#poison ivy. these things all pale in comparison to her beauty

[iknowwhereyousleepatnight]

ngl i’ve grown incredibly fond of the poison ivy that’s taken like a third of the house. like she’s ruining the gutters and shit but i love her

[learnhowtocreatemusic]

9 Expert Tips for Writing Songs with Vivid Imagery to Enhance Your Lyrics

Crafting lyrics that resonate deeply with listeners often relies on the power of vivid imagery. When your lyrics evoke strong mental pictures and emotions, you create a connection that leaves a lasting impact. Enhance your lyrics with rich imagery will not only enhance your storytelling but also adds depth and texture to your music.

Here are nine expert tips to help you write songs with vivid imagery that will elevate your lyrics to a whole new level:

1. **Show, Don’t Tell**

Instead of telling your audience how someone feels or what’s happening, show it through descriptive details. For example, instead of saying “I’m sad,” paint a picture of that sadness: “The rain taps on my window, mirroring the tears on my face.” This allows the listener to feel the emotion without you directly stating it.

- **Example**: “The sun sets in shades of crimson, the night crawls in, silent and cold.”

2. **Use All Five Senses**

Engage your listener by writing lyrics that incorporate all five senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. The more senses you evoke, the more immersive your lyrics become.

- **Sight**: Describe colors, light, or visual details.

- **Sound**: Use auditory details like echoes, whispers, or the sound of a bustling city.

- **Smell**: Mention scents, like fresh-cut grass or perfume.

- **Taste**: Reference the bitterness of coffee or the sweetness of a kiss.

- **Touch**: Include textures, such as soft skin or the rough bark of a tree.

By engaging the senses, your lyrics become a multisensory experience for your listeners.

3. **Use Metaphors and Similes**

Metaphors and similes are powerful tools for creating vivid imagery in songs. A metaphor directly compares two things, while a simile uses "like" or "as" to make a comparison. These literary devices allow you to express emotions and ideas in a more colorful and creative way.

- **Metaphor example**: “Her voice was a thunderstorm, crashing through my mind.”

- **Simile example**: “His words were like poison, seeping through my veins.”

These comparisons help paint a richer picture of the feelings or actions you want to express.

4. **Be Specific with Your Details**

General statements can feel bland, but specific details bring your lyrics to life. Instead of “a car,” write “a rusted red pickup,” or instead of “a house,” write “a creaky old Victorian with ivy climbing the walls.” The more specific your imagery, the more memorable and impactful your lyrics will be.

- **Example**: Instead of saying “a beautiful flower,” say “a wild sunflower swaying in the golden afternoon breeze.”

The specificity allows listeners to clearly picture what you’re describing.

5. **Create a Mood with Colors**

Color is a great way to convey emotions and set the tone of your song. Each color evokes certain feelings—blue for sadness, red for passion, yellow for happiness, and so on. Incorporating colors into your lyrics can help guide your listeners’ emotions and create a more vivid picture.

- **Example**: “The pale blue sky was a mirror of my lonely heart.”

Colors instantly create associations and emotional responses, making your lyrics more vibrant.

6. **Use Active Verbs**

Active verbs add movement and energy to your lyrics, making the imagery feel more alive. Instead of passive, static language, focus on dynamic words that push the song forward.

- **Example**: Instead of “the tree stood still,” say “the branches swayed and danced in the wind.”

Active verbs like “racing,” “whispering,” and “crashing” will give your lyrics a sense of momentum and life.

7. **Incorporate Contrasting Images**

Sometimes contrasting imagery can make your lyrics stand out. Pairing opposing images, like fire and ice or light and dark, creates tension and intrigue, enhancing the emotional depth of your song.

- **Example**: “Her smile was warm, but her eyes were cold as ice.”

This contrast keeps listeners engaged and gives them something to think about, adding complexity to your lyrics.

8. **Draw from Personal Experiences**

Some of the most vivid imagery comes from real-life experiences. Think about moments in your life when you felt strong emotions—what did the world around you look, sound, or feel like? Drawing on personal memories can help you create more authentic and vivid imagery in your lyrics.

- **Example**: “I remember the crackle of the campfire and the smell of burning wood as the stars flickered overhead.”

Your personal connection to these images will make them feel more genuine and relatable.

9. **Use Symbolism to Enhance Meaning**

Symbolism can give your lyrics a deeper meaning beyond the literal words. Symbols like the moon, water, or the seasons often carry emotional weight and universal meanings. By using symbols in your songwriting, you can convey complex ideas and emotions with simple imagery.

