too before leaving for Port Yketan, and they then return to the tavern. Cassandra has returned by now, still looking a little down but at least not actively stabbing something anymore. Lyn gives her a healing potion as a peace offering.

 And finally, it’s off to Port Yketan.

 At some point during travel, Trick falls into pace with Lynnae for a talk: the tiefling’s interested in why Lynnae looks up to her exactly. Trick doesn’t consider herself a good role model, especially for people like Lyn, as Trick considers Lyn a genuinely nice person.

Reluctantly, Lyn says Trick can do things she can only dream of: Trick’s more emotionally stable and fearless, something Lyn wants to be but can’t. “The Trick to being Trick is not to care,” Trick says, laughing, and she goes on by saying she wasn’t always like that. Back in her village she had a reputation for being prankster. Things went wrong, there was a fire – which wasn’t Trick’s fault – and her entire family perished while Trick narrowly escaped with a burn scar across her torso. Trick was blamed for the fire and imprisoned, but she escaped prison and has been on the run ever since. They were her adoptive family but still family, but when Lyn asks Trick to elaborate on that, Trick says that’s a story for another time.

Trick asks if it’s just the carelessness that Lyn looks up to, but it’s not: Lynnae is rather jealous of Trick for having been able to connect to a deity, since she’s been trying to connect to Mystra for years. She’s offered Mystra her loyalty, her honesty, material things she cared about and there hasn’t been a single sign from her, while Trick barely prays and is still in contact with Leira. She doesn’t know what she’s doing wrong exactly. Trick says it’s been years since she connected to Leira, and that the goddess saved her, that she was in a hard place when Leira reached out to her. Lyn’s hit with a wave of jealousy: why Trick and not her? Trick’s got no idea, she says it was probably luck and that gods are fickle. It’s hard to know them on an intimate level.

Lyn changes the subject here and asks why Trick sacrificed herself for Cas, as Lyn doesn’t consider Trick the person who’d easily do that, and she’s not even sure if she’d done the same despite how much she cares about Cas. It was a calculated risk but boy is Trick bad at math. Lyn says she’s never been as afraid as when she saw Trick in the dirt road, under the influence of Feeblemind, though Trick laughs and says she was just as terrified. Trick remembers every single thing from when she was feebleminded, including how often Lyn tried picking her up and how much Trick hated that, among other things. Trick’s a little salty about Lyn picking her up because it happens often, because of how small she is and how cuddly she looks. Lyn apologizes, but Trick forgives her because Lynnae was just trying to protect Trick to the best of her means.

Lynnae also mentions that what Trick said in Theodred’s house was what caused her to stay this time around: when Theodred told the party Lynnae eventually ran off and didn’t return to him, Trick said she has a tendency to do that. This had a bigger impact on Lyn than she thought and when in the heat of the moment, when Lyn found Trick outside after Kauthrien attacked her, she wanted to run away again and not return this time around. What Trick said in Theodred’s house then came back to her, driving her to stay. Trick’s glad she was able to hold Lyn from running again but also says it was a pretty natural reaction from Lyn to want to run and survive. Lyn also confesses that when Kara called while they were at the Corvinius manor and Lyn ran away after the conversation, she was actually not planning on returning.

Trick jokingly suggests Lyn doesn’t write in her journal for a few days to see if that will cause Mystra to check up on her, but Lyn immediately goes into a defensive mode saying that her journal helps her keep a fucking grip on things. She also once again promises to try to lie less, and Trick assures her she’s doing pretty great so far.

 On the second day of the journey Hadall suddenly hears something in his mind speaking to him. It’s his wife Zalasti’s voice, saying: “Hello dear, I acquired a communication spell. How are things there? My love, and please reply, but keep it concise. Love, your wife.” Hadall happily replies: “Not dead yet, rescued three children, killed some cultists, there are more, but it’s fine. We’ll go to next base soon. Love you bye!”

 On the fourth day of travel we come across a small town named Kafar. The place isn’t half as peaceful as it should be: it’s in a complete uproar. People are screaming, running around, the clanging of fighting is in the distance. We approach, rushing in (Lyn gets a wild magic surge while casting Mage Armor it’s absolutely ironic, she gets a random static shock and almost throws up). As we run into town, we see the reason for the uproar: hound-like creatures known as Tarnlir, sleek and almost reptilian looking, with fire brimming at the corners of their mouths. The Tarnlir are attacking villagers, tearing into them. It seems like they were let loose or provoked somehow.

It’s time to battle.

Some villagers manage to escape the Tarnlir’s jaws but by far not all of them. Hadall and Blatrenn prove very useful in the battle, chopping down Tarnlir left and right. When Lyn casts Burning Hands she surges again and causes Grease to appear underneath her feet and in a small radius. Luckily it also makes some of the Tarnlir slip and fall. REI ALSO KEEPS GETTING FUCKED OVER IN THESE BIG BATTLES I SWEAR TO ALL THE GODS OUT THERE WHAT THE FUCK REI.

The last of the hounds goes down to Rei’s Intense Fisting. As the wood elf looks around they hear sounds in the distance and run up to it with the rest of us. As we approach a group of people we see someone laying dead on the cobblestone below: it’s a good friend of Rei’s, named Erevan Xiloscient. They traveled with him and a group of other people as a traveling band of musicians named Fiddlefox, before Rei met us and joined our party. Standing over Erevan’s dead body, crying, is Rei’s girlfriend Nairessa. Rei immediately embraces her, pulling her close, for they haven’t seen her in so long after they got separated somehow. Trick rushes up to Erevan with her hand forward, casting Revivify, but it’s been longer than a minute since he died and the spell fails.

The human in this group, Gilhrod, asks Rei how they got here, and Rei explains we’re on our way to Port Yketan to fight some really bad people. Naia’s still crying into their shoulder while Rei clings onto her for dear life. Rei asks if we can do anything for Erevan, Trick proposes a decent burial but Lyn steps in with another idea: they’re on the way to Port Yketan anyway, and even though a cleric’s services are no longer needed to save Trick’s shattered psyche, the cleric is still there. Agatha Mistral should be able to revive Erevan despite him having been dead for a longer period of time – since she was able to resurrect Lynnae despite her having been dead for 2 days after the drowning. Gilhrod’s suspicious of the method, necromancy apparently isn’t his cup of tea. He knows of magic that can heal, but nothing of this magnitude. He also asks how much it’d cost, and although Lyn doesn’t know how much her parents paid to have her resurrected, but Trick knows it definitely wouldn’t be cheap. Lyn then offers to pitch in for the resurrection if necessary, despite Gilhrod’s protests that she doesn’t even know him and that they’re total strangers to each other.

No one of the band members really knows what will happen to Fiddlefox now. Erevan was their leader, after all. They can continue but it won’t be the same. Rei asks them to come with us to Port Yketan.

Rei suddenly looks around and asks about Haelra and Brite, two other members of Fiddlefox, who aren’t here but also not among the dead bodies. Gilhrod says they ran, and that he doesn’t know where they are. Rei takes Naia out of earshot for a moment, and they sign to her in very broken Infernal “I love you”. Naia half-smiles and signs it back to them. Rei asks what happened to her and how she’s been since Rei left. Naia’s been traveling with Fiddlefox, performing, it’s been good but she missed Rei immensely. Rei missed her too, and admits they should have visited her sooner. She also says Erevan was always talking about how he wanted to see Rei again, and now he never will, it’s too late, but there’s still hope for him now that there’s a plan.

We start looking for Haelra and Brite (Rei’s totally exasperated that Brite of all people ran since he’s the only one of Fiddlefox with a fucking sword). Lots of angry signing from Rei later we look around for them (we all rolled below 9 on our investigation checks it was insane), but Naia finds them out hiding in the local tavern. They seem to have some scratch marks but they’re relatively okay. Naia doesn’t want to talk to them, neither does Rei, they’re both pissed and go brood in a corner. Naia eventually walks up to them, entirely unhappy, and says that she’s at least happy to see them alive.

Lynnae takes Naia to the side for a bit and asks if she saw what happened and what got the Tarnlir so riled up like that. Naia heard something about smugglers, trying to get them on a ship. Must have gotten out of control. Lyn takes some notes and leaves it be, reassuring Naia that Erevan will be all right one more time.

Gilhrod has informed Brite and Haelra in the meantime, the two are absolutely pale with shock as they sit with Erevan’s body.

We decide to rest up in the tavern for the night to gather strength for the last stretch to Port Yketan, where we’ll pick up next session.

[deepseawritings]

After re-reading that one piece I wrote almost a month ago, I decided I don’t completely hate it, so I’m posting it now. A piece of original fiction, written becasue I wanted to write something sort of spooky and based on the area I live in (aka: everything is a figment of my imagination, except for the places depicted). 

Disappeared

Crossing the quarantine line didn’t bring any change to the sights. It was still just pines and more pines at both sides, and the road kept winding further up the mountain. Sandra was glad she’d taken a Dramamine, this road had awful curves and bends and otherwise she’d be green around the gills.

“Has the boss briefed you? About…?” Her designated driver coughed uncomfortable, unable to finish the sentence. Must be a new guy, Sandra couldn’t recall his name.

