#on the next page after the moon stuff is literally a poem and you know I love that

[plutonium-humanitatis-studia]

Okay so you know the part of the book when the Creature is brought to life?

How his eyes, his horrible eyes, are described by Victor as yellow?

You know how Victor then leaves it, goes to his bedchambers and paces until sleep befalls him?

Victor has a nightmare about the death of Elizabeth and then wakes to the dim, yellow light of the moon?

How then he finds the creature above him?

Looking at Victor, the only other living creature he knows? His creator? His father, just like Victor previously had proudly proclaimed he would become?

I’m sure we all know how light tends to be representative of hope, do we not?

And how fitting is it not then that the creature’s eyes are yellow, the same as the dim light the moon?

Could you not say that the dim, yellow light of the moon is a representation of the dimming hope in the creature’s yellow eyes?

The dimming hope that his creator might actually help him? Might guide him? Might do more than simply bring him to life?

I know Victor calls those watery eyes horrible, but what I would give to look into them and tell them how beautiful they really are.

[kuerie]

rocky and his water motif

ive seen a few people analyze rocky and his symbolism with water, and i thought id jump on the train and contribute what ive found. i looked through every piece of art in the gallery and messed around with the dead drop to find everything here! with that being said…

obvious spoiler warnings! and warning for a lot of speculation and over analyzing! a lot of things i mention are really big stretches but i added them anyways incase anyone else wants to look into it more

starting where the pilot starts and near the start of the comic (the page “lackadaisy dithyramb”), right off the bat we have an entire poem from rocky dedicated to the mississippi river. this iconic poem is literally just about the river, and he recites it in both scenes from on the bridge over the river.

note that in both cases there is also a crescent moon featuring in the background

more poetry! this one is from the comic on the page “lackadaisy doggerel”. this is actually one of my favourite pages in the comic, its very cool! we have this poem that, again, is entirely about water. it talks about water in a metaphorical way, comparing it to memory and the passage of time. maybe ill try to analyze this poem sometime but idk im not very good at that stuff. seems to talk about rockys past but im not sure

i didnt want to just put this entire page here but i will note that the page has a raging storm, an ocean, a water mill, another storm cloud and a waterfall all picured above rocky, who, in this case is ahem under water, in a way.

last bit of poetry im talking about is probably the most relevant. rockys feauture in the “lacrimosa” poem/halloween artwork shows him seemingly drowning outside a window.

the significance of it being outside a window is somewhat unclear to me, as every other character appears in something reminiscent of a picture frame. my only idea is that its meant to show him outside of what could be a home, in reference to him getting the “unceremonious boot”. the text emphasizes this idea, saying hes away from home

this next one is more obscure and much more of a stretch! after digging around in sketchbook pages, i found this tiny little sketch on a page simply labeled “lackadaisy preview 0018”. the sketch page features sketches that were used for the page “lackadaisy palaver” in the comic, and a few bonus doodles. this was one of the bonus doodles, and i cant seem to find a comic pannel that matches it anywhere.

this sketch could be a lot of things, its a bit hard to tell. most likely, its an unsused pannel of rocky that was going to be used on the comic page. maybe him on whe windshield, or something like that. that being said, the first thing i thought of was the lacrimosa art. its a stretch but i thought id add it, just in case! who knows really

next up is rockys character artwork, which features him standing on a barrel floating in a river.

be careful rocky, you might fall! one little detail about this art that i like is that hes quite literally hiding his sadness behind his back. and again, the crescent moon motif features in the background. the cattails in this image also remind me of this scene in the pilot

…but i mean cattails do grow near water so i dont think that means anything

speaking of the pilot, this scene has rocky accidentally blowing up a water tower and flooding the area, and getting a whole bunch of water dumped on him

be careful rocky, you might get hurt! ...i dont think he cares

one last note from the pilot (for now) is a line from mitzi after rocky comes back with alcohol for them. it could mean nothing, could be foreshadowing, who knows

note in the second image: “rest” as in the rest of the alcohol they were meant to bring back

the music video for liquid gold ends with rocky dropping a bottle and the golden liquid flooding the room

i wasnt even looking for water symbolism when i found this, i was just rewatching the music video for fun! i just about had a heart attack when it ended like that D: rocky please dont drown

back to the comics! sorry this is a bit all over the place. forgive me for just uploading an entire comic page, but the page “lackadaisy thunderhead” features rocky standing over a river. at the bottom of the pannel on the right there are daisys, a symbol that features in a lot of rockys artwork and is generally associated with the lackadaisy speakeasy. the daisys could just be for aesthetics or to frame the pannel better, but its also notable that they appear where the water is.

the name “thunderhead” is interesting given some other pannels

not sure what it means though

the very first scene in the comic aside from the introduction shows rocky at the river.

in the page “lackadaisy trouble boys” from the early concept art mitzi makes a comment about rockys aim, and makes an… interesting metaphor

side note: im gonna cry is that actually how rocky gets the little hole in his ear lmao

the mini comic “wilderness” has rocky climbing out of a small muddy pool of water claiming “the waters great”, despite looking absolutely horrible. isnt shown here, but he says he cant feel his legs and calls for freckle to come back.

knock knock! its time for the playing cards! rockys card depicts him as the 8 of spades, although hes also been shown as the ace of clubs multiple times.

first up, 8 of spades! i really like this art but i have a lot of questions. for one, why is rocky holding a shovel and whats with the lantern? theres nothing wrong with it, just caught my attention since i think freckle is drawn with shovels a lot more than rocky (might be wrong on that though) second, this is the only picture i can find where you can CLEARLY see rockys head injury healed. cool! third, the outfit hes wearing is… atypical for rocky, you could say. for obvious reasons. he always wears blue, why suddenly the change to black? and obviously, the choice of making him the 8 of spades. some quick google searches and this is what i found: from various websites (the first things that popped on on google), apparently spades symbolizes the winter season and the water element. it seems to represent old age, change, wisdom and acceptance. the number 8 supposedly represents victory, prosperity and overcoming. i was going to put images, but i could only have 30 and i ran out of space lmao im so sorry this is SO LONG djfjsjnrfj

make of it what you will. as for the ace of clubs:

my google searches were much less interesting so ill just put my own thoughts. the clubs is likely just for the association with the lackadaisy speakeasy, as in both of these cases he is shown alongside other characters from the lackadaisy and everyone has clubs. as for him being the ace, the main notable thing about the ace is that its generally the highest card.

the main idea i personally took from these cards is the idea rocky will possibly not be a part of the lackadaisy in the furure. we see him in his classic outfit, no head injury as the ace of clubs, with clubs being associated with the lackadaisy. but we also see him with a healed head injury (so clearly in the future) with a new outfit and no more clubs suit.

not sure if this is even notable but this entire (very iconic) scene in the comic takes place in the rain

be careful rocky, you might get shot!

and now, even more crescent moon motifs

so why have i been pointing this out? well its undeniable that rocky also has motif with this crescent moon. i have no idea what it means but heres my very quick five minute thoughts on it: one: the moon controls the tide. obviously a river doesnt really have a tide, but still! theres some association with water there, so its notablea. two: this might be a stretch but in the pilot theres this very memorable frame where it shows the reflection of the moon (which initially looks like a cat) ahem in the water. obviously water reflects stuff so its not abnormal for the moon to reflect in the water but i just thought it was cool!

aaaand last but not least

this analysis was brought to you while listening to hatsune miku, i probably made a lot of typos so yell at me and ill fix them but not my grammar its terrible and im not fixing that, lmk your thought and if i missed anything, thank you for reading have a nice day sorry it was so long <3

[a-edgar-allan-hoe]

Charles x Reader, Erik x Reader, Logan x Reader One Shot

A/N: Here is the one shot requested by my lovely anon! I do hope you enjoy this one! 💕💕💕 I was literally listening to a Harry Potter classroom ambience while writing this for some odd reason haha. Also there will be a part 2 and feedback is greatly appreciated lovelies! 💕💕💕

Summary: Imagine being Hekate, the Greek goddess of magic and witchcraft, the night and the moon, doorways and crossroads, creatures of the night, and ghosts and necromancy. You stumbled upon Earth many centuries ago and since then have resided on the foreign planet. You became close friends with Logan during the civil war and he has been like a father figure for you ever since. During the recent years you were discovered by Charles and Erik, and after finding out your identity, Charles recruited you into being a professor at his school. But though you became close with the trio over the years, there are some things you wish to keep hidden.

Warnings: language, angst

“Okay class.” You stood up from your desk to face the chalkboard behind you as you moved on to your next lesson, “Does anyone know what the six popular types of poetry are?” You felt a sudden rush of wind behind you, making your hair blow towards your face as you rolled your eyes, turning around to face the young silver-haired teen who displayed a proud smirk on his face while sitting in his seat as if nothing happened. “Peter Maximoff, if I catch you doing laps around my classroom one more time…………..I’m going to turn all your band shirts into bands you hate.” 

“What? Aw come on Ms.Hekate.” Peter slid down in his seat with his head thrown back, exasperating as he did so. “Not my band shirts.”

“Keep it up and you’ll start to see Madonna and Abba on your shirts.” You smirked. “Now, since you oh so greatly volunteered to answer, what are the six popular types of poetry?”

“I don’t know, the ones that rhyme.” Peter shrugged at the question, causing some of the students snicker in response.

“Well,” you chuckled at his answer “there are some poetry that have rhymes, but there are also some that do not necessarily have to rhyme, like blank verse and free verse. Blank verse for example, is a poetic form that features rhythmic rules, such as iambic pentameter, but no rhymes.” You faced the class as you leaned against your desk, using your telekinetic abilities to grasp the chalk and write the info down on the board, a violet mist forming around your fingers and around the piece of chalk. “Free verse on the other hand, is an open form of poetry, which in its modern form arose through the French vers libre form. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any musical pattern and thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech. Now, does anyone else know what the six types are? Anyone?” You looked around before picking on the red-haired girl in front who had her hand up. “Yes Jean?”

“Um the six popular types of poetry are Haiku, Diamante, uuuhhh Cinquain, Ballad, Sonnet, and Limerick.”

“Excellent Jean! That is correct.” You grinned, the chalk behind you hovering in the air and moving rapidly as it wrote down the different types along with a short description beneath them.

“Ms.Hekate?”

“Yes Peter?”

“Why do you only teach literature and folklore and mythology classes? How come you don’t teach us magic witchcraft and potions and stuff, you know?”

The students perked up at his question, their eyes sparkling up at the idea as they whispered to each other words of excitement.

“That’s a good question Peter. You’re welcome to ask professor Xavier about it or start a petition. Now, I want you to open up your books and turn to page 394. I mean 36! Sorry! Please turn to page 36. We will be doing a reading of the poem ‘To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick.”

“Virgins huh?” Peter snickered, making you glare at him lightheartedly.

“Quiet now Peter before I make you read the whole thing in front of the class.” You grabbed the leather bound book off your shelf before hoisting yourself up on your desk and standing upright on it, straightening the black turtleneck sweater you wore and smoothing down your gray plaid pants.

“Uuhhh Ms.Hekate.” You heard Scott speak up.

“Yes Scott?”

“Why are you standing on your desk?”

“A different perspective you might say. Something all of you will be trying tomorrow.”

“Wait what?”

“Alrighty.” You cleared your throat before speaking loudly, holding your book out before you with one hand while your other hand was shoved in your pocket. “To the Virgins!-“

“What’s this talk of virgins?”

You stopped, your eyes widening at the voice that just now spoke while your own became trapped in your throat as you saw a man enter your classroom, lingering in the back as his piercing blue eyes bore into yours.

“Ch-Charles.” You blinked. “I-I didn’t expect you here.”

The students looked between you and Charles with amusement painted on their faces as they giggled at your flustered expression, some of them leaning over to whisper in each other’s ears.

“Well don’t let me stop you from whatever it is you’re doing.” Charles smiled politely at you, his eyes lit up in curiosity from your stance on your desk. “Don’t mind me, I’ll just be……quietly observing.”

“Well thank you for joining us Charles. But, you know better than anyone else, that there are only participants in my class, not observers. So if I ask you a question you best be ready to answer it.” You snarked, smirking at the puzzled look that now masked his face before clearing your throat once again, holding your book out before you and reading off the page you had turned to.

“To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time. By Robert Hedrick.

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

Tomorrow will be dying.”

You glanced up from under your lashes to see Charles’s eyes still glued to you as he listened to your every word. Such a simple action made your cheeks heat up and your stomach spin as you held the book higher to cover your flushed face.

“The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

The higher he’s a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run,

And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer;

But being spent, the worse, and worst

Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,

And while ye may, go marry;

For having lost but once your prime,

You may forever tarry.”

You closed the book back up, setting it aside as you sat down on your desk and faced the students. “Now, can anyone tell me what the biggest element of this poem is? Yes Kurt?”

“Ummmmm………Carpe Diem?”

“Correct!” You smiled at Kurt as the piece of chalk behind you wrote Carpe Diem in large letters with a line underneath. “Carpe Diem is in fact the biggest part about this poem. Now….Charles, can you tell me what Carpe Diem means?”

Charles straightened up in his seat as he looked up at you confounded, surprise hidden behind his eyes on the fact that you kept your word on having him participate. “Well it means seize the day.”

“Yes, true. Carpe Diem is a Latin term most commonly known as ‘seize the day’, but, the term originally means ‘to gather or pluck the day’. It was originally used by the Roman poet Horace to express the idea that time is limited and we should enjoy life while we still can. His full directive was ‘carpe diem quam minimum credula postero’, which is translated as ‘pluck the day, trusting as little as possible in the next one’. Now, for all of you night owls out there who can’t stand the sun like me, Carpe Noctem is perfect for you because it translates to ‘seize the night’.”

You briefly glimpsed up at your clock, hissing and nearly falling off your desk once you saw that you had only a minute and a half left of your class. “Alrighty my little poets! Today’s word of the day was Carpe Diem or Carpe Noctem! I want you all to ingrain that into your minds! Write it down, paint it on a canvas, make an artwork out of it, tattoo it on your forehead I don’t care! ACTUALLYDONTDOTHELASTONE! Please, for the love of all things holy, do not tattoo your foreheads. We will finish this lesson tomorrow and discuss some more themes. For homework, I want you all to pick a poet and one of their poems and try to analyze some of the themes we have already discussed. I will be having you read those poems aloud to the class. Extra credit will be given to those who decide to come in costume, dressed up like their chosen poet. The more dramatic the better! Fake beards are welcome, fake phalluses are NOT! For the love of the gods, please choose something PG. We are not learning about Greek Satyr plays, let’s keep that a thing of the past thank you very much and kindly. You will all be respectful to each other’s performances! There will be no snickering, no laughing, no chastising, and I will not have you behaving like a babbling, bumbling, band of baboons! Those who choose to do the things I have specifically said not to, will receive a very friendly spirit with a penchant for grabbing the bare feet of problematic students at the foot of their beds during the stroke of midnight.” You stopped to take a breath after having to ramble everything just as the bell rang.

“Thank you all for being a lovely bunch and I will see you all tomorrow! Good day! Hasta la vista! Fare thee well! Fly, you fools!” You shouted over the bell ringing as everyone got up from their desks and bustled about, getting ready to go to their next class.

“Did you really just threaten the students with necromancy?” Charles quirked a brow in amusement as he slowly made his way over to you once all the students left your classroom.

“Ehhhhh an empty threat really.” You shrugged, playing it off though you failed to truly disguise the smirk that pulled at the corner of your lips.

“Right.” He chuckled, “And whatever was the issue with the phalluses? You seemed to be really adamant about that.”

“Well…..long long time ago, way back in the lands of ancient Greece.” You leaned back on your hands as you began to explain the story behind your dislike for satyr plays and their rather vulgar uses of the phallus, swinging your loose legs over the edge of your desk. “When I was just a wee teen, or you could say 15 in human years, my sisters Athena and Artemis took me with them to roam the markets of the mortals. Being the rebellious and angsty teen that I was, I didn’t want to be dragged along for their shopping, so I separated from them in search of food and something new to discover.”

“And? Did you find food and something new?”

