#or nail it to a tree or trap it and bury it

[southernmermaidsgrotto]

Luck or protection would be awesome

Hi Anon! This has been sitting on my drafts for so long!! I'm so sorry for making you wait. Since I've posted about protection here, let's talk a little about luck. What do we do when we want to change our luck and get the best side of life?

If you're part of the african diaspora, then I'd recommend you work your luck either on sundays, when you want to cleanse and get rid of anything holding you down, and maybe do a bath or headwash to gain clarity on how to best move forwards. That is, to guarantee the right Spirits have your back and guide your path. Or you can work on fridays, which are widely considered the luck and favor day in many traditions across the diaspora.

I also want to clarify something first. To change luck, you need to know what luck is first. To me, having luck is having favor, but not from humans. On one hand, good luck is favor from the Spirits that may be ruling whatever aspect of life you want to relieve or change. There's a few different ways to gain their favor, but most have to do with giving offerings, praise and sweet words, and knowing who to ask for aid.

On the other hand, most bad luck that people experience on a daily basis has to do with some kind of restless, angry or even just bored spirit messing with them, and in that case, what you want to do is get rid of those troublesome spirits. One way is, after receiving a bad omen (a murder of crows or a black cat crossing your path, among others, depends on each lineage and tradition) or coming across some mal aire, some place that is occuppied by restless spirits that could be offended by your presence, you want to walk backwards (I'd say, seven steps backwards), then turn around and head home using a different route than you'd normally use, better if it's a confusing zig-zagging path or one that crosses over water (as bad spirits are thought to not be able to cross and follow you). That should avoid the issue before it even sets in. Another classic way to get rid of bad luck after you start to see it play out in your life, is to wear your clothes inside-out for a day. It can be any garment, doesn't need to be easy to spot (in fact, i'd say it's better if what you're trying to do is not obvious and public, just in case).

Traditionally, if you don't know what is causing the bad luck streak (if it could be a specific kind of spirit or else), a good limpia should work either way. A barrida with herbs or a good cleansing bath. Always protect yourself first to make sure whatever you're pulling out and away from you cannot crawl back in. There's also infusions someone can take to alleviate bad luck caused by spirits, but which herbs you should use? depends on the region. Here in the Andes region it would be things like ruda, molle, or paico. If you're going to be using some herbal infusions always consult with a yerbera, curandera or herbal medical professional first. Maybe use a sahumo (smoke cleanse) instead, with incienso, ruda and copal. Then get a good bath with a splash of florida water, some milk, some honey and many colorful flowers !! that should bring in some sweetness and luck into your life.

Hope that helps!!

[moondirti]

𝐂𝐀𝐁𝐈𝐍 𝐅𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑, 𝐈𝐈 [18+]

familiar! ghost × witch! reader

you are a witch trapped at home by a devastating blizzard. ghost is the demon that answers your call. ( 2 of 3 /PREV )

DEAD DOVE. RATED E. HORROR EROTICA. 9K. – AO3 heed the warnings below and proceed at your own discretion.

warnings: NONCON. graphic depictions of gore. injury. cannibalism. blood licking. slaughtering + ingesting animals. violence. degradation. body horror. hypothermia. isolation. manipulation. corruption kink. religious imagery. dark!ghost. female reader. i know i said 2 parts total but now it's a 3er.

additional tags: groping. tit fondling. rough oral (male receiving). face-fucking. cum guzzling + eating. it’s all a little disgusting and not in the good way i fear.

𝐈𝐈.𝐈

The cottage is halfway buried under snow when you run out of firewood. 

It should come as no surprise, though you stare down your emptied closet like the ground opened up and swallowed your remaining reserve. Out of body, you fail to confront the cold reality that has already seeped into your walls, freezing the splintered wood of your floors, instead standing stock-still as your mind sharpens its critical edge. 

Only there is no one to direct your reproach to but yourself. Weeks ago, your rune casts had predicted a crippling whiteout, thus you set out to collect enough fuel to last you the season. Yet as night waxed on the third day of your efforts, and your hands started tearing bloody from splitting hardwood all on your own, that resolve debilitated rather quickly. Like sugar steeped in tea; your will to live was already in a decrepit state, and indeed, eagerly unravelled at the first sign of adversity. Suicidal, with hindsight. A passive play at death of which you were too fearful to try and seek for yourself. 

It did not seem like that at the time, of course. Rather, you justified the fatuous decision to stop (after cutting down a mere three trees) by concocting an estimate of how long it would be before you could venture out for more. Based on absolutely nothing but a desperation to curl back on your couch, sore but sheltered, you gave it one month. One month until the storm would abate. Of restlessness, fermenting in a prison you call home. To your distorted sense, four-hundred pieces of firewood seemed plenty enough to get you through it, despite admittedly lacking even a basic working knowledge of wood arithmetic.

Counting the days now, you’re almost tempted to laugh. Almost. The shroud of horror that newly accompanies death since Ghost’s lesson triumphs, after all. You are more terrified than you would have been a week ago. Still, you were not wrong – the firewood had lasted a month – only the weather does not seem to be looking up, and you’re trapped inside a quickly cooling cottage with no source of heat to get you to the thaw. The possibility of fatal hypothermia looms closer, more dangerous. Eerily relevant–

(Just a year ago, you watched a man die from the warmth of your ancestral home, face down in fresh snow outside the parlour room window. Your ageing mother had invited the pastor’s son over to help repair the stairs left unattended since your father’s death, and the man had called your fascination with the corpse morbid, nail between two teeth as he hammered down a wooden plank. 

No use starin’ at a dead man, lass. Not for a bonnie thin’ like you.

But you could not tear your eyes away from his mottled skin, the blue-black ends of his fingers. Even at his burial several days later, his face displayed the same, blank expression, perpetually cast by that winter’s frigid storm.) 

You imagine yourself passing in a similar vein. It will take longer, you think. You’ll be dying for weeks as your blood courses slower through you, iced by the winds that howl down your chimney. Protected, but not enough, by these walls you have been banished to live within. Unable to get even a glimpse of sunlight before shutting your eyes for the last time, the snow packed up to your windows effectively burying you without ceremony. A forgotten tomb. 

You wonder if Ghost would intervene, yet your speculation is brief. His words echo like he uttered them only moments ago. Fight or die. He has long established the volitional aspects of your relationship – he owes you nothing unless you ask, and if you do, then you would rather wish you were dead in lieu of what he asks for in return. No. He will merely watch as you take your last breath, satisfied that he was right, then scavenge your carcass for his next meal. Fated to wet his mouth like the picked off crow. A long-awaited feast.

Curling in on yourself, it is all you can do to bury yourself in clothes. Your vulnerability is often a fickle thing, you find, ebbing and flowing like seawater tides gradually gorging on their shore. There are periods you feel invincible; a being made of eternal magic, unmoved by the shifts in nature bid by time. Some sequoia, whose roots pierce deep into the earth and drink from freshwater wells unacquainted with human touch. A thing truly deserving of the title witch. 

Other times – these times being of increasing occurrence since the arrival of your familiar – you cannot help but to shrink back into a girl again. Raw and tender and emotionally volatile. Naked, sore lungs, as you’re pulled from your mother’s womb and forced to embrace the harsh cut of air. Ghost watches from his usual corner, a spectre practically pulsing with this voyeuristic game he likes to play. You know he’s figured out the predicament you’ve put yourself in, can feel yourself quailing at the discredit his judgement affords. The layers serve a dual purpose, then – for warmth, and to grant brief reprieve from his gaze on your shivering form. 

Three pairs of socks. A tunic, a fleece, a cardigan, and a coat. Skirts over your trousers. Gloves and a woollen hat. 

By the end, you have a hard time moving at all. Certainly not enough to cook, or to try tunnelling a way out of the window. No point in reading if you can’t practise your magic, either; so you mutter a quiet ignition spell over the charred firewood from last night, hoping it lasts even half as long, before collapsing on the couch and willing yourself to sleep. 

Only sleep does not come. 

Or, it might. Yet your mind is so occupied with your condition that it does not allow you to fully lose consciousness. You’re attuned to every particle around you, overstimulated in the worst sense, still subjected to an unsettling sequence of half-dreams. Brain flickering through pale mirages of dead crows, ice floes, of capsized rafts in arctic waters, their hulls resembling slabs of marbled meat. As you drown, you shout for help and pique at the sound of it echoing in real life, tangible enough that it shakes you awake. You nearly strangle yourself trying to wind your quilt tighter around your shoulders afterward, burying your nose in a pillow and cupping your cheeks with frigid hands. 

Eventually, time joins the distortion, and you have a hard time discerning whether it’s been hours or meagre minutes. The only indication is the way in which your body starts to ache with a pain so profound, it is as though you’ve been beaten. If you weren’t frustratingly cognizant of your surroundings the whole night, your first bet would have been to blame Ghost, or at least the threadbare couch you’ve been using as a bed erring too long now. Unfortunately, the true cause of your affliction is hard to misdiagnose; a violent, merciless shivering, your muscles made to tremble as if compelled to by electric shock. The teeth chattering kind – and it is exactly the rattle of ivory against ivory that serves as a makeshift timekeeper. 

Click. Click. Clickclick. Click. 

It must be two hours later when you bite your tongue and jolt completely awake from the pain, swathed in your quilt like the nesting doll that sat on your windowsill back home. Though the appendage bleeds, spreading metallic bitterness onto your teeth, you wonder for a brief moment whether you are alive at all. Foggy vision. Taut skin drawing lines down your cheeks from either corner of your eyes. When you squint, it tugs tighter, and you realise at one point you had started crying. It’s hard to tell without your nose hot and runny, or your lips swollen like overripe berries. Instead, you’re rendered to a shrivelled reflection of yourself, dried tear tracks setting the image in stone. The shadow looming above you seems to agree. 

“Not dead yet. But only just.”

You wish you could say his voice is any softer than standard. That the stars aligned, or that this is an ideal world where the antediluvian creature occupying your home has tapped into his small pool of pity. But he nudges your knee with all the detached amusement he prescribes to most things, like he can’t understand why you’re so easily affected by the cold. 

“Ghost?” 

“Almost exclusively.” He mocks.

The couch dips near your feet. You do not register why until he scoops an arm into your quilt, pulling you from warm refuge and onto his lap instead. It isn’t in you to fight, merely mewling like a feverish cat as you reach a hand out to the cushion where you once lay. Wiggling your fingers, kicking your heels. 

He swats your arm until it flops back to your side. 

“If only y’could see yourself like this. Bloody pathetic, pet.” 

“I’m c-cold.” 

“Not doin’ yourself any favours, then. This,” He tugs at the coat barely hugging your shoulders, stretched taut over your bulky layers. “off.” 

When you fail to listen, he takes the initiative for you, pulling it down your arms and towards some distant corner. You don’t miss it, necessarily – it hardly did anything to keep you warm – but you protest the loss as you would have done anything else; noisily, sniffing to suppress the fresh bout of tears spooling over your vision. 

“Think you exhausted every option, hm? All you can do is curl over and cry?” With his hands now at your cardigan, thumbs hooked under the lapel, you search his eyes for indication of what he intends to do. Ghost is difficult to appreciate even on the best of days, but now, without the handy glow of fire or direct stream of sunlight, he’s practically impossible. Like two mountains stood tall with no valley in between them, no line of logic exists that can explain his actuality. 

(And you’ve never been the logical type – there is no precise science to why goat fat and cumin work together to lure someone into love, or why you knew to stay away from the pastor who kept your mother company. Some things exist solely in magical proportions; limiting yourself to rational thought would be doing a great disservice to what they have to offer.

But confronting Ghost on a plane where he has the upper hand is a daunting task, so you stick to what rationale can place.) 

“What are you–you doing?” 

“Shut it.” He folds the cardigan around your hips, clasping a colossal palm onto the back of your neck. Though you’re used to being scruffed when he’s less than pleased with you, the purpose of this is far from dissatisfaction. You know it immediately. His skin, flesh, is warmer than anything you’ve felt in a long time. A quality of comfortable, penetrating heat that sinks into your nape and slowly works to defrost your marrow, your limbs, the icy film clinging to your brain. Your eyes roll shut almost instantaneously, body slumping forward to sink into his chest. Somewhere in the recesses of your mind, where the relief of warmth has not yet reached, you worry that he’ll push you off. 

He does not. 

Instead, his other hand slips under your fleece and tunic, smoothing over the knots of your spine to reach between your shoulder blades. There, his heat sinks to swathe your chest, and the weakly heart somehow managing to do its job, pumping blood that tickles your toes and fingertips. It drips down to your tummy too, where it weighs heavy like a tangible mass, and brings your pulse to the bud between your legs.

His touch there doesn’t last long; he pulls away only moments later, a tightness newly lifted off your sternum. One hand still kneads your nape, effectively keeping your face against his broad shoulder, but the other moves to collect your slack wrists together. It strikes you as unusual, sure, yet you’ve since surrendered your inhibitions for sake of survival. A cavewoman tradeoff. Your body purrs at the satisfaction of your baser instincts, happy to resort to this primitive state of impartiality, if only it means you’ll stay snug throughout the winter. 

Yes. If anyone were to ask you right then, you would have seen it as not only plausible but entirely necessary to stay like this for the months to come. Sated and secure and just a hint impassioned, content to doze off on the lap of your tormentor. Already halfway there, lashes fluttering as you battle complete oblivion. 

Only that isn’t what Ghost has in store, and he seems eager to break the illusion you hold in such high regard. 

He releases your neck, guiding you to sit upright upon his tree-trunk thighs. When you object by reaching for his hands again, you find that your own are securely fixed behind your back. Completely immobilised. 

Sensation slowly trickles back to you. Once numb, your skin now comes alive with frayed nerve endings, crackling, hair standing on its ends. What you find, alarmingly, is your place within a twisted example of the lesson Ghost has been attempting to teach. The lightness on your sternum not as metaphorical as you had assumed – rather, the bandages binding your breasts have been unwrapped to treacherously hitch your wrists together. The rough fabric excoriates the surface of your forearms. 

Your breathing accelerates. If you’d been freezing before, you’re thoroughly iced now. Shock races through your system and persecutes everything that lulled you into this position. Stupid, stupid, stu–

“Ghost.” You hiss. “Ghost. This is-isn’t funny.”

He doesn’t respond, rolling your top to reveal the soft stretch of your navel. It involuntarily retracts when he flits over your belly button, dodging the unwelcome spread of his fingers. Your body's way of protesting, for all you lean into his touch. Too tempting not to, really. Something in him burns; perhaps a furnace in place of his heart, or a piece of hell he takes with him wherever he goes. 

That primitive voice grows louder, whispering deceptively in your ear that it’s fine, let him touch you. So long as you stay warm. 