“Yes, he has. In general lines.”

In fact he dragged her out of her deserved vacations, cashing in a favour from a year ago and promising her to get those days back, and more, whenever she wanted. She could have been sunbathing on Ibiza, yet she said yes. A disappearance case? Completely her specialty and it must be something huge for the freaking superintendent to be this unsettled. He’d practically begged to her. So here she was, still in civilian clothing and with her luggage in the back seat.

“So why the quarantine line and not the usual police tape?” She asked hoping to get some details. He hadn’t been much of a talker up to this point.

He mumbled about how the inspector would inform her of everything. She thought about informing him she was an inspector too, but he was nervous enough without her usual biting comments.

Sandra observed the narrow road, entranced by the looming pines on both sides. She’d heard this forest had burnt on many occasions, yet to her it looked dense like a jungle. So different from what she’d seen around Barcelona. The car passed by the husk of a house, full of graffiti and climbing vines, and then, at the behest of the robotic voice of the GPS, they took the road on the right. The only turn in this road so far. There was a faded sign with a name she didn’t read, in front of an unkempt vineyard patch. Not much further ahead a sizeable field broke the monotony of the flanking pines.

“You’ve arrived to Elm’s Field” announced the GPS. Her almost mute companion pulled up to the other two cars parked by the field. Two uniformed persons were talking to a man she recognized. Inspector Morales. He didn’t seem overly surprised to see her. On her part, Sandra was surprised to meet him here; she had secretly hoped to never see his bearded and condescending face again. He shook her hand like they hadn’t parted in bad terms the last time they spoke, and even looked mildly pleased to see her.

“Inspector Sandra Costa. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re here.” If he was bitter about it, he was making a good job of hiding it. Strangely enough, he looked sincere.

“You already met Sergeant Garcia,” Morales gestured at her driver, then at the uniformed couple in front of him. “And they’re officers Paredes and Segarra, from the local police.”

The young woman smiled and waved at her, while the muscular guy shifted uneasy and scratched his arm under Sandra’s passing glance.

“Have you finished cordoning off the area?” Morales asked them.

“Yes sir,” Paredes nodded and her dark ponytail swayed like a whip. “Although it was a pain in the ass to cordon all the fucking mountain.”

Officer Segarra facepalmed and hissed “Laia!” between his teeth, and she replied with a mocking “Pol!”.

Sandra chuckled quietly and pretended to not notice Morales’ disapproving frown. She missed that camaraderie born after years of working with the same partner.  However, she’d come here to investigate a disappearance, and standing there would not help her solve the case any faster.

“Who’s the missing person?”

A sepulchral silence fell over them, all looking at her with varying degrees of nervousness and confusion.

Morales cleared his throat. “All of them.”

“What? What do you mean all of them?” Their faces told her louder than words that no, it wasn’t an elaborate prank. “How many people are we talking about?”

“The cordoned area includes two residential areas, a handful of farms and cottages, and an already abandoned village.” Officer Segarra ticked off fingers as he listed the places. “About a hundred people in total maybe.”

This was… catastrophic. No wonder the boss had sounded so worried when he called her. The press was going to have a field day with this, and she wouldn’t be surprised if the central government intervened soon.

“Corpses?”

“None so far,” officer Paredes informed.

Sandra licked her lips, thinking. “Has a terrorist operation been ruled out yet?”

“Terrorist cells leave bodies behind. Evidence.” Morales snapped at her. He was out of ideas and in charge, she realized. In other circumstances, she might pity him.

A soft rain started to lazily pour down, barely enough to wet the grass. Calabobos, her mother called it. Fitting, she felt a bit dumb right now. Was there even a crime if there were no victims to be found? Of course, the possibility of all these people packing up and leaving unnoticed was laughable, but a hundred people disappearing overnight was also ludicrous. And worrying. Mostly worrying.

“P-perhaps we should carry on with the programmed search, inspector Morales?”

A sensible suggestion, made by Sergeant Garcia of all people. Sandra had completely forgotten he was here, he occupied so little space he quickly became part of the background. Sandra got in the car with the local police officers, claiming she wanted to ask them some questions. It wasn’t a complete lie. Best of all, her new car companions wanted to talk to her too.

“Can you believe this has gone on for days without anyone noticing?” Officer Paredes commented from behind the wheel. “Some of these people have been missing for almost a week, apparently.”

That was– this was a mess and Sandra was regretting accepting the case. “Is this the first search done here, officer?”

“Apart from me and Pol cordoning off the whole mountain, you mean? And none of that officer thing please, just Laia and Pol.”

“Why a quarantine perimeter?”

Laia chuckled, a joyless sound to convey her opinion of that idea, so it was her companion who answered. “Cover story is that there’s been a toxic pesticide dump.”

As cover stories go, that one was neither particularly good nor bad. Wouldn’t hold for long, tough. Yet it was understandable Morales would be trying to keep the details from reaching anyone outside the investigation.

“Anything else?”

“There was a quick superficial search this morning on the other residential complex. Some of the farms in between too.” Laia had no problems telling her anything she asked about and Sandra loved her for that. Teamwork required freaking cooperation Garcia, goddammit.

The neighbourhood, if you could call it that, was a sparse collection of houses scattered around without a definite order. And people actually lived in this backwater place? The closest spot of civilization was eight kilometres away. Sandra looked intently at the houses from her back seat position. In this section all were clustered together at one side of the road, surrounded by trees and thick bushes, dormant and empty, waiting for owners who had vanished.

“My aunt used to own that house there, but only came in summer.” Pol pointed to a compact two story house. Despite the air of neglect wrapped around it, one could imagine it had been a pretty house back on its day.

The road forked and Laia kept on the main path, until they reached a curious building with a cement terrace and what looked like an old stage. There was a car and a moped parked in front of it. No signs of life around the premises, though. Morales’ car stopped, so they did the same.

“This is supposed to be the local bar.” Morales strode to the short flight of stairs before the door, and Garcia trotted after him.

Being closer to it, Sandra beat them to the punch. A petty victory, but enough to appease her competitive nature for now. She knocked on the metal door. The sound echoed on the presumably empty inside and nobody answered. She looked at the rest of the group, shrugged at Morales and pushed forcefully. The door opened without resistance, groaning dramatically with the movement.

She stepped into the room, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the half darkness. Nothing out of place at first glance. She paced carefully around, taking into the apparent normalcy of the room. In fact, it seemed like a patron had ordered a beer and was about to return. The glass bottle on the counter remained full to the brim. A single receipt was caught under the bottle, the paper still soggy. It disintegrated when Sandra tried to pick it up.

The door to the covered balcony was unlocked. The secluded space could be considered cozy, with its wooden tables and decorative plants, were it not for the message painted on the window’s glass.

IT’S AWAKEN

The ink used was of a suspicious brown-reddish colour, thick and clumpy. And undoubtedly scribbled by a human finger. Pol poked the substance with a pen he produced from his breast pocket.

“Not blood,” he determined. “It’s more like goo?

Nothing else of interest on the inside. Morales followed her outside, while the other three investigated the kitchen in depth. Sandra had taken a cursory look at it and knew the most interesting thing they could expect to find was a mouldy fridge. Too tidy in that dusty way of places nobody’s been in for a long time.

She lit a cigarette and walked in silence to the left of the bar’s premises. Morales dogged her steps, the gravel crunching beneath their feet. God, how she wished he would stop! She needed to process her ideas about the situation, and she though better while not being observed constantly.

It had stopped raining but a thick fog was rolling in. The child’s park was an eerie sight covered in mist and so empty that Sandra felt like an intruder. A cracking noise startled them, the rustle of something scurrying through the underbrush of the surrounding forest. Probably it was just a rabbit, or a fox, or any other critter. Animals didn’t give a damn about police cordons. Morales was avoiding her gaze now, pretending he didn’t jump at the sound like she did. Bullshit.

“What did you find during this morning’s search?” If he was surprised she knew about that, he didn’t show it.

“We just looked for survivors. Found nothing. The farms were empty too, even the cattle is gone,” he sighed, looking tired and years older than he truly was. “There’s also the candles found on the abandoned village, but I was told that’s normal.”

Well, she didn’t consider it completely normal. “Oh?”

“Hey inspectors, we’re done!” Laia shouted from the bar’s door.

Morales turned around and Sandra crushed the butt of the cigarette under her foot. Nothing to see here, might as well carry on.

Getting back into the cars Sandra once more chose to go with the local officers. Same as before, Laia drove following Garcia at a slow pace, while Pol and Sandra looked out of the windows for any signs of life. The road eventually bifurcated, and Morales gestured them to go straight forward while they took the right turn. Houses were more separated from each other now, and the ever thickening fog created the illusion of roofs and house fronts peeking up like forgotten islands in the sea of mist. It was a moment as good as any to satisfy her curiosity.

“What can you tell me about the abandoned village?”

“Place’s got bad fame because of an unsolved murder in the 90s,” Pol explained, his distaste of the whole ordeal dripping from his voice.