“I did discover something new, though to be honest I wish I didn’t. But I disappointedly did not find any kolokithopita, which I was extremely craving at the time, it’s like a flaky pastry dough filled with zucchini and feta cheese and it is soooo good, you have got to try it.” You gestured with your hands as you tried to describe the food. “But anyways, back to the story. I heard some laughter coming from afar so I followed the sound and found a group of people gathered around a stage. Being the curious teen that I was, I tried to get a good look at whatever the hell these people were laughing at. Lo and behold. Turns out, I accidentally stumbled upon a Satyr play, which I’m sure you’ve heard about. And let’s just say, I have never u-turned and bolted so fast in my entire life and never have I ever been more traumatized.”

Charles laughed at your storytelling, his frame shaking with mirth as he shook his head at the thought. “You poor thing.”

“Yeah, I wanted to scoop my eyeballs out after seeing that. And I think I might’ve puked on someone on my way out.” Your voice became barely audible at the last part. “But also because one time during a poetry reading I took part in way back, some asshole thought it would be funny to wear a fake phallus on full display and try to reenact one of the scenes from those kinds of plays.”

“Well then that explains your dislike for them.”

“Yes, very.” You chuckled. “You know, your students want me to teach witchcraft and magic.”

“Do they?” Charles tilted his head at your words. “Let me guess, was it Peter that mentioned it?”

“It was. How did you know?”

“He may have tried to…..nonchalantly bring it up in my class. Hypothetically, is there a possibility in being able to teach such things?”

“Just really basic spells and potions. Most of the things that I can do are my natural abilities though. Waaiiit…….is that a possibility?”

“Possibly. If there’s no harm in it and none of the students have to sell their soul to you to learn your tricks.” Charles teased.

“Oh definitely not. But they’re welcome to make sacrificial offerings in the form of food.”

Charles laughed again, his eyes crinkling at the corners as his boyish laughter rung out through the room, causing you to chuckle along with him.

“So…….are you serious though?” You stopped, turning your head to look at him with eagerness hidden behind your eyes at the prospect of having your own magic class. “Will I really be able to teach magic to the students? Like my very own Hogwarts?”

“I’m sure I can make some arrangements.”

You nearly jumped off the table in excitement, clasping your hands together between your knees and biting the bottom of your lips to hold back a squeal before breaking out into a big grin. Charles smiled softly at your reaction. A tight pressure like feeling formed within his chest, not one of pain, but of adoration as he took in the pure cheerfulness that painted your features. Your irises which resembled the galaxies in hues of purples and gold, now sparkled from your emotions against the sunlight that managed to hit them at the right angle.

“How could I ever thank you?”

“You don’t need to. The students enjoy having you, that in itself is enough.” Charles smiled before looking up at you intently. “You know. All this poetry and you never read me any.”

“Maybe because you’re not special.” You teased.

Charles feigned a wounded expression, dramatically throwing a hand over his heart. “Ouch. You really do know how to break my heart y/n.”

“Oh please.” You rolled your eyes before grabbing your poetry book and shoving it at him lightly. “Here, you read one then.”

“Me? For whatever reason? Is it because you fancy my voice?” He smirked, poking fun at the time that you admitted you found his voice to be soothing.

“Well don’t go tooting your own horn. You’re no Christopher Lee.” You scoffed, trying your best to hide the blush that crept onto your cheeks, cursing yourself and wishing you had never told him that. Now you were never going to hear the end of it and he was to make sure of that.

Charles chuckled softly at your statement as he opened up your book and flipped through the pages. You stared at the dark wooden wall at the other side of the classroom, listening to the crisp sound of the turning of pages until Charles paused at a certain one and scanned the contents on the page, his eyes lifting to briefly glance up at you before clearing his throat.

“She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o’er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express,

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!”

“She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron.” You noted, recognizing the same lines that you became fond of when the piece itself came out. “I’ve always loved that one.”

Charles closed your book back up, his blue eyes lingering on the distant look that was held in your eyes like the stillness of the air that accompanied the dark clouds of an oncoming storm. The room had started to cast a shadow on your face, deepening the small scars that lined your face from the many battles you had once fought. And though he had come to recognize those, his gaze became fixed on the dark circles under your eyes, knowing they weren’t there a day ago.

“Y/n is everything alright?” He asked, his voice quiet and soft, and his brows creased in worry. He didn’t need to read your mind to know that something was deeply troubling you.

“Hm? Oh yeah I’m fine! I just…….been having trouble sleeping, nothing major.”

“Are you sure? You know if there’s anything upsetting you, you can tell me, I’m here.”

“I know.” You smiled at him, reaching over to hold his hand. “I’ll come to you if I need anything. Thank you Charles, for everything.” You slid off your desk to place a soft kiss at the top of his head. “Now, I’d hate to leave you and all, but I don’t have any classes for the rest of the day and I’m feeling a bit tired so I’m going to go rest.”

“Of course. You take care of yourself darling.”

“I will thanks. See you later Charles.” You smoothed your hands over his soft hair before leaving the classroom and heading up to your room. A tugging sensation bubbled within your chest from having to lie to him, filling you with feelings of guilt. But you had to. You didn’t have the heart to tell him about the nightmares, or the searing sensation that coursed through the skin on your back whenever you woke up from them, the vividness of your dreams and the excruciating pain a constant reminder of your past.

Charles watched you leave the room in silence with a small frown on his face that only grew deeper the further away you went. He knew you spoke the truth about not being able to sleep, but he couldn’t help but feel there was a more chasmic layer to your explanation. And though he dared not to read your mind to find out the truth and instead trusted you to tell him when you found it in yourself to do so, something told him that whatever was slowly eating at you would soon consume you whole.

[thevividgreenmoss]

My grandfather was awake and lucid for a longish while between late Friday night and Saturday morning apparently first time since this past Sunday when we all thought that was It and crammed ourselves seven people in one sedan that got a flat on the way over of course (as we were leaving the handle of the screen door came off in my hand as I was closing it behind me so the vibe was very on the nose things farcically falling apart that whole goddamn day lol) but then when we made it he was smiling and laughing and talking to and teasing everyone that was there, albeit with much more effort than it would have taken him even just a week earlier when he was already in a really frail state because of his hip surgery. My sister happened to be up later than she usually ever is and got to video call and chat with him for a bit I wanted terribly for my cousin in Colorado to be able to also but by the time he could get through my grandpa's blood pressure had suddenly spiked or something and he'd drifted back into that borderline unconscious state so they didn't get a chance to talk which makes me want to claw my fucking skin off of my face but who knows maybe another opportunity will present itself hopefully it does like he suddenly became really talkative and energized the other day after not having said more than maybe a couple sentences over the few previous days like I was there with him for several hours on Thursday and the entire time he didn't say a word and only opened his eyes once for like half a second and even that I might have been imagining after sitting there sleep-deprived and holding his hand trying not to cry because then my mom would start crying and then my aunt and on and on and if he's conscious at that point he'll start to get worried and his heart rate will destabilize but after that for this one stretch without anyone expecting it he was really talkative and alert and joking around with the nurses and doctors and all that for a while but then later yesterday afternoon he started to get disoriented and drift in and out of the present in between dreaming and waking again at one point apparently he kept saying 'look at my shoes' to my mom and her sisters and they thought it was just just the medication/pain-induced delirium talking but he kept insisting and eventually said 'you're not taking me seriously' and I guess gave up? Or said it a few more times I'm not clear on the course of events I only heard all this secondhand when my younger aunt, who also got diagnosed with cancer late last year but thankfully is more or less in the clear now, got back home last night and she and I went into his room and took all the shoes out of the cabinet he keeps them in and like looked inside and turned over and examined the soles of every pair, took the cushion insert things out of the ones that had them, checked for scooby doo-esque hidden doors, all that but there was nothing there just shoes. Her kids flew back out yesterday morning, the older one's tentatively returning to Toronto in the next week or so she had a painfully rough time in some ways her first couple of years and then abruptly had to be uprooted and leave because of covid then everything with her mom and in time honored eldest daughter tradition bearing the brunt of the familial frustration and insanity associated with that and now everything with our grandpa I really really want her senior year to go smoothly and be enjoyable and memorable in a manner opposite to how this past year+ has been I'm so worried about her and her little sister's starting freshman year there in the fall and I'm terribly worried about her in a whole different way like she's still really attached to her parents in this innocent way that still strongly resembles like a baby's adoring my mom hung the moon type attachment and it can be especially hard being away for the first time ever when that's the case...like she's hyper hypersensitive even by my family's standards lmao but she does have this sort of self-possession and inner groundedness that no one can quite pin down but it's

definitely there and maybe that

could carry her through I really hope so...they were saying to come up to visit them in the fall hopefully I can find a job soon after returning to Texas and like be able to afford to do that and also like keep paying the bills and shit lol in either case I hope so so badly that they'll be okay like I think they will be the women in my family are all really strong but they've also had to be because of various fucked circumstances and I don't want that to keep having to be the case...my grandpa's a Strong Woman in a certain way also honestly lmao like my mom's aunts have always been like your father raised you in a way beyond even most mothers which like who fucking receives let alone genuinely deserves that kind of praise from their in-laws lmao let alone a man from a notoriously patriarchal culture of a generation when fathers from any culture barely had any involvement in their children's upbringing at all which I mean most still don't but even more so back then and like literally everyone we've been hearing from or seeing drop by at the hospital has a story of how at one point or another my grandpa was there for them when no one else was like distant cousins variously removed and loose family friends all with something about how he comforted me when no one else could, I remember word for word what he said to me when I suffered some loss of my own, he's the strongest man in our family, the best times we ever had were when he was near us, when he'd take us out, his youngest brother's children saying he cared for and spoiled them as if their were his own after their dad died suddenly when they were just kids, my mom's third cousin whose own father was with her till a late age saying that he was even more of a father to me than my own father, his other brother's son who was ostracized for decades by his immediate family on some straight up racist ass bullshit on the part of his mom and older brother because he married a black woman but my grandpa stayed in touch and made sure my mom and uncle did as well and made sure we all got together when he'd came to the states, like even now lying there on what very well might be his literal deathbed when he can barely talk he was telling my uncle he's worried about him and he needs to go home and rest, asking who's taking care of the house, are the kids all okay even at this point his thoughts are for others. After I put his shoes back in the cabinet I closed it and opened the one beside just in case I guess just in case what I don't know but it was just like standard cabinet stuff clothes a shaving kit and a couple of what I assume are photo albums that I didn't feel like I should open for some reason and a few old books, a collection of Ghalib's which I can't really read very easily if at all because it's in Urdu lol, a history of government college of Lahore where his father was teaching at the time of his death and the two philosophy textbooks my great grandfather had written himself, Inductive & Deductive Reasoning, and inside the latter I found a handful of yellowed pages torn out of an old notebook upon which mostly seem to be translations of french poems and I think maybe a song or two? I guess old coursework or just for funsies I'm not sure whether written by my grandfather or his own father. My khala was mentioning just the other day that she'd kept one of my grandpa's old notebooks marked as having been designated for biology but inside it were no actual notes just urdu poetry which she wasn't sure whether it was his own original tossed off work or something the lifelong frustrated creative transcribed while bored in class. The night I got here I was looking through his bookshelves after everyone had gone to bed and then a couple of weeks ago I was sitting in the living room by myself watching archer when my cousin came and sat down next to me upset and unable to sleep on her own first night here and I held her and tried not to cry and then went through the same bookshelves again, this time with my cousin who we came to Pakistan for the first time after moving to the US

to see being born who turned three

the day we arrived on what until this current trip was the last time I was here her little sister having just been born earlier that same year (whose life I may or may not have saved when I caught her after she was dropped by the person holding her (the fact that (parentheticals within parentheticals!) I may or may not have been the one who dropped her in the first place is immaterial imo not that I'm the one on trial here but what's important is that I caught her and if anything this would be an even more athletically impressive and frankly heroic incident if I'd been the one that was holding her to begin with since I was 8/9 years old at the time and there wasn't much of a distance for her to fall and yet I kept her from hitting the ground like talk about reflexes like that's what's important and what's more important than even that @ my year older cousin (whose younger sister was the first baby in the family after myself whose arrival in this world when I was three had me positively giddy in the way that young children get when witnessing the miracle of even younger children, who's the only other one of the cousins that's been here during all this, just me and the three I got to see as darling little babies) who was the only other person in the room with me at the time, is that we take this to our fucking graves no one can hear a word of this least of all any adults in the house who like not that they're the ones on trial here either but like who allowed for this scenario to transpire in the first place where two children and an infant are in a room by themselves unsupervised in retrospect that's somewhat irresponsible not that I'd ever hold it against them or even mention it because then they might get mad and not let me hold my little cousin anymore and I do love holding my little baby cousin and carrying her around everywhere, mostly without incident)) neither of whom I'd see in person again until we visited them in Canada the summer after I graduated college the trip during which I finished the last of the Neapolitan novels the day after landing and turned 22 the day after their mother, my younger khala, turned 43, looking through my nana's bookshelves with my baby cousin no longer a baby but a U of T classics major entering her senior year, noting the overlaps with our own, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, George Eliot, the same exact copies of Cheever and Kafka's collected shorts, Umberto Eco, Proust, wondering what the various titles meant to him or what they might say about him, wondering how much of even the version of him that can be hypothesized based off his library I'm missing now that I'm limited to the much reduced version of what had been in his old home in Lahore (when he visited us after my junior year of hs and my mom was trying to convince him to downsize and move in with my other aunt with whom he's been living the past several years, the one who most resembles my grandfather the only one that has his cheekbones my khala whose eyes have sunken all the way into her skull before my eyes with exhaustion and grief over the past two weeks, when my mom was like what's the point of just hanging onto a bunch of books that you've already read: I look at them [dramatic pause], and I feel happy [my mom sighing equally dramatically in.exasperation, me cracking up in the background]) the city I was born in the house where I spent the first almost five years of my life before we moved to the US to join my dad who'd moved back shortly after my mom became pregnant with what turned out to be me, abu nana's house with the garden we'd walk through every morning holding his hand and following along as he puttered around with his plants in the garden in the house in the city he had to leave to move into my khala's house in Islamabad where I've been the past almost a month now where two weeks ago he suddenly came down with pneumonia and had to be dragged to a hospital in Rawalpindi where he's been since, not in his house, my nana's house, with the garden in the city I haven't seen since the last time I was in this country the

summer I

turned nine the day after my khala turned 30 the day before my other khala turned 32(?) the summer I first remember obsessive compulsive disorder becoming an overwhelming aspect of my consciousness although it was there before, the first summer of the Iraq war and being terrified watching the Iraq war unfold on the BBC evening news my nana would turn on

at dinner time and hearing for the first time or maybe just the first time I remember the night we left the phrase 'the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer' from my younger khala talking to her sisters and some family friends that had come over to see us off feeling terrified and cold then embarrassed because she noticed my face visibly fall from across the room and told my mom and I was like godammit everyone knows I'm scared now smhead then crying the entire flight back home because I missed everyone and maybe had a little kid premonition that I wouldn't return to my nana's house and I would be years and years till I saw any of them again some I still haven't or maybe there was nothing premonitory about it but in either case that's the way it turned out. I do feel grateful I got to see him again at all, when he last came to the US late 2016-early 2017 I was sure it would be the last time we would be in the same room. I'd make breakfast for us every morning and we'd eat together and the entire day I'd sit next to him inhaling secondhand smoke and talking and reading. I was in the midst of my initial aborted attempt to read Swann's way when he arrived. I'd gotten to Guermantes way last summer but I couldn't find a secondhand copy so I had to read it via ebook and that didn't feel right so I abandoned it until now I've been reading a copy pulled from his bookshelf. Last he visited was the first time I learned we were both Garcia Marquez-heads which I'd kind of assumed before and I showed him Mad Men which he heavily fucked with and also every John Le Carre adaptation I could track down online. From the first time I read one hundred years of solitude the summer after freshman year of college the passage describing Colonel Aureliano Buendia's death already absolutely and unbearably heartwrenching enough immediately brought thoughts of my grandfather, aching aching sorrow over the solitude that he himself existed within in all the fucking pain his life has been inordinately filled with grief over the knowledge of this inevitable final separation from him after so many years and so much distance already having separated him from the people he loved and cared for and he loved and cared for so many people so deeply with such sincerity and beauty and endless endless warmth and compassion and humor when Gabo wrote of the colonel trying to reach back through to his memories and being unable to after previously recalling that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice even years later, as he faced the firing squad, at the moment of his death like a 'baby chick' my poor frail beautiful grandfather appearing exactly the same way when he'd take off his dentures and curl over to the side to sleep, then when awake but still half asleep hearing your voice having brought his apple cider vinegar and garlic concoction or a cup of tea or just coming by to hold his hand or play with his beard the way all of his grandchildren have at one point or another and smiling with his eyes still closed smiling bright and wide the expression of a precious little cat purring as you scratch under its chin always the most beautiful smile and even as his hair turned white and his body withered and wrinkled and shrunk his cheekbones while still not bad long ago ceased being the way they were in that picture from his wedding day back when he he looked like young Robert De Niro's much much prettier Kashmiri cousin from then until now always that same radiance and those same quick-witted and kind and bright bright bright sparkling eyes. The past month and a half I've been feeling like I'm seeing my own mother dying before my eyes along with her father, my adorable beloved abu nana, I can't even begin to comprehend how she must be feeling right now I feel like I'm witnessing her death in advance through all of this and losing the part of her that is him even though I know that's not actually the case. Things have been so fucking painful and complicated between us but the one thing we've shared that's never

been painful is our love for him. When he left after his last visit four years ago I spent the next two days barely able to even talk. Compliments or like any positive comments directed in my directions have almost always caused me this reflexive discomfort and uneasiness but whenever he or anyone else would say that I'm his favorite grandchild I'd want to hold on to that as closely as i possibly can. I don't want him to leave us and more than that I want for whatever happens to at least happen with him back at home but neither of those things seem likely right now although who the fuck knows. I hope his last thoughts can be of flowers, like Kafka's, and Lispector's, or of love, wherever he is I hope it's not asking too much to hope for that at least. For someone that spent his life so deeply immersed within that Garciamarquesian solitude he never made those around him feel any way other than at home, safe and warm and loved and adored and adorable and lovable and at home not because of a place not even the garden at the house in Lahore but with him always always I've never felt more at home than during the times I spent near him, and his love and his flowers

[mexicancat-girl]

Inspiration

A MarcNath fic written in part for #MLPrideFest2020 and Pride month in general

AO3: Link, 5700+ words

.

