#raised slate hearth

[rocketjumper]

Family Room Enclosed

Family room - mid-sized traditional enclosed carpeted family room idea with beige walls, a standard fireplace, a brick fireplace and a tv stand

[angelofchaos001]

Stranded in the Rain - Chapter 1

Link to Ao3 (Chapter also under cut)

Link to Masterpost

Next (Adapting)

Chapter 1 - Beginning

GASP!

Hatchling shot upright, desperate for air. It felt like they had been choked out, maybe even to the point of death. Perhaps that's not the best train of thought, they realized. Death was just a grim reminder of the fact that they had been stuck in a loop. Space and time had gotten so warped and tangled with each other that no matter what they did, every time they met the end of their life, they would just come back.

Except . . .

Hadn't they ended the loops?

Hadn't they ended the universe?

I . . . I remember the big flash . . . But . . . Why can't I remember anything else?!

Panic seized the young hearthian as they fought to remember even the most basic information. What were they doing? What was their goal? Who were they??

Memories flooded back to them like a cyclone slamming them down. They remembered seeing it with their own four eyes. Finding the Eye of the Universe, being taken to a strange quantum realm where nothing made sense, gathering all their close allies they'd met on the journey to bring them together for one last song, before the big bang that they could have sworn killed them happened. Feldspar . . . Solanum . . . Everyone . . . It wiped everyone out.

Evidently, it did not wipe everyone out, because they were very much here and very much alive. Alive. Am I really?

They could cling to the memories of who they were now. They were Moissan, a Hearthian in the Outer Wilds Ventures space program. They had been exploring the solar system like everyone else. And they caught in a time loop because of a statue they'd linked to.

Oddly enough, they were even still wearing their space suit. That's new, they thought, checking themselves over. No injuries. No missing pieces. Just a full tank of oxygen and a jetpack ready to launch. They didn't have their scout, which was a little upsetting, but it seemed rather odd that they were in such a pristine condition now, waking up alone.

Alone.

Whenever they'd woken up before, they'd seen Slate sitting by the campfire, roasting a marshmallow. Even if they didn't know about the loops and tried to ground Moissan several times for apparent medical reasons, not seeing the familiar hearthian's face stung. There was no campfire, not even a smoldering pile of logs. No launch pad waiting for them on the rocky cliff, their trusty ship that had carried them so far on their journey absent.

Considering everything that ship had lived through, they were surprised it wasn't here with them when they had lived it.

Arrrrgh, the ship doesn't matter right now, they thought, slowly getting to their feet. What matters is finding out where I am. Clearly, it wasn't Timber Hearth. Everything looked too . . . damp, despite the abundant plant life. They reached out for what seemed like a fern, only for the plant to shrivel away from them with a rustling noise. They gasped, intrigued and in awe of the specimen.

All the plant truly did was raise more questions, though. If everything was wet, then it couldn't be the Hourglass Twins. There was plenty of solid ground to stand on and a lack of fog, so it wasn't Dark Bramble (thankfully). It seemed too stable to be like the collapsing Brittle Hollow, and Giant's Deep would have been far wetter considering the whole planet was an ocean. None of the moons - Not even the Quantum Moon - matched this unique location either. It almost reminded them of the Stranger.

Almost.

Around Hatchling seemed to just be walls and a very tight, cramped room. Small plants, almost like some kind of moss, stretched across the floor like a natural carpet. They almost felt tempted to touch it, but one of the most basic safety lessons was 'Don't interact with things you don't know about'.

Ignoring that rule is sorta what got me into all of this in the first place, isn't it.

Moissan really just didn't feel like taking off their suit for moss-touching purposes. Instead, they focused on the room. The walls, other than having strange flora growing along them as well, seemed fairly sturdy. They took a moment, curled up their hand, and punched at the wall to test it's integrity. OWWWW . . . Pain exploded in their digits as they uncurled them. Solid metal wall, got it. Owww, ow ow, why did I do that?