“You forgot the part about the rumours of a cult!” Laia wasn’t one to remain quiet, and bless her for bringing up the interesting details. Pol looked uncomfortable with it, scratching his arm and avoiding looking at her. “The place’s got a fame, you know? It attracts people wanting to commune with the spirits or some shit. And the trash they leave behind fuels the rumours of strange rituals happening there.”

Charming. Sadly, it was another dead end. Cults tended to leave behind either corpses, or pissed people who were scammed.

Ahead of them a tall building emerged from the fog, tall like a lighthouse. Curious to see a block like that after a parade of two story houses, especially when in front of it there was a small cottage with an even smaller fenced garden. And its door was wide open, swaying in the gentle but cold breeze.

Laia stopped the car in the middle of the road, alleging there was no traffic here, and went with Pol inside the house. Sandra stopped to look around, taking into the ruined building before her. Who in their sane mind would choose to live in front of that?

A sound came from within it, pebbles and debris crunching beneath someone’s feet and rolling around. Sandra got closer to the ruin, cell phone in hand to light the dark inside. Vines grew all over the walls and the trees here, smothering everything in a verdant carpet. She went in through a man sized hole in the wall. The bluish light of her phone hit the remnants of a reception counter, with a graffiti painted on the wall behind it. Welcome. A small noise to her right, deeper into the dark.

Her foot landed on something slippery, thick and squelching under her weight. The phone’s light revealed the same rust coloured substance used to paint the message on that window. A drop of it landed down as she was inspecting the puddle, heavy and loud in the resounding silence. Looking upward, Sandra saw a stain of the same substance on the cracked ceiling, slowly filtering down from the upper floor. The stairs were collapsed, though.

There was this prickling sensation in her scalp, as if she was being followed. She caught a quick movement out of the corner of her eye, but there was nothing when she swivelled around. God, she needed a smoke, this place was putting her imagination into overdrive. Better get out of here and join Laia and Pol on the house.

The fog hid both ends of the road and it felt like the car was in a bubble reality, separated from the rest of the world, which did not help much to ease her sudden nervousness.

The small garden surrounding the cabin was in disarray. The patch of flowers next to the gate had been stomped over and a garden rake lay broken in half, the wooden handle stuck on the ground like a defensive stake by the side of the gate.

The inside of the house was completely normal, though. The TV was on, cartoons still playing, with a lively green bowl full of popcorn on the floral couch. The only window, right behind the TV, was covered by a crocheted curtain; and the hearth’s shelf was dangerously full of family photos. Her mother would love the decor.

“Officers? Laia? Pol?” No answer.

Sandra went into the kitchen, looking around the cabin. Nothing. The twin bedrooms. Empty. In the bathroom she found another message, this time painted on the mirror with… it was either mud or shit. She hoped it was the former.

NO ESCAPE

A scraping noise outside caught her attention. Sandra ran to the door and stepped out into the fog. She spent a few seconds trying to puzzle why there was a tree next to the car. Then it moved, turning towards her, and screeched like a banshee.

An extreme feeling of wrong filled her as the tree-like thing started to fucking walk. Sandra bolted back into the house and closed the door, leaning against it as she tried to make sense of what she’d seen. If a stick bug grew to imitate a small tree, and had a disturbingly humanoid looking face, it still wouldn’t be close enough to that horrific thing out there.

A heavy impact rattled the door, nearly dislodging Sandra from her spot. Another thud, followed by a screech that made her wish to cover her ears and press her back against a wall until the chill in her spine went away.

Pushing against the door with one hand, she stretched her other arm to tug at the nearby telephone table and drag it closer, inch by painful inch. The next attack on the door threw her to the ground, nearly hitting her head on the same table she was moving. With one last push, Sandra shoved the auxiliary table in front of the entrance door. Then she stepped away to grab the bookcase next to the TV and bring it to her improvised barricade too. Then went the couch, bowl falling down and popcorn flying everywhere; and then the dining chairs to fill in the gaps. That was the only entrance big enough for that thing, and it wasn’t getting in, no matter how much it banged at the door. Not while Sandra could prevent it. The pounding went on and on, but the barricade held.

She stared vacantly ahead, desperately thinking about what to do, unaware she was digging her nails on her palms. Should she confront that thing? She was unarmed, she’d literally been about to go on a vacation so of course she wasn’t carrying her pistol! She could call for help, but who could help her and how much it would take them to arrive were unknown factors. But it was better than staying here and staring at the wall. She took out her phone with shaking hands. Out of range, fuck!

“Inspector Costa, open the door.”

The assault on the door had stopped. In fact, a disorienting silence had taken over.

“Open the door.”

It was officer Segarra’s voice, as if delivered from Heaven itself.

“Through the window!” Sandra retired the curtain and opened the window for him. It was a narrow fit, but it would work.

Hope is a dangerous feeling, more so when ruthlessly squashed. Pol pushed his head and torso through the open window, and Sandra felt the air leave her lungs. His face was covered in a greying, scaly layer, half fused with his clothes, rough looking and inhuman. Only his left eye remained untainted. Thin vine-like extrusions sprouted from his arm, from the same spot he’d scratched before when nervous.

He groaned, stuck in the reduced opening, shocking Sandra out of her horrified stupor. She might not have her pistol here, but she was full of fear induced recklessness. Sandra grabbed a fire poker from the hearth’s display, an ugly iron thing with a spike on the business end. She rammed it into his human eye. The unnatural, high pitched howl was most satisfying. The next step was to take it out and stab the parasitic growth on the arm. The skin was hard and rigid, but once it shattered the flesh underneath was sickeningly easy to abuse. The creature that once was officer Segarra jerked spasmodically and then withdrew from the window, leaving torn pieces of its bark-like skin stuck to the frame and a splash of rust coloured goo on the floor.

Alright, alright, she needed to barricade the windows too maybe, and -

Sound of static “…Inspector Costa, officers…”Static noise

The patrol car’s radio. The sound was slightly muffled, but in the sudden silence she could understand most of it. Garcia and Morales were investigating on their own, she forgot about them in her panic. And unlike her, they were armed.

“…Morales disappeared…”Static noise“…being followed by mutated…”

Shit. She had a bad feeling about this.

“…Please, I can’t- Inspector Morales? What… AHHHHH!”

The scream lasted a few agonizing seconds, and then static took over again, this time forever.

Sandra was utterly lost. Was it safe to assume everyone else was dead or worse? Honestly, she didn’t feel like going to investigate. The house was a mouse trap, but safe. Barricade the windows it was.

After about fifteen minutes Sandra had fortified the house and scoured it to the last corner in search of a weapon. Surprisingly, she found an axe in one of the cupboards. Countryside folks were weird. With its dulled edge it was of more use as blunt weapon, but heaps better than a fire poker.

She checked her phone again. Still out of range. The meagre light of day was quickly fading, at only six PM. Last time she looked through the window more of those creatures were converging around the house and the patrol car. One of them had a familiar black ponytail sticking out of its inhuman head, blue uniform almost completely assimilated under the bark skin growing all over the body. No matter who they were before, Sandra would chop them all to pieces if any of the creatures attempted to break in.

An infernal chorus of screeches rose, like wolves howling to the skies. Sandra fidgeted with the axe. If she made it through the night, the superintendent surely would send someone to investigate why nobody had reported yesterday. She only had to make it through the night.

The screeching stopped as abruptly as it began. The earth trembled, followed by the unmistakeable sounds of trees falling over. She had a terrible feeling about this. Something low and guttural rumbled outside the house, a distorted shadow passing over the window. Sandra held her breath, praying they would all go away, yet gripping the axe tightly.

A hit against the door shook the barricade and her bones. The door held, but it would not last forever. If pressed, she could still barricade herself on one of the rooms. And it wasn’t like those creatures would fit inside the house, never mind something larger. Right? The door rattled again, the hinges groaning under the strain.

She only had to make it through the night.

[youngjusticerevival]

a small-ish drabble chronicling Evie’s post-season 1 arc. songs listened to while writing: x & x.

an anthology of fake smiles

It felt for a while she’d been faking her smiles. She faked it to the grocery store checkout. She faked it to Barry, and Iris, and Bart. She faked it to the Team, to him. And she faked it now at the groundskeeper, who griped at her to hurry up before the gates closed and she was locked inside. 

The supermarket flowers wilted in her hands. Evie clutched them loosely, taking in a shuddering breath as she turned her chin up, regarding the choice before her. High gated walls, poked with iron-wrought spikes at the top, rose up above her. She was small here, just a phantom passing through, a breeze. The only indication of her ever being there came as the faint scuttle of leaves along the dry pavement. 

But now, she had ceased to exist as a breeze. It was hard to be just a memory among the true, real ghosts buried in the cemetery. She took a step forward, then another, until she had crossed the threshold of the last part of her journey. 

***

Evie hadn’t expected the news to be so catastrophically gut-wrenching. It was like a punch that knocked the wind out of your lungs, the kind of sucker punch that made you keel over. To be honest, she had known for a while. Not consciously, of course, but deep-down she had been aware that she was not who she was. 