...

It’s been a long day. But instead of feeling tired, Marc feels restless, and strangely energized.

After all, the absolute favorite part of his day happens after school.

Once the final bell chimes, Marc instantly stuffs his notebook in his bag with lightning speed. He gives a little wave to some of his friends in class, before he quickly makes his way out of Ms. Mendeleiev’s class and down the hall.

He and Nathaniel were going to meet up to work on their comic. They always met up Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and today was Friday.

Though, as of late, they were spending nearly every day of the school week together. To work on their comic, of course. But more and more often, they just…hung out. And talked.

A solid half the time, they went wildly off-topic and didn’t even touch their comic. And while normally the two of them weren’t much for talking, when together, they could chatter up a storm.

Marc’s pretty sure they’ve re-treaded The Great Sailor Moon Debate at least a dozen times already—in which Nathaniel firmly believed the 90’s anime was the greatest version of the source material, while Marc defended the Crystal reboot for it’s better writing. Nathaniel would playfully call Marc a heathen, while Marc would retort with Nath being nostalgia blind. Then the two would get locked in a stalemate, and finally admit that Madoka Magica was better anyways. Rinse and repeat.

It was just…so easy to talk to Nathaniel. Even when Marc would get flustered and stutter out a mess, because of his stupid crush flaring up, Nathaniel wouldn’t judge him. He’d wait patiently for Marc to finally get a halfway cohesive sentence out, absorb it, give it his full consideration, and then take the conversation from there.

It helped that the two of them were on the introverted and shy side, knowing when to talk and when it was just enough to sit quietly side-by-side. They both had similar interests and passion driving them. They sort of…clicked. Understood each other in a way they didn’t with others. They got each other.

It’s the biggest reason why Marc enjoyed spending time with Nathaniel. Though his crush undeniably played a part in it…

Marc startled, running into the doorway of the art class slightly. He didn’t do it very hard—just barely clipped his shoulder against the arch—but he still jumped a foot in the air and yelped.

“You okay…?” a voice asks, warm and familiar.

Marc feels himself flush. “Y-Yeah, I’m fine,” he gets out, with a bashful laugh, rubbing slightly at his shoulder. He looks down at an amused Nathaniel, who’s half-hanging out of the doorway, having managed to get to the room before Marc.

“Lost in thought?” the redhead asks, jerking his head to move his bangs out of face.

“Sort of?” Marc offers, hitching his bag further up his shoulder and following in-step with Nathaniel over to their usual table in the Art Club.

The place was empty, which was a surprise. They had Art Club on Wednesdays, sure, which was when the art room was the busiest. But their teacher always encouraged students to work on projects in the room if they wanted, so usually there would always be at least one person in here.

It was nice, though, having the room all to themselves. Marc certainly wasn’t complaining.

“Thinking up new ideas for the comic?” Nathaniel asks, sitting in his normal spot, Marc sliding in next to him on the left, as was per usual.

Marc lets out a long groan. “Not really…I’ve sort of reached a…a writing block, actually,” he admits while threading a hand through his hair, feeling just a bit ashamed.

“That’s rough, buddy,” Nathaniel says sympathetically, but there’s a playful lilt to his smile that catches Marc’s attention.

Marc pauses, and considers, his eyes narrowing as he looks over at the other boy. “…Was that a reference?”

“Dunno. Is it?” Nathaniel asks, much too innocently.

“It is, isn’t it,” Marc says, more statement than question, levelling a finger at Nathaniel. Who is looking all the more amused with the way Marc’s challenging him. “Which anime?”

“I can’t believe you instantly jump to anime. I don’t always make anime references,” the redhead huffs, voice just shy of a whine.

“Cartoon then,” Marc decides. “It doesn’t sound like something from comics, or comic-related.”

“I mean. You’re not wrong, exactly…”

He tilts his head, taps his fingers against the table. “Is it something I’ve watched…?”

“Well, I mean, I’d hope you’ve watched it,” Nathaniel starts, voice turning teasing. “Or else I might just revoke our friendship.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” he chides, but not seriously at all, bumping their shoulders together with a roll of his eyes. “Just say it’s Avatar and go, you drama queen.”

“Ding ding ding, we have a winner,” Nathaniel mimes speaking into a microphone, holding his pencil up to his mouth like a complete dork. “Local writer gets cartoon reference, more at nine.”

“Dork,” Marc snorts, giggling.

“I’m not a dork,” Nathaniel states, shoving Marc playfully. “You’re the dork.”

Marc feels his grin widen. “Yes, because I’m the one that quotes things like a total dork on the reg…”

Nathaniel gasps, shoving at Marc’s shoulder again. “Shut up! You do that all the time!” he sputters, indignant.

“I really don’t.”

“You quote Shakespeare!”

“Nath,” Marc starts, putting a hand on his shoulder, giving him the snootiest look possible. “All writers quote Shakespeare. Keep up.”

“Go and quote your Shakespeare, then,” Nathaniel says, dramatically rolling his eyes and shrugging Marc’s hand off his shoulder. “Maybe writing a soliloquy will help with your writer’s block, or something.”

“You know, that might not be a bad idea…” he admits, before scratching at his temple and smiling sheepishly. “But I don’t think I’ve ever actually learned how to write one.”

“I mean, that’s fair,” Nathaniel laughs, nudging him playfully with the eraser of his pencil. “Writing like Shakespeare is bonkers. Poetry’s already complicated as it is.”

“How is poetry complicated? You can literally write anything as a poem.”

“Exactly,” the redhead nods sagely. “You can write anything. That’s way too many possibilities.”

“You know what? Fair.”

The two grinned at each other for a few long seconds, only broken by the door opening. Marc jolts in his seat, whipping his gaze away guiltily from staring into Nathaniel’s pretty blue eyes. He’d always had a habit of getting lost in them, if he wasn’t careful.

Mr. Carracci blinks back at them for a few seconds, before smiling softly. “Oh! Hello there, boys. Just about to head out, so I came to grab my things.”

“Do you need any help, sir?” Nathaniel offers, already half-out of his seat, the art teacher waving him away.

“No, no, I’m quite alright. You boys just sit and keep doing whatever you were doing before. Don’t mind me,” the older gentleman tells them warmly, already crossing the room to his desk at the very back. “Just remember to close the door on your way out when you’re done, alright?”

“Yes, sir,” Marc and Nathaniel chime together, relaxing in their seats once more.

The two share a look, grinning slightly, before they open their bags and start to riffle through for their materials.

Marc cracks open his notebook, staring down at the page full of scribbles. He huffs, cracks his knuckles, and picks up his pen.

------

  A solid ten minutes pass, and nothing new is on the page. At least, nothing that hasn’t been instantly scribbled out in a fit of frustration.

Marc tries to sigh quietly so he doesn’t disturb his partner. Tapping his pen against his lips restlessly, he glares down at his notebook like it’s done him a personal offense.

Nothing comes out right. It all sounds…dumb. And clunky. And unrealistic. His prose is all out of sorts, too.

Nothing is up to snuff. It’s frustrating.

By the time Mr. Carracci is telling them goodbye, Nathaniel is already drawing furiously in his sketchbook. He’s so laser-focused, he only pauses to wave slightly at the teacher because Marc poked him in the shoulder and hissed at him to be polite.

Marc is the one that wishes the man goodbye properly, actually speaking and acknowledging him. “Goodnight, Mr. Carracci! I hope you get home safely.”

“You boys as well.” The art teacher smiles at them, warmly amused, and a bit…knowing, almost.

What he knows, Marc isn’t sure. But the sheer paternal energy from the man is almost comforting, when Marc gestures at Nathaniel with an apologetic smile, and Mr. Carracci nods back, eyes glittering in understanding.

The man leaves like he’d arrived: quiet and gentle, like a sweet Spring breeze.

Deciding he’s probably had enough of a break, Marc turns back to the daunting pages of his notebook.

  ------

 He can’t do it.

Marc feels the distinct need to slam his head against the desk, but just manages to keep himself from doing it.

He doesn’t want to startle Nathaniel out of his muse. If he makes a ruckus, it might ruin his drawing.

Speaking of drawing…

Marc can’t help but be curious, leaning slightly over to look at what the redhead has been so perfectly enraptured with the past few minutes.

He blinks. And then rubs at one of his eyes, thinking maybe he wasn’t seeing things correctly.

He’s not, though. Seeing things.

Because what Nathaniel is drawing is… him?

It’s of Marc hunching over his notebook, pen against his lips, looking frustrated.

It’s a nice drawing. The proportions are all there, the expression is spot-on, and Nathaniel’s even in the process of shading it.

The only things that seem slightly off are Marc’s eyes and lips. His eyes look like they have more lashes than an old-school shoujo manga character, and his lips look way plumper than they are.

And—is that a little heart next to the pen pressed against his lips…? Or is that just some sort of accidental stray mark?

As Marc tries to puzzle that out, his heart thrumming in his chest quite suddenly, Nathaniel’s pencil stops moving. The lack of familiar scratching against the page throws the room into an eerie silence, for all of three seconds, before the sound of Nathaniel nearly choking on his spit replaces it.

The redhead all but lunges forwards, bodily covering his sketchbook, looking back at him with the exact same look of a deer caught in headlights.

Marc leans back and shuffles into his spot, face warming as he realizes he’d all but draped himself over Nathaniel to watch him draw.

Not just draw anything, either. Draw him.

“S-Sorry,” he stutters out, tripping over his own tongue. “I-I didn’t mean. I just. Um?”

He clicks his mouth shut, finding that words weren’t doing him any good. Nathaniel is staring at him with an expression of pure mortification, face steadily turning as red as his hair.

And then the other boy laughs, strangled and high-strung, and just this side of hysterical.

“I-I-It’s fine!” Nathaniel squeaks out, voice jumping an octave.

The two stare at each other for a painfully drawn-out moment.

“I, uh…P-Probably should’ve asked to watch you,” Marc admits, tugging self-consciously at a section of his messy hair. “Sorry.”

“N-no, no, it’s…Fine,” Nathaniel says with an awkward laugh, still hunched protectively over his sketchbook, eyes darting about the room instead of looking at Marc. Like a cornered animal.

Another pause.

“I-I, ah. Should’ve asked. T-To draw you,” the redhead says, slowly and haltingly, gaze now firmly on the wood-grain of the table, like it’s the most riveting thing in the world. He taps his pencil restlessly on the tabletop. “Sorry. S’probably creepy…”

“No, no, not at all!” Marc yelps, quickly waving his hands in front of himself. “It’s great! I-I mean. I’ve…never had anyone draw me, b-before, and…And you did an amazing job, so…”

Nathaniel takes a deep breath, seemingly steeling himself, before he peers up at Marc cautiously. He’s hiding behind his hair, in that way he does when he’s embarrassed or shy, but his uncovered eye gleams bright under the florescent lights.

“Y-you, um. You really think so…?” the redhead asks softly, almost disbelieving, and Marc nods his head so fast he feels like an enthusiastic bobblehead.

“Mhm! It’s amazing,” he says emphatically, with a bit too much feeling. Instead of looking weirded out, though, the other boy’s lips upturn into a lopsided smile. “I mean, I’ve always known you can draw people really well, considering our comic being based on actual real-life people? But, I guess it’s sort of…different? Seeing myself being drawn. It’s like seeing myself from your eyes, you know? It’s something wholly unique.”

He knows he’s gushing and rambling, but he can’t help it. Nathaniel’s art… It’s always been amazing, and it always manages to get Marc to wax poetic over it.

It’s just even more amazing to see himself in Nathaniel’s sketchbook, as a realized drawing, something so obviously bursting with energy and care. With both enthusiasm and careful consideration, somehow perfectly harmonious.

“Are you sure you’re not just saying all that to butter me up…?” Nathaniel finally says, smile widening, stretching out his pink cheeks.

Marc blinks back at him, taken aback and confused. “But…I always compliment your art?”

“Yeah. I know,” Nathaniel starts, chuckling breathlessly. “But, I mean…Most people compliment my art to get me to draw them, y’know.”

“I wouldn’t do that!” Marc retorts instantly, scandalized. “All artists deserve compensation for their work! I’d never do that to you, Nath. D-do you think I’d do that? Because I wouldn’t.” The redhead raises an incredulous brow at him, and Marc presses, firm. “I wouldn’t.”

Nathaniel stares at him for three seconds, brow still raised, before he bursts into laughter.

“S-sorry! Sorry! I’m not,” he wheezes through his giggles. “I’m not laughing at you, I s-swear. Okay?”

Marc feels…just a bit lost.

“O…kay?

“Look, I know. I know you wouldn’t do that. It’s just,” Nathaniel sighs, shaking his head, the movement causing his long bangs to swish in front of his face. He takes a second to tug them behind his ear, smiling that crooked smile of his, making Marc’s heart skip a beat. “I wanted to tease you a little. I know you’d never use me like that, Marc.”

The earnestness in his voice, the openness of his expressions, they’re as easy to read as a book. The catalogue of Nathaniel’s expressions is Marc’s favorite book, actually, no matter how weird and cheesy that sounds.

“I just…I guess I didn’t want you to get your hopes up or anything, of me drawing you,” Nathaniel says slowly, seemingly picking his words carefully. He taps his pencil against the table rapidly, a nervous tap-tap-tap. “I only really draw what catches my attention or inspires me. It’s a bit harder to draw on-command…”

“Right. That makes sense,” Marc notes aloud, fiddling with his choker as he realizes just how similar both their creative processes actually are. It’s no wonder they worked well together. “It’s…actually sort of the same with me and my writing.”

“Yeah?” the other asks, pencil stalling.

“Yeah,” Marc nods. He pauses, bites his lip. “I mean, when I don’t have writer’s block, of course.”

It’s a lame thing to say, a total cop-out. But it’s not like Marc can just tell him. Tell Nathaniel point-blank that he’s what inspires Marc to write, the most out of any possible subject in the world. Including Ladybug and Chat Noir, the literal subjects of their comics.

Because Marc means it in a totally non-platonic sense; that Nathaniel inspires Marc to write with all of his heart. And it would be hard to explain away as it being in a ‘friend way’.

