#or strange man building a boat in the desert. any & all of the above & other

[unproduciblesmackdown]

going like what's the most bloodsong thing to do today (or any given day) like ooh i know letting loose on the kazoo. letting loose on being dead & dying

& like well yes but you know. cmere arm around shoulder i'm gonna just straightforwardly talk about what bloodsong is about. well of course it's about wringing your Truth Self Passion Feelings Whatever essential bloodstyle inspiration motivation into your deal. however you heard the black suits, where wringing yourself out & thus having to have that blood to wring out is perhaps not very sustainable. so great news b/c bloodsong of love is, like the black suits, also about how one sustains & is sustained by others & their deals like wow i'm all about what you're wringing & ppl being all about what you're wringing & just even what goes before & beyond any wringing at all to be, thus, sustaining, but where if you can't get your blood all over & into stuff at all ever then it's like well that's probably a problem. see also the villain isn't presented like oh Not a fellow musician or otherwise emphatically really separated / othered from our heroes & good guys, like well yeah he does just walk a road too, Is also a musician, just that the musician And Everyone is struggling with being vulnerable & in a hostile world & potentially fucked over at any time, & so our villain's quest is the impossible one to never be fucked over & by extension never be vulnerable, which theoretically includes having to bleed for anything figuratively, but of course he Is vulnerable & bleeds & wrings & has had to do so all along b/c he was ofc all along never invulnerable either....but you gotta do your thing, b/c you gotta do your thing, regardless of if you gain whatever success or reach whatever goals Through it & not be fucked over, and you certainly can't Know you will or won't. last on land, bloodfilled heart of the matter, everyone's there, penultimate song on album, transitions into the friendship song, ultimate song in bloodsong, did i mention the black suits where it was never about knowing they'll win, winning, knowing the future will bring any particular thing

[wiypt-writes]

Stark Spangled Banner

One Shot: Vanilla

Summary: A year on the run following the events in Siberia has changed Steve…but not too much. He’s still a man of simple tastes… Warning:  Language, SMUT (NSFW, 18+)

Pairings: Steve Rogers x OFC Katie Stark.

A/N: This sits alongside SSB Ch 35: Not A Perfect Soldier, But A Good Man. I had it in my head for a while and couldn’t quite fit it in. And those of you who read “Leave No One Behind” might recognise a little of the scenery, so to speak.

Disclaimer: This is a pure work of fiction and classified as 18+. Please respect this and do not read if you are underage. I do not own any characters in this series bar Katie Stark and the other OCs. By reading beyond this point you understand and accept the terms of this disclaimer.

Stark Spangled Banner Masterlist // Main Masterlist

August 2017

Another day, another under-the-radar mission. This one breaking up a gang that had been terrorising locals, running guns and arms, raiding local refugee camps and kidnapping children to ship out to god knows where, for god knows what.

Frankly, it had knocked Katie sick, so she had been only too glad to get out of there once they’d ‘dispensed’ the ring leader into the care of Fury’s contacts. Well, by that they mean they’d left him hog tied in the middle of the African desert at the co-ordinates they had been given. What happened to him, well, even the world’s sentinel of justice, honour and truth couldn’t find it within him to give a shit. Not after what they’d just seen anyway.

Katie stole a glance at Steve as they drove the ‘borrowed’ jeep back to where Sam had landed their jet. Their time on the run had hardened him. Over a year now spent in shadows, and it was almost as if those shadows had claimed part of him for themselves. His hair was longer, far longer, usually worn pushed back off his face but the exertion of the fight they’d just had, left the front strands flopping over his sweaty forehead. His beard was dark, and thick, speckled with the odd bit of copper and blonde here and there, hiding his jawline entirely and leaving his face almost completely unrecognisable.

To the average man on the street he looked like just another person, maybe worthy of a second glance for bearing a passing resemblance, maybe, to the fugitive Captain. The one thing that remained unchanged were his eyes. Whilst they were tired, carried a heavier burden than before, they were still the same eyes Katie had noticed and fallen in love with, and they still flashed with warmth and a sparkle whenever he looked at her.

And as long as that was there, she knew he was okay.

They reached the jet, Sam hopped down from the back of the jeep and headed in first over to the coms system, swiping at the screen.

“Hey, Steve?” He turned to his head back over his shoulder. Steve walked up the ramp, looking at Sam expectantly. “Fury’s patched us through the co-ordinates of a place to stay. Looks to be a hundred or so miles North. Might be worth holding up there for the night?”

Steve hesitated for a while, they’d been running missions back to back now for almost three weeks. He was desperate to get back…well, home he supposed. To their cottage in Scotland where they’d holed up for the past twelve months, where Wanda was currently waiting. But, as he glanced around, Sam’s face was sporting a nasty gash above his eyebrows, Natasha had taken a few hard digs too and was clutching her side and Katie had taken a heavy blow to the face, the bruise already forming on her cheek.

They were tired, whacked, maybe it was best they got their heads down and headed back in the morning.

“Alright.” Steve nodded. “Bring it up on the map.” Sam pressed a few buttons and then the holo-display sprang to life. Steve and Natasha observed the image, Natasha pointing to something, Steve agreeing before he straightened up and looked at Katie and Sam who were waiting patiently. “We were just staying it looks like a good spot we can land the jet. There’s nothing for miles, and it’s coastal.” “Coastal?” Katie frowned, before her eyes lit up “Like, there’s a beach?”

“Yeah.” Steve smiled, not bothering to point out that their cottage in Scotland basically had its own private one. “There’s a beach, Sweetheart.”

“It looks to be an old Diving Resort on the Red Sea.” Natasha mused, swiping at the screen. “According to Fury, one of his contacts in Mossad said they used it as a front for smuggling Jewish Refugees out of Ethiopia. Operation Brothers. You heard of it?”

Katie, Sam and Steve both exchanged glances before they shrugged.

“Not surprising, I think the information surrounding it was only declassified recently.” Natasha scratched her neck as she straightened up. “Long story short they saved thousands of lives. Smuggled refugees out of camps, and then shipped them out by boat back to Israel.”

“And they used a hotel as a front?” Katie arched an eyebrow.

“Diving resort.” Natasha nodded “Was fully functional too. Pretty damned clever if you ask me.”

“Is it safe?” Steve asked.

“Fury wouldn’t tell us to head there if it wasn’t” Katie replied simply, “We can go, check it out. If we don’t like it we can head home.”

***** Sam landed the jet expertly on the beach which was hidden in a large cove. They stepped off the ramp onto the sugar white sand and Katie looked around at the various huts scattered along the shore. The main body of the hotel itself seemed to be boarded up. The four of them split up into two groups of two under Steve’s instructions, and made their way around, carefully, making sure there was no one else there, checking each out building thoroughly. Eventually they met one another at the front of the sandstone building, all nodding to signal that there was no sign of anyone else.

“The Red Sea Diving Resort.” Sam read the faded red lettering over the top of the boarded up entrance “Imaginative.”

Katie gave a scoff as she shook her head “Well I don’t know about any of you lot but I need to wash up and get changed. I’m disgustingly hot in this.” She pulled at the collar of her combat-top and turned to head back towards the jet. Steve caught her up, sliding an arm round her waist and pressed a gentle kiss to her temple.

“We haven’t forgotten.” Sam called from behind them. They both stopped and Katie glanced at Steve who met her puzzled look with one of his own.

“Forgotten what?” He asked as they turned to look at Sam.

Sam blinked, then turned to Natasha who gave a snort “Clearly they have.”

“Have what?” Steve pressed again, his tone slightly less patient than it had been.

“It’s your wedding anniversary you pair of dumbasses.” Sam snorted “God you two are…”

Clearly he couldn’t decide what it was that Katie and Steve were, instead he trailed off and headed up the ramp into the jet. Natasha followed him as Katie and Steve remained on the sand, simply looking at one another, before they both burst out into laughter.

“Oh my God.” Katie stuttered “We forgot!”

“Well, we have kinda been busy, Doll.” Steve teased, before he shook his head and smiled “I haven’t forgotten that day though. Happiest day of my life.”

Katie smiled, “Mine too.”

He gently raised her hand to his mouth, brushing her knuckles with his mouth before they too headed onto the ramp and grabbed their kit bags.

The four ex-agents walked down the sand, towards the huts they had checked earlier. They selected one each, the fact that Natasha and Sam headed a little further down the beach away from the one Steve had picked for him and Katie didn’t go unnoticed by the super soldier. Something Steve had noticed when he had looked around was how reasonably clean it was. He’d expected things to be covered in a layer of dust but it was fairly habitable. As Katie set about searching the drawers for something to make the bed with, he headed into the small bathroom at the back, turning the taps on. After an initial cough and a splutter, the system kicked in and the water began to run. Orange from sand and rust at first as it splattered the white porcelain bowl. Steve left it going whilst he moved back into the main room and saw Katie was holding what looked like an old polaroid photo.

“Look at this.” She smiled gently. “I found it when I was looking for some bed sheets.”

Steve glanced down at the photo which showed a tall dark haired, bearded man stood with his arm round a shorter, dark haired slim woman, both looking at the camera, smiling . At their feet sat, quite frankly, the ugliest dog Steve had ever seen. It was hairless, but he still couldn’t help but admit it was cute in a strange way.

“They must have been part of the team that ran the Mossad Op.” Katie shrugged. “He kinda looks a bit like you actually.”

“I don’t see it.” Steve wrinkled his face and she shrugged, moving to put the photo back in the drawer. “I found the bathroom, water is still running but not sure if it’s gonna be heated or…”

“I don’t need it heated.” Katie shook her head. “Frankly the colder the better. Now, help me get this bed sorted and then we can wash up and maybe we can spend what’s left of the Anniversary we forgot sat out on the sand?”

Steve chuckled, pulling her closer to him, both hands on her hips. He dropped his face to hers, catching her lips in a soft kiss. “Sounds good to me.”

After a quick shower each they headed back outside, where Sam and Natasha were already sat. And it turns out their friends were indeed far better at remembering their anniversary than they were. Along with their normal supplies, Sam had stashed a crate of beer on the jet, hidden in the cooler and Natasha had also managed a bottle of the same champagne they had served at the wedding, although instead of drinking it out of crystal flutes, it was sipped from mugs Natasha had dug out of the jet, which bore the Avengers symbol, a harsh reminder of the life they had all run from little over twelve months previously.

The four of them sat on the up turned logs, dotted around what, Steve correctly guessed, had been some sort of fire pit, talking quietly, watching the sun set over the ocean. It was peaceful and Steve felt like they could almost have been on vacation.

Almost.

Steve felt Katie sagging next to him and turned to see that she had her eyes closed, head resting on his shoulder. He placed a soft kiss to her head and then looked at the rest of his team. Sam’s head was drooping a little and Natasha’s eyes were heavy. He issued a soft instruction to go to bed and they both looked at him, giving him a nod and Katie stirred a little. In a graceful movement, Steve had swept her into his arms and he carried her, not unlike the way he had done two years ago that very night, to their accommodation for the evening. She sat on the edge of the bed, removing her shorts leaving her in her panties and tank top as she climbed under the scratchy sheets, Steve settling down besides her.

“Night sweetheart.” He muttered, kissing her neck as he pulled her to him, her back pressing into his chest.

“Night Soldier.” She whispered back, closing her eyes.

**** Steve turned over for what felt like the tenth time in as many minutes. He couldn’t get comfortable, and then there was the simple, yet slight complication to the situation that he’d woken from a particularly graphic dream about their honeymoon, and now he was fucking horny as hell.

He rolled onto his back, his head turning towards Katie and his eyes scanned over her face as she slept. He took in the shape of her nose, soft curve of her lips and his eye-line flickered down to the swell of her breasts which were visible under the cami she was wearing.

Okay, so that wasn’t helping. At all.

She gave a soft sigh, moving a little, her legs kicking down the sheets slightly so they fell around her hips and that was the point Steve’s already fraying self-control snapped. Shuffling closer, he pressed his lips to hers, before he moved his mouth to her jawline, down her neck, leaving soft, hot kisses on her skin as he went. His hand gently curled around her hip, fingers digging into the flesh ever so slightly and she gave a little murmur, her eye lids fluttering as his lips moved back to hers. And this time, she reciprocated slightly. His lips dropped downwards, his tongue dipping into the hollow of her throat before his affections turned to her delicate collar bone. With a gentle shift of his body, he went even lower still, his calloused hands sliding along her ribcage as he slid her cami top upwards, exposing her breasts. His large hands cupped them, thumbs brushing over her nipples and at that he felt her really respond with a soft whimper, her back arching slightly into his touch.

With one hand he traced the curve of her hip down the outside of her thigh, before he trailed his fingers across her belly, and then her soft whimpers became a harsh gasp as his fingers entered her, curling softly against her insides, coaxing more and more wetness from her as he moved, his mouth continuing to lick and sucking at her breasts. She arched her back, writhing, desperately moving her hips as she sought out the friction she needed between her legs and Steve obliged, moving his hand so the heel of his palm brushed against her clit. With a strangled moan, which she stifled slightly by turning her head into his arm, she came, her body shaking on the mattress, sheets now pushed well out of the way.

Steve’s mouth claimed hers once more, in a searing kiss as he let out a groan of his own when he felt Katie dip her hand into his boxers, wrapping her hand around his achingly hard cock.  Every inch of him was on fire and he wanted her.

“Need you.” His voice was low with desire as he pressed his lips back to her neck, nipping at the spot beneath her ear. “Want you.”

“You got me.” She whispered. “I’m yours, Stevie.”

At her words he gave a low groan, sitting up slightly so that he could pull her underwear down. He wriggled out of his own, before he settled over her, his mouth finding hers again the pair of them letting out a shaky sigh and a moan each as he entered her.

Her hands gently slid down over his back, feeling the expanse of muscle which twitched under her finger tips as he moved, slowly, deeply. Every roll of his hips sent his pelvis rocking up against her spot. Katie glanced up at him, his lips kiss swollen, eyes blown with desire, hair falling forward over his forehead. She reached up to brush it back, her hands tangling in the long strands and she pulled his face down to hers, locking their lips in a sloppy, filthy kiss.

Fuck, Steve Rogers loved sex with his wife anyway he could get it, but this, well, he was a sucker for simple vanilla and Katie was too. There was something about this position, the boring missionary one that drove both of them wild. The way Steve could cage her in his arms, fuck her into the mattress one day or make love to her the next. The way his large frame engulfed hers completely surrounding her, filling each one of her senses.  The way he controlled the pace completely, driving into her again and again until she could no longer think straight. The way he controlled the depth, sometimes using his arms under her knees to hold her open, or slinging her legs over her shoulders.  

It was a plain, vanilla flavoured heaven. One that they could visit time and time again, and would never get bored of tasting.

Steve drove as deep into his wife as he could get, rotating his hips slightly whilst he was fully seated, causing her to gasp and emit a frankly sinful moan which he swallowed with his mouth. Her hands dug into the skin of his shoulder blades and he moved, grabbing her wrists and pulling them round so he could lace his fingers between hers. Pinning her hands either side of her head he picked up his pace slightly, carefully watching her face as he felt her tightening around him slightly, a tell-tale sign she was close.

“Come on, pretty girl.” Steve panted, his lips by her ear as he gave a soft nip to her neck. “Give it to me, baby.”

The sensation and heat which was building in her core was impossible to ignore. Her breathy pants of his name became faster, as did Steve’s movements, and with a last, broken cry of his name the fire exploded in her belly and she came, hard, her orgasm rolling over her in wave after wave of white hot pleasure, which left her boneless underneath Steve, her nails digging into the backs of his hands. The sensation of feeling her around him was enough, and Steve gave a single, strangled cry of her name as he too reached his peak, his hips faltering as the ribbons in his belly untangled, the pleasure spreading from the toes to the very hair on his head.

He pressed his face into Katie’s neck, placing another soft kiss to her pulse point which left his lips salty from the slight gleen of sweat which coated them both. He pulled back slightly, releasing Katie’s hands as she flexed her fingers, knowing full well what she wanted. And, sure enough, her fingers threaded through his long hair, scratching softly at the nape of his neck. His eyes closed, and the pair of them lay in silence, completely blissed out and relaxed, hearing only each other’s gradually steadying breaths which mingled with the sounds of the waves lapping against the shore outside.

Katie felt Steve’s lips press to her forehead and she smiled softly, opening her eyes to look straight into his, those baby blues spattered with green.

“Happy Anniversary, Gorgeous.” He muttered, his lips catching hers.

“Its past midnight.” She replied gently

“Not at home.” He replied softly, before he swallowed and hung his head. “I’m sorry it has to be like this.”

“Steve, I am home.” Katie looked at him, her hands moving to cup his face “My home is with you.” She guided his head down so that his lips met hers again, her hands gently tangling in his beard “It always will be, you know this.” She whispered against his mouth before she kissed him, deeply, wriggling a little. Steve gave a short grunt and she felt him starting to twitch inside her again. With an arch of her eyebrow she tipped her pelvis up and in a flash Steve had reached up, pinning her wrists down by her head.

“Keep going and imma be hard again in about five seconds flat.” He whispered, and Katie grinned.

“I’m counting on it, Soldier.” She smirked “Because I’ve got a hankering for some more plain old vanilla.”

**** Chapter 36 Part 1

**Original Posting**

[princessdong]

 One: The Girl In Her Dreams

Masterlist

Of all the possible outcomes of having a human in her house, Joy would've never thought that this one would be the one. After you left the house with Jiu, who seemed more than happy to get out of there, you hadn't left her head.

She could still see your eyes, never quavering with fear, or showing anything but the utmost disinterest, and only to be replaced by fury. Your eyes were thunders after she let go of your throat, and she was sure that you were going to hit her, she even braced herself to it, but nothing came. She even let herself not move a muscle when you practically mocked her by not believing her true self.

Yet, the fact that you were daring enough to get into an apparent abandoned house, and go as far as to explore it, with no regard for who might be in there, it made you so fascinating in her eyes that she couldn't stop thinking about it.

In her whole life, every encounter with a human had two ways: Either they were completely scared that they could've piss their pants, or completely turned on by the idea of having a vampire sucking their blood. But you didn't. And she had to find you, before you consumed her brain entirely.

That's why she, for the first time in two centuries, she got out of the house for a reason that wasn't feeding herself. She assumed that you had taken the ferry back to Mokpo, as she could hear Jiu groan at the fact that they had to get into the ferry so early, and only that stopped when you told her that she could get breakfast at Mokpo. In that moment, those were the only things she needed to launch herself into the quest of finding you. But, as the ferry moved, she seemed to remember that she was not aware if you were in Mokpo, or if you flew out of the country, or even if you were alive. After all, it's been a week.

Joy quickly remembered why she wasn't out of her house in two thousand years, and it was because of the noisiness. She should've asked Yeri to perform a locator spell on you, or get someone to find you, but she was impulsive, and she was out there, in Mokpo's port, not knowing what to do, where to start. Of course, she had her whole immortality to search for you, but you weren't immortal.

Should she get into Seoul? Should she start searching there? Should she be afraid that you were in another country? She didn't knew. Plus, all those people were making her uneasy, she could hear them all, and smell their blood, even hear their heartbeat. It was a mess, she was getting overwhelmed, but her efforts were in not pouncing into some human. She was no rogue vampire, she was four thousand and something of years, and she had more control in her than a baby vampire.

Among the madness of the busy port, she heard something that she needed to hear.

“Jiu! You should stop from going with Y/N to those places! You can't keep up like this.”

She turned around, trying to search for the voice, and the girl she saw with you. There she was, with her purple hair falling from her shoulders, wearing something so simple as a shit and a pair of jeans. Next to her, there was a girl, with dark brown hair, and they were holding hands. She started to get closer, trying to listen, and to think how to get them to tell her location.

“I know, Jagi, but I don't wanna let her go all alone, she might get in trouble one day. And she's my best friend.” Joy heard Jiu say, and she smirked, knowing that you had been face to face with trouble, if she was up to it.

“But then you get all scared the days after. And then you drag me to make sure that the house doesn't have anything strange, at day.” The other girl complained, and, although she understood that they were talking about her house, it could be a great opportunity to have some interrupted alone time with you.

“Uh, excuse me, do you know, by chance, where it's the house of Y/L/N Y/N? She's, uh, tall, has no fear of getting into haunted places...” She said, trying to sound like she was not trying to find a complete stranger. “I'm an old friend of hers, and, I came here to surprise her, but you know, since she's gone to university, and her parents moved...”

She hoped that they either didn't knew your parents, or your parents had moved somewhere else, as she didn't have any idea of who were your parents, or if it was even truth what she said. Luckily for her, it happened that you parents did actually moved to a more secluded place in the outskirts of Seoul... But it was a year ago.

“You really haven't seen her for that long, huh?” Jiu chuckled, but she understood. If it wasn't because of her always coming to your home unannounced, and your yearly tradition of getting into haunted places. “She lives in Seoul, do you have your phone? I can show you on Google Maps.”

She was aware of what Google was, and what a phone was, but all thanks to the newborn vampires, or rookies, as she liked to call them, but she did not come to contact to such frivolities of the human world. Or anything from the human world.

“It's dead” She simply said, and the pair seemed to understand right away.

“To the old way it is then” The other girl said, and then started to explain that you were in Seoul, the direction, how to get there, of course, not saying the obvious part that Joy had to take a train, taking as the old vampire was an old friend of yours that had lived in Seoul.

After all, you hadn't been out of the city long enough to make friends.

And that fact was just hanging above Joy's head like the rock above Tantalus head, threatening to fall in any second. But she wasn't one to be intimidated, so she left after thanking, and biding goodbye. She could easily compel someone to show her the directions to Seoul, as Korea had changed so much in so little.

Last time she had been in the mainland, she traveled on carriages, with horses carrying it, and boats had people to row. Now they all had something inside that carried them. If Chanyeol saw her, he would be probably rolling in the floor laughing. She couldn't let herself fall in the only quest that she had, and she already had the needed information about you, now only had to get there, somehow, some way.

Lucky for her, being a vampire comes with tricks, tricks that she had mastered during the monstrous time he had been a vampire, with the help of those humans who would become her food, only to get rid of that awful guilty feeling of not having a chance at feeding from any other thing, and causing pain to the human.

She make sure to be as far away as she could from the pair that she found out, and walked to a deserted street, where there was only a man who seemed to work at the port.

“Uh, excuse me, Sir.” She said, bowing once the man looked at her.

When she had his complete attention, and he was close to her, she flashed her eyes red, and the man looked at her like his life would end if he didn't.

“I need you to instruct me how to get to Seoul. You must accompany me on my journey until I reach said city.” She compelled him, and the man could only nod before starting to walk away, being followed by the vampire.

Joy then found herself getting into a train station for the first time. Her, who hadn't been in a train in her whole life, wasn't sure if the iron cage would be able to get her to Seoul, or if the cage was actually something else, and the compelling had failed. She was scared, but she asked the man how it worked.

It was then when she learned that humans didn't even know how things worked, not even those who were born in the century where all of that already existed. But he could explain that it was a mode of public transportation, where everyone, not caring about the social status of the one who was sitting next to them.

