#probably my last one for today folks!

[noodleblade]

give us some thoughts on our boy smokescreen

I will always talk about my bestest boy.

He's really bad at video games, especially racing games. Bee is a natural at them and Smokescreen cannot stand it. I'm not saying he has gamer rage but like...after a few too many times in last place he will offer to go on patrol to spin his wheels.

He picked his new paint color because it looked rad. Totally not because Optimus is also blue. That'd be a little ridiculous. It's not because of Optimus but isn't it kind of neat they like match now...ahah.

Smokescreen had ingested human food. Multiple times. Each time he does it he had to sheepishly come up to Ratchet a few hours later and ask for his help to remove it before it gunks up his inner systems. No matter how many times Ratchet tells him he cannot eat chili dogs and cotton candy Smokescreen somehow gets tempted by one of the kids. Its a nightmare.

He can speedread. At first, Arcee and Ratchet are convinced he's just not reading the reports and is pretending he did so they test him. When he passes, they are still suspicious and start sneaking stupid little things into the reports to see if he catches them. Smokescreen thinks this is all very funny so he doesn't mention their little mess ups which only infuriates them further. It takes both of them....an extremely long time to realize he just reads fast.

Smokescreen's idol complex is not exclusive to Optimus and when he learns about Ultra Magnus being the leader of the wreckers, he immediately looks up every single report and has a small period where he idolizes and follows him around. Wheeljack and Bulkhead think this is the funniest thing and may exaggerate some of the stories to see how long it takes Ultra Magnus to tell the kid to stop. In the meantime, Ultra Magnus is just confused why he can't walk ten feet into base without Smokescreen at his heels, asking him 1 million questions.

[non-un-topo]

All it takes is a wee little nightmare to make you too scared to step foot outside for fear of Bad Things happening, like it’s an omen lol

[lynxfrost13]

Workout update !! Damn the schedule >:(

[yu3s]

* not restarting my animal crossing island or redecorating it but a secret third thing

[why-animals-do-the-thing]

average United States contains 1000s of pet tigers in backyards" factoid actualy [sic] just statistical error. average person has 0 tigers on property. Activist Georg, who lives the U.S. Capitol & makes up over 10,000 each day, has purposefully been spreading disinformation adn [sic] should not have been counted

I have a big mad today, folks. It's a really frustrating one, because years worth of work has been validated... but the reason for that fucking sucks.

For almost a decade, I've been trying to fact-check the claim that there "are 10,000 to 20,000 pet tigers/big cats in backyards in the United States." I talked to zoo, sanctuary, and private cat people; I looked at legislation, regulation, attack/death/escape incident rates; I read everything I could get my hands on. None of it made sense. None of it lined up. I couldn't find data supporting anything like the population of pet cats being alleged to exist. Some of you might remember the series I published on those findings from 2018 or so under the hashtag #CrouchingTigerHiddenData. I've continued to work on it in the six years since, including publishing a peer reviewed study that counted all the non-pet big cats in the US (because even though they're regulated, apparently nobody bothered to keep track of those either).

I spent years of my life obsessing over that statistic because it was being used to push for new federal legislation that, while well intentioned, contained language that would, and has, created real problems for ethical facilities that have big cats. I wrote a comprehensive - 35 page! - analysis of the issues with the then-current version of the Big Cat Public Safety Act in 2020. When the bill was first introduced to Congress in 2013, a lot of groups promoted it by fear mongering: there's so many pet tigers! they could be hidden around every corner! they could escape and attack you! they could come out of nowhere and eat your children!! Tiger King exposed the masses to the idea of "thousands of abused backyard big cats": as a result the messaging around the bill shifted to being welfare-focused, and the law passed in 2022.

The Big Cat Public Safety Act created a registry, and anyone who owned a private cat and wanted to keep it had to join. If they did, they could keep the animal until it passed, as long as they followed certain strictures (no getting more, no public contact, etc). Don’t register and get caught? Cat is seized and major punishment for you. Registering is therefore highly incentivized. That registry closed in June of 2023, and you can now get that registration data via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Guess how many pet big cats were registered in the whole country?

97.

Not tens of thousands. Not thousands. Not even triple digits. 97.

And that isn't even the right number! Ten USDA licensed facilities registered erroneously. That accounts for 55 of 97 animals. Which leaves us with 42 pet big cats, of all species, in the entire country.

Now, I know that not everyone may have registered. There's probably someone living deep in the woods somewhere with their illegal pet cougar, and there's been at least one random person in Texas arrested for trying to sell a cub since the law passed. But - and here's the big thing - even if there are ten times as many hidden cats than people who registered them - that's nowhere near ten thousand animals. Obviously, I had some questions.

Guess what? Turns out, this is because it was never real. That huge number never had data behind it, wasn't likely to be accurate, and the advocacy groups using that statistic to fearmonger and drive their agenda knew it... and didn't see a problem with that.

Allow me to introduce you to an article published last week.

This article is good. (Full disclose, I'm quoted in it). It's comprehensive and fairly written, and they did their due diligence reporting and fact-checking the piece. They talked to a lot of people on all sides of the story.

But thing that really gets me?

Multiple representatives from major advocacy organizations who worked on the Big Cat Publix Safety Act told the reporter that they knew the statistics they were quoting weren't real. And that they don't care. The end justifies the means, the good guys won over the bad guys, that's just how lobbying works after all. They're so blase about it, it makes my stomach hurt. Let me pull some excerpts from the quotes.

"Whatever the true number, nearly everyone in the debate acknowledges a disparity between the actual census and the figures cited by lawmakers. “The 20,000 number is not real,” said Bill Nimmo, founder of Tigers in America. (...) For his part, Nimmo at Tigers in America sees the exaggerated figure as part of the political process. Prior to the passage of the bill, he said, businesses that exhibited and bred big cats juiced the numbers, too. (...) “I’m not justifying the hyperbolic 20,000,” Nimmo said. “In the world of comparing hyperbole, the good guys won this one.”

"Michelle Sinnott, director and counsel for captive animal law enforcement at the PETA Foundation, emphasized that the law accomplished what it was set out to do. (...) Specific numbers are not what really matter, she said: “Whether there’s one big cat in a private home or whether there’s 10,000 big cats in a private home, the underlying problem of industry is still there.”"

I have no problem with a law ending the private ownership of big cats, and with ending cub petting practices. What I do have a problem with is that these organizations purposefully spread disinformation for years in order to push for it. By their own admission, they repeatedly and intentionally promoted false statistics within Congress. For a decade.

No wonder it never made sense. No wonder no matter where I looked, I couldn't figure out how any of these groups got those numbers, why there was never any data to back any of the claims up, why everything I learned seemed to actively contradict it. It was never real. These people decided the truth didn't matter. They knew they had no proof, couldn't verify their shocking numbers... and they decided that was fine, if it achieved the end they wanted.

So members of the public - probably like you, reading this - and legislators who care about big cats and want to see legislation exist to protect them? They got played, got fed false information through a TV show designed to tug at heartstrings, and it got a law through Congress that's causing real problems for ethical captive big cat management. The 20,000 pet cat number was too sexy - too much of a crisis - for anyone to want to look past it and check that the language of the law wouldn't mess things up up for good zoos and sanctuaries. Whoops! At least the "bad guys" lost, right? (The problems are covered somewhat in the article linked, and I'll go into more details in a future post. You can also read my analysis from 2020, linked up top.)

Now, I know. Something something something facts don't matter this much in our post-truth era, stop caring so much, that's just how politics work, etc. I’m sorry, but no. Absolutely not.

Laws that will impact the welfare of living animals must be crafted carefully, thoughtfully, and precisely in order to ensure they achieve their goals without accidental negative impacts. We have a duty of care to ensure that. And in this case, the law also impacts reservoir populations for critically endangered species! We can't get those back if we mess them up. So maybe, just maybe, if legislators hadn't been so focused on all those alleged pet cats, the bill could have been written narrowly and precisely.

But the minutiae of regulatory impacts aren't sexy, and tiger abuse and TV shows about terrible people are. We all got misled, and now we're here, and the animals in good facilities are already paying for it.

I don't have a conclusion. I'm just mad. The public deserves to know the truth about animal legislation they're voting for, and I hope we all call on our legislators in the future to be far more critical of the data they get fed.

[respectissexy]

If you are not on Twitter but are interested in what's going on with Elon Musk's Twitter, never fear, I am back as your Twitter Correspondent.

So, on Thursday, 4/20, Elon removed all the "legacy verified" blue checks. That means that if you are, say, Taylor Swift or the Pope, and you have a blue checkmark because you have proven you identity and want to avoid being impersonated, that check mark went away unless you paid the $8 to subscribe to Twitter Blue.

The assumption was clearly that, despite all their blustering, when push came to shove the power users would nut up and pay for it, if only to avoid their fans being scammed using their likeness.

That didn't happen. As of 4/21, only weirdo Elon stans had blue checks. Those stans immediately got mad, because they had intended to purchase access to an exclusive club, and all the cool kids left as soon as they arrived.

To make matters worse for Elon, several influential shitposters began posting about #BlockTheBlue, a movement to block all paid Twitter bluechecks, and some even released scripts that would automatically block all bluecheck accounts for you.

However, some people retained their blue checks who swore they hadn't paid for them -- in particular, Stephen King and LeBron James, who had tweeted that they would refuse to pay.

Elon admitted that he had paid for these users' blue checks out of his own pocket. Is he trolling? Is it a weird simp move? Hard to say.

Now, as of 4/22, a whole mess of famous people have bluechecks who aren't paying for them. This seems to be a move to confound the automated Block The Blue scripts. Lil Nas X is tweeting angrily about how he doesn't want his blue check. People are speculating that a new policy has been silently rolled out to automatically assign a blue check to every user with over 1 million followers. Several people have pointed out that this amounts to false endorsement, i.e. implying falsely that a notable person uses or endorses your product without their permission, which is a crime. Blue checks have been posthumously assigned to Anthony Bourdain and Terry Pratchett, whose estates my money is on to be the ones to actually sue.

dril, famous shitposter and Block The Blue promoter, keeps being assigned a blue check as an apparent punishment for crossing Elon, but you can lose your blue check by changing your display name. (It seems really wild to tie the blue check to the display name and not use the username, but it became necessary after the era where all those legacy verified folks unleashed their inner Jaboukie and changed their display names to Elon Musk. As recently as last month a legacy verified user with 100k followers got banned for impersonating JK Rowling apologizing to trans people.) So dril just keeps changing his display name every time they bluecheck him. Elon and dril have been engaged in this game of cat and mouse all day. The "Elon bans dril and we all throw trash at him like New Yorkers defending spiderman" meme will probably come to fruition today or tomorrow.

[its-captain-sir]

today was so fucked I hate it here

[drchucktingle]

my masks

hey there buckaroos. due to all of the attention the TEXAS LIBRARY ASSOCIATION situation has gotten i am going to take a minute to talk about my personal way as an autistic buckaroo. im going to tell you about my masks.

im doing this for a few reasons, some are good FUN reasons full of love and some are not so great. 

lets start with the GOOD STUFF. first of all, i am talking about this because speaking on my way can help other buckaroo feel more comfortable speaking on there own way, ESPECIALLY if they are good at ‘passing’ for neurotypical like chuck is. 

unfortunately the NOT SO GREAT reasons im talking about all this dang stuff are two fold. reason one: i have been put into a position of having to explain and justify my needs and boundaries by the TXLA. this is not something that i WANT to be taking up all of my time, but when large organizations do not make space for those who they have pledged to support, it puts us smaller buckaroos into position where were have to defend our existence. it is not plesent but it is necessary.

the second NOT SO GREAT reason is that ‘passing’ bisexual and autistic people like myself are ALWAYS just seconds from being gatekept from folks both outside and inside these communities. there will probably be a day on chucks deathbed where i take off my mask and say hello to this timeline (mostly so you can all see how handsome i am under here but I DIGRESS). i KNOW with absolute certainty (the same way other bi and autistic buckaroos are probably nodding along right now) that when that day comes i will STILL be accused of ‘not being real’ and ‘faking’ because i ‘dont look autistic’ and i have a beautiful ladybuck partner in sweet barbara.

ALL THAT IS TO SAY, i am taking a moment today to talk FOR THE RECORD about my neurodigence and my particular needs. hopefully i will not have to keep diving this deep every time an organization takes a discrimantory action against me, but i will also say this: at least it is a good fight on an important battlefield

anyway buds, here is the story of my way on the spectrum

when i was a young buckaroo i knew that my thought process was different. i could socialize easily, which is unique in contrast to many autistic buds (it is a spectrum after all), but my social ease was for an interesting reason. I ALWAYS KNEW WHAT OTHERS WERE ABOUT TO SAY. it was like a strange ‘human game’ where someone would say one thing and i would think ‘well you actually mean something else’ in a sort of logical way (this is why i later related to DATA from star trek so dang much). at first i remember thinking ‘well i am just NOT going to play along with this human game’. i quickly learned neurotypical buckaroos do not like this, that there is a BOB AND WEAVE to social interactions that must be learned. 

later i realized ‘actually if i WANT to make friends and prove love is real then i can do this like an expert because i can SEE the game where most cant’. this got chuck many buds and took me on many adventures. please understand, i am not saying these connections are not important to me, they are just different. they are full of love, but i express this in my own unique way.

HOWEVER, while growing up i felt disconnected from this timeline in other ways, like an alien or a reverse twin trotting along in a world that is not quite my own. i did not feel emotions the same way my buds did. they would get upset over the ‘human game’ interactions and i would not be moved at all, HOWEVER i could see the way sunlight hit a window and start crying my dang eyes out over the beauty. so my emotion was still there and VERY STRONG, i just felt it in more existential ways (like hearing the call of the lonesome train). these days that feeling has progressed to where i am pretty much in a constant blissed out state of cosmic emotional connection (make of that last sentence what you will, but it is the truth). when i make existential posts online i am not just FIRING OFF SOME CONTENT, i really mean every word. this is really my trot.

anyway as a young buckaroo these feelings made me worry sometimes. i thought about various mental health dianosises and marked the parts and pieces that matched with myself. am i this? am i that? sometimes, instead of just being’ different’ i worried i might actually be ‘wrong’. 

when i saw david byrne on letterman in my younger days i immediately recognized something connected to myself. i thought ‘wow this is the mystery being solved before my very eyes.’ i could hear it in the music of talking heads too. i started doing research and realized that i might be on autism spectrum, something that was later confirmed by a therapist (back then the diagnosis was called asperger's). it was a glorious and fulfilling moment. i was SO EXCITED TO BE AUTISTIC LIKE MY HERO. i felt very cool because of it, and i still feel very cool because of it.

one of the big reasons i talk so much about being autistic these days is because i want to make sure OTHER buckaroos can have that same moment that i did. they can see chuck and think ‘wow i really like this autistic artist, maybe being autistic is cool’

so what does an average day WITHOUT wearing the pink bag look like for me?

my thought process is exactly like ROSE from CAMP DAMASCUS, which is part of why i wrote the book. we have the same stim (complex order of finger taps), we prepare for social interactions the same way, we analyze things in the same logical trot that neurotypical people might think feels ‘detached’ but for me feels natural (certain reviews of camp damascus are very funny to me in this way. you can tell when a reader is just very confused by existing in an autistic brain for 250 pages.)

from the outside you would not be able to tell that i am on the spectrum. in fact you would probably find me very socially adept. 

the problem is, all of that masking can take its toll. i spent years trotting in and out the emergency room, talking to confused doctors who could not figure out the chronic phantom tension and pain that radiated through my body. i eventually accepted the fact that i would either live a life constantly on heavy painkillers or just stop living altogether.

eventually, however, i started noticing a correlation between the way that i felt, and the space that i allowed for chuck and the pink mask. i was exercising that tension, allowing my mental mask of neurotypical existence to take a rest. i started practicing physical therapy and this time THE RESULTS STUCK because i was approaching from two sides, MIND AND BODY. after a while, i got my pain down to about 5 percent of what it once was. i still have flare ups in times of stress, but the healing has been very real and life changing.

lets get VERY specific now. if i attended the TXLA confrence without a mask and gave my talk i can tell you this: i would do a dang good job. i can work the heck out of a crowd and (not to reveal too much about my secret way) I HAVE BEEN KNOWN TO DO THIS ON OCCASION VERY WELL. however, going home from this event i would very likely be in pain. i would likely need to do physical therapy. i would likely need to stim for a while. i would NOT be emotionally fullfilled in the same way. in other words, without my pink mask i can charm the heck out of buckaroos, but THE SPACE OF CHUCK TINGLE IS NOT THE SPACE FOR THAT. the pink bag is a place for me to not have to put up with that tension. it is a place for me to unmask mentally by masking physically.

this pink bag space SAVED MY LIFE and i am not going to risk blurring these lines. if and when that ever happens it will be MY decision, not someone elses. that is my boundary. the part of me that neurotypically masks could handle a library conference in a purely technical sense, but the part of me that chuck represents absolutely cannot and should not be asked to do that without the pink bag. unfortunately, the complexity of this point makes it even MORE difficult for me to think about and takes up even more of my time, because it forces me to START QUESTIONING MYSELF and my own needs. to be honest, that is the most insidious part of other people questioning your identify and refusing to accept your accommodation needs without ‘proof’.

the thing is, while all of this discussion of disability and accessibility is important, i have a much larger point to make by writing these words.

a conference should not uninvite someone with an unusual physical presentation or a strange way of speaking REGARDLESS of it being classified as a disability. it does not matter WHY i look the way that i look and wear what i wear. i should not have to spend all day writing this post instead of writing my next book, just because my sensibilities are unique and my presentation is unusual. 

fortunately the solution is very simple: let other people be themselves. its not hurting you to simply accept and nod at the buckaroos you think look strange. let us exist

[jabberwockypie]

So @lynati is out of town today and tomorrow, working, but she has been living her best life and embracing her desire to be surrounded by toy Breyer horses for the first time in 25 years, and is really just having a great time with it.

Unfortunately, a particular horsie, Hot Cocoa, who she had REALLY wanted sold out last week before she had a chance to get her. She thought she had more time, because some of the previous years' horsies are still in stock from past years.

Horf!

So Hot Cocoa was sold out, and she was very sad, and there were ZERO OF THEM anywhere else on the internet - this one was sold only through the Breyer website, and nobody had listed any on Ebay or Mercari. We set up some saved searches to try to get her later if she came up, probably at a terrible mark-up, but what else can you do?

Anyway, Lynati got a different, extra-fancy horse in the mail yesterday, and he's a very pretty boy with blues and golds and purples.

Lynati didn't have any others in this mold, but she brought him upstairs to show me yesterday when she got him in the mail, and I agreed as this was a very pretty horse and flipped him over because I was admiring how pretty the blue-fading-to-purple effect is, and I go "WOW. My god, they put a lot of effort into sculpting this horse's junk."

The fact this sculptor clearly spent hours and hours on this horse model, including what had to be rather a lot of time on the individual veining on the Horse Dick* is truly kind of impressive, but I also find it extremely funny in contrast with how pearl-clutchy some American Girl doll collectors get about even the implication that people may have had sex or might be naked at some point, ever. (There are a whole bunch of people get weird about the fact dolls like Kaya and Felicity don't come with underpants - because they wouldn't have worn them. In the 18th century. And, let me be clear, their bodies are just tube-shaped stuffed cloth with no anatomical detail whatsoever.)

