#on a higher throne than mine own | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

the-most-humble-blog · 2 months ago

Text

🧬 The Womb Was Never Yours — It Was Rented by Evolution (Or: Why "My Body My Choice" Is the Most Haunting Lease Agreement in the Universe)

1. Welcome to the Lease Agreement You Never Read

Hate to break it to ya, toots, but that uterus you're guarding like a cursed chalice? It’s not yours. It’s a subletted organ in a bio-rental agreement you inherited from an unbroken chain of evolutionary desperation.

You didn’t earn that womb. You inherited it — along with 300,000 years of trauma, cave births, and DNA-level hustle from ancestors who got speared by mammoths but still managed to drop babies on dirt floors.

You think "My Body, My Choice" is defiant?

No. It’s the slogan of a tenant who forgot she’s on a biological lease with no purchase option.

2. The Body Isn’t Yours — It’s a Rental Cloak for Genetic Propaganda

You are the result of trillions of unthinking zygotic successes. A skin-wrapped meat puppet designed to:

Breathe long enough

Eat enough calories

And reproduce before death gets bored

That’s it.

Everything else — poetry, politics, TikTok thirst traps — is noise.

Your womb isn’t a throne of power. It’s a biological tunnel constructed by nature so genes could sprint into the next generation like panicked marathon runners.

"I am a sovereign being!" No, darling. You’re a carbon-based USB port with legs.

3. Femininity? That Was Never Yours Either

Let’s zoom out:

That “divine feminine” thing? You didn’t conjure it. You didn’t design it. You inherited it — like debt.

Femininity is an ancient survival script:

Enlarge the eyes

Tilt the voice up

Create the illusion of vulnerability

Trigger protection instincts in higher testosterone organisms

It’s not empowerment. It’s weaponized bait coded into your marrow by biological arms dealers who didn’t care about your career goals.

You're not expressing individuality. You're reenacting ancestral insurance fraud against the void.

4. “My Body My Choice”? Cute. Let’s Run That Through a Quantum Filter.

Imagine telling a molecular freight train (your body) hauling 3.2 billion base pairs of genetic instructions across 37 trillion cells:

“I own this.”

LMAO.

Your body is made of hand-me-down molecules that don’t even have your name on the tags. You can’t own a body you didn’t build, can’t maintain, and don’t even fully understand.

You can’t explain 90% of your internal functions. But you’re claiming ownership like a toddler yelling “MINE” in a Toys R Us.

You didn’t choose your hormones. You didn’t pick your sexual instincts. You didn’t design your womb.

Your existence is a passenger ride on a train of ancient obligations, and you’re trying to take the wheel in the caboose.

5. The Horror of Evolution Is That It Doesn’t Care About You

Let’s sit with this:

Evolution doesn’t care if pregnancy ruins your life. Evolution doesn’t care if childbirth kills you.

It only cares that you get pregnant at all.

Your womb is a hostile AirBnB rented out to genetic parasites. They install themselves like squatters, flood your body with chemicals to rewire your brain into bonding with them, and then explode out of your pelvis like a xenomorph auditioning for God.

You call that “miracle of life.” I call it cosmic body horror with a slow payment plan.

6. And Yet — Here's Where the Mindfuck Hits Harder:

Even that is less disturbing than the idea that you’re the only one responsible for it.

Because here’s the secret:

“My Body My Choice” accidentally makes you the sole contractor, janitor, victim, and jailer of the most hellish reproductive mechanism ever designed.

You’re claiming full accountability for the consequences of a process you didn’t create.

You’re saying: “This horror show is mine. My idea. My burden. My problem.”

Which is kind of… cruel, don’t you think?

Because what if:

Handing your body over to the man who impregnated you — to share the responsibility, share the violence, share the consequences — is less oppressive than facing it all alone?

What if “ownership” is a trap? A way to isolate you under the guise of empowerment?

What if the slogan was never “freedom” — it was atomization with lipstick?

7. Maternity as Capitalism’s Final Flex

Modernity took the horror of pregnancy and said:

“Girlboss it.”

Now you're not just birthing a child. You're birthing a personal brand. You better have a Pinterest nursery and gender reveal confetti or you’re failing womanhood™.

"My body my choice" becomes:

My uterus, my liability

My fertility, my marketing funnel

My abortion, my trauma, my cross to bear — alone

Ownership = accountability. And accountability is a prison when no one else shares the cost.

8. Your Ancestors Would Laugh at You

Your prehistoric great-great-grandmother got clubbed in the head by a man named Oog and bled out delivering her 12th child on a pile of mammoth hair. She didn’t say “My Body My Choice.” She said “Keep the fire going while I scream this parasite out of my spine.”

She didn’t claim ownership.

She expected a village. A tribe. A blood pact of mutual obligation.

Not a bumper sticker.

You inherited her uterus, her hormones, her unfiltered trauma.

And now you're out here trying to copyright it?

9. Who Benefits From You “Owning” Your Body?

The system.

Because if you own it, then you maintain it. You feed it. You pay for its medical collapses. You swallow its failures like they’re your fault.

If something goes wrong? That’s your choice, queen.

That’s liberation now: full responsibility for a vessel you didn’t design and can’t control.

And no man, no tribe, no god has to lift a finger.

10. Conclusion: A New Kind of Horror

“My Body, My Choice” was supposed to be a battle cry.

But in a universe this cruel, this alien, this entropic — owning your body might be the worst curse of all.

It means the trauma is yours. The death risk is yours. The hormonal hell is yours.

And if you don’t want it? You have to petition the very system that programmed it into you.

So maybe... just maybe...

Handing your body off to the man who impregnated you —to be the co-owner of the apocalypse— is less monstrous than being the sole proprietor of your own biological hell.

Because you were never meant to carry this alone. And you were never meant to pretend it was your choice in the first place.

So, perhaps...Just perhaps:

“You don’t own femininity. You inherited its debt.”

“Ownership is not empowerment. It’s isolation with paperwork.”

“You’re not a queen. You’re a womb-based timeshare with delusions of sovereignty.”

🔥 Reblog if you’ve ever questioned where “choice” ends and programming begins 📩 DM if your uterus ever felt like a haunted house 🧬 Tag a friend who thinks sovereignty is sexy until the DNA bill shows up 🧠 Comment if the post made your brain twitch in seven dimensions

#womb discourse #philosophy of choice #evolutionary horror #feminine body trap #cosmic uterus theory #satirical feminism #dark humor post #my body my curse #trauma economics #ancestral debt #reproductive metaphysics #quantum gender theory #beyond feminism #you don't own your body

11 notes · View notes

wittyrogue · 6 months ago

Text

we all like to joke that zevran's failed contract in origins has lost the crows an entire country but in this essay i will tell you how actually crows are afraid to go further south than the free marches because the black shadow will get them.

lets set the scene: early 9:30 dragon, a hit goes out on two grey wardens from the "ruler" of ferelden. zevran wins the bid and effectively disappears. two grey wardens are still seen out and about. taliesen is later sent to clean it up and also disappears.

their fates, canonically, are "unknown" (per world of thedas, vol. 2 pg 96, screen capped at the bottom of the post for reference).

grandmaster eoman arainai (zevran's master and the one who ordered rinna killed) is killed four months after the blight ends. four other members of house arainai are also killed over the next three years (9:30-33 dragon), taking house arainai from being the house with the eighth talon to obscurity.

grandmaster runn and grandmaster availa are also killed (honestly unclear if they're house arainai or not, but we'll run with them being eoman's replacements 1 and 2), likely around 9:33 or at the latest, 9:34 dragon.

at some point, zevran makes some friends and seems to have worked to fill the ranks of those rising within the crows with those who are similar in his mindset--those that have been cheated out of well earned coin, driven into hiding, or silenced in one way or another, slowly building a rising generation of crows less keen on the old house structure way of doing things.

during this time, whenever zevran is discovered in antiva, he's chased out by the crows, who get as far as rivain or the free marches and then those crows go missing--the implication here being that they chase zevran, only to at some point have the chase twisted and end up killed by zevran's own blade.

also at some point, zevran is caught in a trap by the crows, who continued to hunt him "for the honor of antivan crows" aka a crow never breaks a contract (though at this point claiming zevran as a crow seems like a clerical oversight).

in case you were wondering: - crows: 1 - zevran: 3 grandmasters, 5 assassins (rank or higher), innumerable rank and file lured south

by 9:35 dragon, the guildmaster of rialto has been killed and two guildmasters are said to be in zevran's pocket. first caveat: unclear if this is widespread to all of the crows, or limited to just house arainai. second caveat: guildmaster and grandmaster seem to be used interchangeably? which is mildly frustrating but it is what it is. this is also assumed to do with zevran's escape from wherever they were keeping him captive.

relative radio silence from the maker's perfect boy until 9:40 dragon when he sends an "oops i did it again ;)" letter to leliana apologizing for killing a crow hired to do inquisition business. for the record, this crow is doing business in hercinia at the time, which is in the free marches. this exchange speaks to a pattern of continuing the crow killing business, specifically those going south to the free marches.

now we're up to the current year and lucanis and harding have our oh so charming exchange below (emphasis mine):

Harding: Lucanis, you've never really been to Ferelden? But I thought you traveled all over!

Lucanis: The Crows don't take many contracts there. Not since the Fifth Blight.

Harding: I heard Teyrn Loghain hired Crows in his fight over the throne.

Lucanis: And that's why we don't work there anymore.

Harding: So the Crows don't work in Ferelden anymore because of Loghain? Why, exactly?

Lucanis: House Arainai embarrassed themselves so badly on that job, the Crows buried six different Eighth Talons.

Harding: You're... you're saying they actually die of embarrassment.

Lucanis: Some of them weren't dead at the time. But they got it eventually.

hey scroll up for a second, back to the part where i told you the crows vs zevran tally.

ok come back. thanks.

now at least one of those six #confirmed kills of zevran's is grandmaster eoman arainai, the eighth talon. clearly being a grandmaster and a talon are not conflicting roles. i'd gather, actually, that being grandmaster of the house holding a talon position makes you the talon as well. so zevran's killed at least three arainai talons (eoman, runn, availa). if we put house arainai in rialto, that makes a fourth in 9:35 dragon during zevran's escape from imprisonment for four dead talons, just between 9:30 and 9:35 dragon. i really think in the following handful of years, zevran can do two more. as a treat.

all this to say--in this dialogue with harding, lucanis is putting on his professional customer service voice and saying that no, they just don't really like working in fereldan all that much.

please don't look at the line of dead crows that starts in the free marches.

please ignore the pile of dead eighth talons.

please stop looking at house arainai.

honestly, i think there's a solid argument to be made that zevran's hunting of crows affected a widespread change in his generation of rank and file crows, to the benefit of any follow-on generations. it was mentioned a little how zevran was gathering allies, even paying off guildmasters, and i think it's seen in the fact that arainai hasn't prospered and crows like teia even exist at all.

references under the cut.

#[ rp ] headcanon.#[ i don't want to discount teia in the slightest ]#[ what she did on her own is impressive ]#[ i do think there's a line between zevran and teia tho ]#[ i don't know if any of the changes she's made that are clear in datv could have happened ]#[ without the crows getting killed en masse by zevran ]#[ and therefore allowing the old guard to die off and the newer assassins hungry for change ]#[ anyway hi i'm dean and i can't take a joke ]#[ zevran may have failed in origins but it's been a big W for him ever since ]#[ lucanis is doing a very good job at covering for the crows own embarrassment ]#[ at having an ex crow hunting them personally ]#[ as a hobby and a living ]

22 notes · View notes

jazzmckay · 2 months ago

Note

Happy Thedas Weekend, excited to participate in this! From your going to bed list — "going to sleep as the big spoon and waking up as the little spoon" with your Mercar/Neve?

thank you for the prompt! i jumped on this one instantly cause i haven't had the chance to write these two yet :> 💜

vague/fade to black smut 1.8k for @thedasweekend

It takes many months for the damage in Minrathous to be repaired in the wake of the final battle. Weeks dedicated to just preparations for the dead and clearing out the crumbling husks of dead blight growths before true restoration can begin. With a new Archon on the throne, the efforts spread wide enough to include even Dock Town—for once, Neve’s district isn’t left to carry the entirety of its own weight.

The Shadow Dragons are there to care for those still displaced, those in need of relief. Rook isn’t sure she can still call herself one of them, for how Tarquin’s jaw still clenches in her presence, anger and hurt brewing a storm in his gaze, but she is there alongside them all the same, her and Neve, cutting through any Venatori who still dare to show their faces, distributing supplies to those who need them, and even patching buildings when they can, with Rook hauling the materials and Neve weaving them into place with binding magic.

“I have something to show you,” Neve says one evening, catching Rook’s hand to stop her when they would ordinarily head for the eluvian and return to the Lighthouse.

Rook arches a brow, intrigued. It’s rare for anyone to successfully surprise her, but Neve almost always manages it, excelling at misdirection and remaining a mystery in some ways, even nearly a year later. Neve has lived such a full life that Rook feels she will never run out of stories to uncover.

“Lead the way,” she replies.

Neve does, her hand still in Rook’s. Their fingers remain threaded together even as they emerge into the streets, their connection visible for all to see.

It isn’t a long journey; they make their way down familiar paths cloaked by nighttime darkness, passing by familiar faces who greet them with nods or smiles, until they come to their destination. It’s a tall structure, rising high enough to rival those around it. The main floor is an office, and Rook can smell ink and parchment—a printmaking bureau.