So, he’d rather not explain it at all. Like a coward.

In spite of his total lameness, though, Nathaniel grins back at him. “Is that why you’ve been just sitting there this whole time…?”

Marc sighs, long and loud, and gently thunks his head on the table. “Yes,” he says shamefully, voice muffled slightly against the wooden surface.

Nathaniel laughs, a bright and loud sound that makes Marc’s heart squeeze in his chest.

“Ah, alright then. That makes sense,” he snickers, voice warm and teasing. “Guess I have your writer’s block to thank, then, for helping me with my own art block.”

Marc’s heart takes the time to do a bout of gymnastics, and he turns his head to the side to peer over at the other boy. “Wait. What? How?”

Nathaniel smiles back at him crookedly, tapping his pencil in a jaunty rhythm that sounds vaguely familiar. Maybe a video game song. “I couldn’t figure out what to draw, but I looked over and saw you looking so pent-up and frustrated, it sort of made for a good drawing.”

Marc stares at him, taken aback. The other rubs the back of his neck, sheepish. “And I mean, you were sitting there so still…You made the perfect model, actually.”

Marc snorts, completely disbelieving. “You mean to tell me that me being stuck in a writer’s block actually solved your art block?” he demands, sitting up and turning his body towards his friend, who simply looks bemused. “How’s that even fair?!”

“Dunno,” the redhead says with a chirp and a shrug, a shit-eating grin unfurling on his face. “But I’m not complaining.”

“Well—Well I am!” Marc sputters out, levelling a finger at Nathaniel’s face. The other boy goes cross-eyed to look at his judgmental digit. Marc lets out a disbelieving laugh, “I ended up being your inspiration, and I’m still suffering over here…!”

“Alright, alright,” Nathaniel says, gently batting Marc’s finger away. His voice is placating, but his smile was still a bit too wide in his mouth for Marc to believe. “I mean, you were a big help, being my model and all. So, use me as your inspiration, if you want.”

  ------

 Marc’s mind stalls, “So, use me as your inspiration, if you want” echoing on repeat.

It’s a flippant statement, but it still makes Marc’s face burn. He sputters, stuttering.

“Th-th-that’s not h-how it works!” he manages to choke out after a longer-than-necessary pause, turning and snatching up his notebook, hugging it against his chest and curling himself around it.

A sudden sense of deja vu hits him like a bullet.

It’s almost like when he first met Nathaniel, hopelessly crushing and too much of a shy mess to show him his writing.

He’s still hopelessly crushing now, but he’s also loosened enough and gotten enough confidence that he can show the other boy his writing, his passion.

But as he uncurls himself from shielding his notebook, it’s already too late.

The smile on Nathaniel’s face has dropped, the playfulness gone. Instead, his face shutters, replaced with an awkward grimace.

“Right. You’re right,” Nathaniel says stiffly, voice incredibly hard to read, but there’s unmistakable hurt in his eyes. He ducks his head, his bangs jostled from behind his ear, falling in front of his face in a fiery curtain to shield it once more. “I mean, you can’t write if someone’s forcing you… And it’s not like I’m an interesting subject, anyways. I wouldn’t make for good inspiration at all.”

“Th-that’s not true!” Marc snaps, without thought. The other boy jerks his head up, staring at him in shock. “You’re plenty interesting, Nathaniel! I’ve written about you before!”

Oh.

Oh no.

He did not mean to say that last part.

Nathaniel’s blue eyes are wide and gleaming like the sun glinting off the sea’s waves, staring soulfully at him, blue locking with green.

The moment stretches between them. Marc holds his breath. Or, more accurately, the breath feels like it’s been sucked straight from his lungs.

“You have…?” Nathaniel asks, voice soft. Awed, almost. He leans forwards, and Marc barely keeps himself from flinching backwards, stiffening in his seat. The other boy carefully places his fingers against the cover of the notebook still clutched to his chest, fingers splaying out to press his palm against the cover.

A siren blares in Marc’s scrambled and panicked mind, sounding suspiciously like the Kill Bill siren.

Nathaniel is touching his chest. There’s his notebook in the way, of course, but. Nathaniel is touching his chest.

Marc feels like he’s going to pass out. Whether from shock, blushing too hard, or not being able to breathe, he’s not sure. Maybe all three at once.

“Have you written about me in your notebook…?” Nathaniel asks wonderingly, dropping his gaze at the notebook in question, tapping a rhythm against the cover. Marc gulps thickly when the redhead looks back up at him, blue eye searching, lips slightly parted and looking very kissable right now.

“Pull yourself together, Marc,” he hisses to himself in his mind. “Do not kiss the boy.”

“S-s-sometimes,” he manages to choke out, voice squeaky, watching as Nathaniel’s eye widens and gleams. He averts his gaze, nervous and overwhelmed, clearing his throat. It doesn’t help his stutter. “W-when I c-c-can’t think of c-comic stuff.”

It’s a half-truth at best—barely truthful at all—because Marc pretty much exclusively writes about Nathaniel when he’s not working on their comic. Hell, he writes about Nathaniel even when he’s technically not writing about Nathaniel. Every romantic bone in his body, every scrap of adoration, is fueled through the dialogue he writes between Ladybug and Chat Noir.

Everyone’s praised their comics for having such realistic dialogue and fantastic chemistry between the main characters. What no one else realizes is that Marc pretty much writes everything ripped straight from talking to Nathaniel in real life, or from his own lovesick fantasies of what he wishes Nathaniel would say to him.

His sorry excuse for a half-baked half-truth is all Marc can come up with to not blurt out a full confession then and there and ruin everything.

“Can I read some of it…?” Nathaniel asks, voice thick with excitement and something else Marc can’t exactly name.

“Fuck no,” he thinks frantically and emphatically. “That’s embarrassing!”

The other boy bursts into raucous laughter, finally leaning out of Marc’s space, and the realization dawns that he just said that out loud.

God damn it.

Nathaniel’s head is thrown back as he laughs, the pale column of his neck on display and definitely the next thing about Nathaniel that will star in Marc’s future daydreams. Good Lord. He’s such a disaster, and Nathaniel has an unfairly nice neck.

Wait. That’s weird to think, right…? What is he, a vampire?!

Marc groans loudly and buries his burning face in his hands, no doubt red up to his ears.

“Kill me now,” he whines, while Nathaniel seems to laugh even louder. “Please.”

It takes Nathaniel a full twenty seconds before he manages to get himself somewhat under control. “B-But if you do, who’ll w-w-write about me?” he snorts, falling back into his laughing fit.

“Oh, I’ll write about you alright,” Marc says darkly, feeling mortified beyond belief, peeking between his gloved fingers to glare at his partner. “I’ll write your eulogy.”

“I-I’d be down,” the redhead wheezes out, clapping a hand on Marc’s shoulder. He wipes the tears of mirth from his eyes with the other hand, smiling wide. “I’m s-sure you’d write a bitchin’ eulogy.” He perks up. “Actually, maybe we could have that in our comic at some point! One of the heroes could fake their own death or something.”

“Sure, w-we can pull a Sherlock later,” Marc sighs, rubbing his face, the embarrassment barely receding. His cheeks still burn like a furnace beneath his fingertips; the pros of wearing fingerless gloves, he supposes.

Nathaniel squeezes his shoulder and jostles it playfully. “Hey, maybe you can write that scenario up for a future issue? It might be fun to see if we can fit it in later, and it’ll get you writing again!”

“Alright, alright, I’ll try it,” he groans, passing an irate hand through his hair, tugging at the dark strands. “Please stop man-handling me…”

“Sorry, sorry, it was for motivation’s sake,” Nathaniel jokes, but quickly lets his hand drop from Marc’s shoulder, respectful to a fault.

“It was hardly motivational…”

“No, I’m pretty sure it was.”

Marc levels him a flat look. Probably not as effective with a pink face, but. An attempt was made.

Nathaniel raises his hands in a placating motion, the motion decidedly cheeky when paired with the mischievous curl of his lips. “Alright, how about this? I try and tell you one last thing to inspire you to write. After that, I’ll leave you to it, ‘kay?”

Marc can’t help but feel a bit suspicious, raising a pointed brow at the other’s suggestion. “Really…?”

“Really,” the redhead nods.

“And this’ll be an actual inspirational statement…?”

“Hm. Well.” A pause. “I’d hope so?”

“Hmmmmm,” Marc hums, tapping at his chin. “I guess that’d be fine?”

So long as it was something to help distract Nathaniel from his huge slip-up, he was down for it.

“If you’re going to quote an anime theme song at me, I might reconsider, though,” Marc says in teasing warning, lips twitching into a grin.

The other pouts spectacularly at him, and Marc fights down a giggle at how ridiculously adorable he looks. “Ye of so little faith, Marc. Maybe I won’t say it after all—”

“No, no, please! Don’t stop because of me,” he says, giggling a bit and setting his notebook aside, carefully closed. “I’m all ears. Really.”

“Alright,” Nathaniel drawls out, blue eyes glittering.

And then he’s leaning in again, one arm propped on the table for balance, before Marc can say another word.

Nathaniel has a boyish grin on his face, lopsided and toothy, eyes half-lidded and piercing. It’s confident—bordering on flirtatious—an expression that seems nearly uncharacteristic for someone like Nathaniel.

But he makes it work.

Oh, does he make it work.

Marc’s face feels like it’s on fire, and his heart is back doing some complicated gymnastics routine. There’s about a foot of space between them, and the distance is steadily diminishing as Nathaniel leans in, closer and closer.

Marc’s breath stutters out, sounding shallow to his own ears, while his pulse skyrockets.

They’re nearly nose-to-nose by the time Marc wonders if he should be closing his eyes or not—because this is a kiss, right? How can it be anything else?—and then Nathaniel completely diverts his course.

Nathaniel’s silky hair flutters and brushes just slightly against the side of Marc’s cheek. He can feel the other’s breath puffing against his ear, and fights down a full-body shiver, nerves alighting all at once.

The redhead whispers right in Marc’s ear, “Start writing, or you’re straight.”

Marc sputters and wheezes, rearing his head back, feeling like Nathaniel had decided to sock him in the stomach instead of whatever the hell that was.

He gapes, mouth working frantically and only spilling out stuttered gibberish.

Nathaniel waits him out for a full five seconds, eyes bright, before he starts to snicker.

“N-Nathaniel,” he ends up whisper-yelling through a wheeze, which only sets off the boy in question. He finally backs away from Marc, out of his personal space, and starts cackling.

“I—Why—I c-can’t believe you,” he hisses, swatting at Nathaniel, who seems to cackle even harder. The redhead only makes a minimal effort to shield himself, too caught up in his mirth.

“S-s-straight Marc,” wheezes the redhead through his laughter, tears streaming down his face, his voice no longer capable of forming words afterwards.

“H-How dare you. I’m a proud heterophobe—” Nathaniel doubles over, clutching at his stomach. “—a-and I will not stand for this forced straight narrative.”

The other boy nearly falls off the bench. Marc—because he is a good friend, who cares for his dumbass friend-slash-crush-slash-tester of his patience—reaches out and catches him before he faceplants on the Art Club’s dirty and paint-splattered floor.

Nathaniel clutches at Marc’s token red hoodie, still absolutely hysterical.

“P-p-proud heterophobe!” he parrots back, planting his face on Marc’s shoulder.

“I was born Assigned Heterophobe At Birth,” Marc says, quite seriously, only to get a loud laugh all but in his ear in answer, for his troubles.

  ------

 It ends up taking Nathaniel a good four minutes straight (hah) in order to calm down. Every time he seemed to calm down a bit, one look at Marc’s flat and judgmental look, and he’d rev up all over again.

He’s been laugh-crying so hard, even snot was leaking out his nose. Nathaniel fumblingly wipes at his eyes with the sleeve of his blazer, and with a grimace and a mutter, Marc hands him a tissue before he managed to smear snot all over his own arms.

And yet, Marc notes with a long-suffering sigh, he still thought Nathaniel looked cute— puffy eyes and snot and all. He had it bad.

He hadn’t even realized his crush had gotten to this point, but, well. It has.

He was fucked.

“I dedicate my life to the gay agenda, and this is the thanks I get?” Marc demands in the closest approximation of iconic offended resignation, only to trigger a peal of giggles from the redhead. “Listen, if you die because you laughed too hard at my stellar gay jokes, I will not be held accountable.”

“W-will you go t-to my funeral?” Nathaniel asks, much too brightly for a boy who’d nearly choked on his own spit from uncontrollable laughter.

“Didn’t we go over this earlier? I’d write your eulogy.”

“Ah, r-right,” the other snorts, grinning dumbly, all wide and toothy. It was a charming expression, Marc notes with fond exasperation. “Your bitchin’ eulogy skills.”

“Yes,” Marc sighs, smiling in spite of himself at his dumbass friend, smile no doubt grossly fond and gooey.

He couldn’t help it, either. He was useless against Nathaniel’s dorky charm.

“So…” Nathaniel starts, finally seemingly able to breath properly once more. “Did it work?”

He eyes the other warily. “Work…?”

“My inspirational statement,” Nathaniel states, quite seriously, smirking in a completely infuriating way.

“You call that an inspirational statement?!” he demands in a hiss, all the while Nathaniel snickers evilly. “I told you to tell me something to inspire me to write! Not—not whatever the hell that was.”

“I mean. I personally think it was pretty inspiring,” the redhead says innocently, blinking his big blue eyes. The overall effect was ruined by his sheer cheek.

“It might’ve been for you…!” Marc retorts. He plays up his offense by placing a hand on his chest like an aghast French noblewoman. “But I asked for inspiration, not a threat.”

“Hey, it’s still motivational, right?” Nathaniel snickers, propping his elbow on the table and leaning in close again. Marc feels his heart trip in his chest once more. If Nathaniel keeps this up, Marc might just need to go see a specialist or something; his heart doing non-stop frantic gymnastics probably wasn’t healthy. “And besides, if you just do what I said, you wouldn’t have to worry.”

“You’re the reason I’m a Professional Heterophobe,” Marc deadpans, which earns a bark of laughter from the other.

“Impossible. I’m bi,” Nathaniel says, so casually light and flippant, it felt impossibly fake. The slight tightening of his smile and the way he tapped his fingers restlessly on his arm only cemented this. “S-so. We’re actually gay solidarity.”

“Right,” Marc manages to say, mind whirring a mile a minute.

This didn’t mean anything. It didn’t. Just because Nathaniel is bi doesn’t mean he’ll like Marc back.

But.

It’s possible, however slight. And the chances are definitely higher than they were before, when Nathaniel had just been straight. Or not out of the closet yet.

The redhead’s entire posture has turned tense, fingers tapping quicker against his arm. He’s looking at Marc, cautious, gauging.

As if Nathaniel would ever have to be afraid of Marc, of all people. He was probably one of the most blatantly gay people at school, out and proud of it. He was also someone so ridiculously in love with Nathaniel Kurtzberg, he would never turn his back on him.

“Gay solidarity can only take you so far,” Marc starts, wagging a finger jokingly at Nathaniel. “You’re on thin ice for testing me, mister.”

Marc grins, trying for something casual and playful. The beaming smile he gets in return outstrips him a thousand times over.

“We’ll see,” Nathaniel replies, rather cryptically, but his smile isn’t dimmed at all by his vagueness. He shoves his bangs behind his ear, as he says, “Now, who’re we choosing to fake their death for later?”

“Mightillustrator, so Reverser can write his eulogy,” Marc suggests, half-joking, only to get a warm laugh and even warmer smile from the other boy.

“Can’t wait to draw it,” Nathaniel says softly, grabbing onto Marc’s right hand and squeezing it. Marc feels his breath catch, hand tingling from the points of contact. “And I can’t wait to read what you write about it.”

With the way Nathaniel’s looking at him—shy, blue eyes peering through his lashes—Marc lets himself smile shyly back and think, maybe… just maybe… the possibility isn’t as farfetched as he’s been thinking. Him and Nathaniel. As partners, and partners.

“I can’t wait either,” Marc replies, voice just as soft. It’s as if neither one wants to speak too loudly, to not break the moment, somehow.

Marc turns his hand over, threading his fingers with Nathaniel’s, and squeezes them together. Black-painted nails and black fingerless gloves settling perfectly together with a pale hand with bitten-off nails and wayward pen doodles on the knuckles and the palm lightly stained with paint.