That led her to think about who she was now in the world. She had been married into the Joseon family, so that mean she was a princess, or she had been. And she came from a rich family, didn't that meant anything now? She was, by law, the princess now, as her husband had been killed right in front of her eyes. Not that she had cared anyway.

But how did she fit in that world? Did she wanted to? No. She didn't wanted to fit in that awful human world, she didn't wanted to have any contact with the human world unless it was seeing you. She hadn't tried to seize the crown after all those years because she didn't have the slightest interest in ruling Korea, or any place that had humans as its residents. She could be a clan leader, that much she would like, but having contact with humans? Just this once, to get rid of whichever spell or trick you put her under, but that was it.

That was why she accepted to sit in one of those communal seats, next to a man that wore common clothes. The man she compelled was not seating, but was standing next to her. Joy didn't cared to ask, neither try to convince the man to sit, as he was just another pawn in the chess game of her life.

The train from Mokpo had been a new experience for Joy. Nothing had moved as fast as it did when she was human, as horses can only run at certain speed. Plus, she got to see how Korea had improved itself to keep up with the world. The large blocks of glass and iron, who she later knew it was used for work, and some other less interesting-looking buildings, where the people with less money lived.

The cars that she saw in the streets, things that she wouldn't even imagined, and the streets, every single one was paved. In her times, there weren't like that.

Everything was new to her, and people sometimes looked strange, like that one who had a furious pink hair, and another who had an iron ball in their face. They didn't dressed like they did four thousands years ago, but that wasn't a new. Even herself was dressing different than how she would've done on her human life. She wasn't used to wear short skirts, no matter how long she had been trying to wear them, and she wasn't even sure of how she felt with shirts that didn't even got to her waist.

Fashion nowadays is like that, Chaeyoung had told her before. Even though Chaeyoung was almost as old as her, she had been a little more into the human world as Joy was. But, she was also more ruthless when it came to them, so the dark haired girl wasn't sure of how much she could count on the younger one.

The train journey had come to an end before the vampire could even make her mind grasp into the whole new world. And even then, when she and her companion got down of the train, she couldn't believe how much the world she knew had changed. Even Seoul had become unrecognizable.

The five grand palaces were nowhere to be seen, and they were supposed to be so magnificent that everyone would turn their heads to watch them. The people walked fast in the pavement, mostly surrounded by buildings so tall that Joy had to look up finding some of them lost in the clouds.

“What happened to my birthplace? Why is Seoul like this?” Joy lamented, still looking how the concrete took upon the most beautiful city she had ever seen.

“This is not Seoul, this is Cheongju. We have to take yet another train to get to Seoul. Mokpo is really far away from the capital. Can I ask why didn't you take a plane? Is faster, and easier.” The man, still under compulsion, asked.

“What is a plane?” Joy looked at him, frowning.

“Don't you know what a plane is?” He asked once again.

“I may know what is the thing, but not by its name” She answered.

“Oh, uh... The iron birds?” He answered unsure, as he didn't knew how to describe it to a completely unaware person.

“Oh! I see them in my backyard! They go really far in the sky!” Joy enthusiastically said, as she found herself always marveled at that particular invention.

“Yeah, those. You could've taken them to Seoul, and it would've been faster.” He divulged, and Joy nodded absentmindedly.

“But I didn't, maybe next time. Now, we have to go, another train is awaiting for us” Joy declared, already walking in some direction she wasn’t sure it was the right one.

“Uh, ma’am, your going in the wrong direction. Let me lead” The man cautioned, waiting for Joy to get back to a safe distance before starting to walk in the opposite direction.

The second ride didn't got joy as excited as the one before, but as the sun slowly started to set, she centered herself into asking as much as the human could answer. Of course, there were things that the man didn't knew profoundly, and it left Joy even more curious.

This time, they got quickly in Seoul, as the ride wasn't too long. Once the vampire got there, she smiled. She was finally going to be able to see you, and discover what had you done to her.

“Quickly, ma'am, we're really close to your destination, I bet you wanna get there as soon as you can” The man said, walking out of the station.

And it was then when she realized how it was already night, and that he must have family that was waiting for him back home, and that probably won't see him until the sun came up, if he was lucky.

“Just inform me how to get there, and I will do so. You probably family to go to.” She compelled him, and the man nodded.

“Just get into one of those yellow cars, and you pay them to get to your destination. Do you have money? Or anything to pay them?” The man asked, still not getting out of the compulsion.

“Yes, I do, I'm okay now, I still have the address, you may go now, I hope you have a safe trip.” She bowed to him, and he then walked away.

Joy walked to a taxi, sighing, and gave him the direction of your home. He didn't spoke, and Joy didn't spoke either, so she was just thinking about what she would do when she got there. Truth is, she had no idea. She threw herself to the idea of getting to you, to get her peaceful mind back, but she had no idea of how to do so. She was simply out of her mind, with her always so calm and collected now reduced to a reckless nothing, She couldn’t believe it, the great Park Sooyoung, the once heiress to an empire, acting like some lowland person.

But, a part of her knew that that one Park Sooyoung had died long time ago, with her humanity. She wasn’t the great Park Sooyoung, she was now Joy, Park Joy, if it pleased the crowd, and those were two different girls, they had to be.

Her predicament was cut short by the driver, who had made the car stop, indicating that she had arrived the destination, and demanding to be paid. Truth be told, Joy had not eaten since the morning, and she had been kind enough to spare the man who traveled with her because he had endured the endless questions from the girl for a long time, but this man didn’t earn her kindness, so he wouldn’t have the same fate as the prior one.

“Actually, I’m going to be the one rewarded”

The night had finally come for you, and with that it meant for you to get back into your apartment to have finally some unhealthy amount of hours of sleep, only to get up and get back into your daily routine. Being an university student does that to people. And you would’ve dozzed off in the couch, or even make a zombie walk to your bed, if it wasn’t for those eyes in the dark. Those red eyes, following your every move since you got inside the house. Those eyes that had been engraved in your mind ever since you saw them for the first time in Jeju.

That thought seemed to get ridden of your sleepy state. That island was too far away for her to be there, it was impossible for her to be there. But as much as you wanted to deny her presence, those red eyes were moving, until slowly but surely started to be part of a face, that face that you were not able to forget since you were there.

“Joy.”

“Well, hello there. I though that I would have to wait for you the whole night”

[feferipeixes]

The Good Lines (1/3)

Trapped in an unfamiliar world, Alcor finds that he doesn’t mind the loneliness. He doesn’t care about finding a way out. He doesn’t even care about Mizar. All he cares about is solving puzzles, and drawing the good lines.

(or: I Think Dipper Should Play The Witness)

Chapter 1: Tutorial (link to chapter 2) (3)

I promised this a year ago and it’s finally happening! No knowledge about The Witness necessary -- this is basically a TAU fic. Thanks @toothpastecanyon for beta reading it!

(See the most updated version on AO3!)

===

One of the first signs that something was wrong was the silence.

Alcor didn't know when it had happened, but at some point he realized he couldn't remember the last time he'd heard a living thing. Sure, he could hear the grass crunch beneath his shoes, and the babble of the river cascading down the mountainside. When the silence got to be too much, he’d listen to those things as closely as he could.

He never heard a cicada screech, though, never heard a squirrel chitter, never heard a wolf howl. One time, he wandered through the forest and was assaulted by the chirping of birds, but when he looked closer he noticed that there were speakers hidden in the trees. That confused him even more, because who decided a forest needed assistance in creating an ambiance? Would the speakers switch from birds to crickets when it got dark out?

The next thing he noticed was that it never got dark out either.

Another strange thing: his magic wasn't working. He walked upon the ground instead of floating above it. He saw the physical shape of things instead of the shape of the ideas they embodied. And his hand didn't alight in flame when he snapped his fingers. He was still a demon -- he could see it in the pitch black reflection of his eyes when he looked in the ocean -- but it seemed less relevant right now. Which was without a doubt extremely odd.

However curious these things were though, he didn't have much of a chance to dwell on them. He was too busy drawing the good lines.

The panels were everywhere on the island. They were all sorts of materials -- some made of metal with a plastic border, some made of glass so he could see the scenery as he drew, and some were just embedded into the concrete he walked on. Many of them were connected with thick wires. They all had a grid of some sort on them, sometimes containing fanciful shapes and dots. All had one or more bulbous circles somewhere on the grid, as well as one or more rounded off ends. Some of them were pretty to look at, but he knew they weren't just for show. They were puzzles.

He couldn't remember when he'd discovered it. Maybe someone had told him (who? He was all alone). Maybe there were instructions on one of the panels (but he'd never seen any text on the island). Or maybe it was just instinct that led him to reach out and touch a panel, right on one of the large circles. It made a little popping noise, letting him know this was okay to do, and to keep going. So he dragged his claw across the grid, and as he did so, he drew a line. It was simple, it was effortless, it was satisfying. He drew the line around intersections in the grid to one of the rounded off bits and lifted his finger. The panel flashed angrily and highlighted some of the symbols on the grid.

Oh no. That was a Bad Line.

Frowning, he tried again; touching the circle, dragging his claw through the grid in a different pattern this time, and letting go at an end. The panel made a squeaky little beep, and the wire leading out of it lit up.

Alcor smiled. That was a Good Line.

---

There was a mountain at one end of the island. Well, it looked like a mountain, and the climate at the top was dramatically different from that at the bottom, but there was no way it was tall enough to really be considered a mountain. It only took a few minutes for Alcor to follow the path to the top, and he wasn’t even using any kind of demonic superspeed.

The summit was covered in weird stuff, but at this point Alcor would’ve been surprised if such a significant-looking location on this weird island wasn’t covered in weird stuff. Still, he wouldn’t have guessed that it would be covered in random statues of humans. There was an old man speaking at a podium, a figure in a trenchcoat using a camera on a tripod, a librarian gesturing angrily, and so on.

There were two statues at the center under three parabolic arches. One was a young man with a strange ladle-shaped mark etched onto his forehead, struggling to carry a large yellow box covered in images of eyes and which had a thick cable coming out of it. The other was a young woman in a sweater, holding the box’s cable taut and seemingly trying to pull the first statue back. All of the statues seemed vaguely familiar -- especially the two in the middle -- but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He eventually decided it was just because humans all look the same.

There was another thing he found while observing the statues: a tape recorder, sitting on a rock near the statue with the tripod. It looked positively archaic in design, and only had one button on it. When he pressed the button, the voice that came out was so clear that it was almost as if the words were being transmitted directly into his brain.

“Up there you go around every hour and a half, time after time after time.”

He frowned at the odd device and cocked his head. It was nice to hear a voice for the first time in what seemed like forever, but he had no idea what it was talking about. He pressed the button again to no effect. The voice just kept talking.

“And you realize that in one glance that what you’re seeing is what was the whole history of man for years.”

Whatever. He decided to ignore it and take in the lovely view instead. He could see almost the whole island from up there, from the desert to the quarry to the forest to the swamp. There was something stunning about the diversity of landscape he could see from one spot. And yet, it wasn’t quite the beauty of the sights before him that made him marvel. It was the thought of all of the unsolved puzzles he was yet to find.

“You finally come up across the coast of California and look for those friendly things.”

There only seemed to be one panel at the mountain’s summit, and it was hardly a puzzle -- just a single zigzagging line. Quick as a whistle, he tapped the starting node, dragged his finger up, and released. It made all of the same sounds the other panels did, but it was kind of disappointing. There was no challenge in it, nothing to occupy his mind or give him a sense of accomplishment. It wasn’t a Good Line or a Bad Line, it was just… a line.

Huh.

“And you do it again and again and again. You look forward to that, you anticipate it. And there it is. That whole process begins to shift of what it is you identify with.”

He set off down the mountain again, and headed toward the greenhouse he’d noticed on his way up. Just as he expected, it was full of puzzles. Surrounded by colorful flowers, he stared at a panel and thought, and thought, and thought.

Hours passed. He solved two more.

“You look down there and you can’t imagine how many borders and boundaries you crossed again and again and again. And you don’t even see ‘em. All of history and music and poetry and art and war and death and birth and love, tears, joy, games, all of it is on that little spot out there that you can cover with your thumb.”

Alcor bounced between areas on the island when he got stuck, always breezing past the scenery without a second glance because there were more important things to attend to. Across the island and toward the desert. Across the island to climb through a treehouse. Across the island to get lost in a boat. He waited for it to blur together but it never did.

“And you realize with that perspective that you’ve changed. That there’s something new there. That relationship is no longer what it was.”

It was peculiar, if he did let himself think about it. He didn’t want to -- didn’t want to give the voice that kind of victory -- but in between panels he sometimes needed a little break and there were only a limited number of things to put his attention to in this place. So, occasionally, he let himself wonder why he was alone.

This was not an unfamiliar question for him. He could come up with a million reasons for it right off the top of his head. He was immortal, so maybe everyone else in the universe was just dead. He was a monster, so maybe everyone else in the universe was just scared of him. He was a dream demon, so maybe he was just buried so deep in the Mindscape that he couldn’t find his way out.

Somehow, none of those reasons felt like the truth. If they were, he’d probably be sadder.

“And you think about what you’re experiencing and why. Do you deserve this? This fantastic experience? Have you earned this in some way? Are you separated out to be touched by God to have some special experience here that other men cannot have? You know the answer to that is No. There’s nothing that you’ve done that deserves that, that earned that.”

Besides, there wasn’t anything to be sad about, if he really really thought about it over and over again until words lost all meaning. He was Alcor the Dreambender, after all! He was the most powerful entity in the universe. Feared like a demon by the masses, revered like a deity by the foolish. All because he’d had the great fortune to rid the world of a villainous creature of destructive chaos.

He did deserve it. He was special. He spent a day lying face up on a rooftop in the town, thinking these things to himself on loop.

“When you come back, there’s a difference in that world now, there’s a difference in that relationship between you and that planet, and you and all those other forms of life on that planet, because you’ve had that kind of experience.”

Past the town there was a little peninsula with some sort of old building on it. Alcor made his way over, but when he got there he was dismayed to find not a single puzzle in sight. There was, however, a statue of a man kneeling on the floor. Alcor jumped when he saw it out of the corner of his eye, reaching for him with a crazed look on its face, but relaxed when he realized it wasn’t alive.

It was an odd sight, to be sure. Alcor followed its gaze to a glass shelf behind him, on which sat a chalice of some sort. He reached up to grab it -- almost knocking the shelf over as he did -- and cautiously stuck his tongue in.

Whatever was in the cup, he thought as he walked away from the building, it was delicious.

“And all through this I’ve used the word ‘you’ because it’s not me, it’s you. It’s us. It’s we. It’s life. And it’s not just my problem to integrate, it’s not my challenge to integrate, my joy to integrate -- it’s yours, it’s everybody’s.”

There was a long pause, and Alcor thought the recording might finally be over. He took a sip of his drink and smiled. Back to thinking about the current puzzle. It was a tough one -- three different colors of symbols on it -- and he was glad that the voice wasn’t distracting him from it anymore.

And then:

”Please come back, Dipper.”

Alcor did a spit take at the sound of his true name. The panel he was working on made a sizzling noise and deactivated.

“Did that work? Can you hear me?”

He shot to his feet and looked around in all directions. No one. He was still as alone as ever.

“You’re not responding so I don’t know if what you’re doing is just a coincidence.”

“What? Hello?” he yelled.

“Oh, thank the stars, it worked! Dipper you have to get out of here.”

“What are you talking about?” he sputtered. “Who are you?”

There was the sound of a deep breath, inexplicably broadcast from the sky. “I’m your sister, S- I mean, uh. Mizar. I’m Mizar.”

Alcor’s eyes widened. “Mizar?”

“Yeah. I’ve been trying to contact you for so long. I can’t believe it finally worked.”

“I don’t understand. What finally worked?”

“You need to listen to me. This isn’t the real world. You’re in a virtual reality game.”

“I’m what?” Alcor said. He backed up, accidentally leading himself to the edge of the platform he was standing on, but instead of falling off, his back hit a wall. He spun around to see what had happened, but there was nothing there. “Mizar? I’m- I’m so confused.”

Mizar sighed. “I told you. None of this is real. It’s a computer program. Haven’t you noticed that things aren’t quite right?”

“Well, yeah,” Alcor replied. He flapped his wings, but stayed firmly glued to the ground. “My demon powers don’t work. Honestly though that’s fine with me. I’m just having fun drawing the good lines.”

“The what?” Mizar demanded, incredulous.

“The good lines!” Alcor squeaked, and waved at the puzzles behind him. “I don’t know what they’re for or what they do, but I’ve been so busy solving all these puzzles that I’ve barely thought about… why… things are… off…”

He trailed off, and Mizar sniffed.

“That’s the point. They’re there to keep you occupied.”

Alcor frowned. “Why though? Who’d go to so much effort to make all of this for me?”

There was no response.

---

Alcor continued to solve puzzles. He didn’t know why Mizar’s voice had stopped, but he was glad it had -- she was the true distraction, not the puzzles. And yet every once in a while, he’d be staring at a particularly difficult panel with one of those Y-shaped symbols on it that made no sense to him, and his mind would begin to wander.

And when it did, he’d notice another one of those tape recorders nearby. There were a lot of them on the island, and they all had boring quotes from philosophers or whatever on them. But then Mizar’s voice would cut in, with a note of glee like she’d thought he’d never speak to her again. Every time she sounded more and more desperate for him to leave. And every time it made him feel more and more frustrated.

“Okay, so,” Alcor said as Mizar's voice faded in for the 20th or so time, “you said last time you might’ve figured out who made this island.” He didn't look up or take his finger off the panel in front of him.

There was a rustling noise, and then a loud pop. “Sorry, had to plug in my headphones. That’s right, though. I’ve done some more research since then and I’m sure of it now.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“It was an advanced artificial intelligence,” Mizar replied. “I think you might be familiar with it. It’s called ‘the Alcor Virus’.”

“Oh.” Alcor paused for a moment. “Yeah, I wrote him to mess with fanfic writers. Why do you think he made the island?”

“I don’t think,” Mizar said. “It definitely did. There’s traces of it all over the computer network in this building.”

“There’s traces of him all over every device with a processor in the whole world,” Alcor countered. “He’s a really good virus. I’m very proud of him.”

Mizar groaned. “I also found its executable embedded in the binary for this game. Also a few summoning circles, and a big ASCII art picture of it giving me the middle finger.”

“Okay, maybe you’re right,” he conceded. “Why, though?”

“How should I know?” Mizar said, with more than a note of irritation in her voice. “I’m not a psychologist and I’m definitely not a computer scientist. Also why does it matter ‘why’ it’s doing this? Isn’t it time to get out of there already? I’ve already asked you like a million times!”

“No!” Alcor exclaimed, throwing his hands up. He walked out of the structure he’d been standing in and headed toward an area with some shady trees in which he’d noticed puzzles he hadn’t solved yet. “I like it here. It’s fun for me. And I deserve a vacation from all the people who bother me all the time. Why would I leave?”

“Because you can’t just run away from your problems!” Mizar shot back. “You think this is healthy? Literally living in a virtual reality world so you don’t have to talk to anyone anymore? How do you think I feel?”

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Horrible! I thought you cared about me, Dipper, but all you care about are those stupid puzzles! Stars, sometimes you act like such a demon!”

Alcor frowned. “You know that I -”

“Yes, I get it, you ARE a demon and you can’t help it that you’re a selfish piece of shit. I GET it. Is this how it’s really going to end? You’re just going to turn me down after I’ve spent all this time trying to get you out?”

Alcor’s ears turned red as he felt Mizar’s furious, extraplanar glare land on him. “It really means that much to you that I leave?”

He heard Mizar smack herself in the face. “Yes, yes, a hundred times yes! It kills me that you’re not in my life anymore! You probably thought I could get along just fine without you and no one would be affected by you staying forever on your fantasy puzzle island vacation, huh? Why do you think I keep asking you? I’m starting to get sick of it!”

Alcor felt every muscle in his body tense up at that. He squeezed his eyes shut as Mizar continued to shout, tried to fend off the words violently striking at his ego, and only opened them again when she cut off mid-word. The light on the tape recorder had turned off.

He tried to let himself relax again but he couldn’t. It felt like his chest had become a black hole and it was taking all he had not to shrink up into a tiny little dot and vanish. He hated being yelled at. Hated it.

Maybe Mizar was right, though. Maybe he was just being a selfish jerk. He'd done it before. Countless times, to countless Mizars, his self-serving actions had caused harm to mortals and it was always his fault because he couldn't put himself in their shoes. Maybe he was a monster after all. It was just like a monster to have wants and needs that inevitably end up hurting people.

Alcor exhaled, long and heavy, and pressed the button on the tape again. When the pre-recorded message ended and Mizar’s shouts returned, he interrupted her.

“Okay. I’ll go.”

[the-awkward-outlaw]

Holà ! Could you write an imagine / headcanon about Arthur meeting a mermaid ( maybe in Guarma ) and falling for her ? And you can choose the ending ( but not too sad please he deserved better )

Ah, I’m so sorry Anon this has taken me so long! My life is weirdly busy right now even though none of the reasons it’s busy are important. This turned out really long and doesn’t neccessarily have a happy ending, but it sort of does at the same time. Anyways, I hope it’s at least semi-satisfactory. 

When Arthur found himself stranded on the beach after the boat wrecked, he was horrible disorientated. A mixture of exhaustion, heat stroke, dehydration, and a horrible burning in his lungs didn’t make anything better. The ground was white hot and he could barely see when he opened his eyes. Once they’d adjusted, he realized he was standing on sand with islands of grass and bushes. 

Hot. That’s the only sense his mind can process. unbearable heat. The sand burns his feet, the sun burns his face and eyes. The air is thick and soupy. Gulls cry happily as they soar above him. How can any living thing be happy in this place? Hell itself could not be worse. 

As he stumbles around the beach, he sees something sparkling on a large rock poking from the waves near the shore. He thinks it must be some water collected in the fissures of the rock, or perhaps some strange birds. He’s heard of sea turtles, maybe it’s coming from them. As he approaches, though, he sees a little better and it’s obvious that none of his previous impressions were correct. He’s looking at what looks like a woman. Or what looks partially like a woman from the waist up anyways. Where her legs should have been was instead a long, shimmering tail, the flukes trailing back and forth slowly. Her head was tipped back as though enjoying the rays of the sun, her long brown hair trailing over her chest and back. 

Arthur blinks multiple times. His condition must be making him go insane. She can’t possibly be real. He’s heard legends of course. He heard some drunken sailors at the saloon in Saint Denis discussing their sightings of mermaids, but ten minutes later they were black out drunk. Yet here she was, visible proof that perhaps they weren’t mistaken.

Arthur lifts his hand. “Y-you!” he calls, his voice weak. 

The woman looked to him, unafraid. She was very familiar with the land folk, her people called them. She was unimpressed with him. Sure, he was a large specimen, broad shouldered and barrel chested, but most men she’d seen wandering shores or atop their strange, massive floating carved trees were. Luckily for him, she wasn’t feeling particularly hungry. Land folk were regarding by her kind as a delicacy, but she had never grown to like the taste. There was just something about land meat she never craved. She preferred her usual game of fish and the other creatures that dwell in the ocean with her. 