So when the scientist cackled, gurgling up blood to spit at her feet, and snarled,

“Your parents? Your parents sold you. You’re a gutter rat, a nobody, and we gave you a purpose, saved you from your meth head parents, you ungrateful little bitch - ”

Sam had been the one to knock his lights out with a harsh kick, even though she was sure she saw Rose mouth something, too, but the damage had already been done.

Evie had staggered away, until she found a corner to throw up in. 

The last piece of Evie Buchanan died. 

***

It started with Rose. 

Really, it started with Alex. The Bat had been the one to track Evie down and when she refused to come back to the Team, Alex had pinned her and threatened to knock the sense into her until she agreed to talk to her very, very distraught girlfriend. Evie, of course, had refused at first, but she relented after a while. But only after Alex slammed her head into the concrete a few times, of course. 

(Normally she wouldn’t be afraid. Normally she’d have a certain archer on her side. But he couldn’t help her. Not in the state he was in.)

She probably deserved it anyways, the head bashing. That’s how she found herself sitting on the edge of a Gotham skyscraper with Rose as the dawn broke over the city, their legs dangling off the edge.

Always taunting death, but never joining. 

“Why are you doing this?” Rose had breathed when she first stepped from the shadows, her hands fisting themselves in Evie’s shirt.

“Why’d you turn to dark magic?” Evie had asked coldly.

Rose had slapped her. Evie deserved that. But it didn’t stop her from slamming her boot into Rose’s chest, until they were brawling on the top of a skyscraper, hurling insults at each other.

It ended with Alex ripping the two off of each other, and that’s how they ended up here. The argument, the tears, those had passed. All that was left were scrapes and bruises, tear tracks, and the throbbing ache in her skull Evie nursed now. 

Evie flicked some of Rose’s blood off her cheek, just as the magician cleared her throat. She reached out, and Evie didn’t do anything, not as Rose closed her hand over hers. She squeezed, three times. She was crying, again, but she always cried, and Evie didn’t dare look, not unless she wanted to fall apart. 

“Just remember at the end of this, you have somewhere to run back to,” Rose murmured, just barely loud enough so the wind didn’t cover it up. Evie hummed, but didn’t agree. She could feel Rose’s eyes on her. Finally, the witch heaved a sigh. 

With that, she pushed herself to her feet precariously, balancing on the edge before stepping off. 

“Well, as you know of course, it’s past my bedtime and I do require my full 8 hours,” and at this Rose sighed deeply, as if 8 hours was such a price to pay, “of beauty sleep.” 

“I’m sure,” Evie replied, turning only slightly to catch Rose’s silhouette. The soft glow of a billboard made her look ethereal, more magic than she ever was human from the way her white blonde hair gleamed silver. 

Evie gave a smile, and she knew Rose caught it, from the way her face crumpled. Fake smiles. Rose hesitated, fingers flexing as if she might reach out. But she didn’t. 

“Come home soon, please,” Rose murmured, and with that, she turned, disappearing into the shadows, where no doubt a Shadow did wait for her.

***

“Hello?”

…

“...hello?”

“Hey.”

...

“Evie? Evie! God, where are you? Where the Hell have you been?”

“I’m fine, Iris, I -”

“Like Hell. Do you know how worried we’ve been? Barry hasn’t stopped looking for you, and Bart, he can’t eat chicken wheezies, Evie. Chicken whizzies! Where. Are. You?”

“I’m...I’m fine Don’t worry about it..”

…

“Like Hell - I ...Evie, please. Please, just, come home. Please, come home.”

...

“Iris, I’m fine, really. I just, need time.”

“Evie, honey, we can help you, please. Please, just let us -- ”

“SORRY THIS CALL WAS DISCONTINUED. DIAL AGAIN?”

***

Max came next. 

He arrived subtly, in the passing autumn when the leaves fell and crunched underfoot. Sometimes Evie didn’t understand Max, she realized dimly, much later. She didn’t pretend to either. It was something she accepted, a long time ago, in between sharing s’mores energy bars and bonding over a mutual grief neither wanted to address just yet. 

“How’d you find me?” she asked with sigh as his blurred figure approached in the window. 

A pause. She craned her neck, only to find the bird had slipped past her. 

“Well,” he said, grunting as he took a seat at the table, “ it took some master-sleuthing, but I finally followed the trail of energy bars and,” he spread his arms, as if to say ‘look’, “here we are.”

He leaned forward, settling his elbows on the table between them. Evie let the hint of a smile across her lips. She had missed this. Max had a rare ability to calm her down. She crossed the distance between them, nudging aside some salt shakers in the process, to gently take hold of his wrist. Just like that, the buzz of energy in her slowed, before it fizzled out. She didn’t feel that itch to run and disappear, just a dull, waning urge. 

Max said nothing.

“So,” he said after a minute, “you going to tell me what’s going on with you, Red? You’re taking quite the extended vacation.”

Evie considered telling him. But like she had considered telling Rose, the moment passed. She let go of Max’s wrist, settling back in her seat. All at once the same prickling energy returned in full force. She winced. 

“If I told you, you’d try to help.”

“What if I don’t want to help?” he retorted.

Evie raised her head, ignoring the way he studied her, as if she were a case, a puzzle, waiting to be cracked. 

“You always want to help.”

He didn’t answer. But his lips did twist down sourly, before he lifted two fingers, flagged down a waitress. He ordered fries, and a milkshake. S’mores.

“Are you coming back, Red?” he asked eventually, between a mouthful of fries.

Evie considered the question, before stealing one of his fries. 

“Nope. Not yet.”

His lips twisted. But he nodded, and the waitress came sidling up, asking if they wanted refills on water. They talked about little else. But he made her laugh about something dumb, and for a minute, just for a fleeting second of the After, Evie felt closer to home than she had been in a while. She didn’t notice the motorcycle that time, nor the rider, black helmet resting in his lap as he watched. 

***

She hadn’t really expected Jason to find her, but she suspected by the reaction he gave her, a wide-eyed impression of a deer in the headlights, that she had found him. And maybe, if she believed in destiny or fate or something like that, then that’s where she needed to be. Because really, he seemed to be in worse shape than her. 

He had dark circles under his eyes and the faint beginnings of a scratchy beard edging around his jaw. So she took a seat, and with the fake she bought in the back of a seedy bar in Idaho, she ordered a round for them. 

They nursed their beers together in a dingy bar somewhere in the heart of Jump City, until Evie found herself lightheaded, and Jason mumbling about something, about Guy, that she couldn’t remember.

And finally, the question, the age-old question. He tipped his head back, swallowing the last drop of beer, before he clanked it down on the counter. 

“You coming home?”

Evie paused, lifting her head. She couldn’t get drunk. A side effect of speedster life. The scars burned on her stomach. A life she had paid dearly for. Her lips twisted, and she almost offered a smile, before it guttered on her lips. 

“I don’t know,” Evie whispered after a moment, and it was the closest she had gotten to the truth in a while, which scared her. She found his searching eyes, her own sharp. “Are you?”

Jason grunted. No. Then he tipped back his fifth beer. That’s where they left it. 

***

Beeep.

“Heeey, Evie. Eves. Evester. Yeah, it’s Bart. I don’t know if you’re using this number, but can you call me back? Iris isn’t sleeping. Barry ran around the world three times. Three! Can you believe it? But seriously. Just come home. This isn’t crash anymore. Okay, well, later. P.S. the Terrors keep asking where you are. Okay, bye - wait! I miss you, too. Okay, now, later!”

***

TO: eviebucannonball05@gmail.com

FROM: cora_tran@gmail.com

Evie, 

I hope you are doing well. Zach taught me how to use the e-mail, so I thought I should reach out. Ray would like to say hello, as would Zayn and Sebastian. Ronnie says, and I quote, “Watch out for yourself, kid.” Jalil is not present at the moment, but I am informed that he has been actively keeping track of your whereabouts, as well as the others. We are doing well here. 

Wishing you the best,

Cora

P.S. I know you may not wish to hear it, but we do miss you, Evie. 

***

Evie checked her e-mails often enough. She checked them often enough to know that Iris had sent her dozens of them, Cora sent one, and then Zach sent one everyday, but only to be annoying. 

Today, he’d sent her a cache of eclectic cat memes before surreptitiously, just under that information dump, a location tag. Her location, of course. A subtle reminder if anything, but one she didn’t mind. She slid her phone back into her pocket, gaze wandering to the dusty window. It was about time to get going then. 

“More coffee?”

Evie looked up, catching the tired, forced smile of the blonde waitress leaning over her, coffee pot shaking in her hands. That forced, strange smile slid over Evie’s lips, too.

“No, thank you.”

She stepped outside minutes later, and into the frosty morning, turning her collar against the cold. Today was Utah, closer to the destination than she was home. Nevertheless, she liked it here. The tall high mountains stretched above the city, just barely jutting out of the morning haze. He would like it here. Her heart ached, gave a stabbing pang that made her pause. It wasn’t unusual, to have her thoughts wander to a certain archer, but she had shoved them down recently. Maybe because of guilt, of what state she’d left him in, or maybe because she knew, despite the desperation in her chest to run to him, that they couldn’t be. They couldn’t, not until they had both figured it out. 

Whatever it was they had to figure out, well, that’s what this sabbatical was for, right? 