They'd been expecting dirt . . . maybe packed dirt, if they were lucky. Not full-on metal. They looked straight ahead of themselves, and saw the one wall that was different than the others. Embedded into the wall was a small tunnel, maybe about the size of Hatchling's head if they really squeezed themselves in there. Attached to it seemed some kind of contraption, something made of a smooth metal that looked . . . in a decently well-kept state.

Maybe this place has intelligent life on it. Naively, they found themselves hoping it was some kind of familiarity, such as another hearthian, a Nomai, or even an Owlk would be nice to see. No, stupid thought, they told themselves, facepalming. The Owlks didn't (couldn't) leave their dream world, and all the Nomai in the system had died from the Interloper and it's densely packed load of ghost matter.

Well, all but one. Moissan thought of Solanum again. They'd met her in such a strange place, such a strange time, and most certainly the last thing they ever expected to see. Guess it's really back to being 'all of them', though.

The big bang played out in their mind again. Had it been some kind of crazy dream? The heat and fire felt too real for them to believe that. They could recall every second in the blast, as few as there were, and the moment pain seared through every fiber of their being before becoming a pleasant nothingness. My universe was already doomed. It was a strange thought to come to terms with, being born at the end of a universe. If every path would lead to my doom, then I'm glad I could at least build something new for those after me.

If Hatchling survived, there wasn't really telling if the others had. The feeling of that one end felt so real. Was it because of the intensity? The emotions they felt in that moment of terror and awe? Perhaps because they knew that this time, they wouldn't come back? Removing the warp core from Ash Twin ended the loops, after all, and if nothing else, they had absolutely taken that core out. It just wasn't possible that this was another loop.

What else could explain this, though?

Too many questions buzzed in their head like angry flies, numbing their brain to anything else. They tried to ground themselves by looking at the tunnel again, studying the metal. It appeared to be some kind of mechanism of moving parts to close off the tunnel. Gears sat underneath large metal slabs, though they were currently quiet and still, not pulling anything along. On either side of the passage, there was small bits of interlocking metal that they guessed fit together to fill the small tunnel. But why?

They'd figure it out at some point, probably. They'd been spending their life figuring out mysteries, after all, hadn't they? A small mechanical contraption was nothing compared to creating another universe.

. . . How did every thought loop back around to the end of their world and the beginning of a new one?

Being alone with their thoughts wasn't entirely pleasant. For one, Hatchling was confused about a lot of things their mind had already entertained before. They thought that the release of death would be a nice closure to their action-filled life of solving the Nomai's greatest mystery. After all the trials, they could rest easy knowing that at least there would be something for future planets to exist in. Instead, they were both relieved and terrified that they were still alive.

Brushing past all the confused thoughts, though, being alone was what made things even more awful. In their travels, they had never been truly alone before. There was always the network of other explorers to chat with, Nomai scrolls to read, the Ship's Log to update and check over, and if they got lost too badly, the signalscope could at least bring them back to something.

Pulling out the device now did almost nothing. No matter what frequency Hatchling tuned into or where they pointed it, no readings popped up. It was almost like the horrible silence and loneliness they'd felt in the Eye, awestruck by the new setting but oh-so-scared of what lie in wait for them.

Most of all, though, Hatchling felt . . . sad. Nothing but true sadness lined every thought, thinking of the world they knew. Coming to terms with the inevitable end didn't mean they had to like it. But now, this meant that it was really just them on their own. Everyone else was still most likely gone, gone forever. For the first time since becoming a space explorer . . . Moissan felt like crying.

It wasn't like the frightened tears that threatened them when the anglerfish let out their awful, shrieking roars, certain doom following the noise.

Nor was it the happy ones they'd nearly wept when they saw everyone gathered together, playing their music one last time around a campfire.

It was just . . . sad. And lonely.

Did everyone else get to die with that last happy memory? If so, then . . . why not me?

Am I stuck because I'm the one who did it?