This isn’t where Neve stops. They take a lift up to the higher levels, the offices switching to residences, and that’s when it clicks.

Rook’s chest aches at the memory of Neve telling her that her apartment was destroyed in the dragon attack. The Lighthouse became Neve’s only residence, and it has served them both well, but Rook knows it isn’t the same. It isn’t the same as Neve having her own place carved out within the city that she shapes as much as it shapes her.

She squeezes Neve’s hand, understanding, and Neve offers a soft smile in return.

At the top floor, they step out into a hallway, and Neve takes her to one of the doors, lifting her free hand to unlock it with magic. Beyond, a sparsely-furnished apartment unfolds; largely open-plan, cozy rather than sprawling. It wasn’t much, but it was mine, Rook remembers Neve saying about her previous home.

Continuing inside, Rook takes in all the details: a desk in the far corner is already adorned with papers, and the wall beside it has a board with pins clustered together, no notes to hang yet, but a blank expanse ready for Neve’s next case to unfold upon it. The other side of the flat, separated only by some dressing screens, has a bed big enough for two, a large wardrobe, and even a weapon stand in the corner that gives Rook pause. It’s a stand to hold blades rather than a sceptre or staff; it’s on the side of the bed closest to the corner, while Rook spies some of Neve’s belongings on the table on the other side.

Rook’s throat tightens. A space already made for both of them.

She returns her attention to Neve, finding her looking back with a lopsided grin, delighted with whatever emotion she sees on Rook’s face. Without words, the message is clear: whether they’re here in Dock Town or back at the Lighthouse, they can share that place with each other.

And Rook will always be exactly where Neve needs her, from here to the end.

Stepping closer, Rook brings her hands to Neve’s face, cupping her cheeks. She leans down, and Neve’s eyelashes flutter with desire and anticipation—an expression Rook will never tire of seeing upon her face.

They kiss deeply, open-mouthed and unrestrained. Neve’s arm encircles Rook’s waist, holding her close as they melt into each other.

When they finally part, Neve chuckles softly, her warm timbre as beautiful as ever. “You haven’t even seen the best part yet.”

“Oh?”

Neve eases out of her hold without turning away, their eyes still locked. Once again, she grasps Rook’s hand and pulls her along as she backs up towards the set of glass doors across the apartment. It leads to a balcony, that much is obvious, but it isn’t until they’re right in front of it and Rook can get a clear line of sight through the glass that she understands what Neve means.

This side of the building faces the docks, so high up that the sea stretches seemingly forever. It’s a clear night, and the moonlight shines on the dark surface of the water—Rook has to wonder if Neve waited for cloudless skies before bringing her here, wanting it to be perfect.

Neve only turns to push the doors open, letting them step out onto the balcony proper. They go to the railing together, side by side, Neve’s shoulder pressed to Rook’s bicep.

Rook thinks of skipping stones with Neve by the warehouses. Of eating Hal’s fish at the docks together. She also thinks of the beaches she has walked, some in places she’s unlikely to return to, and others in places she and Neve could visit any time they please. She takes in a deep breath and closes her eyes, finding the faint scent of the harbour, the undertones of fish and brine from below. The fresh air is cool upon her face, upon her bare scalp.

The tap of Neve’s prosthesis signals her movement; Rook can feel the displacement of the air when she steps away, and listens to the shift of her armour while she returns inside. She’ll be back, Rook knows.

Sure enough, it’s only a minute before Neve returns to her side. The clinking of glass urges Rook to open her eyes and look over, just in time to watch Neve pour wine into the first of two cups.

“Now you’re spoiling us,” Rook teases as she takes the offered cup, holding it in wait while Neve pours her own and sets the bottle aside upon a pedestal with a potted plant.

“We can afford an indulgence once in a while,” Neve says. She lifts her glass between them pointedly. “Besides, it’s a celebration, and victories are rare enough to be grasped onto when we can.”

Rook nods, a small smile forming on her face. Neve is radiant when she’s hopeful; she’s clearly speaking of more than celebrating the new apartment, she’s speaking of renewal, of the whole city pulling itself back together into a place its people can be proud to call home. None have worked harder than Dock Town’s own residents reclaiming what is theirs, with Neve in the heart of it all, a fierce protector.

Tipping her own glass against Neve’s, Rook says, “To us, and to Dock Town.”

While they drink, Neve’s gaze once again locks onto Rook’s with the kind of intensity that makes heat simmer in Rook’s stomach.

Neither of them manages to completely finish off their glasses before they find themselves reaching for each other instead, Rook plucking at the belt buckles of Neve’s tassets and Neve pushing Rook’s lapels wide. They fumble their way back into the apartment, kissing and shedding their armour and clothes as they go.

They fall into bed together—their bed—where Rook brushes kisses along Neve’s nape and shoulder while Neve sets her prosthesis carefully at the bedside and then rolls into Rook’s lap, shoving her down onto the sheets. The pillows are so plush that Rook’s horns curl comfortably over them, unbothersome as Neve leans in to bring their lips back together.

The taste of wine is both sharp and sweet on their tongues. Neve’s fingertips trace the lines of Rook’s tattoo down her chin, then drift lower over her throat, down to her sternum. Rook runs a palm up Neve’s spine in tandem.

With moonlight spilling in through the balcony and the distant sounds of the harbour beyond, they do indulge, and celebrate, and revel in each other until exhaustion leaves them sagging into the sheets, their breaths laboured and skin salty with sweat. They settle with Neve’s back flush to Rook’s chest, Rook’s arm wrapped around her and nose pressed into the silky strands of her hair.

Falling asleep feels like calmly sinking below the surface of the sea.

Into quiet darkness and nothingness, where Rook does not dream.

Waking is not so smooth—there are moments of awareness, moments of reaching, moments of daylight shimmering high above like an unattainable beacon. When Rook finally claws her way to the shore, she notices the ache in her muscles, but also a cocoon of warmth, a touch on her shoulder like the gentle lapping of ankle-deep waves.

Rook opens her eyes, momentarily caught off guard by the sight of unfamiliar walls until her gaze finds the weapon stand in the corner, perfectly crafted for her own blades.

She lets out a sigh, expelling her kneejerk wariness.

“Morning, Trouble,” Neve murmurs at her back.

The touch on Rook’s shoulder solidifies into Neve’s palm running back and forth over the curve of it, her arm curled over Rook’s chest from behind.

Instead of responding with words, Rook takes Neve’s wrist and draws her hand to her lips, brushing a couple kisses to her knuckles. Then, after a few slow breaths, she manages, “Did I wake you?”

“You did,” Neve answers without any frustration. “You were restless, but you settled once I put my arm around you. Bad dreams?”

Rook shakes her head against the pillows. She directs Neve’s hand back to her shoulder in a silent request, and Neve resumes her ministrations. “I never sleep well in unfamiliar places,” she admits. She has spent too much of her life drifting from one mission to the next, needing to be alert and ready, never calling a place home until the Lighthouse. “The apartment is unfamiliar, but you aren’t.”

Neve hums in understanding as she traces her fingertips down across Rook’s collarbone. “In that case…” she starts, the playful lilt in her voice making Rook grin even before she continues, “I may have to keep you here in bed until we have it memorized.”

“Breakfast first,” Rook says, just to tease.

Neve chuckles and bows her head to kiss Rook’s shoulder. “If you do the cooking, then alright, breakfast first.”

“A fair deal,” Rook replies.

She sighs again, stretching her legs between the warm sheets. Breakfast together for the first time in their new home sounds perfect, but while held in Neve’s embrace, Rook feels no rush to rise from their bed, already a step closer to recognizing this space as a safe harbour, their very own port at sea.

#dragon age #davg #rook mercar #neve gallus #neverook #oc rook #my fic #thedasweekend #datv

16 notes · View notes

wanderingthroughsands · 9 months ago

Text

VIII. If you don’t know where you are going…

Can you help me out, can you lend a hand? It’s safe to say that I’m stuck again Trapped between this life and the light I just can’t figure out how to make it right

– "Rain" by Creed

The first thing I saw upon opening my eyes was the face of Dreamlord, mere inches away from my own. My ears rang, and my entire body felt helpless, limp, stripped of any ability to move. Lord Morpheus gripped my shoulders firmly, kneeling before me on the marble floor, his endless gaze piercing through me. As my thoughts slowly began to return, and the palace surroundings sharpened, I noticed something in his face… fatigue. His brows were furrowed, and his lips pressed into a thin line. I felt his slow, deep breaths on my cheeks, and his strong hold on my arms, as though he wouldn’t allow me to collapse.

“Dreamlord,” I spoke weakly, letting our eyes meet. “Are you all right?”

He didn’t answer, just continued to gaze at me unflinchingly. With each passing second, my strength and awareness of what had happened returned, but I didn’t dare move even a fraction while he was so close to me. His grip loosened slightly, yet the intensity of his stare remained. His presence, nearer than ever before, awakened something new in me—something that nearly displaced the fear and anticipation I had long known.

“For a moment, I thought… I was certain… But you let me live. What happened?” I asked, almost in a whisper, afraid that careless words might disturb the extraordinary energy surrounding us.

“Something went wrong,” Dreamlord replied just as softly. “You weren’t supposed to feel that pain. Your power…”

“You didn’t take it from me?”

“My lord!”

Lucienne found us kneeling across from one another in the middle of the throne room, speaking in hushed tones, our closeness almost making us appear as one. At the sound of her voice, Dreamlord finally tore his gaze from mine and, standing, extended his hand to help me rise.

"Is everything all right?" Lucienne asked, concern in her voice as she stood beside me, facing Lord Morpheus. "Something happened in the Dreaming, my lord—something like a tremor, but it felt as if the very foundations of the realm were shaking."

"I attempted to extract a fragment of my Nightmare from Rebecca Surrey's existence, but..." He turned to the woman, and in the colorful light streaming through the stained glass windows, the exhaustion on his face was even more evident. "Her power would not submit to me. It attacked me."

"Attacked you...?" Lucienne's words faltered, and she cast a surprised glance in my direction. "Are you... unharmed, my lord?"

"That power..." Dreamlord continued, as if he hadn’t heard her question. "I cannot comprehend it, Lucienne. Even the Corinthian, my most perfected Nightmare, couldn’t fight me like that. It wanted to repel me, to wound me, without regard for the life of its bearer."

"How is that possible?" Lucienne's expression was already one of astonishment, yet somehow her brows rose even higher. "If Rebecca was born from the Nightmare..."

"...then why did she not yield to her creator, to Dream of the Endless? What have you done to preserve your power, Rebecca Surrey?" he turned his attention back to me, and once again, that familiar dark shadow settled over his sharp features.

"I..." I stammered as fear suddenly surged back into me, crashing like a wave. "I really, truly don’t know, Lord Morpheus."

"Mind that you are addressing King of the Dreaming, the Ruler of this realm, the Endless, Master of Dreams and Nightmares, of hope and of torment..." With each word, his voice, which could shake the very pillars of the universe, echoed more menacingly through the palace chamber. "I expect you to answer my question truthfully."

"I swear on my life," I said, remaining rooted to the spot, though every fiber of my being wanted to flee from the overwhelming force of his energy. "That I did nothing to defend my power. You know I was willing to give it up to you, Dreamlord."

We fell silent, locked in a gaze like predator and prey before the final battle. I could see the anger in his eyes, and he must have seen my fear, but surely he also saw my resolve. Like him, I couldn't understand why the power I had already resigned myself to losing refused to leave me. The attack on him had happened as if without my will, manifesting as pain in the deepest recesses of my being.

And Lord Morpheus, instead of continuing the fight, had spared me. He had spared me yet again.

"We must find out why Rebecca's power resists yours, my lord," Lucienne said cautiously after the silence had stretched on. "There is no record of her second parent in the Book of her history. If the Corinthian is indeed the father, as the traces he left suggest, perhaps he can help us understand..."

"I will not restore the Corinthian to the Dreaming, Lucienne," Dreamlord interrupted coldly. "He caused too much damage here and in the waking world."

Lucienne lowered her gaze for a moment.

"Then perhaps the fault lies with the Vortex?"

"The Vortex appeared years after Rebecca Surrey was born. And, like no Vortex before in millennia, it would not have been able to instill such power in a human child." He turned his gaze back to me, as if analyzing me from head to toe. I remained silent, waiting for him to pass his divine judgment, unaware of what might be brewing behind the unreadable facade of his face. "In recent times, I have presented you with many choices," he said at last. "You chose to surrender your power to me, yet I am unable to take it from you. You are something I cannot explain. And until I learn why your power opposed mine, I will have to keep you in my realm."

"Dreamlord," I responded, a surge of defiance rising within me at the cold, hollow look in his eyes. "You seek the truth about the origin of my power, and so do I. I would gladly help you in the search for answers... but you just cannot imprison me here."

The calm aura that surrounded him almost perpetually suddenly vanished. He stepped toward me, and as I lifted my gaze to meet his, he seemed larger and more powerful than ever before. Darkness enveloped his eyes, swallowed his features, and instead of the pale man I had once seen in the park just before the accident, I saw an infinite, dangerous night, slowly wrapping its tendrils around me.

He was no longer the person I had first encountered. He was the Endless. The Lord of the Dreaming. A being of unimaginable power.