She let out a frosty puff of air, shouldering her bag, and checked both ways, before, with a flash, she was gone. 

She never noticed the rev of the motorcycle that followed close behind. 

***

Beeeep.

“Evie, it’s Barry. I don’t know how else to tell you this, kid, but we miss you. I’ve looked everywhere for you, but you’ve stumped me. Just, I miss you. Come home. Okay?”

***

It ended how it always did. 

The amount of fake smiles Evie had given out that day amounted to a total of innumerable. She pushed her cart, ignoring the looks she got, giving them glassy vacant smiles. She knew - bloody lips, wide, black sunglasses, and wild mess of hair looked like she’d just gotten out of a bar fight. Really, she’d tripped running down a highway, and that was a much worse story than getting her lights knocked out in a sleazy bar. She caught the glare of a mother in a pink velour tracksuit staring at her baldly, her baby bouncing on her hip. 

But then Evie smiled, and the lady’s face rouged, turning around so fast she knocked into a table of free pot-sticker samples. 

The days seemed to be getting longer and the nights shorter and unfortunately, her emergency cash had started to run out. It didn’t stop Evie from stretching her arm out and dragging a row of cereals into her cart as she walked on by. She’d have to find more work soon, freelancing job maybe some muscle for hire. 

She turned a corner, only to recoil. 

It had been a while since she’d seen her own costume. The cardboard cut-out stood at her height, but her skin had been airbrushed, her windswept hair pulled back effortlessly into a bouncy ponytail. Mercury stood there, in all her cheery glory, reminding kids to take their vitamins, a fat bottle of superhero multivitamins clutched in her hand. 

She knew Rose had one, too, and so did Max, Ronnie, and Ray, and Cora. Even Bryce had one, a recent addition but hey, well-earned. It had been some dumb promo work for the League, to improve their standing. 

But now, Evie didn’t want to see it. She reached out, and turned her hero self to face a wall of pasta. 

The satisfaction only lasted a second. The bitterness welled up in her like a sore stomach. 

That girl was fake. Her entire concept had been fake from the start, and really, Evie thought as she wrenched her cart down the baking aisle, everyone could just forget about Mercury. She’d seen the news - there were questions, concerns if the same thing that happened to the first KF happened to her. 

They’d never know that Mercury was currently pushing her self-loathing ass through a QuickMart in Star City, loading up her cart with junk food. 

Why Evie ended up in Star City, she couldn’t tell you other than it involved a man named Scott Buchanan, and it ended with a very unhappy reality. Evie Buchanan had died. FindAGrave.com said so anyways. Scott Buchanan said so. So, Evie Buchanan didn’t exist. But Mercury did.

Evie huffed at that. She eased her cart into line behind a plump old woman wearing a large visor. 

If Evie Buchanan was dead, then who was she? 

This wasn’t the question she wanted to ponder in the supermarket checkout line, but it couldn’t be helped. There was another cutout of Ray, staring her down with that eerily cheery smile. A whole wall of them, some Leaguers, like Black Canary and Green Arrow, of course, but a lot of the team, and the one that made her heart kick up into some frantic drumbeat. An archer, bow drawn, his lips drawn into a severe utter lack of expression that nearly made a laugh tumble out of her lips. And next to him, they had placed her, a speedster with a wide, fake smile, the same one she had turned to face pasta. None of them had anything to sell. These were to take home. 

So if she was dead, then who was that girl, smiling back now? 

“Next.”

Who was that girl, that the team had begged to come back to? 

“Miss, next.”

The girl that the motorcycle followed, waiting? 

“Excuse me, miss -”

The answer hit her clear, all too overwhelming of a realization to be having in a Star City QuickMart. She was who she has always been. She was who her friends loved. She was Evie Buchanan. Not Evelyn. Not an experiment, not the girl she was mourning, not the life she never knew.

She had always been Evie.  

Evie felt the everything, the bitterness, the spite, gutter in her before it spiraled away and she was left with a gaping epiphany of what to do next.

It was time to go home. 

The stand of supermarket flowers was across the store, but that wasn’t a problem for Evie. She made it there and back in five. Five seconds. She pushed the cart away, forgotten, and slapped the flowers on the conveyor belt with a force that had the cashier blinking, hair settling back onto her shoulders from the quick breeze.

“Sorry,” Evie said, and plastered on that fake smile. “Just these.”

***

Evie exhaled slowly as a car passed her by. The sun beat down on her, through a thick bank of muggy clouds. Soon it’d be night, though, so it didn’t matter. She leaned back against the wall, sucking on a lollipop. She told herself she wouldn’t do this, wouldn’t keep adding names to the list. But it was hard to resist the curiosity. So here she was, watching as people passed in and out of the high gated grey walls. 

‘Star City Cemetery’.

This was it, according to that helpfully grim website.

She closed her eyes against the sun, ignoring her sunglasses perched on top of her head. 

He told her often he had a graveyard in his chest where his heart should be.

“Liar. I can feel your heart,” Evie would murmur in the hazy darkness that surrounded them in the early morning, and smooth her fingers against where his heart should be, feeling the rhythm of it against her palm. But he insisted. He insisted he had a graveyard blooming in his chest.

So, she decided, if he had a graveyard there, then she had one in her head, in the back of her mind, growing, growing, with each name she found etched into stone. 

With a sigh, she pushed off the wall and made her way into the cemetery. The groundskeeper warned her to be fast. That was one promise she could keep. She had mapped out the way already, from the directory, and now she wound through the white markers, the tall angels, deeper into the cemetery. 

Her path led her back, back past the military section, towards where the cemetery began to thin out into graying patches of grass and lone headstones, until there it was, underneath a scraggly oak tree. A simple stone marker. There were no others. 

Evie bent down, resting the flowers on her folded legs. 

A wind pushed back her hair, but she merely tucked it behind her ear, reading the worn-out engraving.

Evelyn Nilsson Buchanan 

December 20, 2005 - June 21, 2011

She was dearly loved.

Evie sucked in a breath. She scrubbed away the tears gathering at her eyes, before letting it all sink it in. Was. Was loved. 

“Correction,” Evie murmured sadly, tracing her fingers over the words. “She is loved.”

Quietly, she settled the supermarket flowers under the marbled stone next to a burnt-out candle and a soggy teddy bear. 

Evie bowed her head, and let herself, for the first time, mourn the girl she used to be. 

She stood when the sun began to cast the grey stone in gold, breaking through the leaves. It was time. 

She didn’t look back as she wound her way out of the cemetery. She stepped outside, out into the dying light of the sun as it dipped beneath the ocean. 

That’s where she found him, leaned up against that same motorcycle, hands in his pockets. 

Evie slowed to a stop. Her heart sped up, her mouth catching in an ‘o’, before she pressed her lips together. He wasn’t looking at her. Instead, his head was turned to the skyline, the golden orange light catching on his features, making his dark hair glint with gold, his skin somehow warmer. Ethereal. No, Evie thought, biting her lip, not ethereal, just, real. Home. He looked like coming home. There were fainter dark circles under his eyes, but, more than that, he looked better. Some kind of hope rose in her chest. Maybe they’d both figured it out. A tired smile tugged at her lips, and finally, finally, he looked up, his eyes meeting hers. 

Evie cleared her throat. She didn’t dare move just yet.

“Hey,” she called out softly, not hiding the nervous edges that caught in her voice. A gentle breeze tugged at her, and she pushed her hair out of her eyes, tucking the loose strands behind her ear.

“Hey,” Sam replied, just loud enough so she could hear. “Are you tired of running yet?” he asked dryly, straightening. His lips didn’t ever move above a quirk, but it was soft, the way he looked at her. The question was loaded like a gun. But it was one that Evie could finally answer. 

She took in a shuddering breath, then, felt herself nod. “Yeah,” Evie answered, “I think I am.”

She crossed that distance slowly, and he pushed off his bike, meeting her halfway as she walked into his arms.

He banded his arm around her waist, curling the other around the back of her neck. In turn, she curled her arms around his back, like a puzzle piece fitting together. He held her like she might run again. But this time, she was sure she wouldn’t. She let his warmth sink into her, reveling in the feeling. 

“Welcome back,” Sam murmured into her ear. Evie felt a sob of a laugh hiccup out of her, and she turned her head into his shoulder, curling her hands into the back of his jacket. It didn’t just feel like it. She was home. 

This time, when Sam pulled back and brushed the tears away, a real smile bloomed on her lips. 

[tsw-story]

Chapter 77 - Seek and Destroy

Deena's hands clapped together, and around them swirled a dark violet energy that manifested quickly—a chaotic but skillfully contained power. She thrust them forwards, and from the tips of her fingers came a piercing, black arrow, that soared through the air and directly through the chest of the stone-like beast. The area around the point of contact cracked and crumbled but it otherwise unperturbed. Death Arrow!

She had read much about demons, and it was true that they were unpredictable, but having no inner organs was a bother. None of her curses would work, nor would a stab through the chest. They would have to knock it to pieces.

“Hey!” Deena called.

Renatta, unsure if it was to her, glanced down from the rooftop. “Me?”