She flashed him a smile though. Her pod would definitely appreciate her bringing in an offering of land folk. They were becoming harder to come by as their carved trees became more advanced. Faster and sturdier. A land folk who had been ship wrecked was the perfect target. 

“You there!” he yelled again, slightly stronger. 

“Arthur!” another land folk approaches him. Taller yet thinner in build with disheveled black hair and mustache. Three more men followed him and she knew it wasn’t safe. Luckily none of them saw her and she slipped quickly back into the water. Her sun bathing would have to continue later. 

Over the next few days, she saw the man again and again in the same spot as the first time. It was like he was looking for her. The boulder he’d seen her from happened to be her favorite sun bathing spot as it was easy to access and surrounded by deep water which made hiding easy. She knew the island was heavily populated despite its small size, making her vulnerable. 

The man seemed harmless enough, but he was clearly wary of her. She allowed him to spot her a handful of times, both in and out of the water. Despite how little she liked the taste of land folk, she was very good at hunting them. Something the matriarch of her pod was befuddled by. 

The third time the man came calling, she slid right to the edge of the water, allowing him to get the closest he’d ever been. She found herself growing curious about him. He wasn’t like other land folk she’d stalked and killed. He wasn’t frightened nor did he try and kiss her like some misguided sailors had. He was simply intrigued and she was too. 

Mayani, as was her name, soon learned the land folk’s name was Arthur Morgan. She learned, like all merfolk do, his native tongue along with the languages of other land folks. It was part of learning the hunt. She spoke with Arthur for many hours that first day and he told her many things about where he came from. He described the hot deserts, seas made of grass, mountains taller than the highest waves capped in snow. It was intriguing. In turn, Mayani , or Maya as she preferred, told him the secrets of the ocean. Listening to the haunting songs of whales, hunting giant squid, outrunning sharks, the colorful and vibrant corals and how to tell which kinds were safe to eat and which kinds were not. 

Arthur found himself longing to join Maya in her watery kingdom after a week had passed. Dutch was still working with Hercule in order to get off this god-forsaken island, and he felt envious of Maya and the freedom she had to come and go from it as she pleased. She told him that she was breaking her matriarch’s boundaries though. Last year, three of her pod members had been killed on the shores of this island by those who occupied it and the matriarch forbade the rest of the pod from returning. Maya still found the warm, shallow waters worth the risk, plus it offered some of the best foraging corals and hunting grounds. The temptation was too great. 

Arthur made her laugh easily. When he asked her if it was true that a mermaid’s kiss could give a sailor the ability to breathe underwater, she found it hysterical. A kiss could not change one’s abilities, she said. Nothing could do that. She learned that his kind were called humans. As they divulged more secrets of their lives to one another, they found that their species were not so different. Merfolk possessed their own cultures, though the females were the leaders and not the men. The females were also the only ones allowed to do hunting. The idea was that since they were the only ones to give life, they should be the only ones to take lives. The males spent their time foraging and helping raise the offspring. 

Arthur quickly became interested in the mermaid. She was beautiful, sure, but he found himself more attracted to her spirit than anything else. She was in a very similar position as he was in his own gang, the third highest ranking member of her pod but she enjoyed wandering the ocean on her own, though her loyalty was unwaverable. Arthur wished there was a way they could be together, but he knew that was impossible. She could not survive on land for more than a few hours, her tail and even skin was heavily dependent on the salt water. Without it, she would quickly dehydrate and die. He of course could not exist in the water. 

The time finally came when only one thing was left to do before he and the others could return to the mainland. Arthur approached his and Maya’s meeting spot with a somber expression. She was miserable too as someone in her pod had spotted her “fraternizing” (as her matriarch had put it) with a land folk on a forbidden island. This was the last time she’d be able to see him. They told each other how things were standing for themselves. Arthur didn’t want to leave her with nothing, but having no object to give, he kissed Maya gently. 

“Thank you,” he said. Maya smiled, but something about the way his lips tasted was off. She knew immediately he was sick. She told him to wait and then dived down and foraged for a rather rare coral that she knew grew around the island. It luckily didn’t take her long before she found the tiny organism and she gave it to him. 

“You’re very sick, Arthur,” she explained. “Your kind carry many sicknesses. If we didn’t learn to identify them, we’d get sick too. When we’ve eaten sick humans, we eat this coral and it cures us. You should do the same.” 

Arthur did not question. His lungs had been burning more than ever before and he’d developed quite a cough, so he studied the strange, bumpy coral. It was only the size of a quarter but the texture was awful. Squeezing his eyes, he swallowed the coral as quickly as he could, for Maya said cooking it would destroy its healing properties. She smiled at him when he had swallowed it and he kissed her one last time. 

“I promise,” he said. “I will never forget you.”

“I wish our paths could cross again,” she said. 

The sun was beginning to set and in the distance they heard Dutch calling Arthur’s name. He sighed heavily and brushed her cheek. “Thank you,” he said. He got up and walked away towards the voice. Maya watched him for a moment and then dipped into the water. She tried to imagine how things could have been between them in another world, but her matriarch had told her time and time again that wanting what could never be was the most fruitless venture of all. 

[atamascolily]

An Appointment in Sawarra, 9/?

In which Luke is sorely vexed.

(previously: one two three four five, six seven eight)

The official reason they wouldn't let him fly the X-wing through the Ring--their name for the neutron star cluster--was safety, though Luke suspected security and paranoia were equal concerns. His brain turned to mush from the interminable paperwork, Luke met this turn of unexpected turn of events with as much grace as he could muster.

It wasn't as if he had much in the way of luggage--just the simple rucksack he'd packed with a few changes of clothes, back when he'd thought this would be a simple trip out and back again. He should have known it wasn't going to work out that way.

<i>"I have a feeling you may be gone longer than you think,</i> Mara had said back on Coruscant. Her hunch had been spot-on. Luke was starting to get the same feeling--though like her, he wasn't sure whether it was good or bad yet.

If Karrde's contact could help him with the uneti seeds, all of this would be worth it. If not--well, he'd been on wild bantha chases on much less cause. And perhaps he could use the time in transit to learn more about his mysterious hosts.

The journey through the Ring was uneventful to the point of boring. In theory, Luke was allowed the run of the transport. In practice, they treated him as a bizarre cross between an honored guest and a poltical prisoner, and he didn't understand why.

Luke's attempts to coax out information out of the rank and file proved fruitless. The crew pretended that he wasn't there, with no eye contact or acknowledgement of his presence unless he spoke to them directly. Even then, they were curt almost to the point of rudeness, reverting to cursory nods or gestures whenever possible. Despite the translator box looped prominently around Luke's wrist, they refused to speak anything but simple Basic in his presence, making conversation about anything more complex than the direction to the 'fresher impossible.  

Eventually, he gave up and retreated to his assigned quarters for the remainder of the journey. The room was simple and spartan, the only spots of color a holographic image of a flower arrangement and calligraphy scroll on the shelf over the bed. Luke didn't recognize any of the flowers, and the translator was voice-only, leaving him effectively illiterate--an oversight, he realized now. He sat cross-legged on the bed and tried to meditate, but he couldn't let go of the thoughts swirling around his head.  

Why had the authorities let him enter Sawarran space if they clearly didn't want him? Either they weren't as xenohobic as Leia and Winter had claimed, or they had mellowed considerably since throwing off the Empire and declaring their independence. Neither of those explanations fit the evidence. Why, then, had they made an exception for him? Because he was a Jedi?

Luke had grown used to people treating him differently once they learned he was a Jedi--sometimes with awe and reverence, sometimes with gestures to ward off the evil eye. The customs agents been intrigued, but not impressed, by Luke's lightsaber and his claimed occupation. It was his connection to Yoda, of all people--a direct, tangible connection, as teacher and student--that had captured their attention.

What was Yoda to these people? And, more importantly, <i>why</i>?  

Their arrival in Ri'tarn City a few hours after local dawn was routine to the point of anticlimax. Luke didn't know what he'd expected--a parade? a riot? another horde of bureaucrats?--but there was nothing and no one waiting for him at the docking bay. He was escorted politely but firmly off the ship by the crew and abandoned outside in the bustling street.

"Hey!" Luke shouted at their rapidly retreating figures. "What am I supposed to do now?"

The leader turned back long enough to shrug and gestured off to the side. "Temple that way," he said in Basic, and hastened off after the rest of his squad.

Luke stared, blinking in the morning sunlight, as the crowd bustled around him on the cobbled street past elegant wooden townhouses with open-air shops on the lower levels. They'd let him come here, to a place where foreigners were never supposed to come... and now they were letting him wander around unsupervised?

Then again, he thought, taking in the dark skin and voluminous, colorful robes in the press of people around him, maybe the authorities didn't need to hold his hand to track his movements. Between his pallor and his tightly cut clothing, he stood out like a Wookiee at a Jawa family reunion.

He was relieved and confused to be left to his own devices so abruptly---and, he had to admit, more than a little insulted. He'd been prepared for anything--except, apparently, total indifference. No one in the bustling street was paying the slightest bit of attention to him, the crowd parting around him like a crowd of Coruscanti swoop-bike racers around a cloudcutter.

That, too, was unnerving.

He was alone on a strange planet outside the New Republic's jurisdiction--and, thanks to the pulsars of the Ring, no means to contact anyone on the outside should things go sideways, except through the Force.

Thankfully, <i>that</i> still worked. He could probably reach Leia in a pinch if he violated some taboo by mistake, though she wouldn't thank him if he ended up triggering an intergalactic incident.

<i>Why am I here? What do THEY think I'm supposed to do?</i>

<i>Pay your respects</i>, the head customs agent had said.

"My respects to what?" Luke said aloud. "Yoda is <i>dead</i>. How does this even make <i>sense</i>?"

The crew's mention of a temple intrigued him. Perhaps there were answers waiting for him there. But that wasn't why he was here. He needed to find Dr. Mendoza at the university and ask her about the seeds. Maybe she could help with the other mysteries, too.

But he had to find her first.

***

Luke had assumed it would be easy enough to locate the university with the address Karrde had given him, but it quickly became clear that Ri'tarn City, like everything else in this system, was determined to make even simple tasks an ordeal. Whatever rhyme, reason or logic underlay the streets was nothing like standard grid/level system for ships, stations, and Coruscanti high-rises. Signs were few and far between, not that he could read them anyway.

Meanwhile, the inhabitants seemed intent on thwarting his efforts through sheer indifference. As with the transport crew, none of them would acknowledge his presence unless Luke forced them to. Even then, they refused to meet his eyes or say much beyond the simplest gestures when he asked for directions. Even the wooden seal representing his visa didn't impress them.

The only exception to the general impassivity were the children, who stared openly as he passed, pointing in his direction and giggling among themselves, only to flee if Luke approached them. The contrast between the stoic adults and their offspring made the former's stoic unconcern even eerier.

The sun inched its way across the sky overhead, bright and hot as he wended his way through the streets, increasingly lost and confused. He was thirsty, but there was no sign of water anywhere, and none of the shops he passed would serve him.

A high, piercing alien cry came from overhead. Luke looked up to see feathery lizards gliding overhead, a welcome breeze breaking the heat with a distinctive salt tang. Was it his imagination, or were those ocean waves in the distance?

Out of ideas, he wended his way in the direction of the flying lizards, hoping it would somehow get him to the university. The docks didn't seem like the typical site for an institution of higher learning, but maybe the Sawarrans did things differently here. Either that, or the entire population was in on some big joke they weren't going to share with Luke.

He came around the corner to find himself on the edge of a stark, man-made seawall a dozen meters above the bay--or would be a bay if there were any water in it. A bare tidal flat stretched to the horizon in an endless expanse of sand, a mockery to his hopes. There was no sign of anything even remotely approaching a university, only crabs skulking in and out of their burrows as they dodged the attentions of flocks of hungry lizards wheeling and diving from above.

"Maybe I should have gone to the temple after all," Luke said, to no one in particular, slumping against the wall.

He was tired and thirsty, light-years from home on a strange planet where no one would meet his eyes, let alone talk to him. He'd been here for hours there was no sign of Karrde's contact, and now he was faced with yet another dead end. <i>How did I get into this mess?</i> he wondered, not for the first time.  

He hadn't been this off-balance since--since his first trip to Dagobah, actually. <i>Maybe that's why they like Yoda so much</i>, Luke thought sourly. <i>Or maybe they're testing me, the way Yoda tested me at first?</i>

<i>I failed that test back then. I won't fail this one, too.</i>

He had to be missing something, something obvious.

He leaned against the sea wall, and stared out into the distance, struggling to calm his racing thoughts. <i>Think. Think. Think. There's got to be some sort of key. What am I missing here?</i>

Something shimmered on the edge of the horizon.

<i>Wait.</i>

It wasn't his imagination. There was a tower rising out of the tidal flat, with what looked to be a small city at its base, far enough away that he hadn't noticed it on first glance.

There were no signs at this distance, of course, but Luke <i>knew</i> what he was looking at. It was the university. Had to be. What <i>else?</i> could it be?

He squinted. There was no bridge or road leading to the tower from the mainland. The buildings rose out of the sand, shimmering like a desert mirage in the afternoon heat, completely disconnected from the mainland.

"You have got to be kidding me," Luke said in dismay.

It made a weird kind of sense, though. Who needed roads when you had speeders? Or, when the tide was in, boats.

Luke scanned his surroundings. He was alone on the sea wall, the wind whipping through his hair, lacking both a speeder and a boat. The only way he was going to get out to that hazy tower on the horizon was under his own power.

This was stupid and crazy and pointless, and he ought to just give up and go home, but it was too late for that. He'd come this far.

But he'd done plenty of stupid things over the course of his life, both before and after joining the Rebellion. And at least this time, nobody was shooting at him.

"All right, then," Luke sighed. "I guess I'm doing this."

He stripped off his boots and socks, and stuffed them into his rucksack, wishing he'd brought a hat to protect himself from the broiling sun. Then he jumped down onto the tidal flat, landed with a roll, and set off barefoot across the sandy expanse towards the tower.

[timeagainreviews]

Those are excellent nose hairs

Hello friends! It's been a long weekend for yours truly, as I was in Nottingham for a convention. My hooves are very tired. This review is going up a bit later than I would like as the hotel I was staying at's TV's volume only went up to fifteen, which made it hard for me to watch the episode properly. Now that I'm home and have watched the episode with the sound full blast, I can give it a proper review.

When we last left the Doctor and her crew, they were suspended in space. Of course, none of us were actually worried, after all, they showed the shot of them being picked up in the series trailer! Also, come on, they're not gonna kill our friends. In true Doctor Who fashion, the cliffhanger was resolved in seconds. Graham and Ryan find themselves aboard a spaceship with a standoffish captain named Angstrom. She doesn't trust them, despite saving their lives. Yaz awakens aboard a different ship in a sort of stasis capsule to the sound of the Doctor and the ship's captain Epzo bickering. Neither one of them can agree on the best way to crash-land Epzo's ship- "Cerebos."

Upon landing on the planet, Ryan, Graham, and Angstrom begin walking toward a still unknown destination. From above comes Cerebos, like a comet falling from the sky, directly at them. Having never seen a science fiction movie, the three of them run in the direction of the ship's trajectory, as opposed to, you know, left or right. The ship skids through a ravine and it's not until the Doctor yells "Brakes!" does the ship stop, due to previously unseen wheels.

Happy to see each other alive, the Doctor and her new friends take a moment to appreciate the fact that they're on their first alien planet. They also learn that Epzo and Angstrom are familiar with one another as competitors. Suddenly, an alarm sounds, beckoning them toward a mysterious destination, which turns out to be a tent in the middle of a desert where the hologram of a callous wealthy man named Ilin sits like a king. Opulence drips from him despite his shabby digs.

We learn that Ilin is the facilitator of the last "Rally of the 12 Galaxies," or as the Doctor put it, "Paris-Dakar in space.” The prize is an exorbitant amount of money, enough to set the winner for life. Out of 4,000 entrants, Epzo and Angstrom are the only two left. The name of the planet on which everyone has found themselves is most closely translated to "Desolation," and it's the final leg of the race.

The racers final task is to navigate Desolation, a planet "made cruel," toward the titular "Ghost Monument." The Doctor being who she is, asks to know the appearance of the Ghost Monument. Ilin, annoyed by the request, reluctantly presents a holographic image of the monument. The Ghost Monument, much to the Doctor's delight, is none other than her TARDIS, which has been phasing into existence every 1000 cycles. Due to the nature of the time machine, it appears to have been doing so for a very long time. It's a moment in the episode that feels genuinely gratifying, as the pieces for our new Doctor are beginning to fall into place.

Ilin and his tent disappear instantly, leaving everyone at the mercy of this cruel planet. Strewn about are what looks like the remnants of a society. Structures are tangled with strange gauzy strips of fabric. Buildings are in ruin. The Doctor can't make heads or tails what happened to this civilisation. The water is full of carnivorous bacteria, the air is poison, and there are sniper robots. In a scene that evoked strong "Keys of Marinus," vibes, they must travel across a deadly body of water, aboard an abandoned boat.

In these moments, we're given a further glimpse into the motivations of both Epzo and Angstrom. Angstrom wants to win the race so she can save what's left of her family from tyranny, while Epzo is simply a very lonely man with a painful past ripped straight out of the movie Wetlands (of all places). On the other hand, we don't get much more of a glimpse into the Doctor's new companions. We learn that Yaz's family is a bit irritating, and incomplete, as she doesn't mention a mother. Ryan and Graham are still basically where we left off- Ryan won't call Graham granddad, and Graham still doesn't know how to reach him. Ryan still struggles with ladder-related dyspraxia, but it seems to disappear when he takes out a group of sniper bots with one of their own weapons. There seems to be a sort of fluctuation in characterisation present in this, and last week's scripts.

The Doctor is presented in a way that is meant to illustrate not only her competence but also her philosophy. This is where Chris Chibnall's writing has continually stuck in my craw. As with last week, where the Doctor denounced knives, despite having travelled with two knife-wielding companions in the past, she goes on about guns once more. We all know the Doctor is against guns, but why is it not okay to kill lifeless sniper robots with a gun, but okay to kill all of them with an electromagnetic pulse? The Doctor does these kinds of things all the time, but Chibnall has brought our attention to it.

The Doctor helps the racers and her friends through what looks like a dilapidated parking garage filled with sniper bots into an underground network of tunnels and chambers. While underground, the Doctor learns that our baddies from last week, the Stenza, had forced the scientists of the world above to create weapons of death to the point that it killed their planet. We also learn that both Graham in Angstrom lost their wives to the Stenza.

After the race is over, only the Doctor and her new friends remain, stuck on the surface of Desolation. The Doctor is at one of her lowest points, as even she is beginning to doubt herself. In a very sweet show of camaraderie, Yaz, Ryan, and Graham reinforce their belief in the Doctor. It is at this moment when a glimmer of hope is heard in a familiar sound. Last week I voiced my concern that the Doctor might have to "earn," her TARDIS back. Much to my relief, this was not the case. Evidently, it was a case that the TARDIS saw the Doctor was now a woman, and her whole “bachelor pad,” with candle wax dribble and books on the stairs was suddenly unsuitable. “Out you go, while I spruce up!” And I’m glad for it. Not only would a Doctor without her TARDIS story have been tedious, it would have also been a rather incomplete feeling series. With a new Doctor, it's good to have a bit of the familiar around, even if it looks a bit different!

In a line that is probably now my new sexuality, the Doctor pleads with the TARDIS and says "Come to daddy... er mummy." Our trusty blue box finally manages to materialise, and like something out of a Lassie movie, or even a love story, the Doctor runs to it. It's a truly beautiful moment that left me in tears. In my review for "An Unearthly Child," I talked about the first TARDIS reveal. It's seldom, however, that we get to see the Doctor have the same reaction to seeing the inside of her TARDIS, which is why this one is so great. Having been apart from what is possibly her oldest friend, she gets to rediscover her new interior alongside her companions. And like that, the show feels like it can truly move forward.

Now then, let’s talk about what worked, and what didn't. First of all, how about that introduction? Yet another one of my fears was that Doctor Who had gone the way of many modern television series, and dumped the intro, which would have been a crime! Thankfully, this was not an issue. I mentioned earlier the "Keys to Marinus vibe," I got from this episode. That intro is pure Hartnell era, through and through. After getting a better listen to Segun Akinola's theme tune, I must say I like it. Though I feel that some of the effects placed upon the sound seem to cancel out certain notes. While it lacks the high energy of some of the previous themes of the "new Who" era, it gains a level of creepiness and danger we've not seen since the 70's.

The story itself is pretty simple, but that's not any kind of judgement on my behalf. Simple can be a welcome break after Moffat's long-winded, and often unfulfilling story arcs. Though the bit about "The Timeless Child," was so Easter eggy, that I thought Moffat may have snuck into the writing room with a Chris Chibnall mask and monkeyed with the script. I'll be honest, I have zero interest in that storyline. It's called Doctor Who, not Doctor Who was Once a Little Kid Known as the Timeless Child. IDGAF.

One of the interesting elements of these past two episodes has been Chibnall's characterisation of the Doctor. In some ways, it's evident how well he knows the character. Simply in the manner by which the Doctor uses the sonic screwdriver, do we see her character come out. The sonic is often criticised as a plot-convenient deus ex machina, but in many ways, it is the Doctor condensed into an object. It fixes things and opens the doors to new possibilities. The Doctor tries to teach her companions her philosophy, not with weapons, but with hope.

I said earlier how Chibnall has also, a somewhat muddied philosophy of the Doctor. His sophisticated ideas, don't really stand up to their own scrutiny. When the Doctor and her companions have their backs against the wall, it's suddenly ok to destroy the Remnants (killer strips of fabric now animated under the night sky), with a blaze of fire. What was different between these and the sniper robots? The Remnants could actually speak, yet it's less ok to shoot the mindless robots because...guns? These aren't massive sins, but they are worrisome. As I've said, Chris Chibnall is the one element of the new series that has worried me. Even his one-off jokes can serve as tiny red flags.

In the previous episode, we learn that the Doctor has empty pockets, something that had come up more than once in "The Woman Who Fell to Earth." However, in this episode, it turns out that she has filled her pockets. It would make sense if the object she pulls out of her coat were merely a simple pair of sunglasses. But these weren't just any sunglasses, these once belonged to either Pythagoras or Audrey Hepburn. Which is fine, it's cute, right? But where did they come from? Her coat from her days as a white haired Scotsman was empty, and her new coat came from a charity shop. With no TARDIS, how does she get a pair of sunglasses from one of two dead people? Perhaps it's as River says- the Doctor lies. Or perhaps Chibnall just wanted a cute joke. Either way, Graham looks fabulous in those shades.