You shake your head as if to jerk the instinct off your crown. Lips pursed tight now, the hand on your belly slowly climbing up. Up. 

“Stop it. Stop this, I d-don’t want it.” 

“I know.” He says, pressing his thumb into your waist. It digs until it hits a rib, tenderising muscle. You’re a lamb on a spit, spun slowly, roasted over an open flame. How silly of you to lean into the burn. Short-sighted to decide that it’s better than the cruel press of winter. You’ll be eaten like this. 

“Then g-get the fuck off me!” You yelp, swaying on your haunches in a bid to knock yourself off his lap. Your arms are useless, but that does not mean you cannot fight. “I order you!”

That pulls a laugh from him. Or, what sounds like a laugh. As with everything, it’s his estimate of a human one, like the cicada mimics the bird; not as melodic, rather striking you with disgust so potent you feel your nausea reawakening. You might just hurl.

“And wha’ will I be granted in return? Nothin’ you have that’ll convince me to unhand you, pet.” Ghost rucks your tunic to your shoulders at last, exposing your bare breasts to bitter air. Though he gives them no time to pebble up, large paws enveloping both mounds and squeezing until your breath syphons from your lungs. “Haven’ seen a pair of tits in decades. Suppose you humans do have somethin’ going for you.” 

Your words startle in your throat. Nothing about it is pleasurable, nor does he intend for it to be. His fingers take your nipples; rolling, tugging, pinching. Nails dig crescent cuts into the darkened skin there, perhaps searching for blood. He certainly treats it as though blood is the aim, and you wonder whether you’re to be hung from your bust to drain onto his waiting tongue. Just as one might press olives, no care for their pulpy bodies but only the rich oil they produce. Grease to slick their pans, to moisten their mouths. 

You’ll be eaten like this.

“Stop, please.” 

“Wonder what y’would look like plump with milk. Nursing my litter, rounded out with another dozen.” He sucks his teeth, contemplative. “Body wouldn’t handle it, f’you ask me. Stronger women than you ‘ave tried.”

Have. It hurts to think about. Hurts more when the insult of his words truly resonates. Stronger women. That is to say you have been exiled for nothing. That with a year of solitude and occult practice, you are just as feeble as before. Is this why he ate your crow? To prove to you that he could? 

The tide pushes back out. In a great swell of loam and brine, your hatred crashes vengefully onshore. You muster all of it, dipping pails into the water and letting it weigh heavy on your shoulders. It is almost negligible, you find. You scarcely feel its burden when fuelled by a focused point to your antipathy. Your teeth stop chattering. You glare daggers. 

“Let me go.” 

Your final plea rolls over him like all the ones before it. “But you’re a witch, aren’t ya? Brew up a little elixir to pull yourself through the whelping. Maybe then you’ll realise how much you long to stay alive.” 

Your neck snaps back. Before you can think it through, you thrust your head towards his face. There’s a crunch, a dizzying moment of choked silence, then a hot burst of moisture down your face. For a naive moment, you think you must have struck gold. You imagine drawing back to find his mask sticky with blood, or tar, or whatever demons have thrumming through their veins. A raw testament to your resolve, if he should ever underestimate it again. 

But the mirage is as naive as your mother. Eventually the pain catches up to you. You realise the iron-tang at the back of your throat is not the dreg of satisfaction. The tears slipping past your lashes no longer wrought from misery. Everything, rather, an immediate response to the sore condition of your nose. Misshapen and swelling already.

Ghost hums. You hoped to see him grovelling in pain by now. The battered expectation somehow makes his condescension worse. 

“Good to see y’find your spirit,” His head tilts, bullying yours into remaining still, fingers knitted firmly in your hair. “but it’s misplaced.” 

Given his derision, you know not to rejoice when his other hand leaves your chest. Your shirt slumps lamely back over your figure as he lifts the edges of his mask, folding it over his mouth. In the dark, it’s difficult to map the nuances of his exposed jowls. There’s a pale curve there, a disfigured line here. Your sinuses twinge when your stare narrows, cutting through murk to place the shape of his lips. 

It’s futile. You have no way to jam the gaps; no way of knowing whether he’s all man, all demon, or a foul mix of the two. 

The one thing that glimmers with definition is the string of spit when he unlatches his jaw, long tongue striking like a wound-tight cobra. You would flinch if you could, eyes pruning shut, but his grip keeps you steady in place as he laves a forceful path up your chin. Tasting the metallic leak of blood, all the way up to its source. 

You see it coming. Still, you can’t help but scream when he works his tongue around your nose. Loosed bones shift under your skin, steadiness fractured, cartilage support dipping inwards against the assault. He groans, and in spite of your impaired sense of smell, you get a whiff of rot-hot breath. It must all be a terrible dream, you think. The hardened muscle pressing against your inner thighs, the viscous web of saliva stretched across your face. It’s cold and you’re sweaty, and everything about the past month – the past year – seems like it has been especially curated to torment you. You would wake from this any second.

He gathers the salty drips off your eyes, the blood, every grief coating your skin. Agony blinds you – so profound it takes shape, colour. You squirm in your binds, ragged shrieks ripping from your throat. 

It echoes even after he breaks away. If it weren’t for the sudden coolness of spit drying within your cupid’s bow, you would think he was still making a feast of you. 

“Tha’ got you to settle, hm?” 

You shake your head, exhausted. “You said–” 

“I said fight, or die.” He huffs. You let silence swathe your lips, pursing them as thin as you can manage without exacerbating your injury. “Yer fighting to die, pet.”

“I just want to be left alone.” 

“‘N’ what d’you think will come of that?” 

“It shouldn’t m-matter.” Your conviction sound hollow when spoken aloud. If he hears it, he uses it as an incentive to strip your top back over your chest. Like a hot wire pushed through your ribcage, his warm hands toast you from the outside in. It is in your best interest not to shiver in delight; though you are still dreadfully cold, and your injury makes it difficult to pigeonhole any alleviation to your pain. “You can’t-t-t defile me on the grounds of greater good.” 

Ghost laughs again. “Ain’ pretending this is for the greater good, pet. The world will thank me if one more witch freezes to ‘er death.” You’re yanked further up his lap. “I let you go, you’ve got four, five hours tops ‘till your heart fails. You wan’ to live?”

You shake your head, fervent tremors batting your pout. A nonanswer seems the only manner of resistance, now. “Not like this.” 

“Clever. Tha’ still tells me you do.” He pinches the knotted peaks of your breasts, twisting until you buck wretchedly onto his pelvis. “And I wan’ to spend my evenin’ playing with your tits. A fair compromise, then.” 

What sort of familiar makes the demands? You contemplate berating him out loud, lunging for the dirty insult to beat at his status like he did yours. With no room for taking the high ground, you will do anything so long as you can later say you bared your claws. So you do not wonder, for countless sleepless nights, if there was something more you should have done. You will be mean. You will go low. You will condemn him to a fate of eternal dissatisfaction, so that no matter how much he eats or kills or takes, he will always feel his stomach a gnawing pit. 

Though something tells you he will not succumb to scrutiny against his honour. There is no code for creatures like him, who floss their teeth with crow meat and pluck the nipples of girls who grant them shelter. Nothing to hold them to expect the conditions of their summons.

Perhaps that’s just it.

You stir. It feels much like magic, when an incantation rolls off the tongue just right and the air shifts to accommodate it. Your heart vibrates behind your sternum, power bloating your veins, ricocheting within your skin. If Ghost feels it, he doesn’t falter.

“Be sure, demon.” You rasp, drawing your intent taut in your chest like a bowstring. He hums but does not stop, kneading your flesh to conform to the creases and calluses of his hands. “Be sure that’s what you want. I could give in without further fuss and be like a docile rabbit on your lap. That way, you will have taken two things from me tonight.” 

The liquid of his eyes shifts quick. You catch its gleam in the little light, and it pleases you enough to deliver the rest of your covenant.  

“By the spell that brought you here, you are bound to do what I sacrifice for.” You pause a moment. “In exchange for the blood you have ingested off my face, you will dig this house out of the snow. And for my virtue, this one evening allowance of which you have already taken upon yourself, you will collect my firewood until the season clears.” 

Ghost makes an indiscernible noise from underneath. You can not tell if he is peeved or pleased, and the ambiguity shakes you. You expected some sort of acknowledgment or counter to your trick. Instead, he does not speak on it. No pitch or complaint, protest or taunt. 

He just sits there, pawing at your chest like a satiated dog. 

(And come morning, when your breasts are raw and tender to the touch, he tunnels the snow around your cottage and returns hours later with a hundred cedar logs for the kindling.)

𝐈𝐈.𝐈𝐈

She prefers him in the daylight

Sun floods her little home when it rises and keeps it bright until it sets. Whereas the dark plays tricks on mortal eyes, oil lamps flickering, casting shadows that always resemble something else. She likes training an eye on what he does in his usual corner; but come night, she can’t trust what she sees. Thus, her confidence strains. She flinches at every sound. Any movement will have her tucking deeper under her quilt. His empty-eyed stare glows more sinister, if anything is to be assumed by the way she will crack her grimoire open and mouth protective spells like prayers.

Perhaps she’s afraid she caused offence, that he mulls over a punishment to teach her not to make a fool of him again. Perhaps it plagues her that she cannot stop him if that is the case. He does not tell her that, already, the worst possible thing that can confront her has. Though of course she isn’t privy to it, it’s been a month since he decided against making a meal of her. Everything he does now is moderate in comparison. He’s being good. 

Good, yes. In the evenings, he will venture out to do her bidding. The timing grants her a few hours rest, then, and him an opportunity to hunt for his dinner. 

Good, because he waits until he’s a mile out to transform to his truer self. It is easier to strip trees of their branches and snap their spines when he stands over two metres tall. Not so easy to mend the fragile tolerance she’s gained for him, which is sure to shatter if she catches sight of his monstrosity. He eludes the possibility entirely, then. 

Good, because Ghost refrains from agitating her more than he already has. And his intention in doing so does not change that decency. 

That is to say, he hasn’t grown a heart. He does not care for the girl. But the passivity that necessitated his savagery has since come to pass. She’s grown claws. She fights for her say and punches through life with guile. Any more and he would be faulting her for it, like burning the meat he tumbled through mud to slaughter. It is down to him to take it off the roast, now, to revel in the succulent bite. He’s got her right where he wants her.  

With some brief tampering on his part – laying out the temptation like a breadcrumb trail into the woods – she broke her invisible vow not to ask him for anything. Has it not made her life that much simpler? Her hearth burns bright and warm everyday; she does not have to worry about keeping it lit for the remnants of winter. He picks cedar for its aroma, it's even char, and she would not have access to that if it weren’t for his ability to tackle the sturdy tree. All it took was her debauchment, the vitiating of character to match his. 

(And really, how debauched was it if she only endured his groping for one night?)

It isn’t too much to want, he thinks. 

She thinks so too. Or otherwise decides it's worth the risk. 

It is late into the evening and his dinner sits fresh in his belly, fire chewing away at the split logs he emptied into the pit earlier. The air is thick with cloying cedar and the mephitic scent of potion-brewing, his pet crouched over a bubbling pot. She has been at it for hours, the same nightly routine since she broke her nose. Tadpoles and feverfew and sage, chanterelle and wishbone and sand. Stirred, brought to a boil, thickened with spit. Then scooped out and smothered over her sore face. A modest poultice, turned cast, to help her mend correctly over weeks.

He wonders if she considered bothering him to heal her. He certainly can. But it appears as though she enjoys keeping her hands busy. Toiling through time, grinding away like water does the earth. In the aeons he’s been around, he’s seen mountains chipped away, rocks change shape, rivers bend over time – and it is always the same eternal petulance. Stubborn mediocrity built into something larger. Endurance over brute force. He doesn’t pretend to understand it, but he can recognise a reflection of it in her craft. 

But she is not eternal. Every mortal has their limits. 

Ghost sees the iron grow filigree in her eyes, calculations imprinting onto her resolve. When she stands and turns to him, he almost expects it. The past quarter hour has built up to this ambitious ask, whatever it may be, and he’s mapped every battle she’s held within herself over the course of it. She does not want like he does. It is only extraneous circumstance that would lead her to his service. 

“I started it later than I usually do.” She mumbles, lips twisting like maggots. The hollows under her eyes are prominent, both exhaustion and hunger trimming her down to a sorry state. “I need sleep, but this can’t be heated beyond a boil.”

His cock chubs up in his trousers, aching as an array of possibilities occur to him in that second. Would he split her cunt on his fingers? Would he make her set it down atop his tongue? Her skirt leaves much to the imagination, but he imagines it bright and faithful in his head. Darker on the outside than in, glazed with pellucid slick, and shrouded in a matting of hair. The thought alone funnels salivate to the underside of his tongue. 

He meets her eye, shoulders curving inward, poised to pounce. 

Then, her brow spasms, and the wolfish instinct unravels as fast as it materialises. 

No. He cannot push it too far, not when she asks for something so little. It took all her energy to come to him now. She will never consider it again if he exploits that beyond equal measure. 

So, Ghost stands, stalking over to the cauldron and his pet. He often forgets how small she is until she cranes her neck to look up at him, all owlish blinks and delicate fingers latticed together, anxious for his response. 

“I’ll wake you.” He says. The tension in her forehead ebbs immediately, eyelids sagging now that he confirmed her ingredients will not waste. Though she doesn’t move, and he makes her stand there until he determines on an appropriate return. 

Moments later, he wraps an arm around her. His hand finds the jut in her skirt, where it protrudes to lap over her arse, and squeezes around the fat of one cheek. Even with the layers separating them, she is supple like softened butter. She makes a sound like a trapped mouse, jumping to the balls of her feet. The noise doesn’t deter him; he holds it there until he’s satisfied his grip will bruise. 

“There we are.” When he releases her, she stumbles backwards to find her bearings against the cool press of the wall. Puts a safe distance between them. Yet her stunned silence is intoxicating, and he has to actively suppress the gluttonous urge for more. Nothing is sacred when he gets like this. “That’s us even, then.” 

She nods. It is a wonder she manages to sleep at all.

(Unfortunate that the potion to heal her broken nose steals stock from her kitchen shelves. Day by day, he’s watched her sacrifice her fungi and herbs to the cauldron, prioritising recovery over sustenance. Unfortunate that she is still unable to go out for more. The winter whips cruel and merciless winds for anyone who dares step out into its storm.

Unfortunate. But not moving enough. 

It is intentional silence on his part, then. For the day will come where she opens her cupboards to eat and finds them lined with dust.

And on that day, he will be there.) 

𝐈𝐈.𝐈𝐈𝐈

Ghost takes his meals outside. 

That is, when he comes back lugging a dead beast and a tree behind him. You’ll watch from the window as he places the latter to the side, sinking to his knees to feast on whatever he caught that day. It always varies: hares, owls, rodents. An elk if he’s lucky. Today, it is a fox. 