Because I knew about the looping?

Or am I being called out for a greater purpose, just like last time?

Moissan really hoped they weren't about to become the universe's favorite specimen to call on when in need. One lifetime of adventure was enough for them. They didn't want (or need) more stress to be the great unseen hero all over again. They sniffled once, then twice, before they felt the unfamiliar sting as their eyes watered. Can I do this alone? Whatever it is I need to do?

It felt as if every thought was too painful to read, too much for such a fragile heart to bear. Tears dripped onto their suit, rolling off the waterproof fabric as the reality of everything truly caught up to them. If everyone else had to die and yet I survived, me, of everyone . . . great trees, I'm sorry it had to be this way. It wasn't what I wanted. It was what had to be done. There wasn't any other option.

The song that almost brought them to joyous tears now haunted Hatchling like a ghost, sailing in the air around them and involuntarily forcing the air in their throat to form a faint humming along with it. Each part added a new distinct layer, the full song being beautiful enough in both sound and meaning.

The plucky, strong banjo that carried the melody. Riebeck may have been scared of space, but they were still bold enough to face that fear in some way or another.

A high-pitched whistle, giving the banjo a lighter partner. Age didn't take a toll on Esker, even if his place in life had come to the end of it's usefulness.

Droning and yet still warbling, the harmonica sang back to them. Despite their isolation and situation, Feldspar had been invaluable in their quest for the Eye.

Carrying the steady beat were those drums. Even if they had given Chert some existential dread, they had skill at their instrument, that was for sure.

Delicate and faint, the flute gave everything a new meaning. Gabbro really had tried their best, hadn't they? The only other one to remember the endless looping.

Cutting the noise clear, the key strokes of the Nomai instrument shone through. Solanum had been the last Nomai in the system, and without her, they weren't sure they would have made it this far to begin with.

Lastly, the haunting, ethereal strings of the Owlks made everything feel that much less real. The Prisoner, as Hatchling called them, was the one they had to thank for them being where they were now. If they had never let the Eye call out again . . . (That was not a reality Hatchling wanted to think about)

All seven of them.

Gathered at the fire.

Playing together.

Happily.

Moissan felt like curling up and waiting for death to take them all over again as more tears flowed, a long-dried well inside of them being opened and the water inside rushing out. Between the sobbing, they gasped for air like they would lose it, their vision a blurred mess as they tried to stop thinking about everything they'd lost. About the lives that had been so intertwined with theirs, only to be ripped away like nothing had changed.

Alone.

Alone and lost, with nothing but the feeling of a mistake clinging to my gills.

No matter how badly they wanted to find out where this place was, find shelter, and explore, look for any kind of familiar sight . . . they couldn't bring themselves to move. They just sank back down to the ground, the moss squishing beneath them as it stretched for the delicious tears that continued to fall. They couldn't bear the idea of getting out of this small, cramped box. They didn't want to stay, either, but this was at least safe.

Unless another supernova is going to happen in twenty-two minutes, in which case nowhere will be safe without my ship.

Why couldn't they think just one happy thought? One thing to help claw their mind out of the mental pit it was sinking deeper and deeper into was all they needed. The boost to get up, put their helmet back on, and try to find a way out to explore. But if felt like all they could do was sit there, lying on the floor, crying and mourning for the loss of friends, home, and sanctuary. Not even the knowledge that in the grand scheme of things, they had been astronomical in saving this place of existence, was enough to make them move. Every limb felt heavy, every bit of energy dedicated to sobbing and choking on air.

Did anything they do truly matter in the end?

What is my purpose here?

Hatchling found themselves almost wishing they were dead, happy with their friends in whatever kind of afterlife awaited them all (if there was one), rather than stuck here, confused and scared on what to do. The damp moss around them became a poor comfort for their weeping heart and soul, but it was comfort enough. As they continued crying, they began to tire. Lying on the ground, with somewhat spongy plants as a bed, sleep and it's numbing, peaceful bliss found a way to them.