Evidently, Chris Chibnall's true talent lies in being able to recognise talent. He's found a wonderful group of actors and directors. Jodie Whittaker is a genius pick for the Doctor. Segun Akinola is brilliant in his musical direction. Even his vision for what the series should look like is inspired. The retro vibe suits not only the Thirteenth Doctor but also the concept of the first female Doctor. Something I had hoped they wouldn't ignore. While some of the cinematography has been frustrating, with close-ups cropping off 20% of actor's faces, and points of focus not always being properly framed, it's also kinetic and gorgeous. The new TARDIS control room is beautiful. I'm hoping the little spinning crystal TARDIS serves a function of some sort, as well as the hourglass, which was perplexing in its function (as well the TARDIS should be). My favourite bit was the little custard cream biscuit dispenser. Pure cuteness, that.

This episode has been particularly hard to review, as I didn't hate it, not by far. But it was also disjointed and frustrating at points as well. I'm still giving a lot of leeway to everyone involved, as it's early days. Neither Stephen Moffat or Russell T. Davies wrote a homerun within their first two episodes. Chris Chibnall has managed to breathe new life into the series again, which is a feat unto itself. The TARDIS has done herself up, and so has the show. And as the Doctor said, "I really like it."

[seventeen-scenarios-blog]

[SPECIAL] All Your Hate (and all your love) (G)

HEY GUYS GREAT NEWS, WE’VE GOT A NEW ADMIN!!

ADMIN HOSHIT, SAY HI!

A/N: Hi guys! as my name suggests, I’m soonyoung’s trash (even though jihoon is my bias). I write with lots of sarcasm, run-on sentences, parentheses, italics and dashes between words because that’s how i roll ;____: I’ll also sell my soul to the devil for seventeen, memes and The Gay Agenda so feel free to hit me up with any of those :) if anyone has any advice with regards to writing better, please dm/message us (i live for constructive criticism) 

HOSHIT ROLL OUT \0/

Prompt: Mingyu and Minghao as neighbours  Ship: Minghao x Mingyu  Genre: Crack, fluff Word count: 2,066 Warnings: None!

Minghao was not having a good day.

His cactus’ health has been on a steady decline for two weeks now, and it seems that it had finally decided to kick the metaphorical bucket overnight. Minghao had watched as his cactus had defied the florist’s instructions of “water every two weeks! It’s hardy.” Hardy, his ass. Ever since the cactus had been placed on his window sill to receive optimal levels of sunlight, it had begun its gradual descent into its current state, a withered yellow stick. The knowledge that he was less nurturing than the desert was more than slightly grating on his nerves, and the jaundiced stalk mocked him from its pedestal on the window sill, the bright sunlight at odds with his darkening mood.

What’s worse was that his neighbor, the bane of his existence, an overgrown muscle being, was silent. Suspiciously silent. He should have been listening to wall-shaking music at that time in the morning and generally making a nuisance of himself while working out, and yet there was nothing coming from the other side of the wall.

Strange. Minghao was not about to lower his guard. Ever since that walking accident named Kim Mingyu moved in next to him, his life had lost all semblance of peace. Oh it had started out simple enough, Minghao had a decently good impression of Mingyu when he knocked politely on the door to introduce himself, Mingyu’s good looks deceiving Minghao for the first few hours. Then the cookies that Mingyu brought over had given him a stomachache, which Minghao had (mistakenly!) written off as unsanitary Thai food he’d ordered for dinner. Then the plumbing for the whole floor had gotten clogged (Mingyu had dropped his toilet roll in the toilet and decided to flush, instead of fishing it out like a normal human being). Then Mingyu’s stove had caught on fire (how? HOW?) and caused a building-wide evacuation, which Minghao was certainly not pleased about, his daily dance practice ruined. Then the flu that started from Mingyu and contaminated the floor (in other words, Minghao, as the whole floor only had two apartments). Then the loud exercise music at 8am, a time Minghao considered illegal to wake up at. Then the squirrels. Oh God, the squirrels. Within a month, Mingyu had turned from the handsome-puppy-next-door to devil-incarnate-please-go-back-to-hell-and-stay-there.

Minghao stirred from his half-asleep thoughts. It was time to throw out the cactus and get a new one, pretend nothing had happened and be content in his knowledge that he had a green thumb and all of his plants flourished and none of them have ever died on him yet (Minghao’s plants have never lasted beyond their third week, which, coincidentally, was the record that this cactus had set before its untimely death that morning). Maybe he would even do a Viking funeral for this one to celebrate its longevity and its part in the ongoing war that is Minghao’s attempts to cultivate a living being other than himself.

The boat prepared, the sink full of water, Minghao poured the cactus and its wet soil out of its vase and into the paper boat. It was time for the send-off. Wait, wet soil? Minghao never watered his plants. With a curse, Minghao lifted the boat out of the face of its impending watery doom and tossed it into the bin, Viking funeral be-damned. There was only one person who could have committed such a foul deed, and that person was Kim Mingyu.

Seething, Minghao wrenched open his apartment door, not even bothering to change out of his pink bunny slippers and hammered on Mingyu’s door.

“KIM MINGYU! OPEN UP! HOW DARE YOU! MISTER CACTUS NUMBER FIVE WAS MY FAVOURITE CACTUS! COME OUT AND OWN UP!”

The apartment remained silent. In a fit of anger, Minghao twisted the door knob, not expecting the door knob to actually turn and grant him access to the devil’s lair. That idiot… Minghao could hardly believe his eyes. He knew his neighbor was not exactly the smartest person but to leave his apartment unlocked was an act that was inconceivable. Unless this was part of Mingyu’s grand plan? To aggravate Minghao in the hopes that he would get angry, try the door knob, go into his house and wreck it, and Mingyu would be able to call the police and capture Minghao while Mingyu laughed evilly and watch as the police dragged Minghao-the-trespasser to jail where he would die old and alone? No, Mingyu was not capable of a plan that required an intelligence level higher than a seal.

Minghao giggled—no he laughed in a deep and manly way, as he entered the demon’s apartment, half expecting Mingyu to be lurking around exorcist-esque, where the main character would enter a seemingly empty room and be relieved, only to realise that the demon was behind him all the while. With this thought, Minghao whipped his head around and checked behind him just in case Mingyu was really there waiting in ambush. The empty umbrella stand gazed mournfully back at him. Embarrassed, Minghao turned to survey the apartment. It dawned on him that with the unexpected entry to the house, he actually had no idea what to do next.

He’d dreamt of getting back at Mingyu for weeks, but none of his plans actually involved going into Mingyu’s house because it was absurd that he would be able to. And yet, Minghao stands in Mingyu’s house, with no Mingyu in sight.

There was a thud from above, and Minghao jerked, because what if Mingyu came back. But it was just Chan from apartment 151, and unbidden, Chan’s story of how he pranked his brother rose to mind. Chan had moved all the furniture in his brother’s house one inch to the right, because “that big oaf wouldn’t be able to tell the difference”, and had a gleeful two hours of confusion from his brother before he was found out. That had sparked a whole chain of pranks that had required a whole month of dance classes with Minghao to recount in full.

Minghao blurred to action, moving all the furniture he could, just enough to throw Mingyu off, but not enough that Mingyu would find out for, he hoped, at least a day. In just a few moments, most of Mingyu’s furniture was sufficiently moved to his liking, and Minghao threw in a victorious door slam as he bounded back towards his apartment to wait for Mingyu to come back from wherever he went.

A mere half an hour later, a crash heralded Mingyu’s arrival, because of course even after twenty years of existence that tree of a man still hadn’t figured out how to navigate flat surfaces. Minghao almost felt bad.

A flurry of self-censored curses flew from next door as Minghao listened on in bliss. It seemed like Mingyu had found the slightly rearranged shoe rack. “FLYING FISHCAKES!” and the couch, if Minghao could be so bold as to hazard a guess. “MOTHER FATHER!” and maybe the lamp. Minghao was in heaven.  

Two days of life interjected with strangely creative curses later, Minghao found himself re-evaluating Mingyu’s intelligence level. It seemed that Mingyu had an IQ that was less comparable to a dog, which was what Minghao had originally thought, and more comparable to a tree. That insufferable man emulated them in height after all, it wasn’t too much of a stretch to say that he also had brains similar to the foliage that Minghao was incapable of growing.

Minghao despaired. The overgrown child that was his neighbor did not even swear properly, instead resorting to substitute words that made even less sense as time went on. Lately, he’d been on a bug phase, and Minghao was tired of hearing different species of insects being shouted at him through a wall.

“DUNGBEETLE!”

Aggravated and yet somewhat sorry, Minghao ran next door, ready to confess to Mingyu what he had done. It seemed like he was growing soft in old age, having already forgiven Mingyu for all the wrongs that he had committed after only two days of, admittedly, pain-filled revenge.

Mingyu’s doorbell was an oddly cute ring unbefitting of a man in his twenties, but Mingyu emerged quickly, looking like a kicked puppy as he rubbed his knee. The man brightened up instantly at the sight of Minghao, a smile curving across his face as he greeted “Minghao! What brings you over? Would you like some tea?”

As Mingyu rambled on, Minghao stood still in shock over how adorable Mingyu looked when he opened the door oh my God what is going on Xu Minghao get a grip. When Mingyu’s string of random phrases finally came to an end, Minghao blurted “I moved all your furniture a little when you were out two days ago, it’s why you’ve been bumping into your stuff a lot more these few days, but it’s only because you watered my cactus and it died! We’re even now so don’t bump into your furniture anymore!” He made to run off, but Mingyu’s hand on his bicep stopped him.

Sheepishly, Minghao turned to meet Mingyu’s eyes, only to see that Mingyu’s face was pink and ashamed.

“I’m sorry about your cactus. You told me the first time we met that your plants always died because you didn’t water them enough, so I watered your cactus for you since I can reach your pot from the window, but I’m also a bad gardener so your cactus died anyway. It’s my fault, I’ll buy you a new cactus.”

Minghao was incredulous. He remembered that I don’t water plants so he watered them for me?

“How about you come in, and we can sit down and you can tell me what kind of cactus you want? Or we can go to the florist to pick one out?”

The situation was changing too quick for Minghao to even understand what was going on. It was almost as if he was just a bystander watching events unfold, but with no context whatsoever.  

“So why did you start watering my plants?” Minghao decided to change the topic and get at least one answer to the list of questions that he had for Mingyu.

Mingyu visibly startled, before taking a deep breath and ushering Minghao to the couch.

“I suppose I might as well say it. I like you, Minghao. Ever since I moved next door, I’ve been trying to ask you out but there’s never been a right moment. You’ve avoided me like the plague as well, so I just wanted to have some sort of contact with your life, however indirect.”

Speechless, Minghao sat. He had never encountered someone willing to do so much for a guy who “avoided him like the plague”, and frankly, it was flattering. He’d thought about Mingyu before too, before Mingyu started wreaking havoc on his life.  Speaking of which…

“How did your stove catch on fire two weeks ago?”

Mingyu immediately covered his face and mumbled “I was trying to cook but I heard music from your house and went over to see what was going on. You were dancing and it looked so cool that I forgot about my pancakes. And then the fire alarm started.”

“Huh.” Was all Minghao could say. They sat in silence for a while, each mulling over what had just transpired. The sharp whistle of the kettle prompted Mingyu to make the tea, and while he was gone, Minghao considered his options.

Clearly, Mingyu was interested. And cute. And Minghao wasn’t opposed to getting to know Mingyu better, the clumsy attempts of Mingyu to win him over strangely endearing. The cons were that Mingyu awoke at ungodly hours, but Minghao supposed that it could be trained out of Mingyu quickly.

Mingyu sat the mugs down, and Minghao, cradling his mug, said “I’m willing to give you—or us, a chance. Let’s get to know each other better first.”

Mingyu’s despondent face (God why is that so cute?) immediately changed, a wide smile taking the place of the pout.

“Really?”

“Yes, Mingyu. So where do we go from here?” Minghao would be damned if he ever told anyone about how adorable Mingyu looked if he smiled. Perhaps if he hadn’t avoided Mingyu all the time he would have had a better impression of Mingyu and become friends with him earlier.

“How about a coffee?”

“Lead the way.”

[writerspink]

K-12 Words

K

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1.1

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1.2

interest job because such think thirteen subject answer letter meet north length need times divide (by) times table edge soft months present energy point sound log south wide members exercise flowers set found things heart cause site brother teacher live read billion another distance written kept direction developed wall east happy million world must house turn west change well twenty felt put end does large big even here why ask went men land different home us move try kind hand picture again off dress play spell air away animal page mother study still learn should America

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paragraph weather window third believe discovered simple gone paint new store form cells matter follow perhaps cannot good means around line center kind reason move forest sentence return instruments beside represent wild study back farmers sum difference product quotient remainder mother animal land region record summer general caterpillar scratch modern adjust passenger promise equal creak almost croak book dainty song high every near add food between own below country plant last school father keep tree never start city earth eyes light thought head under story saw left don’t few while along might close something seem next hard open example begin life always those both paper together got group often run

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misty poor caution pest phrase life startle squirm alone centaur rise mountain above illustrator footprint temperature decorate country sweat sometimes hair smiled everything began thick compass themselves enough took although splendid crowded second act attach sly talk wonder let’s whirl someone Africa borrow beat belong blink per fasten pain begin drenched bed shell free earth tiny slippery count factors important until children side feet car mile night walk white sea grow river four carry state once book hear stop without late miss idea eat face watch far Indian real almost let girl mountains cut young soon list song being leave family it’s

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drowsy bashful hatch glad copy possible wicked grin sibling shovel run verb sail polish ride young steep case Indian laughed soil appear bolts costume melody narrow behave howl example flee together lot filthy alarm spiral selfish idea conductor fight rolled middle glacier tree dizzy gather sneaky already construct every miss lively metal couldn’t gold plant mask chat nation hear either bundle section near rescue face divide sob celebrate family loosen jealous crash chimney daily own cozy ripe cut son natural serious carry care paper broken cue within body music color stand questions fish area mark horse birds problem complete room knew since ever piece told usually didn’t friends easy heard order red door sure become top ship across today during short better best however low hours black products happened whole measure remember early waves reached

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being instead ache exactly hard speed buy age late artistic close affordable fraction eyes appetite complain sleep seem eat below remove rusty grow glum stormy trust enormous scale open add grab upset weed denied expensive story terrified lead jumped died basket side bear bend list tomb while batch grateful father gleaming dress light sprinkle amount exclaim result yank leave cheat whimper angle outside remain heap champion surprise dodge moment fancy squeeze pretend village shriek city thunder rapid iron striped don’t attitude bell hat tug isn’t applause children honest cross spring freezing listen wind rock space covered fast several hold himself toward five step morning passed vowel true hundred against pattern numeral table north expert slowly money map farm pulled draw voice seen cold cried plan notice south sing war ground fall king town I’ll unit figure certain field travel wood fire upon

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pattern cave hope mile group travel blush killed seed bottom hide important let ticket timid pounds restart silent cranky keep real bright quite curved repeat trip without dart consonant mountains quiet apologize roar grip groan bolt food injury century exhausted cabin atmosphere floor it’s scold transportation delighted giant hill something build fog method rough left everyone obey deserve speak therefore soon french switch until pushed state knob hobby between surround collect fire I’ll arrive road happened certain top order astronomy inches club catch farm nibble color yourself received connect told gaze check wear English half ten fly gave box finally wait correct oh quickly person became shown minutes strong verb stars front feel fact street decided contain course surface produce building ocean class note nothing rest carefully scientists inside wheels stay green known island week less machine base ago stood

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round award crowd slowly yet products, goods, services vowel himself strange whose draw team hold feel flood sent save stood yard notice warn enemy deep please flap coast music wrote safe blast behind island lizard figure famous garden correct whisper listen joined clear share net thus calf maybe cried piece fold seen england decided bank fell pair control clean telescope trouble glass float morning horse produce course hunting rest step statement contain shouted filled zigzag accident cents instrument fly single express visit desert seeds chew dome experiment break gravity against branch size low plane system ran boat game force brought understand warm common bring explain dry though language shape thousands yes equation government heat full hot check object am rule among noun power cannot able six dark ball material special heavy fine circle include built

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mark wealthy row feeling across attention ran map students inside design art mouth ring skill hot during shelter full till log (book) blossom discard bring quickly scientists party town covered wise early cram grain harm goal pause inform heal clue fame freeze badge pimple dim missionary diet dumb rod march agree stick government bulb mall ban greed skiing poison stove image grew fact material dangerous flow gap ago stack explain didn’t strong voice true drawing surface gift corner cloud since king dawn pulled dozen friends greedy burning upon knew insect decimal nervous pay foot weak smooth aware steady serve lost nonetheless beach front atlas questions less cost slight motor banner wire area carefully separate equation local minutes fast table plan fine waves fair sing dive suppose boat thousands shape among toward gas factory birds wait understand sure ship report captain human game history reflect special brave bounce though else can’t matter square syllables perhaps bill felt suddenly test direction center farmers ready anything divided general energy subject Europe moon region return believe dance members picked simple cells paint mind love cause rain exercise eggs train blue wish drop developed window difference distance heart site sum summer wall forest probably

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include cage language base red brain building feast better built demolish excess leap tower ocean plains cold claw information scholar climbed woman worry strand heavy herd common ground damp pack choose president least increase half english invent class measure dash tremble object become doubt became bare wheels continued shiver engine core couple business stars week peak numeral brought nothing touch reached uncle symbols however rumor evening inasmuch (as) force curious heat career system valley dust flock spray robber practice lonely remember luxury warm heard calm rock frighten leader difficulty best gum cheer key support universe stream bit usually fish parade balance money note cliff stand proof you’re pale machine complete cool shown street today shy easy several search unit war power caught settle itself fuel mention fresh planet plane straight period person able direct space wood seal field circle lady board besides hours passed known whole similar underline main winter wide written length reason kept interest arms brother race present beautiful store job edge past sign record finished discovered wild happy beside gone sky grass million west lay weather root instruments meet third months paragraph raised represent soft whether clothes flowers shall teacher held describe drive appreciate structure visible artificial

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afraid absorb british seat fear stretched furniture sight oxygen coward rope clever yellow albeit confess passage france fan cattle spot explore rather active death effect mine create wash printed process origin rose swift woe planets doze gasp chief perform triumph value substances tone score predict property movement harsh tube settled defend reverse ancient blood sharp border fierce plunge consider terms vision intend total schedule attract average intelligent corn dead southern glide supply convince send continent brief mural symbol crew chance suffix habit insects entered nursery especially spread drift major fig diagram guess wit sugar predator science necessary moisture park ordeal nectar fortunate flutter gun forward globe misery molecules arctic won’t actually addition washington cling rare lie steel pastime soldiers chill accordingly capital prevent solution greek sensitive electric agreed thin provide indicate northern volunteer sell tied triangle action opposite shoulder imitate steer wander except match cross speak solve appear metal son either ice sleep village factors result jumped snow ride care floor hill pushed baby buy century outside everything tall already instead phrase soil bed copy free hope spring case laughed nation quite type themselves temperature bright lead everyone method section lake iron within dictionary bargain loyal resource struggle vary capture exclaim gloomy insist restless shallow shatter talent atmosphere brilliant endure glance precious unite certain clasp depart journey observe superb treasure wisdom

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prepared journey trade delicate arrived track cotton hoe furnish exciting view grasp level branches privilege limit wrong enable ability various moreover spoil starve dollars digest advice sense accuse pretty wasn’t industry adopt loyal suggested blow treasure cook adjective doesn’t wings tools crops loud smell frail wisdom fit expect ahead lifted deed device weight gradual respect interesting arrange particular compound examine cable climate division individual talent fatal entire advantage opponent wouldn’t elements column custom enjoy grace theory suitable wife shoes determine allow marsh workers difficult repeated thrill position born distant revive magnificent shop sir army struggled deal plural rich rhythm rely poem company string locate church mystify elegant led actual responsible japanese huge fun meat observe swim office chart avoid factories block called experience win crumple brilliant located pole bought conditions sister details primary survey truck recall disease radio rate scatter decay signal approach launch hair age amount scale pounds although per broken moment tiny possible gold milk quiet natural lot stone act build middle speed count consonant someone sail rolled bear wonder smiled angle fraction Africa killed melody bottom trip hole poor let’s fight surprise French died beat exactly remain fingers clever coast explore imitate pierce rare symbol triumph ancient cling disturb expose perform remote timid bashful brief compete consider delightful honor reflex remark brink chill conquer fortunate fury intend pattern vibrant wit

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capture remark western outcome risk current bold compare resident ambition arrest furthermore desire confuse accurate disclose considerable contribute calculate baggage literacy noble era benefit orchard shabby content precious manufacture dusk afford assist demonstrate instant concentrate sturdy severe blend vacant weary carefree host limb pointless prepare inspire shallow chamber vast ease attentive source frantic lack recent distress basic permit threat analyze distract meadow mistrust jagged prefer sole envy hail reduce arena tour annual apparent recognize captivity burrow proceed develop humble resist peculiar response communicate circular variety frequent reveal essential disaster plead mature appropriate attractive request congratulate address destructive fragile modest attempt tradition ancestor focus flexible conclude venture impact generosity routine tragic crafty furious blossom concern ascend awkward master queasy release portion plentiful alert heroic extraordinary frontier descend invisible coax entrance capable peer terror mock outstanding valiant typical competition hardship entertain eager limp survive tidy antonym duplicate abolish approach approve glory magnificent meek prompt revive watchful wreckage audible consume glide origin prevent punctuate representative scorn stout woe arch authentic clarify declare grant grave opponent valid yearn admirable automatic devotion distant dreary exhaust kindle predict separation stunt

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evade debate dedicate budge available miniature petrify pasture banquet pedestrian solitary decline reassure nonchalant exhibit realistic exert abuse dictate minor monarch concept character strategy soar beverage tropical withdraw challenge kin navigate purchase reliable mischief solo combine vivid aroma spurt illuminate narrator retain excavate avalanche preserve suspend accomplish exasperate obsolete occasion myth reign sparse gorge intense revert antagonist talon aggressive alternate retire cautiously blizzard require endanger luxurious senseless portable sever compensate companion visual immense slither guardian compassion escalate detect protagonist oasis altitude assume seldom courteous absurd edible identical pardon approximate taunt achievement homonym hearty convert wilderness industrious sluggish thrifty deprive independent bland confident anxious astound numerous resemble route access jubilation saunter hazy impressive document moral crave gigantic bungle prefix summit overthrow perish visible translate comply intercept feeble exult compose negative suffocate frigid synonym appeal dominate deplete abundant economy desperate diligent commend boycott jovial onset burden fixture objective siege barrier conceive formal inquire penalize picturesque predator privilege slumber advantage ambition defiant fearsome imply merit negotiate purify revoke wretched absorb amateur channel elegant grace inspect lame tiresome tranquil boast eloquent glisten ideal infectious invest locate ripple sufficient uproar