- **Example**: “The autumn leaves fell like memories, fading with each breath of wind.”

Symbols create layers of meaning and invite listeners to interpret your song in their own way.

Conclusion

Writing lyrics with vivid imagery transforms a simple song into an immersive experience for the listener. By incorporating the techniques of showing rather than telling, engaging the senses, using metaphors, and drawing from personal experiences, you can create powerful, emotionally charged lyrics that resonate deeply. The key is to paint a picture in the listener's mind, allowing them to not just hear the music, but to feel and visualize the world you're creating.

Take these expert tips and start experimenting with imagery in your songwriting. Soon, your lyrics will captivate your audience and make a lasting impression.

[sunshinewhale]

an oxeye daisy

he loves me, he loves me not.

pairing: minhyuk x reader  pov: unnamed reader, second person, mostly past tense

genre: angst  word vomit: ~2800

warnings: i’m just writing the same stuff in different words and different situations. lol.

notes: not proofread. i was trying to do something small and short and quick but it turned into a monster. this was only supposed to be ~500 words.

Autumn wind caresses your skin with soft chills, but it pales in comparison to the frozen wasteland in your empty chest. It’s numb. The playground before you is flowing with youth and joyful screams of delight. It’s not as contagious as you thought it would be.

A child comes up to you. She clutches a tangled garden of flowers in her chubby hands, and specks of dirt glitter on her dress coat. Shyly, she offers one out to you. Your numbness thaws a little at the way her small baby fingers are clumsy and unpracticed.

You smile and thank her, taking the flower by the stem. You twirl it in your fingers and tell her it’s pretty and that she’s even prettier. The child beams with unrestrained glee and runs back towards the playground with a bounce in her steps.

Your sight focuses on the flower again, and it’s anything but pretty.

It’s withering. The stem is crumpled and bent horribly out of shape. The petals are carelessly smushed, discoloured and ruined at the tips. It was well on the way to death’s door before it was unearthed from its roots in the name of childish innocence.

A wild wave of nostalgia overcomes you. You wish you could to return to the honeyed fairy tales of childhood, when you didn’t understand how something as good and pure as love could ruthlessly maim beating hearts.

You run your finger over the wispy petals, and gingerly pluck one off.

He loves me.

And another.

He loves me not.

Another.

He loves me.

Minhyuk burst into your life on a somber spring day. He had carried the sun on his shoulders like he was meant to illuminate your starless sky.

You were strangers, then. At best, friends of friends, though you weren’t really sure what Kihyun considered Minhyuk to be.

That didn’t stop him.

He was so alight with life. He glowed with the watercolours of sunrise and the universe seemed to bloom into existence under his fingertips. He chattered on about anything and everything, weaving a unique melody of thrill and mischief that tickled your ears. The world excited him, the ordinary amazed him, and he wanted to share his exhilaration with you. It was annoying, but it was so annoyingly endearing.

“You don’t understand! Listen to me,” he said breathlessly, wonderstruck and awe thrumming in his voice. “We’re in such a boundless galaxy with years and years of history and look! We’ve meet here, in the same time and at the same place! That’s a miracle in itself! Wouldn’t it be such a shame if we don’t become friends?”

You remember feeling something in your wary heart stir, for the first time. Minhyuk had made a mere crack at the edge of your steel fortress, but it was enough for a trickle of his warmth to seep through and reach the slumbering eros beneath.

He loves me not.

Sworn to secrecy under the velvet moon, he confided that you weren’t exactly his type. Not that he really had a type, he hurried to explain, because types are such an inflexible concept and everyone is worth loving anyway, but he was furiously drawn to people who painted their souls vividly with emotion and wore vulnerability like golden armour.

You wore it like weakness.

He had thought you were solid diamond. Almost too unapproachable, too stiff, too aloof, too alike Kihyun. The lover in him ached, throbbing at the far distance you had withdrawn into yourself. He wanted to show you the magic the world hid in plain sight, but he had only meant to become your friend. He had a difficult time with guarded hearts that refused to flower in the sincerity of spring.

He loves me.

But then, he confessed, he saw how he made you smile for the first time, so silently sweet because you thought he wasn’t watching, and he fell just a little bit in love. He coaxed you to laugh for the first time and he fell a little bit harder. His heart swelled to the heavens and it couldn’t decide between skipping beats or beating faster when he began to realize how effortless your smiles and your laughter came for him, and only for him. Like the North star dazzling amongst billions of other identical stars, he felt so, so special.