"I have endured your defiance time and again, Rebecca Surrey," he spoke, his voice so deep and filled with rage that I felt it reverberate through my fingertips. "You dare to make demands of Dream of the Endless, and instead of destroying you the moment I found you, I try to fulfill them to save your fragile human life. So now, you will heed my demand."

"I wanted to give you my life," I whispered, struggling to catch my breath as my racing heart constricted my chest. "I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me."

"By defying me? Hiding within my Nightmares? Failing the purpose for which you were created?" He leaned in closer, and I stopped breathing altogether, staring into the dangerous darkness of the night he had become. "I know you could wake now and return to your world. But you won't do this. Not until I allow it. I need to hear it from you, Rebecca Surrey. I need you to promise that you will not leave the Dreaming until I give you permission."

I swallowed hard, fighting against the rising tide of fear. He was right, I actually could close my eyes and open them back in the waking world. I could slip away from the snares of the night that Lord Morpheus wove around me. I could leave him here, once more, and condemn myself to endless flight through Nightmares.

And yet...

"I promise not to leave, Dreamlord," I said quietly, my facial muscles tightening with each word. "Not until you give me permission."

The darkness vanished, and with it, so did Lord Morpheus. The throne room felt smaller, quieter as I finally took a deep breath and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to compose myself. Slowly, second by second, the colorful light from the stained-glass windows crept back into my awareness, and the thunderous pulse of blood in my ears began to fade. Only then did I also realize Lucienne was standing not far from me, silent and as unsettled as I was. My hands were still trembling as I wrapped them around my arms, trying to shake off the lingering chill within.

"Rebecca," Lucienne’s voice was gentle as she extended her hand toward me. "You can’t stay here. Come with me."

Lucienne led me to one of the deep, soft chairs in her library and allowed me to sit in silence for several minutes, while she busied herself organizing books. I watched her, first absentmindedly, then with increasing focus as she carefully sorted through the volumes and arranged them in neat rows on the vast wooden shelves. Her movements were steady, full of certainty and calm, as though she knew her library as intimately as a mother knows her child. Watching her soothed me, slowly dissolving the fear that had taken root in my chest.

And though she seemed absorbed in her task, I knew she was waiting for me to be ready to speak.

"Lucienne..." I finally began, and she immediately turned from her books to offer me a warm, kind look. "Thank you for bringing me here."

"Each of us in the Dreaming has been where you are now," she smiled and sat down in the chair opposite mine, her voice gentle and soothing. "Lord Morpheus has been the great ruler of this realm since the dawn of time. But since that very same dawn, he has never taken well to defiance."

"Matthew told me the exact same thing," I muttered, sinking deeper into my seat.

"I’ve served Lord Morpheus longer than you could ever imagine," Lucienne continued with a soft chuckle. "And more than anyone, I know that everything he does is for the safety and well-being of the Dreaming. Don’t judge him too harshly, Rebecca. From your first encounter, he has been trying to protect the life you hold so dear."

"I know," I sighed, though I couldn’t quite shake the edge of stubbornness in my voice.

"You are a bit alike, you and Lord Morpheus," she said, sounding amused. "He’s just as stubborn and just as unwilling to let others decide his fate. But trust me, if he didn’t care about your safety, he wouldn’t ask you to stay in his palace, where nothing can harm you."

"I don’t think it’s my safety that concerns Dreamlord so much," I replied, rolling my eyes, though Lucienne’s smile only grew warmer.

"Then why didn’t he fight back against your power when it attacked him?" she asked, her tone probing but kind. "You don’t trust him, and I can’t entirely blame you for that... but Lord Morpheus rarely cares for human life as much as he does for yours. Those emotions you just witnessed—they weren’t a sign of indifference. They were the opposite of that."

The opposite?

"Lucienne," I leaned slightly towards her, clasping my hands on my knees. "I want to help him understand why he can’t take my power. But here, in the Dreaming, I feel helpless. I made him a promise, and if I were to break it..." He would hate me—that’s what I intended to say, but the words just wouldn’t pass my lips.

"He will eventually turn to you for help, I’m sure of it," Lucienne said, drifting off into thought, as if a distant memory had resurfaced. "He must, if he wishes to reclaim the power you now possess. But for now, you should stay here, let your emotions settle, give yourself and Lord Morpheus some time."

"Time..." As she said it, a question suddenly sprang into my mind, and I was surprised I hadn’t thought of it sooner. "Lucienne, what about my world, the time that’s passing there? If I don’t wake by morning, and my mom sees me lying lifeless in bed..."

"You needn’t worry about that, Rebecca," she replied soothingly. "Months might pass here before a single night in your world comes to an end."

"She has nightmares about me not waking up. It’s been that way ever since the accident, the one that left me unconscious and started these journeys into the Dreaming. It’s always been just the two of us, her and me, so when she thought she might lose me back then..."

And as soon as I said it aloud, another thought instantly filled my head.

"It’s always been just the two of us," I continued, feeling excitement rise within me with each word. "Lucienne, your books lack any mention of my father, but my mother—she actually met him! Perhaps she remembers something, knows something we can’t discover on our own. Maybe staying here, in the Dreaming, would be a mistake after all. Maybe I should return to the waking world... and simply talk to my mom."

#dream of the endless #the sandman #morpheus #netflix the sandman #the sandman netflix #sandman fanfiction #the sandman fanfic #sandman fic #the sandman fic #sandman fandom #morpheus imagines #dream of the endless x reader #dream x fem!reader #dream x fem!character #sandman x fem!character

19 notes · View notes

mariuspompom · 1 year ago

Note

Top 5: quotes from asoiaf 🙂

Sorry nonnie I procrastinated so much on this because it was impossible for me to choose just 5. I won't mention the quotes that encapsulate asoiaf the best necessarily, but the quotes that speak to me the most personally.

The door loomed before her, the red door, so close, so close, the hall was a blur around her, the cold receding behind. And now the stone was gone and she flew across the Dothraki sea, high and higher, the green rippling beneath, and all that lived and breathed fled in terror from the shadow of her wings. She could smell home, she could see it, there, just beyond that door, green fields and great stone houses and arms to keep her warm, there. She threw open the door. "… the dragon …" And saw her brother Rhaegar, mounted on a stallion as black as his armor. Fire glimmered red through the narrow eye slit of his helm. "The last dragon," Ser Jorah's voice whispered faintly. "The last, the last." Dany lifted his polished black visor. The face within was her own.

A Game of Thrones - Daenerys IX

And no matter how far the dragon flew each day, come nightfall some instinct drew him home to Dragonstone. His home, not mine. Her home was back in Meereen, with her husband and her lover. That was where she belonged, surely. Keep walking. If I look back I am lost. Memories walked with her. Clouds seen from above. Horses small as ants thundering through the grass. A silver moon, almost close enough to touch. Rivers running bright and blue below, glimmering in the sun. Will I ever see such sights again? On Drogon's back she felt whole. Up in the sky the woes of this world could not touch her. How could she abandon that?

A Dance with Dragons - Daenerys X

Jaime lay on his back afterward, staring at the night sky, trying not to feel the pain that snaked up his right arm every time he moved it. The night was strangely beautiful. The moon was a graceful crescent, and it seemed as though he had never seen so many stars. The King’s Crown was at the zenith, and he could see the Stallion rearing, and there the Swan. The Moonmaid, shy as ever, was half-hidden behind a pine tree. How can such a night be beautiful? he asked himself. Why would the stars want to look down on such as me? "Jaime," Brienne whispered, so faintly he thought he was dreaming it. "Jaime, what are you doing?" "Dying," he whispered back. "No," she said, "no, you must live." He wanted to laugh. "Stop telling me what do, wench. I'll die if it pleases me." "Are you so craven?" The word shocked him. […] "What else can I do, but die?" "Live," she said, "live, and fight, and take revenge."

A Storm of Swords - Jaime IV

Rhaegar had put his hand on Jaime’s shoulder. “When this battle’s done I mean to call a council. Changes will be made. I meant to do it long ago, but… well, it does no good to speak of roads not taken. We shall talk when I return.” Those were the last words Rhaegar Targaryen ever spoke to him. Outside the gates an army had assembled, whilst another descended on the Trident. So the Prince of Dragonstone mounted up and donned his tall black helm, and rode forth to his doom. He was more right than he knew. When the battle was done, there were changes made […]. It was queer, but he felt no grief. Where are my tears? Where is my rage? Jaime Lannister had never lacked for rage. “Father,” he told the corpse, “it was you who told me that tears were a mark of weakness in a man, so you cannot expect that I should cry for you.”

A Feast for Crows - Jaime I

Marsh flushed a deeper shade of red. "The lord commander must pardon my bluntness, but I have no softer way to say this. What you propose is nothing less than treason. For eight thousand years the men of the Night's Watch have stood upon the Wall and fought these wildlings. Now you mean to let them pass, to shelter them in our castles, to feed them and clothe them and teach them how to fight. Lord Snow, must I remind you? You swore an oath." "I know what I swore." Jon said the words. "I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. [...] Are you certain that I have not forgotten some? The ones about the king and his laws, and how we must defend every foot of his land and cling to each ruined castle? How does that part go?" Jon waited for an answer. None came. "I am the shield that guards the realms of men. Those are the words. So tell me, my lord—what are these wildlings, if not men?"

A Dance with Dragons - Jon XI

#valyrianscrolls #anonymous #ask game #asoiaf #asoiaf quotes #daenerys targaryen #jaime lannister #jon snow #brienne of tarth

34 notes · View notes

littlebvtterfly · 6 months ago

Text

SOME MORE DESCENDANTS PLOT BUNNIES

Zenna Hebe Olympos

daughter of Zeus and Hera, sister of Hercules

fled Mount Olympus to experience adventures on Earth and to see her brother and his wife more

has the power to activate the fountain of youth located in a cave in the north of Auradon, but won't use it because she knows how dangerous it can be

is considered to be childish but really just has a young spirit

is often spotted with colorful nails and dancing around campus

is actually of a lot higher standing than even Ben but doesn't let that get to her head

goes by Hebe

loves to spend her days in the grass field

Uma ship

Beau Dwarf

Bashful's son

is very similar to his father, definitely the most quiet of the cousins, even more than Happy's depressed son

loves to spend time in the mines; he enjoys the darkness and quiet down there

too much noise and flurry of motion makes him nervous

is usually the first person you can come to for advice out of his cousins

is shy but that doesn't mean he won't snap back if you're mean to him

Harry Hook ship (?)

Maite Madrigal

Dolores and Mariano's daughter

bit of a gamer

also obsessed with musicals of any kind, really

is constantly swiping sweets to eat and is showing no signs of being stopped

can manipulate people's minds and control them, doesn't really like to do it though unless absolutely necessary because it makes her feel icky

loves to spend time with aunt Luisa and watch her lift heavy stuff; it's always fascinated, she's kind of like a real-life video game character in Maite's mind

is pretty much ostrichsized at Auradon because people fear her powers

very much always in defiance of the dress code

owns giant collection of DVDs

OC ship

Prospero "Perry" Rose

Aurora and Phillip's son, Audrey's older brother

very polar opposite of Audrey

headphones are permanently attached to him

a lot more chill about royal matters, would happily give Audrey the throne

though Audrey can be annoying, he is pissed at Ben (and moreso Mal) for playing with her heart

does not particularly like his grandmother (he thinks she's to blame for Audrey's shitty behavior)

likes to house little creatures in his room (much to Faye's chagrin); his most recent roommate was a racoon

has a million flavored chapsticks on him at all times so if you lose yours, he will share

unhealthy obsession with maccaroni

always leaves notes of encouragement for Audrey, tends to slip them under her door

OC ship

Tagging Descendants moots as per use: @rose-of-oz, @dancingsunflowers-ocs, and also @luucypevensie for helping me with developments!

#ocappreciation #ocapp #fyeahdisneydescendantsocs #oc: hebe olympos #oc: beau dward #oc: maite madrigal #oc: perry rose

11 notes · View notes

sabraeal · 8 months ago

Text

a heart felled by you, held by you; Part 2

[Read on AO3]

Obiyukiweek 2024, Day 1: Quadrille

It’s not that Suzu didn’t know Lata’s name or whatever; it’s impossible to forget when it’s stamped right across the office he refuses to use three months out of the academic year— why should I let the university know where to find me? he’d huff, stoking the forge. If they’re going to interrupt my work to harangue me about class numbers and securing grant funding, I have no interest in making it easy for them— and scrawled on every lower right corner of his notes. It’s what every colleague calls across the university atrium before he hurries to out pace the persistence hunter that is professional collaboration; and what Ryuu had tried to stutter through for a whole week when he confused formality for maturity.

But between the towering aisles of his yet-to-be-catalogued accessions, and the number of times Shirayuki— and sometimes even Suzu himself— have been left to make his excuses to professors and professionals far above their pay grade, the idea that’s he’s a noble— a capital ‘F,’ weasel-thing-rampant Forzeno— well, it doesn’t seem quite real.

Not until now, when the doors on this stately manor swing open, and—

“I thought you lived in a shithole,” Suzu blurts out, momentarily blinded by polished marble and gold filigree. He’s no expert on architecture and has only a dubious grasp on history, but even he can tell this place is old. Storied, his mental Kazaha supplies, buzzing through his thoughts like flies over an ungrammatical carcass. “Or at least, that’s what Shidan said when—”

“I said apartment.” Shidan glares at him, like it’s Suzu’s fault he spent ten highly memorable minutes complaining about the stack of specimens that almost toppled onto him that one time he tried to brave Lata’s front parlor.