Nathaniel ducks his head slightly, ears pink and smile wide enough to split his face.

Marc has to let go after a few seconds to pick up his pen and ready himself to write—he’s not ambidextrous as Nathaniel is, the talented bastard—but it doesn’t seem to matter. Nathaniel instantly scoots over on the bench, pressing their sides together, shoulders and elbows and thighs firmly connected.

Marc twirls his pen in his hand, looks over to beam at Nathaniel—who beams back—and then opens his notebook.

He feels like he won’t be able to write fast enough to capture all he’s feeling, this swell of emotions. Overwhelming joy, sweet fondness, a burst of giddiness, confused disbelief, a flutter of embarrassment, steady hope, and heart-thumping love.

He’s perfectly inspired, now.

So he puts his pen to paper, and writes.

...

[breaniebree]

Can you share your journey as a writer? How the idea of writing fanfics came into your mind? Do you have other own fiction too? Also how do start a particular fanfic? As in do you make notes, timeline or character sketches and stuff or do you just go ahead and write and then make notes on facts?

What an interesting question -- thank you for asking!  This is literally going to be a novel response (letting you know in advance LOL)

My journey as a writer... I guess I always wrote things down, started as a child when I wrote in a diary and then as I got older I wrote a little poetry, none of it very good (though I wrote a poem when I was twelve to describe the loss I felt when my Nana, my great-grandmother died, and my aunt read it aloud at her funeral).  I wrote a few short stories, just little things, prompts from teachers in school and such and then one day I decided I wanted to write my own story.  But funnily enough, it actually came about through fan fiction.  

I used to love this book series back when I was ten called Trash by Cherie Bennett, and I was completely in love with the characters Chelsey and Nick, and when Jazz claimed that she was pregnant and Nick was the father and it did ended on a cliffhanger and I didn’t have the next book, I remember writing my own version of what happened next -- God, looking back, it was probably terrible, I definitely don’t have it anymore.  Pretty sure the book series isn’t that great looking back at it now, but when I was ten, it was great! LOL.  I also wrote a side story for Demetrius and Karma, so even then I guess I branched off into subplots.  When I was fourteen, I started my own original series, which I am still currently working on and probably will be for the rest of my life if I’m honest -- it’s changed over the years, but the characters and my ultimate goal have stayed the same.

How did writing fanfiction come into mind?  

Well, with Harry Potter, it was because of my friend Chris.  We used to talk on the phone every single night after school for hours on end and after HBP came out and Harry and Ginny were FINALLY together only for him break up with her, I was so livid that I had to wait to find out what happened!  I remember Chris and I debated what would happen in the last book for ages and one day I must have ranted too much because he told me to go write my own story if I didn’t want to wait, so I did.  

I was seventeen and it was Harry Potter and the Prophecy Fulfilled: Which looking back at it now, I think it’s not exactly the greatest story lol and you can definitely see where I’ve improved since then.  After finishing HPPH, I ended up still having different ideas, all Hinny, and went on to write a few one-shots: Almost Too Late and Beautiful Mess.  Then I started writing A Different Beginning, which turned into my Beginning series: A Different Beginning, A New Beginning, Why Don’t We Just Dance?, Life Is Fickle Like That, Graduation Party, and The Reunion.  Those of you who have been reading my fanfiction since the beginning know that I originally posted the above stories on SIYE between 2005 and 2007 and had then completed (except for the second half of Life is Fickle onwards before Deathly Hallows was published).  I didn’t start posting on fanfiction.net until 2008 and only recently on Ao3.  Somewhere in between writing the Beginning Series, I also wrote a few other Hinny one-shots including The Greatest Gift, She Never Lets It Get To Her Heart, I Loved Her First (actually Arthur POV, which I later incorporated into the Beginning Series), The River (which is a standalone but also can be read as part of the Beginning Series), When the Sand Runs Out, and then the mini-series Padfoot’s Advice (Late Night Talks with Padfoot 1 & 2, Padfoot’s Advice, and Secrets from the Past).  Then I wrote the short Hinny/Romione story: The Trouble With Secrets and was inspired to write a Jily series, which I did with Crazy Little Thing Called Love, which could technically be a prequel to the Beginning Series as I kept some of the story similar.  I also wrote a Jily one-shot called Flowers and another Hinny one-shot called I Don’t Like Your Girlfriend.

I didn’t plan on writing any more fanfiction as university became busy, but then in 2017 I started writing these little Missing Moments for Harry and Ginny both before HBP and then during, and then after.  I just sort of compiled them on my computer for a while, wondering if it would turn into a story or not and then the idea came to me one day for A Second Chance after seeing some fan art of a five-year-old-Harry in sunshades and a leather jacket while riding a child’s motorbike next to Sirius in the same outfit and the next thing I knew, this story just pored out of me in February of 2018, I had the first twelve chapters written by March and another five by April.  I started posting the Missing Moments compilation, added a few more things including the Remus and Petunia scene from ASC and kept writing A Second Chance and in May, decided it was time to share it and uploaded the first twelve chapters.  

By the time I realized it was going to be a long one, I knew which characters I would sacrifice and how it would end, but how I was going to get there I still have no idea.  I’m not a writer who methodically plots.  I have a few general bullet points at the end of my current WIP chapter and that’s really it.  I add to it occasionally as I go, but mostly, I just write as I go along.  I can’t tell you how many chapters it will be or how long it will take me to get to the next section because frankly, it’s constantly changes.  I do not write in chronological order, which means I am often writing anywhere between 2-6 chapters at the same time depending on what scene has drawn my attention.  I might write something today that fits in the chapter I am currently working on and then by the time I finish writing other stuff, I realize that it doesn’t really fit there and stick it ahead into the next chapter or ten chapters from now.  I write where my heart takes me and where my creativity flows.  

I rarely ever work on more than one story at the same time, though I did write the short Newtina one-shot for my friend Heather as a Christmas present in 2018.  She requested it and I couldn’t write it, I found it so hard as I like them but it’s not characters I loved enough to write so I did it with a Luna spin-in, which I found helped.  I never take writing requests so this was very different for me, but I think it turned out cute: Say Love, ‘Cause We Got All the Time in the World.  I only recently uploaded it a month or so ago because I found it on my computer LOL.

Do you make notes, timeline or character sketches and stuff or do you just go ahead and write and then make notes on facts?

Once I am into the story, my notes are EXTREMELY detailed.  I do have a time line and separate documents for the following:

Character lists and family trees

General notes on: Political stuff, bills I’ve written, the sacred 28 document I wrote, tattoos mentioned, important dates, moon cycle dates of Remus’ life, classes I’ve invented (what they are about, who teaches them etc), textbook list per school year, notes on each Animagus form and information about their animals, actual time tables I wrote up Monday to Friday for Harry’s third/fourth, and fifth year, details of Zee and Tonks’ engagement rings, history and outline of Dante’s circles of hell with notes on how to incorporate into story, notes on pregnancy, character’s wands, geographic locations of characters, and any other little notes I think are important but don’t belong in the bullet points at the end of my current WIP chapter

History and ancestry of each family (from Harry Potter Lexicon, Pottermore, Harry Potter wiki, and my own personal creations).  This also includes manor information for Potter, Black, Longbottom, Nott, and Malfoy.

Hogwarts lay-out including stuff I’ve added or made up

Ministry of Magic departments and people (known and created)

List of spells (including ones I’ve made up and which chapter and which character introduced it to who)

List and pictures of Sirius’ motorbikes with information on each one

List of Pensieve memories and marauder moments (crossed out which ones I’ve shared already, some are written and waiting to be used and others just a general idea)

Terms and phrases from different languages I’ve used in the past

My playlist of songs I have mentioned in the story

An entire document dedicated to Operation FUVP including a Voldemort timeline which I have now shared in the story itself (also includes when and where each character found the Horcruxes)

A list of some of the recipes I mentioned, and 

I have a 72 page document that is literally just detailed chapter summaries to help me remember what the hell I’ve written LOL (also highlights introductions to new characters in a different font colour to help me find out when people were introduced).

Hope this answers your question -- thank you again for asking!

[gashinamoon]

An Eye for Poetry - an Olicity fic

Summary: Oliver and Felicity make great use of the fridge magnets that they'd originally bought for their kids to play with.

Words: 1502

Notes: So my friend Brianna posted this tweet and I haven't really been able to stop thinking about it since. So this happened. You're welcome, Bri. I hope you all enjoy this! Please let me know what you think!  Thanks to @ghostfoxlovely for helping me pick names for the kids. I've literally never written a fic where they have kids before and I had no idea how stressful it can be.

Read on AO3

Waking up on Sunday morning was always bittersweet for Felicity Smoak.

It was nice because Oliver always took the kids to the park early so she could sleep in or get the house cleaned or read a book or do some work or whatever she felt like doing. So she was grateful, she really was.

But it also meant that almost every Sunday she woke up in an empty bed and the house was too quiet and both of those things never made her feel like doing much at all besides waiting for her family to come back.

She never thought she’d ever be one of those wives and moms who misses their family as soon as they leave her sight, but over the last 3 years, that's exactly what she’d become. And it was especially bad on Sundays. She just didn't have the heart to tell Oliver that she really wished he wouldn't take the kids out so early. They all always came back so happy and excited and she knew they'd had a great time, Oliver included, and she just couldn't bear to take that from them for her own purely selfish reasons.

Today, however, was different.

She’d woken up and rolled over to Oliver’s side, slipping her arms under his pillow and breathing in his scent, the way she always did when she woke up without him, only this morning, she’d found a note under the pillow. Grabbing her glasses excitedly she’d found that it was written on a piece of notebook paper that had been torn messily from the book and it was slightly sticky with… something, she assumed it was maple syrup or maybe juice from some strawberries, and it said;

Morning, mommy! We left you a message on the refrigerator! And there's pancakes on the table! Love you, Emilia & Isla

PS Daddy had nothing to do with this PPS Daddy also said the pancakes would be cold by the time you woke up but Isla cried so we made them anyway. They'll probably still taste good if you microwave them for 3 minutes. PPPS Sorry about the kitchen. We were driving daddy crazy and he had to get us out of the door before he cried. He says he’ll clean it up as soon as he gets back and we’re taking naps.

Felicity chuckled to herself and smiled as she reread the note several times. It was written in Oliver’s handwriting, but she could tell he’d been distracted or in a rush because it was almost intelligible by the end. She could perfectly picture the girls wanting to write it themselves, even Isla who was only 2, and Emilia’s 4 year old handwriting alone would have taken up six pages in the notebook. She knew they'd still be downstairs writing it now if Oliver had given in, like he usually did when they wanted something. Anything.

She laughed again and got up out of bed, slipping on Oliver’s shirt that he always left for her on the floor by the bed, and a pair of her fluffy socks. Leaving the bed unmade, she headed downstairs.

*

Oliver was right to have apologised about the kitchen. There were dishes in the sink as well as in the dishwasher that had been left open, there was the same sticky substance that had been on the note all over the counters, there were crayons and markers and superhero action figurines all over the floor and the girl’s pyjamas had been left strewn over the back of the bar stools at the breakfast table. It definitely looked like it was worthy of an apology.

But she’d definitely seen it look worse.

Ignoring the mess, she walked over to the fridge, smiling at the plate of pancakes that had been left for her as she passed the table. There were two, covered in maple syrup and raspberries which explained the sticky stuff, with a knife and fork left neatly next to the plate. They were also cold, as Oliver had said, she could see that even without trying them, but she looked forward to putting them in the microwave and eating them all the same.

Reaching the fridge, she saw that the magnets they had with different words and letters on so that the girls could practice their spelling and writing, had been arranged into what looked like some sort of poem.

She is a goddess to me My sun and my moon A luscious garden of beauty My ship through the storm

Felicity felt her cheeks blush red hot with happiness as she read the poem. The girls had clearly had very minimal input.

Oliver could be such a huge sap sometimes, and she could never understand fully whether she absolutely loved it or kind of hated it. She’d never been the overly romantic type, even with Oliver let alone before him, and she sometimes still struggled with his affections for her. Of course, deep down she adored hearing him say things like this or doing ridiculously sweet and wonderful things for her, but those things also had the tendency to make her feel inadequate sometimes, like she just couldn't compete or didn't deserve them. And then there were the times where they just made her blush and also cringe a little inside because come on, “a luscious garden of beauty” was a sentence she was sure didn't come from this century or the one before it.

Grinning to herself at just how painfully over the top Oliver could be sometimes, she bent down and gathered some of the remaining magnets together to add her own sentence onto the end.

As she thought of something to add, she remembered how ridiculous Oliver had found these magnets when she’d first bought them, telling her that no 3 year old needed to know complex words like dazzling or effervescent or shattering just to name a few that had been in the pack. He’d eaten his own words a few days later when said 3 year old had walked into the living room and asked why the sun was so “resplendent” that morning. Felicity had just smiled smugly to herself at the shocked expression on his face. Later that night he told her how happy he was that it looked like at least one of their kids would grow up to be geniuses like their mom. Felicity hadn't argued with that.

Finishing up her touches to Oliver’s poem, Felicity stepped back and snapped a picture on her phone, sending it to Oliver in a text before smiling and going over to her pancakes to heat them up for breakfast.

*

Emilia and Isla were playing happily together in the sandbox at the park when Oliver felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. They'd been out of the house for an hour now and since it was so early, they were practically the only ones there. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, clear blue skies and bright sunshine forecast for the entire day. After the chaos that had ensued in the kitchen just an hour ago, Oliver was glad to be out of the house and far away from all the mess even if he did feel bad about Felicity having to wake up to such disarray. Part of him hoped she’d still be asleep when they got back and he could clean it up himself.

Glancing down at his phone, his opened the text, smiling widely when he saw it was from Felicity. His grin soon turned into choked laughter when he opened the picture attachment.

It was an image of his poem on the fridge, except there was an extra line on the bottom so that the poem now read:

She is a goddess to me My sun and my moon A luscious garden of beauty My ship through the storm

and dat butt hot

Underneath the picture was a simple text message.

Your poem was nice, but you forgot something.

He laughed again as he reread the text. It was just so… Felicity. She had to be in a very particular mood to not make a joke out of something overly romantic that he’d said or done for her. At first, it had annoyed him. All he wanted was for her to see herself the way he saw her but she always seemed so adamant to lessen it somehow, like it made her uncomfortable. But after talking about it, after hearing how she felt sometimes, like she wasn't worthy of his affection somehow, it had only made him want to do it more. One day she’d see herself how he saw her, he’d make sure of it. And for now, he would have to just take her cute little blushes, dry humour and slightly self deprecating jokes as they came.

A few seconds later, his phone buzzed again.

Come back, please. I miss you guys. Love you.

Barely 5 minutes later, Oliver and the girls were in the car on the way home.

If you want to be tagged in my fics/chapter updates, feel free to let me know! :)

(Also, let me know if there’s anything you don’t want to be tagged in! i.e. fics that aren’t strictly Olicity/Arrow, I’m more than happy to remove tags!)

@geniewithwifi @scu11y22  @dandeelies @ghostfoxlovely@ bellemmie @keytoflowers2509 @relativelyobsessedfangirl @oliverfel4 @hope-for-olicity @lemonlime799 @pleasantfanandstudent @thebookjumper @almondblossomme @broken-canary @green-arrows-of-karamel @youngfolksoldsoul @lovethishealthylife

[reveriesforyou]

A Little Help

Hi guys! I wrote this on my phone and I haven't been to sleep in forever, so I'm pretty positive this is just some rambly words about Tom and the reader wanting to be in a relationship, but being too shy to actually tell the other. So, instead, they just do small things to help each other out. P. S., Harrison ships it. I hope you enjoy!

A Little Help

“You need help, let me grab that for you,” Tom said, reaching up to plunk the novel from the shelf. “Which one do you want?” Tom asked, bringing a hand to rest upon her waist to readjust her position to point out the book she’d been trying to obtain.

    She stood up on her tiptoes, eyes desperately seeking to survey the shelf clearer, “I actually don’t have one particular in mind, would it be a bother to just take everything by Pablo Neruda down?”

    “Course not,” Tom said and easily picked all the Neruda’s out for her. “Who is he?”