-----

@mellow-mooon

@0silverbluedragon1

@corn-worshipper

@doodlebug091

@isnt-that-grape

@fishbone5

@dragonpurplecristal

@obsidianmage3

[vaya-writes]

The Wyvern's Bride - Part 3.3

When Adalyn gets sacrificed to the local wyvern, she’s a little annoyed and a lot terrified. Upon meeting the wyvern, she discovers that he’s not particularly interested in eating people, and mostly wants to be left alone. In a plot to save himself from the responsibilities his family keep pushing on him, Slate names Adalyn as his human Envoy, and tasks her with finding him a wife.

4800 words. Cis female human x Cis male wyvern (slow burn, arranged marriage, eventual smut). firefly-graphics did the divider.

Masterlist - Previous

Get excited. A large portion of this is Slate's POV. And by the Gods please don't let me edit this a third time. I'm done. If I left any filler words or random parts bolded for later fixing, no I didn't.

Slate is gone when Adalyn wakes. She’s sensing a pattern and wonders how he manages to wake and leave before she does, despite her baker instincts to be up before sunrise. 

Not in any rush, Adalyn fortifies herself with a cup of tea out on the balcony, snacking on some old biscuits. She cooks jam on toast over the fire, frowning at the mess cluttering the hearth. She takes a moment to straighten the equipment and jars – she's keen to get cooking, but with Slate’s explicit permission to organise his belongings, part of her is tempted to spend the morning rearranging.  

Still, they’d purchased a week’s worth of groceries yesterday, and she plans to experiment. After she’s fed and dressed, she heads down to the kitchen, lighting the room once she arrives. They’d visited Northpoint, the main trade hub of the valley, and Adalyn had managed to procure some sugar. Slate had smiled at her excitement at seeing the ware, and purchased the merchant’s whole stock.  

She spends half the morning baking, experimenting with recipes that exist only as scraps in her family journal, or as fragments in her memory. The shortcrust biscuits are a little sweet and the pastries don’t keep the shape she wants, but the sweet rolls turn out beautifully, and she makes note of the recipe she’d used. 

When the dining area begins to lighten, Adalyn starts to prepare lunch. She packs a basket, and is off towards the main-way, excited to showcase her food for the day. 

Slate is working on the same passage as last time, and she waits expectantly by the stream bank as he washes off and joins her on the blanket she’d laid out.  

“Potato and leek pottage. Bread of the day. Wine,” she gestures to each in turn. 

He smiles. “You’re an absolute blessing, Adalyn.” 

She blushes and stares at her food. “There’s like three breads of the day, but this one turned out best.” 

Slate lets out an appreciative groan when tears into the loaf and raises it to his nose. “I believe you.” 

They eat in silence for a few minutes, before Adalyn tries to start a conversation.   

“What are you working on today?” 

 Slate grins at the inquiry. “I’ve pretty much dug to the right spot. Now it’s time to start hollowing out a living space.” 

“What do you do with all the stone?” 

He shrugs. “I set it aside. Most of it is good for sculpting. I can use it for furnishing, or steps, or block facades. Though some of it is as good as slag by the time I’m through.” 

Adalyn nods contemplatively. Realises that they’re sitting in a makeshift limestone quarry. She’s musing about the other uses of the stone, wondering if there’s any further use, or if Slate would sell the material when he interrupts. 

“Have you given any thought to what you’ll call your wing?” 

She starts from her thoughts. Raises a brow. “Can’t I just call it my wing? My chambers. My tower?” 

“You can. But where’s the fun? It’ll be big enough to be its own fort, at least.” 

A pang of unease goes through Adalyn. If she were self-reliant in her quarters, wouldn’t that mean less reason to visit Slate and the Tower? 

She shrugs, pushing the feeling down. “From the valley they look like they’re in a row. Sometimes we number them. The Tower is fifth...” 