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apprehensive dialogue prejudice marvel eligible accommodate arrogant distinct knack deposit liberate cumulative consequence strive salvage chronological unique vow concise influence lure poverty priority legislation significant conserve verdict leisure erupt beacon stationary generate provoke efficient campaign paraphrase swarm adhere eerie mere mimic deteriorate literal preliminary solar soothe expanse ignite verge recount apparel terrain ample quest composure majority collide prominent duration pursue innovation omniscient resolute unruly optimist restrain agony convenient constant prosper elaborate genre retrieve exploit continuous dissolve dwell persecute abandon meager elude rural retaliate primitive remote blunder propel vital designate cultivate loathe consent drastic fuse maximum negotiate barren transform conspicuous possess allegiance beneficial former factor deluge vibrant intimidate idiom dense awe rigorous manipulate transport discretion hostile clarity arid parody boisterous capacity massive prosecute declare stifle remorse refuge predicament treacherous inevitable ingenious plummet adapt monotonous accumulate reinforce extract reluctant vacate hazardous inept diminish domestic linger context excel cancel distribute document fragile myth reject scuffle solitary temporary veteran assault convert dispute impressive justify misleading numerous productive shrewd strategy villain bluff cautious consist despise haven miniature monarch obstacle postpone straggle vivid aggressive associate deceive emigrate flexible glamour hazy luxurious mishap overwhelm span blemish blunt capable conclude detect fatigue festive hospitality nomad supreme

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exclude civic compact painstaking supplement habitat leeway minute hoax contaminate likeness migration commentary extinct tangible originate urban unanimous subordinate collaborate obstacle esteem encounter futile cordial trait improvises superior exaggerate anticipate cope evolve eclipse dissent anguish subsequent sanctuary formulates makeshift controversy diversity terminate precise equivalent pamper prior potential obnoxious radiant predatory presume permanent pending simultaneously tamper supervise perceived vicious patronize trickle stodgy rant oration preview species poised perturb vista wince yearn persist shirk status tragedy trivial snare vindictive wrath recede peevish rupture unscathed random toxic void orthodox subtle resume sequel upright wary overwhelm perjury uncertainty prowess utmost throb pluck pique vengeance pelt urgent substantial robust sullen retort ponder whim saga sham reprimand vocation assimilate dub defect accord embark desist dialect chastise banter inaugurate ovation barter muse blasé stamina atrocity deter principal liberal epoch preposterous advocate audacious dispatch incense deplore institute deceptive component subside spontaneous bonanza ultimate wrangle clarify hindrance irascible plausible profound infinite accomplish apparent capacity civilian conceal duplicate keen provoke spurt undoing vast withdraw barrier calculate compose considerable deputy industrious jolt loot rejoice reliable senseless shrivel alternate demolish energetic enforce feat hearty mature observant primary resign strive verdict brisk cherish considerate displace downfall estimate humiliate identical improper poll soothe vicinity abolish appeal brittle condemn descend dictator expand famine portable prey thrifty visual

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stance vie instill exceptional avail strident formidable rebuke enhance benign perspective tedious aloof encroach memoir mien desolate inventive prodigy staple stint fallacy grope vilify recur assail tirade antics recourse clad jurisdiction caption pseudonym reception humane ornate sage ungainly overt sedative amiss convey connoisseur rational enigma fortify servile fastidious contagious elite disgruntled eccentric pioneer abet luminous era sleek serene proficient rue articulate awry pungent wage deploy anarchy culminate inventory commemorate muster adept durable foreboding lucrative modify authority transition confiscate pivotal analogy avid flair ferret decree voracious imperative grapple deface augment shackle legendary trepidation discern glut cache endeavor attribute phenomenon balmy bizarre gullible loll rankle decipher sublime rubble renounce porous turbulent heritage hover pithy allot minimize agile renown fend revenue versa gaunt haven dire doctrine intricate conservative exotic facilitate bountiful cite panorama swelter foster indifferent millennium gingerly conscientious intervene mercenary citadel obviously rely supportive sympathy weakling atmosphere decay gradual impact noticeable recede stability variation approximately astronomical calculation criterion diameter evaluate orbit sphere agricultural decline disorder identify probable thrive expected widespread bulletin contribution diversity enlist intercept operation recruit survival abruptly ally collide confident conflict protective taunt adaptation dormant forage frigid hibernate insulate export glisten influence landscape native plantation restore urge blare connection errand exchange

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feasible teem pang vice tycoon succumb capacious onslaught excerpt eventful forfeit crusade tract haggard susceptible exemplify ardent crucial excruciating embargo disdain apprehend surpass sporadic flustered languish conventional disposition theme plunder ignore project complaint title dramatic delivery litter experimental clinic arrogance preparation remind atomic occasional conscious deny maturity closure stressed translator animate observation physical further gently registration suppress combination amazing constructive allied poetry passion ecstasy mystery cheerful contribution spirit failed gummy commerce prove disagreement raid consume embarrass preference migrant devour encouragement quote mythology destined destination illuminating struggle accent ungrateful giggle approval confidence expose scientist operation superstitious emergency manners absolutely swallow readily mutual bound crisp orient stress sort stare comfort verbal heel challenging advertisement envious sex scar astonish basis accuracy enviable alliance specific chef embarrassed counter tolerable sympathetic gradually vanish informative amaze royal furry insist jealousy simplify quiver collaborate dedicated flexible function mimic obstacle technique archaeologist fragment historian intact preserve reconstruct remnant commence deed exaggeration heroic impress pose saunter wring astound concealed inquisitive interpret perplexed precise reconsider suspicious anticipation defy entitled neutral outspoken reserved sought equal absorb affect circulate conserve cycle necessity seep barren expression meaningful plume focused genius perspective prospect stunned superb transition assume guarantee nominate

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install reticent corroborate regretfully strength murder concise cunning intention holy satire query confused progression disillusion background mundane abrupt multiple enormously introduce emulate harmful pragmatic pity rebut liberate enthusiastic elucidate camaraderie disparage nature creep profitability impression racist sobriety occupy autonomy currently amiable reiterate reproduce cripple modest offer atom provincial augment ungratefully expansion yield rashly allude immigration silence epitome exacerbate somber avid dispute vindicate collaborate manufacturer embellish superficial propaganda incompetent objective diminish statistics endure ambivalent perpetuate illuminate phenomenon exasperate originality restrict anxiety anthropology circumstances aesthetic manufacturing conventional dubious vulnerable reality precedent entity success term critical repair underscore stepmother republican hesitantly classic wary contents prediction immediate invoke notorious implicit excluding input skeptical foster element punish frank humanity profound dessert orthodox substance disappear encourage neighborhood elder superfluous naive ascertain complacent resilient deafening military tend prudent glare acceptance skillfully induce monster beam gullible conciliate vessel petty cantankerous disclose archaeology anecdote disdain electronics substantiate subjective tourism advisable joyful incredible provocative psychological ruins discipline condone indifferent misfortune judgmental industrialize tasty assume astute mission mar protective definitely escape oppress shocked virtual zealous endorse qualification hostile eccentric abstract disparate geographical scrutinize generalization tolerate activity claim dogmatic influential obsolete extol implausible subsequent resource chronic benevolent improve confidential ambiguous seriously dearth perplex hatred throughout dine contemporary evoke essentially economic flagrant obscure alleviate eloquent dreaadful clumsy sympathy victim condemn vigor condescend spontaneous quell reprehensible substantially sleeve equivocal ironic decry errand articulate progressive eradicate refreshments elicit aspiration recently exemplary bribery theoretical disingenuous partisan revere particle nostalgia self-aggrandizement debunk tyranny rhetoric hierarchy warning whimsical venerate commend assert miserable awful vibe constrain undermine explicit differentiate compliment scrupulous contempt erroneous ideal refute imply cynical rash presume insight revival vary delay renounce indignant offensive temperate circumstantial export peep logo advertise suppress distort chunk convoluted denounce overwhelming fertility rigorous acquire arrogant university antagonize profitable indulgent strategic breathing idiosyncrasy profession frugal discern accommodation adversary incredulous disturbance digress social belie roam smug continual pertinent voluntarily elite subtle blame sincerity lick horror censure involvement candid infer futile impetuous exploit bewilder sustain diligent sincere protect sealed musical empathy callous parenthetical insure acorn sarcasm seize sacrificially allege emphatic irrelevant progress diplomatic stunned improvise deride reconcile meticulous deject scientifically incontrovertible pressure justify gloomy depict supplant endurance analogous diary bolster slip contemplate pesticide glow religious advocate negligent creator lament fundamental embrace throne inherent inferior valuable thrive trivial pretense reserved capricious refresh refusal flight boost explanation coherent prevalent tenacious official royalty assassin rub poach delete

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warrant circumscribed somewhat explosive optimistic mandate previously detract opinion intuitive feasible intimate persistent humble simplicity tempt deliberate painful unethical fundamentals discrepancy remorse pessimistic possibility conclusion acknowledge impregnate soberly creation paralyze suitability oblige tranquil medal arbitrate pacify illusory susceptible vibrate vengeance infection democratic stressful grave speculative sample identification stifle obligation revenge organization namely mediocre practical scream weaken consensus affectionate deficient treacherous console isolation ingenious memory melodrama despair awestruck composition regret recommendation celebrity decision devoid opaque ornamentation longevity participate dread restore interrogate aid accordingly mislead embarrassment optimism domestic apt funds virtue geography fundamentally thoroughly press despite horrible chilling rental esteemed disappointment innovative contemplation assign popularize haunt deafen serene percent estrangement suffer extravagant throng estimate comment priesthood mass dreadfully promote periphery animated saying relate clarity triple derivative succeed distortion register suicide improvement discreet inquisition probable curative incident praise convenience baffle covet dreadful genuinely weary undisturbed disgruntled humility renown nonchalant monopoly comedy vague decisive inconsequential announcement fabricated nevertheless vigilant scarce neglectful hushed attainment tedious explode snatch pslm agency sentimental tension adhere meanwhile sacred avert conformity likewise challenger accessible responsibility peril contact event roast fallible catastrophic competitor violate resolute deceive exaggeration discredit intolerable approve paste dimly novelist demeanor norm politician satisfaction obvious vehicle reservation defer involve restoration crush audible assistant backpack attain inanimate commemorate confrontation emigration parasite disperse quantitative laughter policy vulgar occasionally repay effective eulogy starvation empty therapeutic overall immortal encompass inappropriate opportune engagement illustrate turmoil observatory classification expression reminiscence comedian invention depress remedy protagonist gesture texture diplomatic election prolong conducive emotional invigorate curiosity expressive %

K-12 Words was originally published on PinkWrite

[unproduciblesmackdown]

also i was like oh right how Does the strange man in bloodsong of love have a concept of who he Thought the musician was upon having just met him. & the answer can be "whatever it needs to be so this role can issue knowing, relevant guidance" like whatever he's magic. but also it can be like we are about to do that Liminal last on land sequence of perhaps the peak [original idea for bsol to have been a show within a show with an entire parallel "real world" story] like well bsol is still a show about doing / making art & performing a show & not taking the Story as completely concrete & literal so here's all the other roles Not as the roles they'd be in other scenes who are here to help assemble this ship which is what you are going to build regardless of if you are ever Actually going to be on the water at port isabel, doesn't matter, this is what you have to do anyway because what else would you do when this is who you are and what you believe in? like yes right sure i can feel this as an idea that would fit right in with like "there's a whole other plotline about this being a show put on by maybe a struggling venue or whatever similar nonzero Stakes, maybe even just the stakes of again making a show happen ever" like this is just what you'll choose to do even if you don't know it will succeed in certain ways or even feel that's likely or at all realistic(tm) so yknow continue forth on your path & role as a the musician even if you forgot your signature instrument in a cab.

thinking of it in juxtaposition with the black suits where like the stakes matter even when the story was always going to be about them losing but it's still what they had to do together in the music & the band being important to them & certainly including because of their relationships; here i don't know what the actors (played by actors) of show within a show bsol would've been to each other or the theatre or the show or anything but that even not being a garage band, Save The Theater stakes or not, i can assume Doing The Show would matter to everyone. & of course so too did it in real real life to the real everyone involved, as it does anytime but in whatever endless different ways. & thinking again about it in juxtaposition like, the black suits not so much drawing on so very distinctive genres as spaghetti westerns or christmas specials, being so relatively grounded that its own style / format is not semi stepped out of at any point vs like how i was thinking of bloodsong & xmas extravaganza alike able to on a dime be more in Sitcom Mode without being a full break/exit, & on a dime right back in it while incorporating whatever was just expressed more sitcommishly....all while also of course being in earnest like the black suits even while being more elevated in terms of these genre conventions drawn upon, when like, we're never considering ourselves to be "above" certain genres that are considered genre(tm) against others that supposedly aren't, a tasteful Drama, perhaps thriller or dark comedy if you twist my arm. like the bloodsong extravaganza style of being so playful but where it is not about being "above it" to think something is worth playing with. being so comedic & comedy is not being "above it" to think something can be laughed about. or cried about when all this also means you can just be doing things entirely in earnest throughout without thinking it needs to be separated for the audience like okay this is the stuff we're above & find humorous, this is the Real stuff now, which we can find moving

anyway like here's the strange man who knows you building a ship in the middle of the desert because he also knows himself & here's the rest of the cast now also building a ship in the middle of a desert all singing the song about having to live in the way you could survive whether or not that "works" in the way that would be have you & your endeavor deemed successful, have to make the boat, have to make the show, bloodsong last on land sequence as sort of the peak instance of that nonliteral performance of roles as parts of this show and its story and Making Them Exist along with the intro Outlaw ft. Everyone, along with the outro Friendship Song reprise ft. Everyone that is about the Themes about the Experience just had, not like choosing to preserve "oh rip. died for real" stakes like this story being concrete, like it being Over & not iterated live theatre, is what matters, it isn't really. & all the room for Interpretation throughout knowing what matters isn't This Is Very Literal & Concrete rather than talking about everyone's motivations & approaches in making it through a hostile world, whatever kind of hostile world, real, spaghetti, & the focus on them as Musicians in this story, perhaps actors in that cut ["real life" within the show, bsol as a show being put on] element but that wasn't really fully lost b/c it was a matter of doing what it wanted to do anyway but just in the one storyline / world lol. bloodsong last on land sequence, is what i'm saying

[gokailyger84]

So, here’s my Grump Ocean Girl AU, Ocean Boy

this is crazy long

Leighdanvi is from another planet.  A planet of Oceans.  He has above average human strength.  Is very agile and strong swimmer.  He is able to swim underwater for long periods of time without the need to breath.  He can communicate telepathically with some marine life.  He is also in tune with nature.

He has been living alone on a deserted island for the past ten years.  He has no memory of how he ended up on the island and hasn’t had any direct contact with humans.  He’s seen them.  An underwater facility not too far from his island. But has chosen to stay away.  Preferring the company of dolphins and whales.

One night there is a pretty bad storm. Arin is out on a boat.  He is a biologist’s assistants.  He, his girlfriend Suzy and their friends, Barry and Ross were assigned to ORCA, an underwater, ocean conservation, research facility.  

Arin was out doing water temperature measurements at different depths when the weather took a turn for the worse.  His boat washed up on Leighdanvi’s island.  Arin was injured and passed out from exhaustion.  Leighdanvi finds him and takes him to his shelter amongst the trees.  He dresses Arin’s wounds and gives him fresh water.  During this, Arin is delirious, going in and out of consciousness. 

He wakes up the following morning on the beach near his boat, alone and confused.  He could’ve sworn someone was taking care of him.  He dismisses it as a dream and heads back to ORCA. Suzy and the other were very worried about him but Arin assured them he was okay.  All the while thinking he’d forgotten something important.  

A few weeks later, Arin, Suzy and Barry are out to sea whale tagging to track the migration paths.  Barry has a crossbow loaded with a tag and plans to shoot one of the female humpbacks near their boat.  As he is taking aim, a man with long hair appears in the way, telling him not to shoot.  Startled, Barry loses his balance in falls overboard, hitting his head on the railing. Arin and Suzy call out to him but he’d already sunk below the surface.  They see the man, dive down under the water.  

Several painstakingly seconds later, the surface breaks.  The man is holding Barry who is still out cold and swims towards the boat.  Arin and Suzy pull Barry up and check him over.  He isn’t breathing.  Arin performs CPR and Barry awakes with a cough, water spilling out of his mouth.  Suzy hugs him tightly, saying she thought he was going to die. Arin looks back at the man, suddenly remembering what had happened on the island.  He thanks the man who just smiles, and dives back into the ocean.

Back at ORCA, Arin, Suzy and Barry discuss what happened.  They tell Ross, who at first doesn’t believe it but  knows his friends would never make up such a tale.  The four decide to try to find the mysterious man.  A week passes before they see the man again.  They are out in a boat, near a pod of whales with a hydrophone, listening to and recoding the sounds the animals are making.  Curiosity brought the man to them.  Arin sees him and waves. Ross is stunned to silence.  Arin calls out asking if the man speaks english.  The man nods.  Suzy asks if he has a name.  The man tells them it’s Leighdanvi.  Arin chuckles saying that’s a bit odd and decides to call him Dan.  They all introduce themselves and invite Dan onto the boat.  Dan hesitates, but then turns his head towards the whales, as if listening to something.  He then agrees and comes aboard.  They all end up chatting and having a great time.  

Over time, the trust grows between them all and Dan invites them to his island and shows them around and even introduces them to his closest friend.  A humpback whale named, Dana. It was the same humpback Barry had tried to tag at their initial meeting.  Dan has also visited ORCA on several occasions.  Ross getting him a fake pass and ID and a assistant uniform.  They show him what they are doing as ocean conservationists.  They also teach him about modern society and help him develop his communication skills. 

In exchange, Dan help them with their research, even calling over marine life to be observed.  Arin’s group is bringing in a lot of research and are drawing suspicion.  Upon finding out, they cut down on Dan helping as they don’t want him to be discovered.  They are sure he would be turned into a lab rat, no matter the good intentions behind it.

UBRI, a rival research company begins interfering with ORCA’s tasks.  They are a crooked organization that only does research for fame and monetary gain.  There have been several close calls with Dan being discovered.  Arin knows they can not let UBRI know about him.  They find out from Ross, who was an ex-UBRI employee that the company was searching for some kind of craft that had appeared on radars around ten years ago.  He doesn’t know why it was so important, he was just told to search for it. They really had only found a few clues.  Ross brings out a flashdrive he had secretly copied files onto.  Several images come up of a strange symbol.  Dan shocks them all saying he’s seen that symbol before, on his island.

The group goes to investigate.  Dan leads them to a section of the island he typically stayed away from. He isn’t sure why, he just never went into it.  On a large rock, near a cave is the same symbol that was in Ross’ files.  The group enter the cave and after several minutes come across an large object jutting through the rock and partially buried into the ground.  Ross says it must be the craft.  They find what looks like a door with the symbol on it.  Dan cautiously touches it and to their surprise the door slowly opens.

Upon entering,  they looks around to see a strange architecture.  Strange machinery and monitors filled the open space. Looking around, Dan starts to remember bits and pieces from his past.  Touching what looks like a console, the ship comes to life.  A hologram of an older man appears before the group. He looks just like Dan.  The hologram confirms itself as Leighdanvi’s father, Avi.  

Avi had recorded a message in hopes that his son would after his memory was gone.  Turns out, that Dan and Avi were on an expedition to explore and help other worlds with oceans.  They had sent a device that would help save the oceans ahead but it had broke into pieces upon entering the atmosphere.  Due to a miscalculation, their ship crashed and the majority of the crew didn’t make it.  Dan and Avi stayed on the island, were Avi taught him many things and how to survive.  Avi had been injured in the crash but it was slow building.  He wanted to make sure his son had all he needed when he was gone.  Avi told them that he had repressed Dan’s memories so he wouldn’t remain in mourning as he was only ten when Avi passed.  

Avi then tells them there was one more survivor.  One of Avi’s assistants had his son with him.  His son, Alebrianxder was Dan’s childhood friend.  In a act of panic, Alebrianxder was shoved into a life pod and shot out before the crash.  Avi tells Dan he needs to find Alebrianxder and to complete his mission of saving earth’s oceans, as the humans are slowly but surely destroying them and if their oceans fail it would affect their planet in negative ways, being a sister planet to earth.

Dan is also told he needs to find the nine pieces to a device that can reverse the damage to earth’s oceans and in order to get the pieces, he needs Alebrianxder because he possesses an ability to track and find the pieces and Dan has a rare gift of their people that allows him to completely meld with nature using the device.  Avi ends his message by telling Dan he loves him and that he knows he will succeed where he had failed.

The group is stunned into silence.  Dan grabs onto the necklace he’s had his whole life.  A half of a seashell.  A memory surfaces of him next to an older boy.  They are standing at the edge of the water.  The boy picks up a shell and snaps it in half.  He hands it to Dan with a wide smile.  Dan takes it, treasures it.  Alebrianxder.  Dan whispers to himself.  He tells the others that they have to find him.  

Going back to ORCA, the group begins to research any strange happenings in the timeframe that Dan arrived to earth.  They find a newspaper article about a young boy being found in the open water of the ocean by a fisherman.  They believe it to be Alebrianxder.  They then start searching out any strange happenings with kids.  Starting with Ross hacking into the computer files of children shelters and coming across a peculiar boy.  The boy was brought in by authorities as they couldn’t find anyone who had lost him and the boy seemed to have lost his memory.  He would only say one word.  Alebrianxder.

He was given the name, Brian and the last name Wecht after the fisherman who initially found him.   He was put into the foster program.  He ended up being passed between foster homes.  No one wanting to keep him, due to his odd behaviors.  He would spend hours in the tub or shower, stare up at the stars and sometimes talk to his pet fish.  He ended up aging out of the shelter and going to college, earning a marine biology degree while also being a star swimmer.  They found out he was currently teaching at a university on the main land.  Dan and the others make plans to go see him.  UBRI somehow gets wind of Brian’s existence and the race is on to see who will get to him first.  

Brian is finishing teaching for the day, the last student leaving his room and is packing up his stuff. Just as he’s about to leave, a person dressed in a uniform he recognizes to be from the UBRI company comes in.  The person introduces themselves and say they have heard of Brian’s amazing feats and could use someone like him at the company, tempting him with an executive position.  Brian is automatically suspicious but tells the person he’ll think about it and receives a card from them.

A few days later, Brian is approached by a group of young adults.  He can’t help but notice the tall-curly haired one amongst them.  Arin introduces themselves and ask to speak to him in private.  Brian agrees only because he’s curious to why he can’t stop looking at the one who called himself Dan.  He could hear a different name being whispered in the back of his mind.  Arin and Dan explain everything to him and to be honest, it all sounds beyond crazy to Brian.  

He has had a pretty rough life and had become something of pessimist.  He had never truly found his place in the world.  Becoming a Marine Biologist, the closest he’s come.  He found it hard to believe he belonged to a alien race and that his place was by Dan’s side.  

Seeing he wasn’t convinced, Dan pulled out his necklace with the broken shell.  Brian’s eyes widened as a memory surfaced of him as a boy giving Dan the piece.  He then reached into his shirt, pulling out his own necklace, with the other half.  The brought them together and it was a perfect fit.  Brian eyes began to tear up.  He says Dan’s full name, calling him Leighdanvi and Dan calls him Alebrianxder.  The two hug each other tightly and Brian agrees to come with them.  