“It’s a townhouse.” Lata’s all noblesse oblige now that they’re ensconced in his family’s home, acting generous and tolerant, like they’re a good friend’s dogs that he knows are going to piddle on the carpet and he’s determined to be gracious about it. The kind of patience that’s pushed out between a man’s teeth instead of welling up from some internal font of goodness or whatever. “Private land ownership is the only way to receive permission for a forge of that size. And yes, I do.”

“But why not hang out here?” Suzu peeks into one of the fancy urns lining the walkway— disappointingly empty— before letting it rock back onto its pedestal. “It’s big and fancy and there’s a bunch of people whose job is to wait on you hand and foot. I’d never leave.”

“The commute,” Obi offers, sticking his own head down some fancy pot too. “Or maybe the wallpaper bothers him.”

“That’s certainly one way to put it,” Lata mutters, steering Obi away from the crockery with a scowl. “This is family land, owned by countless generations of Forzeno since time immemorial—”

“672.” Kazaha strides down the runner with his hands clasped behind his back, like he’s the king of the castle— or like it might convince the man who is that he’s not about to have any sticky fingers. “That’s when Motouji Forzeno ordered a fitting home to be built for him within a day’s ride of the capital, which at that point was still based in Wirant, not in Wistal. That only happened once the Wisteria family inherited the throne from a series of strategic marriages over the previous three generations—”

“And in any case, not mine.” He clears his throat, shoulders pulling straight beneath the heavy wool over his tunic, looking more lordly per inch than he ever has at the university. “At least, not in name.”

For as long as Suzu’s known him, Shidan’s never been a confrontational kind of guy; Lata might duck and dodge and, if cornered, bite and rend any interference from the university’s board, but Shidan chooses the path of least resistance. Or more accurately, the path of least surveillance— he might sit and stay and sign the papers the higher up sent his way, but as soon as they had their back turned cajoling some of the more recalcitrant academics in their department, he’d slip right off the leash, doing what needed doing before the deans were any the wiser. That’s how they’d gotten into this whole orimmallys project anyhow, and that all worked out in the end. Mostly.

So when Shidan hums, all considering— the way he does when he’s about to quibble over wording on a paper, but so nicely Suzu won’t even know he’s gotten the run-around until he’s halfway to the dorms— it’s a sign. A portent, even.

“Your father gave you lease over the entire place, didn’t he?” He’s got his gloves caught in his hand, running fingers along some fancy wainscoting. There’s some gold leaf on it, gilding a few fussy fleur-de-lis, and his fingers run slow enough that there’s got to be some grit. Dust, even. “That’s what Garrack said, at least.”

Lata’s brow sours like samples left too long on the bench. “And of course, Head Pharmacist Gazelt would be the expert on my family’s internal affairs.”

“No,” Ryuu murmurs ponderously, so soft they all hush up to hear him. “But she’d be less invested in avoiding them.”

Big blue eyes blink up at his lordship, and if they were any less guileless— or maybe, if Ryuu was any less fifteen— there’d be some sort of dust up. Some flavor of raised voices and shaking fists, and maybe someone would end up with a cold ass on the big field of snow Lata calls the front lawn. But instead he just sucks in a breath, whistling like a hole in a window when the wind’s got its back up, and says, “I thought I was being quite generous offering you all a place to ready yourselves before the gala, but now I’m quite wondering just why I extended the invitation.”

“Because you’d rather be annoyed with us than risk being left alone with one of those lords?” Suzu barely realizes he’s spoken until five sets of eyes swing his way, goggling like he’s hauled off and said something out of band. Again. “Or ladies?”

A laugh’s dour cousin scrapes out from Lata’s chest as they climb what Suzu assumes is the grand stair, if only because it’s larger than the last three. “Yes,” he agrees, more weary than waggish. “Something like that.”

“Hey.” Obi hangs back, lingering on the landing with one thumb hooked over his shoulder. “Is that you?”

There’s a portrait beside him, larger than he is— or Suzu, or Shidan, or any man he’s seen living; so big that it must have taken a whole crew of footmen to install, if only to keep one of them from being crushed under a lordly boot. He’s got to squint to see above the knee, daubs of oils glistening in the gaslight, making it hard to pick out more than the curve of thick, dark hair, or the stern, squarish set the to jaw, or—

“I gotta say,” Obi hums, arms folding over his coat. “Quail hunter isn’t what comes to mind when I look at you.”

“I’m not.” Lata paces a step back toward them, then two, glowering up at the most detailed bird carcass Suzu’s ever seen outside the ruts of a country road. “That would be my father, in his youth. He had a great love of…working his will on the world, one way or another.”

“Ah…” Kazaha sighs, searching for something properly ingratiating to say. “There’s a certain, hm, strong family resemblance.”

Suzu seizes the opportunity to inform the professor, “He means that you both look grumpy.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“Right,” he agrees blithely. “It’s what you meant. Like I said.”

Lata snorts, starting back down the hall. “If you think I am ill-tempered, wait until you meet my sire. Why, I’m practically a ray of sunshine next to that old—”

“Oh, are we gonna?” Obi whips around, determined to be underfoot as he asks, “Will I finally get to meet my Knight Grandpa? Sir Grandpa—?”

“I would thank you not to call him that. And no.” Lata’s mouth thins to a line as tight as his shoulders. “Besides, if we are to take Knight Grandpa at its most literal, it would not be my father, but instead the man who was my master as a squire.”

“Is he gonna be here? Can I meet him?” It’s not physically possible for Obi to wend himself around Lata’s legs, but by the way he bats his eyes up at him, he’s spiritually there. “I promise I’ll be a good little knight. I’ll even bow and scrape and write poetry about women lying in ponds—”

“No.” After a begrudging pause, Lata adds, “He’s dead, actually.”

Obi pops up, shoulders suddenly soldier-straight beside him. “Oh, well. That’s a pretty good excuse. Did he die from some battle wound or…?”

“The drink,” Lata confirms. “He wasn’t, honestly, a very good master. But he was a friend of my father’s. That seemed to matter more back then.”

A laugh saws out of Obi, rough enough Suzu’s surprised it doesn’t take a bit of throat with it. “Seems to matter just as much now.”

The professor doesn’t do anything so obvious as look at Obi, oh no— he just simply clasps his hands behind his back, favoring the hall in front of him with an approving nod. “Doesn’t it just.”

“You frown the same way.” Both men peer over their shoulders, but Obi makes confusion seem casual, whereas Lata just scowls. Ryuu, for his part, doesn’t seem to notice. “You and your father, I mean.”

“Yes.” Lata surveys the hallway over his shoulder before turning back around. “It runs in the family.”

A beat passes before Suzu dares to venture, “Hey, weren’t the girls supposed to get ready here too?”

“Yes.” The professor isn’t known to smile, and he certainly doesn’t now, giving them all a disapproving glare. “They arrived on time.”

“What if” —Shidan’s clever little botanist practically froths over the vanity like a flask left too long on the hob, spilling linen and lace where she leans— “I told him I had something in my eye.”

This is hardly the first volley of hypotheticals Garrack’s fielded from that quarter; oh no, the girls had all been down to chemises when the preliminary speculation began— what if…I said I needed some air?— and now what had already been a serviceable set of natural curves has become a feat of human engineering, bolstered by a bulwark of baleen and batiste. There’d been endless layers added on; bust improvers and corsets and girdles, all requiring additional helpful hands, and it lends a weary edge to Izuru’s, “Oh, it’s a him, now is it?”

Shidan’s long-time assistant hasn’t bothered to batten down her hatches— at least, not as much as the botanist girl’s— with only enough corsetry to turn her posture from academic to appropriate. Another assurance that she’s coming along nicely, just the way Garrack always thought she would so long as Shidan’s quiet perfectionism didn’t infest her work ethic the way his little pet project did the university’s water supply.

“What next?” It has to have been ages since there was a woman in this place— heavens know Lata isn’t bringing any inamorata around here to parade around in front of his mother’s mirror— but the painted wood Izuru slumps over is pristine. Or, well, as much as whale bone lets a body slouch. “Identifying details? A name?”

“He’s hypothetical,” the botanist snaps, which almost guarantees that he isn’t. Too bad she hasn’t caked on the powder yet; even with the lights dimmed as they are, it’s impossible to miss the flush that creeps up her shoulders, pouring onto that pretty face. “He doesn’t exist. Yet.”

There’s quite a bit Izuru seems to have to say about that; her shoulder straighten, her mouth cants, and—

“Is that supposed to be romantic?” Shirayuki frowns into the mirror, hands swallowed up by the untameable beast that is Izuru’s hair. “Having something in your eye?”

“Well, not usually,” the botanist admits, undaunted by the sharp elbow of reality bursting her dreamy little bubble. “But an eyelash…that’s all right. Delicate even! Demure. And when he bends down, BAM.”

Shirayuki blinks. “You hit him?”

“Kiss him!” The girl slumps into a chair— despite all her scaffolding, she makes a better show of it than Izuru— heaving the most world-weary sigh. “I would kiss him, Shirayuki.”

It’s years since she’s been that diligent apprentice, quietly working under Ryuu’s precise direction, but Shirayuki still flushes as red as her hair at the barest mention of grown adults touching in any way but a professional handshake. Garrack would have thought Zen would handle that— three years is a quite a lot of time, and considering what some of her cohort got up to on these cold Lilias nights, she’d have expected the bar for blushing to be a few sexual acts higher. Under the clothes, at least.

“W-wouldn’t that be an awkward angle?” Shirayuki busies herself with Izuru’s hair, letting it twist around her hands as she pins it in place. “You m-might crash heads! And noses.”

“Fine.” The botanist flops on her chair, thoroughly put upon. “What about dropping my handkerchief? I let it flutter, just like this”— there’s no fabric in her hands, but she sticks out an elegant arm, turning away as her fingers go limp— “and when he bends to retrieve it, I—”

Garrack snorts. Not a soft one either; for as unintended as it is, it draws quite the audience. The pretty botanist included, one of her well-shaped eyebrows raised.

It’s a struggle to keep the laugh in her chest from bubbling out, making this whole situation worse. Or injure this girl’s more tender emotions, at least.“Listen, you really think a lord would stoop? For a botanist?”

“He will if he wants to be kissed!” she huffs, arms crossed. Quite a bit of lace froths out over them, like a puffed-out pigeon’s chest. “Which he will, since I’m going to be the best looking girl at this gala!”

There’s one of these girls in every cohort— a little too pretty for their own good, always thinking about which assistants they might be able to catch alone in the fourth floor stock room. Clever, of course— you don’t end up in Lilias if you’re a slouch in that department— but just a bit silly. Whimsical. Destined to be disappointed when they find out royals don’t marry researchers.

At least most royals with most researchers. It probably doesn’t help that the statistical outlier is in the room right now, sending her a long suffering look. “Yuzuri…”

“That’s no slight on the rest of you, Shirayuki,” the botanist— this Yuzuri— assures her, “I’ve just been planning for this my whole life. Or at least since I found out Wirant throws one of the Solstice things.”

“We’re supposed to be here for professional purposes,” Izuru reminds her, having worked for Shidan too long to believe in mixing work with pleasure.

“Oh, boo, Izuru!” Yuzuri straightens, bustling over to the mirror to fuss with the glossy fall of her hair, pinning up parts of it with her fingers and frowning at the results. “Don’t be dull.”

“It’s not dull,” Shirayuki protests, placing the last pin in hopes that this time, Izuru’s hair might not simply bend the mess of them to breaking. “It’s what Shidan’s asking us to do. I’m not saying you can’t dance too, but if you’re going to be mingling with the nobles, maybe you should try to talk to some of them about what we’re doing with the Phostyrias. Just a couple of them giving permission for us to plant the bulbs would really be—”

“Oh, fine, fine.” She waves one hand— painstakingly manicured, done up in a pearly sort of polish that wouldn’t last five minutes once she was back in the greenhouse— but undeterred. “I can chat them up a little bit too. For the project.”

Tonight might be the darkest night of the year, celebrated in the coldest, most ass-end part of the whole country, but when Shirayuki smiles, Garrack might well be back in her office at Wistal, enjoying the mild summer breeze winding through her window. “Thank you, I really appreciate it.”

“You better,” Yuzuri huffs, twisting her hair in her hands. “Don’t think I don’t notice that it’s the girl with a guy who’s down to kiss her anytime, any place that’s asking the rest of us to consider this a work party.”

“I…” Shirayuki sputters, and hoh, there’s that blush again, with a vengeance. “Obi wouldn’t…I mean…that’s not…”

Well, well. Looks like she’s been a little behind on current events of the frigid north. And maybe not so wrong about royals and researchers after all.

“What if I asked him off into a side corridor? Or an alcove? Maybe a balcony,” Shidan’s botanist continues, saving Shirayuki a few more stumbles. “Those always have the right ambiance. And then I ask him to check the clasp on my necklace, and—”

“At that point you might as well ask him to kiss you,” Izuru is quick to point out, stepping up to help her hold a swag of hair in place. “You’re not really being subtle.”