    Her eyes widened and she smiled, happy to tell Tom everything she knew about Pablo Neruda. “He’s a famous Chilean poet, I mean, he eventually went into the political field, but I mostly know him from his poetry. When I was in high school, my best friend and I were obsessed with a poem he wrote called, ‘My Ugly Love.’”

She was starting to ramble and she knew that Tom probably couldn’t give two shits about the ugly love spoken about in the poem, but she was so close to him and he smelled good, and his chest was firm when she leaned into him, so it would be a fair statement to say that she was beyond distracted. “It starts out-”

Tom didn’t remove his hand from her waist, figuring that if she didn’t like it, she’d step back from him. His gaze flickered from her lips, to the rosy flush gliding across her cheeks, and then up to her eyes. Tom drank in her words about Pablo Neruda, still not quite registering who he was, but still completely absorbed by her words.

As he listened to her, still holding an assortment of novels in his hands, he accidentally cut her off completely. “Wait, do you have it memorized?”

She was nearly positive that her entire body was tinged pink, “Yeah, I won’t bore you with the details, I just like the poem because it’s different.”

“No, no, tell me. I wanna hear about it. I just got,” Tom searched for an appropriate word. “Excited?” Truly, Tom had cut her off because she looked so endearing that he thought that he would physically blow up if he didn’t kiss her.

He loved it when she talked about stuff like this, he could tell it was one of the few times that she actually felt confident in voicing her opinions.

“My ugly love, you’re a messy chestnut.

My beauty, you are pretty as the wind.

Ugly: your mouth is big enough for two mouths.

Beauty: your kisses are fresh as new melons.

Ugly: where did you hide your breasts?

They’re meager, two little scoops of wheat.

I’d much rather see two moons across your chest,

two huge proud towers.

Ugly: not even the sea contains things like your toenails.

Beauty: flower by flower, star by star, wave by wave,

Love, I’ve made an inventory of your body.

My ugly one, I love you for your waist of gold.

my beauty, for the wrinkle on your forehead.

My Love: I love you for your clarity, your dark.”

She finished and looked up to him with a smile on her face.

“So, what do you think?” She asked him, reaching up to sift through the books that Tom had gotten down for her.

“How do you know the best of everything?” Tom muttered, eyes widened, because, as usual, she was right. The poem was supremely different from any of the traditionally romantic sonnets that he’d read.

She smiled and unwound herself from his grasp and wandered down the next aisle, in search for her friend and Harrison, who’d accompanied them to the bookstore.

Tom, still leaned up against the shelf was slow to notice Harrison’s approaching figure.

“Dude, you need to ask her out. It’s getting ridiculous. Everybody, even strangers, already think you’re together, so why not make it real? Not as if she’s going to say no.” Harrison urged.

Shrugging his shoulders and racking his brain for an adequate response, Tom eventually stuttered out, “you never know, she could just want to be friends, and then if I ask her out, then she won’t even wanna be that.”

Harrison rolled his eyes, “Well then, mate, better wipe that drool off your chin.”

The next morning, in a haste to open the door for her, Tom had accidentally whacked himself in the face with it. Now, he not only sported a bloody nose, but also a split lip. Still, he wasn’t complaining.

She’d freaked out when she saw the blood drip from his nose and the bruises already forming on his jaw and had rushed him home. She stood in between Tom’s legs, while he perched on her kitchen table, and held up towels to stop the bleeding.

“Tom, literally what the hell?” She murmured, gliding her soft palm across his lower lip.

“I told you, I saw a bee and I didn’t want it to sting you,” Tom lied. Obviously, there hadn’t been a bee, but he refused to tell her that he’d nearly broken his face purely to hold the door open for her.

“But I never saw it? I didn’t even hear one, and besides, it wasn’t like there were flowers around. Why would a bee wander over here?” She mused, walking to the fridge to grab a bag of frozen vegetables.

“No, no,” Tom whined, “Those will be too cold, I don’t wanna put that on my face.”

She pouted, “Too bad, let me help you! I don’t want you to be hurt.”

Tom hesitated, and then opened his arms and pulled her close to him, keeping a gentle hand on the small of her back. “Fine, fine. Just do it.”

She smiled and rocked up onto her tippy toes and pressed her make-shift icepack to his face. He didn’t even shiver when the frost-covered package touched his bare skin, because when she was this close to him, he could see the multitude of colors swirling in her eyes.

A week later, it was time for Tom and Harrison to, once again, travel for the press tour. Tom was gutted. He couldn’t imagine leaving her without explaining to her that he wanted to be with her so badly, that the mere thought of leaving her made him physically ill.

Little did he know, that she felt the same way. All he knew, was that he was going over to her apartment to give her one last goodbye hug while Harrison waited in the car.

From inside her apartment, she spritzed on Tom’s favorite perfume. Whenever she wore it, he always leaned into her more while they were in conversation, or fiddled with her hair more and didn’t pull away from her when they hugged.

She had done her best to conceal her nighttime tears with makeup and she prayed that Tom wouldn’t notice them as she opened the door.

Tom stepped in quickly and before she even shut the door, Tom surged towards her. Bending down to her height, Tom threw his arms around her, ignoring that his phone had fallen to the floor.

“Are you alright Tom?” She questioned, hands stiff at her sides.

“Just gonna miss you loads and loads and loads.” His voice was muffled by her sweater.

Her arms wound around him, “You know I’ll miss you too.”

“I don’t want to leave you yet.” Tom pulled away and his gaze bore into her floor.

Taking him by the hand, she pulled him to sit down on her sofa. “I made you something to help.”

Tom curled an arm around her frame as she sat a heavy box down in front of him, “Darling, what is it? You shouldn’t have gotten me anything, I didn’t know-”

She cut him off by pressing a hand over his lips. “Promise to look at it on the plane?”

She looked to cute and eager and shy that Tom had agreed, and now, after finally boarding the plane, Tom opened the box.

Inside were all the Pablo Neruda books that she’d bought the day she read him ‘My Ugly Love,’ and a note.

The note read,

Hi Tom,

I’m just going to assume that you followed my directions and now you’re flying safely through the air, but if you’re not, and I find out, may Mother Earth save your soul.

All of these books were mine before yours because I wanted to give you something that would remind you of me. I wrote you little notes on all the pages, so it’ll be like we’re talking about them. I highlighted my favorite ones for you in pink.

Please don’t forget about me.

Tom scoffed, as if he could ever forget her. He opened the first book and quickly spotted the swirls of her delicate handwriting on the bottom corner of the page. It read,

Don’t freak out, some of the poems are in Spanish, but I made sure to help translate them for you in the margins.

Tom smiled and began to leaf through the poems, blown away by not only the words of Pablo Neruda, but also by her tiny love poems for him written so softly in the captivity of the margins that he could barely tell that they were there.

When he landed, he would make sure to send her some of his own.

[shadowlineswriting]

Lewis, Part 2

Remember that guy, C.S. Lewis, who wrote The Chronicles of Narnia? Well he wrote a bunch of other stuff, too!

The cool thing about Lewis is that he was a fiction writer and a scholar. His intellect can’t help but ooze over into his stories, but he does have a lot of interesting essays and exploratory works as well. He didn’t become a Christian until he was an adult, so much of his writing was done as he worked through his thoughts about religion and Jesus and Christianity overall.

I used to have a lot more of his essays but Lewis was a hardcore Anglican and I’m not, so I don’t agree with everything he says. Ergo, we are only going to discuss five more Lewis works here, and only two of them are nonfiction.

The two nonfiction books I own by C.S. Lewis are Mere Christianity and The Business of Heaven. Mere Christianity is a very popular book. In fact, Christianity Today voted it the best book of the twentieth century. The book discusses “Christianity” and what that really means, because so many religions claim to be branches of Christianity and yet we don’t always worship the same gods. He discusses the reasons Christians disagree with one another over doctrine and ultimately says that it has to do with the Laws of Right and Wrong, or the Law of Nature. In fact, the arguments have very little to do with the specifics of religion and a whole lot to do with morality.

He’s not wrong, in my opinion. I know I struggle with people who claim to be Christians and then say they are part of the Mormon church, or they are Catholic, or Jehovah’s Witnesses. Because for me, Christianity disagrees with some of the fundamental dogma of those other religions, and I have a hard time understanding why members of those religions can’t see it. Mere Christianity is the kind of book I should read about every other month or so because it helps everything make sense.

That’s just me, though.

When I was researching The Business of Heaven I found almost no information, which was confusing until I opened the cover. Turns out this is a one-year devotional that borrows a daily reading from Lewis’s works (and there are a bunch to draw from!). HOW COOL IS THAT. I can’t tell you how I feel about the book until December 31st, obviously, but I’ll get back to you on that. I’m keeping both of these books.

The other three fiction books I have of Lewis’s are The Pilgrim’s Regress, The Dark Tower and Other Stories, and The Screwtape Letters. I have a lot to say about all of these so I’ll try not to ramble, but...well, if the past is any indication, you should probably go get a snack or something.

The Pilgrim’s Regress--To be completely honest, I thought this book was just another version of The Pilgrim’s Progress and that’s why I bought it initially. That is not the case. While Lewis does borrow Bunyan’s style and general plot points (namely, the idea of a man going on a literal journey to find God), this work is actually allegorical for Lewis’s own journey. It’s not that this is a BAD book...but unless you want to debate philosophical thought processes page after page, it IS a boring book. It received terrible reviews, to the point where Lewis actually wrote an explanatory preface in later editions. The best part about this book is that it quotes my favorite Tolkien poem a few times. So I’m glad I read it, but it’s definitely out.

The Dark Tower and Other Stories--Published posthumously, this is a collection of short stories and partial manuscripts found in Lewis’s collection after his death. The stories are fun. He wrote a science fiction piece about Medusa living on the moon. He discussed a blind man who gained his sight but couldn’t understand what light was (because really, how WOULD you explain light to someone who’d never seen it?). “The Shoddy Lands” may be one of my favorite pieces ever because it’s incredibly thought-provoking. And I found “The Dark Tower” to be frankly kind of messed up, but also frustrating because they only recovered part of the manuscript. We’ll never know how it ends. This is a great collection of very diverse stories, though, so it stays!

The Screwtape Letters--Imagine me rubbing my hands together gleefully and you’ll get a sense of how much I love this book. It is, literally, a collection of letters. Each one is addressed to “My dear Wormwood” and signed by “Your affectionate uncle, Screwtape.” At first it just seems like Screwtape is sending his nephew advice on how to be a terrible person, but it doesn’t take long before you realize that Screwtape is actually a senior demon instructing a younger demon how to keep his human “patient” an unbeliever instead of a Christian. 

It is disturbing.

I’m not a huge fan about books on demons (although we do have another one in the Ls coming up!), but when they’re done with chilling accuracy, I do love them. This is such a one. Screwtape is a slimy but brilliant demon who seems to find a loophole for any Christian motive. When his nephew’s patient starts to wonder about God, Screwtape tells Wormwood to distract him. “They find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes,” he writes. And it’s so true. “Do remember that you are there to fuddle him.”

I wish all atheists would read this book.

There are too many reasons I love this book to explain them all to you, but if you’re a Christian, the next time you’re frustrated or upset you should take a reeeeaaaalllly good look at where that’s coming from. This book STAYS.

A little food for thought from Screwtape:

“We want him to be in the maximum uncertainty, so that his mind will be filled with contradictory pictures of the future, every one of which arouses hope or fear. There is nothing like suspense and anxiety for barricading a human’s mind against (God). He wants men to be concerned with what they do; our business is to keep them thinking about what will happen to them.”

“I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one.”

“It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

“The best of all is to let him read no science but to give him a grand general idea that he knows it all.”

[emikostudio2018]

Literature review (with out bibliography)

What I read to feed my (art) seed.

I am often asked, what area of art am I studying, and sometimes I want to say I am a painter, or sculptor, because I feel like that's the familiar answer that people expect. But alas, I am neither, and maybe both, along with, drawer, writer and marginal infiltrator. I am (dis)assembler of grammatical structures, (de)colonizer of spaces, and (re)constructive meditator.

Is this what you would classically call ‘artist’?

No, I think it’s what you would classically call ‘con-artist’.

To be that confident-artist though, I have to know my shit…and so I read. This year, I am Modern Māori artist, who loves science-fiction and questioning authority, because like some punk once said, “authority is only a system of control”…maaaaan. But the more I read, the more I learn how much I don’t know, and that ‘authority’ has systematically controlled me from learning about my own culture. So the perks of a contemporary art degree is, I can use this time to study whatever I want. When you think of me, think of terms like ‘Space-Māori’ or ‘Astronesian’, cause here I come baby. I’m taking this spaceship into my own control and using the knowledge of my tupuna to guide me into poetic, futuristic Māori art-jams through time and space.

Matariki, the star of the year, 2017 Rangi Matamua non-fiction

Matariki, the star of the year. It is full of insights and knowledge of Māori astronomy that I had never encountered before. One of the most exciting things about this book, is that it is Māori knowledge, told from a Māori perspective. We are in the age of Māori taking agency of our knowledge and legitimizing it. In the past Eldon Best had written about Māori astronomy and gathering what he could understand of the vast knowledge—which at the time was far superior than the European counterparts (3)— but he couldn’t grasp it all, and also couldn’t understand properly the way Māori saw the stars. For example Best translated “Matariki’ literally, ‘mata’ meaning eyes, and ‘riki’ being a plural of ‘iti’ which means small, so he told the world that Matariki meant small eyes. But Matamua revokes this incorrect translation. The story of the word Matariki does indeed include eyes, but they are in no way small. The ariki Tawhirimatea was so distort with the separation of his parents Ranginui and Papatūānuku that he tore his eyes out and threw them up to the heavens where they landed on Rangi’s chest and stayed there, creating Matariki, Te Mata o te ariki Tawhirimatea, which means the eyes of the god Tāwhirimātea.

I have been reading this book, as research to feed into my own art practices and alsojust out of interest and wanting to know more about Te Ao Māori. There is a story inMatamua’s book about Te Waka o Rangi, captained by Taramainuku. Matarikimarks the prow of this waka. Taramainuku lets down his net and pulls up the spirits ofthe dead. They wait there on his waka until the next Matariki season where the wakacan be seen again rising just before the sun. When it is time to celebrate Matariki andthe coming of the new year, it is also the time to let go of the dead as Taramainukureleases all the spirits from his waka and they go into the heavens to become stars.Stories like these totally fall into my astronesian space Māori undertones of my workthis year, Māori been space Māori’s since way back.

The Lathe of Heaven, 1974 Ursula K. Le Guin Fiction

I read this book over the summer just been. While stuck in the hump of the book— which often happens to me—Le Guin just up and died. Her death wasn’t so unexpected to her family, I’m guessing—she had been sick for a while, and she was 88 years old—but the idea hadn’t crossed my mind, or rather the actuality. Probably because in my mind Le Guin was more like a hero, or the high priestess of sci-fi, or arch mage, maybe even close to divinity, but in actuality, she was human. So propelled by mourning and longing, I searched the pages of The Lathe of Heaven, looking for her. If at the time, I was worried at all about losing Le Guin and her genius I was quickly reassured in my faith. While a lot of Le Guin’s books have an anthropological base from which her social-political commentaries spring, The Lathe of Heaven moves more from philosophical questions. If you had the ability to change the world for better, should you? and could one even do such a thing against the formidable force of nature? Le Guin brings into focus human ambition to play God, only to back-hand that destructive notion by illuminating our very own human nature and “all the stuff we carry around in us”(125).

I guess the only relevance this book has to my art practice at the moment is that it is writing, and it is science fiction. I am mostly looking at Māori and Pacifika artists, but am not limited to this, and Le Guin is formative for me. In The Lathe of Heaven Le Guin challenges authority and warns about messing with nature, and reminds us how small we humans are. I think these are good things to think about and are a part of what I keep in my mind when I do anything.

Sleep Standing/Moetū, 2017 Witi Ihimaera with Translation by Hēmi Kelly Fictional, based on true a true story

In this fictional retelling of the battle of Ōrākau, Witi Ihimaera educates his audience on the historical three-day battle that ended the Waikato land Wars in 1964. I’m not a huge fan of Witi Ihimaera writing, but this seemed like a good way to learn about thebattle of Ōrākau without having to read a history book, and also from the perspectiveof Māori. I am Ngāti Maniapoto, and it’s frustrating that I know about the first andsecond world wars and the Oregon crossing but I don’t know about the Waikato landwars, which is where I am from and where I spent the majority of my life. I’m tryingto be this modern Māori artist, but because of colonisation, I don’t actually know ahuge amount of about my culture, and so reading this book helps. It also helps me torecognize writing that I wouldn’t call bad…just, not for me.