After a few days of tying up loose ends of his life.  Brian is prepared to leave the mainland.  Arin helps him get a position at ORCA and from there, Brian begins to learn more about his past and heritage.  He even stays with Dan on the island for a while, learning how to use the abilities that made him an outcast throughout his life.  They then start the mission of finding the pieces of the device, Avi had told Dan about.  Brian learned from the ship, how to sense the pieces.  Turns out they are scattered across the globe.  Brian and Dan decide to go on their own to gather the nine pieces, since the others still have their own responsibilities at ORCA.  

Arin disagrees and wants to help and they all end up arguing until Ross, who is at a computer, interrupts them.  He says that UBRI has found out about the pieces and are currently tracking the energy signal.  Everyone is shocked and wonder how they found out and how they can find them.  Brian says he may know.  When he was a teenager he had been put into a Institute for the gifted.  He had gone through many tests and experiments, of which he had no idea what they were for.  He says that maybe UBRI got a hold of those files.  Arin says that still doesn’t explain how they knew about Brian in the first place.  Where were they getting their information from?  None of them could come up with an answer.  Dan says they can worry about that later and they should get started.  

Dan, Brian and Dana swim across the globe finding up to four pieces, carrying communicators that keep them in contact with the group back at ORCA.  The journey takes about a month and a half.  One day while they are resting on a small island, Brian tells Dan that he senses a large energy, similar to the pieces they already have.   Ross then calls them, saying that UBRI has found the other five pieces.

When they return, UBRI, on a large boat, has captured Arin and the others and tells them to hand over the pieces.  Dan and Brian agree to hand them over, seeing no other choice.  Dan and Brian are then pulled onto the boat and restrained.

Suddenly the person holding Ross releases him.  Ross turns to the head director, who congratulates him on a job well done and that he will be rewarded handsomely.  Ross thanks him and says it was no problem.  The others are shocked.  Ross had betrayed them?  He had been playing both sides, feeding information to UBRI all along.  

The director laughs and says that Ross was planted into ORCA to find out any useful information and he did wonderfully.  Suzy and Barry plead with Ross, telling him not to do this.  Arin and Brian are pissed. Dan doesn’t say anything.  His head hanging low. Ross smirks but it doesn’t look genuine.

The director then combines all the pieces and holds the completed device above his head. The blue pieces becoming corrupted and turning into a dark shade of purple.  The wind begins to pick up, the water becomes turbulent, Dark clouds filling the sky.  He starts gloating, saying the oceans now belong to him and with it the spread and rule of the UBRI organization.  

Dan looks up, staring at Ross.  He asks him is this what he wanted?  The destruction of the planet? Betraying his friends?  All for what?  Money?  Fame?  Dan asks him if he is happy, is okay with being alone?  

Ross’ smirk falters.  He starts remembering all the fun and good times he’s had with the others. How, even though he was new and from a rival company, they embraced him as if they had been friends forever.  How he hadn’t been at his happiest until he had met Arin and the others.  Did he really want to give that up?  Throw all of that away?

Ross turns, making his decision.  The director is about to drop the device into the ocean, sealing it’s fate.  Ross rushes forward, throwing his body into the director, who loses his grip.  Dan slams his head back into his captor, causing their grip to loosen.  He rushes forward, diving over the edge of the boat, grabbing the device just before it hits the water.  Dana suddenly bursts out of the water in a giant leap, splashing a wave of water onto the boat, throwing everyone off balance.  Brian breaks free and dives into the water after Dan.  

Beneath the water, Brian swims to Dan, who is holding the device.  Brian takes hold, his fingers linking with Dan’s.  Dana swims in circles beneath them.  Dan and Brian close their eyes.  The device glows, turning a brilliant blue.  The water becomes calm, the sky clearing, the sun shining brightly.  Dan and Brian open their eyes both grinning at each other.  

They swim to the surface.  An ORCA patrol boat has arrived and the UBRI director and employees have been detained.  Dan and Brian look up to see Arin, Suzy and Barry cheering, yelling that they did it.  Ross who was being put in handcuffs, offered a smile of apology.  Dan nodded his acceptance. He looked back at Brian who was smiling widely and tells Dan that he did it.  Dan shakes his head and say we all did it, together.  He then looks up at the sky and for a moment, he can see Avi, smiling down at him.  

[bitway-arts]

Title: Contrast Rating: G Series: Inazuma Eleven GO Characters: Hakuryuu, Shuu, Shuu’s Younger Sister Pairings: hakushuu Summary/Note: Light and darkness, positive and negative energy. The two that represent these elements come to meet.

The last thing he can recall is a light slowly being devoured by the darkness. It was a bright light that simply did not stand a chance and had disappeared within the blink of an eye. There was also pain that he felt- was it due to the disappearance of light? Wherever the pain may have originated from, it hadn't lasted for long. It was only a quick jolt, a funny feeling followed, thats how he would describe it.

Dark navy eyes slowly opened to the sight of a full moon, it's radiant light shining down upon the boy. Shuu could only stare back, his mind going blank, body feeling oddly numb (he had no other word to describe the feeling). He doesn't move from his position, merely lying upon the grass and letting the soft winds blow around him. Things feel weird. The grass and wind brushing by his body feel different. He feels different.

When the moon is at it's highest point, the boy raises a hand, aiming to grasp it within his vision. His hand, for a moment, goes transparent. A light gasp escapes and he instantly sits up. His eyes are wide as he looks down to both of his hands and the rest of his body. As he flexes his fingers, moves his legs, wiggles his torso, he notices how it all seems to fade away every now and then. Panic rises in him and he nearly screams.

What's happening to me?

It takes a few minutes for Shuu to calm himself, to remind himself what had happened, to what may have caused this strange occurrence. He remembers his sister, how he had failed her, how he had been banished from his village, how he had wandered until...

"I died...?"

If he was dead, then why was he still on this earth? He wasn't a purely physical being, his body had changed- could he even consider himself corporeal?

It must be a curse...

It's the only conclusion he can come to. A curse from the gods for trying to save his sister's life. Or perhaps a curse for being so weak and cowardly. It was his punishment for not having any strength, that would be a constant reminder to him. It seemed fitting.

I deserve it.

His hand clenches into a fist, frustration beginning to rise. His failure and mistake is what had caused this. If only he had tried to play instead of resorting to bribery. If only he hadn't let the fear of losing his sister overtake him.

If only I was stronger...

~...~

Hearing Tsurugi being the best player, the number one player, the one that even the Holy Emperor had his eyes on had sent nothing but jealousy through his veins. Hakuryuu was supposed to be number one, he always had been. When he was younger he had been the best, when he started training to be a SEED he had been the best. That's just how things were for him. And when Tsurugi had entered the scene, he finally had someone who was a challenge, someone he could call a rival, one worthy of his talent.

As their training had passed, he had slowly lost his top status. They were on equal terms (Hakuryuu liked to believe he was just a tad stronger than Tsurugi), so it should only be natural they both be praised for their abilities. Yet, only Tsurugi was given praise, he was even chosen to become the representative of a new 'ultimate' program. A newcomer had stolen his spot in the light in such a short time, how could he not be furious, envious?

Why was it him? Why wasn't it me?

He should have seen this in a more positive light. If his rival was strong and noticed, that meant he could continue to grow stronger and eventually topple him down, reclaiming his position. He could stand tall once again and look down upon everyone else. The sight from above would be amazing and then praise would be all his.

But there was only envy coursing through him. Thoughts of how it should have been him. The fear of never being able to surpass Tsurugi was managing to creep up into the back of his mind. It was something he didn't want to take hold of him. He was strong and he always would be. If those Fifth Sector officials couldn't see his strength, he'd make sure they would.

He tries to force himself to relax. Getting riled up on a boat was useless. He couldn't kick around a ball to let off some steam here. His sharp red eyes drift from the sea to the approaching island. God Eden. That was the island where the strongest, the best SEEDs were sent, only to come out even stronger. If they survived the harsh training regime.

I will become the ultimate player. I won't let him or anyone else surpass me, no matter what the cost.

Hakuryuu grins to the thought. If he was forced to survive in the harshest conditions in order to gain power, then so be it.

~...~

The island had been deserted for so long that it had been a rather surprising and startling sight to see humans once again. They were so strange in what they wore and the machines they used. They seemed to speak the same language, a difference in accent and slang was noted. Whoever these people were, they seemed almost alien to the spirit.

He had decided not to interact with them. What good would come of it? He was cursed- perhaps that meant he wouldn't be able to even speak with other people. Animals didn't seem to be affected by this curse, he could freely play and even speak to them.

His gaze was curious as he watched them set up some strange buildings (it was nothing like his old ones) and other modern necessities. What had really bothered him was seeing the humans find the old soccer field on the island. They had begun to clean it up, make it for their personal use. A rare surge of anger shot through the spirit.

This island was cursed thanks to soccer, it should never be played here again. Shuu had managed to cause machines to malfunction, for vines to grow suddenly, anything abnormal to scare them away from this sacred field. Thankfully, they had left. But that had not stopped them from setting up soccer fields in other parts of the island.

Why do they wish to play this game?

He couldn't understand it. What were they going to decide with soccer? Who was going to be the next one to be sacrificed? As much as he didn't want this to continue, interfering seemed pointless. He was just one spirit against many living humans. The most he could was simply observe and let curiosity overtake him. Getting closer and closer to those faculties as the days passed.

"Hey! What are you doing here? This place if off limits!" An older man had shouted, causing Shuu to jump slightly. He looked around the area, figuring he was talking to someone else but slowly realized that was meant for him.

"Oh, I'm sorry," the spirit bowed his head. "I didn't know I couldn't be here." Nor did he even know he could actually speak with him either.

"Damn kids..." The man sounded furious, radiating anger. He could nearly feel it rising and another shout was about to be heard but someone had stopped him.

"Don't get angry over a child." This came from a man known as Ishido Shuuji (he had picked up on it from others). It was amazing to see how he had managed to silence the other by simply putting a hand on his shoulder. Though, his attention was now being directed to the spirit.

"What are you doing here?"

"I got lost." It was half true. He never did get a grasp on the layout of these new buildings. They all looked the same and gave off such a cold feeling. "I was just about to leave."

Shuu waits for a response, anything to dismiss him from here. And yet, nothing like that comes. He could feel the eyes of Ishido staring into him, possibly analyzing him? The spirit wasn't sure if he liked the feeling. Before he could just make himself disappear, he's asked a single question.

"How would you like to become a player to a powerful soccer team?"

~...~

Tsurugi had left God Eden. His so called rival had given up everything they had been training for. He was chosen to be the representative, participating in this hellish training, and then simply left. Apparently receiving orders from the Holy Emperor was more important than staying on this island to become the ultimate player.

Since he had abandoned his position, that meant the one behind him could now take his place. It was a lousy way of getting recognized as the best. But in the end, wasn't he the best after all? Hakuryuu hadn't quit, he hadn't been given any special orders (and he would promptly decline them if he had). His Keshin had already been released and was now training to become the strongest on the island, the strongest in the world.

Hakuryuu could only scoff at Tsurugi's departure. Why worry over him now? He'd be the star of the ultimate team. He'd lead them all to shining victory. No one would be able to defeat them. He would never lose, not even to that new team Tsurugi was sent to.

Hmph. He's probably getting weaker by the second out there.

He intends to go and see him on the mainland when time allows, but his training comes first. If he wanted to grow stronger, that would always come first.

Before he could return to his training, he receives a message. He has to meet the captain of some opposing team. Honestly, he never cared for this other team. They were some 'negative' energy while his team was some 'positive' energy. Combining the two would make the ultimate team, but he didn't care for any of the other players. As long as he was going to be assigned to it (and why wouldn't the captain of Unlimited Shining not be?) that's all he cared about.

The appointed meeting place is the soccer field in the forest. Why there, he has no clue. No one ever used it as it had been deemed 'haunted' by some of the older SEEDs. Not like he believed in that anyway. It was probably just an excuse to keep the SEEDs from traveling to far into the forest.

When he arrives on the field, the only other person there is a boy. He's slightly shorter than him, with tanned skin, dark navy hair with some odd clips and bangs, and his clothes were...old fashioned. Aside from that, there was something...off about him. He couldn't put his finger on it, but that boy was radiating something. Was it that negative energy those old farts had been going on about?

"Who the hell are you?" Hakuryuu asks while walking up to him.

The boy gives a polite smile, extending a hand to shake. "Hello! You must be Hakuryuu, correct? My name is Shuu. I hear our teams are going to be working together. Kind of? So, I look forward to playing with you."

Hakuryuu looks down to that hand, scoffing at it and crossing his arms. He couldn't understand why this guy was acting so calm. Most of the others here were usually dead serious and would even bow their heads to him (mostly out of fear). "Yeah, I'm Hakuryuu. And if you're expecting us to get along, don't. I'm only here to be the best, not to make any friends."

Shuu looks confused to the lack of greeting from the other but shrugs it off. "I thought people normally shook hands when they meet..." He mumbles that comment. "I know you're aiming to be the best, I've heard you're a really strong player, Hakuryuu. Though, I think we should get along if we're going to be playing together, don't you?"

"Who said we're going to be playing together?"

"Didn't you read the message? We're supposed to kick the ball around together." Shuu motions to the ball beside him, even going to it and kicking it up into the air, balancing it on his knee. That smile of his never seemed to waver.

"Stupid higher ups..." Hakuryuu grumbled as he glared at Shuu. A spark of irritation flashed through him as that boy didn't seem intimidated by him at all. He just seemed so...happy and calm, curious to. "Fine. We'll kick this damn ball around, but I am not letting you get it past me."

~...~

Playing soccer with people again gave off an interesting feeling. Defining it as something completely positive and fun wasn't what he wanted to do. It was different from how he used to play, that's for sure. He figured that maybe it was due to practicing against his polar opposite. Hakuryuu. Things always felt a little different when he played with him.

That boy was radiating nothing but light. And anger, he noted. He never gave up in his plays and pushed himself to the limit, always barking orders to those slacking off. Some looked up to him, some feared him. No matter the case, he certainly had power and was not afraid to show it.

"I'm glad that I'll be playing with him in the future. We won't lose if he's on our team. He's fun to be around, interesting to." Shuu speaks to one of the many birds on the island. While others may only hear chirping, the spirit is able to hear an actual response.

"Hm? You want to know about that other boy?" His brows begin to furrow and he glances towards the coast. The one he was asking about residing far away, back on the mainland, in Tokyo. He to radiated positive, light energy. It wasn't anything like Hakuryuu's. Even if they shined the same, the feeling their light gave off was completely different.

"He...isn't strong enough, not yet." He pauses. "Although he is...interesting. I don't think his ideals can defeat ours." There's chirping from the bird. "We'll come to face each other soon enough. I hope to test him before the real match. Though, I don't think he'll be winning against us."

~...~

They hadn't lost but they hadn't won either. The match of Zero against Raimon had ended in a tie. And for once...Hakuryuu wasn't so furious about an outcome like this. He wanted to win, even with that score he vowed that next time they played, he would. Things would just be a little different. He'd be playing soccer with those he could call friends, he could enjoy the sport a little more. Being the ultimate player was the goal he still aimed for, but he'd accomplish that in a different way, without being under Fifth Sector.

The joy he had felt during the ending of the match began to fade as Raimon departs. He'd be leaving soon to, but that wasn't the reason for this sudden feeling. He recalls those words he was told by Kibayama. If they lost that match, that meant they didn't deserve to live.

They were the ultimate players, it's what they had trained constantly for. If they weren't the ultimate players, then what were they? Just...normal players? Useless? All that hard work had amounted to nothing in the end. Even if they hadn't officially lost the match, a draw could be considered the same.

Tch. I'm not going to let that asshole's words get to me-

"Hakuryuu?"

"Shuu!" Hakuryuu is quick to turn and glare at the boy who appeared, startling him. "Don't just appear out of nowhere like that! You know I hate when you do that," he hisses while the other boy simply chuckles.

"I couldn't help it. But, it seemed like you needed a distraction." And apparently, that meant startling him was just as good.

"Whatever." Hakuryuu sighs and crosses his arms, looking back over to the sea. "What did you come here for?"

"I came to check up on you." Shuu smiles innocently while walking to his side. "Our match was...something else, wasn't it?"

"Yeah...Never expected it to turn out that way." He had only expected to win, he was certain all of Zero had the same expectations. That's why the team was created after all, to win.

"Me either, but...I'm glad it did." Shuu's smile softens, looking distant. "We can all be strong in our own way. We don't need one single power to follow or obtain. Having fun...doesn't hurt. It can lead to great things. Maybe we were a little too serious about all this, don't you think?"

"Hmm..." Hakuryuu goes quiet for a moment. "Maybe. I'm still not going to give up though, you know. You heard me, I'll be the best damn player the world has ever seen." He states that proudly while puffing out his chest, hands going on his hips. Then there's a pause. "And you can be one of the few beside me."

Saying that had taken more out of him than he had let on. He was still adjusting to the mindset of working more as a team player than just on his own. If he wanted to be strong, he needed others. Though, he wanted to be strong with Shuu. He enjoyed being beside him. He was different, in a good way. But would never admit that or the fact that he may have taken a liking to him either. He was just hoping that saying something like that made it so obvious.

"Me?" Shuu blinks, pointing at himself, and looking genuinely surprised by that. "I didn't think you'd want me on your team. I recall you once called me an annoyance."

"That was before okay!" He shoots a glare at him while stomping his foot, loosing that proud composure of his. "You're not so bad now..." While he may not have liked him at first, that certainly changed over time.

"And here I thought you'd only be saying that to Tsurugi..." Shuu comments. "But, I am very happy you'd let me be beside you in more matches. I think I would like to continue playing with you."

"You do know I wasn't going to accept no for an answer." Hakuryuu points out.

"I know. I was tempted to say no to see what you'd do. Maybe I should change my answer?" Shuu asked with a mischievous grin.

"You can't change your mind!" Hakuryuu shouts.

"My answer is, no!" He smiles to the taller male, childishly sticking his tongue out at him. That causes Hakuryuu to growl and go on a tangent about how they're supposed to be an amazing duo.

That comment about how it would have been aimed to Tsurugi lingers in his mind. He used to want to be a powerful duo with him, but...when had that changed? He only wanted Shuu by his side, off and on the field. He couldn't let him know that.

~...~

The spirit is resting beside some of the Jizo statues, a hand resting atop one. These used to be worshipped and honored more in the past and now they're merely a reminder, slowly being overtaken by moss. He finds it amazing how people of this time still know their purpose. Perhaps, somehow, his old customs had been passed down. Legends of the island certainly had.

"Shuu!"

Hearing that voice, he happily looks over to the owner of it. He had called for Hakuryuu to meet with him here to speak with him. Slowly, he pushes himself up from the ground and walk towards him.

"You made it."

"Of course I did, why wouldn't I have?"

"I thought you'd be busy packing. You're going home tomorrow after all." Shuu reminded. It was a disheartening thought. All those who had come to the island had to leave, including Hakuryuu. While he'd be missing his teammates, those he played with on the field, he'd miss Hakuryuu the most.

He had been the one he played with, talked with, laughed with the most. Even if their training was harsh, they had found fun in between times. Even after their last match, it was nothing but pure relaxation. The spirit never knew he'd be blessed to get along with another person so well. Although, perhaps this was also part of the curse. He could not remain by Hakuryuu's side forever, no matter how much he wanted to be. His heart ached to knowing that he'd be left alone once again, the pain was stronger this time after becoming so close to this human.

"I know. But you're going home to, right? It'll suck not being so close to each other, but I'm sure we'll still meet on the pitch," Hakuryuu replies, unaware of Shuu's place.

"Yeah..." Shuu answers halfheartedly.

"What kind of 'yeah' was that?" Hakuryuu asks. "You don't sound so excited. Don't you want to go home and get off this island?"

"This island is my home," Shuu states and Hakuryuu only stares at him. Was the other expecting him to say this was a joke? Some humans did that these days. Jokes were a little different now and sometimes he couldn't understand them. "I'm serious, Hakuryuu. I live here."

"You expect me to believe that you live out here, on an island? As cool as that may sound, it is hard to believe. It's not exactly easy to live out here, you know. And if you did live here, where the hell is your little house, huh?"

"Do you remember the story I told you long ago? About the old customs of the island?" Shuu asked as he looked away from Hakuryuu.

"Huh?" There's confusion in his voice. "Why are you bringing that up now?"

"Do you remember it, Hakuryuu?"

"Yeah, I do. Some brother tried to buy a match for his sister. But the village found out so his sister was sacrificed and the brother ended up wandering around until his death. That it?" Hakuryuu asks, having repeated the story in a monotone voice.

"Mhmm." Shuu nods his head before turning back to Hakuryuu. He always had to wonder if those he told the story to ever figured out it was about him. So far, no one had. "Would you believe me if I said I was that brother?"

"No."

"That was a fast answer..."

"If you were that brother, you'd be dead by now." Hakuryuu walks up to Shuu, pinching part of his arm through his robes. "And I don't think I can touch a ghost."

Shuu pouted a little to that, lightly pulling his arm away. "I prefer spirit." He said while rubbing that spot. "I suppose I shouldn't think anyone would believe me saying that. Spirits wandering around don't seem that common back on your home or in this time."

"I can't believe your serious about being a spirit..." Hakuryuu mumbles.

"I could prove it to you," Shuu states and the other boy only gives him a look that screams, 'how'?

Shuu shrugs, figuring he has to prove it now. So, he takes Hakuryuu's hand, holding it tightly for a moment before making his hand impalpable. While his hand could still be seen, it seemed translucent as it passed through Hakuryuu's own hand. The spirit looked to the human, chuckling a little at his very surprised and shocked face.

"See?" And to prove it more, Shuu simply disappeared from Hakuryuu's sight. The human had to blink, rub his eyes and even step to where he had been.

"Up here!" Shuu waved down to him as he was now sitting on a tree branch. He then jumped down from it, landing gracefully on his feet before going over to Hakuryuu again. "Now do you believe me?"

Hakuryuu didn't answer, still trying to register this information it seemed. Shuu just wanted to take a peek into his head, see what was going on. He was a little afraid that he might find him scary (apparently ghosts or spirits weren't a good thing in this time) and just leave him for good. Maybe he shouldn't have done all this. He shouldn't have said anything. If Hakuryuu rejects him, fears him, what would he do?

The boy manages to reach out a hand, placing it on the spirit's shoulder and gripping it tightly. Was he testing if he was tangible? Hakuryuu lets out a sigh to that.

"Don't do that again..." Hakuryuu speaks, easing up on his grip. "I wasn't expecting that..."

"But you told me to prove it to you? Shouldn't you have expected something like that?"

"I wasn't expecting you to be serious on that matter..." He sighs again and releases the other from his grasp. "I'm going to have to get used to you being a spirit thing."

"So...you're not afraid of me?" Shuu asks. He could feel relief beginning to wash over him. Sure he did seem a little...unsettled, but perhaps any human would be after what he did.