Your heart knots with pity, mourning for the mammal who cannot grieve itself. Eyes blank and jaw swung open. Its fur, which typically strikes as a vivid red, can only look dull when set by the blood it leaves in its trail, tangled in the entrails bursting from its belly. The demon never minds the hair, nor the carnage. He balances on his haunches and pulls his mask up, sinking his teeth into the softest parts of his spoils. 

Though no one holds you to the frosted glass – chanting look, you have to look – you insist on bearing witness. The gore never grows easier to behold; everytime, it is the same revulsion that stews nausea at the sight. But you sit and suffer it anyway. If anyone were to ask you why, you would be hard-pressed to find an answer. 

Perhaps it is to build a tolerance for nature’s brutality. Ghost’s lesson with your crow has carved an irreplicable torment within you, revealing the jeopardy you face should you continue down your meek path. Exposure therapy is good justification, then, when your personal improvement thus far has only wrought merit. Your magic begets greater effect. You feel your self-possession flourish your spirit. Even your familiar has staved off the trouble, and you can not ask for a greater success.  

But that does not capture the core of the matter. Perhaps that is to be found in him, instead.

Because when Ghost eats, his visage will fluctuate. You do not think it is something he’s mindful of. None of it looks intentional – he does not bid whetted talons or teeth, features that would aid him in gutting the fox. Rather, they appear like fish beneath a rippling brook. Swift, transient flashes of another form. 

He sucks down an intestine, and his burly legs stretch so the joints are equidistant. They snap backwards, digitigrade heels extending, before you blink and they’re human once more.

He laps at a puddle of blood, and his mask parts to reveal two ivory prongs that steadily grow from his head. They curl, winding around his temples as ram horns do, only to disappear as your arid eyes burn. 

He tears into cartilage, and his exposed skin flakes like charred wood. The liver; his torso extends and thins. The brain; his breath condenses to black ash, as yours would ghostly vapour in cold air. None of it permanent. All of it haunting. 

The first time you saw it, you chalked it up to phantasm. Lack of sleep, insufficient nutrition. Searching for monstrosity that would better connect to the horror unfurling before you. So you set out to observe. Incessantly. Again and again and again – validating what you saw, though you received confirmation upon the second instance long ago. Sure enough, each day he reveals different parts to a whole. Excrescent spines and lofty feet. Things that have been urging for a spot in the sun, pressing under his skin. 

It’s the nesting doll all over again. Little matryoshka faces, each opening to reveal a smaller version of itself within. If you are the innermost one, then Ghost is the sisyphean effort to close them over each other in descending order. Unfeasible. Too large to comfortably remain within his confines. The wood will eventually snap in your struggle, and all the painted pieces will scatter across the floor. 

(You remember him just then. Craggy charm and blue eyes. Crafty hand – the same to restore your mother’s staircase – whittling the doll when you suggested he couldn’t. He wore a cross no matter the day, a habit of his father’s doing, and the silver pendant would sway with the paring motion of his hands. Lustrous against tanned skin. No doubt forged by him, too.

He used to call you macabre. Though it was footling fun at the time, you can’t help but grasp at what he meant as you track the steaming slaughter outside.)

“Do you like it?”

Water rushes into a tin basin, its metallic clang a forceful, echoing percussion. The noise is insufferable, grating on your ears, but you would rather it than have Ghost tow the pungent smell of death into your home. With his back turned to you, he washes his hands and mouth of dinner’s remnants, faucet spitting frigid reserves into the kitchen sink. 

His head twists a fraction, pupils coasting to assess you in his peripheral. Small talk is not commonplace. In the weeks you have coexisted, you can count your conversations on both hands. They always seem to prefer the path of internal dissection instead, judgments flung at one another through glares and body language and not much else. 

“Be more specific.” He grunts, facing his task again. From your place on the couch, you can see the way he picks his nails for stubborn shreds of fat. 

“Fox.”

A sliver of pale skin, bared where his mask ends at his nape, twitches. “No.” 

“Why not?” 

“Ammonic. Greasy. Tough all ‘round. Slippery little fucks, too.” His voice is softer when he isn’t being caustic. Skipping over enunciations, the typical rumble in his chest quieted to a hum. “There are easier, more rewardin’ meals.” 

You imagine what he may be referring to. Of every creature on this earth, only one does not have the benefit of evasion. Predators are sheltered by hierarchical canopies, demons like Ghost so powerful that they do not have to watch their backs. Birds of prey have their wings, fish their slippery scales. Even deer – slender and pregnable – are granted fleet-footed instincts rivalled only by the Pantheon’s messenger himself. It is only you, human, that is condemned to spindling, slow inelegance. Perhaps it is why so many are intellectuals, worshipers, terrors – why you yourself are a witch, sapping nature for her wares of which you do not come by naturally. That is the way things turn. Assuming the offensive to offset one’s shortcomings.

And turn back again; your effort has only imperilled you further. There is a cannibal, a monster, a man inside of your home. And you beckoned him here. 

Even as the revelation occurs to you, you can’t stave your ambition. Of course you do not parley with Ghost for the sake of it. There is nothing this new knowledge grants. But since he left to do his day’s errands, your stomach has made its presence known. Opening up like an early grave, emptiness gnarled beneath a soil bed as with roots of a tombstone tree. Every moment, every word, you are reminded of its cavity. Too long, it says, you’ve ignored the pangs of hunger that seized this trench in an iron fist. Priorities, you would reply, as you surrendered food to brew your poultice. And so your nose is healed, great, but your shelves are empty and your head is faint. Hunger surplants the cold as your imminent killer.

“My mum taught me how to fix a good stew.” You begin, rolling your sticky tongue and tucking both hands beneath your bottom, cautious not to set this mousetrap off yourself. The pressure is grounding, at least; you match your breathing to the pulse you feel in your fingertips. “I trust it would be better than raw meat.”

A pause. Ghost’s spine straightens. Then, a panic. You’re thrown off your conviction when your chest flutters and you feel it in your brain. Where is that wily being? The woman who cheated her familiar into a season’s worth of labour? You feel as though you have regressed; screeching infant, lungs flaring with a rush of new air. You cannot face this, you think, but you’re already halfway out into the world. The sink squeaks off. 

You just pray your stomach doesn’t make noise in the new silence. 

“Is tha’ so?” He says, though does not turn to look at you just yet. 

“I could try.” The words bubble like bile in your throat. It is in your best interest to stay quiet. Say no more. He’s being ambiguous so you will reveal too much in turn. The game is transparent. You can see the water-worn rocks on the river bed, so clear it’s like they’re clasped between your hands instead. Yet– “If I had the ingredients for it, ‘course.” 

There. The lip of the cliff. How odd of you to see it only as you plummet towards a frothy scree. Ghost snaps, live lightning in heated air, or otherwise like the rocks that impale you on landing. In two strides, you’re cornered by a creature with scorn harrowing the space between its brows. You were stupid not to plan an escape route, stupid to arm yourself with nothing but flimsy subtlety. There was always the risk of it coming to this, you knew that. 

“You think y’can rummage for loopholes, hm?” He leers, eyes searing holes into yours. “A trick is only charmin’ on the first go, pet. More than once and y’start to stink of stale piss.” 

“I don’t–” 

He snatches your jaw, thumb and ring fingers digging an aching grip onto either side. Your protest warbles pathetically, dies, chokes you with its rot. It’s difficult, no– impossible to decipher what he's mad at. A small, fresh part of you actually hoped he’d see your cunning as artful. But it seems your station has come back to haunt you; another mortal whose brain cannot keep up with her heart. Even if one is in the right place, you will go about chasing it in the wrong direction. Artful is too shiny of a laurel, then. Trick, too, is being charitable 

“Do not play coy with me, girl. I do not take kindly to underhand deals.” Snarled right above you, spit spattering across your face. Your mandible squeaks, bone-deep pain flaring where he tightens the pressure around your face. Fox blood flavours his breath. There is a ringing in your head – shrill, like water in the tin sink. “If you need something from me, you will admit it and cope with the terms I have in turn.”

“I-I’m sorr-eeeee.” Your apology wheezes thin when he thrashes your head in place. It is either that or the relentless force on your jaw that tears a new world of pain down your neck. The tears are reactionary, then. Hot and foggy and not at all a sign of fear. “Ah- I’m sorry! I won’t– I didn’t mean to offend y-you.” 

“S’too fuckin’ late for that. You’ll follow through, before I take wha’ I want anyway.” He shakes his head. “Ask nicely for what y’need then, pet. Go on.” 

“Nothing! Nothing anymore, please. Jus’ let me go, Ghost.” Perhaps the universe disdains your insincerity, because in a hand dealt by its inexorable irony, your stomach buckles and purls a foul sound. Like it heard your words and protests the withdrawal, gurgling out loud to whoever will address it instead. 

And he does. He does. 

“You’re hungry, hm? That it?” He shoves your limp body onto the floor, dismissive of the pleas you now regulate to your feet, thrashed wildly to strike at his shin. Everything he does is callous, mean, agitated like the sulphur and magma that run thick beneath the earth’s crust. And though it is not your first encounter with a creature of that ilk – you have had your run-ins with over-excited men – the intentionality behind it has never been more flagrant. Ghost does it to hurt you. “Yeah, been neglecting you, haven’ I? Forgot pets couldn’ feed themselves.”  

“I’w scrounge somefing up mysef.” You struggle, speech impeded as he crushes your cheeks inwards. Pearl dust flakes your gums. 

“Should ‘ave thought of tha’ before. Even if I end up breakin’ every bone in that fine skull of yours, I won’t let up. Say it, then, you daft thing.” 

The scaling of your options is instantaneous. Even as your immediate conscious lags behind, activity lights the back of your head and cracks its way out of your mouth before you can catch it. It took weeks for your nose to heal, much less your skull. You’re consuming fuel quicker than you can replenish, running on a backlog of quick-burning fat. And all of it can be taken care of if you just give in, to what will likely only be a few hours of degradation. 

(Cavewoman. Primordial. Primitive impartiality, or survival of the fittest. The world has only come so far since then, and even within its concentrated civilizations, there is no aegis but for those who come up on top. You cannot expect your liberties to be met anywhere. That, you know too well.

But here, in this feral forest, at least you can use the violation to your benefit. At the very least, you will not be exiled, cast as witch for taboo of saying the greater word. 

You are already macerated on rock bottom. And at the barren abyss of all leasts, Ghost will not hang a cross pendant above you as he stomps it in.)

He must see the surrender wet your eyes, for the grip on your jaw lessens. 

“I am hungry.” You cry, finally, lashes fluttering shut so as to guard your tears. “I am hungry. This winter has dashed my garden and I do not know how to hunt. The cushions jab into my ribs when I sleep. I feel as though my stomach will consume me from the inside out, and I’m desperate. I am desperate, and I am so, so hungry. And I am asking for your help. Please.” 

If there was any part of you that still believed he would choose pity, it is muffled and killed. You hear the scratch of fabric as he undoes his pants. Final, failing. Rustled hand behind confines, stench of musk stiffening the air. For a few seconds, you opt to remain blissfully ignorant – keep your eyes closed and imagine that the presence before your face is something different. A purifying flame, tender cut of meat, a smiling face before things fell downhill. It all sounds too good to be true, and they are. Sooner or later, you tell yourself, you have to face the misery. 

So, you force yourself to behold it before he takes that upon himself. 

His cock is heavy. Fat and oversized, length not having suffered for its breadth. Ruddy where the head peaks from an uncut tip, hard already, but bowed under the weight of itself. If you had anything to expel, you would’ve done so by now. A thicket of hair fledges his groyne – a shade of dark that pales his scarred skin in comparison – and it reeks of sweat and miasma. 

He taps it on your cheek, prespend sticky and warm. You flinch as though you have been beaten. 

“Just one thing af’er the other with you, pet. Think this’ll give y’something to fix yourself on.” 

“I don’t– I’ve never–” His thumb hooks over your bottom teeth, prying your trap as wide as it can go. Drool slicks the cracked hinges of your lips. “Don’ know how.”

“Not what I’m lookin’ for.” He purrs, cruel humour gracing his tone. Somehow, it is not a reassurance as much as it is a snub. “Jus’ keep your teeth out of the way.” Humiliation washes your neck and ears, rush of blood like white river rapids behind your ears. It is the final swatch, trumpet to armageddon, before your ruin. You suck in a breath and bring your mouth to him.

Ghost meets you halfway, treating the crown of your head as an anchor to thrust forward. Immediately, you let slip his only rule, teeth snapping reflexively at the intrusion. You expect to be backhanded, have your hair ripped from your scalp in relation, or worse. It is a relief, then, when the only force you receive is a knock against your jaw. The rapping shakes your cotton-lined skull, snaps you out of your stupefaction, and you slack all muscles to accommodate his demand.

The mass feeding down your throat vibrates, an appreciative hum coursing through his body. “There you are, little jezebel. Look a’ you takin’ my cock so well.” 

You make no effort to glide your tongue along his veins. To make this pleasurable for him beyond what he takes for himself. True to his word, your familiar does not punish you for it. He knots his hands around your head and fucks your face, careless, cock rearranging the anatomy of your neck as it bludgeons a straight path down. You sway, ragdoll with the motions, knees rubbing abrasively across the floor as he slides you back and forth over it. 

Hypoxia spots your vision, lungs clenching furiously at the obstructed flow of oxygen. You would fasten it all shut, close yourself off from the world, but your eyes bulge a little at the edges, stagnant blood keeping them arid and open. It’s hard to dissociate. Hard to pretend that the steel-wool friction at the tip of your nose, the pendulum-consistent slaps on your chin, are not his pubic hair and balls searing unmistakable marks on your skin. And your series of gags are sloppy, lewd out in the confined air of your home. How could they be anything but damnation? There is no deluding the Maker. 

(No matter how fervently he tried. Marry me, proposed down on both knees. It’ll set this whole fankle right. We’ll hold hands an’ seek penance at the kirk before th’ceremony. My pa will officiate. Yer ma will be thrilled.)

Snot bubbles from your nose, cheeks slick with tears and wayward spit. When he batters forward, it amalgamates in the soft palate beneath your spasming tongue. When he draws out, he takes it with him, viscous strings of saliva bridging the gap. It streams down to your neck, glosses your lips, webs your lashes together. You feel buried beneath its stifling coat, set down into your grave at last. Maggots worm their way into the soft matter of your brain, eat away at the tissue until there’s nothing left but suffocation. Death. Throttling void. 

Your hands flail out, seeking an end to it, but all you find is Ghost.

He slows down once he nears his end. 