*Lynati will I'm sure correct me that that is the "sheath" and testicles, but I am not a horse person and I am therefore comfortable referring to it as the horse's dick.

So today, I was relating to my friend @lylilorden my amusement at the contrast between American Girl doll people and the Breyer people with their lovingly-sculpted super-detailed Horse Genitals.

(Quoth Lyli, "and the breyer folks just. "these are ANIMALS and they FUCK"". Yes. Yes they are.)

And I'm looking for a picture of the Special Fancy Horse to show her, and then suddenly, at the bottom of the page on the Breyer website, where I see this:

HOT COCOA IN STOCK, MOTHERFUCKERS

So I call Lynati in a tizzy because this is clearly a Horf-Collecting Emergency, and the horf is now on the way to our house. The day is saved! And I wouldn't have been on the Breyer website if I hadn't been talking to Lyli about the other horse's magnificent . . . endowments.

✨ It's a Christmas miracle! By the power of lovingly-sculpted horse cock. ✨

And now, at the bottom of this post - so people can read the rest of the post and skip it if you want - I have gone downstairs to take a picture of Courcheval's junk, so you can all see what I'm talking about here. (Content warning: plastic toy horse genitalia)

[deepestnightcolor]

✩⁺₊✩☽⋆Kinkmas - 24th of December⋆☾✩⁺₊✩

ᴀ/ɴ: This is it, folks! The last door to open for you in this event. Thank you for sticking around or checking out a story here and there, I appreciate it all! If you celebrate Christmas - merry Christmas! Have some lovely and calm festivities! If you don't - have a lovely day, I hope it is relaxing enough and that you take good care of yourself!

A gentle reminder: when I write "Christmas" here, I am talking about the Feast of The Winterstar. I have to admit, I got a little sloppy after writing "Feast of the winterstar" so often. Please forgive me - and I hope you can enjoy nonetheless!

ᴘᴀɪʀɪɴɢ: find out, dolls!

ᴡᴄ: depending how much you read

ᴍᴅɴɪ ✧ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢꜱ: hints of sexual content

Sebastian: „The Feast of the Winterstar isn’t really my thing, you know? So many people, so many sounds, and you have to pretend to be…I dunno, a happy a little family, you know? Even though you aren’t really a happy little family, and you feel like an outcast. Look at this, me throwing a pity party for myself. But I promise, it’s going somewhere.  I didn’t usually like it because I felt so misplaced, but this year, I didn’t. This was one of the first years where I looked forward to going, because I knew you would be my family, and I dunno, it felt so good. Okay, I have to admit, maybe that blowjob you gave me before helped. And maybe knowing that you were so full of my cum that you had to squish those thighs together in that little skirt did, too. I wonder how many people saw those hickeys, wonder how many knew you were absolutely pumped full…you took my cock so well, even though you knew we had to go, like you always do…I digress. Look at me, writing this card, trying to be all cute and sweet and even now when you are not even around (you are sleeping on the couch right now, I am going to carry you to bed later, promise) to distract me, you still possess my mind. I sometimes wonder if you know how much I love you. Probably not, because I often suck telling you, but I do. So much. You make this life a lot better, you know? You give me this sort of foundation I have always needed, and you know what? I am so happy to build up on it with you. The realization hit me hard today, when I didn’t feel that pit in my stomach when getting ready to go to the town square. When I didn’t just want to turn around and run for it, when I didn’t want to jump on my bike and just get out of there. It hit me even harder when I looked forward to talking to my family, because I could wrap my arm around you, and I knew I would be safe and appreciated. I don’t know what I did to deserve you, but, uh, thank you. I love you, you little toad. I will put this card under your pillow now and pretend it was Santa who brought you your gift, because you can’t stop me. I love you. -Sebby”

Sam: “I haven’t written a card in aaaaaaaaaaaaagessssssssss, but I decided today was the day it needed to happen. Because I love you, baby, so, so much. You should have seen yourself in the square, holy fuck did you make my heart swell. That Winterstar sweater looked sooooo good on you, and the way your eyes glistened? Holy shit, you were prettier than the tree they put up, and I love that tree. But you know what else I love? You. You were so excited for your present, too, and I am sorry Clint gave you rocks. I hope my present is better. No, I am not talking about fingering you under the table while we ate, but that was fucking hot, right? You were fucking gushing for me, baby, so fucking sloppy. I know you were struggling to stay quiet, but I was struggling, too. Do you know how fucking hard my cock was? Oh, oops, I think I am getting off topic. I wasn’t talking about that present, I am talking about the one that’s under the tree (if you are not letting me open mine before tomorrow, I am not letting you open yours, either. Those are the rules (I am pouting as I write this)). I think you are going to like it, I saw you looking at it for a while now. And here you are thinking I don’t remember much (true), but if my baby likes something, I am sure as hell remembering. I hope it is going to make you happy. It won’t make you as happy as you make me, but at least a fraction of it? I can’t wait to see your face when you open it, I hope your eyes will keep that excitement you always get when you are opening presents, not like when you opened the rocks. I do have admit though, the look you gave Clint was hilarious. He’s a shitty secret Santa, isn’t he? But you aren’t. You don’t know it yet, but you have already given me the biggest gift possible, baby. I am not talking about the one under the tree. The days you spend with me are the sunniest of my life, and I can’t wait to spend more with you. I love you to the moon and back, you know that, right? Because I do. And I can’t wait to love you forever and always. -Love, Sammy”

Shane: “You know I am not the biggest fan of this. To be honest, I still think it’s humbug (I grew to like that word, though), but Jas told me that you give people you care about a card for Christmas, so. Yeah, surprise, I care about you. I hope you have noticed by now. Why do these cards even need so much glitter? I made you one so it wouldn’t look like a fucking unicorn threw up over it, but the glitter from those flimsy store things is still sticking to my hands, like, the fuck?  I pet Charlie earlier and he fucking sparkled, and I don’t know how to get fucking glitter out of feathers. It’s not like I didn’t try. I even fucking googled, and now I get ads about little arms you can put on chickens… Reading back, I think I am trying to avoid getting to the point, but that’s not because of you. No, it’s because of me, because I am scared that if I write down what I feel, realization will kick in for you and have you run for the hills, but I just need you to know. I love you, I really do. I know I have been a little very mean to you in the beginning, so…thank you for persisting and not giving up on me. I honestly don’t think I could have ever gotten so far without you - I wake up and don’t just feel like complete shit. I go through my day without just thinking about getting drunk. When you were sitting across from me at the feast, I noticed that this was the first year I didn’t have some sort of alcohol with me. And when you smiled at me, I knew I wanted it to stay like that. I know I went a little rough with you there when we got home, but I just needed you to know, just needed you to feel how much you mean to me, how thankful I am for you. I don’t know what happened to me there, but it felt so right to just…pound it into you. But hey, the way you have scratched down my back and cried my name, I think you got the message. And if not, don’t you worry, I have enough time to make it stick. But I know you are waiting in bed for me right now, and I really want to join you, so… to cut this shit short (Sam would call it yapping, I think), I love you. A lot. -Shane PS: should we get little arms for our chickens?”

Harvey: “Hello, my love. I have decided that today is the best time to sit down and take some time to write this card for you. After all, winter is the time of consideration and love for others, isn’t it? And I have to say, I have so much love for you. I do not know how to tell you this, but I am simply going to try. You have brought so much new things into my life, it his hard to believe. I have always believed that I didn’t really like change, that’s why I opened my clinic in Pelican Town, after all. It promised me a slow pace and rituals, and, most importantly, rarely any changes. There are barely any people coming, barely any leaving. And then you came along, changing this town completely. And you changed it for the good. Just like you did with me. Hon, you made me leave the comfort of my bubble more than one time and in more times than one. You made me test my abilities, try out new things. I would have never gotten in that hot air balloon without you, for example. Would have never discovered that I love aerobics and dancing, and, to be honest, I wouldn’t know as much sexually about myself as I do know. You have allowed me to explore myself and gave me your safety. I didn’t know I had an oral fixation until I met you, if I am being honest, and I didn’t think I would enjoy going down on a woman as much as I do. Okay, well, maybe that is because of you. Your moans and gasps are just the sweetest, and I love the way you tug at my hair…Hoo, boy, I am blushing just writing this! I just wanted to sincerely thank you for showing me that I do not need to be as scared as I used to be. That it is okay to fall sometimes, to trust in the safety nets. I love you, my love. So, so much. I hope you will never forget this, and I hope you know: although you have shown me that change is okay – my love for you will never change in any other way than that it will grow for you. I love you. Yours truly, Harvey.”

Elliott: “The stars are shining bright upon us tonight, my sweet angel, the air is clear, and so is my head, but my heart? Oh, my heart is full of one of the rawest, strongest and most important emotions – love. And this love, my beautiful little angel, is directed to you. Sometimes I am asking myself how I, a mere commoner, so to speak, is deserving of such a carefully created being as you are. And then my thoughts cease, my tongue ties and my throat closes up out of nothing but the sheer fear that whoever was grateful enough to allow your love to be gifted to me will take this question as an offensive act of ungratefulness and take you away from me. What I am trying to tell you, angel, is, that I love you, wholly and completely, with each atom of my being, with every cell that keeps me alive, with every breath that fills my lungs, with every word I write, with every page I fill – I love you. Not only a day like the Feast of the Winterstar awake these strong feelings within me, no, it could be an ordinary day where I get to wake up next to you, your love-bitten skin just barely covered by a blanket, your hair all tousled, partly because of the sleep that still keeps you wrapped up tightly, partly because you have allowed me to make love to you. An ordinary day where I get to see your smile, get to see you is enough to alight this fire within me. If I am allowing myself to speak freely, even right now, just by writing this, I can feel my the warmth pool inside my stomach, can feel myself craving you in a way that is primal, and I know I could just turn around and please you, distract you from the book you are reading. But my angel, I won’t do so – not just yet. I first need you to know that your love, hopefully just as raw and ready to blossom like mine, is the biggest gift that has been ever gifted to me. No Winterstar could gift me something as dear as you, and I would never even dare to speak out another wish – as long as I have you. Please know, my angel, that you are my everything. My muse, my light, my reason to overcome writer’s block, my safe haven I will always be happy to return to. I love you. -Forever yours and fallen for you, Elliott.”

Alex: "Merry X-mas baby! You prolly know that I really suck at writing but this is our first X-mas together and I wanted to write you a card. because there are a few things I wanted to tell you you know? Like that I fell in love with you the moment you moved here and I fell fucking hard. Cheesy isn't it? But it's true. I don't really know how many nights I spent thinking about you. Okay to be honest, I didn't only think, I also busied my hand a little if you know what I mean ;) Just couldn't resist, you are just so pretty baby. So so pretty. Actually I can't wait to see you wearing that lil gift I got you. I think you are gonna like it but I am SURE you will like what I am going to do to you while you are wearing it. Can't wait to have my cock inside of you again baby it to be honest. I just love the face you make the moment I brush your cunt with my dick. Fuck that I love everything about you baby. Love everything you do when I plow you...  I know I know, we already had our fun today, but I just can’t get enough of those moans. They are like my fucking fuel, you are my fuel.  I dunno if I should tell you this, because I am actually a lil embarrassed about it, but do you know that audio I made of us fuckin? I sometimes listen to it when doin an especially hard workout because it makes me feel like I can do anything. I am drifting off right now right? I can't wait to spend this X-mas with you and many more to come because you actually make me look forward to it again. Christmas and the whole Winterstar season were so hard on me ever since my mom passed away, but you… you lift that gloomy cloud away from me. You make it feel like it’s going to be okay, and I am so thankful for that, baby. Damn, this season make me cheesy doesn't it? But to put it in a nutshell (I actually read that phrase in a book today are you proud of me now?): I love you, baby. ~Alex I actually did it I actually wrote a card can you fucking believe it."

Leah: “My sweet thing! Did I already tell you how cute you look in your little Winterstar sweater? Gives me the Christmas spirit in a way you wouldn’t believe! I absolutely loved how you told Evelyn what wool you were using to make it, even offering her some. You’ve just got the kindest heart in the valley, don’t you? You know I usually get artist’s block during the winter months, but when I saw down and looked at this piece of paper, it was like I just knew what I needed to do. And here we are, now that your Christmas card has dried, I can finally write in it, and I am going to use it to tell you that… I love you! What surprise, huh? Especially since I have given you that sculpture. But it is true, I love you. When we woke up together and slept together once more before getting ready…phew… I don’t know, I think I have never felt like this before. By the way, while we are at it, I definitely need you on my face again. There is just something absolutely breathtaking ( 😉 ) about you grinding against me so desperately while you are trying to eat me out… Look at me, sweet thing, already rambling and drooling over you again. But that is what you do to me… Sweet thing, you make me feel so genuinely happy and welcome here. I have always enjoyed my solitude in a way, fending for myself, being one with the nature, seeking out company only when I truly wanted it. But you showed me that there is another person I can rely on but myself, and for that I am thankful. You have opened your arms and your home for me whenever I needed either or both, and you are always believing in me, even when I had this dumb idea to sculpt a Winterstar tree with just cans. Yes, I will never drink that kinda wine again and yes, I remember that Shane blocked me because I spammed him trying to ask him for cans. But even though it was stupid and I was behaving like a maniac, you just smiled at me and got on your horse, telling me you’d fetch me some more cans. And you did. Thank you, love, for loving me, my art, and being a masterpiece yourself. I love you. -Leah. PS: I MIGHT HAVE AN IDEA HOW THAT TREE MIGHT ACTUALLY WORK OUT."

Maru: “Well, Christmas cards certainly aren’t my usual way of communicating, but I figured why not try out something new for once? You know I am all for trying out new things, especially if they make the world a better place. And if this makes your day a little better, then I am already one step closer to that goal. Was that cheesy? I think it was. I cannot believe what you are doing to me; ME, a clear-minded, well-structured scientist, being cheesy and absolutely whipped for you. It is true – I am. I do not what you did to me, but it did work. Every single day I wake up thankful to have you, and not only because you are such a willing little guinea pig (which you are, may I add. But you are my favourite <3). I remember when we had slept together that first time. It was NOT that I was a virgin, but… you made me feel things I didn’t quite think I could feel. I was actually feeling like you wrapped me up in cotton candy when you whispered these sweet things to me, and I didn’t think that was humanly possible (just to be clear, it is not!). With every kiss that you placed on my skin, with every thrust of your fingers, I was falling deeper, deeper, deeper and I absolutely did not want it to stop. I still do not. Is that greedy? Perchance. Do I mind that much? No, because it is with you. And here we are, just coming back from the Feast of The Winterstar, and I can’t wait to give you your gift. You had told me you had wanted to wait until the morning to exchange them, like you don’t know how impatient I can get. I just cannot wait to see your face when you open it up. You know, I probably have hidden it so well, but I actually am trying to support your farm with my machines. I build most of the farm helpers with you in mind. I am only telling you this because it is Christmas, though! Still. I love you. I love you really, really much, and I truly enjoy loving you. I know I sometimes might have an odd way of showing it, but now it is here, spelled out clearly, and I am happy it is. Because you deserve to now. Merry Christmas. -Your love loving you, Maru. PS: Did you know that the tradition of the Winterstar has a quite interesting origin?”

Emily: “It’s CHRISTMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAS! I can’t believe this beautiful time of year is already supposed to be over again ☹. It always moves by so fast, doesn’t it?! Especially now that I have you by my side – it was like it had gone in a blink! One day we were cuddling on the couch watching this sweet little Christmas movie, and the next we were already at the Feast! Thank you for dancing with me, by the way. I enjoyed it a lot, even though we might have put a little show on for everyone 😉. Do you think they saw that I was not just dancing with you, but basically humping that sweet little butt of yours? Do you think they knew we were all over one another as soon as we stepped through the door. Yoba, you were so wet from just a little grinding! Okay, maybe a more than a little grinding, but your panties were drenched! But that’s okay, I was just as wet as you. I always get like this around you; it is like I just can’t get enough. You are so intoxicating! I have always known that, though, I could feel your vibes the first time we met and they were AMAZING! They still are, of course, but they also grew a lot stronger. I hope you know how happy the spirits are with you, my little butterfly! You just wouldn’t believe how happy I am that our spirits get to intertwine like this! I see them in my dreams sometimes, they are a strong unit. I wish I could take you along into that world more often, but it can be hard to channel all these emotions sometimes… Oh, my butterfly, I am just so happy to have you. I love you so much. It feels like colours are brighter with you around, even now in winter! I just can’t wait to see again what the other seasons are going to look like with you. And I can’t wait to spend another winter with you, another Christmas. I know that’s a little early, isn’t it? But with you, the future seems a lot tastier. Albeit now I would like to enjoy the present, because you are smiling at me, telling me we should share some Winterstar cookies. To many more present moments, butterfly. -Hugs and kisses, Emily.”

Haley: “Babe, thank you so, so much for encouraging me to take my camera with me today. Me being a summer girlie makes it hard for me to see the appeal in winter, but I actually got some decent shots today. You definitely need to check them out later when I developed them! But I have to say, even though those pics are pretty, they aren’t my favourite. No pictures can beat the ones I have of us, they are my favourite and will always be.  Actually, well, there might be a set of pics that can beat those as well, hehe… Remember when you allowed me to make you my little model? You looked so pretty in that lingerie set. I am looking at one of those pictures right now, and I would be lying if I said that they didn’t do something to me. You just have a way to pose that makes me a little envious. Not much, though, because those pics are for me and me only. But the one where you grin at me with those hooded eyes…you just knew exactly what were you doing, weren’t you? Who knew a dirty little farmer had it in her? 😉 But look at me, rambling about photos again. I actually wanted to write you a Christmassy card, tell you how much I love you. But you know that, right? I know I was a little…judgemental in the beginning, but you know that you have found your way in my heart? Yoba, that was lame. Okay, you see, I struggle a lot putting these feelings into words because they are such…big feelings (jeewhizz, I sound like Emily), but…Let me try this differently. I am with you. I enjoy being with you. I love every day that we are together. You mean more to me than my camera, sunflowers and pink cake combined. There! I said it! And now I expect you to hold this card dear and never lose it, because I will not say this again. So, maybe I will, if you ask me. Or maybe right now, when you are sleeping so sweetly, your hair falling just right. How do you always manage this, getting your hair to fall like you are starring in an advertisement for freaking conditioner? You know what? That’s it. I am getting the camera, and then I am joining you. Merry X-Mas, babe. I love you. -Haley.”

Abigail: “I just don’t get how you do it. Really, I don’t. I watched you all night, and I am pretty sure your smile didn’t falter even once. Not even when my dad told you that stupid joke – “What did Santa pay for his sleigh? Nothing, it was on the house.” Ha ha, dad, really. See, it’s so stupid I even remember it by heart! Hey, I can’t deny that my parents love you, tho. Well done, I think you can sit at our table until the end of time now, sharing my fate. Fine, it wasn’t all that bad. I was having fun. A little. You made it better, you know? I felt like I finally had someone next to me that actually understands me. You always understand me, and I know you do. Speaking of…Yoba, if my parents only knew that you have taken me to the mines already you would lose that hard-earned spot at that damn table again. Especially if they knew what else we were doing down there… Oh, it gets me weak in the knees to just think about it. You were so rough with me… I know it was because you were worried because I wasn’t careful enough, but being choked against a stone wall? That was definitely something…Actually, I still remember that I had been barely able to walk back to the farm after you were done with me. What do you say? Does the handle of your sword still smell like me? I kinda wish it does… But it’s best if we keep this our pretty little secret, right? So you can keep the spot at our table and so that you can still take me to the mines. And perhaps so they can still let us be together with calm minds.  I wish that I could tell you that I look forward to spending many more Christmases with you, but that would be a lie. I do hope to spend many days with you, and that you can make many more Christmases a tolerable experience like today. You know, you mange to make many things that I hate tolerable. So…Thank you. Truly. I know I am a lot sometimes, but please know that I love you. A lot. A crazy lot. And I would do a crazy lot for you. But for now, I am going to crawl in bed with you. See what you say to the present purple-haired Santa will bring you tonight. Good night, bub. -Your Abby. PS: I could have totally beaten that slime myself. PPS: probably.”