"No. I'm not afraid of anything." Hakuryuu huffs. "Maybe just a little weirded out. Guess it does kind of make sense now..."

Shuu smiles to his response before throwing himself on to Hakuryuu, hugging the human. He was hoping that he knew how happy this made him. "Don't worry, I'll try not to weird you out anymore. Unless if I absolutely have to."

~...~

Hakuryuu was told not to expect Shuu to be on the island when he returned. Shuu had been feeling strange lately and he figured that this meant it was finally his time to leave this world (even Shuu wasn't aware of what the feeling meant, but he figured this was one of the answers). He could be at peace and move on with his life, but that just caused a pain in the human's chest.

Was it selfish of him for wanting Shuu to stay alive or whatever he currently was right now? He didn't want him to leave, to just disappear. How could he lose a dear person in his life so soon? They were supposed to play soccer together, to become their own ultimate team. They were supposed to do so much more and now he was simply going to vanish?

Hurry up, hurry up...

He was impatient on the ride over to God Eden. What if the spirit just left on his way there? What if he couldn't see him again? Maybe he could stop the other from disappearing. He wanted to. He'd make it his goal to keep him here, even if it was horribly selfish of him.

When the boat docks, Hakuryuu doesn't wait a second to go. He jumps off the side of the boat, landing on the wooden platform and dashing onto the island. He knew where Shuu had to be. That soccer field in the forest. Somewhere around there. Possibly by those weird little statues. He'd find him.

Don't you dare disappear on me, Shuu!

His breathing is heavy by the time he reaches the area. Those red eyes constantly moving, searching for that one form that he just has to see. What will he do if he's not here? He doesn't know. How will he know?

Hakuryuu takes in a huge breath, holding it for a moment before shouting, "Shuu!" He could hear an echo of his name. That has to be loud enough to alert him to his presence. "Where the hell are you?" He asks that in his normal tone.

Nothing seems to happen. The island is quiet, only the sound of wind rustling the trees and other plant life. He's waiting, hoping to hear something that will break the silence, something that can sound human. He clenches his fists, not wanting to believe that he missed Shuu. He was gone from his life and everything seemed to hurt.

"God dammit, Shuu..."

"I heard cursing a god is really bad, isn't it?"

Hakuryuu blinks to that voice. He slowly turns to find Shuu standing behind him. A wave of relief washes over him. His friend was still here. He hadn't gone. He was okay. He'd still be around for a while. It was so good to see him again.

"Shuu..." Hakuryuu walks over to him before grabbing his arm and holding onto it tightly. "Why the hell weren't you waiting for me here? I thought you had passed on!" His grip tightens. He can still feel him, a good sign. "You...You..." Scared me.

Shuu winces to Hakuryuu's grip. "I'm sorry, Hakuryuu. I didn't mean to do anything like that...I was going to meet you here but..." He pauses and looks away. "I guess this weird feeling keeps coming up again."

"You're not going to just disappear, are you?" Hakuryuu asks breathlessly.

"No, no, I don't think so. Maybe I was just overreacting. I shouldn't have jumped to a conclusion like that..." He pauses. "Though, maybe I will if this doesn't go well..."

"What the hell do you mean?" Hakuryuu looks confused to his comment. Were they both at a loss for how it felt to pass on? Whatever the case, he was still a bit peeved for having gone to that conclusion and worrying the hell out of him. If this had been one of his attempts at joking, it really was the worst of them all.

Shuu gives the other a small smile before holding out his free hand, a couple of flowers, roses being held in it. "Tenma told me to use a soccer ball for this but I remember some custom of using flowers to. Though, I'm not sure how a spirit is supposed to ask out a human..."

"What...?" Hakuryuu raises a brow and his grip on Shuu completely disappears. Did he just hear that correctly? No, no, he must be dreaming.

"Oh! I don't think I was supposed to say that." Shuu gives a nervous laugh, scratching the back of his head with his now released hand. "I want to ask if you'd like to be with me? I don't know if you'd like to be with someone like...me, but I'd like to be with you, Hakuryuu." The spirit smiles at him, a light blush tinting his cheeks.

"Uhh..." Hakuryuu's own face begins to flush. If there was one thing he hadn't expected from all this, it was a confession. "I guess I can accept. I don't mind being with someone like you, Shuu." The human takes the flowers from him, surprised that no thorns seemed to be poking at him. "I'd...like being with you to," he mumbles, a little embarrassed at this but also completely thrilled to it all.

"So, you like me?" The spirit's eyes seemed to light up as he asks that.

"What?" How he could ask something like that so quickly, he'd never know. "Yeah, I do. Don't you dare question it!"

"I won't, because I like you to!"

~...~

In the shadows of a tree, a young girl is watching the scene play out before her. She watches as that human becomes flustered, more so than he'd like to be. And the other one, the spirit, is managing to play off his worries so well. It's a sight she never thought she'd be graced to see.

"I'm glad you're happy, Shuu."

The girl smiles while a hand rests upon the teal bracelet she wears. She wants to go and congratulate them, but remains back. If she went now, she'd be ruining the moment. Besides, she loves seeing that genuine smile on her brother's face. It was a rare sight, or had been. That smile began to return when he played with that Hakuryuu human. And if he made her brother happy, then she to was happy.

"Please, continue to be happy, together."

The female spirit chuckles as she looks to them once more. Her brother had a way of making the human blush so much, making him angry (but even she knew that he wasn't really furious with him). She offers a small and quiet prayer, a blessing to them both before slowly fading away.

[azvolrien]

The Island of Stars - Chapter Two

In which we are properly introduced to the island of Starwatch.

~~~

           The cliffs above the harbour and the beach were sheer and forbidding; the high black crags loomed a thousand feet above, streaked and speckled with white where seabirds had nested or snow had gathered, while ancient volcanic columns made strange flowing shapes in the stone. Strix climbed onto Rionnag’s back and led the Stormhaven group along a winding road up out of the harbour to the foot of the cliff, where twin sets of gigantic vertical rails had been fixed to the stone.

           “Most of the island is uninhabited,” said Strix once everyone had caught up. “There are a few livestock farms in the southern hills and a couple of seasonal fishing villages at the far coast, but there aren’t any real permanent settlements other than the harbour and the Noctorium. More than half of the Order’s budget is devoted solely to shipping in our food supplies – and a good slice of the rest goes towards maintaining this.” He pointed above his head. A huge metal cage was descending towards them, fixed to one set of the rails by enormous wheels and suspended from impossibly long cables. It reached the bottom with a clank, the cables ringing strangely under tension, and Strix rode over to open its gate. “I hope none of you are afraid of heights!”

           They boarded one by one. The platform was spacious enough that they were not packed in like sardines and the bars came well above head height, but it was still open to the air on three sides and, when Strix rang a bell and the cage began to rise, more than one apprentice cautiously sat down on the floor.

           “There is a road up to the Noctorium,” said Strix, raising his voice to be heard above the wind and the cries of the birds, “but it takes hours – the porters will take your luggage that way and it’ll be waiting for you by nightfall. The lift is much quicker.”

           “My tad told me about something like this he saw when he was travelling,” said Una, pressing her face against the bars to try and look down at the harbour falling away beneath them. “On the Long Cliff above the Gorsfen.”

           “Ours is taller,” said Strix with a grin. Halfway up, a second cage descended past them on the other rails. “But it was designed by the same engineer. The Order was years paying off the commission.”

           After about ten minutes, the cage reached the top, where a pair of big constructs resembling hornless karkadann stood harnessed to the huge winch and a chest-high fence kept people safely away from the cliff edge. Ahead of them, a wide path paved with flagstones and cleared of snow led across a windswept plain to an extraordinary settlement divided across two mountain peaks. On the lower, rounder summit, the buildings huddled against the ground, close to the road that spiralled up around the peak to a dome at the summit, and clearly constructed to withstand the full blast of the wind. On the higher, sharper peak, a second domed building sat right at the top. A slender cable ran between the two domes, and as they watched a cage like the lift slowly travelled along it up to the high peak. Even from that distance they could see it rocking in the wind.

           “The Order of Night does have chapters elsewhere,” said Strix as he led everyone along the path. “Djeret, Pontevena, the Imperial City – but the Noctorium is our spiritual heart. There are more Acolytes based here than anywhere else, and everyone in the Order will at least have spent some time here training or researching.”

           “When does the Order expect the planets to align?” asked Master Gwyn.

           “Four days’ time,” said Strix. “That is, not tonight, tomorrow night, or the one after that, but the one after that.”

           For all its isolation, the Noctorium was surprisingly busy. The spiralling main street around the lower peak bustled with people going about their day. Like Strix, each of them wore a long, hooded black habit with a small lantern at their waist. Also like Strix, some of them wore a single white sash across one shoulder; some instead wore one as a belt, and the occasional person wore two crossed over their chest, but most dressed all in black. They were also all clearly familiar with Strix: most of them gave him an acknowledging nod as he rode past, while a couple waved friendlier greetings.

           Most of the buildings had only a single storey, and none more than two except for the dome at the top. The slate roofs were curved, shaped a little like upturned boats, and the walls were all built from solid black stone.

           Strix kept up a running commentary as he rode.

           “Now, the oldest parts of the Noctorium were actually built during the Raiding Period, roughly a thousand years ago and before the Sea Lochs were annexed into the Empire, but the hills were enough of a defence; none of the raiding parties ever bothered to climb all the way up here, so the complex was never fortified. The walls are strong, yes, but it’s to defend against the weather.

           “Now, most of the buildings here in the lower ward are accommodation. Those over there are the Acolytes’ dormitories, and despite how that sounds most of us have private rooms or share with just one or two others. Here on the right are the guest quarters – that’s where you’ll be sleeping, and where the porters will leave your luggage. Those chimneys are from our kitchens, and they’re attached to the Refectory. Everyone – guests and Acolytes alike – eats there, unless they’re busy with something further up the hill. On the other side of the road is our infirmary. The Noctorium is generally a very safe place, but, well – accidents happen.”

           He continued in this vein the rest of the way up the hill, pointing out storerooms, workshops, the laundry and the temple until finally they reached the building at the summit.

It was the biggest structure on the hill, both in height and in footprint; up close it was obvious that the dome they had seen from a distance was only one small part of it, perched on a squat tower at the other end of the two-storey building from where the cables up to the higher peak emerged.

           Strix climbed down from the saddle. “Now, this is the real heart of the Order,” he said as he led them up to a wide bronze-plated door flanked by columns and etched with a star map. Rionnag yawned massively and curled up against the wall for a nap. “Up in the dome is one of our two big telescopes – the other one being up there on the mountain – while the rest of the building is given over to other research. Later I’ll show you around our library and the Great Orrery, but what I think you’ll find especially interesting is just through here.”

           They all filed through the door and down a corridor to the right, following Strix past decorative sculptures and paintings representing the night sky and all manner of nocturnal life, until he opened a second star-map door and let them into a large room with a glass roof. It stood two storeys high, with a wide flight of stairs at the far end leading up to a gallery, and both the walls and the floor were packed with artefacts. Scrolls and books lined the shelves along the walls, while out in the middle of the room glass cases protected carved stelae and engraved tablets.

           “Welcome,” said Strix in a dramatic voice, “to the Hall of Prophecy!”

           “And you had better have the sardines I asked for from Duncraig!” said a new voice from above them. Everyone wheeled around and looked up to see another man in a black Acolyte’s habit leaning over the gallery’s railing. He was another elf and of a similar height, build and age to Strix, but his skin was a deep brown and his black hair was tied into many long, thin braids and bound into a ponytail at the nape of his neck.

           Strix sighed and took a small jar from his pocket, holding it up for the newcomer to see. “Yes, I have your sardines. Honoured guests, this is Acolyte Tyto, the keeper of the Hall of Prophecy and someone much better placed to explain it than me. Also,” he said, watching Tyto walk along the gallery and down the stairs, “he really likes sardines.”

           “You say that as if it’s something I should be ashamed of,” said Tyto, taking the jar from his colleague and putting it in his own pocket. “Is this the Stormhaven group?”

           “That’s us, yes,” said Master Gwyn.

           “Well, welcome to the Noctorium. And while Strix and his wolf were off gallivanting to the mainland, I was hard at work here in the Hall. You see,” said Tyto, folding his arms and tucking his hands into his sleeves, “while the Order concerns itself with many different studies of the night – sleeping patterns, nocturnal life, bioluminescence – our primary focus is in the very name of this island. Starwatch. We spend these long winter nights charting and observing the stars, the planets, and all manner of other celestial phenomena.”

           “And we go through a lot of coffee,” said Strix.

           “That is also true,” Tyto allowed. “Of course, we have to keep in communication with the southern chapters – half of the night sky isn’t even visible from this far north. But, of course, we aren’t the first people to have looked at the stars. I expect people have gazed at the heavens since we first became people – and throughout history and before it, people have attempted to read the future in the stars.”

           Master Jones snorted and rolled his eyes.

           Tyto grinned. “So, here in the Hall of Prophecy, we collect those predictions made through the stars. For example!” He waved them over to a rectangular stone pillar, taller than he was and covered in tiny, intricate symbols. “This is the Taremu Stele; it was excavated in the desert ruins of that name. Translated from the Ancient Kemeti into modern Imperial, it records a prophecy relating to a solar eclipse. I’m sure you know the sort of thing – sun turning black, great misfortune throughout the land, famine, plague, and so on and so forth. Yes, you with your hand up?”

           “Did it come true?” asked Una.

           “Nope!” said Tyto cheerfully. “There was a solar eclipse in 1137 BE, and totality would have been visible from Taremu – we think the Stele only predates it by a couple of years – but there’s no record of any famine, plague or unrest following it and the city thrived for another five centuries before it was finally swallowed by the desert. Much the same goes for this tablet from pre-imperial Lagara, which refers to the approach of what we now call Rived’s Comet as a sign of impending doom. Again, there’s no evidence to suggest that any doom actually happened.” He gestured around the room, taking in all of the many exhibits and documents. “Doom is a very common theme among the sky-prophecies we’ve collected. Comets, eclipses, movements of the planets. And out of all of them, not a single one has been conclusively proven true.” He smiled. “Make of that what you will.”

           “And therein lies the lesson,” Master Gwyn said to the students. “The sight of things to come, however limited, exists only in the seer; there is no future written in the stars.”

           “There are a couple of seers living here,” added Strix, “but all they can do is predict the weather for the next couple of days.”

           “Which reminds me,” said Tyto. “Strix – they say there’s going to be quite the storm later today. Make sure Rionnag’s safely indoors for it.”

           They spent the next hour or so in the Hall of Prophecy, wandering around studying the various carvings and writings. Strix busied himself going through a collection of scrolls from the gallery, while Tyto was content to sit at his desk in the corner and answer whatever questions he was asked.

           Una went over to talk to him. “Tyto?”

           “Yes?”

           “Do any of the prophecies in here talk about this alignment?”

           “Interesting question,” he said, getting up from the desk and waving for her to follow him up the stairs. “The short answer is that we’re not completely sure.” He took a wooden scroll case wrapped in seal skin from one cubbyhole and prised the lid off. The scroll inside was made of some kind of soft leather rather than paper or parchment, and it unrolled without flaking when he laid it on a lectern. “The slightly longer answer relates to this document. It was discovered in the tunnels of Drekaheim, up north in Myrkfjord. We believe the city was once an Eyrie Culture settlement, abandoned after the extinction of the dragons and then claimed by the people of the coasts, but even so the modern population only ever settled in outbuildings and the sub-surface corridors; the deep tunnels are still largely unexplored, but the occasional intriguing artefact does turn up.

           “Bringing us neatly back to this scroll. This drawing at the top would seem to represent the upcoming alignment; the landscape beneath is recognisable as the mouth of Myrkfjord, near the town of Valsnes, while the planets and constellations are in the correct positions in the sky above. So it does look like someone predicted it, whether a seer or through astronomical calculation. It’s been theorised that they thought it related to the loss of the dragons, due to this other sketch showing a dragon falling from the sky, though if that’s the case they got their timing a bit off – whatever happened to the dragons, it happened five hundred years ago. The problem,” said Tyto, rubbing his close-trimmed beard, “is that the actual text has yet to be deciphered. It looks somewhat like the runic script of the northern Sea Lochs, but when one of my predecessors tried translating it on that basis, he ended up with complete nonsense.”

           “Maybe it’s Eyrie Culture writing,” suggested Una.

           “Perhaps. It doesn’t look like it, but it could be a form of regional dialect. The Eyrie Culture once ruled the entirety of the Dragon’s Teeth, after all – there must have been variations in their language, written or spoken.”

           On the other side of the gallery, Strix put his scrolls away and loudly clapped his hands. “You can come back here later if you want to read more,” he said, leaning over the railing. “But we should really finish the rest of the tour before you can wander!”

           Over the next couple of hours, Strix showed them around the rest of the building, including the library and the Great Orrery – a clockwork model of the solar system big enough to fill a room – until he finally finished the tour in the telescope dome. The huge telescope hung still and silent on its mechanism in the centre of the room, ready to swing around towards whatever corner of the sky needed studying.

           “The whole dome can open up and turn around,” Strix explained, perching on a wooden chair attached to the framework. “These cranks here control the whole thing. This one opens the dome, while these others control the directions of the hatch and the telescope. Most of the Order here aren’t mages, so it’s fully mechanical, no magic required. The one up on the mountain is much the same. The whole reason for having the Noctorium out on this island is so we can view the sky without interference from the city lights on the mainland; you might have spotted that there aren’t any streetlights on the road, so if you find yourselves out after dark be sure to carry a lantern or conjure a witchlight. On clear winter nights, the view of the sky from here is second to none.” He sighed and hopped down from the chair. “This isn’t going to be a clear night, though, so both domes will be sealed before the storm hits. The porters should have arrived with your luggage by now, so I’ll show you to where you’ll be sleeping. Then I’ll need to get Rionnag into his kennel for the night…”

           The porters had indeed made their way up the long, winding road from the harbour and the suitcases were waiting in a heap inside the guest quarters’ entrance hall. Everyone collected their own and carried them off to the rooms and dormitories they had been assigned. By some twist Una had a tiny berth to herself on one corner of the building, with a small window looking out over the sea to the north.

           The storm hit in the early afternoon. The cable car up to the high telescope was locked in its station, and protective shutters were closed over all the windows as the wind rose to a gale and fat drops of rain and hail fell like sling stones. Nobody even dared to venture across the street to the refectory; instead the Stormhaveners made do with a picnic dinner of whatever snacks they had in their luggage and turned in for the night.

           Luckily, when the storm rose it was to a clear sky and a light breeze. The shutters opened and the cable car started running again, and after a hearty breakfast in the refectory one of the journeymen took all the apprentices down to the beach by the harbour to stretch their legs after the storm.

           Una had just picked up a particularly interesting length of twisted driftwood, with a mind to taking it back as a gift for Wygar, when something let out a strange, deep roar from further down the beach.

           Everyone straightened up at once like a colony of startled meerkats.

           “What was that?” said the journeyman, frowning towards a distant lump on the sand.

           “There’s… I think it’s some kind of animal on the beach down there,” said one of the apprentices. “What is that, a seal?”

           “There’s more than one of them,” said Una, whose eyes were keener. “The big one’s not a seal, it’s a… I don’t know what it is. It looks sort of like an afanc, but sort of chunkier, and – oh, gods, that’s a person it’s got!” She broke into a sprint, waving her arms and yelling at the top of her voice, the others following behind. Once the creature was in range she threw one arm out ahead of her; a shimmering forcebolt tore through the air to strike the creature’s muzzle, too weak to do more than sting but certainly enough to make it back away, baring its predator’s teeth and flattening its pointed ears against the back of its long, oddly horse-like skull. Una yelled again and sharpened her own teeth into fangs as she dropped to her knees on the coarse black sand beside the person. The rest of the wizards caught up, raising their arms to conjure shields and concussive waves against the creature, and it fled into the sea in an ungainly lumber.

           Everyone gathered around the stranger. She was soaked through; fresh blood streaked her fair skin, and even unconscious she shivered in the cold. One foot lay twisted at a horrible angle.

           The journeyman pointed to one of the apprentices. “Run back to the harbour and get help – a healer, a stretcher, something! We’ll stay here with her.” The boy nodded and sprinted back up the beach. The journeyman laid his hand on Una’s shoulder. “Good eye, Una – let’s hope the infirmary up at Starwatch can help her.”

           Una nodded, pulling off her own coat to lay it over the stranger. She was a tall, strongly-built woman about the same age as Una’s parents, with long red hair tied back in a single braid. Tattoos of strange symbols drawn in fine blue ink covered her face and arms, and she wore a cloak made from the skull and pelt of a seal.

~~~

Guess who?

The cliffs at the harbour draw on two different inspirations. The columnar basalt (and the black sand on the beach) is inspired by the cliffs at Reynisfjara in Iceland, while the size of them is based more on the high sea-cliffs on St Kilda.

Strix and Tyto aren’t their original names, as you might expect; Acolytes take new names on joining the order, usually something relating to the night in some way. I don’t usually have specific people in mind to ‘play’ my characters, but I kind of picture Tyto as Chiwetel Ejiofor.

[dubaization]

The Pigeon that Landed on a Sidewalk Reflecting on its Existence

A pigeon flew across vast distances and finally saw from high above a curious sight. A city emerging in the middle of the desert. High-rises everywhere. It decided to descend and to inspect this apparition. It landed on a sidewalk.

This is a tale about a boat ride with Eddie Huang of ‘Huang’s World” on Dubai’s creek and the curious encounter with a pigeon that prompted some serious self-reflection while watching a dance on a stretch of sand with the city’s skyline in the background and ending with a disgorgement from the entrails of a parking garage. I think.

This is how it went down. It all started with an email ...

Last March I received an email from a production company inviting me to participate in a show called “Huang’s World.” Premised on the notion that I would accompany the host Eddie Huang, unknown to me at the time, on a boat ride from “old to new Dubai” while talking about the city’s history and its rapid rise. At the time I was preparing for my permanent departure from the UAE, and this seemed a good opportunity to offer some parting shots while leaving a city that was my second home outside of Al Ain. I met with the company production representative at Special Ustadi Restaurant, a Bur Dubai institution, and one of my favorite spots in the city. From there we walked to the Abra station and took a boat for a dry run in preparation for the actual filming which would take place a couple of weeks later.

I hadn’t really heard of “Huang’s World” but did some research prior to the filming and found that the show was well known in the US and that it had quite a following. The host, Eddie Huang, is an interesting character – a law school graduate, restaurateur and chef – so it seemed like it would be quite a departure from the usual interviews and talks that I have done in the past which tended to veer to the academic. I was ready for Eddie.