Slate hits his knee with a fist, excited. “I like the way you think. That’d make your mountain the fourth?” 

“Yes.” 

“We could call it Fourth Spire? Fothspire? Fourth Peak?” 

Adalyn busies herself with her food. Watching the enthusiasm in Slate’s demeanour stings, just a little. “Fourth Spire is fitting.” 

There’s a silence while they eat. Slate shoots Adalyn some careful stares, sensing something amiss. “What are your plans for the day?” 

Adalyn glances to the sky. The sun is high overhead, stretching into the afternoon. “Dunno. Maybe I’ll clean your desk.” She means it as a joke, but considers with some seriousness. 

Slate purses his lips. “If it makes you happy, dearest.” 

She takes pity on him and huffs a laugh. Some of her tension seeps away. “Did you have a system you’d like me to adhere to?” 

He pouts down at his food. “Not presently.” 

“And the books you’ve left out. They’re quite numerous...” 

He fidgets. “I might be referencing some of them.” 

“Even the ones left on the floor?” 

“Well, maybe not those.” 

Adalyn teases him with a smile. “I also meant to inquire about your book-marking system.” 

He meets her eyes, despairing. “... What book-marking system?” 

“The one where you leave books open or close them on a variety of... strange things. Feathers. Receipts. Fabrics. Unidentified plant matter.” 

He shifts. “Well, you know dog earring is terrible for parchment.” 

  “So is staining the pages with potion ingredients, dearest.” She pushes back with the new endearment. 

He covers his silence by scraping the bottom of his bowl. 

Adalyn relents. “If they’re not an elaborate bookmarking system I’ll just remove them then? At least from the books not currently in use?” 

He relaxes a bit. “I should be grateful for your care, Adalyn. I admit the treatment of my hoard is not always delicate.” 

She permits another soft smile. “Would that I knew how to care for your belongings. I’ve never cleaned armour or weapons, and I fear to touch half of your possessions for worry of mistreating them.” 

He stretches. Gives her a sheepish look. “I’ll show you then. If you’ll remain patient. I’m not fond of cleaning but you’ve my permission to wrest the best methods out of me.” 

She raises her brows. Considers the chance to spend more time with her husband, under the guise of learning and cleaning. 

Weary at her interest, Slate stands and dances back. “Later, though. You’ll not have me that easily.” 

She scowls at him. “Tease.” 

--- 

By sunset Adalyn has cleared the walkways significantly. She doesn’t know how so many tomes found their way onto the floor when they’d tidied less than a week prior. Slate exudes a special kind of chaos. Despite his list and his priorities, it seems the wyvern can’t help but start other projects on a whim, falling victim to tangents and rabbit holes much too easily. 

She doesn’t even know what half his side projects pertain to. Just that their shopping trip in the valley had resulted in them visiting all three major settlements and stopping to speak with every experienced tradesperson they crossed. 

He’d been so enthused by the time they got home – evening, despite their morning start – that he’d raced off to work on something that night and had completely missed dinner. 

He’d eaten at least – the food was gone when she woke this morning. Along with her husband. And with Slate dismissing her at lunch – albeit playfully – and now running late for dinner again, Adalyn feels the itch of rejection chafing at her once more. 

She knows it was foolish to assume that it’d be a perfect transition. That things between them would stay simple and easy. They've been married... five days now. Complications are to be expected.  

But she still wonders if Slate even notices her disconnect. If he feels as estranged as she does. She doesn’t know if he’s rushing the construction of her quarters because he wants her gone, or if he’s being dutiful and kind, or if he’s just hyper-fixating on his next big project. She doesn’t know, because he hasn’t given her any indication. Hasn’t spoken to her about anything serious. Has barely spent any alone time with her. 

She finishes her dinner and covers Slates before standing to pace, restless. She scours the room for something else to do before flopping into the desk chair and scowling at Slate’s desk. Blueprints and plans are scattered around.  