Yuzuri groans, pins clattering against painted wood. “But where’s the romance in that? There’s got to be some uncertainty, some risk—”

“You do know,” Garrack hums, crossing her ankles on the convenient hassock in front of her. “Shidan and I are here specifically to help keep down the kissing, don’t you?”

The girl sighs, eyes rolling in her reflection. “But you’re not really going to do anything, are you, Master Gazelt? You know how silly this whole rule is. Aren’t you just going to look the other way?”

Her mouth twitches. It would be funny to see that old goat get twisted up over some twenty-year-olds playing mother-may-I with their tonsils. “Maybe,” she allows, “if I thought it was funny enough.”

It hardly seems fair to say Suzu is disheveled when he hardly ever seems, well, sheveled, for lack of a better word. But with his shirt still merely half-buttoned and flyaway wisps of blond escaping their tie with every scrape of his hands over his scalp, Shidan has little else to call him.

“Is the mazurka step-step-clap-turn, or is that the redowa?” His half-coat flaps out around him as he marks out the movements— poorly, but at least recognizable, even if Shidan would be at pains to reproduce them. “Or maybe it’s the waltz? Help me, Obi,” — he seizes the knight as he slips through the door, rumpling the black wool of his coat— “I can’t remember!”

“I’ll run you through the steps before we get out there,” he promises, detaching Suzu from his lapel with more gentleness than Shidan would, under the circumstances. Suzu is a valuable member of his team, a long-time collaborator who will perform any number of demeaning tasks to see a project through, so long as he can avoid a single shred of responsibility and complain about his sorry lot the whole time, but well— even Shidan has his limits. “It’ll all come back to you once you got the band to back you up. These things always make more sense with the music.”

Suzu stares at him, utterly blank, and Obi huffs out a laugh. “Theoretical versus practical knowledge, right?”

“Oh.” Suzu endeavors to smooth back his strays, but they only pop back up in his palm’s wake. “Right. Yeah. Of course. Easy, then.”

“Right.” Obi pats his shoulder with a purposeful sort of confidence, as if he could pass it through flesh and fabric with the ease that footrot does through hoofs. “Easy.”

That is until Ryuu glances up from his book, brow furrowed in the faintest vee, and says, “If that’s the case, then how are you and Shirayuki so bad at it?”

Obi whips around, wide-eyed with betrayal. “H-hey!” he squawks. “We’ve gotten better!”

Ryuu doesn’t reply— not verbally, at least— but the look he turns to Obi is eloquent enough to speak for itself. And what it says is: not appreciably.

“Why are you even concerned about all that?” Kazaha’s costume is so crisp carpenters could use it to cut corners, cape and coat and pants and stymieing haircut all in perfect place. “It’s not as if anyone is going to ask you to dance.”

“Why not? I’m dressed all nice.” Suzu blinks down at himself, taking in the uncuffed sleeves and half-buttoned shirt and the coat canted askew on his shoulders, and adds, “Well, I will be.”

Kazaha may cluck his tongue, may shake his head hopelessly, but even still, he reaches out, straightening Suzu’s cuffs before buttoning them tight. “Because you’re a man, idiot. Girls might inquire if you’d like to take a stroll down Pavilion Street when we’re at the university, but in a ballroom, men do the asking.”

Shidan can’t say Suzu’s ever been popular with the female population, especially among the more established academics who are already well aware of his reputation as a rather acerbic eccentric, more apt to be cozened under tables or smudged with sweat and grit from Lata’s forge than doing the more respectable pastime of benchwork. But there’s always a flush of fluttering young freshmen flouncing outside the lab each year, eager to catch a glimpse of— or even speak a word or two with— the herbology department’s most striking scholar. That is, of course, until they actually talk to him.

“Really?” Spoken like a man who has had invitations hurled at his retreating back for five years running. By Kazaha’s strangled sigh, it’s clear he’s thinking the same. “I’m very pretty, though.”

“That may help with young ladies wanting to dance with you,” Kazaha informs him, pulling his lapel into a shape somewhat approaching acceptable. “But it will be expected that you approach them.”

“Oh.” It’s startling to see that sharp face turn thoughtful. “So I don’t have to do this dancing thing at all.”

“You do.” Shidan’s order scrapes out at the same time Kazaha’s does, creating an odd sort of echo before he presses on, “We’re the guests of honor at this gala. The department is expecting us to socialize with potential donors.”

“Well sure, but that doesn’t mean I gotta—”

“You will,” Shidan promises him wearily. “And you’ll have to at least pretend to like it, if you want to continue our work in the lab.”

“And not in some tiny closet,” Obi adds, brightly. “Where you’ll have to knock elbows with Kazaha just to get a beaker on the burner.”

“Well, yeah.” Suzu slumps, waving off Kazaha’s continued ministrations. It’s too late, however— he already looks respectable. Not enough to pass for a peer, but someone well on his way to professor. “But what if I just hung out along the wall instead. Then I could talk to people, and—”

“It’s rude for young men to be idling when there are eligible young ladies waiting for a partner.” Obi’s words nearly sparkle for all their polish, but he ruins the effect with one of his slant-wise grins. “Don’t worry, I told you I’d show you how to cut a rug. It’s better than getting stuck in a conversation with one of those stuffy old—”

There is a gravitas to the way the doors open in this place, a stately creak that does not imply age so much at maturity; this manor was built long before the sovereigns of Wisteria sunk their roots into Clarines’ throne, and it would last long after they were nothing more than musty portraits in halls long forgot. For as much as Lata might chafe under the weight of that history, might complain about the burden of expectation placed upon a son— the son— of Forzeno, he looks every inch the part as he steps over the threshold, trousers tailored and coast pressed within an inch of their lives, more institution than man.

“The guests are arriving,” he intones with all the cheer of a funeral bell. “Are you through with your preparations?”

“Almost!” Obi sing-songs, helping Kazaha tug the sleeves of Suzu’s jacket straight. “There, done.”

Lata surveys them with the same sharpness as he does his specimens, assessing them as if their flaws were as easily apparent as a gem’s through a loupe. With a long-suffering sigh, one pristine glove pinches at his nose, as if it might be any help at all stemming the incoming headache.

“Passable,” he grates out, stepping aside. “Now if you would follow me, I will ensure that you all make it to the hall.”

Obi’s mouth twitches, threatening a smirk. “Can’t trust us to get there on our own, eh, sir?”

“I have been an academic for nearly as long as you have been alive.” The fit of his coat already has Lata at his full height, but he lifts his chin for good measure, just to give his glare a few more momentum before it meets Obi’s grin. “And there is not a single scholar alive that can travel from one point to another in a straight line.”

Both brows raise now, scrunching the scar right to his hairline. “Not even you?”

Lata clears his throat. “If you would all come this way please. In an orderly fashion,” he adds, when Suzu traipses after him, elbows nearly colliding with Ryuu��s nose as he comes up behind. “I would prefer to avoid any accidents before we even arrive.”

Obi slinks closer, like a cat approaching a precariously placed cup. “But not after?”

A heavy sigh flares out of Lata’s nostrils. “I would prefer you not. But ‘after’ is not part of my purview.”

For all that Obi enjoys dogging the professor’s irritable heels, he makes no move to follow him. Instead, he lingers just inside the door, watching as first Suzu, then Ryuu, then Kazaha pass. Being polite, Shidan assumes at first, but then the moment for him to fall in line comes…and passes, utterly unmarked, save for the amused glance Obi turns his way, gold flaring in the lamplight.

He’s a different man than the one that appeared with the snow, all those years ago. Even more so from the boy that simply manifested in the university’s library, slotting himself between the two royal pharmacists with an ease that had Shidan squinting even then, trying to figure out how such incongruous pieces could fit. Lilias drew all types, it’s true, but even so— he’d never seen one quite like this: a knight with a thug’s scar cut into his brow, swaggering through the stacks like they were old enemies.

Don’t be fooled, Garrack had written him once, loops spiking tight with barely restrained humor. He might look a little rough-and-tumble, but that kid cleans up well.

He sees it now— the strong line of his shoulder accentuated by the cut of his coat, the belt at his waist complementing the taper of his torsi, the loose trousers that only barely obscure the acrobat’s body beneath. There’s no way to cover the scar, not even with a judicious application of pomade, but there’s no need— not when it only makes him look roguish, like a man who might sweep a girl into an alcove and teach her the sort of things proper young ladies only learned from novels. Still dangerous, but not deadly.

Worrying, really, considering. Shidan doesn’t make a habit of listening to scuttlebutt, but, well, he does have eyes of his own. And red is hard to miss. More so than the black he always finds bent beside it. “Obi, if I might have a word?”

That brow of his pitches up, amusement apparent in every angle. “You academics really will do anything to keep from having to go where you’re told.”

Shidan blinks, confused, before shaking his head. “I only thought I might remind you, that er…” There’s no delicate way to put it, not when he’s already wearing a smirk that would set every fine young lady’s fan fluttering. “That this year there is to be no Solstice kissing. By Lata’s request.”

“So I’ve heard.” Obi’s head cocks, curious, though when he takes in the emptiness of the room, the pointedness of the request…the slant his brow takes is clearly…confused. “Is there any reason you’re telling me, specifically?”

It’s a romantic sort of night, he might say, and it’s easy to forget yourself in the moment. Or maybe, you already stand so close I couldn’t fit a paper between the two of you, all it would take to close it is a well-timed trip. Or perhaps more accurately, you’ve been together so long all you need is an excuse. Trust me when I say you should take it.

But Shidan knows better than to speak, not when silence is all the more eloquent. The mind, he finds, often finds the most pressing reasons all on its own. Especially when one's thoughts never strayed too far from them anyway...

“Hey!” Obi presses a hand to the placard of his coat. “I haven’t caused trouble for years.”

It’s a feat worthy of song that Shidan keeps from reminding him of the last time him and Shirayuki rode through these gates. And yet, there’s no graceful way to admit that he hadn’t been talking about that sort of trouble anyway.

“Months, at least,” he relents, grudgingly. With a few moments of thought, he adds, “I’ve been really good this week.”

Shidan, with the patience of a saint, restricts his reply to simply, “If you’re sure.”

Obi does him the courtesy of hesitating. “Well, none of that’s been of the kissing variety, anyway. Not like any of the ladies here are going to be looking to make time with a guy like me tonight.”

He gives him another one of those charming grins, and Shidan sighs, resigning himself to an evening of being pointedly unobservant. “So you say.”

#obiyukiweek24 #obiyuki #akagami no shirayukihime #snow white with the red hair #my fic #ans #finally i have gotten to revisit this fic I worked on last year with annie #the draft has been sitting in my WIP folder forever #and finally i've gotten to take out a chunk of it #i think there should be...one more full chapter and an epilogue #hilarious that i thought this whole project would be 9K #looks like it might well be between 15-18K overall #but maybe i'll get to sneak out another bit of it before the new year #love to get something wrapped up for once 😅

17 notes · View notes

kwaggysshardmindemporium · 5 months ago

Text

Okay so all my fellow Arcane fans Riot uploaded a cinematic that seems to simultaneously be a preview for the next show and for League's next ranked season. (To be clear, this is not any kind of announcement for the next show's release date.) Even without any concrete news it's still pretty hype.

youtube

For some reason I've decided to do a breakdown of the characters in here for people with less familiarity with this nonsense than me below the break:

First and foremost I really like most of the redesigns. Most. Not gonna lie I hate what they did to Vlad but also Vlad sucks so who cares. Everything else, aces I love it.

Bit of a primer on Noxus as a setting: think ancient Rome if they had the aesthetics of the barbarians who *sacked* ancient Rome. They bill themselves as a true meritocracy where you get by on your own strength and wit or you fucking die. This has exactly all the problems you immediately just thought of with that philosophy. Riot keeps trying to make them a nuanced counterbalance to their in-setting rival nation Demacia, but can't seem to escape the pull of how bad guy coded everything about them was when the game first came out.

First character to appear is Mel. I'm not recapping Mel. If you're reading this, it's probably because you like Arcane and know who the fuck Mel is. She rules, moving on.

Couple of characters who appear in more detail further in. We'll get to them.

That dude with the huge fuckoff axe is Darius. Higher-up in the Noxian military. Boring as shit. This trailer is literally the coolest he's ever been in anything they've done with him and he's only kinda interesting here. He has a brother who is roughly eight gazillion times more fun to talk about but does not appear in this trailer. He's (Darius) basically the stereotypical square-jawed slab of meat hero, if such a guy was from a place run by shitbags incentivizing shitbaggery.

The dude he's fighting? That's Trundle. Not from Noxus, but the neighboring country of Freljord. He's king of the trolls, and also a servant/thrall/pawn of one of the ladies vying for power over that region. He's a brute and a villain and words cannot describe my seething contempt for the retcons that occurred to *make* him a brute and a villain but that's its own post.

That lady dancing in a mask then busting out some knives? That's Katarina. She's the daughter of a major Noxian noble who was assassinated, and she's on a vengeance quest to find his killer and return the favor. She has an on-again off-again thing with a character not in this trailer who acts as Darius's foil, a bodyguard/minion also not appearing named Talon, and a sister who's half snake. I literally do not know what the present lore reason for the sister being a snake is these days because I know it's been retconned and I haven't checked.

The spider lady she's fighting? That's Elise. I *think* she's a member of the Black Rose (mentioned in Arcane S2 but not fleshed out much) but don't quote me. Her whole thing is luring nobles who want a piece of that action off to their deaths when she does all sorts of evil sacrifices with them.