Penny: “Do you remember last winter? We weren’t together yet, but we still shared a moment that is still very dear to me, hun. I had dropped my bookmark into the snow, it was a papery one, beige at that, so looking for it was a lost cause. You had come by on your horse and without any hesitation, you had jumped to help me. Of course, we didn’t find that bookmark ever again, and I had been really sad, it had been my favourite. You had told me you were sorry and stroked over my hair oh so gently, as if it had been your fault. Oh, I had already been swooning for you, then! And then the next day you had come by, smiling at me as you held something behind your back. You had told me that Santa had passed by early before you stretched out something, a Poppy, carefully pressed and wrapped in a foil to secure it. I didn’t know how you had done it back then (now I know you like growing flowers in your greenhouse, and I love sitting there), but I kept it dear to me. I like to think that this was the point our relationship got its roots, and that’s why I will always hold that bookmark dear. When I looked at you at the Feast today, the bookmark came back to my mind, and I felt like a realization hit me. Our relationship – it is like a book. A carefully crafted romance by life. The only difference is that, while I love books, I have never been as involved in one as I am in this one. I am here for every single page, and I am eating them all up. No matter if they consist of our little reading ritual in the evenings, our date nights, the things you have taught me about living on the farming, our fights and… the spicier parts of our relationship, hi hi. I haven’t told this anyone, and I trust you keep this secret, but I did actually read some more…passionate books, but it never quite resonated with me. Until I met you. I don’t know what’s happening to me when we are naked, I am usually well composed, I think, but when you let me sit on your thigh, or when you guide our…ehe…you know, to grind against one another, something happens in my brain. It’s like a short-circuit, and I find myself wanting more, more, more. Ever since I have met you, I have also been feeling a lot more…lustful. But only for you! I tried to replicate these feelings you give me by reading books a few times, but I have never managed to do it. Weird, isn’t it? However! This isn’t y main point – my main point is that I love you. I love you more than a library of a million books holds words. I hope our personal book will fill more and more. I hope we will be able to fill our own personal library. I just want you to know: You are my favourite; book, topic, genre. It doesn’t matter. You are my favourite. ~With purest love, Penny.”

[fairyysoup]

it will come back

part two

a.k.a. sever the blight (eddie's version)

pairing(s): werewolf!eddie munson x fem!milkmaid!reader

summary: As May Day approaches, you find yourself running into Eddie, and succumbing to his charms, more and more.

cw: smut, heavy petting, fingering, frottage, denied orgasm, public sex, getting caught, alcohol consumption (both eddie and reader), a bit of humiliation, teasing, tons of flirting, eddie munson's Big Meaty Claws, jealousy (by reader), eddie being a flirtatious shit all around, slight enemies to lovers beat here, some kind of historical fantasy period, fairytale au, descriptions of scars, mentions of abuse, reader is a servant to an abusive master

a/n: Happy May! I wrote this in a complete stupor and woke up and it was almost 8.0k words, so there will be a part three. I also wanted to get this done yesterday, but that's not how the cookie crumbles. Alas.

The lyrics that Eddie sings in this are from a traditional English folk song, commonly called "As I Walked Through the Meadow." There are variations on the lyrics, but this is the version I used here.

MY WORKS ARE ALL 18+ MINORS DNI

The man from the creek is being thrown out of the tavern in the center of town.

You know because you’ve been watching since he went inside. Except, if anyone were to ask, you’d say you’re simply watching the ripples on the mud puddles on the dirt road in front of the building. They’re fascinating, you’d insist. They say you can see your future in them.

You’d noticed him going in as you were stepping out of the haberdashers. You knew it was him from the wine red of his blouse– it’s a rich color, like you’ve never seen on a garment worn by anyone in town, and certainly not by someone claiming to come from the woods. The last time you saw him, nearly a month ago now, you forgot to ask him where he got something so richly woven and colored, in such seemingly good repair. You contented yourself with a single lie: you didn’t want to know. 

You also figured that you would likely never see him again. That this so-called Eddie Munson was probably better off disappearing back into the woods and staying there. You’d never seen him in town before, and you certainly didn’t expect to see him there any time soon. He doesn’t exactly fit in with the rest of the townsfolk; people who work the land, who own it, who sow it. His rich red wine doesn’t fit into the bland suedes and dull grays of your neighbors. 

No– no, with his wild, curly hair and bright, rosy cheeks, he definitely doesn’t look like anyone who belongs in Havensfield. He belongs in a storybook. He belongs in a fairytale you tell to little children, to send them to sleep with something larger than life in their minds. Just like you haven’t been able to sleep a wink without thinking about him and his troublesome smile and sparkling eyes first. 

It’s as if he has you under some sort of spell, unable to move on but remaining steadfastly in place with your mind only revolving around him. You figured it was probably best to spend the coin he gave you and get it out of your system, so maybe you can get rid of the one physical thing that reminded you of his existence.

But here he is, in the flesh and very alive, and being tossed into the mud puddle you had been gazing into, spraying droplets of dirty water off in every direction. A cacophony of laughter rings out from the open door of the tavern– a barkeep angrily wipes his hands on his apron, snarls something at Eddie, and disappears back into the building, the door slamming shut behind him.

The town has erected a maypole in the square for the May Day celebration in just a few days. The marketplace is normally hectic during the festival. Shopkeepers will set up their stalls, the place will be decorated with garlands of flowers, and for days at a stretch one can hardly get their errands done for the amount of chaos going on in the place. That’s why you did your shopping today, rather than waiting for the festivities to begin.

You didn’t expect this.

You haven’t moved from your spot in front of the haberdasher’s. You don’t know if you should– you look this way and that, wondering if anyone is going to approach him, or if everyone else instinctively gives him a wide berth. The people on the street continue about their business like they haven’t seen him, like he isn’t there. You wonder if it’s some unseen force of nature that keeps them away. Does some magic spell exist to make him undetectable to anyone but you? Or are you just the only one stupid enough to get close?

He just sort of lays there in the mud, staring up at the sky. You assume he’s drunk. Why else would he have been thrown out of the tavern? Drinking them dry, getting unruly, starting fights… Yes, you should go on about your business. 

Your hand fists in your skirt, the color of barleycorn. Such a drab color when compared to his deep red, like the flow of blood from a wound. Just as you had feared, it draws you in like a moth to a flame. You lift your skirts and step carefully across the muddy town square, until your feet toe the edge of the puddle he lays in. 

“Do you… need help?” you ask when you peer down at him. From this angle, his eyelashes fan across his cheekbones in long arches, fluttering like fairy wings. 

“My Lovely Lady of the Creek!” He croons wistfully up at you when you pass into his field of vision. “We must stop meeting this way.” 

“Which way is that?”

“With me on my back in a bunch of water.” He smiles at you treacherously, in that way he does. Like he’s privy to a joke that you’re completely unaware of.

“Well, are you just going to lay there like a dead man in the road? Or would you like help?” Your hands are on your hips, the small basket for your purchases wiggling precariously on your wrist. 

“You really should be more discerning about who you offer to help,” he lectures as he heaves himself up to sit. Muddy water sloshes up towards your shoes, and you scamper back before they can get wet. “Lest I begin to get the wrong impression.” 

“I don’t recall ever offering you help before,” you point out. 

“Right,” Eddie says after a moment, his eyes sweeping along the road. He looks unsure, as if he doesn’t know what to ask for, if he wants anything at all. “You… could help me over to the well?” 

Your eyes follow his to the well in the center of the square. You shrug, and then brandish your hand at him. 

Eddie looks at it thoughtfully for a moment before placing his hand into yours. His hand engulfs yours in warmth, his long fingers stretching up and around your wrist. A flush bursts beneath your skin from where his touch hits, spreading up your arm and into your chest.

You’re going to catch fire, you’re sure of it.

Instead, you just help him to his feet, trying not to slip in the mud, yourself. Eddie staggers, sways back towards the porch of the tavern. You lunge forward to catch him before he can fall over again, and you snatch him around the waist without much thought. His arm plops down onto your shoulder, and your basket bats against his hip, the contents shifting inside.

You’re so close now. He smells like pine and whiskey, and his body is warm. So warm that you’re surprised he isn’t sick in bed. 

“How much did you drink?” you ask him, your voice choked as you heave him towards the well. You don’t want to think about his body pressed against yours, his arm hot around your shoulders. He’s looking down at you with an impassioned gaze that you don’t want to match. You fear that if you look up into his face, you will. 

“No more than usual,” he murmurs. His hand reaches out and grabs the stone ring of the well once you get him to it. He kneels on the step of it, starting to look a little green in the face. 

“You smell like the tavern floor,” you tell him frankly, raising your hand to push his hair away from his face. 

“Well, I was just laying in a bunch of piss and shit, so.” Eddie raises his head and gazes up at you, wide-eyed, when you press your hand to his forehead. 

“And you’re much too hot,” you assess, watching his eyes flutter at your appraisal. “Don’t you dare get sick in the well. I have to drink out of that.”

“I need water,” he grumbles, and pulls away from your hand. He tries to stand, and fails.

“Stay,” you tell him firmly, planting a hand on his shoulder. Eddie pouts, watching as you place your basket beside him and step up to the well to fetch him the bucket yourself. 

Like a child who’s just been given a present, Eddie’s eyes fall to your basket. “What’s this?”

“My shopping,” you grunt with the effort of cranking the wheel to lift the bucket from the well. 

“Ooh– stockings?” 

You turn to glance at him, and see that he’s lifted the cloth from the basket to peek at the contents inside. He’s pinching your new stockings between his two fingers, pulling them out with a gleeful expression on his face.

You could kill him. “Put those back,” you hiss, letting go of the handle of the wheel. The crank spins backward, and down in the well, the bucket hits the water again with a loud, wet splash.

“Silk stockings, no less,” Eddie continues, ducking away from your swiping hand as he begins running the smooth hosiery over his knuckles. He seems to have gotten his second wind– no longer staggering, nor looking green in the face, he scampers around the well while you chase him. “Now how could a milkmaid afford such finery? It couldn’t be… no, I shant say–” 

“Give it to me now,” you snarl at him, rounding the well after him. You hadn’t wanted him to see them– hadn’t wanted anyone to see them. It’s not something that you could have gotten yourself, on your own pay. The Master or Mistress would assume that you’d stolen the money, and punish you for it. Obviously, any stranger seeing them would be improper.

And Eddie… Well, he knows exactly how you got your hands on them.

“Could it be… a silver coin?” He giggles like an impish little sprite, his feet working faster than his mind. “Given to you by a handsome, charming, mysterious stranger?” 

Eddie turns to look at you, holding the silken fabric up to his cheek to feel its softness. The sight of the gesture, him pressing his cheek against your undergarment, makes you see red. 

“You little demon–” You lunge for him, but he jerks away, barrel rolling across the opening of the well somehow without managing to fall in. He lands on the other side with a noisy plop, laughing hysterically, and you continue rounding the well to get to him. “Your hair is unsightly and you smell like dirt and you’re as vain as you are vexing and I would rather try to climb the maypole than call you charming!” 

“Well, you’re correct on most accounts,” he tells you, still trying to slow his laughter. Eddie lifts the cloth on your basket, still containing a bread roll and a new wooden comb, and begins carefully folding the silk stockings into a neat bundle. He tucks them back into the basket primly, while continuing, “But I would love to see you try to climb a maypole. Mine has been known to be good for such uses–”

“You’re despicable.” You snatch the basket away from him and step away from the well, turning your back to him without a goodbye. 

“Maybe so,” Eddie replies from behind you. “But you’re still curious, aren’t you?”

You stop. You shouldn’t, but you do, and you know it’s a mistake the minute you turn and see him already standing, not swaying in the slightest, and beginning to crank the wheel of the well to fetch his own water. 

With a scowl, you watch his arm work the wheel until the bucket rears up over the lip of the well, and he lifts it onto the edge. He glances at you out of the corner of his eye, like he expected you to have walked away, and he smirks. “Ohhhh, she’s curious. You know what they say about curiosity.” 

Your skin prickles as you’re uncomfortably reminded of your last meeting with Eddie. “You’re much too fond of your idioms.”

“They’re idioms for a reason,” he replies frankly. With the water bucket steady on the edge of the well, he pinchest the front of his blouse and begins untucking the tails from his trousers. 

“What are you doing?” you snap, appalled, as he lifts the hem of his blouse to expose his belly.

He pauses, looking at you dubiously. “I have to wash my shirt.”

You bluster, “In front of the whole town?”

“Who’s looking?”

Who, indeed? You finally think to take in your surroundings, and you notice that the town square has cleared since Eddie was thrown out of the tavern. Aside from the occasional passerby, no one is lingering, and certainly no one is watching Eddie as he peels the muddy fabric from his skin. 

“You’re the only person in this town who deigns to speak to me. I thank you for that,” Eddie says, not unkindly. “But you should know that it makes you a rose among thorns. That isn’t necessarily a good thing.”

“How is that not a good thing?” you ask, feeling his eyes rake over you just before he pulls his shirt over his head. You see a flash of pale skin, and avert your eyes so swiftly it nearly makes you dizzy.

“Roses tend to be picked,” he tells you simply, as if it’s obvious. “Careful who you show your colors to.”

Your face heats against your will, while your eyes remain locked on the building across the way and not on him. At least, not until your curiosity wins out, and you steal a glance at him. 

Eddie dunks his dirty blouse in the bucket, splashing water down onto the stone step at the base of the well. The muscles of his arms flex with the work, and his hair spills over pale shoulders, rosy at the collarbones. He has pictures drawn on his skin with black ink– mythical creatures you learned about as a child, which denote power and magic. Surrounding the images on his skin are scars, old enough that they’ve gone pale, but their raised appearance indicates that he’s seen his fair share of danger. Hair trails down his chest and to  the curve of his stomach, then disappears beneath the line of his trousers. Your eyes trace the trail of it, lingering on his waistband as you wonder how far down it goes. 

He must feel your eyes on him, because he glances up at you. You immediately rip your eyes away, but it’s too late. He’s already seen you looking– seen you staring. 

Eddie grins, his eyes lighting up with mischief. “If it pleases you to look, then look.”

“I wasn’t… I wasn’t looking,” you say, with more than a hint of pride, turning your nose up a bit for good measure. 

“Of course,” Eddie muses, a wicked smirk still on his face. “And neither was I.” 

He meets your eye with a heated gaze that makes goosebumps break out across your skin. His eyes are two black coals, burning at you from just a few feet away. They slowly move up and down your body, until he sets his jaw and turns back to the bucket. He lifts the red blouse from the water and wrings it out, casting droplets of water down his forearms.

You watch them travel along his pale skin, your eyes tracing the blue veins and sinewy muscles of his arms. And that’s when you notice it– the cloth tied around his wrist.

It’s pale pink. It has a slight brocade pattern to the weave. It’s one that your Mistress had no use of, and when she decided she didn’t want the cloth for anything, you took and dyed it yourself with rose petals, and turned it into a blanket for your bed.

It’s the same cloth that you tied to the injured leg of the wolf in your dream, all those weeks ago. But it wasn’t a dream, or it couldn’t have been– the end of that very same pink blanket is still frayed from the tear of the fabric.

“Where did you get that?” you ask him sharply, marching forward. He startles, drawing back just a bit, his eyes glancing you up and down in alarm.

“Get what?” he says coolly, though his manner doesn’t reflect his tone. He’s backing away from you, holding up his hands like you mean to attack.

“This.” Far too bold for your own good, you snatch his wrist in your hand. Eddie gazes down his nose at you as you yank his wrist up near your face, twisting until the pink brocade glints in the overcast light of late April. “Where did you get this cloth?” 

“In the woods,” he says simply. 

“This is from my bed,” you hiss at him, your eyes narrowing as your hand tightens on his arm. Beneath his overheated skin, his pulse pounds against your fingers. You feel it like the beating of a thousand drums. “I don’t believe you. Where did you get it?” 

“I told you,” Eddie repeats slowly. “I found it hanging from a tree. Thought it was pretty, so I kept it.” His face betrays no emotion now, almost strategically so. Where alarm once was, there is nothing. No hint of hesitance, or mischief, or cunning. Just a blank slate that you have no way of reading. 

Your eyes flick between his face and his arm, trying to connect the dots. That’s when you notice the mark as well– among the otherwise pale, older scars that riddle his torso and arms is a long, jagged gash on his bicep. It arcs across his skin and appears to have been from a deep wound. It’s raised over and scarred, but still bright in color. New.

You’re wondering if your mind is playing tricks on you. It’s improbable that the scar on his arm is the one you patched on the wolf a month ago. You refuse to believe such things; you don’t believe in wolf-men, in fairytales, in silly superstitions.

You release his arm. You still don’t believe him– not when he so quickly went from being startled, to suddenly showing no emotion at all. You don’t trust him in the slightest. It seems to you like he’s hiding something, but you don’t know what. You don’t believe he’s anything other than a man. You can’t honestly say that you believe he’s evil, or that he means you harm, but you still wouldn’t lay your life down to fend for his honor.

And that cloth. You would bet your life that the fabric wrapped around his wrist came from your bed, dyed by your own hand, tied around the wounded leg of a wolf on the last full moon. But you can’t dispute that what he says is true. So you step back, and you fix him with a steely-eyed gaze that you know would make even the roughest of men shake in their boots.

“Good day, Mr. Munson,” you say, and he looks surprised that you even remembered his name. “I hope that I never see you again.”

“Making a wish like that is unwise,” he replies mildly, turning back to the bucket that he has perched on the rim of the well. “Unless you have a coin to toss in the well for it. Silver, maybe?” 

Your cheeks burn hot, and you turn away from him. He infuriates you so much. You can’t recall a time when a man affected you so badly. 

“Right. Because you spent it,” he observes, taking your silence as a quiet relent. “I’ll sleep well knowing that my coin was spent on a pair of beautiful stockings. Excellent craftsmanship, by the way. The weave is immaculate. Feels like spun gold.”

“Go to Hell,” you mutter, finally turning away from him, for good this time. 

“As long as I know you’ll think of me when you wear them,” he tells you as you walk away, “I’ll die a happy man.”

You pause. For a moment, you think of turning back to him, telling him to shove that exact thought down his stupidly pretty gullet. But you don’t. Thankfully, you have the reserve and the self respect to set your shoulders and leave him there, rinsing his soiled blouse there on the edge of the well.

You still didn’t ask him how he got a blouse so fine. You doubt that he would tell you the truth even if you did. All you know is that he stays with you, haunting you, rolling through your mind the way he rolled across the mouth of the well, until your hand lands on the gate to your Master’s property.