The bruising pace he set stutters, balls tightening against your submental. It catches you off guard because, for the past ten minutes, you accustomed yourself to the patterns of his push and pull. For every plunge, there is a retreat, where you will greedily feast on fresh air before being choked back down on his cock. It is a break of tide, an opportunity to paddle your way above water to clear sea-salt from your hollows. A bay to hold onto so you do not drown.

Until now; his forearms twitch and you’re kept in place, forehead squashed onto his mons. You panic, hold on your breath breaking. The heady scent of sweat sweeps over you, laced with the tart products of your mouth – saliva and blood from where your canine pierced your cheek. Prespend, too. The undiluted stink of him. Hair tickles your lips. Your cunt flares, sudden, slickening the chafe of your thighs, but the unwelcome arousal does nothing for you. 

He holds your head down and spurts his load into your gullet. 

There is no room to swallow. It goes in the wrong direction, then – upward – and out your nose. You squeeze your eyes shut, disgusted scream gargling around his throbbing appendage. Distress bloats your head, temples feverish and sweating, nails digging deep impressions into your palms. It’s futile. Useless. Nothing thwarts him but the last dregs of semen spitting out onto your tonsils, pumping himself dry until finally, finally–

Ghost pulls out. You collapse onto the carpet and hack up cum until your throat bleeds. 

The silence afterwards is mortifying, tension palpable enough to writhe up against. Drained, you’ve since pressed your cheek into the puddle of filth, urging pearlescent spend to seep into the fibres below. It'll be a nightmare to clean later, you process slowly. Perhaps you’ll use the bleach, and take the same sponge to your lips.

The monster above you tuts at the display, crouching to your level when you exhibit no interest in rising to his.  

“C’mon, sweet. Wouldn’t want to waste your dinner now.” 

But you’re too weak to lift your head. So Ghost gathers your hair, puppeteering – in a manner rather gentle for your assailant – until you can lap his essence off the floor. 

It tastes like raw venison. You snivel your thanks, and imagine it is exactly that.

i do not have a taglist. to be alerted when i update, please follow @moondirti-archive and turn on post notifs.

[oreo-creampie]

𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮’𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝

𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬: fluff, suggestive with toji, mentions of his hard dick, toji smells your panties after taking them off you, mentions of smoking with stoner!choso, cuddles with choso and sukuna, back massage with toji, confessions, jealousy towards a stuffed bear, toji calls ya mama, sukuna teases you and calls you pet, true form!sukuna, plenty of kisses, they are all soft for you how can they not be your wonderful babes, established relationship

𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 @akumuprincess I'm so sorry to hear that you're having a shit day😭🥺 I've recently been imagining really often about the jjk men holding you (me, us, the reader, everyone idk how to text😭) after a hard day, because I've had it pretty rough the last few weeks and just imagine them hugging you and holding you close while stroking your back or hair! I feel like Toru would drown you in little kisses all over your face while caressing your hair and cooing sweet nothings at you. Suguru would have you sit in his lap, holding you as close as possible, letting you talk about your worries and frustrations, humming and stroking your skin softly until you relax under his touch. Toji I feel like would give you a relaxing massage and then let you bury yourself in his huge chest while you lie on top of him! I think even our mean king of curses would be softer if you've had a rough day, letting you be more affectionate and clingy, he'd still bully you about it, but wouldn't let you go off his grasp, trapping you in the bed with him hoping it'll make you feel better. They'd be just so gentle and sweet aah, I really hope you feel better by the end of the day, I'm sending you hugs and kisses 🫶🏻🫶🏻

Oreo; thank you for this cute idea! I’ve been thinking about choso a little too much! Toji has a little sexual tension to it, but he does his best to behave. After writing this I realizing that sukuna in true form would give wonder massages

𝐂𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐨

Gently, slowly trailing kisses up the side of your face, to the middle of your forehead, down the length of your nose. Cupping your other cheek, lovingly kissing you. Slowly swiping his thumb along your cheek.

Pulling away, “Let’s cuddle on the balcony, look out at the smoke n’ watch the stars try to be as beautiful as you.” Kissing your cheek.

Squeezing Choso’s slim, sculpted waist, hard underneath your squishy thighs. “Don’t let me go.” Slipping your fingers into his soft hair, freeing it. Lightly dragging your nails along his head.

Choso half open, eyes are blood shot, full of admiration and love for you. The way he looks at you has you forgetting the rest of the room. When he smiles down at you, “Never dream of it love dove. I'm your’s forever.” there is only him.

He stands up, holding up the bong for your to carry before picking up his black rolling tray from his bedside. Kissing where his tattoo stretches into his cheek. “I can't believe I get to be your’s.” He flicks on the fairy lights strung along the balcony’s ceiling.

A soft kiss on your forehead and the last of the tension is melting from your body. “Who else could I hope to belong too but a perfect Angel.” Stepping out into the cool autumn air. Sitting down on the sofa looking out at the tree line.

You slip your hair out of his hair, kissing his forehead. Turning around in his lap, grabbing the tray from him, setting it down the bong down. “Lean back for a moment love dove let me make sure your cozy in a blanket. Don't want you to get a chill.” Resting on Choso’s warm, broad bare chest.

He grabs the neatly folded blanket next to you, spreading the blanket over your lap. “Thank you handsome, you’re wonderful I love you.” He squeezes your soft side, his gentle large hands comforting. You’ve never felt so secure in yourself or in a relationship before Choso.

“I love you too love dove. You’re my everything.” Another kiss, and you want countless more. Closing your eyes enjoying his soft lips on your temple.

𝐓𝐨𝐣𝐢

“I’ll be good but I can’t promise that my cock won’t be hard.” Sliding your underwear off, holding the messy part to his nose, taking a deep breath. “I’ll use this lace piece to jerk off when you take a nap.” Looking into your eyes, “Missed ya mama.” Tossing your underwear behind him.

Running your his hard, “I missed you too, couldn’t wait to get home when I got your text. And how is that behaving?” He stands up, leaning over you, kissing your forehead. Grabbing your hips and squeezing. Toji’s loving, gentle kiss and his warm large hands on your soft body is everything you need.

“I could’ve licked ‘em clean like I wanted.” Kissing your cheek, sliding his hands up your waist. “Lay down on ya stomach beautiful.” You stretch out on the bed, turning your head to the side. The smell of his conditioner clinging to the pillow.

After three weeks had started to fade from the large black sweater he lasted wore and from his side of the bed. It didn’t feel like home without him.

Closing your eyes. “If ya fall asleep then I’ll clean ya up n tuck ya n, I’ll be smokin’ on the balcony watchin’ tv if ya need me.” Straddling your ass, making himself comfortable. His hard dick resting on your cheeks. “If ya take a nap after we can order some take out get in the shower together whilst we are waiting.”

Toji leans over kissing both your shoulders, slowly smearing lotion up your back with his large warm hands. “I’ll wash ya up, give you one of my shirts spray ya in my cologne.” Relaxing your shoulders, not realizing how you’ve been tensing up throughout the day. He works on the tight pinch between your shoulder blades with one hand.

Lifting your head, “Will you take my make up off?” Your head hits the pillow, holding it up being too much effort. Closing your eye, smiling at Toji’s heavy sigh, picturing his pout.

Kissing the top of your head. “Lucky I love you.” Focusing on the knot between your shoulders. Gently messaging up towards your neck, letting out a soft sigh when his large fingers wrap around your neck, gently kneading.

“Thank you handsome, I love you too.” Wiggling your cheeks, he lifts his hips up. Grabbing more lotion pouring some on your back. Smearing it towards your sides, squeezing.

You are admired, beautiful and loved laying on your shared bed with pouty Toji giving you a message. “Teasin me with your beautiful ass how is that fair?” Gently messaging your lower back finding the knots there. “Now stay still, lemme take care of ya mama.”

𝐒𝐮𝐤𝐮𝐧𝐚

“You sure you want me? That giant Teddy Bear of your’s seems to be-oh!” Sukuna intentionally stumbles forward onto you. Calculating his fall onto you to involve shoving your stuffed animal off the bed.

Caging you in between two of his large hands, grabbing your hips. Nuzzling his face into your neck, pressing you into the bed. Sukuna lightly bites making your squirm. “Didn’t look like you needed me since you picked the bear.” Leaning away, cupping your cheek, the mouth on his hand giving you a soft kiss.

His cheeks flushing pink. “Without a thought of coming to see if you could cuddle me.” He glances down at your lips when you smile for the first time since coming home. Letting go of your face, grabbing waist, lifting you off the bed.

Sukuna lays down, setting you down on his lap. He is shirtless like always, part of the population is seeing him traversing around town half naked. “The great, powerful, handsome sukuna is,” siding your hand down his bare chest enjoying the warmth of his hard pecs.

“Is what? Spit it out pet.” He gently slips his fingers underneath your chin to tilt your head up to admire your face. Sliding both his hands down your thighs, squeezing them. He’s been getting handiser, unable to keep to himself.

You love it, the softer he gets for you the more you fall for him.

All four of his hands comforting, warm, and big. One of the mouths on his hands peppering kisses along your side. “Jealous of a teddy bear blushing pink because he doesn't know how to handle the feelings he has for one measly little brat.” The mouth across his abs vanishes, you lay down, resting your head on his chest.

“You know people are scared to breathe in my presence.” His chest rumbles when he speaks. Kissing his chest, the resting your heard, the heart pounding of his vessel pounding faster.

“Back in my day, ok old man.” Sitting up, kissing his cheek, whatever happened earlier today no longer matters for the moment. All that your concerned with is the beautiful monster beneath you. “I love you.”

Sukuna smirks, “I know ya do pet. What else would explain your baffling behavior. When you first saw me and smiled I knew you were a dumbass.” He pinches your nose shut wiggling your head, gently flicking your forehead.

Grabbing his wrist and biting his finger. Letting go when his hand on your thigh bites back. “I'm your dumbass! I wonder if I'll get to hear you say it back.”

He leans in and softly whispers, “I love you.” Leaning back his expression indifferent, crimson eyes cold which his cheeks are redder than. “Now don't think about trying to hear those stupid words from anyone else.”

Oreo creampie’s m.list

part two; gojo, geto, nanami

[kentopedia]

.𖥔 ݁ ˖ THIS WORLD, IT'S CRUEL — levi ackerman

summary . . . levi comforts you after a nightmare

contents . . . gn!reader, takes place after the female titan, pet names (my love, darling), i got the urge to write something for levi last night, so here we are — 800 words

blood splattered across the trees. the bodies of your dead friends and soldiers littered on the ground like nothing more than discarded trash. the sun pelted down on them, the feet of titans crushed them. 

levi was among the bodies. his eyes stared back at you, cold, empty. the blue in them had faded to a steel grey, nothing there at all; not the love and affection that usually bled between his irises. 

and you were frozen, feet stuck in the soil as the world around you swirled so realistically, swaying. the female titan’s eyes turned to you—you’d be next, you knew.

fear gripped you, clawed up your neck, but you couldn’t breathe; couldn’t move. 

the female titan picked you up, stared at you, squeezed you tight. though you thrashed, you were caught in her palms, tears streaming down your cheeks as you tried to scream. 

whatever sound left your throat was raspy, nothing more than the end of an exhale. you screamed and screamed, your body trapped, as you tried to kick and claw and cry to no avail.

then—

“hey, hey, calm down, it’s okay.” 

a voice. it cut through your the vivid image, and suddenly, the sun seemed to dim, the female titan blurring into a figure that seemed darker, different. the air turned cold—the beating sun that you’d sure you’d felt dimmed.

you screamed once more, and this time, a shrill sound came out. levi’s name spilled from your lips… not quite a yell, but loud enough to wake anyone else who was sleeping down the hall.

tears tracked down your cheeks as you blinked, realizing that you weren’t kicking at the female titan, but the blankets of your bed. the sun was gone because it was the middle of the night, and the room didn’t smell like pine because you weren’t there.

levi stared at you, eyes concerned as they darted all over your face. he brushed away your tears before they rolled down, dripped off your jaw, a steady stream that you weren’t sure how to stop. 

“levi,” you said again, squeezing his wrists as he held your cheeks. “levi.” 

“it’s okay,” he repeated, noting the terror in your expression that hadn’t faded, knowing exactly what had happened in your mind. it wasn’t the first time you’d had the nightmare—it wouldn’t be the last. “you’re okay. i’m okay.” 

you searched his face for any sign of a lie, that perhaps, this was the dream, and levi had truly died back on the mission. but levi breathed like a living person, held your face like a breathing person, and touched you with a warmth that no dream had ever supplied. 

“breathe, my love,” he said, catching your eye, taking a long inhale with you as you watched, focusing on those beautiful blue eyes. they were full of life; full of love—not the dulled irises that you’d seen in your dream.

you took a long, stilted breath, closing your eyes. you let your hands trail down his arms, grip at his biceps, nails digging into the skin. “i’m sorry, levi,” you said, softly, voice cracking. “i didn’t mean to make so much noise, i just—” your lip trembled, but you refused to cry again. your gaze fell to his lap, to the place where his thighs brushed your own on the bed. “i’m sorry.” 

“fuck. don’t—” for some reason, your apology always seemed to crush him. his expression broke, and he tugged you onto his lap, sending a fresh wave of tears over you. “just. come here. don’t apologize.” you trembled in his arms, and he hushed you, rubbed your back as you squeezed his shoulderblades, buried your face into his collarbone. “you’re okay.” 

he smelled like fresh linens, so clean and soapy. there was a hint of bergamot. so very levi. he was safe. he was alive. so were you. 

“you’re okay,” you repeated his own words, exhaling, shifting so your cheek was pressed against his jaw, your nose buried in the soft skin of his neck. though, if you were talking more to yourself or to him, you weren’t sure. 

levi held you for a moment, running his hands along your back, his fingers tracing each knob of your spine. slowly, he lowered you back to the bed, maneuvering you onto his chest, tucking you into his side. at some point, your hands had fisted in the fabric of his shirt, clutching it tight, the material wrinkled. 

you released your palm, sighing softly as he kissed your forehead. “i didn’t mean to wake you,” you said — the same thing you always repeated after every nightmare. 

to which levi always said — “you didn’t.” because sleep evaded him, always, and he never got far enough into it to have dreams. 

you reached for his hand and levi let you, let you squeeze his palm, lace your fingers together. the darkness settled back into the room, the serenity stilling, even as the images of your dead squad members lingered on the back of your eyelids. 

you were alive, and so was levi.

it would be okay.