One day, he watched you as your eyes hooked onto him in a sea of strangers. He watched as your face lit up in an indescribable, iridescent glow and the way your lips smoothly curled upwards in unrestrained beauty, and he fell completely, utterly, hopelessly.

“It was so enchanting, I couldn’t control it at all,” he breathed love against your lips, “I thought, we were definitely meant to be more than friends. I yearned to become yours.”

You placed your fingers over the heat of his heart, and you traced your name on his moonlit skin, as if you were searing it into memory.

“Is this mine, then?”

“Only yours,” he took your hand into his, and kissed his declaration into your soul as the night and all its stars bore witness, “and don’t you dare give it back.”

He loves me not.

You had hardened the outer layers of your heart into stone because you wanted to protect yourself against the dangers of unbridled passion, of loving and being loved in return. Minhyuk had given himself to you in sweet surrender, but you were reluctant to throw yourself in wholly. Just the very idea of loving entirely, emotionally, unconditionally, had always been difficult for you.

But Minhyuk made it so ridiculously easy.

He settled into your daily life as naturally as the sun rose at dawn and set at dusk. Whale-shaped cushions made themselves home on your couch, another coffee mug in the kitchen, an extra toothbrush in the bathroom. You fell into silken bedsheets with him each night, and you woke up to his handsomeness each morning. You were budding, bountiful and bright, allowing your roots to tangle with his as you bloomed thornless red roses and white ivy without poison.

You had stars in your eyes, and you were drowning in everything about Minhyuk.

His adorable uneven blink. The husky pitch of his voice. The precious crinkles of his eyes. The puppy-like curve of his smile. His large, warm hands.

His laughter was pure sunshine after the rain. He kissed like fresh dewdrops sparkling on the grass during sunrise, and embraced you securely like the way the summer sea hugged the horizon. His silly antics brightened even the bleakest of your days, and you’ve never felt so saturated with colour.

Minhyuk almost had you entirely. Almost. You were barely able to hold a small part of yourself back, but your sanity demanded you to do it. It was your last line of defence, your last hope before the ground underneath you gave way to raw vulnerability. It was small enough that it would’ve been inconsequential, but like everything else about you, he had noticed.

“You’re so enduringly careful, so cautious,” he asked into the dim light of the rising morning, “have you been hurt before?”

You tensed. Your shoulders curled into yourself out of defense, and unconsciously, you turned away from him slightly.

“No, but I’m afraid of being hurt. My heart is weak, and if I hurt I will shatter and I won’t know how to pick up the pieces and put myself back together,” your half-whispers had barely sounded in the soft silence, “that makes me afraid of you, too.”

He pulled you into his arms to unravel you, to undo the insecure knots you had wound yourself into. Minhyuk touched his forehead against yours, patiently coaxing you to look at him, and with little resistance, you locked onto his unwavering gaze.

You had nearly forgotten how to breathe.

His pupils were crystal clear and unbearably sincere. You saw endless love reflected in them, and then, you saw yourself.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” he sweared, and his voice promised you eternity, “I’ll be careful, too. I won’t hurt you.”

He paused, body stilling. His eyes widened round, like he suddenly had a life-changing revelation.

“Oh my god, I would even eat a cucumber for you.”

Minhyuk had made a face, his nose scrunched in disgust as if the very thought of eating the cursed vegetable brought him pain. You remember your fear washing away into the unknowns of the ocean, genuine fondness bubbling in its place as you promised you would never subject him to such cruelty.

He loves me.

Without even trying, he left his traces on your forever.

He was the love you dreamed about in childish fantasies, the one that lived in every fairytale and every myth, every legend. The love that made mere mortals defy gods, destroyed kings and brought great empires to war and to fall into ruin. He was the love that made miracles that you could never even imagine, happen.

And miracle, he did. Minhyuk made quick work and smoothly demolished down every last barrier that shielded your heart from the world. He didn’t leave a single brick behind in his wake. Your heart was beating naked on your sleeve, bearing his name in bolded love letters.

Your heart was so in bliss you could barely contain yourself.

“I was so reserved, Minhyuk, wasn’t it hard? I think I was hard to love.”

He chuckled at your query, a mischievous glint in his laughter as he teased, “I’m not going to lie, you’re still a little hard to love. I’m amazing, I know.”

You pouted, and amusement shook his shoulders. Adoration oozed from his entire being as he patted your cheek like he was consoling a spoiled child, but the slight scrunch of his brow told you he was giving it some serious thought.