You can’t afford to have him occupying your thoughts. You can’t afford to be so distracted– you don’t even want to think about what may happen if the Master learns that you’re on your way to being smitten with someone. Someone young and beautiful and, from what you can tell, not running a farm with indentured servants on it.

And when exactly did you go from wanting him to disappear into the woods, to being smitten with him?

On May Eve, you get just enough of your chores done for the Mistress to not find any excuse for you not to attend the festivities. With your hands tight on a woven basket, you set off with a group of young milkmaids from down the lane, bearing torches, to collect flowers from the meadows and woods. 

Bringing in the May is one of your favorite customs, mostly because it’s practiced by the young people of the town. You don’t have to worry about being watched by the town elders. There’s an air of being chosen by someone; the more popular girls in town get flowers laid on their doorsteps in abundance. You’ve never been left flowers, but each year you hold out hope that someone, anyone, will leave them for you. A gesture– you’re wanted. 

There’s music in the air. Groups of young men and women laugh and dance, and the meadows are dotted with the little blooms of fire at the ends of torches as flowers are gathered. You’ve already indulged in a certain amount of floral spring wine and honey cakes, lulling you into a sweetly tipsy, giggly mood. There’s magic in the air– you can taste it in the humidity, the moonshine, the salt of sweat and earth.

“There aren’t enough flowers in the meadow this year,” one of the girls in your group complains, tromping through the high grass. 

“This isn’t the only meadow in Havensfield, Victoria,” says another. 

“I’ve seen more growing by the trees,” you offer, holding out your basket for one girl to toss a few measly primrose blooms in.

The other girls stop. You look around in the low torchlight at the appalled expressions on their faces. 

“You can’t just… go into the woods,” the one named Victoria objects. “There’s… there’s fairies. And wolf-men.” 

“Oh, please.” You roll your eyes while the other girls balk. “You can’t honestly tell me that you believe those old wive’s tales. You know the elders only tell those stories to keep us from going into the woods to fuck.” 

A few snickers rise up with the smoke from the torch. “It’s true, I saw Katherine Plack sneaking through the woods with Scotty Raker two nights ago,” says a short girl beside Victoria, nodding sagely.

“And what were you doing in the woods, Hyacinth?” the girl holding the torch says, slugging Hyacinth on the shoulder. 

The girls dissolve into laughter, while you suck on your lower lip and gaze toward the trees. It can’t be that dangerous, if Eddie claims to come from in there… somewhere. You imagine a cozy little cottage in the woods with a well beside it, tucked away, hidden from town. You imagine him chopping the wood to make it, himself. You imagine his lean frame and strong hands holding an ax, the drawings on his skin highlighted in the filtered sun through the trees as he swings the blade–

“I’m going to go see,” you announce abruptly, your voice nearly cracking. You’re nodding to yourself, looking like an idiot while you fumble to pick the basket up and set it on your hip. “Yep. That’s what I'm going to do. You all can stay here if you want.” 

“But, there’s no light,” Victoria insists, pulling her hair back away from her face with a condescending expression.

“Moon’s almost full, I can see just fine,” you snap back. Honestly, what does it matter to her if you go into the woods? “I’ll be back.”

Hyacinth calls something about “girding your loins” after you, but you’re too far away to really pay it any mind. The grass grows taller by the trees, and you hop over the creek into a wide bed of bright yellow marigolds. They wiggle in the slight spring breeze, lit with just enough moonshine for their color to show even in the dark.

“Beat that, Victoria,” you mumble as you set the basket on the ground. Methodically, you begin picking them, choosing the biggest blooms, the ones with the most immaculate petals. You’ll decorate your small cabin with them, and fashion garlands for the town square with the rest. 

As you wander over to another bed to collect some more blooms, you hear singing, following the tune being played by the pan flute across the meadow. It’s an old folk song that most of the people in town would know, and you hum along mindlessly as you pick the flowers at your knees. 

“As I was a-walking to take the fresh air, The flowers all blooming and gay, I heard a young damsel so sweetly a-singing, Her cheeks like the flowers in May.” 

It’s a young man’s voice, coming from somewhere in the trees, low and rich, and quiet enough that you don’t think it’s meant to be heard by anyone else across the meadow. Tipsy, you smile to yourself, not thinking to look for the source of the voice, but just appreciating the sound as it travels on the breeze.

“Said I, ‘Pretty maiden, and how came you here, In the meadows this morning, so soon?’ The maid she replied, ‘Why, to gather some May, For the trees they are all in full bloom.’”

As your fingers stroke along soft flower petals, humming along under your breath, you glance over your shoulder towards the meadow, where flaming torches dance like woodland spirits in the night. Laughter follows the music and the raucous cheering of the other groups of May-goers, dancing and collecting their own greenery and flowers.

The rich, velvety voice filters through the trees, ever quieter, but even closer than before. You look up just in time to see the source of the voice move just beyond the treeline, and then he appears, leaning against the trunk of a great pine, close enough that you can see the deep wine red of his blouse, and the wicked smirk on his lips.

“I said, ‘Pretty maiden, shall I go with you Through the meadows to gather some May?’ ‘Oh no, sir,’ she said, ‘I would rather refuse, For I fear you would lead me astray.’”

You could swear that Eddie’s eyes glow nearly red at you in the moonlight, his teeth sharper than you’ve ever seen them as he grins at you. The lace at his collar is untied, disheveled, falling open to reveal one of the inked pictures on his skin and his dark chest hair. 

“Climb any maypoles today, princess?” he asks you after a moment of your staring at him, like you’ve seen a ghost.

The question sets your skin aflame. You sit back on your heels, giving him a caustic expression, despite the way your heart flutters at the sight of him. It’s the eve of May, your lurid mind thinks, tracing his outline among the trees. Anything could happen. 

“I thought I told you I never wanted to see you again, Mr. Munson,” you retort, imagining that he won’t be affected by your words in the slightest.

He isn’t. “Ah-ah, you said you hoped that you wouldn’t. But you didn’t toss a coin in the well, therefore, your wish was never going to be granted. Rules of nature, sweetheart.” He wags a finger at you. “And enough with that ‘Mr. Munson’ business. You remember my name, don’t you?” 

“Eddie,” you say quietly, not sure why you feel so shy when you do. Probably because, up until now, you’ve been firm in your false belief that you’d never give him the time of day. It seems it all depends on whether or not you’ve seen him shirtless, first.

“Good girl. I knew you were paying attention.” Eddie smirks at you then, sowing the seeds of your detriment right there. He stands poised, and then bows low as he says, “So, pretty maiden, shall I go with you through the meadows to gather some May?”

You consider quoting the song right back to him, but you figure that it’s probably what he expects you to do. So instead, you sigh and shrug your shoulder at him. “As long as you promise not to crush them in your big meaty hands.” 

Eddie’s mouth drops open in shock, an impressed smile curling his mouth up at the corners. He barks a laugh. “That’s not how the song goes.” 

“Well, the song ends with them kissing and then getting married in the morning,” you point out, with a roll of your eyes. “So, forgive me for not adhering to the lyrics.”

“Also, my hands are not meaty.” He smirks at you ruefully, his face half bathed in moonlight. He leans towards you, “I’ll tell you what is, though–”

“If you’re about to mention your maypole again, I’m leaving,” you snap, glaring at him in the dark. He snickers, but says nothing, instead preferring to start gathering marigolds. “Just how did you manage to find me again, anyways? There are hundreds of people wandering the meadows tonight. How is it that you keep managing to run into me and no one else?”

“Oh, I can sniff you out in a heartbeat, princess. It’s one of my many talents.” The flowers are dwarfed by his hands– his long fingers pinch the stems delicately, offset by the size of the silver rings he wears on them. You admire them, watching them glint in the moonlight, the tendons in his wrist flexing and his skin pulling tight over veins and knuckles. The heavy metal clicks as he works. You’re about to comment on them, when you watch what said fingers are doing with the flowers.

He takes one, and loops the stem around another, creating a loose knot that lets the tails sit alongside each other. He repeats the process slowly, building a chain of bright marigold blooms, while he hums idly and shoots you a heavy look from beneath his lashes. “Ah. So you’re not afraid to look, now. That’s good to know.” 

You tear your eyes away. The tips of your ears burn with embarrassment at having been caught staring, yet again. “Have you any shame?” 

“Not a hair of it.” 

Eddie holds up a finished crown of flowers, grinning at you. He places the circlet of blooms on your head, and as he draws back, tucks a loose strand of hair behind your ear. 

“And I crowned her my Queen of sweet May,” he sings at you, more of a coo than truly carrying a tune. “The most beautiful one in all the land, of course.”

“From princess to queen,” you muse, trying not to show how quickly your heart is melting. “I’m sure you must think that endears you to me.”

“I’d like to think so,” Eddie admits, leaning ever closer to you. You can see the reflection of the moon in his eyes, glinting vaguely red– you can smell honeyed wine on his breath. His voice drops even lower in register, until it’s just barely above a whisper. “I hope so. Tell me I’m wrong, sweetheart.” 

“I think,” you murmur just as quietly, letting your eyes drop indulgently to his parted lips. They’re so plush and inviting, they’re right there. You need only let yourself bend an inch and you could kiss him. You breathe in, “I think…”

Your hand falls softly to the basket of flowers beside you.

“I think your hands are egregiously meaty.”

You lift a handful of marigolds and smash them into his mouth, making him splutter and fall backwards. You cackle, flinging yourself in the opposite direction, scrambling up to run away. You swear you got some of them in his mouth; you can hear him coughing and spitting them at the same time as he laughs.

“I’ll get you for that!” You can hear him leaping up to chase you, and the prospect makes your heart pound in your chest, your blood rushing hot beneath your skin. You’re sure that it will be easy for him to catch you– you’re hoping for it, really.

You duck between the pines and into the trees. “Come sniff me out then, if you must!” 

You hear his laugh from behind you, almost sounding dark and menacing. Your hair stands on end, but your feet carry you through the trees, running even though you feel as though you’ve been struck by lightning. 

His feet pound the earth behind you, his laughter dancing on the breeze and combining with the music from the meadow. Beyond the trees, your contemporaries dance and make merry with the coming of summer. Here, in the woods, you run from some indeterminate end– one that you have an inkling of, like the barest traces of a memory, but you can’t quite make it out yet. 

Eddie’s hands snatch you by the waist, and you yelp. Heat bursts beneath your skin where he touches you through your bodice, whirling you around until your back hits the trunk of a tree. 

Your breath catches in your throat, heart pounding, chest heaving. Eddie is so close, and the air around you buzzes with energy and magic, as if the very trees themselves were singing. 

“You little minx,” Eddie muses, his voice rumbling low like thunder. “Just need me to chase you, is that it?” His eyes truly do shine red, you don’t think you’re imagining it– each time they catch the light of the moon, or a torch burning far off in the meadow, you see a glimpse of that subtle iridescent red of a forest creature in the dark glinting back at you. 

“I think you’re a spirit,” you whisper, the words light and airy in your throat as you try to regain your breath. “I think you’re one of the Fey. You can’t be real.”

Eddie has you caged in against the tree– one hand on the trunk beside your head, one on your hip. You don’t want to be anywhere else. “Oh, I’m very real, sweetheart. Shall I show you how much?”

His forefinger traces the line of your cheekbone, down the side of your face, to your jaw. You want it bad. You want him and anything he’ll give you– throw you to the ground, take you as prey, the lot of it. You won’t be married in the morning, but tonight all things are possible. 

You turn your face and drag your lips across his knuckles, half-gone in your desire. You barely even register the look on his face; eyes wide, lips parted in awe, like he’s never seen anything like you before. Like you confound him as much as he confounds you. A match made in heaven. 

Eddie catches your jaw in his fingertips, holding you like you’re made of glass, and he crashes down into you. He tastes of cherry wine, as rich and deep as the color of his blouse, which you fist in your hand to tug him closer. 

“Please,” you whisper against his lips. It falls like a sigh into his mouth, and his hand tightens on your hip momentarily before gathering your skirts. The fabric flutters as he pulls at them, tugging them up just enough to disappear beneath the hem. 

Your breath quickens. His hand makes contact with your thigh and you think, Oh fuck, this is really happening. 

Eddie’s finger’s pause on the breadth of your thigh, just above your knee. His forefinger strokes downward, passing over your garter strip and feeling the weave of the silk before he cracks a self-satisfied smirk at you. 

“Nice stockings. Get them recently?”

Your eyes narrow with false gravity, your nose scrunching. “I’ll kill you.”

His smirk stretches into a grin, and he scoffs a little laugh that flutters across your lips. It feels like a kiss. “Dying between the legs of my beautiful Queen of May sounds like a good way to go, actually.”

His hand drags hotly up your outer thigh, and the touch nearly burns you to your core. Eddie’s thumb presses against the skin just at the juncture of your leg, and you press your lips together to bite back a moan from coming out. Everything between your legs is tense, and pulsing, and turning feverish the longer he just pets at your skin and tugs your leg up to rest against his hip. 

His fingertips dig into the curve of your ass and the moan escapes you; high pitched, needy, embarrassing. You’re hot all over and you feel like you might die if he doesn’t touch you– you have a mind to tell him so, too, when Eddie dips his head and bites at your earlobe. 

He dips his finger between your folds, tracing one forefinger up the seam of your cunt, and you swear you could nearly scream. Flesh that is too hot and too sensitive bursts alive with feeling. His finger is drenched, your legs shake just from one touch. Is this what it always feels like?

“Oh, baby,” he coos as you whimper into his neck. His lips move slowly along your skin. Each move of his finger, just teasing you gently, dragging so slowly over your clit that your back arches and you keen long and high. “That’s it. This is what you needed, isn’t it?” 

You let out a pitiful squeak, nodding your head like you may explode rather than answer. He strokes you firmly and then gently, watching your face, studying your expressions. It’s so much and it’s not enough, not nearly enough to settle the throbbing in your core. 

“Please…” It’s the only thing you can come up with, the word bubbling up out of your throat before you can make it make sense. “Please.”

“‘Please’ what?” Eddie tilts his head. His pale skin nearly glows in the moonlight, the red in his eyes shining for a split second. “Please… here?”

His finger circles your entrance, prodding but never quite dipping in all the way. It’s just enough to make you see stars, just enough to turn you nearly insane. 

“Oh my God,” you cry out, fingers digging into his shoulders and gripping at his neck. 

Eddie hums, letting you feel the gentle touch for a few more seconds before it’s gone. You could cry. There are tears in your eyes– you could sob, throw a tantrum. You don’t think it would make him change his mind either way.

“My hands are too big, though, aren’t they?” Eddie shakes his head, mirroring your pout in a condescending manner that makes you want to smack him. Then he cracks a smirk, and you know he’s just being mean. “Mhm. Big and meaty. Too much for a sweet little thing like you. I wouldn’t want to break–”

You snatch his wrist through your skirts and bring his hand back between your legs. No preamble, no begging– this time he hisses, and you sigh with relief as you grind down onto not just his fingers, but his entire hand. 

“You’re not disappearing on me this time, Munson,” you nearly growl at him. Your tongue lavishes his skin, his long neck providing just the right amount of area for you to indulge in. 

“I would have stayed,” he gasps out when your teeth find a particularly tender spot under his jaw. “I’d have stayed if I knew you wanted me to.”

“I want you to,” you say, and you wonder if you’ll regret it in the morning. But the morning seems so far away right now, and his hand feels so good between your legs, and you don’t quite understand how you could regret anything that makes him look at you like that.

“Don’t– You can’t talk to me like that,” he whispers, and his eyes shine like rubies in the night as he gazes at you in awe. “You should know better than that.”

You do know better. But still, you tell him, “Stay,” and it’s like a dam has been broken. You know that you’ll never get rid of him now, and you don’t really want to. You want him to make a home in your chest, right against your heart. You want him to always touch you like this. You want him to always look at you with that same reverent gaze, like he’s just looked upon divinity.

Eddie crowds between your legs and his hand leaves you, but his thigh remains in its place. His leg presses tight to your core, the rough fabric of his trousers not nearly as warm as the touch of his hand, but just as erotic. You rock forward mindlessly against his thigh as he takes your face in his hands– one wet with your arousal– and kisses you breathless. His lips move over yours softly, and then passionately, until you take all that passion and feed it back into him twice over.

You lose track of time. The stroke of his tongue against yours, your hands in his hair, his firm thigh between your legs, all brings you to the edge of oblivion. You squirm against him and he chuckles against your lips. He knows what you want. He’ll give it to you, you know it, you know that he will–

And then a twig snaps. Someone calls your name just through the trees, and then, fucking Victoria breaks through the bushes just in time to see you jump and squeal, having to clutch at Eddie’s shoulders to keep from falling over when he spins around to see who intruded on your precious moment.

“OH! I’m so sorry– I thought–” Victoria fiddles with a long lock of her hair, twisting it idly before tossing it over her shoulder. You’re sure you look disheveled, with Eddie’s crown of marigolds slowly unweaving itself in your hair. It’s obvious to her what you’d been doing– Her eyes rake up and down Eddie’s frame, standing halfway in front of you like a shield, his chest heaving, a dark spot on his trousers where his thigh had been pressed between your legs. “Well, you said you were going to be back, and we thought you’d gone missing…”

“I was in the middle of doing something,” you tell her bluntly.

“Understatement,” Eddie mutters under his breath, and you knock your elbow against his back.

You ignore him. “I thought you didn’t want to go into the woods?”

“Well, that was before we thought you… disappeared.” Victoria looks from you to Eddie. “Who’s this?”

“Something.” Eddie grins at her, sharp teeth glinting in the moonlight breaking through the trees. “Sorry I stole her away from you. We were actually just having a fascinating conversation about when it’s appropriate to disappear– you could join us if you want?” 

Eddie glances over his shoulder at you, and smirks a bit at the expression of complete and utter envy on your face. You don’t want anyone to join. You don’t want to share him. You want him all to yourself. You want to grow on him like ivy until no one can see him but you. You want to hold him close to your chest and keep him there for eternity, and then some. 

“Oh, no, I–” Victoria blushes. She half-turns, like she wants to run away from the conversation entirely. “I just wanted to let you know that we’ve collected all the flowers we need, so… we’re going back to town. You can stay… if you want.”

You want to throw a fit.

She ducks back into the bushes quickly. Eddie is quiet for a moment, listening to her footsteps through the grass, before he turns to you. 

“You were jealous,” he teases, leaning towards you with that stupid self-aggrandizing grin.

Your face grows hot with anger and embarrassment. “You did that on purpose.” You shove him bodily, so that he stumbles a bit to the side, and he snickers. “I can’t believe you. She could have said yes to that.”

“Nah, she was too bashful. I knew she wasn’t gonna take me up on the offer. She wandered into something she wasn’t ready for.” Eddie leans up against a tree, smiling at you with a more resigned expression now. He looks you over, like he wants to burn the image of your kiss-bitten lips and rumpled dress into his memory. After a moment, he meets your eye again. “You should go. Get some sleep before the festival tomorrow.”

“But I–” You flounder. You just made so much progress, and now you’re just back where you began. You shouldn’t be proud about it now– not after he nearly took you to pieces with a single touch. Not when you can still feel the sharp edge of an orgasm pressing at your core, wanting to force its way out but with no way to get there now, and every look at him makes it press that much harder. “You know what– I don’t even know what I expected.” 