And lastly, we have Vladimir and LeBlanc. Vlad looks like a vampire but very explicitly isn't. He's a blood mage. Which is a totally different thing. Totally different. 100% not the same thing. He just looks talks dresses and acts like Count Dracula for fun and because it's kind of on vibe with the whole blood magic thing. (I'm making fun of them not making him a vampire in setting, but not exaggerating.) He works for LeBlanc.

And LeBlanc. She's a master manipulator and illusionist, head of the Black Rose. Honestly, she doesn't have a ton a of development beyond "she effectively rules Noxus from the shadows with an army of altar egos she can illusion herself into." So I cannot fucking wait to see what they do with her. Like, right before Arcane S2 dropped a buddy of mine asked me what I'd want them to do next and my number one answer WAS "a Game of Thrones-y drama in Noxus with LeBlanc as either a main protagonist or a main antagonist." This is exactly what I wanted. My personal hype is through the fucking roof.

#league of legends #arcane #Youtube

5 notes · View notes

justmybookthots · 1 year ago

Text

The Prisoner's Throne

This is THE book. The book that's been consuming my every waking thought since I read its prequel in May last year. The book which, if I didn't manage to read any in 2024, would be the only one I read this year at all. The Stolen Heir was among my favourite reads last year, possibly even more than The Cruel Prince because of Oak's characterisation.

The last few days before the book release was agonising. Sheer, skin-flaying agony. When Ann Liang's 2024 release let me down after I'd spent months hyping it up—as did I with Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands—I have to confess I was terrified the same thing would happen with The Prisoner's Throne. Ann Liang is one thing, but this is Holly Black. The Prisoner's Throne is on a much, much higher pedestal for me than any other book in existence thus far. If this hurt me like the others did, I might really go into the worst kind of depression. (Yes, I'm one for histrionics… only I'm being perfectly serious.)

After a night of poor sleep—I am still very grateful that I managed to sleep, albeit fitfully, most of the hours away—I started reading this book at 7AM. (I'd downloaded the book at 2 in the night.) And then I didn't stop until I was done at 10AM.

First thoughts: THANK THE FUCK IT WASN'T A MASSIVE LETDOWN OR ANYTHING LIKE THAT. Was it as good as its prequel? No. But it didn't end up anywhere as bad as my jaded, paranoid self had secretly feared, and for that I am grateful. Overall, I enjoyed it!! I saw quite a handful of negative reviews on Goodreads but I don't feel the same way. Granted, the book definitely has a few issues, but being too slow or character-driven was not mine.

Let me talk about some things I liked and did not. Beware: Spoilers abound.

Things I did not love:

I'm going to start with my most major disappointment. Oak, who is the highlight of this duology to me, wasn't as alluring as I found him in the first book. I think that Oak's character is written best when his POV isn't the entire book. I definitely LOVED reading his POV and welcomed it, but I also felt that having the entire thing in his perspective dulled some of his mystique. This is my personal preference, because I don't generally love stories that have too much of the hero's POV. I think Six of Crows is a good example of finding balance with Kaz's perspective and the other characters'. Also, because the story is in Oak's head, we don't see much physical descriptions of him. I miss all those parts about his adorable marigold hair and his golden eyes 🥺

I also miss his cleverness. He was very manipulative in the first book, and it was easier to feel impressed back then because you weren't in his head and you didn't know what was coming. In this instalment, he thinks a lot about playing the fool, over and over. It gets wearisome because I'm constantly being told but not often shown. In the first book, I was actually shown without being told at all—which is why it hit so much harder. Moreover, I don't think he did anything specifically very clever in this book? I guess he did use the wedding ruse to prevent a war, and he did find out what Wren was hiding, but he found that out too late and that was less cleverness than the plot being in motion.

There's a running theme in this book about being accepted and loved for your truest, darkest self, but… I don't think it was conveyed very well. In the end, he says that Wren is the only one who can love him for who he is, but it isn't convincing to me because it's so clear to me how much—and how unconditionally—his family loves him. A lot of his inner turmoil felt very contrived and self-inflicted, whereas I thought Wren's own self-loathing was a thousand times more convincing and understandable.

I was also quite confused by how much he loved Wren when their feelings seemed to be only gradually building in the first book. But he's completely head over heels for her at the start of this book and I wonder about the transition. I'd been hoping for some clarity because he mentioned in Book 1 that he'd loved a lot of different girls, so what made Wren The One here? I suppose it's because he didn't play the fool with her and she "saw him as himself"? I wish the writing was more convincing in this regard.

Genuinely a little baffled by the plotline about the Ghost. I'd thought we'd already covered his part in Liriope's murder in the Cruel Prince series. (I may need to reread the OG series to be sure.) But it's being rehashed again like ripping open an old wound. And I never knew Oak cared that deeply about his biological parents. My point is: Leave the Ghost alone!

I wasn't invested in Tiernan and Hyacinth's story. I skimmed a lot of their screen time together, but their fans will probably receive quite the treat.

Lady Elaine, fuck off!!! (That said, I do understand her role in the story, especially the climax.)

OAK TRYING TO KILL WREN AT THE END, SIR, SIR, PLEASE. DO NOT.

We didn't need the sex scene being SO IMPLICIT –- GIVE ME DETAILS, DAMN IT!! Now I feel empty.

Things I liked:

One thing I predicted when I'd read the exclusive first few chapters of Prisoner's Throne months ago: Wren's power came as a cost to her health. I was right. And I loved it. I'm not the biggest fan of overpowered heroines and her limitations were a great story point to me. Holly always does such an exemplary job in making her heroines, including Jude, badass and yet so human (more a figurative phrase for Wren since Wren is fae) and grounded. Also, in general, I liked Wren a lot in this book. My heart broke for her over and over. I JUST WANT WREN TO BE HAPPY AND I AM GLAD SHE GOT A HAPPY ENDING.

I had COMPLETELY forgotten about her connection to her mortal family and I am so, so happy we managed to resolve that in this book. The fact that Wren would do anything to protect her sister Brex moved me immensely. Holly did well in tying that loose end up, and hurray that Wren finally got to spend time with her family at the end of the book. 🙂

JUDE AND CARDAN!!!! Especially Cardan. He was such a gem and so intriguing in this book. Once I'm done writing this review, I'm going to reread all his scenes. No one can complain that Jurdan wasn't in this book—they were very, very involved in the plot here.

Holly Black's prose is still one of the most beautiful things I've ever read. It's my favourite prose of any author, period. It's succinct and poetic at the same time. It scratches an itch in my brain that I never knew needed scratching.

The ending where Oak goes to find Wren and he proposes was so lovely. Ahhh. I will always have a special love and fondness for them. Bless their baby hearts.

Oak supporting Wren when she was ill will NEVER not move my stone cold heart. The way he held her weight to keep her from falling while they danced...

Before I sign off, I want to say one more thing: WHAT IS HOLLY PLANNING WITH NICASIA'S STORY? Is she going to write / create a male lead for Nicasia? What's going on?? Holly pretty much confirmed that she's going to write something else in this universe, and I must KNOW what she has in mind. Nicasia was so unlikeable in the original series that I wonder how it would be like to read her as a heroine of her own story.

Holly, I'm right here, waiting for whatever you might throw at us next.

#book review #the cruel prince #the prisoner's throne #the stolen heir #oak greenbriar #cardan greenbriar #jude duarte

13 notes · View notes

biggayhimbo · 7 months ago

Text

prithee, o great destiel: bear me only pleasant news

when dawn my heart breaks cross’t

pray, sweet picture: paint on my canvasséd soul;

a message more lithe than it’s messenger-

evils turn doth evil’s turn; but one spits my eye,

the other; my shoe- pray, good messr., where you’ll run frew?

o! thine eyes to glitter falsely with dawn’s blue baubles!

o! thine hands haply to clasp in thanks, nigh yet prayer!

o! that you have len’t your knees a’fore your patron as i might the maddona in prattled comfort o’ worship!

o, dear lordship, i lay my head to thine boots, mine suit laid yet lower than the hems of your own! employ this invention of mine, brave weapon: keep up your blade; for the gnashing of dawn’s teardrops do rust all the bright swords!

bear bright pleasants; fine caites and gemstones: no such jades! thrones may be carved of jade; go to, my lord, but see you any such jade lying suit to bear waiting, to hold weight? carry, sweet lordship, tales of higher rounds in the dark valley, where beneath such roads even the pale halv’d light o’ sickened moonlit’s hope does nigh reach!

carry on those red wings of scorching sun fortune, dear destiel- wave that blue and valiant flag of sky before you, and let it cloak all the world’s stage behind!

#listen we all deal with election stress differently #vote blue #destiel meme #i’m so fucking high right now man

6 notes · View notes

red-riding-wood · 2 years ago

Text

Chapter 1

OC: Aleera

Fandom: Game of Thrones / ASOIAF

Summary: Former protector of the last Targaryens and bastard daughter of the Mad King Aerys, Aleera ventures to Westeros in search of the family she's never known, and finds herself swallowed by a world of cruelty, ambition and lies... She must leave behind her heart to survive, and, like her ancestors, forge her path through fire and blood. Madness and greatness, they say, are two sides of the same coin, and may the world hold its breath to witness how this coin lands.

Warnings: (for entire story) angst, graphic violence, gore, cursing, sexual assault, graphic sexual content, incest, torture... standard GoT stuff. I'm not holding back with this story so if you're not a fan of dark or disturbing content this is not for you. Also future Ramsay x OC and Petyr x OC and those two are their own warnings.

~ Combines content from Game of Thrones TV series and the ASOIAF books. Some canon changes are made to suit the story. ~

“Here, allow me,” my sister spoke, her voice a murmur and her fingers like silk as they wove themselves through my long, tangled hair. She had always been soft-spoken, unless the fire awoke in her. Her voice was soothing, in these rare moments when I did not allow my envy to pervade my mind.

And while I initially relaxed under her touch, watching as she undid the snares in my locks, I could not help but allow my gaze to linger on the pale silver of hers, the arcane violet of her gentle eyes. Mine stared back a dull, cold grey that I could only imagine must have belonged to my mother, much like the red hair that came from being born of a Tully. Though only a half-sibling to Daenerys, I was twice the Targaryen she was. But it was hidden beneath the markings of a mutt.

“Do you know when your wedding is?” Daenerys asked me softly. “I wish to see you before I am pledged to Khal Drogo.”

My mouth pinched into a bitter line.

“Viserys hasn’t said.” As much as I tried, I could not hold the spite from my tongue, though I believed she would perceive its aim to be at our brother, who had made the arrangements.

“You haven’t asked?” Daenerys seemed genuinely surprised; out of the two of us, I had always been the more headstrong, even with the brother who proclaimed himself the last dragon.

“I have,” I said. “I believe he is still negotiating for a higher price.”

The only time my brother had ever called me a Targaryen was when he was selling me to amass wealth and soldiers for the army he planned to march on Westeros, the origin of each of our births. The land of the Seven Kingdoms, and the fabled Iron Throne he claimed awaited him.

Dany’s expression turned rather grave at that. Neither of us wanted to be sold like cattle, nor did we want to part from each other. Despite living in her winged shadow, we shared a bond that would never break, no matter how wretched my disdain grew.

“Viserys thinks Khal Drogo’s army will carry out his wishes when I am wed. At least with the gold, he can hire mercenaries loyal to his purse. Let us hope that he settles for less than you are worth.”

While Dany was being sold to the great horse lord of the Dothraki, I was offered to a wealthy magister in Pentos, a man whose name I had never heard uttered before my brother had told me the news. And while my sister would become a khaleesi, a queen of a warrior tribe, I would be nothing more than a housewife to one of Illyrio’s lazy aristocratic friends. Of what use would my swordsmanship be, my years of protecting my family from the many vile creatures and men in Essos? And of what would become of my sister’s soft skin and feather-like hair? When would the Dothraki break her gentle heart?

“And what am I worth?” I dared to ask, stiffening.

Her fingers didn’t cease their rhythm, not even now that she was making intricate braids from the outer layers of my hair. Her violet eyes didn’t even meet the biting steel of mine in the mirror. And she said,

“Sister, there is no sum of gold that could ever be worth your company.”

The thorns around my heart softened a bit at that, but guilt gnawed at my chest. I wondered, sometimes, if she was completely unaware of my envy of her.

“What of an army?” I asked.

The line of her mouth quirked into a smile, and she said, “There is no sum of men, either.”

---

The Dothraki had come for my sister when the sun was highest in the sky, the hooves of their mounts thundering through the snaking paths of the hills to announce themselves before they spilled into the courtyard, bare-chested warriors butting shoulders as their steeds snorted and bayed. Reins pulled taught and black, wild eyes flashed as their riders brought them to heel.

The entire ceremony had lasted less than a quarter of an hour, and not a word was spoken other than those I’d heard Viserys whisper into Dany’s ear, pointing out the long braids down Khal Drogo’s back. Each braid signified a battle won; the Dothraki cut their hair after every defeat. If it was fear or awe that had stricken my sister’s face, I was certain not, but I would never forget it. Nor would I ever forget the sinking feeling when she had strode towards her new king, could never forget how emptiness weighed so heavy in my gut.