[dollysilena]

no grave can hold my body down

(i’ll crawl home to her)

ryoumen sukuna, before he was a curse, was once a man.

genre: female implied reader but can be read as gender neutral, reincarnation au, unrequited feelings, unedited ngl, inspired by work song by hozier, angst angst angst

long before ryoumen sukuna was a demon, the king of curses with four arms and two faces, he was once a man.

though, that has been long forgotten in history. sometimes, he even forgets it himself. the habits of being a cursed spirit had erased whatever was left of his mortal self from hundreds of years ago. he only enjoyed the carnal desires of blood, lust, and revenge. he had long forgotten what human emotions were, jealousy, anger, love. 

atleast he thought he forgot what all those were, up until he looked at you through the eyes of his new vessel.

ryoumen sukuna was once a man, who had a lover.

he swears his blood runs cold and he wasn’t even aware that could happen anymore. there you are, standing before him, hundreds of years after you died. 

over the course of a millennium of carnage and curses, your once distinct face had become hazy with time, until eventually he chose to forget you completely. he had no use for the memories of his once-human self. he was a demon now, afterall. but what a twisted curse chance of fate it was, that the reincarnation of his past lover had manifested infront of him, no, rather, it was infront of his new vessel. 

you had no idea who he was, much less that he was inside of yuuji itadori, watching you from afar.

he hadn’t even realized that curses could still feel and it repulsed him. what use could he have for you now? a mere human had no value to him. you don’t even remember your past life.

but he remembers it all.

it was easy to chose to forget, but there’s still an echo of you in his mind. the memories still crept through him like unrelenting roots to a tree. 

he remembers the way his hands, before they were covered in markings and his nails became claws, roamed your skin under the silk of your robes, as the cicadas buzzed outside and the first petals fell from the trees above you. your skin was illuminated by lantern light as he recalled the shape of your lips, stained like they bit into ripe fruit. but the memory that sears so deeply into his mind was the way you looked at him without fear.

there’s a bittersweet taste washing over his tongue, and it isn’t blood. he almost thinks it’s sorrow. it’s too similar to fear, for his liking. he swallows it back down, and buries it deep somewhere in himself where he hopes it will rot away.

he doesn’t act, no, that would be impulsive and too human. something he used to be. instead he watches you from the eyes of his vessel. 

and from his glimpses of you, even after hundreds of years, countless reincarnations, you’re still the same. for once, his focus isn’t on the simple demonic pleasures he’s grown accustomed to, they’re on you. a foolish human, the kind he so despises.

he wishes that it was as easy to despise you.

he feels you creeping through him, and not just in memories this time. it’s like webbing ivy, slowly but surely growing and entangling him. 

he recognizes the crinkle by your eyes when itadori gets you to smile, the familiar lips he begins to crave again, and worst of all, the tenderness of your eyes when you look at him without the thought of evil whispering in the back of your mind.

he wonders that if you’re still the same now, then maybe your love is still the same too.

but no, you’re not looking at him, you’re looking at the brat he’s trapped in.

he buries the grotesque thoughts of longing deep in the chasm of what used to be known as his heart. but he realizes it was never quite gone. 

it’s sickening really, he has no use for menial things like feelings, and he has no use for you. atleast that’s what he tells himself when he sees, feels, you press a chaste kiss onto itadori’s lips.

he tries to ignore the dull ache in his bones everytime you kiss itadori afterwards. but like your feelings for the damn brat he’s caged in, the dull ache grows into kindling, and slowly burns into a fire. 

it’s been so long since he’s felt anything that he almost can’t place his finger on what it could be, but he reit’s undoubtedly hatred. it consumes him like a fever.

it’s hatred for itadori, for making him watch this stupid puppy love from his internal cage. it’s hatred for himself for being foolish enough to degrade himself, the king of curses, into yearning for a human. it’s hatred for you, for making him feel again.

then came the deal.

“one: when i chant “extension,” you’ll hand over your body for one minute. two: you’ll forget this promise– i’ll promise that i won’t kill or injure anyone during that minute.”

of course he struck the deal as a means to his greater plan, but there was a whisper of a thought… he could see you again.

it’ll only just be once, he tells himself, just to finally put an end to this idiotic pining. it’ll be the means to an ends, and once it’s over, he’ll simply find a way to get rid of you. either from his thoughts or just entirely. he ignores the way he actually can’t bear the thought of that happening.

“extension.”

he then finds himself in a memory. the one he keeps replaying over and over.

the image is nearly identical, you laid beneath him with a flushed face as your delicate eyes gazing up at him without a trace of unease. he only realizes it’s not a memory when he realizes he’s in the modern age, where you aren’t outside listening to cicadas as cherry blossoms fell, but to whatever music you have playing as you laid snugly in your bed.

“yuuji?” you hum from beneath him. your voice makes him snap back to reality.

you seemingly hadn’t noticed the switch between the two. though, there would be no way to, considering that the markings strewn out over his body were only noticeable to himself and itadori. you, stupidly and thankfully, were blissfully unaware.

“what are you doing?” you giggled from beneath him, the sound too familiar for his liking. “kiss me already.”

he’s taken aback by the brazen request until he realizes you still think he’s itadori, your lover. for a brief moment, he’s repulsed to say he considers it. he should refuse, and extend himself back to his domain. while he’s done worser things than a simple kiss, kissing you seems too… vulnerable. it would anchor him too deeply into what he thinks is human. but you, laid beneath him, pliantly and unmistakably beautiful, makes him crave it too badly enough to reason anymore.

he finds his way to you, and the craving develops into a hunger. you’re warm to the touch, the once forgotten taste of your lips now familiar again. he feels the hairs on his neck rise when your hand gingerly comb through his locks as you melt beneath him. you’re consuming every inch of him and he feels as if he’s being burned away in a fire.

no bloodlust, carnage, or other carnal pleasure could satisfy him anymore. now that he’s remembered how it was like to touch you, to be touched by you, he couldn’t go back. not now, not ever again.

but the minute is over in the blink of an eye, and he finds himself in his domain, now left with only a pit in his stomach, and the feeling of you still ghosting on his lips.

ryoumen sukuna was once a human. but you still are. and you could never love a demon.

[babiebom]

When You Fall (V)

A/N: take what I am writing with a grain of salt I have no idea how lawyers speak or how their letters work lmao.

Tw:mental breakdown, cursing, slight su*cide attempt, talks of de*th, violence

Wc:2.4k

Previous Next Masterlist

Your day was ruined before it even truly began. You didn't even get to eat breakfast before one letter ruined what you assume to be your entire week. There was going to be no mental healing for a little while longer. 

'To whom it may concern,

Y/N L/N is being summoned to the reading of the final will and testament of {ENTER NAME(S) HERE} on May 22, 2023 or whenever is soonest possible…'

You don't even finish reading it before crumpling up the paper and tossing it away from you. You laugh bitterly, in disbelief at the fact that they couldn't even be bothered to actually enter all three names…they didn't even enter one except for yours and it was misspelled. After a second you go and pick it up, throwing it inside of your home before grabbing your pickaxe and fleeing to where you think the mines are. 

Seeing your parents and grandfather buried was final enough for you, the almost literal nails in the coffin confirming the fact that you would never see them again unless you believed in God or an afterlife. Yet now things seemed even more real, as if the funeral and the police calls and the planning and the crying weren't enough to get it through your head that this was all real. As if you needed one more punch to the gut to remind you of all your past mistakes. 

Tears stream down your face as you power walk your way up the mountain. You puff, chest already burning from how hard you were walking, the air growing just the slightest bit thinner. Your eyes land on a house, lonely by itself on the mountain. There were potted plants decorating the outside, and a gate that was propped open as if the space didn't truly need to be fenced off at all. You walk passed, not wanting to be caught standing around outside and also not wanting to have a conversation with whoever lived there. It was too early anyways. There was also a tent, a couple yards out further up the mountain under a tree. You could kind of see an outline of a person, but again you didn't want to have any sort of conversation. Continuing on, you begin to see debris littering the ground, large rocks and wood and other…things lying around as if whoever was doing something around here hadn't cleaned up at all. 

Gratefully you follow the debris, all the way to the entrance of a cave. Stepping inside, you almost feel relieved you can collapse in here and no one would ever find you. Hell, you could die here and no one would ever see you again. You doubted anyone in town really came into the caves. 

You laugh loudly, hysterically as you allow yourself to fall to the ground, away from the entrance but not deep enough inside that no one outside wouldn't be able to hear you. Your laughs echo and bounce around the cavern as they grow louder and louder. Your lungs burn and your stomach twists as you continue, hot tears rolling down your cheeks as you fold and press your forehead to the cold wet floor. You hit your head once against the floor before bursting into sobs, laughing in between each one.

It felt as if your mind was melting and going deeper into the caves was becoming the best idea you have ever had. You would surely get what you wanted that way, you could hopefully see your parents again, or realistically be freed from whatever nightmare you had found yourself trapped in. You were nowhere close to a professional miner, and one wrong move could bring down everything onto your head. 

There was a ladder and a broken down elevator a few meters ahead of you, and the thought that maybe just...maybe sabotaging yourself would get the job done far more quickly than hoping some rocks would fall on your head. Just one slip off of the ladder, just one jump that was too heavy for the elevator to hold and you would be free. 

Your sobs quieted down as you dragged yourself towards the ladder. Only pausing when you hear something move. The something moving turns into more movements and you slowly come to the realization that someone was walking towards you, slowly. 

The man wasn't really paying attention to anything, his eyes…well eye was pointed to the ground, his eyebrows furrowing. The other eye was covered by an eyepatch and he wore some sort of cloak on his shoulders. He sort of looked like a pirate. Is he a pirate? Do pirates even exist anymore?

He hums and moves closer, stepping around you. Was he not going to say anything? The feeling of annoyance crept up your throat, but slowly as it was being weighed down by relief and gratitude. He wasn't here for you, and you weren't here for him, so whatever you were doing is none of his business. The man looks down the hole where the ladder is and you curiously follow his lead still from your position on the ground. What was he doing?

After a second he frowns then backs away, finally looking at you. Embarrassed, you look away, before opening your mouth to speak. You wanted to ask him what he was doing before he could ask you. 

"...I was just peering down into this old mine shaft. It's been abandoned for decades." He sighs and offers you a hand which you take, standing up on wobbling legs. He doesn't question it. "Still, there's probably good ore down there."

"Ore?" You ask, trying to regain your balance. He nods with a grunt, the eye not covered by the eyepatch looking at you with an emotion you couldn't quite read. Was he judging you?

"But a dark place, undisturbed for so long…I'm afraid ore isn't the only thing you'll find." He's silent for a moment while you look down again. You can't really see anything, apart from darkness. Were you really going to go down there?

"Here, take this," he hands you an old sword that was hanging from his belt. The thing is old and rusted but it made your heart swell just from receiving it. The man didn't even know you and he gave you something that you assume meant something to him. "You might need it." 

You thank him, holding the sword awkwardly in your hands. It wasn't too heavy, but the weight was still an unfamiliar one. You hadn't gotten many chances to hold an actual sword before. "Name's Marlon, by the way. I run the adventurers guild right outside." 

You don't recall seeing anything of the sort on your way up here, but then again you had your sights set only on this cave. Maybe you can explore some more since the self sabotage plan couldn't be done now. "I'll keep my eye on you. Prove yourself and I might think about making you a member." 

You blink rapidly at his words, confused on when you had made it apparent that you wanted to join. You didn't want to join. You open your mouth to object him, but the white haired man is already walking away from you and out of the cave. You frown as you watch him, turning back to the ladder. There had to be no way he just did that, right? It felt as if you had been tricked by some sort of forest imp or something into giving your soul away, and while the situation wasn't that dramatic you still felt almost played. You assumed there weren't many members to begin with, which is probably why he did that in the first place. You didn't think anyone else in the valley would do anything like this so he needed who he could get. 

Sighing loudly, you try and put your feet on a rung of the ladder. The thing was shaky and, as he mentioned, old so caution needed to be used. The thought of trying to purposefully get hurt leaves your mind, now your need is to somehow prove yourself to this strange man because what else did you have to do? And though you did not wish to admit it you knew somewhere in the back of your mind that things were only bad for now, and that youd at least needed to use the gift that your grandfather made without doing anything rash. It would be rude to not use a gift, especially one as grand as an entire farm. 

It was hard for your eyes to adjust during your descent. The darkness overtaking your sight and the smell of rocks and dust overtaking your nose. Your lungs, nose, and throat burned as you forced yourself to hold in any coughs or sneezes until you got all the way down. One wrong or rough move would have the whole rickety thing coming down and despite what you wished for previously, dying a slow and painful death if probably starvation at the bottom of this ladder wasn't ideal. 

Thankfully you got to the bottom pretty quickly, torches lit up around you casting an eerie glow around the cave. It was empty except for the rocks that littered the ground, was this all there is to the cave? You wondered for a second why you would need a sword if this is how far down it went, except you didn't see any sign of the supposed elevator or the ore he was talking about earlier. 

It took a second to adjust yourself, but luckily the sword Marlon gave you came with a sheath that you struggled to attach to your backpack. Putting the sword away you take out your pickaxe, the tool seemingly lighter in your hands from all the hours you spent hitting rocks. 

In here was no different, though the air was cooler and a little more muggy. Particles stirring with every move you make. Soon enough you find a ladder hidden under one of the rocks. And so level after level, rock after rock, you make your steady descent into the somehow dry cavern. 

It was past the first time you saw the elevator when you came across your first…thing. It was almost similar to the little thing you saw in the community center, though it was almost also completely different. 

This thing looked like sentient jelly, see through even though it was green. No arms or legs, and it bounced like a ball. It was kinda cute…in a creepy sort of way. Its eyes are black and empty, not really focusing on anything until you take a step closer. For a split second you think the thing might be friendly, it's small and cute-ish, only coming up to your ankle. There was no way this thing could damage you in any way, right?

Wrong. The thing sets its sights on you and it's like the air around you changes. Its eyes somehow grow darker and it lunges towards you in a leap that even a frog would think is risky. You move backwards, staring at the thing in confusion, what did it think it could do? It's a ball of sentient jello. Frowning at it you make a noise of surprise as you get lunged at again.  

The thing gets too close somehow, way too quickly and unexpectedly. The slime thing bounces against your leg and you're suddenly overcome with a sluggish feeling, as if your body was being weighed down by a ton of bricks. 

In a panic you scrunch your face, trying to stomp on the thing. It doesn't do much damage to the things as you frantically attempt to stomp it out like a fire. The feeling leaves you after a couple moments, allowing your movement to pick up speed. All this does is serve to make the little thing angry, its eyes turning a vibrant red. Just like you had been able to pick up speed, it picks up speed and launches itself at you again. This time you move, allowing it to fly past you giving you a little time to scramble and take out your sword. 

Swinging hard, the sword passes through the thing and to your relief it seems to do a little damage to it though it was still moving at an alarming rate. You swing again, and again, and again until the thing is just a puddle of goo. 