You march off towards the tree line. You have to find your fucking flower basket. You have to go and make garlands and slap together some bouquets for the festival tomorrow. You have to pretend like you aren’t dying inside from the disappointment.

“Princess.” You turn to him. He isn’t smiling anymore, he just looks disappointed as well. He glances up at the moon, and then back to you. “It’s a full moon tomorrow. Best not to go near the woods, okay?”

“Don’t tell me you believe in those stupid wolf-man stories, too,” you snap, beyond aggravated.

“Just promise me,” Eddie bites back, his eyes shining dangerously in the moonlight. “Promise me that you’ll stay in town. Don’t come near the woods. Drink, be merry, have a good time.”

“And you?” You feel a bit humiliated and desperate, vying for his time and attention– but you want it. You want it, you want him, more than anything, but you have a feeling you won’t be getting what you want, yet again. “What about you?” 

“I’ll find you,” he says firmly, and then lowers his eyes. Softly, he amends, “I’ll always come back to you.”

[breelandwalker]

PODCAST RECS - Debunking and Fact-Checking for Witches & Witchcraft Spaces

A collection of podcast episodes fact-checking, debunking, or just providing some clarity on modern myths, misinformation, and conspiracy theories that are frequent flyers in witchcraft and pagan spaces, both theories mistakenly touted by community members and some of the utter drivel spouted by non-witches that still affects us today. Check out these shows on your favorite podcast app!

(Updates to be made whenever I find new content. There will be some crossover with my Witches In History Podcast Recs post and some of the content will be heavy. Blanket trigger warning for violence, abuse, bigotry, sexism, antisemitism, and mistreatment of women, queer people, and children.)

[Last Updated: October 17, 2024]

This post is broken into three basic sections:

Historical Misinformation

Modern Myths and the People Who Create Them

Conspiracy Theories and Moral Panics

List of Cited Podcasts, in alphabetical order

American Hysteria

BS-Free Witchcraft

Dig: A History Podcast

Hex Positive

Historical Blindness

History Uncovered

Morbid

Occultae Veritatis

Our Curious Past

Our Fake History

Ridiculous History

Stuff You Missed In History Class

The History of Witchcraft

Unobscured

You’re Wrong About…

Historical Misinformation

General History of Witchcraft

Historical Blindness - A Rediscovery of Witches, Pt 1 & 2 Oct 13, 2020 & Oct. 27, 2020 A discussion of the early modern witch craze and the myths, misconceptions, and theories about witches spread by academics. Topics of discussion include the works of Margaret Murray and Charles Leland, the founding of Wicca, the emergence of the midwife-witch myth, and folk healers as targets of witchcraft accusations. Sarah Handley-Cousins of “Dig: A History Podcast” supplies guest material for both episodes.

Hex Positive, Ep. 36 - Margaret Effing Murray with Trae Dorn July 1, 2023 Margaret Murray was a celebrated author, historian, folklorist, Egyptologist, archaeologist, anthropologist, first-wave feminist, and the first woman to be appointed to the position of lecturer in archaeology in the UK. So why so we get so annoyed whenever her name is mentioned in conversations about witchcraft? Well, it all has to do with a book Margaret wrote back in 1921...which just so happened to go on to have a profound influence on the roots of the modern witchcraft movement.

Nerd & Tie senpai and host of BS-Free Witchcraft Trae Dorn joins Bree NicGarran in the virtual studio to discuss the thoroughly-discredited witch-cult hypothesis, Murray's various writings and accomplishments, and why modern paganism might not have caught on so strongly without her.

BS-Free Witchcraft, Ep 03: The History of Wicca October 06, 2018 On this episode, Trae digs deep into the history of Wicca, and tries to give the most accurate history of the religion as they can. I mean, yeah, we know this is a general Witchcraft podcast, but Wicca is the most widely practiced form of Witchcraft in the US, UK, Canada and Australia… so how it got started is kind of important for the modern Witchcraft movement. (And trust me, there aren’t any pulled punches here.)

BS-Free Witchcraft, Ep. 28: The Burning Times May 30, 2020 On this installment of the podcast, we tackle probably one of the more controversial topics in the modern witchcraft movement: The Burning Times. What were the actual “Burning Times,” where do we get that phrase from, and what really happened? Also, how has this phrase been used in modern witchcraft? It’s a heavy one, folks.

Dig: A History Podcast - Both Man and Witch: Uncovering the Invisible History of Male Witches Sept 13, 2020 Since at least the 1970s, academic histories of witches and witchcraft have enjoyed a rare level of visibility in popular culture. Feminist, literary, and historical scholarship about witches has shaped popular culture to such a degree that the discipline has become more about unlearning everything we thought we knew about witches. Though historians have continued to investigate and re-interpret witch history, the general public remains fixated on the compelling, feminist narrative of the vulnerable women hanged and burned at the stake for upsetting the patriarchy. While this part of the story can be true, especially in certain contexts, it’s only part of the story, and frankly, not even the most interesting part. Today, we tackle male witches in early modern Eurasia and North America!

Dig: A History Podcast - Doctor, Healer, Midwife, Witch: How the the Women’s Health Movement Created the Myth of the Midwife-Witch Sept 6, 2020 In 1973, two professors active in the women’s health movement wrote a pamphlet for women to read in the consciousness-raising reading groups. The pamphlet, inspired by Our Bodies, Ourselves, looked to history to explain how women had been marginalized in their own healthcare. Women used to be an important part of the medical profession as midwives, they argued — but the midwives were forced out of practice because they were so often considered witches and persecuted by the patriarchy in the form of the Catholic Church. The idea that midwives were regularly accused of witchcraft seemed so obvious that it quickly became taken as fact. There was only one problem: it wasn’t true. In this episode, we follow the convoluted origin story of the myth of the midwife-witch.

Dig: A History Podcast - Cheesecloth, Spiritualism, and State Secrets: Helen Duncan’s Famous Witchcraft Trial July 3, 2022 Helen Duncan was charged under the 1735 Witchcraft Act, but her case was no eighteenth-century sensation: she was arrested, charged, and ultimately imprisoned in 1944. Of course, in 1944, Britain was at war, fighting fascism by day on the continent and hiding in air raid shelters by night at home. The spectacle of a Spiritualist medium on trial for witchcraft seemed out of place. What possessed the Home Secretary to allow this trial to make headlines all across the UK in 1944? That’s what we’re here to find out.

The Conspirators, Ep. 63 - The Last Witch Trial Nov. 26, 2017 England’s official laws regarding the prosecution of witches dates back to the 1600s. Those very same laws would also remain on the books until well into the 20th century. In 1944, a psychic medium named Helen Duncan would gain notoriety by becoming the last woman to be tried under England’s witchcraft laws.

The History of Witchcraft Podcast, hosted by Samuel Hume Witches didn’t exist, and yet thousands of people were executed for the crime of witchcraft. Why? The belief in magic and witchcraft has existed in every recorded human culture; this podcast looks at how people explained the inexplicable, turned random acts of nature into conscious acts of mortal or supernatural beings, and how desperate communities took revenge against the suspected perpetrators.

Unobscured, Season One - The Salem Witch Trials Welcome to Salem, Massachusetts. It’s 1692. And all hell is about to break loose.

Unobscured is a deep-dive history podcast from the labs of How Stuff Works, featuring the writing and narrative talents of Aaron Mahnke, horror novelist and the mind behind Lore and Cabinet of Curiosities.

As with his other series, Mahnke approaches the events in Salem armed with a mountain of research. Interviews with prominent historians add depth and documentation to each episode. And it’s not just the trials you’ll learn about; it’s the stories of the people, places, attitudes, and conflicts that led to the deaths of more than twenty innocent people.

Each week, a new aspect of the story is explored, gradually weaving events and personalities together in chronological order to create a perspective of the trials that is both expansive and intimate. From Bridget Bishop to Cotton Mather, from Andover to Salem Town, Mahkne digs deep to uncover the truth behind the most notorious witch trials in American history.

Think you know the story of Salem? Think again.

Witchcraft and Other Magical Practices

BS-Free Witchcraft, Ep. 43 - “Lilith” Jan. 29, 2022 Host Trae Dorn discusses the ongoing debate over whether or not it’s okay for non-Jewish witches to incorporate Lilith into their practices. Is Lilith closed? Is it cultural appropriation? There’s so much misinformation in New Age and poorly written witchcraft books on Lilith, it’s hard for some witches to get a clear picture. It’s common to run into folks on social media talking about Lilith as a “Goddess,” which she very much isn’t. Let’s dive into the origins of the folklore surrounding this figure, and we’ll let you decide whether or not it’s okay to work with Lilith. But, uh, spoiler – we don’t think you should.

Historical Blindness, Ep. 106 - Lilith, the Phantom Maiden November 22, 2022 Host Nathaniel Lloyd explores the evolution of the figure of Lilith, from Mesopotamian demon, to the first woman created by God, and back to a succubus mother of demons. It’s a tale of syncretism, superstition, forgery, and a dubious interpretation of scriptures.

BS-Free Witchcraft, Ep. 55 - Lucky Girl Syndrome and the Law of Attraction January 28, 2023 Trae takes a look at one of New Age spirituality’s most toxic philosophies - The Law of Attraction. The history of the idea is discussed, where it came from, and how this dangerous combination of prosperity gospel, purity culture, and victim-blaming has come back in a major way to a whole new generation as “Lucky Girl Syndrome.” 

Hex Positive, Ep. 19 - The Trouble with Tarot August 1, 2021 Tarot and tarot-reading have been a part of the modern witchcraft movement since the 1960s. But where did these cards and their meanings come from? Are they secretly Ancient Egyptian mystical texts? Do they have their origins among the Romani people? Are they a sacred closed practice that should not be used by outsiders? Nope, nope, and nope.

This month, we delve into the actual history of tarot cards, discover their origins on the gaming tables of Italy and France, meet the people who developed their imagery and symbolism into the deck we know today, and debunk some of the nonsense that’s been going around lately concerning their use. The Witchstorian is putting on her research specs for this one!

Stuff You Missed in History Class - A Brief History of Tarot Cards Oct. 26, 2020 How did a card game gain a reputation for being connected to mysticism? Tarot’s history takes a significant turn in the 18th century, but much of that shift in perception is based on one author’s suppositions and theories.

Hex Positive, Ep. 23 - The Name of the Game November 1, 2021 Bree delves into the history, myths, and urban legends surrounding Ouija boards. Along the way, we’ll uncover their origins in the spiritualist movement, discover the pop culture phenomenon that labeled them portals to hell, and try to separate fact from internet fiction with regard to what these talking boards can actually do.

Our Curious Past, Ep. 20 - The Curious History of the Ouija Board August 18, 2023 Host Peter Laws explores the history of the “talking board,” which was wildly popular in the early 1900s, until something happened that would tarnish its’ reputation for good. 

Ridiculous History - Brooms and Witchcraft, Pt. 1 & 2 Oct. 13-15, 2020 Most people are familiar with the stereotypical image of a witch: a haggard, often older individual with a peaked hat, black robes, a demonic familiar and, oddly enough, a penchant for cruising around on broomsticks. But where did that last weirdly specific trop of flying on a broomstick actually come from?  Could the stereotype of witches on broomsticks actually be a drug reference? Join Ben, Noel, and Casey as they continue digging through the history and folklore of witchcraft - and how it affected pop culture in the modern day.

Historical Blindness, Ep. 116 - The Key to the Secrets of King Solomon  May 02, 2023 Host Nathaniel Lloyd continues his occasional series on the history and mythology of magic. In this installment, he looks at the development of the story that the biblical King Solomon was actually a flying-carpet-riding, magic-ring-wielding wizard and alchemist who bound demons to do his will. The origins and content of the legendary Key of Solomon are also discussed.

Dig: A History Podcast - Plastic Shamans and Spiritual Hucksters: A History of Peddling and Protecting Native American Spirituality July 24, 2022 In the late 20th century, white Americans flocked to New Age spirituality, collecting crystals, hugging trees, and finding their places in the great Medicine Wheel. Many didn’t realize - or didn’t care - that much of this spirituality was based on the spiritual faiths and practices of Native American tribes. Frustrated with what they called “spiritual hucksterism,” members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) began protesting - and have never stopped. Who were these “plastic shamans,” and how did the spiritual services they sold become so popular?

Historical Blindness, Ep. 145 - All Is Number: Pythagoras and Numerology May 28, 2024 In this installment of the ongoing Encyclopedia Grimoria series, host Nathaniel Lloyd talks about a cult leader who is remembered as a great mathematician, whose real lasting contribution to the world is the nonsensical divination "magic" known as numerology.

Holidays

Hex Positive, Ep. 28 - The Easter-Ostara Debacle April 1, 2022 Host Bree NicGarran puts on her Witchstorian hat once more to delve into the origins of both Easter  and Ostara and to finally answer the age-old question: which came first  – the bunny or the egg?

Historical Blindness, Ep. 28 - A Very Historically Blind Christmas Dec. 18, 2018 An exploration of the origins of Christmas traditions, with special guest Brian Earl of the Christmas Past podcast. (There is also some mention of Christmas witches!) Further installments of this series explore additional Christmas traditions and iconography which have been falsely claimed to have pagan origins as well as the myths surrounding the history of Christmas itself. (Eps. 47, 63, 84, & 132 in December of subsequent years)

Modern Myths and the People Who Create Them

Ed and Lorraine Warren

You’re Wrong About…Ed and Lorraine Warren w. Jamie Loftus Nov 8 2021 Special Guest Jamie Loftus tells Sarah about Ed and Lorraine Warren (of The Conjuring and Annabelle fame). Topics of interest include Connecticut as a locus of scary happenings, New England uncles, and psychic communication with a tearstained Bigfoot.

Dig: A History Podcast - The Demonologist and the Clairvoyant: Ed and Lorraine Warren, Paranormal Investigation, and Exorcism in the Modern World Oct 3 2021 In the 1970s, Lorraine and Ed Warren had a spotlight of paranormal obsession shining on them. In the last decade, their work as paranormal investigators–ghost hunters–has been the premise for a blockbuster horror franchise totaling at least seven films so far, and more planned in the near future. So… what the heck? Is this for real? Yes, friends, today we’re talking about demonology, psychic connections to the dead, and the patriarchy. Just a typical day with your historians at Dig.

History Uncovered, Ep. 92 - The Enfield Haunting That Inspired "The Conjuring 2" Oct 25 2023 The Enfield Haunting began with a bang. Literally. From 1977 to 1979, an unassuming North London home was the site of near-constant paranormal activity, from knocking sounds and moving objects to disembodied voices and the terrifying alleged possession of one young daughter of the Hodgson family. But how much truth was there to these happenings? And since the Warrens got involved briefly and subsequently touted themselves as experts on the case (and made money from talking about it), how much of what we think we know reflects the actual events?

Hex Positive, Ep. 042 - Extended Warren Tea with Jenn the Ouija Girl and Lorelei Rivers Jan 01 2024 Discussions about the careers and rhetoric of the Warrens make the rounds regularly in conversations about the paranormal among members of the witchcraft community. But who were the Warrens? Why do they inspire such ire even as the Conjuring franchise gains steam? How much of what we think we know about the supernatural comes from them? And why is it important to recognize - and refute - their rhetoric when we encounter it? Bree NicGarran sits down with Jenn the Ouija Girl and Lorelei Rivers to spill ALL the tea.

"Paranormal" Literature & Media

You’re Wrong About…Winter Book Club - The Amityville Horror, Pts. 1-3 Dec 20 2021 - Feb 6 2022 Sarah tells guest host Jamie Loftus about the Amityville Horror, how it’s a Christmas story, and buying murder furniture might not be such a great idea. Further highlights include Jodie the Demon Pig, poor insulation and terrible parenting as evidence of a haunting, lots and lots of sunk cost fallacy, and how the book kind of debunks itself.

MORBID, Ep. 610 - The Amityville Horror Conspiracy October 17 2024 The supposed experience of the Lutz family at 112 Ocean Avenue served as the basis for the iconic haunted house story, “The Amityville Horror,” and the countless films adapted from or inspired by the original novel. However, unlike most other stories of paranormal experiences, “The Amityville Horror” became a phenomenon that influenced everything from Ronald DeFeo’s criminal defense during his murder trial to the American public’s belief in the supernatural. Yet for all their talk of it being a genuine story of demonic activity, in the years since the publication of the popular novel, a large body of evidence from skeptical evaluations to court records and interview transcripts suggest that America’s most notorious haunted house might not have been quite so haunted after all.

American Hysteria, Ep. 125 - I Was A Teenage Poltergeist October 14 2024 Sarah Marshall, host of “You’re Wrong About…,” transports us to the old world of British Hysteria to reveal the mysterious story of the Enfield Poltergeist and joins host Chelsea Weber Smith at the seance table to discuss the great unknown and the ghosts they know.

You’re Wrong About… - Michelle Remembers, Pt. 1-5 March 26, 2020 - April 30, 2020 Intrepid hosts Sarah and Mike delve into one of the foundational texts of the Satanic Panic - “Michelle Remembers.” A young woman spends a year undergoing hypnosis therapy, which uncovers repressed memories of shocking and horrifying abuse at the hands of a Satanic cult. The book became a foundational text for both mental health professionals and law enforcement attempting to grapple with an alleged nationwide network of insidiously invisible child-abducting cults. The only problem is…none of what Michelle remembered ever actually happened.

You’re Wrong About…. - The Satan Seller, Pt. 1-5 June 28, 2021 - August 9, 2021 Sarah and Mike return to Camp You’re Wrong About for another Satanic Panic story hour. This time, the summer book club explores Mike Warnke’s 1972 “memoir” about joining a demonic cult, rising through the ranks of Satan’s favorite lackeys, his sudden downfall and redemption, and the California hedonism that made him do it. This is followed by a discussion of the Cornerstone Magazine exposé that brought the facts to light and thoroughly discredited Warnke’s story.

American Hysteria, Eps. 64-66 - Chick Tracts, Pts. 1-3 March 20 - April 03, 2023 In his own lifetime, Jack Chick was one of most prolific and widely-read comic artists in history. His company, Chick Tracts, published hundreds of millions of copies of pocket-sized bible comics, filled with lurid illustrations of cackling demons, wicked witches, and sinister cults, all hell-bent on corrupting any hapless mortal they could get their hands on. These tracts were meant to be left where they might be found by a sinner in need of salvation, with a scared-straight morality-play approach to Christianity that contributed in no small part to the period in the late 20th century we now call the Satanic Panic. (There’s also a follow-up two-part episode about one of Chick’s “occult experts,” who claimed to be, among other things, a real-life vampire.)

History Uncovered, Ep. 95 - Roland Doe, The Boy Who Inspired "The Exorcist" November 15, 2023 In 1949, priests performed an exorcism on a boy referred to as "Roland Doe," aka Ronald Hunkeler, in a chilling ordeal that became the real-life inspiration for William Peter Blatty's 1971 book, "The Exorcist," and the movie adaptation released in 1973. But what really happened during this alleged exorcism and was there any proof of the claims of alleged demonic paranormal activity surrounding the events?

You're Wrong About... - The Exorcist (with Marlena Williams) December 27, 2023 Marlena Williams, author of "Night Mother: A Personal and Cultural History of the Exorcist," joins host Sarah Marshall to discuss the little possession movie that changed America forever. Was the set cursed by Satan himself, or plain old 70s misogyny? What makes a country going through a cultural upheaval embrace stories about the Devil? And - the most critical question of all - do Ouija boards really cause possession?