Viserys had sent me away shortly after the meeting, wishing to seek council with Magister Illyrio, the man who had opened his doors to the three of us nearly a year ago. He had aided my brother in finding suitors for us both, was a believer in Viserys’ claim to the Iron Throne and wanted to bleed him dry of a king’s generosity.

All I knew was that Dany had come sobbing to me afterward, that she had tried to speak against her union to Khal Drogo, that our brother had uttered words so vile to her that they still echoed in my own ears. And while I dreaded my own dinner tonight with my suitor, while I found myself grimacing at the thought of having to cook for him and watch him grow fatter over the years, of having to clean his bed sheets each night after he used myself or one of his whores, of never again feeling the weight of a sword in my hand or my sister’s fingers through my hair, my heart could not help but fracture from her own miserable fate as her tears dampened the fabric of my gown. And though I would have traded places with her in a heartbeat, though I had always wished to be her, I had put aside my resentment and told her to be stoic, to let her tears fall quietly when Khal Drogo would take her purity. She was so fragile, yet she needed to be strong. I needed her to be strong.

Now, sun swept the bathhouse in a blanket of gold; dusk was within the hour, snaking its talons beneath the awning of the balcony overlooking the sandy hills of the Pentos outskirts and glittering off the colourful masonry of the bath’s walls. Tousled curtains of ridiculous proportion billowed from the great gusts of wind that poured into the every crevasse of the building and threatened to chill me past the dampened fabric of my gown. One of Illyrio’s servants scurried from my sight with the last urn of soiled water from my sister’s earlier bath, sandals landing heavily against the stone as I descended the steps. I could still picture Viserys handing her the fine silk she had worn for Khal Drogo, could still taste the bile on my tongue when I watched his hands wander across her naked form. As the servants slipped dragon pins that I would never wear through the shoulders of the light garment.

My wrath burned like fire beneath my skin, drummed against my chest like the hooves of the Dothraki stallions, and split the quiet of the building as I practically roared my brother’s name,

“Viserys!”

One of the curtains whipped and curled around itself as the wind changed direction, before blowing back with another gust of wind that stirred the curls from my shoulders and revealed the bright red robes of Illyrio, surprise flashing across a pudge face as a bearded mouth parted to speak.

But, ushering him aside, was my half-brother, tall yet thin in frame and leaning to bark something in the man’s ear. Whatever he said, it was disagreeable to our host, who seemed all the more shocked by his words, but pinched his mouth shut and disappeared along the balcony.

Pain flared where my nails had dug into the palms of my hands, only noticeable when I peeled my fingers from my fists. Viserys knew better than to hit me; it was not a physical battle I would need to win today but one of words, and I could never twist and morph them into such sweet yet false promises as he did, could only spit them like hellfire as its flames licked at my throat and boiled my blood so hot it threatened to consume me.

And while I should have been silent, should have kept my protest and my sister’s admittances to myself, I could bear the echoes no longer.

“You are calling it off,” I ordered him, tone dark as the stallions’ eyes that had flashed at me in the courtyard. “You are calling it off – the wedding, Khal Drogo, the khaleesi and khalasar, so help me, by the gods, I will – “

My words were extinguished in a shattered breath as my brother’s finger rose to my lips, and he said to me, “Hush, dear sister. Do you wish to wake the dragon?”

My lip curled around my teeth as I glared up at him, meeting the lilac of his glittering eyes and taking note of the subtle yet gloating line of his smirk. As the sole surviving male Targaryen of the Rebellion, he had proclaimed himself the “last dragon”, though he had all the strength of a child still pink in its skin, and his foolishness was only at times mistaken for courage by imbeciles like Illyrio and the servant girls who frequented his quarters.

“If I must,” I growled.

“Khal Drogo is already expecting his bride come their wedding. I cannot withdraw my end of the bargain now. He would have all our heads.”

It was to be expected that my brother had chosen to weasel his way into a situation that could only benefit him but had mortal repercussions for his family. And it was only natural that he was attempting to use fear as a means to quell my fury.

“Then call off my marriage, and let me go with her, to protect her. As I have always done,” I suggested, trying not to let the desperation creep into my tone.

Viserys’ finger reached to brush a lock of hair from my face; I had undone Dany’s braids earlier and it must have made me unpresentable. I witnessed his smirk twist into a displeased line when pale eyes examined my face, felt my heart quicken in my chest, my blood boiling yet my stomach fluttering.

Though he looked about to comment on my unkempt appearance, his eyes wandering from my wild hair to my tear-stained gown, he said,

“She does not need the protection of a girl who thinks herself a warrior when she will have an army of the most vicious fighters at her side.”

I could not bring myself to draw from the touch that I craved, but his words stirred the hellfire in my chest and I practically spat in his face, “You said you would let every one of those ‘viciousfighters’ fuck her – and their horses, too, if it meant reclaiming your throne. And tales of the Dothraki and their brutality do not go unsung in any corner of Essos.”

Of all the dangers in this cruel world, it was not the rapers nor the thieves nor even the assassins sent by the usuper, but our brother she needed protection from the most.

Not a trace of doubt shadowed Viserys’ glittering eyes as he told me, as if speaking to a child, “She needed to understand how important my conquest is.” His deft fingers fell from my cheekbone and settled on my shoulder, thumbing at the fabric of my gown.

“Your conquest?” I spat, and his flinch came as a simple yet earned satisfaction. “Your army and your gold is bought by selling your family. Is this really how you want the great song of your reign to begin? How can you even expect to continue your dynasty, that you insist to be so pure? You cannot expect to wed Daenerys, not when she is pledged to Khal Drogo, and – ”

“Daenerys will mother my heir.” These words, spoken so calmly amidst the storm of my fury, brought mine to a slamming halt in my chest, my lungs screaming for air and my lips parted in a silent plea as a knife twisted between my ribs.

My brother’s hand slid to my other shoulder as his body pressed against mine, and his soft lips brushed the tingling flesh of my neck. I was paralysed, captive to his venomous touch and his cold words. “Khal Drogo will not be able to refuse a king,” he whispered in my ear, and I shut my eyes to find a tear suspended on my lash, now streaking down my cheek. Viserys worked the fabric of my gown from my shoulders, the winds outside now sweeping a chill across burning flesh, the garment tumbling slowly down to my breasts. “And neither will you, dear sister. When my army marches on the Red Keep, we will pay that usurper back with fire and blood, and I will ascend to my throne, and the people will cheer, and you will hear great songs about me from the bards in Essos.” I could almost feel the heat from his body and the fire of his touch melting my fury away into yearning. I leaned into him, if only slightly, a soft moan catching on my tongue as he groped at my breasts through the fabric that would only fall at his whim. “And tonight, you bed not a prince, but a king. The one, true king.”

And just as he released the fabric, I stole myself from my trance and I tore my body from his, tugging the sleeves of my gown back over my shoulders. His visage was blurry past my unshed tears, the silver of his fine hair undulating beneath the dusk’s blanket of rich gold so befitting of a king.

“Take me with you,” I pleaded, nearly breathless.

A grin so wide it came sickening to my stomach stretched across his features, and I blinked, his high cheekbones and his furrowed brow and his scornful eyes sharpening. “How absurd. Of what use would you be to me when I am king? Is it my throne you desire?”

I swallowed lead. And when my lips formed the confession, my voice was quiet, so quiet it mimicked the gentle whisper of a lover,

“It is not a throne I desire.” I looked him deep in his eyes, forcing back the new hail of tears that threatened me, and from his look I could tell that he knew what I meant to say, that mayhaps, in all our years of growing together as siblings, he finally understood me.

“You foolish girl,” he chuckled, the baritones of his voice loveless. “You want to be my queen.”

My fury surged again in my chest, stirred by the pain that had burrowed itself deep in my soul, and I suddenly found my voice as my tears streamed freely down my face,

“All I’ve ever wanted was to be worthy enough for this family, to be by your side.”

For you to look at me the way you do Daenerys. To speak of me not as a bastard but a Targaryen.

But I once more bit my tongue, a slave to my desires.

“Aleera, you are not a queen. You are a bastard – a whore, like your mother. Your blood is tainted, your flesh sullied by scars. You throw yourself at any man willing to offer a copper for your bedside.” If my words were fire, his were poison, sinking deep into the marrow of my bones, chilling my boiling blood.

Past his soured expression, I studied the beauty of his face – the fairness of skin that I had once known to be filthier, stretched gaunter over pointed cheekbones, before Illyrio had come along. The face of the Beggar King. Even then, I had found him handsome.

But each scar that had not tarnished his flawless skin nor my sister’s had scored cruel through mine, and I wore the stench of blood and steel to his bed, blood as red as the hair and steel as sharp as the eyes that marked me as half-bred.

And when I told my sister stories of my skirmishes and thievery and whoring, I looked upon her ethereal face that mimicked my brother’s so, and I would have given anything for her silver hair and her pale lashes, and the light rose of her cheeks, and the soft skin I knew my brother favoured.

And each time I bid her goodnight, I cursed the gods others prayed to for these differences that made me an outsider.

Years of this torment frothed at my tongue as I rose my voice, shaking, in more fury or fear I could tell not,

“You would be dead if not for my scars, brother. Each was earned protecting this family. Each meant another week that you could live. And each man I bed meant another meal to fill your aching belly.”

Each another step from the acceptance I craved.

“And I would do it all again, for you and my sister,” I told him, my tears still falling unbidden to my breathless lips. “I may not be your family, Viserys, but you were mine.”

And there it was. That awful, simple word. Were.

Now that mud no longer caked his clothing and hunger no longer gnawed at his gut and he slept in a bedchamber rather than a gutter, now that he was to be a true king rather than a beggar, I was no longer necessary. I would be gone, in a day, or two. Mayhaps sooner if he could be rid of me. And I would forget that beautiful face, slowly, as I spent the rest of my life serving someone who never made my stomach flutter as he once had.

And I needed to let go.

My gown swept across the floor as I turned to stalk across the bathhouse, towards the winds of Pentos that howled into the deathly silence of Illyrio’s seaside domain.

“Aleera!” Long fingers curled around my wrist, tightening so firm the flesh would surely bruise, and my head snapped around, my cold eyes surely shooting sparks as I let my gaze fall so tragically on the face that I would remember, for a time, not as my brother, but as the man who’d sold me.

“Do not ever touch me again,” I hissed, and shook him off as virulently as his own touch had landed upon me. And though uttering such words split my heart in two, twisted the knife deeper past my screaming ribs, I knew that it was always meant to be this way, that I was never anything to him but a means to an end and another body to warm his bed.

---

Each tide that drew back into the sea seemed to steal a piece of my heart with it, and each wave that crashed against the rocks below echoed my fury. I clenched and unclenched my fists where they rested on the sandstone railing, nails stinging my palms. Dark clouds crowned the bright of the sunset, and the winds swept sand into the frantic air and commanded the sea with an iron trident.

My sight rested where the sea gave the illusion of stretching forever into the light fog that crept along the water, and each time the chill of the western winds buffeted my face I could almost feel the beyond calling to me.

But it was not the Narrow Sea that called, but rather, the continent known as Westeros, the land of my birth and the home of my alleged mother, who in her late years came to be known as Catelyn Stark, wed to Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell and Warden of the North. A powerful title, and a powerful name; the Starks were one of the longest standing houses in Westeros, and commanded a vast, near barren stretch of land until the Wall of the Night’s Watch barricaded them from northern savages known as wildlings. Snow was said to fall from the sky, shadowcats and mountain lions and wolves said to prowl the lands, and great, white trees with leaves red as blood stretched into the heavens of the oldest gods.

My adopted mother had died giving birth to Dany when I was barely out of the womb, but a knight named Ser Willem Darry had smuggled us three children across the Narrow Sea to the Free Cities of Essos, in which he purchased a beautiful manor to raise us until I was the age of nine and Viserys the age of thirteen, when King Robert Baratheon’s assassins burnt it to its foundations. In his rebellion, he had usurped my father, The Mad King Aerys, the second of his name, and had commanded that every Targaryen be executed to ensure his claim to the throne and his dynasty.

As one of the last Targaryens, my mother Catelyn had given me to Dany and Viserys’ mother, Rhaella Targaryen, for my own safety. It was because of Ser Willem and Viserys that I knew these things about the mothers I’d never had, about the father who’d burned cities, about the houses that waged wars across the sea.

And while I had always yearned to seek the mother who had been forced to give me up as an infant, who probably still cried for me as I did for her still, I had always been needed here in Essos, to take care of this family that was never truly my own.

I would bring Dany there, to the North, where my birth mother would welcome me back as her eldest child, where my sweet, innocent sister could be free of Khal Drogo and our cruel brother.

Where he can never touch her again, a venomous part of my mind added as lead formed once more on my tongue. Where she cannot bear his children.

“Sister?”

I flinched at the soft lull of her voice, and when I turned to behold her, I found myself snapping with a still-virulent tone, “What do you want from me?”

Though evidently taken aback, fear dashing through bright, arcane eyes, she was calm when she spoke, “I overheard some of your words with Viserys.”

My stomach churned, and my heart seemed to clench in my chest. “How much?”

“Enough,” she said, and took a step forward, but no more. “I don’t mean to cause you pain, sister… I only wish to help ease it as you did mine.”

When I looked at her face, I saw the silver-haired beauty who had always overshadowed me, had always been more wanted. And when I looked at the silks that were draped across a now womanly figure, I thought of Viserys shedding them, thought of his hands entwining themselves into those silver locks as they once had mine. I foresaw her belly, swelling with his child, and it was all I could do to muzzle my rage.