“It was a little hard, but the hardest thing was convincing you to let me love you. Compared to that, loving you came so, so easily.”

He cradled your face as if he was holding the most precious treasure in his hands. His eyes lowered as his voice grew tender, “but you know, when I saw the beginnings of love in your eyes, I knew it was worth everything. “

“You’re worth everything,” he repeated, and his lips found yours.

He loves me not.

Spring came to an end. Spring always came to an end.

On the water’s surface, there wasn’t a single flaw. Stars never stopped twinkling in your eyes whenever you caught his gaze, and you were constantly a crisp reflection in his. Kihyun had begun to joke about being invited to your summer wedding. Minhyuk was beyond delighted that someone else saw you so clearly in his future, and you took the idea as naturally as the changing season. Love firmly rooted you two together, and in unending selflessness, both of you would do anything for each other.

Maybe, there were warning signs hanging in the air all along, like small ripples that sailors paid no mind. Maybe, the hazy promises of love had made you two both willfully blind.

Minhyuk was the perfect child of fate and destiny, and you were the other side of the coin, ingrained in choice and chances. His heart was big and his love limitless, he gave too much and at times, it felt too intense. There was too much to bear. On your worst days, you wanted him to give less, to meet your needs halfway and give you a chance to breathe. You didn’t mind suffocating in his soul, but you were new in your steps and you had just learned to trust yourself in the hands of another. For you, this territory was unfamiliar, still strangely foreign. He mistook that for doubt because you didn’t feel secure enough in his embrace, so he gave you even more.

Maybe, that was your downfall.

He loves me.

You knew Minhyuk would never leave you because he had promised you forever, and that was simply an absolute truth. Every last cell in his body was willing to follow you in eternal vow, everything else be damned.

You are worth everything, his words had echoed in your mind.

No matter what Minhyuk thought, you weren’t everything. 

You couldn’t be everything. 

So beneath, the current was turbulent. In a book of relationships, there was a page you two just couldn’t agree on. He continued to pour his love onto you until his veins were dry and his pulse was weak with exhaustion, and he still insisted it wasn’t enough. Because you understood Minhyuk and his good intentions, you let his love fill you until it ached raw and wounded. You readily endured it even though the fullness bruised you, the blood underneath your skin silently screaming too much.

Like a sluggish toxin, love’s name gradually became weary and loving put a heavy strain on both of you. However much you and Minhyuk were willing, you knew it wasn’t right. The flowers of your roses began to wilt, but the vines thrived, growing sharp thorns. Your ivy buds shrivelled, feeding sickeningly sweet poison instead of honey nectar.

You knew, then.

When the sun dipped below the skyline and it began raining on the last day of spring, you murdered his beating heart.

“We’ve been trying too hard, Minhyuk, maybe we’re meant to just be friends.”

Your eyes had already been wet before the words even left you. Fear settled into the lines of his face as he reached out for you, to console you, to hold you and deny you of what he knew you intended to do. He tucked your head into the curve of his neck, and his fingers curled into you desperately like you would disappear if he let you go.

The comfort of his warmth broke you, and in a shuddering breath, you grieved in his arms. Your tears burned stains into his skin, and in an instant, you felt new wetness that didn’t belong to you.

“No, no, no, don’t cry,” his voice cracked, and his hands shook as they cradled your face, “you can’t cry because of me.”

Then Minhyuk had cried too, until his eyes turned bloodshot and his throat was hoarse with heartbreak.

“I love you,” he sobbed, “I’m sorry I ended up hurting you, I’m sorry I wasn’t careful enough, I’m so sorry—”

“You were careful. You didn’t hurt me. Maybe, it just hurts to love, but I chose to love you regardless,” you kissed his watery eyelids and ignored the sting of fresh tears at the back of your eyes, “I know you’ve been hurting too. We did our best.”

The sound of his weeping heart rang in your ears. It didn’t want to let go, and in all the truths of the universe, neither did you. 

One of the truths deafened you to his pain, gripped your hand and forced you to go.

What you want isn’t always what you need, the truth had said, what he wants isn’t always what he needs.

Minhyuk had promised he would never hurt you, and it was you that made him a liar.

He loves me not.

You had blinked, and autumn arrived at your doorstep.

Your life seems even bleaker than when you first met him. Your vision is colourless and your eyes cannot adjust to the vibrancy of the warm tones of harvest. All you can think of are of wilted leaves, barren trees, and dying flowers that have been robbed of too much time.