Frightful, Bonus Episode - Is the Paranormal Like A New Religion? June 25 2024 Since the early 2000s, paranormal content has exploded in popular culture. It seems we can't get enough of ghosts (and hunting for them). What could be behind this enthusiasm for spooky things? Host Peter Laws shares a theory - that the paranormal is a clever way for us to be religious...without being religious. (This is less a debunking than a discussion of a personal hypothesis, but it deals with the pervasiveness of cultural religious themes, the influence of social media on modern mythmaking, and the sense of community surrounding paranormal belief.)

Conspiracy Theories and Moral Panics

Ancient "Mysteries"

Historical Blindness, Pyramidiocy, Eps. 146-151 June-July 2024 Host Nathaniel Lloyd delves into the great pyramids and the various myths and misconceptions surrounding them, some of which, despite vast amounts of historical evidence to the contrary, endure to this very day. Further related segments on this topic may be found on the show's Patreon, including a highly interesting July 2024 minisode regarding "Books of the Dead," which examines claims about H.P. Lovecraft's "Necronomicon" and its' supposed relation to the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus.

History Uncovered, Ep. 117 - The Real History Behind the Mythic City of Atlantis June 12, 2024 First mentioned by Plato in Timaeus and Critias, the lost city of Atlantis later became a widely debated topic among historians. But is Atlantis real? (Spoiler: No. No it is not.)

Hucksters, Secret Societies, and Antisemitism

Historical Blindness, Ep. 14 - Bloody Libel December 12, 2017 An exploration of one of the most destructive myths in history - the blood libel, or the false accusation that Jews of the Middle Ages and beyond ritually murdered Christian children, a lie that host Nathaniel Lloyd traces back to its’ roots in medieval England and the murder of one Young William of Norwich.

Historical Blindness, Eps. 56-57 - The Illuminati Illuminated September 15-29, 2020 A contemplation of the modern conservative conspiracy theory of a “deep state” leads host Nathaniel Lloyd back to the dawn of the modern conspiracy theory, the Enlightenment, when the ultimate conservative conspiracy theory was born as an explanation for the French Revolution: The Illuminati!

Historical Blindness, Eps. 38-40 - Nazi Occultism, Parts 1-3 July 2-30, 2019 An exploration of the dark roots of Nazi occult philosophies, from a neo-paganism preoccupied with the Nordic Pantheon, to a folksy back-to-the-land movement that evolved into a nationalist sentiment, to an ideology of racial supremacy all tied up with contemporary myths and pseudoscience. (The host is careful to note with clarity and vehemence at the start of each episode that this series IN NO WAY approves of, promotes, or supports this ideology and Nazism is roundly condemned at every turn. It’s not an easy listen, but understanding how and why this bigotry continues to be a problem in pagan spaces and how to recognize it is very important.) TL;DR - Fuck Nazis. No tolerance for genocidal fuckwads.

DIG: A History Podcast - Werewolves, Vampires, and the Aryans of Ancient Atlantis: The Occultic Roots of the Nazi Party Oct 17, 2021 Modern movie plotlines which portray Nazi obsessions with occultism might be exaggerated for dramatic effect, but they aren't made up out of wholecloth. The NSDAP, or the National Socialist Worker's Party, was a party ideologically enabled by occultist theories about the Aryan race and vampiric Jews, on old folk tales about secret vigilante courts and nationalist werewolves, and on pseudoscientific ideas about ice moons. In this episode, the hosts explore the occult ideas, racial mythology, and 'supernatural imaginary' that helped to create the Nazi Party.

Our Fake History, Eps. 66-68: Who Was the Mother of the Occult? May-June 2018 An exploration of the life and works of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, self-described sage, medium, guru, author, and one of the founders of Theosophy.

The Satanic Panic

American Hysteria - Satanic Panic, pt 1 & 2 Dec. 10 2018 - Jan. 07, 2019 This two-part episode covers perhaps the most mystifying moral panic in US history, the 1980s and early 90s ‘Satanic Panic.’ For this episode, Chelsey covers the rise of organized Satanism beginning in the late 60s, as well as the adversarial countercultures of the hippies and the metalheads, and their apparent Satanic crimes that would be hailed as proof of their evil, as well as proof that teens, as well as children, were in serious moral peril. Satan was allegedly hypnotizing the youth with secret messages in backwards rock songs, teaching them occult magic in Saturday morning cartoons, and causing suicides through a popular role-playing games, all while helping religion blur into politics for good.

For part two, Chelsey will cover what came next, a serious investigation into an imagined network of Satanic cults ritually abusing children in daycare centers all over the country. Chelsey will try to understand this shocking decade in history, why it really happened, and the cultural issues it was really about.

BS-Free Witchcraft, Ep 10 - The Satanic Panic April 27, 2019 The Satanic Panic of the 70s, 80s, and 90s shaped the Modern Witchcraft Movement in a lot of unexpected ways. Its effects still ripple through a lot of our sources, so in this installment of the podcast we’re digging into this extremely weird part of American history. It’s a bit of a doozy, after all.

BS-Free Witchcraft - Ep. 32: A New Satanic Panic? February 27, 2021 A couple of years ago, we did an episode on the history of the Satanic Panic of the latter half of the twentieth century, but recent events have led us to ask - could it be happening again? It’s very possible that we are at the start of a new wave of satanic panic, and QAnon is just the latest symptom of a larger problem.

Occultae Veritatis, Case #014: Satanic Panic of Martensville Jan. 28, 2018 Today the hosts cover one of the various Satanic ritual abuse scandals that happened close to them. Is it full of hot air and false allegations? Yes. Yes it is. 

Occultae Veritatis, Case #097A & B: Dungeons, Dragons, and the Satanic Panic Dec. 07, 2019 - Dec. 15, 2019 Dungeons & Dragons, introduced in 1974, attracted millions of players, along with accusations by some religious figures that the game fostered demon worship and a belief in witchcraft and magic.

[Last Updated: October 17 2024]

[k4marina]

— Prologue: Dragonstone|| Heart of the Dragon

synopsis: a trip to Dragonstone goes a little wrong, or does it?

game of thrones x modern!reader

4.5k+ word count

sereis masterlist || next part

"Why are we doing this during the hottest day of the year, again?" Daeron mutters, using the brochure that was given to us at the beginning of the tour as a fan.

If I could, I would've replied, but the heat was also getting to me, draining away my energy. And, on top of the scorching heat, I'd just finished the last of my water. I pursed my lips together, the line wasn’t that long and I’m sure I can buy another overpriced water bottle after we visited the caves.

The group tour guide turned back to us, just as exhausted, and somewhat bashful. He said something, but I couldn't be bothered with it as I was too focused to not tip over from the heat. It was probably something like “only a few more minutes and we’ll be outta the heat, folks,” with an awkward smile or something.

The line to the caves under the castles was stupidly long, but it's no surprise. So much history was in those caves and so many mysteries had come full circle there. And, the deeper they dug, the more they uncovered the history of the Targaryens that lived there from when Aenar Targaryen moved his entire family to Dragonstone after his daughter, Daenys “the Dreamer” dreamed of the Doom of Valyria. 

"Who's idea was it to come here for our research trip?" I didn't bother looking over at him, knowing that I'd be blinded by the sun that shone directly behind his big head.

“Shut up. Your voice is giving me a headache.” I quipped. “Besides, almost everything on this island is connected to the Targaryens. It might come useful when we have to write our research paper.”

The line moved up until our group was at the front of the line. A small group of students, along with Daeron and I, were on Dragonstone for our research projects. Some of the other students had decided to stay in Kings Landing or go to other parts of Westeros for their research.

Everyone was to spend a week in their respective areas and gather all the information they needed before heading back to Kings Landing to write and then later present their topics. Some chose to do it themselves whilst others, like us, decided to go with someone else.

Today was the first day of our stay on Dragonstone. Daeron and I had decided to check out the caves and the island's beaches before we would explore the labyrinth-like castle.

I rubbed the side of my head, feeling a headache approaching. My hand reached up to my necklace that rested on my chest. The chain was long enough for it to hang in the dip of my breast.

Not only did I come here for my project, but also for me. The necklace around my neck has been in my family for generations, but no one knows from where. It’s made entirely of Valyrian Steel, which was rare back in the day, and even rarer now.

As a child, I didn’t think much of it. It wasn’t until I grew older and more curious that I started asking questions. First to my family, but all I got was even more confusing answers that led me nowhere. Then I turned towards the internet, scouring for hours until I had found it.

On the official Dragonstone website, I found pictures of the caves under the castle and possibly under the entire island. On one of the walls was a crude hand drawing of my necklace. Two dragons around a sword with a ruby in the middle –though, the ruby was replaced with a red dot. Regardless, the cave painting matched. 

The line moved up and Daeron gently pushed me up while I was lost in my thoughts. “You good?” He asks. I nod, “Yeah. The heat’s just a lot.” He gives an understanding look. Once the tour guide is given the green light, he begins to lead up to the entrance of the cave.

"Ready?" Daeron asks. I nodded and we begin walking. Once we entered the cave, my jaw was on the floor. I had seen pictures of the caves, but seeing it in real life was far more beautiful.

The deeper we got we could see the cave paintings done by the Children of the Forest which Daenerys and Jon had found. As the guide droned on about the cave paintings, I could feel my headache intensify. Why was it so hot in here? 

The deeper and deeper we went into the caves, the worse it got. My chest started to feel heavy. I struggled to put one foot in front of the other. The back of my throat burned and I felt like throwing up, but I pushed forward. 

My eyes raked the the cave walls, Where was it? Finally, I was able to see it. The markings were next to a few unknown ones. A sign with some information was hung up next to it. Despite my head pounding I was still able to read the bold words. 

Unknown markings made by who researchers believe are the Targaryens. The paint used seemed to be as old as when Aenar Targaryen moved his family to Dragonstone.

By the time I finished reading, I could feel my head pounding so loudly in my ear. It felt like an ice pick was being hammered into the side of my head. I could hear muffled voices call out, but to who I didn’t know. The room started to spin and a ringing sound filled my ears.

A hand, most likely Derons, reached out and turned me around. I could see his mouth moving, but no words coming out. My chest felt like it was overheating while my head continued to throb. Everything turned blurry and then it went black.

When I woke up, I was still in the cave. The cold stone floor had helped with bringing my body temperature down. And, my head didn't hurt anymore. After getting up, I looked around the cave. It was darker, and quiet.

Where was everyone?

Carefully, I made my way out of the cave. It was harder to walk out of the cave and the spotlights that were on the walls weren’t on. Once I was outside I was met with the night sky.

All the tents and other buildings around the beach were gone, as if they'd never been there.

Okay, this is weird.

"Hello?" My voice came out horse like I hadn’t spoken in a long time. "Hello? Is anyone there? Daeron?" 

My feet moved on their own and I tried to find someone, anyone. But there was no one. How could a populated area with tents and buildings disappear within hours?

Retracing my steps, I found the stairs that would lead me back to the Help Center that were posted around for lost tourists, but like the beach, there was nothing. Matter a fact, even the lamppost that were posted into the ground, the banners, the signs –everything was gone.

"What the actual fuck?" Panic creeped up and I could feel my heart thumping in my ears. "Gods, If this is some kinda sick fucking joke..."

At this point, I was running towards the castle. For what? I didn't know, but surely there had to be something there. The grand doors seemed to be closed so I tried to find another way in. I guess you could say I found something like a side door that took a little force to open. 

The inside of the castle was grand. High walls, banners held high, candles and lamps lit all around. Truly, it was amazing. As I was gawking at the architecture I failed to notice unknown voices walking towards me. 

“Halt!” Two unknown men dressed in what looked like armor cornered me, pointing their spears at me. “State your name! Who are you?” 

I stuttered out my name, raising my hands up so they could see I wasn’t a threat. “I’m not going to do anything, I swear.” 

The two men shared a look and a few hushed words before one of them walked over to me, grabbing my arm roughly and pulling me along. 

“Ow!” I tried to pull back, but his grip was too strong. “What the fuck dude. I said I wasn’t a threat.”

“Khaleesi will decide if you are or are not a threat.” The man who wasn’t holding onto me said. 

Khaleesi? What Khaleesi?

“Oh please don’t tell me I just walked into those real-life roleplaying things.” I groaned, earning side eyes from both of the men. 

They led me down a series of hall ways, each one intricate as the other until we stood outside of a set of polished stone double doors. Another pair of men dressed just like the cosplayers that brought me here stood in front of the doors. Without having to say any words they opened the grand doors. 

Slowly, I could see the inside being revealed. 

There, on the elevated platform stood the Throne of Dragonstone, where all the Targaryen heirs of the Iron Throne sat as they took the title “Prince of Dragonstone.” A light push brought me back as I was dragged closer to the throne. 

“Khaleesi,” the guard called out. Before I could ask who they were speaking to, an unknown voice answered. 

“What is it?” 

Light footsteps were heard from behind a wall and a woman emerged from behind it. Except it wasn’t just any woman. Even a child would know who she was. Everyone around the world knows her. 

She was Daenerys Targaryen. 

Mother of Dragons. 

The Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea.

The Unburnt.

The Breaker of Chains. 

I could feel time slow down as I watched her walk over to the throne and sit down. My blood turned cold as she sat in front of me. 

No.

No.

She’s dead.

This can’t be happening.

It’s not possible.

It’s not. I have better chances of reviving dragons than traveling back in time-

“What is this?” Daenerys eyed me, confused at my appearance and why I was even here before looking at the two men. 

“We found this unknown woman wandering around the castle, Your Grace.” 

She eyed me, as if wanting me to plead my case, but the words died in my throat. Why wouldn’t they when Daenerys fucking Targaryen was right in front of me. A million thoughts ran through my head, but I couldn’t rack my brain to find one answer. 

Daenerys squinted before speaking again, this time directly towards me. “Who are you?” The High Valyrian rolled easily off of her tongue like a true Targaryen. Those three words held so much power and conviction, like a true Queen.

“Y/n Vellarys!…” I rushed to reply in Valyrian. 

“You speak good Valyrian.” She praises, but it's quickly pushed away. “But that doesn’t explain what you are doing here.”

What should I do? I bit my bottom lip as nervousness filled my body. 

Knowing that if I lie, I’ll be fileted, I took a deep breath before responding. “I don't know. I.. I,” I paused, not knowing if I should continue. If this was real then I only wanted her to know, “Can we be alone.. please?” 

The two men besides me visibly tense up, but don’t speak up. Daenerys looks down at us, seemingly in thought before she nodded. The two men bow before turning around to leave. The double doors closed with a loud thud. 

“We’re alone now, you may continue.” 

I nervously swallowed. Here we go. “This might sound weird, but.. I don’t know how I got here. I.. I woke up in the caves under the castle… alone.”

Daenerys’ face stayed neutral as I relayed the information. She seemed to take some time to process what I had just said. “Do you think I’m a fool?” 

I could feel my heart fall all the way down. Fuck.

“You woke up in the caves alone?” She repeats. “Not even a child would come up with such a stupid story like this.”

“N-n-no, Daener- I mean, Your Grace. I swear to the Gods that I’m telling the truth. I have no reason to lie to you. Especially when you could get rid of me with your dragons in a second.”

She seemed to mull over my words, as if weighing her options. “Alright, let's say you’re telling the truth. Your story still doesn’t make sense. How do you just “wake up” in a cave?” 

Now or never, I guess. 

“Actually,” I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. “I’m not from here. I come from-” The future. Fucking hell, how cliché. “-I come from a different… time.” 

Daenerys squinted and I could see the clogs in her brain moving. “You mean you’re from the future?” 

Jeez. Ripped the bandage right off. 

“Well –uh, yes,” I say. “I was touring the caves and then I –I fell unconscious or something, I still don’t know, I just know that when I woke up I ended up here.” 

I let out a frustrated sigh. What if this was just a dream and that all of this is just my imagination running wild. 

“That necklace.” 

Huh? What is she talking about? 

 I looked up, confused. “What?” 

She pointed towards my chest. I looked down and I could see my necklace was out. “What about it?” I asked.

“Where did you get it?” 

“It’s mine.” I replied. “It’s been in my family for generations. Why?” 

Now it was Daenerys’ turn to look a little nervous. 

“I’ve seen it in my dream.”

“Your dream? Like, one of those Dragon Dreams?” I ask. She gives a nod, “While we were sailing to Dragonstone I had a dream of a woman with silver hair and that necklace. Because I couldn’t see her face, I thought it was me. I’ve turned the treasury over looking for them; however, it seems that I dreamt of you.”

Ho-ly Fuck. Daenerys’ dreamt about me. What the hell. I’m about to throw up. 

“What?” Now it was my time to be skeptical of what was being said. “You dreamt about me and my necklace?”

She nodded. “It seems odd, but a Dragon Dream has never been wrong.”

“Ture, but that still leaves a lot of blanks.” My hand subconsciously went up to hold my necklace while I tried to think back. 

The deeper I walked into the cave the more my head started to hurt, but that was most likely because of dehydration… probably. But then there was a burning feeling on my chest when I looked at the symbol on the wall that matched my necklace and the burning feeling got even more intense and it felt like it was about to burn my skin-

“Fuck.” I groaned, letting go of the necklace. The outburst made Daenerys frown, “Are you alright?”

I looked down at my hands and at my necklace before looking into her eyes. “I think my necklace tried to burn me, like last time.” 

“Last time?” She frowned. “How can a necklace burn someone?”

“I don’t know. It happened before I passed out in the cave.” I let out a sigh. “Gods, what is going on.” 

“It seems that this was the God's doing,” Daenerys says, as if it was a fact. “They’ve brought you here.” 

“The Gods?” I repeat. Sure, in some sense they did bring me here. “But why?” 

“That may be something for you to find out.” Daenerys stood from the throne, walking down the steps until she was right in front of me. “I was lost once, but then the Gods gifted me my children to show me my true purpose.” 

“The Iron Throne.” I thought back to my history classes where I learned that for the fight for the Iron Throne, Daenerys lost her life as she fell into what historians said was “Targaryen Madness,” but I’ve always felt that there’s more to it. 

“It’s late, I’ll have the servants bring you to a spare room for you to rest in for the night.” As if on cue, the guards from before stepped up to us. “We can talk further tomorrow morning.”

Daenerys turned to leave from where she came from. The guards bowed as she left. Once she was gone they brought me to a spare room somewhere in the castle, this time without having to pull me around. 

The hallways were nearly empty, meaning there weren’t a lot of people living here or servants working in the castle. The most I’d seen was guards posted around. Once we were in front of two thick double doors the guards stepped back waiting for me to open them. 

It took a little force to open the door, but once I was inside, my jaw was on the floor. Despite everything being made of stone, the walls were covered in rich tapestry. There was a giant bed with lavish looking furs laid atop the bed and maroon bed sheets. 

Behind me, a servant walked in with a few sets of clothes and laid them on the bed. “We’ve prepared you some clothes,” she said. “Would you like to change now or take a bath?” 

As if on cue, I could feel how dirty I was since I was practically on the cave floors for Gods knows how long. 

“A bath would be fine, thank you,” I replied. It honestly felt weird watching servants work. Not that it was bad, just the fact that in the modern day you don’t have them. Sure maybe someone who cleans your home or makes you food, but servants?