“I’d rather be alone,” I said bitterly, turning my gaze back to the writhing sea and hunching over the railing with an almost petulance.

“I don’t want Viserys. Not in the way he…” Dany trailed off, her words nearly swept away by the winds.

I whirled on her, my heart clenching tight in my still-aching chest as I hissed, “Not in the way he wants you. Did you come here to remind me of that? Are you here to tell me that you don’t want Khal Drogo as well, that you don’t want to be a queen?”

While I would never wish to be pawned off by my own brother, in any circumstance, I wasn’t certain my sister realised how greater an honour it was to be sold to such a dangerous, prominent man than a nobody who happened to carry a large purse. And unlike my sister, I knew the Dothraki would not break me. If anything, I could learn to turn them against Viserys. Break free.

Dany’s eyes were more sad than fearful now, and something about them made my heart splinter. I closed my eyes, exhaling, realising that I was mayhaps unjust with my words.

Turning once more to the railing, I said, voice lowering, “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.” My fingers curled into another fist to quell my rage as I forced the image of her from my mind. “None of this is your fault.”

After a pregnant pause, and a few mournful cries of the gulls, Daenerys stepped beside me, her footfalls silent but her presence indicated by the sweet perfume Illyrio had gifted her. And she told me, plainly,

“I had a dream.”

I sighed. My sister had always thought her dreams had meant something; when she dreamt of the three of us prospering with mountains of gold and an army at our heels as we marched back to Dragonstone, the isle of Dany’s birth, she’d told me it would someday come true. When she dreamt of horrible monsters emerging from the darkness – likely a result of overhearing the priestesses who pledged themselves to the Lord of Light – she asked me to watch over her the next night closely with my sword.

“Please, spare me,” I said, imagining that she was about to try cheering me up with some pointless illusion. “Nothing but cruel tricks from the gods, no doubt.”

But she spoke anyway, her fingers landing across the railing adjacent to mine and her silver curls whipping back from her face as she stared into the blackening sunset,

“I dreamt of two dragons, one of ice and the other fire; one of silver scales and the other a crimson as blood red as your hair. The red dragon seemed to claw itself from the other, rising above it in a black sky.” Her head tipped back to regard the first stars emerging in the hollowness above. “And then both were swallowed by each other’s flame. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but now I wonder if it has come true. If the dragons are meant to be you and Viserys.”

I scoffed. Dragons had not existed for nearly a century, though tales of the great beasts tamed by my Targaryen ancestors were always favoured by mummers and bards. But it was her interpretation of the dream that baffled me most.

“Viserys is no dragon,” I said, my lip curling with more than a slight disdain.

“No,” she said, her voice soft but assured. “But you are.”

Something winked in the last, fading rays of the sun, and I looked to what she held out to me in shock.

The pendant was of the three-headed dragon, the sigil of the Targaryen house. The intricacy of the craftsmanship detailed even the ridges along the slender necks that reared above the body of the beast, its maws gaping and tongues as sharp as its teeth. I could not help but run my fingers across the silver-hued jewelry in awe, thumbing at the tightly woven chain that bound the circular pendant.

“Valyrian steel.” Though I had suspected it mainly from the ripples that ran through the metal like markings along the dragon, I could confirm it now that I held its unusually light weight in the palm of my hand. Few remnants of Old Valyria remained, but there were some blacksmiths and jewelers who still knew how to reforge the rare metal of our ancestors.

My heart swelled, warm and whelming, in my chest, mending the fracture the sight of her had carved moments ago. When I looked up at her again, everything about my demeanor must have softened, for my eyes were swathed again in unshed tears, and she bore a small yet loving smile, violet eyes glittering in the quickening dark. I glimpsed the silver dragons that Viserys had pinned to her silks, and I no longer looked upon them with envy, but rather, a strength that emerged deep from my soul and bound me to the one person who had always been there for me, who may, in fact, still have been my family.

Rendered speechless, another silence passed between us before she spoke, “No matter where our paths take us, promise me, Aleera…” Her fingers gently folded mine over the pendant. “… that we will always be sisters.”

The tear was warm against my cheek as it shed, and the smile that quirked my lip was genuine. I held the necklace to my chest, tightly as if in fear of it being swept away by the winds. And I realised that not all of my heart was torn empty.

“I promise.”

NEXT CHAPTER

SERIES MASTERLIST / FULL MASTERLIST

Please let me know if you would like to be added/removed to any of my taglists and notified of new works!

Taglist: @emotionalcadaver @zablife @confidentandgood @shelbydelrey @punypoesy

#game of thrones fic #a song of ice and fire #game of thrones #asoiaf #ramsay bolton x oc #ramsay snow x oc #petyr baelish x oc #fanfic #asoiaf fic #oc: aleera #targaryen oc #my writing #fanfiction #a song of ice and fire fic #got #got fic #series #blood of fire heart of ice #boifhoi

17 notes · View notes

shitbyz · 1 year ago

Text

TW: SA

Κασσάνδρα: And They Never Believed

Hurt by the one I loved

The one I trusted

The one in my life

Higher than all others

I wanted one thing

They wanted another

I tried to keep what was mine

But they took it

They took it for their own pleasure

Not caring what happened to me

But at least it's done now

And they no longer want more

They leave me

Hurt

I need help

Any help by any willing person

I go to anyone who will listen

But no one believes

"They wouldn't do that"

"Were you leading him on?"

Rings throughout the air

Reverberates through my soul

I keep searching

Searching for someone who will believe

But no one does

He continues to sit on his throne of lies

Piled with bodies left unmarked

As no one believes

A word I say

#This is based off of the story of Kassandra and Apollo in the version that Apollo SAs Kassandra after giving her the gift of prophecy #I relate quite a bit to the story and thats why it's in first person #poetry #ptsd #trauma #greek mythology #kassandra #Apollo

3 notes · View notes

quixoticmoth · 2 years ago

Text

Missing Someone

(A small scene for my work Railway Ronin from the perspective of Mikazuki, one of the two main characters.)

Above the lake I watched the green-hued moon; impending as it was and close to the earth, and around my feet I felt warm caresses as it pulled the tides higher to meet me. My shoes were gone, and I hadn’t any idea of when I shed them. I think at some point I shed my gloves; I only realized as my fingers dug into silky, water-loosened sand. And when I took a deep breath of humid air, I found that I shed my mask at some point as well. It was me, here, bare of all identities.

Content at the foot of the celestial throne, I was a mere visitor to the god of the lake who lived here and whispered to me from the distant shore. Not in words she whispered, but in the chimes that hung from her shrine. They played out across the water, riding the ripples in concentric circles that crossed the ones which emanated from me in kind. The geometry was beautiful. I wondered the sound of my own music and hoped she heard this song of mine.

But as I rested here at water’s edge, the song grew sour. Her chimes responded to mine with an indignant harshness that struck my ears. What had I said? What had I done to upset her? I couldn’t explain myself, not without my face or name… No, not that I couldn’t, but she didn’t listen. The once artistic ripples rose to roaring waves that roped me in. As a wave of anger swelled up inside, I struggled!

The sky and moon were lost to me, and the fabric of the lake that surrounded me held my arms fast. I couldn’t stand to listen to the music anymore lest I scream and fill my lungs with cotton and feathers and silks! Then, freeing a heavy arm, I reached for the phone on my nightstand, sliding a thumb to hang up the call. The offending music was all at once gone, and the lake along with it.

All that was left was me, the darkness, and the phone lain next to my shoulder drowning among the sheets.

And the irritating song played again. So I squinted against the irritating light. The caller ID read the name of my most irritating half. And tempting as it was to hang up again, I hadn’t enough mind to question what this early morning call was for.

“Good morning,” I said, and since I was fresh from sleep, my voice sounded softer and higher than I intended. I cleared my throat of day’s-first-words.

“Well, good morning to you, too,” he said. I judged he was loud enough that I could set the phone on the pillow and still hear just fine. I could even close my eyes. “Sounds like you slept well.”

Not really.

“Mikazuki?” he asked. I had been lulling once more, and never actually said what I meant to aloud.

“Sorry, I was dozing off,” I said. I overcompensated for the lithe voice before and now came across husked. Oh, absolutely not that either.

Kyle's laugh vibrated close to the microphone. “Have any good dreams?”

I thought of them, but only found myself seeing vague shapes of branches and the feeling of going. I went somewhere; somewhere important to me. There was someone there, but I couldn’t remember who. It was such a grief to only find the shell of a dream. So I hummed and moved past the question. “What time is it?”

“Mmm… half past 3?” Whether that was in my time or his wasn't clear. There was a tint of the anger from my waking moments soaking into the edges of my consciousness. “I just got home,” he continued, ”wanted to see how my favorite person in the world is doing.”

So it was this sort of day, was it? It’s too early to play, but play I did. “Is that me?” I said, not answering the question.

“Of course!"

I hummed again, wishing to fall back to sleep. “You’re home early, aren’t you?” “We wrapped the meeting up early,” he said. “The guest speaker canceled, you know how it is.”

“I do,” and not wishing to talk about work upon waking, “Have you thought about dinner yet?” “I haven’t even had lunch yet.” “Kyle…”

“I’ll grab something now, don’t worry.” “Thank you,” When I said these things, I imagined myself a busy but beloved wife out of a sweet American soap. Not a romance I think I particularly fit, but a romance nonetheless. With my eyes shut, the scene transformed, colors re-assigned, the static overlay of a TV. Cameras were pointed at us from the periphery of the perfectly arranged kitchen set for a perfectly arranged couple. He went through a few cabinets, rustling packages and pulling boxes of dry snacks onto a counter.

“That’s not a meal,” I said.

“You don’t even know what I grabbed.” He sounded baffled, which uncovered that he was caught.

“I know well enough.”

He put the freeze-dried fruits back. I’ve seen them when I stayed with him; they were his go-to, and I could imagine the specific plums I brought last visit already half empty, but still in the gift packaging.

“Psychic,” he said, getting something from a refrigerator, which then opened with the click and hiss of a vacuum-sealed container.

“You could put them on the salad though.”

“No fucking way.”

I was smiling now, only slightly. He looked around for the studio cameras, but little did he know he was inside the show, and all he could see was me, hovering behind him, watching over his shoulder.

After this, he turned on video call while he ate, dissipating the illusion I had set up in my tired mind. He acted sad when I wouldn’t turn on mine in turn; however, I figured that he just wanted the consolation that I could only see him because he set up a camera himself, rather than wonder what secret way I knew his actions. Which was fine. I didn’t look at the screen the entire time, and when I did, I squinted with one eye at the bright light composed of the white interior of his suite. It had that American city aesthetic of new-age sterility accented with the painted-over carved woodwork of the home’s heritage. It was not my favorite, but I’m sure my home’s style wasn’t his favorite either.

As I thought about architecture, we spoke longer about the week since we last saw each other. For a moment, it was pleasant; it felt like catching up with a friend. But that wasn’t what it was supposed to feel like; it was supposed to feel like the yearning of a decade-distorted long-distance love affair.

“You never actually told me how you’ve been,” he said.

“Lonely as usual,” I said quietly as if to hide it from those who share this home with me. There was a sharp rustling against his phone as he moved to another room. I pulled one of my many pillows close for comfort, accidentally bumping my own phone’s speaker in the same way.

“Yeah?” “Yeah…” It wasn’t a lie, I was lonely. Met with a lapse, my sleep-wracked mind questioned if I should have even admitted that.

When he spoke again it was uncharacteristically gentle. “I miss you…”

“I hate when you say that.” Now that I shouldn’t have admitted, but I already spoke, and so I continued. “I’m right here, you are talking to me now.”

He was thrown off his grove. I threw off the whole grove of the arrangement. Now I was stripping back the layers of this show one by one- awake enough to know better but bitter enough not to care.

“You aren’t lonely; you have company even when I am not around. And I know you don’t miss spending time with me, as you always find ways to keep apart. You don’t miss my affection. And we talk often; we are talking right now, and still you say you miss me. So what is it in me that you miss?” He wrung his hands, posture deflated on that sterile white couch. The symmetry of the composed shot was broken as he looked off to the side. I knew what he missed. All that was left was for him to say it.

“I…” He hesitated. Inside I was begging him, now cradling the phone in my hands. Please, just say it. There was no one here but us to hear the confession. “I...” Please... “Well, don’t you miss me too?”

I hung up.

The fire-fanning ringtone that had woke me before sounded yet again, and my heart pounded in my throat and ears. “Yuzuki,” I said and was met with a soothing jingle. “Block Kyle, please.” Her voice responded with a mechanical inflection, affirming that Kyle was blocked. The song did not pick up afterward.

It was crushing- the disparity between the silence in the room and the noise from the emotions and thoughts that wracked me. It felt as though that ringtone was still echoing in my head, over again, because I knew that it should be. How was I supposed to go back to sleep like this?

“Yuzuki?”

“How can I help?”

And maybe it was wrong of me to think that the voice of this virtual assistant made me a degree less lonely than the call of my betrothed. “Let’s do a meditation.”

She affirmed my request again. Not long after, I heard her play the calming sounds of water and wind... and the nostalgic music of distant chimes.

#mentally i am writing #railway ronin #original writing #writing on tumblr

6 notes · View notes