Nga Moteatea Volume I, 1928 (1959) Sir  pirana Ngata, Pei Te Hurinui Jones non-fiction

I first remember hearing about Nga Moteatea a few years ago when my mum and Aunty were talking about one of our tupuna in the book, my great, great, great, grandmother, Hēmā Spencer. But I hadn’t actually opened the book until a couple weeks ago. The books became relevant to me as research and inspiration for my own studio practice, one of the weeks when my mind and body are exhausted of creativity, so reading is the best thing to do.

I’ve been trying to read as much Māori poetry as I can over the past year, and Nga Moteatea are recordings of the oldest poetry that we have. I think what I find most beautiful is the rawness of the emotions in some of the compositions. Matangi-Hauroa, in lamenting for the brave, talks about being woken in the night by visions of grief and lost companions “Give me a sharpened obsidian to lacerate my skin…..take away my blood, my body’s essence…so that all you may see ’tis indeed myself” (227). There is so much reference to places and nature and gods in these compositions as well, which have more weight or something then when similar subject matter is mentioned in more modern poetry…Well it feels like that reading this book.

Puna Wai Kōrero An Anthology of Māori poetry in English, 2014 Reina Whaitiri, Robert Sullivan non-fiction

There are many politically charged opinions around the use of Te Reo Māori and English, but there is a nice line in the introduction of Puna Wai Korero, that goes something like, English gave Māori a whole new language in which to describe their poetic aspirations. The book is homage to Hone Tuwhare whom Whaitiri and Sullivan acknowledge as “Aotearoa’s poet laureate.” I have read only a handful of Poems in this book, and have so many more to get through, not that it is a task, I just tend to read poetry a lot slower than anything else, I like to take my time with it.

I don’t know if it's a strange or dangerous thing, but I am always interested in poems that are written to the dead, or about the dead, this seems to be a reoccurring theme in Puna Wai Kōrero, as well as other Māori poetry collections. I guess it would only be dangerous if I was to write about the dead in an incorrect way, or not follow proper protocol around tapu. I can use books like Puna Wai Kōrero to know how to write about such topics appropriately. Another very useful thing this book does, is introduce me to a variety of Māori poets and give me a taste of what their work is like.

Moon story, Small Holes in the Silence, 2006 Patricia Grace Fiction

Often Rona has been portrayed as a hot-tempered forgetful woman, in A.W. Reed’sMāori Legends, he opens the story with this quote about Rona; “She was loved by her husband but, as happens only too often, their lives were spoilt by her quick temper and the sharpness of her tongue”(41). This quote is frustrating on so many levels, (…I’ll mention only two) firstly Reed shouldn’t be so god dam sexist, which he is throughout the entire book, he makes it seem like her hot temper was the cause of all her marital problems, and if only she quit her blabbering, her husband’s love would make everything peachy, and secondly he shouldn’t be so disrespectful of the characters he had the privileged to write about. In Patricia Grace’s version Rona has been under a lot of stress from an enemy attack and has been left with too many tasks of holding the small hapu together after their defeat. In her hurry to fill the calabashes with water, she doesn’t just stub her toe and bang her shin like Reed tells, in Grace’sversion she full on breaks her ankle and is knocked unconscious. The moon—who inthis story has been described as a conjoined twin to the earth—has a beautiful butlonely existence. When the moon takes Rona, they become close companions andtogether “collate the seasons, and roll and unroll the tides” (118).

Patricia Grace’s work is what I remind myself of when I write about women. There are so many slippery slopes in the English language that are oppressive to woman, and to work around them takes critical analysis of each word you use. Its like unlearning all the things you have been taught, and then reconstructing them to tell the story you want to tell. Epeli Hau’Ofa does a great job of re-constructing thought of how the pacific is viewed in his essay “our Sea of Islands”.

Tail of the Taniwha, 2016 Courtney Sina Meredith autobiographical (non) Fiction

This book helped me shape my own poetry over the past year, I think it started when Courtney Sina Meredith made me cry. She talked about saying goodbye to her family at the Auckland airport when going on her OE, and that longing when you are overseas and miss your family. This particularly made me cry because I had that same experience. The last time I saw my nana was at the Auckland airport, she always had a taste for drama and so she decided to die the first time I ever left the country. Courtney Sina Meredith helped me to feel confident enough to write about losing my nana and express those cooped up feelings I was holding onto.

There is an accessibility to Courtney Sina Meredith’s writing that is very appealing to me. She often uses ‘simple’ words, nothing too flashy if you know what I mean. Often people mistake this for a lack of knowledge of the English language (in my writing this is probably the case) but I view it as more of an egalitarian quality. I think there is skill in finding ordinary words and showing their beauty, what can I say, I’m a minimalist.

Por Vida, 2015 Kali Uchis Album autobiographical (non) Fiction

I think more than anything kind of research of inspirational value, this album helps my soul. Sometimes when you go through big events in your life, the music you listen to at those times become sentimental or holds you in those places. But I have been listening to this album for a couple years now, over which I feel I have changed and grown a lot, and this album still cradles me in close, and sends me confident into the world. Maybe this is because me and Kali Uchis were born only 11 days apart and we share the same astrological sign, having a connection that is literally written in the stars. Well, I don’t know if Kali would agree with that, but she probably wont read this, so I’m claiming it. I love her smooth beats and how her lyrics talk about clichéd situations, but don’t come off as cheesy at all, well not to me. Kali shows us that she is a tough ass babe, while also showing us moments of vulnerability. This is what I’m all about.

Cokes, 2018 Coco Solid Mixtape Autobiographical (non) Fiction

In an interview with under the radar, Coco solid says that there is no over arching theme to the mixtape, but if she was going to look at all of her work over all the years, there is always an “enduring idea of sovereignty”. Coco made this ‘enduring idea’ pretty clear by releasing Cokes on Waitangi day this year. Coco Solid is one of those inspiring, multi-talented, pop queens, that there really isn’t enough of. Over the past 20 to 30 years there have been many Māori wahine who have done the hard work of making their voices heard. Names like Dame Whina Cooper, Merata Mita, Robyn Kahukiwa, Patricia Grace and Lisa Reihana are amongst the wahine we will forever be grateful for and look to for reassurance. These are the ones who laid down the road for the next generation to walk on, and Coco Solid is doing just that. I feel like a lot of our responsibility as contemporary Māori is to uphold exactly that title of ‘contemporary Māori’. In the journey a lot of Māori make in reconnecting with their whakapapa, we have to be careful to not become caught in oppressive, clichéd orstereotypical ideas about Māori and what ‘Māori’ ‘should’ be, relevant here is one ofthose oppressive ideas of Māori being ‘stuck in the past’, a culture of ancienttraditions, when in actuality Māori have always been innovators and quick to adapt.This doesn’t mean ‘out with the old, in with the new’ we don’t have to chose new overold, that is a particularly western idea of binaries, like I said Māori are innovators, andI think our cultures allows for growth. In the RNZ two-part show on AotearoaFuturism, Coco Solid talks about making Māori art that can be futuristic if we want,and not having to fit into the small box that colonisation would like to keep us in.Genre’s like science-fiction are not associated with Māori art, we are only left withflora and fauna to create our art from, and Coco Solid just wants everything andanything to be available to her, and ‘is that too much to ask?’ I find everything that comes out of Coco Solid—and she does it all—so empoweringbecause I don’t make classically Māori art, but I still want my work to be of Te AoMāori and Coco helps to give me the autonomy and agency to go on my SpaceMāori, Astronesian pursuits.

fafswagvogue.com 2018 FAFSWAG, NZ on Air Non-(science)Fiction 

What makes this website so good, is that these are real people, battling in real placesin Auckland, but it creates the (un)reality of some futuristic city, where fa’afafine runthe show and glamorously dance battle each other.

 So much of what FAFSWAG do inspires me. They are decolonizing spaces andclaiming them as their own. The art collective Witch Bitch, do spoken wordperformances, I saw them perform down here last year, and was in awe of theatmosphere they created. Tamatoa from the FAFSWAGvogue website is one of thethree members of Witch Bitch, you can watch him perform through his story on thewebsite. FAFSWAG encompass everything that I want in my art, they are futuristicand yet work from Polynesian backgrounds, and bring that poly flavor into their9performances. They are strong and proud and support each other, by creating safe,decolonized spaces.

[metavanaj]

My first big piece of assessment

Preface: So this was part of my first piece of assessment, for the end of semester. All the other stuff prior to this was just writing exercises compiled into a “portfolio”, which hey I might share some of here. However for this, we had to hand in a poem (no longer than 2 pages) and a short story (1500-2000 words). So this is the short story. Title is a little on the nose but it’s probably one of the best pieces of writing I’ve poured time into. Enjoy…I guess. 

PS - I failed the Intro subject so I have no clue if this is actually any good but hey, I’ve never been one for summarising the worth of a piece, or someone’s ability to do something, into a single number. BTW, this has not been edited since I submitted it; it may not be grammatically perfect.

Title: Girl kills Boy because Girl felt like it.

I never thought my first time would feel like...like this.

The moon was gleaming through the kitchen window, highlighting the scene that should be gross. I didn’t find it gross, though. The moon’s light reflected off the broad stainless steel knife and back into the otherwise calming night. I awkwardly shuffled closer, to really take the sight the in.  His chest was heaving lethargically; his once golden brown glazed skin was now a more meagre shade. That was probably the blood loss, though. His lustrous mop of black curls were matted now with the viscous blood; it slowly crept along the kitchen floor. The red actually contrasted really nicely against the black and white tiles. He twitched every so often; an eerie reminder that he wasn’t quite dead yet but boy, was he taking his time getting there. His eyes were wide open in fear, petrified; as if the act of getting stabbed was playing on repeat in his mind. He kept gasping, like he was incredibly thirsty. It looked like he was trying to say something. I crouched down to the floor. I could feel my heart racing in excitement; a little smile snuck it’s way onto my face. This is the closest I have been since, you know...I put a kitchen knife into his abdomen. Ah, he was trying to say something. “Mi-che-lle”, he said, punctuating each syllable with a desperate wheeze, “Mi-che-lle.” I was going to say something back but I couldn’t think of anything so I just preemptively shut myself up before I said anything stupid.

Now you’re probably thinking: “God, this Michelle sounds awful; she must be some psycho killer or something”. I’m like, not, ok, jeez. That’s just sick. See, I’ve just had this ‘morbid curiosity’, as I like to call it. I’ve always just want to see someone die, in the flesh. For as long as I can remember, I’ve just had so many questions about murders, death and stuff. Like what’s it feel like? Is dying quick? Is it the sensation like flicking a light switch on then off or is it more like a slow, gradual fade? You know, just real existential stuff. Except I was not going to go all pretentious emo and like, try to kill myself to find this all out. But that’s for quitters. So I’m in my senior year, this year, and I’m like, right: I’ve got to kill someone. It’s pretty much now or never. Although, saying you’re going to kill someone and actually doing it are two completely separate things. Murder takes a lot of effort and planning, as I found out, but I managed. I mean, I made this far, haven’t I? When I first starting concocting my cheeky little scheme, believe it or not, the biggest setback was figuring just who I was going to kill...

Who

Initially, I was like ‘oh my god yes, time to off a bitch’, because I have beef with a lot, and I mean, a lot of people. For example, I was really thinking of offing this bitch, McKenzie, as somehow she got the cheer squad over and above me, but I couldn't. She was kinda my best friend so that’d totally give me away. Then, there was Chad, sweet Chad. He straight up cheated on me. Sure, we had broken up at the time but we always intended getting back together - well, at least that’s what I thought. He clearly didn’t care about me, about us. Those two were just the worst of them, though. There were just so many to choose from. However, they were all to obvious. They would set me up with motive; my candidate would have to be more seemingly random and then it hit me. No, he literally hit me. I was on my way to Biology, when the dingus wasn’t watching where he was going and I walked straight into Miguel. He’s absolutely gorgeous though, so all was forgiven. He had moved from somewhere in South America, I can’t pronounce, and he started here at the beginning of senior year. “Uh... hello. Sorry, Miss”, I remember him saying to me, as he nervously scrambled for my books. Back then, Miguel thought you had to call all girls, ‘Miss’. Ah, fond times those were. It was then as I watched this exotic adonis grovel at my feet did I come to the realisation. I was going to kill this pretty foreign boy and I knew exactly how I was going to do it...

How

Ever since I made up my mind about this whole ordeal, I’ve kind of been fantasising just how I would ‘do the deed’. To be honest, I used to daydream about it all the time in class. At first, I was thinking quick and efficient: just shoot him, right? Well, that kind of seemed barbaric and not at all to intimate. Bang, and it’s over - it just wasn’t the answer to all my questions. Then, I was thinking, what about something like a wood-chipper or chainsaw? Then that’s just the opposite problem - it would take too long. I like Miguel; I think he’s alright. If I hadn’t chosen him, I could totally see a future with him, or something. I didn’t really want the guy to suffer; I just needed him to die, simple and clean. I racked my brains for weeks, just trying to come up with the perfect method but they all ended up being too elaborate. It took my forever but I finally came up with a solution: I’m just going to stab him. It’s a little derivative, I know, but I believe it’s a happy balance of not being too quick and painful. I reckon I can still get what I need from the experience. That and like, knives are so easy to procure and require no prior setup. Sometimes, the simplest solution is the most elegant solution. Nonetheless though, that was the easy part. I still had to figure out just when I was going to kill Miguel…

When

When. When, when, when. When! Ugh, the word, actually haunted me, for the longest time. Did you know, you’re never actually alone? No, like truly alone. See, I’ve hooked up with Miguel a few times, so I guess, he’s my boyfriend now. So that’s perfect scenario to get him alone, right? Nope. Like, when we did it under the bleachers, there was some stupid football match going on at the same time; not an ideal stabbing situation. I took him home once, when the house was completely empty, and I lead him up to my bedroom. Closing the door, I remember thinking to myself: “Yes, this is it!”. We were in the middle of getting hot and heavy and I began reaching for the knife I has stashed under my pillow, for such an occasion. Just as I was about to whip it out, I heard Wheel of Fortune flick on down in the living room - my damned parents had come home early, too early. Sadly, I didn’t get the penetration I was looking then. For months afterwards, I had so many near-perfect scenarios, only to be so rudely disrupted, every time. That is, until the perfect opportunity presented itself to me. Prom. Ok, not prom itself but the prom after-party. I have no idea how but my next neighbor, Kelsey, was somehow popular enough to be the grade’s appointed host for the massive after-party. And I mean, massive too; half the freaking school ends up showing to these things. It’s the only party worth looking forward to. And that weekend, my parents had planned a romantic getaway, or something - I don’t think they were too fond of the idea of a couple hundred drunk and high teenagers hanging out in such proximity. I knew, just knew that night was going to be the night.  The plan was to loosen Miguel up with a bit of booze, at the after-party, and then lure him to my place. It was a real shame I was so hung up on this ‘killing’ thing - prom was just perfect. My dress was drop-dead gorgeous and I had some impressive tall, dark and handsome man around my arm. We even slow danced to ‘Teardrops on My Guitar’ - my absolute favourite song. However, the entire time my mind was on the task at hand. The dance ended at 10 and we headed to the penultimate piss-up of the year: the prom after-party.  So just how did I lure Miguel away, from the party of the year? Actually, that part was incredibly easy - all I had to do was whisper something dirty in Miguel’s ear and he was like sweaty, adolescent putty in my hands. Finally, I would get the chance, I’d been looking for. And that’s how we got to where we are now…

Just beforehand, I had awkwardly said to Miguel, “I don’t think I can make it upstairs,” God, that had sounded pretty slutty but it was the only way to keep in the kitchen with, you know, all the knives. Luckily, he wasn’t going to be alive to remember that desperate one-liner. We then started eagerly  undressing in the kitchen. Miguel was in too much of a horny daze to realise that what I had lead him into was clearly a trap. But that’s enough reminiscing, I think he’s finally going to do it. Die, I mean. His breathing pattern had drastically slowed. His eyes still had a look of desperation that was freaking me out. Weren’t they supposed to close or something? No, wait - I do that after he’s done. And then, it happened. I saw it. He was dead, finally, dead. Just like someone flicking off a light…but they’re dead. I let the moment, try and wash over me but I... I felt nothing, empty even. I just felt limp, emotionally and spiritually; a little disappointed, actually. Was I supposed to feel some kind of high, now? Develop a god complex, or something? Had my psyche been tainted, now? Nope. None of my questions were answered. Worse yet, I felt the exact same as before the act. Deep down in the pit of my stomach, I knew this just wasn’t how I was supposed to feel. Clearly, I didn’t do it right…

I should do it again.