Once they had pulled out the massive tub and manually poured in the hot water they led me to the tub. One of their hands went up to my shirt's edge and the other to my pants. 

“W-wait!” They all looked at me confused. 

“Is everything alright, My Lady?” One of the servants asked. 

No it’s not. You’re taking my clothes off. And sure, it’s your job to do practically everything for a highborn, but that ain’t me. 

“Uh, there’s no need for… all of this. I can do it myself.” 

“Are you sure?” Another girl asked. “It’s our duty to serve you.” 

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.” I replied awkwardly. “Just not really used to all of… this. Um, anyways I can take it from here. You guys can go…” 

I internally cringed at my words. Gods, I sounded like an idiot, but could you blame me? 

The girls reluctantly agreed, leaving me alone in the room. Once they were gone I let out a sigh and began to undress myself. The water was hot, but it was fine since I practically liked showering in lava every morning. 

Settling into the tub I finally relaxed. This entire thing was just so… bizarre. At first, I thought it was some sort of dream, but that searing pain I felt wasn’t something I could just imagine. 

My necklace burned me. 

And it burned me when I first saw the markings on the cave walls. I looked down at my chest and hand, but saw nothing. 

Okay, weird. 

That aside, why was I even brought here? Why me? What do I have that made me so special that I had to be flung into this era of time?

“Think, y/n, think,” I muttered to myself. The dream. Daenerys’ dream about the necklace. But wait, no history books said anything about her having a dragon dream. Could this maybe be connected?  

For the next hour, I mulled over my options while I soaked in the tub that had turned lukewarm. Having enough, I got up and grabbed the towels that the servants had thankfully set close for me. 

The clothes that they had laid out for me were a bunch of nightgowns. Thankfully, they were my size. I decided to wear a simple white nightgown. 

Laying under the mountain of covers and blankets, I finally let myself completely relax, falling asleep. Hopefully tomorrow’s discussions can help this situation get better or at least easier. 

I woke up to the sun glaring down into my face. Groaning, I turned to my side, hoping to get some more sleep. But the damage was done. 

I could hear light shuffling in the room and things being moved around. When I opened my eyes, I was nearly flash-banged. All the windows (that are floor to ceiling length) were opened and the curtains were drawn back. 

A few servants from last night and a few new faces worked around the room. I sat up in bed, rubbing my eyes, catching the attention of one of the girls. 

“Good morning, My Lady. Did you sleep well?” 

“Morning,” my voice came out a little low and rough. “What’s going on?” 

“We’re getting you ready for the day,” the girl replies, matter of factly. “You will be having your morning meal with the Queen. We’ve already drawn you a fresh new bath and arranged a new set of clothes.” 

I looked at where the tub was last night, nothing that was gone, along with my clothes. 

“Where are my clothes?” I asked. 

“We’ve sent them to get washed,” the servant replied. “My Lady, if i may…” 

I nodded for her to go on. “We’ve never seen such clothes like yours before. They remind us of what the men wear however, yours are a bit more.. different.” 

“Oh, that. They’re just something that I made.” I lied. Thinking back to last night, I’m confused I didn’t get as many weird looks as I should have wearing my jeans and shirt. It's not really the typical Westerosi fashion for this time. 

“The bath is ready.” Another girl says. 

Reluctantly, I got out of bed, following them to another room adjacent to this one. The room was a massive bathroom that could function as a bathhouse. 

There was a massive tub nestled into the floor. The windows were also huge but a little higher up, letting in some natural light. I could tell the water was hot just by how much it was steaming. 

Carefully, the servants began to undress me. They led me into the water and began adding what I can only assume are oils and salts. Truthfully, it felt like I was at some fancy spa with how they washed my body and hair. 

Once that was done, they helped me into a beautiful white dress with a dark teal and gold design. I felt like a model wearing such a beautiful dress. I let my hair down, not wanting it in any style (or knowing any styles of this period). 

A servant walked me to the dining room where Daenerys was waiting for me. She wore a light blue dress with her hair braided and her three headed dragon pin.  

“Good Morning,” she greeted. 

“Morning uh, Your grace.”  I replied. “Sorry, I’ve never called anyone “your grace” before.” 

She brushed it off, motioning for me to take a seat next to her at the table where the food was already prepared. 

“How did you sleep?” She asks, beginning to eat. 

“Fine, surprisingly.” I reached down to grab a fork for my food. “How about you?” 

Was I really making small talk with Daenerys Targaryen? 

“Mine as well,” she smiled. “I was hoping we could talk a little before I had to go meet my small council.” 

“Okay, what did you want to talk about?” I wanted to smack myself. Every time I spoke it was full of nerves and anxiety. 

“Let’s start with you. Your name and where you’re from.” Daenerys says confidently. “Judging by your looks, you’re of Valyrian descent.” She says, eyeing my silver hair. 

“Yes,” I nodded. “My family moved from Volantis to the Eyrie. My family is known to be of the Old Blood in Volantis.” 

“The Old Blood?” Daenerys says, surprised. 

The Old Blood are a group of people in Volantis that have proven to be the last remaining families of Valyria. They live in a perched area of the city that only they can walk. All the families in that area still continue their Valyrian traditions and practices, just minus the dragons. 

I nodded, “My father is the youngest of four sons, so he thought ‘why not move to westeros and start something there?’ knowing that he wouldn’t have to really carry on the family name.” 

“And your family name is Vellarys?” She recalled from last night. 

“Yes. We’re known for our jewelry making in Volantis. That’s why my father moved to Westeros, to open a shop there without having to take over the business and stress like his older brother.

“As for myself, I have two older brothers. One is working to be a doctor,” Daenerys frowned at that, confused, “uh, it’s like a Maester. The other is helping my father run the shop.” 

“And what about yourself?” 

“I’m in school. I go to the University of Kings Landing.” 

“The.. University of… Kings Landing?” 

“Well, after the monarchy was sorta let go, they turned certain parts of the Red Keep and other castles into Universites -places to go for higher studies, like the.. Citadel for example.” 

Daenerys nods, understanding some of it. 

“I study the era of The Game of Thrones as well as Targaryen History.” 

“The Game of Thrones?” She repeats. “What is that?” 

“It’s, uh, what we call this time period. It ranged from the death of King Robert to,” the death of Daenerys Targaryen, “to now, and a little later. We look into how the events after Robert’s death played out and how people fought for the Iron Throne.” 

“Like a game.” She says. 

I nodded. “Yes, like a game. There’s this quote that Cersie Lannister said to Ned Stark that summed it up, “When you play the game of thrones, You win or you die,”.”

“I see,” Daenerys looks down at her plate in thought. “And what about me?” 

Oh fuck. 

“What about you?” I say, acting innocent. 

“What happened to me?” 

I purse my lips together. Should I say it? I mean, it’s a good segway to what I want to really say… if this part goes well. 

“You…” I nervously swallowed. “You die… before you could even claim the throne.” 

The fork in her hand hits the ceramic plate with a loud clunk. 

“What?” 

Nervously, I looked into her. “You were killed… after you burned Kings Landing to ashes.” 

She frowned. “You're lying. I would never do such a thing. Me? Burning down Kings Landing? 

And the Red Keep, but I’ll keep that to myself. 

“I’m not lying, Daenerys. After you died, Drogon picked you up and flew you away. We still haven’t found your or his body.” 

Daenerys' hands started to shake at the information I had just thrown at her. Carefully, I placed mine over hers. 

“Daenerys,” I said softly. “Breath. You’re fine, nothing has happened so far.” 

Slowly, I could feel her hands stop shaking and her breathing seemed to steady. 

“What do you mean so far?” 

I gave her hand an encouraging squeeze although, I can’t tell if it was for me or her. 

“Meaning, I can help you.” 

She looks at me, puzzled. 

“Daenerys, I can help you take the Iron Throne.” 

okayyyy so it's finally here after many rewrites. let me know if you guys liked the first person POV. its my first time writing it like this, typically i do second POV. more to come in later chapters. also, i will be changing a few things, nothing major. one personal head cannon that i have is that jon isn't really named aegon, but jaehaerys. makes a lil more sense in my brain. also, i'll maybe be using some info from the books. and if you guys have any suggestions with y/n's character and other stuff please feel free to let me know. don't worry there will be more story and character development in the coming chapters.

[doctor-dusk]

𝐛𝐚𝐛𝐲, 𝐰𝐞 𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐭𝐨… 𝐟𝐮𝐜𝐤 | 𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐱 𝐭.

what would a musician be without his inspiring muse? 

warnings: soft dom!alex, smut, oral (both receiving), bit of anal playing, spitting, unprotected sex (piv). i think that's all, folks.

word count: 4.1k

i wrote most of this last year on a crowded bus on my way back from college, an old lady gave me a dirty look, but it's worth it. probably the dirtiest smut i've ever written so far because i was bored with my job today. hope you enjoy it :3

you had just gotten out of the shower. the skin of your shoulders and chest was still wet and the scent of grapefruit soap still perfumed the bathroom when you left the room amid a thin curtain of steam from the warm water. alex found it funny that you loved warm showers, even though it was almost forty degrees outside. you were wrapped in a dark gray cotton bathrobe, your hair was wrapped in a towel of the same color and you were drying your face with a white face towel. 

you noticed that alex was in exactly the same position since the last glimpse you had of him before entering the bathroom. he was sitting in a position that was not very comfortable visually speaking, wearing only moss green cargo shorts. his head was resting on his right hand, which held a pencil with a worn tip between his fingers, while his left hand was busy with a half-smoked cigarette, which released a thin curtain of smoke that escaped through the open window in front of him, his guitar resting on his lap, untouchable. 

he had been staring at the page of his notebook for almost twenty minutes. there were a few scribbles on the corners, loose words, but nothing that formed a sentence, much less something that made sense to him.

you tilted your head to see his face, seeing that his eyes were closed now, his hair, which was usually combed back, falling over his forehead, with some of the ends of the strands tickling his lowered eyelids. you gave a weak smile, hanging the face towel on the window and standing behind him, taking advantage of the exposed left side of his neck to give him a little kiss.

‘’what's up, huh?’’ you asked, giving him another little kiss and feeling his skin shiver with the contact of your lips.

‘’it’s all crap.’’ he grumbled, dropping the pencil on the table and straightening his posture, feeling you raise your hands to massage his shoulders. ‘’you know when you really want to write something, you have the idea in your head, but you just…’’ he said, his tone frustrated as he held the guitar. you knew alex well enough to know that he already felt this way before you even asked. you knew his frown, his sullen voice, his strong drag on his cigarette as if he were breathing the air with anger, and maybe he was.

‘’i know.” you answered in an understanding tone, letting your fingers massage the tense and stiff muscles in his shoulders. “but you’ll make it, you always do. you have a mini genius inside you who can think of the most incredible lyrics in the world in the blink of an eye.” you continued encouraging him, lightly tapping his forehead, watching him shake his head subtly.

“well, guess what: this genius is probably on vacation and i didn’t know about it.” turner replied. for a second, you liked to think that alex really did have a miniature of himself in his head, and that at the moment he was just wearing a pair of swim trunks while sunbathing on some paradisiacal beach on the italian coast. “or he must have died, i don’t know.” he finished with another mumble, leaving the guitar leaning against the wall next to it, standing upright and without any risk of falling.

‘’oh, you're so dramatic, turner.’’ you laughed, dragging his last name because of your accent. ‘’you just need some time. maybe relax. you demand too much of yourself.’’

“you know i've always been like this.” he replied, taking one last drag of his cigarette before putting it out by rubbing the butt on the wooden window frame. you've lost count of how many marks there were on the window frame from rubbing the butts of his cigarettes, but you never complained to him.

alex picked up the pencil again, pressing the end of the eraser to his cheek, glancing at the moment you walked around the chair, making a little space to sit on his lap. he felt the scent of the soap a little more intensely on your body, especially when you wrapped both arms around his neck.

alex liked it when you did that without warning, and you liked it even more. you liked the way he wrapped his long arms around you, letting his big hand wander around your waist, following the path further south and leaving it positioned on the warm skin of your left thigh, gently patting it in a caressing manner.

even though he was stuck in his little musical world, he didn't stop giving you the attention you deserved, even if it was just a little. but you knew he wouldn't be able to do anything now, not being so tense.

you had an idea, laying your head on top of his head, since the position you were in favor of the fact that you were sitting a little higher on his lap. you smelled the faint scent of shampoo in his hair, sliding your nose over his scalp, going down a little to kiss his temple, and then his cheek, and then his jaw. you kissed him as far as your mouth could reach, feeling his skin in contact with your lips and feeling the muscle in his cheek contract as he gave a small smile.

‘’what do you think you're doing, huh?’’ he asked, tilting his head a little to the left so he could look at you, but you were more focused on continuing to trail your kisses down his body, each kiss going down proportionally to the point that you had to get off his lap to get between his legs. ‘’you're distracting me, y’know?’’ he pretended to grumble in protest, but you knew him well enough to know that he was far from angry or bored by the fact that you were doing this.

“that's the intention.” you answered with a slightly muffled voice because you were kissing his belly now, letting your fingers slide over the skin of his abdomen in a slowly torturous way to reach the button of his shorts. not even if alex wanted to, he would be able to hide the shiver he felt with this simple act.

“you're crazy.” he laughed, now lightly nibbling the eraser on the tip of the pencil, his eyes not leaving your figure kneeling in front of him for even a second. it was almost majestic for him to see you like that, at an angle he loved, by the way.

“for you? of course.” he heard you retort in the same tone, feeling you unbutton his shorts and lower the zipper with one hand, while the other was resting on his knee. “but you like it.”

“i didn’t say i didn’t like it.” he said, dropping the pencil on the desk at the exact moment your hand reached the hem of his underwear, letting your fingers curl around the elastic to threaten to pull it down.

but you did it so slowly that it actually hurt him. by now, he was already throbbing just at the thought of feeling your hand wrap around him, or feeling your tongue play with the tip, or simply feeling every inch of him burying himself inside you. it awakened unbearable agony in him.

“you're such a twat.” he said through gritted teeth, squeezing the edge of the desk with his fingers. you raised an eyebrow as you feigned offense, threatening to stop. ‘’no, no, love, i didn't mean that, it's just…’’ he said in a frustrated tone with himself, watching you laugh and lower the piece again enough for his cock to practically jump out.

you saw how impossibly hard he was, with some veins marked all over his length, from the base to the beginning of the tip, which by the way was already merely lubricated with precum. it seemed to be calling your name, totally ready to let you wrap your hand around it and swallow it to the last inch, whether with your mouth or with your cunt.

you didn't waste time, you were as eager as he was. your tongue slid deliciously over the tip, tasting him and watching him suck in air forcefully between his teeth. it was as addictive and tasty as the sight you had of him, feeling his hand grab the back of your head, guiding your swollen lips to start swallowing him slowly.

as much as he had that urgency to see you choke on his cock, he could be content with feeling your warm mouth envelop the tip, your delicate hand stayed around the base, pumping slowly and gently and holding it firmly to make him erect as he entered more on your mouth. 

turner was already starting to feel the slight spasms with the vibration of your throat on his cock when you let out a muffled moan. he’s not the kind of guy who is a fan of advance warnings, because when you least expected it, you felt him bucking his hips, making you feel him deep in your throat, which made you cough. he moaned shamelessly when you pulled your head away to get some air, playing with his tip with your tongue, giving it kittenish licks from every possible angle before putting him back in my mouth, swallowing him again without him having to move again.

“oh, so fucking good…” he groaned, letting his head fall back, delighting in the feeling of your warm mouth wrapping around his cock, taking him deeper, feeling your throat closing around the tip. he felt his senses overwhelmed, every fiber of his body contracting as your tongue swirled around his pulsing length.

he looked down at you at some point, your eyes locked on his, he couldn't even try to explain how crazy he went when you looked at him like this, hypnotizing him with your warm mouth and enigmatic eyes, wide like cherry pies.

“such a good girl for me. you're going to make me want to put composition aside to fuck you.” he growled, his fist closing around the towel wrapped on your head.

“you say that like it's a bad thing.’’ you pouted, kissing his tip several times and he chuckled, moving his hand to run his thumb on your cheek, looking tenderly at you.

“baby, you know i love fucking you. really.” he purred, holding his cock and gesturing for you to open your mouth, tapping his shaft on your tongue, the slapping sound adding to the pleasure of both. ‘’love feeling your mouth, your tongue, your pussy clenching around my cock…’’ he continued, his words sending slight jolts of lust through your body. he always knew what to say to make you even wetter.

‘’mhm, so we should fuck, y'know?’’ you said, swirling your tongue around his tip, your eyes pleading for him. you said that like you hadn't already fucked that morning.

‘’we should.’’ he agreed with you, pulling the towel from your head, massaging your scalp, the damp strands of your hair tangled in his fingers. ‘’stand up and turn around.’’ he said in a gentle order, patting your neck lightly.

you giggled, obeying him without a second thought, standing up and turning on your heels, the open window overlooking the deserted street was all you had. could there be people passing by or neighbors who might appear at their apartment windows at any moment? possibly.

but you didn't care much about that as you felt alex untying the knot of your robe while standing behind you, you could feel his hard cock rubbing against your thigh as he made you bend over the desk, your bare tits pressing on top of his notebook. the rough paper pages combined with alex's hands holding the hem of your robe makes your nipples harden, the cotton fabric reached halfway down your back, your lower body exposed to him like a full meal.

“you smell so good.” he hummed, dragging his nose over the skin of your left buttock as if he were snorting coke, your soft skin and your refreshing post-shower scent made him want to melt all over you. he was completely crazy about you.

“it's because i took a shower.” you laughed, feeling his teeth sinking into your skin as if he wanted to take a bite, and he would do that if he could. he could devour you and not waste a thing.

“nah. just your natural scent. and a bit of grapefruit.” he hummed, his large hands gripping your buttcheeks, separating them to reveal your two puckering holes, your cunt already drooling, needing him to take care of it.

his mouth watered at the sight as his cock throbbed in need. he didn't think twice or wait for you to beg for him, his tongue was already darting out to taste you, collecting your slimy juices, feeling that his guts were being blessed by your taste, like a sweet nectar.

you gasped softly, your forehead resting on the rigid wood desk, his tongue molding between your slick folds as the tip of his nose tickled your asshole, making it gap at the slightest touch. the wet muscle made its way upwards, sinking into your needy hole, going as far as he could, holding your buttocks tightly to keep them apart.

you muffled your moans as he fucked you with his tongue, biting your arm to prevent some loud moaning. his tongue moved up just a bit, licking your perineum just to tease your tight hole, circling the spot with the tip of his tongue, making you squirm.

“too bad we're out of lube.” he sighed, more to himself than to you. he knew you still could try it just like this, lubricating you with lots of spit and stretch you with his fingers until you were relaxed enough to accommodate his cock, but he didn't want to risk hurting you and consequently never wanting to try again. 

you chuckled softly, remembering that you're indeed out of lube. alex ended up overdoing it last time because he felt like it was never enough. or maybe he just liked to see how easily he could fuck you from behind, seeing how his cock disappeared inside your hole that was tighter and warmer than your pussy.

“maybe next time?” you suggested, feeling the tip of his tongue threatening to enter, the sensation almost overwhelming you. 