The skies are thick with cloudy misery, and the mornings are starting to darken into longer nights. You hardly see sunlight on the sidewalk, nowadays.

Even if it’s somewhere else, you hope the sun is still shining.

He loves me.

You hope he’s alright. 

You hope the gaping wound you left him as a parting gift has healed.

He loves me not.

You hope he has his head held high and he’s found light and life in autumn.

He loves me.

(He deserves to be happy, more than anyone else.)

He loves me not—

Your fingers tremble.

There’s a single petal remaining, limply hanging on the flower in your hands.

He loves me.

Bitterness claws up your throat and you can’t help but smile dryly at the cruelness of the universe. Familiar wetness stings your eyes and you breathe away the urge to cry.

You’ve should’ve known better than to think just loving would be enough.

The petals scattered at your feet look like fragmented pieces of memories from your spring. You watch as the autumn breeze picks up and carries them away.

You crouch down and carelessly cover the flower and the lone petal with loose earth. You bury Minhyuk and his starry kisses and sunlit smiles. You bury the what ifs and the maybes and the it could have beens.

It doesn’t matter, anymore.

His shattered heart is already six feet under.

[shachaai]

[Ficlet] ki** me quickly

Short fem!fruk, born of me flipping through a fashion magazine whilst bored and snorting at the latest trends in British make-up styles.

   With the yellow, the blue eye-cream is too bright, France decides, tilting her head just so to regard her face in the dressing table’s mirror. Not too bold - she has boldness in armfuls -, but not suited for her complexion at this time of year; the lighting, it washes strange over the warm cream of her skin. Her people are still into blending out their eyeshadow, and the smoky effect on her lids always makes her blue eyes beneath all the more arresting. The blue eye-cream with its yellow contrast is for affront, for alarming, for the pale waifish or dark buxom beauties of the world who want the pop-out scream of pop art.

“Darling,” France says, and tips her head back at one of those pale waifs of contemplation, the woman whose dressing table France is currently raiding out of boredom, “you’re going very seventies again lately, aren’t you? I feel terribly glam rock.”

“You don’t have the haircut,” England informs her blandly, not even bothering to look up at France from where she is sitting cross-legged on her bed and mending a pair of trousers. On a pretty floral duvet without even a hint of sharp glitter in the air. Who is she right now to criticise any French glam rock tendencies? “Try the hippie look instead; if you’re off your face I can dump you at your embassy and get some peace and quiet.”

“Salope,” says France cheerfully, and throws the closed tube of yellow eye-cream at her. If England will insist on following France around the house because she refuses to leave France unsupervised - especially in her bedroom. England is still terribly hung-up about that one time (or ten) that France had managed to dispose of almost the entirety of England’s wardrobe when she had gotten into it alone -, France is going to use her as occasional target practice.

“Pétasse,” England retorts in precisely the same tone, and bats the eye-cream off her lap where it has landed on the trousers. “If you make a mess, you get to do the cleaning.”

“You are a terrible hostess,” France huffs, and reaches for England’s face-wipes. They’re not even nice face-wipes; what has the great Nation of France been reduced to? If she has a break-out because of England’s awful choices in facial cleansers she’ll strike. In the kitchen. “I am already cooking for you, and now you’d have me clean for you too?”

“Did I invite you?” England grumbles back at her, head bowed over her sewing again in the way France knows will make England complain about the crick in her neck later. (A shame, it does lovely things for her aesthetically.) “I didn’t invite you. Not to cook, and not here in general.”

France sniffs, concentrating on wiping off the eye-cream on her face. “Your cooking would poison us both, and I am far too beautiful to starve.”

“If you wish to be murdered in another fashion, I’d be happy to oblige.”

“As ever, your charitable spirit is shining.” France turns at the dressing table so she can dramatically point her finger at her English hostess. “If any of my deaths suffer from indignity because of you, I will haunt your tea cupboard, ma lapine, you see if I don’t.”

England just smirks at her, slow and wicked. “Shouldn’t that be, if any more of your deaths suffer indignity because of me?”

France throws the tube of blue eye-cream at her as well, if only because the balled-up used face-wipe she’d thrown before it flutters rather pathetically to the floor three inches away from her own seat. She turns her back on England when England’s smirk turns unsufferable, sniffing some more and, eye-cream now removed, going back to raiding England’s other make-up with abandon.