[a-edgar-allan-hoe]

Charles x Reader, Erik x Reader, Logan x Reader One Shot

A/N: Here is the one shot requested by my lovely anon! I do hope you enjoy this one! 💕💕💕 I was literally listening to a Harry Potter classroom ambience while writing this for some odd reason haha. Also there will be a part 2 and feedback is greatly appreciated lovelies! 💕💕💕

Summary: Imagine being Hekate, the Greek goddess of magic and witchcraft, the night and the moon, doorways and crossroads, creatures of the night, and ghosts and necromancy. You stumbled upon Earth many centuries ago and since then have resided on the foreign planet. You became close friends with Logan during the civil war and he has been like a father figure for you ever since. During the recent years you were discovered by Charles and Erik, and after finding out your identity, Charles recruited you into being a professor at his school. But though you became close with the trio over the years, there some things you wish to keep to keep hidden.

Warnings: Angst, language

“Okay class.” You stood up from your desk to face the chalkboard behind you as you moved on to your next lesson, “Does anyone know what the six popular types of poetry are?” You felt a sudden rush of wind behind you, making your hair blow towards your face as you rolled your eyes, turning around to face the young silver-haired teen who displayed a proud smirk on his face while sitting in his seat as if nothing happened. “Peter Maximoff, if I catch you doing laps around my classroom one more time…………..I’m going to turn all your band shirts into bands you hate.”

“What? Aw come on Ms.Hekate.” Peter slid down in his seat with his head thrown back, exasperating as he did so. “Not my band shirts.”

“Keep it up and you’ll start to see Madonna and Abba on your shirts.” You smirked. “Now, since you oh so greatly volunteered to answer, what are the six popular types of poetry?”

“I don’t know, the ones that rhyme.” Peter shrugged at the question, causing some of the students snicker in response.

“Well,” you chuckled at his answer “there are some poetry that have rhymes, but there are also some that do not necessarily have to rhyme, like blank verse and free verse. Blank verse for example, is a poetic form that features rhythmic rules, such as iambic pentameter, but no rhymes.” You faced the class as you leaned against your desk, using your telekinetic abilities to grasp the chalk and write the info down on the board, a violet mist forming around your fingers and around the piece of chalk. “Free verse on the other hand, is an open form of poetry, which in its modern form arose through the French vers libre form. It does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any musical pattern and thus tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech. Now, does anyone else know what the six types are? Anyone?” You looked around before picking on the red-haired girl in front who had her hand up. “Yes Jean?”

“Um the six popular types of poetry are Haiku, Diamante, uuuhhh Cinquain, Ballad, Sonnet, and Limerick.”

“Excellent Jean! That is correct.” You grinned, the chalk behind you hovering in the air and moving rapidly as it wrote down the different types along with a short description beneath them.

“Ms.Hekate?”

“Yes Peter?”

“Why do you only teach literature and folklore and mythology classes? How come you don’t teach us magic witchcraft and potions and stuff, you know?”

The students perked up at his question, their eyes sparkling up at the idea as they whispered to each other words of excitement.

“That’s a good question Peter. You’re welcome to ask professor Xavier about it or start a petition. Now, I want you to open up your books and turn to page 394. I mean 36! Sorry! Please turn to page 36. We will be doing a reading of the poem ‘To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick.”

“Virgins huh?” Peter snickered, making you glare at him lightheartedly.

“Quiet now Peter before I make you read the whole thing in front of the class.”

You grabbed the leather bound book off your shelf before hoisting yourself up on your desk and standing upright on it, straightening the black turtleneck sweater you wore and smoothing down your gray plaid pants.

“Uuhhh Ms.Hekate.” You heard Scott speak up.

“Yes Scott?”

“Why are you standing on your desk?”

“A different perspective you might say. Something all of you will be trying tomorrow.”

“Wait what?”

“Alrighty.” You cleared your throat before speaking loudly, holding your book out before you with one hand while your other hand was shoved in your pocket. “To the Virgins!-“

“What’s this talk of virgins?”

You stopped, your eyes widening at the voice that just now spoke while your own became trapped in your throat as you saw a man enter your classroom, lingering in the back as his piercing blue eyes bore into yours.

“Ch-Charles.” You blinked. “I-I didn’t expect you here.”

The students looked between you and Charles with amusement painted on their faces as they giggled at your flustered expression, some of them leaning over to whisper in each other’s ears.

“Well don’t let me stop you from whatever it is you’re doing.” Charles smiled politely at you, his eyes lit up in curiosity from your stance on your desk. “Don’t mind me, I’ll just be……quietly observing.”

“Well thank you for joining us Charles. But, you know better than anyone else, that there are only participants in my class, not observers. So if I ask you a question you best be ready to answer it.” You snarked, smirking at the puzzled look that now masked his face before clearing your throat once again, holding your book out before you and reading off the page you had turned to.

“To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick.

Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,

Old Time is still a-flying;

And this same flower that smiles today

Tomorrow will be dying.”

You glanced up from under your lashes to see Charles’s eyes still glued to you as he listened to your every word. Such a simple action made your cheeks heat up and your stomach spin as you held the book higher to cover your flushed face.

“The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,

The higher he’s a-getting,

The sooner will his race be run,

And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,

When youth and blood are warmer;

But being spent, the worse, and worst

Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,

And while ye may, go marry;

For having lost but once your prime,

You may forever tarry.”

You closed the book back up, setting it aside as you sat down on your desk and faced the students. “Now, can anyone tell me what the biggest element of this poem is? Yes Kurt?”

“Ummmmm………Carpe Diem?”

“Correct!” You smiled at Kurt as the piece of chalk behind you wrote Carpe Diem in large letters with a line underneath. “Carpe Diem is in fact the biggest part about this poem. Now….Charles, can you tell me what Carpe Diem means?”

Charles straightened up in his seat as he looked up at you confounded, surprise hidden behind his eyes on the fact that you kept your word on having him participate. “Well it means seize the day.”

“Yes, true. Carpe Diem is a Latin term most commonly known as ‘seize the day’, but, the term originally means ‘to gather or pluck the day’. It was originally used by the Roman poet Horace to express the idea that time is limited and we should enjoy life while we still can. His full directive was ‘carpe diem quam minimum credula postero’, which is translated as ‘pluck the day, trusting as little as possible in the next one’. Now, for all of you night owls out there who can’t stand the sun like me, Carpe Noctem is perfect for you because it translates to ‘seize the night’.”

You briefly glimpsed up at your clock, hissing and nearly falling off your desk once you saw that you had only a minute and a half left of your class. “Alrighty my little poets! Today’s word of the day was Carpe Diem or Carpe Noctem! I want you all to ingrain that into your minds! Write it down, paint it on a canvas, make an artwork out of it, tattoo it on your forehead I don’t care! ACTUALLYDONTDOTHELASTONE! Please, for the love of all things holy, do not tattoo your foreheads. We will finish this lesson tomorrow and discuss some more themes. For homework, I want you all to pick a poet and one of their poems and try to analyze some of the themes we have already discussed. I will be having you read those poems aloud to the class. Extra credit will be given to those who decide to come in costume, dressed up like their chosen poet. The more dramatic the better! Fake beards are welcome, fake phalluses are NOT! For the love of the gods, please choose something PG. We are not learning about Greek Satyr plays, let’s keep that a thing of the past thank you very much and kindly. You will all be respectful to each other’s performances! There will be no snickering, no laughing, no chastising, and I will not have you behaving like a babbling, bumbling, band of baboons! Those who choose to do the things I have specifically said not to, will receive a very friendly spirit with a penchant for grabbing the bare feet of problematic students at the foot of their beds during the stroke of midnight.” You stopped to take a breath after having to ramble everything just as the bell rang.

“Thank you all for being a lovely bunch and I will see you all tomorrow! Good day! Hasta la vista! Fare thee well! Fly, you fools!” You shouted over the bell ringing as everyone got up from their desks and bustled about, getting ready to go to their next class.

“Did you really just threaten the students with necromancy?” Charles quirked a brow in amusement as he slowly made his way over to you once all the students left your classroom.

“Ehhhhh an empty threat really.” You shrugged, playing it off though you failed to truly disguise the smirk that pulled at the corner of your lips.

“Right.” He chuckled, “And whatever was the issue with the phalluses? You seemed to be really adamant about that.”

“Well…..long long time ago, way back in the lands of ancient Greece.” You leaned back on your hands as you began to explain the story behind your dislike for satyr plays and their rather vulgar uses of the phallus, swinging your loose legs over the edge of your desk. “When I was just a wee teen, or you could say 15 in human years, my sisters Athena and Artemis took me with them to roam the markets of the mortals. Being the rebellious and angsty teen that I was, I didn’t want to be dragged along for their shopping, so I separated from them in search of food and something new to discover.”

“And? Did you find food and something new?”

“I did discover something new, though to be honest I wish I didn’t. But I disappointedly did not find any kolokithopita, which I was extremely craving at the time, it’s like a flaky pastry dough filled with zucchini and feta cheese and it is soooo good, you have got to try it.” You gestured with your hands as you tried to describe the food. “But anyways, back to the story. I heard some laughter coming from afar so I followed the sound and found a group of people gathered around a stage. Being the curious teen that I was, I tried to get a good look at whatever the hell these people were laughing at. Lo and behold. Turns out, I accidentally stumbled upon a Satyr play, which I’m sure you’ve heard about. And let’s just say, I have never u-turned and bolted so fast in my entire life and never have I ever been more traumatized.”

Charles laughed at your storytelling, his frame shaking with mirth as he shook his head at the thought. “You poor thing.”

“Yeah, I wanted to scoop my eyeballs out after seeing that. And I think I might’ve puked on someone on my way out.” Your voice became barely audible at the last part. “But also because one time during a poetry reading I took part in way back, some asshole thought it would be funny to wear a fake phallus on full display and try to reenact one of the scenes from those kinds of plays.”

“Well then that explains your dislike for them.”

“Yes, very.” You chuckled. “You know, your students want me to teach witchcraft and magic.”

“Do they?” Charles tilted his head at your words. “Let me guess, was it Peter that mentioned it?”

“It was. How did you know?”

“He may have tried to…..nonchalantly bring it up in my class. Hypothetically, is there a possibility in being able to teach such things?”

“Just really basic spells and potions. Most of the things that I can do are my natural abilities though. Waaiiit…….is that a possibility?”

“Possibly. If there’s no harm in it and none of the students have to sell their soul to you to learn your tricks.” Charles teased.

“Oh definitely not. But they’re welcome to make sacrificial offerings in the form of food.

Charles laughed again, his eyes crinkling at the corners as his boyish laughter rung out through the room, causing you to chuckle along with him.

“So…….are you serious though?” You stopped, turning your head to look at him with eagerness hidden behind your eyes at the prospect of having your own magic class. “Will I really be able to teach magic to the students? Like my very own Hogwarts?”

“I’m sure I can make some arrangements.”

You nearly jumped off the table in excitement, clasping your hands together between your knees and biting the bottom of your lips to hold back a squeal before breaking out into a big grin. Charles smiled softly at your reaction. A tight pressure like feeling formed within his chest, not one of pain, but of adoration as he took in the pure cheerfulness that painted your features. Your irises which resembled the galaxies in hues of purples and gold, now sparkled from your emotions against the sunlight that managed to hit them at the right angle.

“How could I ever thank you?”

“You don’t need to. The students enjoy having you, that in itself is enough.” Charles smiled before looking up at you intently. “You know. All this poetry and you never read me any.”

“Maybe because you’re not special.” You teased.

Charles feigned a wounded expression, dramatically throwing a hand over his heart. “Ouch. You really do know how to break my heart y/n.”

“Oh please.” You rolled your eyes before grabbing your poetry book and shoving it at him lightly. “Here, you read one then.”

“Me? For whatever reason? Is it because you fancy my voice?” He smirked, poking fun at the time that you admitted you found his voice to be soothing.

“Well don’t go tooting your own horn. You’re no Christopher Lee.” You scoffed, trying your best to hide the blush that crept onto your cheeks, cursing yourself and wishing you had never told him that. Now you were never going to hear the end of it and he was to make sure of that.

Charles chuckled softly at your statement as he opened up your book and flipped through the pages. You stared at the dark wooden wall at the other side of the classroom, listening to the crisp sound of the turning of pages until Charles paused at a certain one and scanned the contents on the page, his eyes lifting to briefly glance up at you before clearing his throat.

“She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes;

Thus mellowed to that tender light

Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,

Had half impaired the nameless grace

Which waves in every raven tress,

Or softly lightens o’er her face;

Where thoughts serenely sweet express,

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,

So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,

The smiles that win, the tints that glow,

But tell of days in goodness spent,

A mind at peace with all below,

A heart whose love is innocent!”

“She Walks in Beauty by Lord Byron.” You noted, recognizing the same lines that you became fond of when the piece itself came out. “I’ve always loved that one.”

Charles closed your book back up, his blue eyes lingering on the distant look that was held in your eyes like the stillness of the air that accompanied the dark clouds of an oncoming storm. The room had started to cast a shadow on your face, deepening the small scars that lined your face from the many battles you had once fought. And though he had come to recognize those, his gaze became fixed on the dark circles under your eyes, knowing they weren’t there a day ago.

“Y/n is everything alright?” He asked, his voice quiet and soft, and his brows creased in worry. He didn’t need to read your mind to know that something was deeply troubling you.

“Hm? Oh yeah I’m fine! I just…….been having trouble sleeping, nothing major.”

“Are you sure? You know if there’s anything upsetting you, you can tell me, I’m here.”

“I know.” You smiled at him, reaching over to hold his hand. “I’ll come to you if I need anything. Thank you Charles, for everything.” You slid off your desk to place a soft kiss at the top of his head. “Now, I’d hate to leave you and all, but I don’t have any classes for the rest of the day and I’m feeling a bit tired so I’m going to go rest.”

“Of course. You take care of yourself darling.”

“I will thanks. See you later Charles.” You smoothed your hands over his soft hair before leaving the classroom and heading up to your room. A tugging sensation bubbled within your chest from having to lie to him, filling you with feelings of guilt. But you had to. You didn’t have the heart to tell him about the nightmares, or the searing sensation that coursed through the skin on your back whenever you woke up from them, the vividness of your dreams and the excruciating pain a constant reminder of your past.

Charles watched you leave the room in silence with a small frown on his face that only grew deeper the further away you went. He knew you spoke the truth about not being able to sleep, but he couldn’t help but feel there was a more chasmic layer to your explanation. And though he dared not to read your mind to find out the truth and instead trusted you to tell him when you found it in yourself to do so, something told him that whatever was slowly eating at you would soon consume you whole.

Tag List: @hargreevesd @lulu-yuming

Hi!! I love love love your Hekate x Avengers series!! You mentioned that the only people who knew about Y/N’s scars were Charles, Erik and Logan, would you be able to do a one shot about how they found out? I’m interested to see how those three reacted. They’re all secretly softies- you can’t change my mind. It’s okay if not, I understand. Stay safe! ❤️❤️

Aaaahdjdbfoc!!!!! Omg I haven’t received an ask in a while and ohmyfreakinggoodness!!!! I’m so happy that you enjoy it!!! It means so much! And I will definitely do that! That sounds like a really fun idea actually. I’ve been wanting to do one shots about her backstory and when I’m done with this one I’m thinking about starting a Hekate x Loki one. 👀 Also yes they are 100% softies! Even Erik!!! And thanks again for the ask love! I hope you have a lovely day!