On the day of filming the segment, I arrived at the parking garage in Deira, disposed my car inside its entrails, and proceeded to the Abra station in front of the spice Souq. The production team welcomed me, forms were signed, I was properly “miked” and then we waited for the host who was resting in a car. They had just arrived the day before from Los Angeles and he was suffering from jet lag made worse since they had been filming all morning in the Suq. While standing in front of the abra, or boat, that we would eventually use, a tattooed man, Eddie, appeared and came down to greet me. We proceeded to the boat, with a 3-man camera crew in tow, and sat down. And thus began a fascinating conversation lasting about an hour. As the abra chugged along the creek we passed next to some of the city’s iconic landmarks – Bastakiyya (about to be overtaken by the Marsa Al Seef development), the Sheraton hotel (one of the oldest five star hotels), Maktoum bridge, City Center, till we reached the floating bridge. There, we had to disembark, walk along a non-descript place surrounded by depressing government buildings, swallowed by immense and empty parking spaces. While walking our conversation continued. There was no human in sight, in stark contrast to the lively scene by the souk. But here was another side of the city, away from the tourist oriented, and heavily redesigned, spectacle, a place that evokes a sense of despair and anonymity. Seemingly out of nowhere we saw a small pigeon who somehow seems to have lost his way, walking aimlessly across a stretch of pavement. This aroused the curiosity of Eddie and the film crew – they filmed him while the hapless fellow feeling slightly alarmed moved a bit faster till he escaped the intruders on his personal space. At a safe distance he returned to his deep thought posture, perhaps wondering how he ended up here. It literally was the only living being around us. I kept thinking about that pigeon. How did it get here? What is it doing on the sidewalk? How about its residency status? Why is it alone? A lot of questions and no answers. We turned our back to the pigeon and moved on. I was tempted to look back but did not.

 Image 01: [L] While waiting for Eddie; [R] Dhows along the Creek

Once we crossed the bridge to the other side we found a taxi boat waiting for us. Inside an air conditioned space I sat next to the captain, who turned out to be a fellow Egyptian and my conversation with the host continued. The questions were all thoughtful and showed that Eddie had indeed quite a deep understanding about the city. What surprised me the most though was the positive and respectful attitude that he showed. Typically westerners and media people come with certain preconceived notions about artificiality, marginalization and exclusion. Yet he displayed none of that. I pointed this out in our talk, which was affirmed by the boat captain nodding excitedly. Eddie, somewhat taken aback, asked me “why’? And as I gave my stock answer we slid into the newly dredged creek extension towards a wondrous apparition emerging through the sun’s haze -- Business Bay. While dutifully enumerating all the good things about the city, its rapid rise and multiculturalism, I saw in front of me what looked like empty shells. Not in a physical sense but that is the feeling they convey. Our talk stopped and Eddie thanked me for my time. I continued my observation of the highrises around us. This was a new perspective of the city, created through the canal leading to the Gulf. It was eerily quiet, kind of like a ghost town. Again hardly any people were in sight – just peculiar building after peculiar building. The very antithesis of urbanity and cityness. All this will change soon – people will move in. The Design District or D3 will become a hub of creativity and excitement populated by the strange, the peculiar, pretentious and beautiful. All will be well and good, so we are told.

 Image 02: Business Bay emerging through a thick haze

Video: The abandoned and yet to be populated waterfront of Business Bay

A camera man was leaning against the boat’s rail and looking at all of this in bewilderment. Eddie came out and examined the scene unfolding in front of our eyes as the boat slowly made its way to the waterfall falling from the sides of the elevated Sheikh Zayed Road. Coming closer sensors detect our arrival and miraculously the waterfall stops. In Moses like fashion, the water parts and we are assured safe passage. We kept going while watching some villas coming precariously close to the canal. Lucky survivors as they have escaped the wrath of expropriation. I see a large part of Safa Park which was disemboweled, creating an expanse of sand that will soon house mixed use developments, upscale shopping and chic restaurants. At the moment none of that is happening though – in fact all that you see are workers walking across the cornice walkway. We ended in some sort of no man’s land, or terrain vague, a taxi station that seems to exist for no one. Located in Jumeirah, at a distance from its main thoroughfare, it overlooks the waters of the Gulf

 Image 03: [L] abandoned space near Safa park, soon to be populated with upscale shopping; [R] villas located precariously alongside the canal

Image 04: Eddie and film crew alongside Business Bay Canal

We left the boat and waited for cars to take us back to where we came from. Stretching across us was a vast expanse of sand. The city skyline appeared in the distance. I sat on a bench. A crewmember had a portable speaker and started playing some music. And then he began to dance and so did the rest of the team. I watched them from the comfort of my bench. It seemed like such a capricious act of silliness but it was also very moving. Here, literally in the middle of nowhere, a sense of place was created. For a brief moment this desolate stretch turned into something and yet as soon as it started it also ended.

And as I sat I began to reflect on my own status and the realization that soon I will have to leave all of this behind. Having observed and documented the city’s growth over the last two decades this brief jaunt over its creek highlighted the extent of change that occurred but also that this is still very much work in progress. The potential that this may eventually turn into a vibrant urban setting that sustains and nurtures a sense of identity and belonging is there. But yet there is a feeling of unsettledness, what I have described before as unhomeliness. It is after all a transient place, not built for permanence. A city that rejects any sort of rootedness and sense of belonging. A place constructed for nomadic citizens, for whom no place is home and who are under a constant awareness of their precarious status. Like the crew dancing, so are the city’s residents, engaged in an act of building and contributing to ‘this’ city’s growth and achievements, but also knowing that they are there for a fleeting moment of time. Fleeting can stretch for decades. But it is still fleeting. 

Image 05: A crew member dances in a Dubai terrain vague

The producers dropped me off on Jumeirah road in front of a strip mall type of building. I hailed a cab and instructed the driver to take me back to Deira. We passed through old Dubai, entered the darkness of the Shindagha tunnel, drove into the cornice and stopped in front of the parking garage. I navigated its grimy corridors, paid the parking fee at a barely functioning machine, waited for the elevator with a slightly disheveled looking South Asian man, who looked at me with curiosity, entered the lift then exited at my floor. My car was waiting, inside I pressed the ignition button. As I was disgorged from the building through its ramp I entered the cornice and looked across the creek. I stepped on the gas pedal and sped towards the highway. My eyes firmly fixed on the road ahead.

 I thought of the pigeon and where it went. Did it fly away? Where did it go? Will it ever come back? 

  The following are scenes of my interlude with Eddie Huang for the Dubai episode of “Huang’s World.” Also a clip of the conversation can be found here.

[plarndude]

For those of you who are unwilling to even Glance at an article because of the website it's on, I've copied and pasted it here. I agree with every single thing this guy wrote in this article.

"Over the weekend, the Planeteers converged on Washington to hold a “Climate March.” I know what you’re thinking: didn’t they already do that, like, last week? Also, how will marching and holding signs improve the climate? And how many trees were slaughtered to make those signs, anyway? And how much CO2 was emitted by the cars and planes they took to get to this march? And how many of D.C.’s pigeons and squirrels were rudely disrupted from their daily routine because of all the extra humans traipsing through the street? Isn’t organizing a march to fight climate change a bit like organizing a hot dog eating contest to fight obesity?

I have posed these kinds of questions to environmental activists many times and never received an answer other than, “You must hate science.” I really don’t hate science, though. I love science. I hate faux-science. I hate leftist dogma disguised as science. I hate activism that calls itself science. I hate bad conclusions drawn from science. I hate hypocrisy. I hate inconsistency. These also happen to be all of the reasons why I hate climate change alarmism.

But my real problem with the alarmists, who I will now address directly, boils down to this: I don’t believe you. And when I say I don’t believe you, I mean that I believe neither what you’re saying, nor that you believe what you’re saying. I doubt both your narrative and your sincerity. I question your facts and your conviction about those facts. Allow me to explain why.

First, your facts. If you stuck simply to the modest contention that the world has warmed very slightly in the last 130 years, and you theorized — and admitted it was a theory — that humans have contributed to it in some small way, I wouldn’t take much of an issue with you. The problem is that you lie so much. You lie when you refuse to confess that the climate prediction models you use are extremely flawed. You lie when you scream about the “97 percent consensus” that doesn’t exist. You lie when you act like the real scientists who doubt man-caused global warming are all kooks and lunatics.

Most of all, your overblown, hysterical doomsday prophecies are lies. The world is supposed to already be over by now, according to you. At the very least, New York City should be under water. We should have all been dead from global warming or global cooling or overpopulation dozens of times over. Around the time of the first Earth Day, we were told that hundreds of millions would be starving to death per year within ten years of that date. Human civilization should have crumbled into dust and the few remaining survivors should be floating through a vast water world, locked in a struggle of survival against Dennis Hopper. Yet, here we are, standing on dry land. How many times are you allowed to be wrong about the end of the world before we are justified in not taking you seriously anymore? I’d say that threshold, whatever it is, has long since been reached.

Second, your sincerity. Here’s the real issue I have with you. Even if you’ve been wrong about the Environmental Apocalypse 100 times, you still insist that this 101st prediction will surely pan out. You tell us that we could be looking at an extinction event within a generation or two. Our planet will turn into Venus sooner rather than later if we don’t drastically change the way we live. Major world cities will be lost into the sea, and this will happen within decades. And even those not drowned in the depths of the ocean will face mass starvation or worse. What’s more, you tell us that Armageddon may already be happening. Even now, whenever there is a hurricane, or a tornado, or a thunderstorm, or even a snowstorm, you tell us that this is a direct result of global warming caused by our modern lifestyle. This is all quite traumatizing, so it’s good for your emotional well being that you don’t really believe any of it.

I can only assume that you don’t believe it because your actions do not at all resemble what one would expect from someone who does believe this sort of thing. With very rare exceptions, you continue living just like the rest of us. Maybe you recycle your plastic bottles, maybe you ordered a salad at Panera Bread today, but for the most part you are just another callous Homo sapien murdering the planet and cannibalizing the future of the human race. Why? How? You think the world is about to end, for God’s sake. What are you doing sitting at Starbucks like the rest of us? Why haven’t you renounced all modern technology? Why haven’t you fled to the mountains before the sea engulfs your family? Why aren’t you doing… anything?

I can only imagine how I would react if I actually believed that the extinction of all mankind was imminent, and my lifestyle was directly contributing to it. At a minimum, I would not drive a car anymore. Ever. At all. I would ditch electricity. I wouldn’t eat any kind of meat. I wouldn’t buy mass made consumer products. I wouldn’t give my money to any company that sells items made in factories with giant smokestacks. Those smokestacks are literally killing people. How could you continue shopping like everything is normal? What kind of monster are you? If I were you, I would live as John the Baptist, eating locusts and wild honey out in the desert. Lives are at stake, are they not? The end is near! Why are you so relaxed about it? Have you even started building the ark yet?

I’m not joking. If I were in your boat (pun intended), I would feel morally obligated to take extreme measures. As a member of the enlightened few, as a person who knows that human life is about to be eradicated, and who knows why, and even when, I would feel an incredible burden of responsibility. If I knew that driving my car, turning on my lights, shopping at the mall, and generally going about my day immersed in modern luxury were all directly causing the current and future death of millions of people, I could not continue engaging in these lethal activities. I would see them as acts of extreme moral recklessness, if not murder, to saunter along on as usual. My conscience would compel me to ensure that I am not responsible for the carnage that is about to occur. How could a person who believes what you allegedly believe possibly arrive at any other conclusion?

It’s become a cliche to point out how all of the major environmental mouthpieces, like DiCaprio and Gore and all the rest, also happen to fly private jets in between the several mansions they own. This fact alone does not disprove the environmentalist narrative, but it is a curious fact that none of its most vocal proponents seem to have taken their own words to heart. Imagine, by comparison, if almost every major pro-life activist also happened to sit on the board of Planned Parenthood. If one or two were exposed as hypocrites in this way you might overlook it, but all of them?

Strangely, only the Amish can be seen riding horses and buggies down the street in this country, but even they don’t believe that automobiles are going to annihilate life on Earth. You do believe that, yet you still drive them. You know how much CO2 was emitted in order to produce your iPhone, yet you still buy a new one every 18 months. You know that hurricanes and tornadoes are popping up everywhere because of the factories that make your trendy shoes and clothing, yet you still stock your closet full of them. You know that your air conditioning unit is slowly poisoning the atmosphere and leading us rapidly to certain death, yet you turn it on the moment the temperature rises above 70 degrees outside. You know that your refrigerator is a cancerous tumor metastasizing on Mother Earth, yet you still won’t preserve your food by drying or pickling it. You know how much safer we’d all be if we stopped using electricity, yet you haven’t gotten that ball rolling, either. WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE, aren’t we? And you can’t even be bothered to crack a window and eat pickled cabbage in the dark like a real environmentalist?

You seem only focused on insisting that the government fix the problem. But even if there were a problem to fix, the law couldn’t do anything on its own. The law can only influence or coerce behavior. So, rather than sitting around and waiting for the law to tell you to live how you already think you ought to live, why don’t you just start living that way? It’s like a vegetarian who declares that he will continue eating steaks until the government finally prohibits him from doing so. The cynical among us may conclude that a vegetarian of this type is not a vegetarian at all. If every vegetarian were of this sort, we might suspect that vegetarianism itself is hallucinatory: a belief system that many advocate but none believe strongly enough to actually live by. And if those who advocate it don’t believe it, why should the rest of us take so much as a second out of our lives to consider its merits?

Now, please understand that I’ve cut you some slack here. I’ve assumed that you don’t believe your own tales of civilizational destruction. The less flattering interpretation is that you do believe everything you say, yet you’re so unbelievably selfish and lazy that, even staring at Armageddon on the horizon, you still cannot stir yourself to make any noticeable changes to your life. One shudders at the moral baseness required for a person to sincerely say to himself, “Yes, my vehicle is melting the ice caps and inching humanity ever closer to liquidation, but, screw it, I don’t feel like walking.” I have faith that you are not so cold and heartless. I have faith that you are merely disingenuous hypocrites. Let’s hope I’m right." - Matt Walsh

original post

[readbookywooks]

‘It’s a geas,’ muttered Rincewind.

Creosote swayed at him. ‘Abrim does all the ruling, you see. Terrible hard work.’

‘He’s not,’ said Rincewind, ‘making a very good job of it just at present.’

And we’d sort of like to get away,’ said Conina, who was still turning over the phrase about the goats.

‘And I’ve got this geas,’ said Nijel, glaring at Rincewind.

Creosote patted him on the arm.

‘That’s nice,’ he said. ‘Everyone should have a pet.

‘So if you happen to know if you own any stables or anything…’ prompted Rincewind.

‘Hundreds,’ said Creosote. ‘I own some of the finest, most … finest horses in the world.’ His brow wrinkled. ‘So they tell me.’

‘But you wouldn’t happen to know where they are?’

‘Not as such,’ the Seriph admitted. A random spray of magic turned the nearby wall into arsenic meringue.

‘I think we might have been better off in the snake pit,’ said Rincewind, turning away.

Creosote took another sorrowful glance at his empty wine bottle.

‘I know where there’s a magic carpet,’ he said.

‘No,’ said Rincewind, raising his hands protectively. ‘Absolutely not. Don’t even-’

‘It belonged to my grandfather-’

‘A real magic carpet?’ said Nijel.

‘Listen,’ said Rincewind urgently. ‘I get vertigo just listening to tall stories.’

‘Oh, quite,’ the Seriph burped gently, ‘genuine. Very pretty pattern.’ He squinted at the bottle again, and sighed. ‘It was a lovely blue colour,’ he added.

‘And you wouldn’t happen to know where it is?’ said Conina slowly, in the manner of one creeping up very carefully to a wild animal that might take fright at any moment.

‘In the treasury. I know the way there. I’m extremely rich, you know. Or so they tell me.’ He lowered his voice and tried to wink at Conina, eventually managing it with both eyes. ‘We could sit on it,’ he said, breaking into a sweat. ‘And you could tell me a story…’

Rincewind tried to scream through gritted teeth.

His ankles were already beginning to sweat.

‘I’m not going to ride on a magic carpet!’ he hissed. ‘I’m afraid of grounds!’

‘You mean heights,’ said Conina. And stop being silly.’

‘I know what I mean! It’s the grounds that kill you!’

The battle of Al Khali was a hammer-headed cloud, in whose roiling depths weird shapes could be heard and strange sounds were seen. Occasional misses seared across the city. Where they landed things were … different.

For example, a large part of the soak had turned into an impenetrable forest of giant yellow mushrooms. No-one knew what effect this had on its inhabitants, although possibly they hadn’t noticed.

The temple of Offler the Crocodile God, patron deity of the city, was now a rather ugly sugary thing constructed in five dimensions. But this was no problem because it was being eaten by a herd of giant ants.

On the other hand, not many people were left to appreciate this statement against uncontrolled civic alteration, because most of them were running for their lives. They fled across the fertile fields in a steady stream. Some had taken to boats, but this method of escape had ceased when most of the harbour area turned into a swamp in which, for no obvious reason, a couple of small pink elephants were building a nest.

Down below the panic on the roads the Luggage paddled slowly up one of the reed-lined drainage ditches. A little way ahead of it a moving wave of small alligators, rats and snapping turtles was pouring out of the water and scrambling frantically up the bank, propelled by some vague but absolutely accurate animal instinct.

The Luggage’s lid was set in an expression of grim determination. It didn’t want much out of the world, except for the total extinction of every other lifeform, but what it needed more than anything else now was its owner.

It was easy to see that the room was a treasury by its incredible emptiness. Doors hung off hooks. Barred alcoves had been smashed in. Lots of smashed chests lay around, and this gave Rincewind a pang of guilt and he wondered, for about two seconds, where the Luggage had got to.

There was a respectful silence, as there always is when large sums of money have just passed away. Nijel wandered off and prodded some of the chests in a forlorn search for secret drawers, as per the instructions in Chapter Eleven.

Conina reached down and picked up a small copper coin.

‘How horrible,’ said Rincewind eventually. ‘A treasury with no treasure in it.’

The seriph stood and beamed. ‘Not to worry’, he said.

‘But all your money has been stolen!’ said Conina.

‘The servants, I expect,’ said Creosote. ‘Very disloyal of them.’

Rincewind gave him an odd look. ‘Doesn’t it worry you?’

‘Not much. I never really spent anything. I’ve often wondered what being poor was like.’

‘You’re going to get a huge opportunity to find out.’

‘Will I need training?’

‘It comes naturally,’ said Rincewind. ‘You pick it up as you go along.’ There was a distant explosion and part of the ceiling turned to jelly.

‘Erm, excuse me,’ said Nijel, ‘this carpet …’

‘Yes,’ said Conina, ‘the carpet.’

Creosote gave them a benevolent, slightly tipsy smile.

‘Ah, yes. The carpet. Push the nose of the statue behind you, peach-buttocked jewel of the desert dawn.’

Conina, blushing, performed this act of minor sacrilege on a large green statue of Offler the Crocodile God.

Nothing happened. Secret compartments assiduously failed to open.

‘Um. Try the left hand.’

She gave it an experimental twist. Creosote scratched his head.

‘Maybe it was the right hand…’

‘I should try and remember, if I were you,’ said Conina sharply, when that didn’t work either. ‘There aren’t many bits left that I’d care to pull.’

‘What’s that thing there?’ said Rincewind.

‘You’re really going to hear about it if it isn’t the tail,’ said Conina, and gave it a kick.

There was a distant metallic groaning noise, like a saucepan in pain. The statue shuddered. It was followed by a few heavy clonks somewhere inside the wall, and Offler the Crocodile God grated ponderously aside. There was a tunnel behind him.

‘My grandfather had this built for our more interesting treasure,’ said Creosote. ‘He was very-’ he groped for a word-’ingenious.’

‘If you think I’m setting foot in there-’ Rincewind began.

‘Stand aside,’ said Nijel, loftily. ‘I will go first.’

‘There could be traps-’ said Conina doubtfully. She shot the Seriph a glance.

‘Oh, probably, O gazelle of Heaven,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been in there since I was six. There were some slabs you shouldn’t tread on, I think.’

‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Nijel, peering into the gloom of the tunnel. ‘I shouldn’t think there’s a booby trap that I couldn’t spot.’

‘Had a lot of experience at this sort of thing, have you?’ said Rincewind sourly.

‘Well, I know Chapter Fourteen off by heart. It had illustrations,’ said Nijel, and ducked into the shadows.

They waited for several minutes in what would have been a horrified hush if it wasn’t for the muffled grunts and occasional thumping noises from the tunnel. Eventually Nijel’s voice echoed back down to them from a distance.

‘There’s absolutely nothing,’ he said. ‘I’ve tried everything. It’s as steady as a rock. Everything must have seized up, or something.’

Rincewind and Conina exchanged glances.

‘He doesn’t know the first thing about traps,’ she said. ‘When I was five, my father made me walk all the way down a passage that he’d rigged up, just to teach me-’

‘He got through, didn’t he?’ said Rincewind.

There was a noise like a damp finger dragged across glass, but amplified a billion times, and the floor shook.

‘Anyway, we haven’t got a lot of choice,’ he added, and ducked into the tunnel. The others followed him. Many people who had got to know Rincewind had come to treat him as a sort of two-legged miner’s canary[20] and tended to assume that if Rincewind was still upright and not actually running then some hope remained.

‘This is fun,’ said Creosote. ‘Me, robbing my own treasury. If I catch myself I can have myself flung into the snake pit.’

‘But you could throw yourself on your mercy,’ said Conina, running a paranoid eye over the dusty stonework.

‘Oh, no. I think I would have to teach me a lesson, as an example to myself.’

There was a little click above them. A small slab slid aside and a rusty metal hook descended slowly and jerkily. Another bar creaked out of the wall and tapped Rincewind on the shoulder. As he swung around, the first hook hung a yellowing notice on his back and retracted into the roof.

‘What’d it do? What’d it do?’ screamed Rincewind, trying to read his own shoulderblades.

‘It says, Kick Me,’ said Conina.

A section of wall slid up beside the petrified wizard. A large boot on the end of a complicated series of metal joints gave a half-hearted wobble and then the whole thing snapped at the knee.

The three of them looked at it in silence. Then Conina said, ‘We’re dealing here with a warped brain, I can tell.’

Rincewind gingerly unhooked the sign and let it drop. Conina pushed past him and stalked along the passage with an air of angry caution, and when a metal hand extended itself on a spring and waggled in a friendly fashion she didn’t shake it but instead traced its moulting wiring to a couple of corroded electrodes in a big glass jar.

‘Your grandad was a man with a sense of humour?’ she said.

‘Oh, yes. Always liked a chuckle,’ said Creosote.

‘Oh, good,’ said Conina. She prodded gingerly at a flagstone which, to Rincewind, looked no different to any of its fellows. With a sad little springy noise a moulting feather duster wobbled out of the wall at armpit height.

‘I think I would have quite liked to meet the old Seriph,’ she said, through gritted teeth, ‘although not to shake him by the hand. You’d better give me a leg up here, wizard.’

‘Pardon?’

Conina pointed irritably to a half-open stone doorway just ahead of them.

‘I want to look up there,’ she said. ‘You just put your hands together for me to stand on, right? How do you manage to be so useless?’

‘Being useful always gets me into trouble,’ muttered Rincewind, trying to ignore the warm flesh brushing against his nose.

He could hear her rooting around above the door.

‘I thought so,’ she said.

‘What is it? Fiendishly sharp spears poised to drop?’