More specifically, England’s lipstick, which currently appears to range from the cute rosebud colour England only ever wears when she’s being delicate and trying to make people forget she has a viper’s tongue, through deep wine burgundy and a strange and almost untouched side-foray into robin’s egg blue, all the way up to an unashamed crimson that’s just a shade off the lipstick France herself prefers when she’s supposed to be sparkling at another politician’s tedious dinner. The last time France can recall England wearing the crimson, America had tripped over his own feet and taken out a buffet table on the way down.

France goes for the buffet table-killer.

The look this season is less painting between defined lines and more sexily smudged, so France parts her lips to paint millimetres inside the natural line with the very point of the lipstick. England can line her eyes with a pencil, mirror-less and on a moving bus, but France has always preferred those options that are least likely to end with her maiming herself with make-up. (Do not ask her how she can maim herself with lipstick: it is England’s lipstick, and if anyone’s lipstick could manage such a feat, it is definitely England’s.)

Past here, France should smudge the lipstick outwards with her fingertip - but she hardly wants to be wiping crimson lipstick off of her hands. The darker shades always stick rather stubbornly.

“Angleterre,” France slides around in her seat, smiling bright and shamelessly dazzling as she extends a palm to England, “do come here?”

In the way of all her people in the face of a superior culture, England stubbornly refuses to be dazzled, looking up from her sewing to squint rather suspiciously instead. “Why?”

“Because you should take a break before your spine protests, and your assistance right now would be invaluable. Come, come.” France makes grabby hands, determined to have her way despite England’s innate intractability. Wild things once tamed are easiest to tame again - with patience. “À moi.”

Perhaps bored of sewing, perhaps seeing the logic of France’s argument, perhaps allowing her streak of sentimentalism to surface long enough to make her biddable, England actually puts aside the trousers she is working on and unfolds herself from the bed. She enters France’s orbit with the same light dangerous tread as a cat, and France reels her in with a hand on her wrist to bring England between her thighs.

England regards her warily from above, and France sighs at her. “You are a terribly distrustful creature, ma belle. I could be hurt.”

“Experience gives me good cause.” England takes her hand back from France’s grip, ignoring the artful moue of French discontent - and places both her hands either side of France’s jaw, her fingertips pressing lightly into the delicate skin to tilt France’s head better in the light. “You’re trying a new look?”

Pleased by the attention and happily preening, France flutters her eyelashes. “Fashion is the art of reinvention.”

England snorts at her. “Snakes regularly shed their skins.”

Outraged at the comparison, France pointedly jabs England in the sides for that - if England were anyone else, France would have pinched her hips for that, but England has so little flesh spare on all her pointiest edges; it is so unfair -, taking advantage of the half-jump- squeak that gets her and pulling England down onto a seat on one of her thighs.

Perched like a grumpy cat, England frowns. “Frog, I don’t see how this lends you any assistance -”

France kisses her. It is a deliberately hard and messy thing, unbalancing England enough that her hand flies up to grab France’s shoulder to steady herself before she topples to the floor and takes the dressing table beside them with her, her nails digging in through France’s shirt. The other hand pulls harsh at France’s hair, a claw that will drag France down if England goes down first, but England’s chin is tipped up into the kiss, rough and hungry, and her chapped lips move over France’s smoother ones eagerly, not just willing.

“You will give me friction burns,” France murmurs, hot and close between their mouths, her head alight with England’s sharp hold on her, the sharper look levelled on her face from underneath England’s dark golden lashes. Ivy in green and yellow: autumn and England, moving through its shades.

“You would deserve them,” England murmurs back to her, pressing her lips carelessly to the corner of France’s mouth to give them an inch to breath. “I have a perfectly serviceable bed, right over there, that you could have come across and joined me on.”

France tuts. “Before my make-up was done? I had to finish applying it first.”

“Oh?” England pulls back a little further to regard her face curiously, and France steadies her again so England does not topple down on top of the scattered paraphernalia on the dressing table. England’s hand leaves France’s hair, curves around her jaw enough so that her thumb can gently swipe across the swell of France’s lower lip. The lipstick must be smudged now, because there is certainly a pretty enough crimson stain on England’s mouth. “Oh. You’ll have to begin again.”

“Not at all,” France demurs, and looks over England’s shoulder at her own reflection in the mirror. Yes, the lipstick has smudged rather beautifully, and France looks half-ravished and kiss-swollen even without a pout. Ardour has always suited her: France preens, and England’s expression rapidly morphs from humouring commiseration to realisation to exasperated self-disgust. (It’s a good as look as the make-up.) “Apparently the lipstick look this season is just-been-kissed.”