“I'm afraid there's no strategy for now. We just need to break it apart, so throw what you can. Just remember that it isn't organic.”

She nodded. With grace, she leapt from the building, and flipped in the air to soar down behind the beast. Both of her chakrams were squeezed in her hands, but as she fell upside down, she flung them with a twist in her wrists. Each burst into an intense, glowing heart that trailed fire behind them.

When they made contact, they spun like saw blades, and fired up its back and into the sky. Flames burst fissures down the monster's stoney back. Then, after arcing in the air, they landed back in her grip shortly after she landed. Burnout!

Deena performed her spell once more. An arrow shot out from her hands, and this time, it cracked its head in two. With only a neck stub, it collapsed to its knees, and the cracks around its torso spread at an increasing speed until the body simply could hold no longer. It fell into dust—just sand over the road with no evidence there was ever a beast beyond it.

There were few people remaining after the initial attack. However, they spotted people fleeing from buildings still as they fought. The people looked, stunned, at what looked to them like a movie being filmed, but with no ropes, cameras, and the special effects were catastrophic.

Eldrian floated above Kevin's head. His friend absorbed yet another blow, but then the beast gazed upwards at the man with shadow magic surrounding his free hand, and a staff sparkling with lightning in the other. He performed an intricate dance with his hands, and they came together to form a deadly power.

With the chaos and destruction of shadow, and the speed and spread of lightning, came Eldrian's most difficult spell. When he unleashed it, there was an explosion of energy, and when it collided with the beast's torso, there was barely one left afterwards. Black electric currents left a hole in its chest and out through the back. Dark Lightning!

It crumbled into dust, just like the other.

Renatta called out. “Dav is helping people this way. I'm going over! But there's some really bad news.”

“What is it?” Eldrian glanced up. She was already a distance away, but he made her own regardless.

“There's already another!”

Deena came running out from around the corner, along with Arlandria, to meet up with the other two. “I knew it,” she immediately said, but then took a breath. “Something is up. These are coming from where, and we need to find out where.”

“You're right,” Eldrian replied with a nod of his head. “Let's catch up and figure it out.”

He wrapped his arm around Kevin's body, and though it was a struggle, they slowly started rising up into the air. It was slower and required more concentration, but he was able to bring his shocked and panicked friend along with him over the rooftops. Deena joined, floating behind them.

“Warn me first, please!” Kevin pleaded.

They landed a few streets down where Daveon was catching his breath near a shattered fire hydrant. Water poured into the air. In the distance, they started hearing sirens from multiple emergency vehicles making their way around the city, some of which were nearing.

Eldrian put his hand on his shoulder. “Dav. We need to figure out where these monsters are coming from. There's more to this. Have you seen anything?”

“No. Nothing. There were a bunch of people trapped in this building.”

Arlandria spoke. “If they're coming from somewhere, there must be evidence. A trail. They can't just be appearing here. Nobody has that kind of teleportation powers beyond the room in the Demon World we used. Especially not to move beings this large.”

Daveon looked about. “You're right. I have an idea. If there's anyone that'll know...”

“Who?” asked Deena.

“Pigeons. Stray cats. Squirrels. They'll know. If these things are all coming from somewhere, one of them will have seen it. Leave it to me!” He once again hopped into the air and flew away in the shape of a crow.

Eldrian looked to the rest. “He'll find it for sure. Let's take care of this next one, guys!”

An American soldier—one Eldrian had met before—stood a distance away with binoculars held up to his eyes. A pistol sat in a holster at his side, and in his free hand was a metal baseball bat. Whitfield watched the crew with interest. “That's him. I'll be damned.” He lowered the tool and dew a cigarette from his pocket. After lighting it, he took a long, deep inhale of smoke.

Daveon wasn't only the eyes in the sky, but he had an affinity with animals being his allies. He spoke with them, and though they didn't have the intelligence of humans, they were able to grant him information. He used the data gained to discern a specific location—straight into a convenience store.

In the maze of a city, it would normally be impossible to find a single individual. However, among the many humans, are animals trying ever day to survive. They quest for food and shelter leads them through more of the city than any man would see. Unfortunately for Ivar, he had no idea of this. In the basement of that shop, he sat, controlling his beasts, with the shopkeep tied up in the corner behind him.

The demon of course was Ivar, the two-foot-tall bearded man with long ears and red eyes, and sported a checkered lumberjack shirt with blue overalls. He had done to this city something similar to what he tried to do with Skello.

Though he was tiny, he could manifest and control three hulking monsters made from pale stone simultaneously, making him a gigantic danger from afar. Of course, he couldn't do so forever, but they didn't know that. It didn't matter either, as waiting wasn't an option with people's lives in their hands.

Ivar screamed as the door up the stairs exploded. The remains collapsed down the steps, and on the other side was Daveon, with his palm held outwards. Push!

“No, no! Get back!” Ivar begged.

Daveon crossed his arms. “So you're behind this. Aren't you? Some kind of demon.”

“Yes, but—“

“People almost died.” He stepped forwards, and once again, his palm moved outwards. “I'm not the person you'll be talking to when you wake back up. It might be Satan himself. So I'll say this while nobody's listening. See you in Hell.”

The crew had defeated yet another, putting the count to three. Therefore, they moved to the next one. They neared it, but before they could act, it disappeared into a cloud of powder in the blink of an eye. Eldrian was stunned at first, but then he thrust his fist into the air in celebration.

“He did it!” he yelled. Then something caught his eye. “It's him.”

“What? Who?” Kevin turned.

“That skeleton man. Damn it. I knew they were all working together. I saw his scythe around that corner just now. If he's a wizard, get ready to kick some ass.”

He nodded. “Always.”

“Something is this way! Perhaps another demon,” Renatta called out, and pointed the opposite direction. “It was black, like a shadow, but big.”

“I'll follow her with Daveon.” Deena said this, not asked, and ran off with the druid.

Eldrian had no use in objecting. Kevin and him would handle this way, as apparently this invasion was only beginning. Now it was time to hunt a serial killer. The two of them bolted off, turned at the four-way intersection, and didn't see the robed man, or anything they hoped for.

He had left, but there was a police blockade instead. More cars pulled up the opposite way as well. Then, in front of them, stood a man he immediately recognized as Whitfield from the Ley Point.

“Greetings again,” he said with a trail of smoke snaking up from the cigarette pinches between his teeth. This time, he didn't even bother to draw the gun.

“Again? Do you know this guy or something?” Kevin asked.

He nodded. “When the Ley Point happened. There were a bunch of people, and I believe this was the representative from the USA. Since we're past the border, I guess this makes sense. Though us running into him specifically is a big coincidence. His name is Whitfield.”

“Is that what you think?” Whitfield called out. “I hate magic. Everything about it. That's one hundred percent true, and it always will be. I don't know who you are, boy, but you're something else. You stole that power from the United States of America, but then you used it to stop a crazy elf, and save two people's lives. Despite how reckless it is, you've here, trying to stop the invasion, just like us.”

“So that means you'll leave us alone, right?”

The soldier laughed. At least, that's what he assumed he was doing, but it sounded similar to a fit of coughing under his breath. “No. But damn it all would I not sleep at night if I didn't tell you something at least. This is all you'll ever get from me. Remember that. I'm not alone, obviously, and this entire city is on lock-down. Nobody comes. Nobody goes. It'll all happen quickly. Once the problem is solved, everybody in the city's minds will be wiped of any magic they've seen. Can't promise your magic affinity will do anything to stop it. Now, it won't matter, because you're coming with me, boy.”

Eldrian didn't notice at first, but he was inching closer throughout the monologue. When he tried to make a move, Whitfield leapt forward, and shattered his spell before he could.

Drodias swept through the air but was caught by the metal of Whitfield's bat. Sparks burst from the impact, and the soldier skillfully parried it away, and thrust his elbow into Kevin's ribs—phasing straight through the illusory armour.

The soldier didn't even seem surprised.

At that point, it wasn't just them against a spellbreaker, but the city's elite police force, and more. Cops held up guns, but SWAT members were set up down the streets. Arlandria watched from behind. She knew that with only one wizard, they couldn't hope break all of the guns before some could fire.

“And don't think I didn't see you too, girl,” he called out. “How many wizards have you got with you today?

[tortuga-aak]

A far-left progressive who won big in Pennsylvania says his election should be a lesson for national Democrats

Harrison Jacobs/Business Insider

Civil rights attorney Larry Krasner won the race for Philadelphia district attorney Tuesday in a blowout.

The election saw a boost in turnout of nearly 75,000 over the last competitive DA's race.

Krasner says the enthusiasm around his campaign should be a lesson to the Democratic Party that it should be "wrapping its loving arms around progressives."

  Civil rights attorney Larry Krasner won the race for Philadelphia District Attorney Tuesday in what can only be described as a blowout. Philadelphia voters provided him with a mandate to pursue the kind of drastic criminal justice reform he touted on the campaign trail. 

With 98% of precincts reporting by Wednesday morning, Krasner had taken just under 75% of the vote. While his predecessor, Seth Williams, also won with 75% of the vote in 2009, the turnout was far lower.