Panting, you rest your hands on your knees, tears springing to your eyes. It wasn't as if you were hurt. You were cut, or bleeding, or dying; but somehow it felt as if that thing took some of your life force away and the thought makes you angry. Sure you had been wishing for death earlier, but you absolutely did not want to be killed by a ball of jello. Not only would that be embarrassing, but it would be shameful. 

A sort of rage filled you and for a moment it fuelled your steady descent. Now determined tonat least stomp out one of those jellies for the sin that the first you had come across had committed. Yeah, it was kind of petty, and dramatic, but you couldn't quite get control of your emotions just yet. 

So you stomp and stomp, kicking and slashing at every jelly you see, letting the rage in their eyes ignite yours more. They wanted to fight? So did you. By the time you had gotten to the elevator again, you were exhausted. Luckily for you the stupid thing seems to now work. 

Hobbling towards it, you can feel the weight of everything you had carried in your bag, quite a bit of rocks, some orange stuff that you thought might be valuable, and an even larger rock that you hoped held something in it. When you step into the elevator you pause for a moment, trying to get your bearings. 

That now familiar feeling takes over your body, as if you were being held down by a ton of bricks. The rage had fizzled out, but you still refused to die by the hands, or lack thereof, of these stupid things. So you turn, and swing at it even with all of your exhaustion. The thing charges for you again the second you swing, hoping it would be the last one. 

You get hit the same time you hear the sound of the jelly splattering. The noise is reassuring and satisfying even as you begin to pass out. Frantically you jab your finger against the only buttons in the elevator that glow, hoping it would get you out of your situation. Just as you hear the ding and the sound of the doors closing, your world fades to black. 

[separatist-apologist]

Buried Alive Inside My Dreams

Summary: An evil enchantress has locked Princess Feyre Archeron in a tower, secluding her from her family and removing her entirely from the outside world. Trapped and alone, Feyre turns her gaze to the stars, dreaming of returning home to her sisters- of finding peace. She's determined to escape before her birthday and the annual starfall that marks the occasion just as soon as she can figure out a way down.

When a thief breaks into her tower, Feyre takes her chances and leaves with him, unaware of who this man is and the price freedom will try and extract from her

Happy @officialfeysandweek2023

Read on AO3 | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

f Feyre had been smart, she’d have left Rhys to die. No one would blame her for it—it was clear he’d been caught up in the rushing river filling the once dry creek bed from the broken dam, had been injured by debris, and had managed to crawl into the grass before succumbing to his wounds. It likely wouldn’t take long at all, and was probably painless.

And yet Feyre found herself searching the bank for a sharp rock and, once she found it, sliced open one of the scars littered along her wrist and pressed the wound to his lips.

“Drink it,” she breathed, her other hand cradling his head so he wouldn’t choke. “Come on, Rhys, drink.”

He did, taking the most polite mouthful of blood—and then another before his eyes fluttered open and he realized what was happening. Shoving her back, Rhys wiped at his shining, ruby lips. 

“You—you—”

“Yes, I know. Witch,” she grumbled, gripping the wound with her other hand and applying pressure. “But a witch who saved your life.”

Pulling at his shirt and revealing dark, swirling tattoos inked along his shoulders and broad, muscular chest, Rhys watched his once fatal wound knit itself back into flawless, golden brown skin. Feyre felt a little bitter looking at her own wrist—she could heal him, and Amarantha, and everyone else, but not herself. Rising to her feet, Feyre walked toward the treeline and plopped back down, wet clothes uncomfortable against her body. 

Rhys came to join her, hesitating before sitting shoulder to shoulder, his back against the same wide tree trunk.

“That’s why you were imprisoned?” he questioned. 

Feyre nodded, drawing her knees to her chest. “My mother made a deal with an enchantress in exchange for children. I don’t know what my sisters got—well, that's not true. I’m pretty sure my middle sister got beauty. And I got this,” Feyre said, holding up the thick strands of her hair draped all over the ground. It would take her days to pick out all the strewn about leaves and sticks. “Eternal youth, so long as you keep drinking from my blood, you’ll never age, never die. Not me, though. I’ll live and die as I should.”

“Oh,” Rhys murmured, looking down at his broad hands. “That's why you thought…I’m not going to sell you, for the record.”

“I appreciate that,” Feyre murmured, not bothering to mention that it was the least he could do given she’d saved his life. 

“You can’t kill her on your own, you know,” Rhys told Feyre, closing his eyes. “Believe me. I’ve tried.”

“Why?”

He peeked open one violet eye. “She killed my family.”

Oh. “I think she killed my mother, too.”

Without opening his eyes, Rhys reached over and gripped her knee. Neither of them said a word, calming their still terrified bodies. Night was starting to settle, which prompted both Feyre and Rhys to get up, gather firewood and some fish from the river they’d just been plucked out of. Rhys built the fire while Feyre began deboning their fish. It was companionable for a moment—even in their exhaustion, Rhys and Feyre had found common ground. Both their families had been wrecked by the same horrible woman.

Looking at her nails illuminated in the dark, Feyre dared to ask, “How did you try and kill her?”

Rhys glanced over, stretching out his legs in front of the fire. The food was long gone, leaving nothing but the curling smoke and crackling fire for company. Overhead, a blanket of stars twinkled, watching with what Feyre thought was curiosity. 

“Traps. Poisoned arrows, poisoned drinks. A poisoned dagger—”

“I’m sensing a theme,” Feyre said, almost smiling. 

“She’s hard to get close to,” Rhys murmured sheepishly. “I’d much prefer to drive a sword through her throat and watch her gasp for air at my feet, but I’ll take what I can get.”

Feyre was tempted to ask why she’d targeted his family. What about them was so special? But asking opened her up to the same line of questioning, and though Rhys seemed to have made peace with Feyre’s magical blood and hair, she wasn’t certain he’d be so calm about a hidden princess in his midst. He was a criminal after all, even if he was one with some morals. And he’d protected her twice in the caverns when he could have let her die and picked his ring off her body. 

“What’s so special about the ring?” Feyre asked him after another long minute of silence.

“It belongs to the love of my life. I intend to give it to her…if I ever find her.”

“That's…strangely romantic,” she agreed, guilt pricking her chest. “How will you know when you find her?”

Rhys shrugged. “I’ll just know.”

“Good luck,” Feyre murmured. She didn’t think true love existed—not in a place where a child could be locked up in a tower for a decade, at least. There was no love that existed at all, only people trying to survive and make the best of their terrible circumstances.

Still, long after Rhys had fallen asleep, Feyre was still thinking about what he said. I’ll just know. Pulling the ring from her pocket, she examined that blue stone and silver band with curiosity. What would it be like, she wondered, to find someone who could recognize you on sight? Who knew what you were without a word needing to be said? 

It was silly, sliding it onto her finger. Stupid, too, because if Rhys saw he was likely to be angry. But he merely slept, head lolled against his shoulder while Feyre held the ring up against the firelight. It truly was beautiful, and whoever it belonged to was impossibly lucky. Rhys, for all his annoying qualities, was frustratingly loyal. 

And maybe some little part of her was jealous, because Feyre could have given it back to him. He’d promised, and she believed he’d take her to Avalon with or without possessing his ring. Feyre merely repocketed it, wanting to hold on to it—and to him—for a little while longer. Rhys was the first person to show her true kindness, even if sometimes it felt begrudging.

And she’d been alone for so long. She wasn’t ready to let it all go. 

When Feyre woke the next morning, her head was in Rhys’s lap. He was awake, her hair carefully piled around her shoulders as he picked scattered debris from the strands with nimble, gentle fingers. Rustling treetops hid the sun from view save for a few errant beams that warmed her skin.

“You don’t have to do that,” Feyre murmured, voice still thick with sleep.

“Keeps my hands busy. And you looked like you needed the rest,” Rhys replied in that deep, rich voice of his. “We’re ahead of schedule. Maybe a day or two from Briarcrest, and then from there it's just a day’s walk to the border.”

“Right,” Feyre murmured, sitting up. She was embarrassed to be using his thigh as a pillow, and more embarrassed still that she’d worn the ring he intended for his future wife someday. It was all painfully intimate. Rhys didn’t stop pulling things from her hair given the length even after she sat up, taking his hands out of her hair only when it was time for her to braid it.

“What happens when you cut it?” he asked, watching her finger comb her hair.

Feyre shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope it just becomes regular hair.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“Then I might just shave it all off and be bald until I die,” she replied, knotting the end of her braid. It fell to the back of her knees, just as it always did, but at least it wasn’t dragging. The multitude of braids required in order to shorten it made it nearly as wide as her back which Feyre preferred simply for aesthetics. 

Rhys cleared his throat, looking away when she finished tucking her shirt into her laced up pants. “We should ah, probably get going.”

While Feyre smothered their fire, Rhys made his way down to the river to splash water over his face and hair. The wet droplets clung to his skin, making him, impossibly, more handsome than before. Feyre couldn’t look at him as he approached, his white shirt still unbuttoned from the day before, revealing wide swaths of muscle and skin beneath the aquamarine of his vest. His jaw was darkly stubbled while his hair was mussed and gods, he was so beautiful it made her teeth ache. 

“Will there be somewhere to stop between today and Briarcrest?”

Rhys grimaced. “Nope. We’re roughing it for the next two days. Good thing you’ve got shoes, though.”

“I would hate for you to have to carry me,” she replied, not hating that thought at all. A flush crawled up Rhys’s neck while he coughed again. 

“Yeah,” he agreed gruffly. 

“So,” she began, sidling up next to him. Even after a night outside, Rhys still smelled good. Like citrus and the sea—like a cloudless, starry night over a cold, midnight sea. “Wanted by the crown, huh?”

Rhys rolled his eyes. “They’ve never once managed to get my nose right on those stupid posters.”

Feyre looked up at his perfect face, deciding it might be fun to tease him a little. “Looks right to me.”

A dark scowl clouded his expression. “Look again, Feyre darling. I am far lovelier in person.”

“And so modest, too.”

“Incredibly modest. I have to be, given how beautiful I am and how big my—ow!”

“That’s enough of that,” she said breathlessly. Rhys glanced down at her and Feyre hoped her red cheeks could be attributed to the uphill hike and not her embarrassment. A sly smile spread over his face.

“I’ll show you—”

“I said that’s enough!” 

“Of course, darling,” Rhys replied smoothly, openly grinning now. He knew he’d gotten under her skin. Did he also know he’d made her heart race? Feyre had read just enough to understand sex, even if she’d never gotten to partake in it. Clearly Rhys didn’t have that problem, which, good for him she supposed. It seemed wrong to bed him and then wave him off.

“Lighten up,” Rhys said, reading her every thought. “Your virtue is safe with me.” Feyre nodded, unable to explain that she wasn’t really worried about that. She was more worried she might like him too much, and it would make leaving him difficult. 

Still. 

Feyre thought about what it might be like for the duration of the walk.

RHYS:

He was losing his mind. Feyre’s shirt was dry, and somehow more sheer than it had been the day before. Or maybe he hadn’t noticed it, given they were in the dark and she was being strangled. Now, though, in a beam of fading light, all Rhys wanted to do was rip it off her body and really look at her. It didn’t help that every day they spent in the sunshine drew forth more freckles over the bridge of her nose and warmed her skin. They’d been walking for two days. 

Two days in which Rhys waited until she fell asleep beside him and drew her into his lap only to pretend she must have done it herself in her sleep. And two days he’d been allowed to untangle her thick hair and comb through it with his fingers while she was unaware, just so he could watch her braid it again.

They were coming up on Briarcliff—which meant their time together was drawing to a close. He supposed that was for the best. He was starting to imagine scenarios in which he told her the truth and offered her his assistance, of which he truly had none to give. Rhys was about to stage a bloody coup, just like the one that had stolen his crown ten years before. He could die.

He could succeed, too. And if he did, he doubted he’d have the sort of time to dedicate toward her revenge. It would have to be shelved while he found a place for her in his court and Rhys didn’t even know what he’d do with her. 

Put her in his bed? It was tempting, of course, and Rhys was highly aware that his best chance at stability and legitimacy was marrying someones very important daughter. A princess from a neighboring realm or a very high born woman of a nobleman with a lot of money made the most sense. And the more he thought about it, the more he could see true love slipping from his fingers. 

Rhys was bound by duty. 

And he had to let her go. 

Sleeping with her would merely complicate his weird feelings, strung together by what he kept telling himself was trauma. She was keeping secrets—so was he, to be fair. Still, Rhys couldn’t resist alluding to his cock, to his mouth, to anything that might give her pleasure, if only to see that blush stain her pretty cheeks.

Feyre really was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And Rhys doubted he’d ever encounter her kind of beauty again. Fierce and unflinching, resilient and yet somehow deeply optimistic.

And soft. Oh, but Feyre was so, so soft. She wanted him to think of her as hardened, as someone unafraid but Rhys could see it just beneath the surface. That sweetness, like a kitten he wanted to stroke. 

Well. Mostly like a kitten. But truthfully, when he imagined stroking her, she was naked and begging him for more, more, Rhys—

“Rhys?”

Rhys snapped out of his daydream. “Hm?”

“We’re close. Look,” Feyre pointed toward a well worn path a few feet away. Deep grooves from carriages and wagons dug against the ground, half frozen as the world continued to get colder. He’d caught Feyre with her arms wrapped around her body as they walked. It had been seasonally warm year round, but the closer they came to Avalon’s border, the colder it would become. Winter was upon them, after all. 

He’d get her a cloak while he was there, and maybe both of them some warmer clothes, too. Rhys was looking forward to soft blankets and a warm meal he didn’t have to hunt down first. Though, to be fair, Feyre was far better at hunting than he was. It had been her who’d trapped all those rabbits and Feyre who had made the bow and iron tipped arrows while he’d been collecting firewood. 

A huntress and a thief. What other little talents was she hiding, he wondered?

By the time they reached the open gates of Briarcliff, Feyre’s shoulder was pressed against his side and her body was wracked with shivers. He wasn’t doing much better, well aware the guard that watched the two of them enter must have assumed them beggars. Let him. Better that then the truth. 

“This way,” Rhys murmured, straightening himself even when whistling air whipped around his face. He just needed to get inside for a minute, warm himself up, and then he’d be fine. 

The city itself was beautiful and vibrant—nearly reminiscent of Velaris. His teeth ached from longing.

He was so close to home. So close to going back and setting everything right. 

“What’s going on?” Feyre asked him, looking as local vendors arranged tables on sidewalks and hung brightly colored pendants and string lights over the streets.

“Starfall,” Rhys replied with a shrug. It had been one of the most cherished holidays in Velaris before…before. Now he could hardly stand the sight of it. “We’ll be long gone before—”

“Gone?” Feyre asked, reaching for his arm to stop him. She wasn’t looking at him, though. She was looking at a mural painted against a limewashed building. Rhys turned, catching the stares of the three young princesses peering back. They’d be grown women, now. He’d never thought much about them, though he’d met them all when he’d been a little boy. Only once, because his father thought he and the oldest sister might be a good match to unite their kingdoms.