“yeah. i'll remember to buy the whole supply of lube next time i stop by the drugstore.” he said, giving you one last lick, one of his hands went down to stroke his cock lightly, he was hard as a rock at this point, aching to be inside you. his internal struggle with music could wait a bit.

alex's right hand spread your right ass cheek while his left hand guided his cock to your entrance, playing a bit with you, his tip threatening to enter, making a small “pop” when he pulled back. you were about to complain about it, but your unspoken words disappeared when he eased inside you, his thick cock filling every space as if it was molded especially for you.

“oh fuck, yes…” you gasped, your hands closing into fists on the edges of the desk, your knuckles turning white as he bottomed out slowly, pulling back until he saw his tip, slamming back inside your cunt again.

“fucking love this pussy, did i tell you that already?” he groaned, lifting your leg so you could bend more on the desk, allowing him to bury his cock deeper inside your clenching walls. 

“everyday.” you said. you almost smiled at the thought if he wasn't picking up his pace gradually, your mind and body filled by him and only him. his fingers gripping the flesh of your ass cheeks, leaving a red mark upon their wake. 

alex collected a small amount of saliva on his mouth, angling his head to spat directly on your asshole, watching how it slided, coating his cock as he moved in and out of you at a frantic pace, the desk hitting the wall with each violent thrust. 

he couldn't help but brought his thumb there, circling the tight ring teasingly, threatening to go in a little bit more and more, until the tip of his thumb went through, stretching you just a little, but it was enough to make you gasp and clench more around him.

“do you like that, hmm? do you like having your holes filled by me?" he growled when he reached your ear, his thumb sinking deeper into your hole until his knuckle, making you squirm even more, whining in pleasure as you nodded, the idea of letting him take you from behind like this didn't sound so bad even with the lack of lube. “dirty little thing.”

you brought your hand to your clit, your eager fingers trying to build the pleasure faster as your body heated up, like there's an inferno inside you. but no, it was alex. just alex.

alex notices your subtle moves between your legs, his thumb abandoning your gaping hole to grab your wrist, pinning it behind your back, holding it tightly with his other free hand.

“no. only i can do this.” he said, his voice sounding demanding and authoritative despite the husky tone. it wasn't like you couldn't touch yourself, but he loved the idea of touching you, of being the only reason you're completely destroyed after he's done with you. he wanted to be everything to you and do everything for you.

your hand was replaced by his, his fingers already coated with your wetness when he rubbed against your folds, feeling the outline of his cock sliding in and out of you, filling you to the brim and even making you stand on the tip of your toes.

“a-alex, i'm gonna cum, please…” you panted, almost passing out, he was taking you so hard, like he was angry or frustrated with you. yeah, he was frustrated, but not with you. never with you.

“yeah, i know, baby.” he whispered, rubbing your clit sloppily because of the position, but still making you go crazy with his movements, hitting that sweet spot inside you over and over again, determined to reduce you to a crying mess as you came on his cock and your body collapses onto the desk. 

in no time, the feeling of orgasm hits you hard, your whole body lost all strength and you felt the knot in your stomach undoing abruptly, your breath completely disappearing for a few seconds, replaced by a moan that was almost a scream.

contrary to what you thought, he didn't stop there. firstly, you didn't even know why you thought he would stop. he never stops after your first orgasm.

he flipped you over, slipping out of you just to fill you up again, not even giving you time to open your eyes to look at him, forcing your sore pussy to accommodate his veiny and angry cock once again.

“too cockdrunk already?” he smirks at your wrecked state, making you rest your calves on his shoulders. you didn't even need to answer him, even because you could barely form coherent words.

he continued at the same intensity while you tried to escape because you were already crying and didn't know if you could handle the overstimulation he was giving you, your legs wobbly like jelly failing on his sides, being supported by his forearms since his hands were gripping your thighs, preventing you from running away or closing your legs.

“come for me again, darlin’. i know you can do it.” alex said to you, his voice sounding like a rough melody as his face came close to yours, placing kisses along your jaw. 

and again, another orgasm consumed you in a much more intense way, your cervix hurt and you felt that you're so aroused and wet that it was already running down your legs as you cried out.

“so pretty.” he praised you, his index finger strolling through your half-open lips, passing through them and entering your mouth, pressing on your tongue. “wider.” he commanded, putting more pressure on your tongue with his finger, forcing you to open your mouth wider.

he took his finger out of your mouth, squeezing your face with his firm hand as he spat inside your mouth, hitting your tongue and the back of your throat. it didn't catch you by surprise, actually. it just turned you on, even if you were already at the height of your sensitivity.

“swallow.” he tapped your cheek, allowing you to swallow it without even thinking, opening your mouth and sticking your tongue out just to show him that you did it. “good fucking girl.” he said proudly, his cock twitching at your submissive side, teetering the edge. “fuck, 'm gonna cum, baby. where do you want?”

“inside me.” you answered without thinking twice. it wasn't like you didn't like it when he came on your face or in your mouth or on your tits. but you liked the primal feeling of him spilling all his cum inside you. he chuckled darkly.

“greedy. want my cum all to yourself?” he asked and you nodded, finding the strength to lock your legs around him as he picked up his pace slightly, chasing his own release after making you cum twice. 

“you know that i love it when you fill me up.” you whispered, propping yourself up on your elbows to reach his bottom lip, nibbling it gently as he grabbed you, holding you close as his head sank into the curve of your neck.

“oh fuck, f-fuck…” he choked on his own words as he came inside you, spilling jets his seed deep inside your cunt to the point that it leaked out, staining your legs and your bathrobe. “jesus fucking…” he paused, catching his breath as the last remnants leave his body to fill you. “christ.”

you finally could let your body dismantle on the desk, your head resting on the window sill, your blurry vision trying to get used to the view of the blue sky on that particularly sunny afternoon. 

“you good?” he asked you, still buried deep inside you, giving you sweet kisses along your stomach. 

“always good with you.” you smiled at him when he reached your chest, resting his head on your left boob, listening to the rapid beating of your heart. 

“you just gave me an idea, y'know?” he whispered to you, his warm and ragged breathing tickling your skin. “my beautiful inspiring muse. don't know what would become of me without you.”

“you flatter me.” you chuckled, running your hand through his messy hair, his sweaty scalp moistened the tips of your fingers. 

“just telling the truth.” he chuckled along with you, his pretty and wide eyes looking at you in awe. “i love you.” he whispered again, as if he was sharing a secret that only you needed to know.

you looked back at him, taking the sight of his face so close to yours. you were looking at him with that loving gaze while you felt the blood flow increase in your veins because your heart was beating too fast. but it was impossible not to have that feeling when looking at his slightly contorted mouth as he absentmindedly bit the inside of his cheek, his cheekbones were flushed and his eyes again took on that slightly greenish brown hue when the light reflected off them in that underexposure of colors that matched the ebony of his hair unruly now without the hair gel.

yeah, you loved him too.

“i love you too.” you answered him, seeing the smile forming on his lips, the corners of his eyes getting a bit wrinkly. you loved these little features of him. 

he leaned in to kiss you, his body moved and consequently his soft cock slipped out of you, you both groaning softly at the disconnection. but the kiss made it better. 

“i’ll have to take another shower.” you mumbled between his lips when you felt his cum running out of you, running down your thighs. he chuckled, it wasn't like you're complaining, much less that he had regretted it. “when will you work on your idea?”

he pretended to think, his lips still sealed in yours.

“after the shower.” he blowed some air inside your mouth like he was inflating a balloon. you laughed, rolling your eyes. he always played these stupid pranks on you, but you loved it. 

“will you join me?" you asked with raised eyebrows.

“only if you have me.” 

you didn't have to answer him.

[adafruit]

🎄💾🗓️ Day 18: Retrocomputing Advent Calendar - Commodore 64🎄💾🗓️

The Commodore 64, released in 1982, is one of the ones we keep hearing got many people their start in their own computing history. Powered by a MOS Technology 6510 processor at 1.02 MHz and featuring 64 KB of RAM, it became the best-selling single computer model of all time, with an estimated 12.5–17 million units sold. Its graphics were driven by the VIC-II chip, capable of 16 colors, hardware sprites, and smooth scrolling, while the SID (Sound Interface Device) chip delivered advanced audio, supporting three voices with waveforms and filters, making it a lot of fun for gaming and music.

Featured a built-in BASIC interpreter, allowing users to write their own programs out-of-the-box. The C64’s affordability, large software library, lots of games, productivity, and educational applications made it a household name. It connected to TVs as monitors and supported peripherals like the 1541 floppy disk drive, datasette, and various joysticks. With over 10,000 commercial software titles and a thriving homebrew scene, the C64 helped define a generation of computer enthusiasts.

Its impact on gaming was gigantic, iconic titles like The Last Ninja, Maniac Mansion, and Impossible Mission. The C64 also inspired a demoscene, where programmers pushed its hardware for visual and audio effects. The Commodore 64 remains a symbol of computing for the masses and creative innovation, still loved by retrocomputing fans today.

Check out the National Museum of American History, and Wikipedia. https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_334636 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64

And…! An excellent story from Jepler -

== While I started on the VIC 20, the Commodore 64 was my computer for a lot longer. Its SID sound chip was a headline feature, and many of my memories of it center around music. Starting with Ultima III, each game in the series had a different soundtrack for each environment (though each one was on a pretty short loop, it probably drove my folks nuts when I would play for hours). There were music editors floating around, so I tried my hand at arranging music for its 3 independent voices, though I can't say I was any good or that I have any of the music now. You could also download "SID tunes" on the local BBSes, where people with hopefully a bit more skill had arranged everything from classical to Beatles to 80s music.

Folks are still creating cool new music on the Commodore 64. One current creator that I like a great deal is Linus Åkesson. Two videos from 2024 using the Commodore 64 that really impressed me were were a "Making 8-bit Music From Scratch at the Commodore 64 BASIC Prompt", a live coding session (http://www.linusakesson.net/programming/music-from-scratch/index.php) and Bach Forever (http://www.linusakesson.net/scene/bach-forever/index.php) a piece played by Åkesson on two Commodore 64s.

Like so many things, you can also recreate the experience online. Here's the overworld music for Ultima III: https://deepsid.chordian.net/?file=/MUSICIANS/A/Arnold_Kenneth/Ultima_III-Exodus.sid&subtune=1 -- the site has hundreds or thousands of other SIDs available to play right in the browser.

Have first computer memories? Post’em up in the comments, or post yours on socialz’ and tag them #firstcomputer #retrocomputing – See you back here tomorrow!

[shion-yu]

Day 30: Contagion

We made it, folks! I really pushed myself to finish @sicktember and I’m so proud I did. For this last work I decided to just let go and do something different. TW for fictional contagion and some mess. Like, contagion is all it is. Which is not something I usually write, but I was inspired by @poetryandsniffles “Going Around” at 3am. It starts with unnamed characters and ends with you. Hope someone enjoys this. As you guys might know, snz isn't fully my thing but I know I have a lot of followers for whom it is, so this is for you. 1,933 words, TW fictional contagion.

It’s Saturday, and all the new freshmen students are moving into the dorms down the street. The bookseller is ready for them, knowing all the students are eager to exercise their first taste of freedom and want to window shop in their new college town. It's probably his busiest day of the year, which is why he absolutely cannot close the store despite the wretched cold he woke up with. He has a cough that won't let him finish a sentence without interrupting himself, and being surrounded by all the used books is making the sneezes that overtake him every minute even worse. He’s putting an old tome of Shakespeare away when he hears the bell ring, signaling a customer. He closes the book and accidentally inhales a noseful of dust. He tries to say, “Welcome,” but instead all he gets out is “Wehh - heee - ahh hatchoo!” 

“Bless you!” It's definitely a freshman, round glasses overtaking half her face and her little homemade clay earrings dangling on either side. 

“Tdangks,” the bookseller mumbles, snorting a huge noseful of congestion up into his face in an attempt to clear his voice. Apparently that's the wrong move, because it causes him to erupt into a harsh round of coughing that forces him to sit down behind his desk. 

The freshman doesn't seem to mind. She’s too interested in looking around the store, fascinated by the used books. The bookseller nurses his poor nose into the fiftieth tissue of the morning, blowing as hard as he can yet it doesn't seem to clear the congestion. He hasn't been this sick in ages. Why did it have to be today of all days?

“I’ll take this, please.”

The bookseller looks up to find the freshman standing in front of him, holding none other than the thick Shakespeare tome he just put away. The one that he knows he really should have wiped down before shelving. 

“Are you sure you want this one?” He asks hesitantly.

“Why?”

Explaining feels like too much work, and bad business. The bookseller shakes his head. “No reason,” he says, coughing into his elbow. “That’ll be $10.80.”

~.~.~.~

It’s well known that a cold isn't uncommon in the beginning of the semester, but the freshman can't believe it took less than a week for her to get hit with this plague. It’s only the end of the first day of classes when she feels a tickle in her throat that makes her cough. By evening she’s feeling the chill of an incoming fever, and by the next morning she feels like she’s been hit by a bus. This feels worse than just a cold, but it's literally the second day of classes in her first year of university. She can't afford to take a sick day so soon.

And so, the freshman drags herself to her English 101 lecture where she continues to cough and shiver, clutching the hoodie she's wearing around her ever tighter. Her bones ache and she feels like she desperately needs to be in bed, but this lecture is three hours long. Three torturous hours, and it's not a huge class. Everybody can hear her coughing away, she's sure of it. She's so embarrassed by her noisiness - the rustle as she plucks out tissue after tissue from the box she's helplessly taken to carrying around. The petite sniffle she's trying to hold back every few seconds, but if she doesn't her nose will be streaming. The stifled sneezes that more than often result in additional chesty coughs. By the end of the lecture she’s so cold and miserable that she's not sure she's going to make it to her next class, which is chemistry 100. 

Somehow she does, and before most of the other students too. She figures now is a good time to try and blow her nose as loudly as possible. Maybe if she can empty it out, she won't be so disruptive at this lecture. She blows into a tissue hard, and it makes her nose tickle. She can't hold it back, and she scrambles to grab another tissue - but it's too late. She ducks her head to the side and sneezes, uncovered, spraying the space next to her. Thankfully no one’s sat down yet. She hastily tries to clean the desk with the tissue, but she stupidly didn't bring any hand sanitizer and the desk is still gleaming with germs when a boy comes in and sits right next to her. 

He greets her and introduces himself as a football player who’s retaking the class. The freshman can't help but watch in horror as he puts his hands all over the desk, then proceeds to bite his nails. She can't just apologize, but she does so in her head, knowing he’s doomed. 

~.~.~.~

The football player is pretty pissed that he’s managed to catch something already. He doesn't have any time for a cold, especially not so early in the season. It doesn't matter that it’s cold for September, or that it's raining, or that he already had chills before practice started. He’s got to push through for the sake of the team, and also his reputation and scholarship. And he still has to finish that chemistry assignment. Who gives such a long homework in the first two weeks of classes? It should be illegal.

He’s drying off in the locker room, a now very wet cough echoing against the metal lockers. He changes into clean clothes, but he still feels sticky with sweat and rain water. He shivers and shleps off to his chemistry professor's office hours. He needs an extension.

The professor doesn't look happy to see him dripping and sniffling when he shows up at his door. “C’mon, professor, I just need a few days. It's the beginning of the season, I can't fall behind already, and I’m - koff koff koff - sick.”

“I can see that,” the professor says in mild disgust. “But I don't make exceptions. Not even for athletes,” she says before he can protest. 

“That's not fair,” the football player complains. “I really am s-siii-”

The professor tries to duck, but it's too late. The football player sneezes, only poorly half covering. “Sorry,” he says hoarsely.

“I think you'd better go home and lie down,” the professor says in a clipped tone. There's some spray on the corner of her glasses, much to both of their chagrin. “And skip practice tomorrow.”

“Yes ma'am,” the football player says. He’s too ashamed of himself now to keep begging. The professor sprays lysol all over her office and hopes it’ll be enough.

~.~.~.~

It’s not enough. By the end of the week the professor, too, is full of cold. She has to lecture through it, even though she barely has a voice and nearly spills chemical solutions on herself trying to contain her sneezes into her shoulder while holding glass beakers. The students keep blessing her, and that irritates her more than anything because it's their damn fault she’s sick. She's trying to make tenure though, and isn't about to call out, so she pushes through. Every sneeze hitches in the back of her throat as she tries to hold back, making a girlish noise that kills her inside a little. 

She’s already passed the cold along to her husband, your coworker, who has an immune system as good as a preschooler. She can't wait to get home where she can just relax. Her legs are cramping from standing for so long in heels, her makeup is running because of all the congestion, and she keeps making errors while lecturing that she never would otherwise. This cold is so embarrassing and comes with all the visible symptoms: cough, congestion, sneezing, fever. It's impossible to hide.

Her coworkers have even taken notice and mentioned she ought to take it easy, which the professor absolutely will not be doing. So what if she has to cough through her lectures? So what if the students in the front row may or may not be nursing colds of their own in a week? She has to work, that's just how it is. No exceptions, she tells her students. Not even for herself.

~.~.~.~

You can hear your coworker coughing from his cubicle opposite you. Yesterday he said his wife was sick, and today he seems to have brought her cold to share with everyone. How generous of him, you think dryly. You cringe as you hear him blow his nose again, a wet, harsh sound that is the audible equivalent of contagion. And now - oh no. Now he's coming to you.

“I've got the report done,” your coworker says as he approaches. His eyes are red rimmed and watery, nose raw red from blowing and his lips parted in an awkward fashion because he can't breathe properly. And now he's blowing germs all over your desk.

You take the report from him and hope to shoo him away quickly with a thank you, but no such luck. He bends over your desk and starts to explain part of the report that apparently, he finds is not self explanatory enough. You can hear the whistle of blocked sinuses and his voice crackles with congestion. “Does that make sense?” He asks, standing up and sniffling. He runs his temple, clearly also trying to work through a headache.

“Yes, perfect sense,” you tell your coworker. It doesn't matter if it made sense or not, you wish he'd just go away. “You don't look so good. Why don't you go home?” You ask.

“It's not so bad - snrrk!” He says before snorting loudly. “I can deal with it.”

“I see,” you say. And apparently everyone else has to deal with it, too. 

~.~.~.~

You hope you'll get lucky. That Emergen-C and hand sanitizer will save you - but it doesn't. Because a few days later you, too, wake up with an ache in your head and chest and a shiver that won't go away despite several fall layers of clothing. You have a cough that snaps and crackles against your sore throat and the sinus pressure behind your eyes throbs. You haven't even made it out of bed before you're overtaken by a round of three loud sneezes in succession. You’re definitely sick.

Unlike your coworker, you're not about to work through this cold. You feel too lousy, and the fever you're running is way too high to ignore. It's everywhere, this fever: deep in your bones, making everything ache from head to toe. You spend the day in bed, shivering and coughing away. The bed becomes a sea of used tissues, the small trashcan long since overflowing. The fever must be making you emotional, because you can't help but tear up a little when your partner finally comes home. 

“Aw, baby,” they say sympathetically. They press their cold hands against your hot cheeks and wet washcloths to cool you down. They climb into bed with you and cuddle you, your throbbing head and streaming nose in their lap, and don't complain about how you're getting snot all over their knee. “Poor love,” they say. “You’ll be better soon.”

You close your eyes and just listen to your partner’s soothing voice. In a few days, this will all be over, you tell yourself. Whatever this cold or flu from hell is, you’ll be back at it by next week. For right now though, you decide to just rely on your partner completely. Let them dote on you, take care of you, and hope you don’t get them - and didn't get too many others - sick, too.