With the numbers still being tallied, the total votes for district attorney this year edged near 200,000, more than a 75,000 increase from four years ago. Krasner's win was part of a Democratic wave Tuesday night that saw the party win big in Virginia and New Jersey, as well as many more local races.

Harrison Jacobs/Business InsiderIt may be some time before we can say definitively what drove turnout in the election — the backlash to President Donald Trump in a solidly Democratic city surely played a factor. But what is clear from both talking to Philadelphians on the ground and local reporting is that Krasner generated an unheard-of level of enthusiasm for a local election.

Krasner told Business Insider that he was able to capitalize on what he sees as a massive electoral shift toward millennials and communities of color by embracing a blunt, progressive platform. In his win, and the excitement generated by Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' run in 2016, he said he sees a lesson to Democrats looking to win nationally.

"Yeah I think that there's I think there's something going on. I think it's real," Krasner said.

"I think the Democratic Party should be madly wrapping its loving arms around progressives," he added.

Krasner's platform called for an end to "mass incarceration," the constellation of state and federal policies that have put more than 2 million Americans behind bars. The platform, as well as his long-established reputation as an advocate for civil rights, activists, and protesters, energized the city's progressive base, who then volunteered and canvassed heavily for him. 

Prominent African-American lawyer Michael Coard, who has worked on activist cases with Krasner for a decade, told Business Insider that a "sleeping giant" of progressive Philadelphians and communities of color had "woken" this year to campaign, canvass, or vouch for Krasner.

When Business Insider asked Krasner about the enthusiasm for his campaign, and the excitement generated by a series of ads aired by the Soros-funded Public Safety and Justice PAC during the primary that centered his legal advocacy for Black Lives Matter and the Occupy Movement, he said it taught him a lot about what voters — and specifically Democratic voters — are looking for in 2017.

Here's Krasner on voters in 2017 and the Democratic Party:

Krasner: [The ads] taught me a lesson, which is that it's not 1987 anymore. People want their same sex marriage. They want their recreational marijuana. They want their economic equality. Especially millennials and older African-Americans, who've been through the civil rights movement and have seen it. They know there is racism. They don't want racism, but they do want their public schools, which in many places don't exist anymore.

It was a lesson to me that my views were being characterized as controversial. They're actually pretty mainstream with the average Democratic voter in Philadelphia County.

Business Insider: Do you think there's a lesson in that for the National Democratic Party?

Krasner: Absolutely. Absolutely. Let me just give you a little teeny tiny portion of it. I think if the Democrats nationally were to come out in favor of recreational marijuana, for many reasons, the first and best of them being it doesn't kill anybody. But alcohol does. And when I say alcohol does, I mean like 80,000 lives a year. And Marijuana kills nobody. It doesn't kill anybody, but opiates and opioids do. And I mean like 60,000 lives every year. These are real numbers. As compared to zero.

I think that if Democrats would come out for that, then you would see a lot of rural areas that went for Trump where there's little pickup trucks going to the polls, with guys who have beards and they have ponytails and they have a gun rack in the back, and they would be voting for recreational marijuana because they know it makes sense too. They know that the reality is that where it's readily available you have a 25 percent reduction in opioid/opiate fatalities. That is a national catastrophe. They know that at least the states that get in early are going to have tremendous tax funds that they can use to bolster education.

The Democratic Party has got to stop running around trying to be close to the Republican Party. Bernie [Sanders] made that clear ..." 

In numerous majority-minority neighborhoods, Krasner netted more than 1,000 votes more during the May primary than Williams, the city's first black district attorney, did during the 2009 primary. Neighborhood vote totals for the general election have yet to be released, but considering the overall turnout bump, one would expect to see similar gains.

By the Krasner campaign's account, Krasner's strongest voter demographic was African-American women, which he attributed to their understanding of the criminal justice system he has proposed to reform.

William Wagner, a canvasser for the ACLU's "Smart Justice" campaign in Philadelphia and and a formerly incarcerated person, put it this way: "Voting for a DA, where I come from, is something that we don't care about."

But this year was different, he said, because "the candidates are specifically campaigning on the issues that we want our constituents to vote for."

Business Insider followed Krasner during the final days of his campaign — check it out here »

NOW WATCH: Trump says the Texas church shooting 'isn't a guns situation' — watch his full statement on the attack that killed 26 people

from Feedburner http://ift.tt/2iDVw1e

[aureliajcne-blog]

premise/ooc: i didn’t really know how to write about aurelia + the gifts. her immediate reaction, i tried to write a thousand times but nothing seemed to work. so i went back to the basics of her character and i created this. the concept is that aurelia is in therapy. and she’s discussing finding these gifts/messages with her therapist. the content below may be slightly triggering as it mentions death and anxiety throughout (though never indepth) . though the content isn’t necessarily mature, if you’re sensitive to the aforementioned maybe give this one a miss. 

“aurelia? come on through.”  his head pokes through an oak door ( she was the only person sitting in the hall ) and she’s gathering her backpack and jacket to only slump them onto the ground two moments later.  “how have you been?” he asks. it’s the same question he always asks; the same question he’s been asking for eight months now. the response from aurelia is always the same. she shrugs, plays with her hands in her lap and sighs. the answer he wants is something she can’t really give, because she isn’t sure how she’s been. she isn’t sure whether she ordered chinese with her roommates on monday this week or last week. she isn’t sure whether she actually went to work this week, and what her shifts were. 

“i got sent ten grand.”  he’s the first ( the only ) person she’s told. saying it makes it seem so much more real that to call her unprepared would be an understatement. surreal, is the word best to describe it.  “and a first edition of tom sawyer.” he knows it was jasper’s favourite book. he knows everything about jasper that she knows. aurelia values her secrets, values her privacy, but not with kyle. with kyle she has to be totally honest because lying to him is like lying to herself and that’s not something she’s fond of either. “i don’t know who they’re from.” refusal to make eye contact with kyle was common whenever she was telling him something like this. the first three sessions she sat with him were mainly silence -- just aurelia sitting there, fiddling with her hands and dreaming of everything that she could ( she should ) say. telling him the full story took at least six months. and even then she wasn’t sure whether every memory inside of her head had been verbally conveyed to him. 

“how does that make you feel?” “strange.” it was a question she had expected. this game had been played for long enough, aurelia knew all the rules. and though she had wracked her brain in an attempt to find a word better than that of six letters, one simply didn’t exist. “it’s like.. i’m grateful, right? but there’s stuff that’s connected to it. all these little puppet strings. and i know that if i do accept the gift, then i get strings attached to me too.” her lip has settled between her teeth but now her brown eyes are staring into his blue ones as she explains. she gulps, anxiety beginning to grow and gnaw at her bones with every second. 

“do you want to smoke?” it’s a question that he only asks when he can see she’s extremely distressed. it’s their secret ---- something that nobody else is allowed to know about because if they did, they’d chastise him for allowing her to smoke on the premises. the strict no-smoking ban was real, but it was something he’d done to gain her trust. now it was something he did when there was clearly more beneath the surface but he wasn’t quite getting there. aurelia was the iceberg that hit the titanic; she was hiding something catastrophic. but then, who wasn’t? all she simply does is nod, rising to her feet and to the window seat within his office. 

a breeze is low, but definitely there. within seconds of opening the window within its entirety, she’s filling her lungs with fresh ocean air before she fills them with nicotine. it’s almost ironic. kyle hands her a light ( she doesn’t even have to ask ), sits down besides her and lights a cigarette for the both of them. he was in his mid-late fifties, had a greying beard but full head of thick black hair. he reminded her of her father, but in a better way. in a way that didn’t make her want to scream into a pillow in annoyance. 

“i got a message. from.. my benefactor.” anonymous felt like a ridiculous name to give them. a benefactor sounded more sophisticated. made her feel less like a high school teenager and more like a woman. “gave me a dare -- i know, believe me, i’ve already scoffed at the idea being out of a cw show -- and said if i don’t do it there’ll be consequences.” he’s the only person in the world that can know because he can’t call the cops and he isn’t the cops. if it came to it, he would simply deny ever knowing that aurelia existed. she would be another face in a throng of los angeles white girls. “i haven’t completed it. not yet. i don’t know if i want to.” every pause is met with another drag from a marlboro light. every exhale forces her head out of the window, just in case they set the fire alarms off. he cares less about being caught than she does, mainly because he can just blame it on her, but she doesn’t like the idea of people busting in here and catching her spilling her guts out. 