He remembered hating her. 

And he remembered their bright, open palace overlooking the sea, and the middle sister—who wouldn’t have been older than seven—trying to rope him into a tea party. And how the youngest had opened a panel in the wall for him, mischievous blue eyes twinkling like stars, one finger pressed to her lips.

Tell no one, she’d whispered before closing him in. Rescuing him from both of her sisters and dumping him out in the courtyard where Rhys had spent the rest of the visit lounging in a hammock napping under a warm summer sun. No one had seen the trio of princesses in years. Except Cassian, at any rate, if Azriel was to be believed. He had the eldest, escorting her to the other sisters somewhere in the vicinity. Rhys didn’t let himself dwell, turning away from their too knowing eyes. Feyre remained a beat longer before reaching for him again.

“Can we stay?”

“Stay?” he scoffed. “You’re a day from the border. You could be in Avalon by nightfall tomorrow—”

“But it’s starfall,” she pressed, her voice a breathless whisper. 

“So?”

Hurt flashed over her expression and Feyre removed her fingers. “Right. Let’s go—”

He caught her before she’d made it more than three steps—in the wrong direction, not that he dared to tell her so. “What’s important about starfall, Feyre?”

Tell me something truthful about you. 

“I could see the falling stars from my window,” she whispered, genuine pain lancing her expression. “It’s how I knew…how I knew I’d turned another year older.”

“Your birthday is on starfall?” he asked with wonder. Feyre nodded, tucking an errant strand of hair behind her ear.

“You’re right, though. We should—”

“Stay,” he interrupted. “We should stay. It’s just…it’s just two more days. I’ll deliver you to Avalon in a week, just as I promised.”

Three more nights with Feyre. His reasons were selfish—he wanted to prolong what he had with her before he had to tell her goodbye. And maybe steal something for himself before duty came to claim him. He’d have his memories, right? Though Rhys would end up married to someone out of survival, he’d know that somewhere in the world, a woman like Feyre could exist and he’d got to be part of that, a part of her, even for a little while. 

The relief on Feyre’s face made it worth it. She’d never admit that she was thankful, proven by the little nod of her head. But he knew it. Rhys didn’t resist the urge to reach for her delicate wrist or pull her hand into his.

Even when Feyre yanked it back out a second later, he’d felt their fingers interlock for that moment, palm to palm. Rhys forced a roguish grin on his face, to act like this was all a little game to him. Feyre scowled, following after him until he reached a tavern called The Snuggly Duckling. 

Inside was warm, and smelled of roasted meat and hoppy ale. Rhys drank it in, making his way to the beleaguered woman running the desk. The sounds of cheering and raucous laughter was nearly deafening.

“I need two rooms—”

“I’ve only got one,” the woman interrupted snappishly. “Last one. You can have it or you can go on. Everything is booked up thanks to Starfall.”

“One room is fine,” Rhys said smoothly. Feyre wasn’t paying attention anyway, which was just as well. Her pride would have demanded they keep walking, and he was determined the next three days belonged to them. Just Rhys and Feyre. She wasn’t an enchantress on the run and he wasn’t a prince trying to reclaim his crown. 

He wanted to give her one good birthday. He doubted she’d ever had one. 

They exchanged coins for a key, and Rhys dragged Feyre up narrow, creaking steps. Three stories to the top, where he slid in that golden key and revealed a small room made up nearly entirely of a bed. It was, blessedly, big enough for them both. A little table by a jutting window had two chairs for meals, and a trunk that the foot of the headboard was likely for storing their things.

Feyre froze in the doorway while Rhys stepped inside. “Rhys,” she breathed, but he was ignoring her to open the little door across the bed.

“A bath,” he said with open relief. He didn’t care if the water was hot—because there, on the sink, was small bottles of soaps for his hair and skin. “There’s a bath.”

“And only one bed,” she added, like this was a problem.

“We sleep next to each other every night anyway,” he reminded her smoothly, as if his heart wasn’t racing in his chest. “This is hardly any different.”

She took a tiny step inside. “Right. And you’ll keep to your end.”

“I promised your virtue was safe with me, did I not?”

“You did,” Feyre acknowledged.

“I’m a man of my word, Feyre. Go on. You take the first bath. I’ll track down warmer clothes and something to eat.”

She held his gaze for a moment and then relented. “Alright.”

Rhys couldn’t hide his grin.

“Good.”

[flowylightwitch]

ELECTRA

⋆༶⋆˙⊹❀☆˖⁺ ☁⋆ .⋆｡⋆༶⋆˙⊹❀⋆｡⋆༶⋆

tw: Death, mental illnels, blood  and dark content

Shes a proxy, most of her work is individually but in some cases she has company 

Spaking of magick shes mostly a prodogy in magical plants, elemental magick and intensly in adivination 

Since she was a kid she had this sense of intuition about people and situacions, shes the first one to feel something is off about people or if something bad is going to happen

If she ever warn you or even noitces her  worried out of nowhere, you bettter start to worry too.

Necromancy and old cultural practices fom her homeland and are always peresent in the practice, most of her spell work or curses ar in her native language 

victims are often use on her practice ( parts suchs as teeth,hair, nails...etc), except the inocent one she considered “not worth dying” those are kill and buried with respect, mostly are children or mans who 

Rituals can be perform in her house or in the forest always at night where there’s no sound apart the wind crashing thought the trees and owls., under a full moon 

Some victims are stalked and played by her, she starts showing up where their at, then in dreams  within a few days/hours they will start expiriencing paranormal activities ( hearing their name or humming when their are alone, knock on the bedroom door, lights flickering and electronic devices not working...) just to mess with them ,  until finnally you’re trapped in her web

But in the end she hates doing that, she feels horrible, somentimes 

⋆༶⋆˙⊹❀☆˖⁺ ☁⋆ .⋆｡⋆༶⋆˙⊹❀⋆｡⋆༶⋆

My inbox is always open<33!

⋆༶⋆˙⊹❀☆˖⁺ ☁⋆ .⋆｡⋆༶⋆˙⊹❀⋆｡⋆༶⋆

[sampigehoovu]

the lovers of aditha karikalan

Aditha, who I think is a perfect 10th century hero and the many people who might have encountered him.

the courtesan of Kanchi

The first time she had laid eyes on the crown prince, had been when he entered the city; seated on a white horse, hair tied into a half bun at the base of skull, armour engraved with tigers*. She had thrown flowers too; everyone was excited to see the crown prince, he was even more handsome in person.

The second time had been during a particularly cruel monsoon storm, when the Palar** was expected to break its banks any day.

The sky was grey, rain poured down in relentless sheets and Karikalan had been at the forefront of evacuating villages along with his soldiers into higher ground. He had found himself, along with his grandfather and friend, Parthibendra Pallavan at her doorstep.

He had addressed her, in a deep baritone that had her stunned for a second, “Devi, we apologise for the sudden intrusion but my companions and I find ourselves in need of shelter. We began our journey to the city too late.”

She bowed her head, suddenly shy in the presence of this towering man, “You are welcome to stay as long as you require Ilavarase.”

He had nodded his thanks, and followed her servants to the rooms that they had always kept for unexpected guests. They had left, early the next morning and she had watched him ride away from the balcony.

For a few nights after, she was haunted by dreams of running into a man in the rain. Both of them soaked to the bone under a tree in some forest,

his body against hers,

gasps of pleasure as he thrust into her,

his face buried in her neck, arms around her hips,

her nails running down a powerful back.

The next time he came around, he was unconscious. Parthibendran had carried him away from a distance battlefield, where he had collapsed after landing the final blow of victory. He had his head on her lap while the physician had closed his wounds, his anguished screams muffled into her thighs as she held his arms down.

“I suggest he stays here for a few days, until the fever subsides,” the physician had said.

They spoke, for the first time at length while she had helped with his bandages, and he had laughed his booming laugh, looking at her with eyes that sparkled with so much mirth that her breath left her for a moment.

For weeks after, gifts flowed into her house; precious gems, exotic perfumes, soft silks.

He came by frequently too, late into the night, ‘to listen to her sweet music to calm his nerves.’

To look, to listen, to speak, never to touch.

But he knew he was trapping her in his charms.

That half smirk when she won a game against him,

The way he caressed the veena which he played while she sang,

The fire in his eyes when she wore a gift he had sent.

The hitch in his breath, when she broke the rule once and had run her hand down his muscled arm while handing him the tamboola.

It was monsoon again, when they started playing new games. He had come by, drenched in the rain, having helped with the flood evacuations. She had pulled the armour off him, kissing away the droplets of water that were making their way down his body. Her hands on his powerful thighs, her mouth on the dip of his hip bones.

Hands in her hair, moans filling her ears.

She was pressed into the bed before she knew it, his mouth on her breasts, counting her ribs, biting into her waist, leaving marks on her thighs.

Thunder and lightning raged outside as she rose and fell in ecstasy.

She had languidly licked salty sweat off his shoulders and neck.

The last time she saw him, was the night his brother had disappeared.

He was agitated, his nightmares never ending, she had held him, soothed him.

News of the younger prince’s drowning had taken him from the warmth of her arms, to the cold embrace of death.

She refused to remember his nightmares, his anguished screams for his long-lost lover, the depths of despair of a man who chipped away at his own soul with each life he took.

She refused to remember the crown prince, dripping with ambition, unrestrained in his fury and straining at the noose of administrative bureaucracy.  

She would remember her lover. His warm golden skin, gentle caressed by the sun.

His long hair that tangled with hers too often.

His calloused fingers that held spears with the same confidence with which he held her. His strong chest pressed into her, as she strained her hips in search of the beautiful friction of their bodies. 

His body as much as weapon as his sword.

His kisses executed the same way he went about decimating the enemy.

His tongue, whip sharp and capable of leaving her a moaning mess in the matter of minutes. Aditha Karikalan, who loved with the same intensity with which he went to war.

---------------------------------------------------------

*the costume designers of Ponniyin Selvan mentioned how they put tigers for Karikalan and elephants for Arunmozhi, so much thought has gone into these details.

**I do not know if this river floods, or how close it is to Kanchi but this is fiction so I have suspended some of my own disbelief.

[drewdaves-blog]

Reposts from 2014

MIRROR my eyes on fire everything smells like mirror glass I’ll not let you crawl through my skin again I can’t handle the dry numbness nether again

JOURNEY camper van silent sadness hung like a broken disco ball from the roof touching everyone with it’s unsparkle unshine she ’s gone I whispered move on and tugged the gloom even tighter about me

DOLLAR burn little light burn for a dollar I don’t want to wake to see the groping hand feel the holler collar I don’t want to shake in the night queens parlor

SADNESS amid the slippery spaces of our touch and tell hair bound in fingers and strewn clothes as well there is an inexplicable sadness a melancholy only heard in our sighs

LUIGI’S HORSES listen the boxes of soul light turn carousel speed wooden steeds painted on the inside seem to gallop in place it’s life it’s going nowhere and desperately wants to be real GENTLE my eyes are beds to the world dark walnut frame white duvet black satin pillow case where the tired might find rest HURT If I could just weep while I sleep…. do you mind crying on my face tonight? I can’t do both

SKIN once I slipped on your skin and saw the world through your yellows and blues its so much brighter than mine it hurt my eyes a note to the social butterfly from the recluse in your life HEART beneath and under her beauty elegant wrappings her heart was hollow bird bones fragile built to fly

BYE in the middle of that disconnect discontent when all your tears had been spent I just wretched wiped my mouth screamed aloud buried my love six feet down walked out not another sound JUPITER A ball of magical gas with rings and pretty things in orbit about your stormy skin

FIVE Excerpt from a meeting with my inner child found him tied to a tree binds cutting five had to be five injured and scared released him, held him everything will most certainly not be alright but I’m here I’m not going anywhere AGE I can feel your hand wither the bones beneath veins bas relief so stretched though too I can feel your soul resounding bell giant endless well your a planet trapped inside a crumbling shell grandmother

LUNAR EYESCAPE ahh to walk upon her eye in its hazel foam fog til i reached its black brine through its tumble jungle bog then slowly loose my mind after reveling in it all

SCOOP yesterday you weren’t here I felt not hollow but as if i was being hollowed out by the cosmic melon scoop

LEVIATHAN one of the majestic beasts who swims in my soul’s waters died the day you lied to me

DRAGON we found the snake in the garden but it was your hands that bit digging into my bicep leaving fear marks in shades of bruise I didn’t really care for I was in that moment Galahad

INTERVIEW In an interview Mary was asked to comment on kissing… she said “I’ve been kissed with lying lips so often, that when I finally tasted the truth it was far too sweet” And your first kiss? Mom still thinks she was the one, but grandfather did it unawares. Do you use your tongue when you kiss? “Sometimes more often my mind and very seldom my heart” What was your best kiss? “ My daughter fell forward and her lips struck my forehead like a spongy feather” Do you have any advice for us? Don’t make your own mistakes, let someone else do it for you. Any advice on kissing? “linger!”

SLEEP my head your thigh your hand my head your nails my skin your watchfulness my sleep

LIE Lie to me lie on me lie beside me Let me into your world that dirt cornflake world that is so messed up and yet so alluring lie to me lie on me lie beside me Climb inside my horizontal plane and we’ll search for something pristine and when we don’t find it we’ll dream

[kiwi245]

The Garden by the Crane Wives would make an *amazing* animatic about Raven and Squall and the whole of A Storm of Birds. Observe.

Tear it down

Tear it down around my head

I need you

To bury this beneath my bed

The crows in the garden are laughing at my expense

Drowning out all the lies that I might have told instead

My stone

My shield, my steady hand

Hold your light

To the darkness in my head

Put your ear to my heart or set your teeth against my throat

Give me something pretty to wear beneath my blood-stained clothes

My darling, the devil knows my name

Whoa, oh

Lay me down

Pour the dirt into our bed

Tell the crows

They can have their pound of flesh

The ghosts at the window echo all our quiet prayers

When they come for us, they'll come with hammers and nails

My darling, the devil knows my name

My name

My name

Get on your knees and

Dig up the garden

Won't you throw down that spade and

Dig up the garden, darling?

Get your hands dirty and

Rip up the garden

Won't you cut down that apple tree for me?

Like- it fits them so well. “The devil knows my name” could refer to both Vulture and Queen Cirrus. “The crows” could be the Rebellion/Clan dragons, and the way that Raven feels trapped and suffocated by them. “I need you to bury this beneath your bed”, “give me something pretty to wear beneath my bloodstained clothes, and “the ghosts at the window echo all our quiet prayers” could be Raven feeling guilt at her killings.