“i don’t know what to do, ky.” he was the only person she ever gave a nickname to. mainly because he was also the only person who called her aj now. it was a sense of baltimore even when she was miles away, and she certainly did appreciate it. even though, of course, she’d never tell him that outside of her blase exterior. “it’s something small ---- the dare ---- but what if it gets worse? what if they ask me to murder someone?” anxiety forced her to always expect the worst, and though he was certainly used to her ability to swing from one idea to the next, this one earned her a grin. “don’t laugh at me!” though she cannot help but to grin herself at how simply ludicrous the idea is. murder? seriously? only aurelia would go to such an extreme. “i think i’m going to do it.” this is something that forces her to linger a little longer outside of the window. eyes transfix on birds dancing across the sky; the idea of flying away always appealed to her. always intrigued her. plus she’s scared to look at him. scared he’ll look at her with pity in his eyes or betrayal or any other emotion that would make her feel three inches tall. “it’s just.. it’s simpler, y’know?” rhetorical questions tended to be her forté in therapy. once her mind was set, there was no hope for kyle to talk her out of anything. 

the cigarette burns out. the window is closed and an aerosol can is retrieved from a drawer in his desk to spray every inch of the office. aurelia retakes her seat on a purple chair, her eyes watching kyle as he goes about the routine. “coffee?” he asks, which earns him another nod. then he begins to ramble about some type of message or fable or some other meaning to something, and the brunette switches off. her eyes wander to the window, back to the birds in the los angeles horizon, and she makes up her mind. she’s got to see it through, see where this leads her. you never know what life has to hold, right? 

[cheeseburgernebula]

Shoulders of Knees

by F. Simon Grant

John Anomalies sold real estate for Shoulders of Knees long before he knew his whole world was inside the body of Theo Huxtable.

Everything was full of bright light, unexpected in retrospect for inside-a-body, and covered in blue and white mosaic tile like the most magnificent bathrooms and worship places, but that was the trend those ideal days of Shoulders of Knees real estate, to make every bodily living space bright and sanitary.

He loved the landscapes inside Theo Huxtable, how the hilltops in Shoulders of Knees gave him a view of column after column extending out in every direction from Shoulders of Knees, columns of houses and roads all the way around the column, top and bottom, people standing perpendicular to him and parallel to one another, head to head only a hundred feet apart, neighbors looking up at each other to converse, kids tossing four square balls up at each other until the other-direction gravity caught it and pulled it to the opposite-side child. They tried, as all children inside the columns of Theo Huxtable tried at one time in their childhood, to bounce back all the way back and forth so it would continue bouncing forever, the impossible dreams of children. What could be more delightful? All this closeness made him feel like always being hugged, like all his life he lived inside a cuddling family.

He knew all the architectural styles (covered in the new trends by white and blue tiles) and cataloged them in his head whenever he surveyed Shoulders of Knees. All the names were based on mythology: Tudor (named after the mythological Tudor family); Second Empire (named after the rule of a mythological king named Napoleon); Ranch (named after this mythological notion of farmland).

John Anomalies knew about the mythology of open spaces due to televisions mounted on the tile ceilings (mounted in ancient times by ancient human leaders) that played open space images (allowing all the closed in Theo Huxtable people to imagine the frightening alternative).

That’s how he knew there was an entity called Theo Huxtable.

One day his neighbor lady, Widow Marmalade, told him, “Did you hear about what happened in science lately?”

“I don’t much keep up with science, Widow Marmalade.” But he indulged this scientifical business because he would indulge anything from Widow Marmalade.

“They say our whole world is inside Theo Huxtable.”

“Ya don’t say,” he said and went back inside sipping his coffee. He thought about his precious houses, as entirely house-like as the ones Theo Huxtable lived in (except this weird notion Theo Huxtable’s world of one-directional gravity). He looked at his hands, as entirely human as Theo Huxtable’s hands, his knees and shoulders as entirely human as Theo Huxtable’s knees and shoulders. Except Theo Huxtable had people inside him.

He went to the doctor and said, “Doctor, I don’t normally indulge in this scientifical business, but I was wondering if you could explain what I am and what I got inside me.”

The doctor, Dr. Zigzag, with a jolly attitude requisite of Theo Huxtable people and a big white beard and a nice, comfortable-looking blue and white checked sweater, said, “Oh, boy, let me tell  ya, I’ve had  a lot of that kind of question since the Theo Huxtable revelation. Let me assure you that everybody’s got the same stuff inside of them: bones, muscles, organs, all the stuff that makes us humans.” Dr. Zigzag even offered to give him an X-Ray to prove it, said he did it a million times before. But no thanks, no science needed.

Still, John Anomalies stayed up nights thinking about all that empty space that must be outside of Theo Huxtable. All that infinite empty space.

Theology inside Theo Huxtable was based on a lingam-yoni-like pansexual deity called the Claircliff. Claircliff had the capacity to “ground” sinners (as this one-directional gravity seemed so terrifying, this must be why grounding was a punishment) and he/she delivered mysterious admonitions like “You were off being wild and free with the Wretched and singing the Wretched song! How did it come to pass that you did not get into the concert with the Wretched, and the big fun?” Supplicants spent ages parsing through such mysterious speeches, but not John Anomalies who knew this one little space, the Shoulders of Knees, inside the body of Theo Huxtable so well, everything else filled his dream life with the shaky cracking of tiles. The warm certainty of the Claircliff kept his dream brain from cracking open. It gave it all a beyondmeaning that wasn't any of John's business to know.

The Claircliff television shows that played constantly in intraHuxtable spaces painted the Claircliff comically as two separate beings, a married couple named Clair and Cliff (what absurdity) and a seemingly endless train of their godling babies including Theo who formed the body of the world. They were so tightly packed in that home, it seemed like paradise, and John wondered why they’d ever want to step outside.

Now, alone in his bed and staring at the ceiling and contemplating the infinity beyond, John repeated, “The Claircliff knows all beyond our capacity to know. The Claircliff’s wisdom is unquestionable. The Claircliff’s ways are a mystery.” This gave him the strength and courage to finally rise (though sleep was now beyond him).

He wondered around his empty house. At times like this, he hated living alone.

John Anomalies had no interest in having a wife or babies. The Claircliff gave him enough of a similar sort of comfort. At least that’s what he told himself. The truth is talking to potential wives was an embarrassing freefall into rehearsed factoids about real estate (“Do you know about the Napoleon mythology?”) or religion (“Are you aware of the theological implications of Different World blasphemies?”) but never anything about himself, a mortifying emptiness, and John wondered often if there even was a self to talk about.

Then there was Widow Marmalade who lived next door. She was John’s age but still a widow, and John wondered how anybody got to be a widow at this age, but he let the mystery remain. Her welfare concerned John most days, and this gave him something other than real estate to talk about: “How you doing today Madam Doohickey, hope your day brings you light and love as the Claircliff smiles upon you,” and so on.

Her obsession in all her conversations these days was this Theo Huxtable business: “I mean I know the Claircliff show says the world was made of Theo's body, but I figured that was only stories. But to even think we live inside another's body...I don't know what to make of it.”

“Somehow … it all seems okay.” John’s nightly mantra made him think this might be true.

“But what if we all have tiny worlds inside of us?” This was a world-shattering concept John had convinced himself no longer to consider.

If there really were worlds inside everyone, everyone would need their own Claircliff, at least the way John Anomalies conceived of the God-and-world relationship. But widow Marmalade had nobody to be her world's God and give the tiny people inside her moral guidance.

So one day passing one another in that neighborly way, he grabbed her shoulders and said, “I have something to say to the little people inside of you,” but he had nothing to say, no original moral guidance inside him. This just wasn’t John Anomalies. He had nothing inside him but Claircliff rehashings he barely understood.

So for once, with the pressing need of all those poor, unfortunate, unguided tiny people inside of Widow Marmalade, he looked down in his true core and spoke the wisdom he discovered there: “You can fly.”

This made no sense, and Widow Marmalade's baffled face showed it. In truth, it made no sense to John Anomalies either, but the wisdom of any world’s god was rooted in mystery.

He tried again: “You can fly. We all can fly. Everyone can fly. There is no such thing as gravity.” No matter what he tried to say, this is all that came out. So he let her go, took a step back and said, “Nice day. I'll be seeing you around.”

But he couldn't show his face again. Every interaction he had with potential wives his whole life had been mortifying. Widow Marmalade was the only one he was able to pleasantly speak with without conversational rehearsal or go-to neutral factoids. That was all shattered by this flying nonsense.

The truth is they could fly because why not? Flying really was a skill with which his people were naturally endowed. It made no sense, but John had no concept of how thoroughly mystery permeated his existence.

Widow Marmalade flew to his window not long after he told her she could fly, and she said, “Mr. Anomalies, what say we see what the outside of the Theo Huxtable looks like.” She grabbed his hand, and he likewise lifted off the ground with as little effort as walking.

They flew away together, laughing like little kids up the column of houses on every side. John Anomalies no longer considered the terror of the outside spaces, as long as he held her hand.

But then the column closed in, and the houses rose like the sort of bumpy landscape John knew well in Shoulders of Knees. In this column, however, the houses had to squeeze together until there was hardly any passageway but one small walking path. All the Second Empire houses seemed to be recovering from some catastrophe, trusses made of bonewood, ropes of sinews holding shattered roofs together, citizens wobbling in their weird gravity walk over house rubble and trying not to bump heads.

John stopped one of the weary-looking column citizens and said, “What is this? What happened here?”

“I reckon Theo Huxtable’s got what they call a cancer,” said the column citizen. “I reckon our world’s not going to live much longer.”

Widow Marmalade pulled John toward the walking path opening and said, “Come on, we can make it through. We can make it out of here.”

But John pulled back against her tugging.

The solid ground felt too good on his feet.