“When they come for us, they’ll come with hammer and nails” could be Raven and Squall’s respective organizations searching for them, not wanting to let go of valuable dragons.

“Tear it down” and “dig up the garden” could mean bringing down both the CloudWing monarchy and the Rebellion so that CloudWings could finally live in peace, rather than being trapped in civil war.

Idk. Just something I thought was really cool:)

[defiantlords]

Thin, fragile ashen gray arms wrapped around him and for a brief moment, Morcant felt a semblance of peace for the first time in a century.

Then the world flashed dark.

Where there had once been open air with a shifting breeze, the world around him was stagnant and pressing in on all sides. Where there had been calls of the wild he now found deafening silence. Morcant found he could not even breathe in. Doing so smelt of soil and the briefest opening of his mouth let in unknown granules of a mysterious substance. He had been trapped within his mind for a very long time but never had he been so physically restrained. Had the elderly fae tricked him into his demise?

Morcant’s mind roared in defiance. This was not how he was to die. His arms shifted gradually, loosening the barrier around him. Then, finally, something broke free. Warm light tickled his upraised hand. That same hand clawed at the surface. Fresh dirt sunk in between skin and nails as he ripped at the ground. A second hand rose and matched the first. Time had no meaning in his current predicament, but he should have been dead already. His lungs should have been burning. Still he continued as dirt piled up beside his forearms. Eventually, Morcant could see and the world around him was so blindingly bright.

The fae had been old. It had warned him that their powers were not as stable as before. Perhaps it was a jest, a prank to be watched from afar. Yet, this was not where Morcant had been minutes prior. Nor was it where he originated from. Was he in another world altogether? Something different than his home or the fae lands? If he was, that detail would present itself in time. The headache ringing between his ears told him he was with humanity once more. Even though it could very well have come from being buried underground. Regardless, Morcant glanced around as he freed more and more of his body.

Spitting out specks of dirt as he pulled his legs loose, Morcant took a few steps away from the human sized hole. Barely three feet away, he dropped back to the ground and breathed in the fresh air. Wherever he had been sent to was so much more different than anywhere before. The heat boiled him within his armor even as the magic attempted to cool him. He would need to remove it soon but did not yet know what dangers were around. Though his arms and legs protested the notion, Morcant began to move again, past trees wholly foreign to him.

What sounded like a trickle of water not far grew louder as he stumbled forward. As trees grew thicker, Morcant fought with branches and wildflowers. He was cautious with every touch. If he was still in the fae realm there was no telling which trees would shy from his presence and which flowers would pepper him with all manner of strikes. Not even the birds or critters on the ground seemed familiar. However, unless they were hiding, Morcant saw nothing sentient beyond primal instincts. He may have truly been freed, just as the small fae offered.

By the time Morcant found the source of water, he was exhausted and hot. A swish of his finger up along the chest of his intricate armor and the unique material fell behind him with a quick shake revealing a simple cloth tunic. Morcant wasted no time dropping down to his knees and reaching into the pool of liquid. It felt so incredibly cool. The surface shimmered against rays, but there were no glittering jewels within. In another time, he would have observed the water should it be the home of another, but not now. A handful of cold water was splashed against his face immediately. Then again. And again. What did not splatter on impact was gulped down, clearing out the sediment still in his mouth. In that very moment, he was akin to a feral animal.

[sleepyowlwrites]

what if my corpse doesn't rot

what if it melts like the snow

does it find its way to to hell

does it know where to go

what if my corpse is a photo

and tacked to a memory tree

will it wrinkle and bleed and fade

will it rip from its nail and flee

what if my corpse doesn't rot

what- what if it never does

what if it stagnates and saturates

and stays full in view:

an endless funeral for the one who never flew

what if my corpse is a poison

or what if my corpse is a trap

or what if my corpse has its reasons

for always remaining like that

what if my corpse doesn't rot

will I stay with this cavern of bones

can I deny this grave of its body

can I deny this body of its host

if I remain, in one place, as a marker, as a sign

if I neither singe, nor wither, nor melt, nor resign

if I do not leave like I am told that I must

will I still gain your favor, will I still keep your trust

if my corpse doesn't rot, will you keep it a while

will you kiss its cheeks to rosy

will you breathe into it a smile

will you bury it beneath your body when your own has close its eyes

can we remain together, forever, side by side

Taglist:

@diphthongsfordays @mel-writes-with-her-dragons @winterandwords @jaxwrites @revenantlore @abalonetea @keyboardandquill @harmonictornadosiren @the-orangeauthor

[sits up suddenly in a cold sweat] what if my corpse doesn't rot

[illiovis]

THE CHARACTERS:

Carla

25, DOB: 09/16/XX, future reluctant inheritor of Traps that Catch

A natural tan from a life in the sun with only the pines and deciduous trees as shade weathers at her skin and promises to bring a face full of future wrinkles. For now, it is just a furrow in her brow, a downward pull of her lip, a crinkle of dark eyes in surprise as she barks a laugh and pats Remy on the back with a hand not soft since she was still in the cradle. Callouses and knobbed knuckles cut through by scars - raised there by a torch incident, white and sunken here by a nasty collision with the blacktop - leads to arms that look soft only in certain lighting, tensed or straining any other time with a pebbled river of freckles flowing up to shoulders, over collarbones, back home to a face that seems permanently unsatisfied.

And she is unsatisfied. She got her mom’s impossibly dark curls but that doesn’t mean she’s like her. Emma is a 7th-generation local, a 4th-generation small-business owner, and she plans to be buried half a mile away after a lifetime managing the family business, whipping her daughter into shape, and never quite being able to get rid of the scent of guts and gore from the shed when, in Carla’s opinion, they can just stop.

Because Carla doesn’t want to run Traps that Catch when her mom steps down. She doesn’t want to keep doing gutting and skinning demonstrations for the kids and newcomers, doesn’t want to live in the same house her great-grandma was born, raised, and died in, and maybe that was it right there - Carla doesn’t want to die here. At least not like this; an endless cycle of being born, carcass stench, death. She doesn’t want the big wide world or even the sight of the ocean. She wants - something. Something that exists just out of bounds, beckoning her.

Remy

24, DOB: 01/24/XX, prospective deli manager at Tom’s Grocery

Remy was a natural at manhunt as a child: body's limbs stick-thin enough to fold into any ditch, slip into any cupboard and - fifteen years after she stopped playing manhunt - to hide behind the supply shelves in the back of the grocery store to make her break a bit longer.

Day in, day out. Fluorescent lights that seem to buzz louder than any summer fly, droning over and over in her ears as the register rings and clacks shut, repeats, as she sees the same faces over and over again - haggard, drooping, as seemingly permanent and rooted as the repeating foliage that rises thousands of feet above her head like a goddamn cage. Day in, day out. She cannot leave. The register rings, clacks shut, repeats. She was born here. Everyone she has ever known and cared for lives here. She cannot leave. Rings, clacks shut, repeats. Day in, day out.

Her father’s hair is beautiful - curls bouncing out like a dandelion seed-head, her mother the tallest thing she knows. She claims neither of those traits and feels permanently stuck, plastered, a rotting log that will be claimed by the earth she has tread on her entire life. Her nails are bitten quick. Her feet always seem to ache and she has bruises from bumping into milk crates on her shins. Her hair is either a tight bun at work or a short, limp mass of curls.

How will they bury us? She wonders as she watches Carla pack a bowl on the trailer porch, the sky a burning ember around them. We will not be remembered, she knows, the roar of the sunset settling into a dark stillness.

[platosshadowpuppet]

Autumn and apotropaic magic

As summer ends, the shadows lengthen, and trees begin their slow descent into senescence, now is the time to consider your wards and charms.

Any permanent resident of Edinburgh can apply to their local council office for a basic witch bottle kit.

On receipt of the bottle, residents should fill it in the normal way - with nails and pins, sea salt, earth, thorns and rosemary - before placing it on their hearth. If your house or flat does not have a hearth the boiler cupboard will work just as well.

Once this task has been completed residents can relax safe in the knowledge that they are once again protected against fire, flood, madness and malice.

A reminder: witch bottles which have successfully trapped a malevolent spirit should not be disposed of in the glass recycling bins. Instead, consider burying the bottle in sanctified soil or placing it within a blacksmith's forge. For environmental reasons, casting the bottle into the depths of the sea is now also discouraged.

[senatushq]

NAME. Alastor AGE & BIRTH DATE. Unknown GENDER & PRONOUNS. Male & He/Him SPECIES. Demon (Familiar) OCCUPATION. Apothecary FACE CLAIM. Mason Gooding

BIOGRAPHY

What Alastor remembered last before his death was the scent of spring, fresh flowers that bloomed after long rains, lazy afternoons hunched over fauna, and a secret that broke his world and cast him to wander through a forest of darkened trees. His mind no longer his own, the improperly formed changeling could not know himself or his past, just that he’d been forgotten apart. He was a reject, a halfmade joke, a cruel trick casually discarded after the experimentation had gone awry. Ages past without consequence or disruption as he was made to wander without thought through the folds of the Otherworld. When he fell through one of the hidden paths and secret ways, he was discovered by humans who regarded him as a terror - a beast to be hunted and slain. Time and time again they came for him but their weapons were all but ineffectual until one with knowledge of the fey’s ways used iron to cut him down. Changeling blood bit the earth and with a final beastial cry Alastor’s life was forfeit at the hands of the trained hunter from The Eye.

Fire and brimstone awaited Alastor as he passed through the hall of souls and bones that made no real decisions in life. Deceased that never chose a side. Neither good nor evil, bystanders for eternity reached for his frame - desperate for the sort of release that his immortal soul was incapable of providing. Their whispers were dead but they echoed about the cavern like a hallowed scream, empty as the wind but it blew upon him with force still. Fear permeated the mortal man; he made his trek through the fated gates and stood before the triple judges of the Underworld. Wrath, they agreed before they exchanged glances and Minos let slip the word passive from his lips and the furies descended upon him to drag him to the circle that was meant to be his home for eternity.

In the shadow of the distant City of Dis, its high walls and towers of flame were the only light that shone upon the sickly river Styx. Trapped within, Alastor awoke to the sharp dig from the heel of a cursed soul, they ground into his gut and forced him to gasp for air. He cried out but only sludge passed his lips as it flooded his lungs and choked him where Alastor lay, the weight of the Styx sat upon him as he drowned in its filth but could make no motion to try and escape. A body fell upon him and Alastor was buried deeper as he sunk further into the sludge, the trampled body did little to cushion the arrows that fell upon the Styx, the brutality of the warfare that raged above among the wrathful.

The passive were doomed to remain submerged within the Styx, and most did, they sunk into the oblivion of an empty consciousness and ceased to be. Through the murky, sickly waters he watched as they were consumed by the monsters that lurk within. Demons as old as man that had fallen alongside their brethren, they grew fat from the consumption of souls that were too weak to pull themselves from the Styx, too apathetic to take their fate into their own hands. Whatever crimes had landed him here Alastor refused to suffer the same fate, when one of the wrathful fell upon him - felled in the eternal battle - Alastor seized the blade and used it as leverage to pull himself through the sea of filth and viscera - a cacophony of bodies that perverted his gaze of the surface. Grime and muck rooted its way beneath his nails as Alastor dragged his way to the surface, he had ceased gasping for air long before and the closer he came to the light that burned above the more he heard the empty cries from the lips of those he crawled over to leave the passive behind. They were too weak to stop him, too passive to do anything more than cry for help but he wouldn’t be one of them.

Air broke his lungs like an acrid sulphur, it burned with every imagined breath but the man’s dead soul didn’t need it. Weary eyes turned towards the city in the distance and he set his sights upon it long enough for an arrow to pierce his chest, it sent him toppling to the side as the truly wrathful descended upon him. There was no time to count his wounds, no time to regret his ascent, if he lingered he would sink once more and so he grabbed a branch that had fallen from the wind and swung out, mad as the lesser demon’s rage caught up with him. When Alastor approached the city he was anointed in all the blood of those he’d killed to reach the fabled gate, the city from which Sathanas ruled, overlooking the eternal battle that raged outside. Stopped by the furies, each was more hideous than the other, but Alastor’s visage had changed too. Whatever handsome man had laid at the feet of the judges begging for mercy had died in the muck, the demon towered over many others, with a crown of nested horns and eyes that looked fondly at the cruelty of the furies. The gates to the city swung open, and Sathanas awaited him.

Alastor broke the necks of the wretched, stepped upon the eternal field of battle that raged upon the Styx and wove the punishments of Sathanas freely. A devoted general in the armies of the Inferno, he willfully devoured the souls of lesser demons as he added their power to his own, with each passing day under the eternal hellfire of the City of Dis, Alastor grew stronger.

His invocation was done in an act of desperation as a coven of witches brought him from the midst of battle to the feet of an imperfect summoning circle. Their attempts to bind him to their will and dark arts were foiled as he easily broke through and overpower them - Alastor consumed them in hellfire and left nothing but ashes behind him. They fell over the skin of the man he’d possessed and as Alastor looked up at the blue sky he hadn’t seen in millennia, it felt like burning rain. The form he took was imperfect and was burned through quickly, what came next was a woman, then a man, and at last when he possessed the lover of a witch he was vanquished from this realm. Alastor returned to the City of Dis after centuries above to find the rank and file had changed, Sathanas’ favouritism had fallen to another and Alastor’s attempts to corrupt those above had been disregarded as pitiful.

No longer the greater demon’s favourite pet, the Inferno did not hold the same lustre it did before. Alastor could not shake the memories he’d made in the world above - in the mortal realm where he’d taken breaths that did not burn his lungs, where he knew rest without the worry that came with closing his eyes. The demon’s influence was felt still in the mortal realm as a powerful witch learned the identity of one who’d all but eradicated an ancient coven; in her hubris she summoned him for her own means, but Vivianne would be the Dahlia. The Oracle. She was not like those that had foolishly invoked him before, she was powerful, resolute, and the binding she’d drawn for the middling demon would not have been easy to break.

Familiar. A pet. A source to be channelled from. But she foresaw for him a life among these witches, and with a touch his eyes were opened. Alastor agreed and their lives were thusly tied together, faithful and true to his word, he stood by her side as the Dahlia were reformed. He protected those that she took in and guided the hands of the most vulnerable. While Alastor could do no spellcraft himself, he studied the flowers that Vivianne grew, eventually he began to cultivate his own and somehow felt at home among the fauna. Trees and flora had a language of their own, one that Alastor learned to speak as he coaxed magic from vines and ground out secrets from roots. Three drops of one would stop a fever in its tracks, but a few more of another would put any heart into arrest.

PERSONALITY

+ patient, diligent, attentive – sadistic, manipulative, violent

PLAYED BY SHANE. EST . He/Him.