Part of her feels small and dumb. Because each night after dinner, if he remembers to attend, Slate spends hours poring over these papers, drafting out his plans and thumbing through his reference books. Small and dumb because of the jealousy she feels towards some parchment. She wants to resent the paperwork. Envies the attention Slate gives it.  

But she relaxes incrementally and lets out a sigh. She doesn’t hate his work. Listening to him talk about engineering and different types of construction, watching him get so animated; she feels guilty for being so angry over something that obviously brings him so much joy.  

And it’s not as if Slate had promised her romance.  

He’d married out of self-interest. To discourage his family. An act of pettiness, or rebellion, she’d thought when he’d first revealed the plan.  

It only hurts because she likes him. 

Her fingers brush the scale that she keeps in her pocket. She grits her teeth at the acknowledgement. Then pushes the thought away. Her feelings for the wyvern aren’t something she wants to contemplate yet, even as she skirts around the truth of them. 

Adalyn lets out a sigh and chides herself. There’s no point dwelling on it. Especially if she refuses to act. And tonight, she doesn’t feel like doing either. 

--- 

The following morning, Slate stirs from his spot on the chaise as the room, barely perceptibly, begins to lighten. He groans, stretches, and nearly falls onto the floor. His cheeks darken, despite the lack of audience to his mishap.  

Slipping back into autonomy, Slate makes his way to the partitioned wash area and fills the basin with fresh water. He splashes his face and dresses for the day. The sun’s not up yet, but rays of red light – probably imperceptible to the human eye – are filtering into the room. Enough to let Slate know it’s time for him to start the day. 

He makes himself coffee. Adalyn had tried the bitter drink once and nearly spat it out, to his great amusement. He supposes that it’s an acquired taste, and as remote as they are, it’s not like any of the locals would have the chance to get used to it. 

He scarfs down a handful of Adalyn’s biscuits, puts another log on the fire, and lingers by the bed. He adjusts the blankets on his wife before leaving in a rush, not allowing himself to stare for too long. 

It’s a bad habit. 

He shouldn’t have started it. Shouldn’t keep indulging it. If she knew how he fussed, how often he touches her without permission... He hates to think of what she’d do if she found out he’d been pushing the boundaries like that. Especially with how touch sensitive humans supposedly are. 

Slate flies to the main entrance before shifting into his demi form and going on foot to Fourth Spire. The ground floor is gradually opening up, and he’s paying close attention to the central column. 

It’s thick, acting as both a support within the tower, and a centralised route up and down the floors once he hollows it out into a large spiral staircase. He hopes Adalyn likes it. Still, part of his mind ticks away at the design, wondering if there’s anything he can add, anything he can do to make carrying things up and down the Spire any easier for his human wife.  

Ready to begin, he lets shadows gather at his fingertips. Feels the weight of keratin form into large claws. In his demi form his muscles are already prepared for the weight the transformation brings. More scales appear across his forearms, the dense patches protecting him from any loose debris that might go airborne. 

Then he begins carving. 

Taking breaks only to sip at a skin of water, he loses himself in the sounds of the earth and the rhythm of his work, pausing occasionally to check that the angles and measurements aren’t out of order. It has to be perfect. Sure, it’s only the first shaping of the stairs. He’d go over it with his chisels once the basic shape had been found. But he moves carefully, not willing to make any mistakes with Adalyn’s quarters.  

She’d been... withdrawn last night. Pale and wan once she’d fallen asleep. There’d been a strange undercurrent in the air when he’d landed on the balcony and found her reading in the back corner.  

Seeing his covered dinner plate had shamed him. Once more he’d been late for dinner. Once more he’d promised himself he’d do better. He’d check the sky. He’d stop work early. But deep beneath the surface it’s hard to keep track of the time. Even if his eyes can cut through the dark with perfect clarity, he has no way of knowing what time it is. Especially as he gets lost in his work. (Especially as he can’t find anyone to fix that blasted timepiece). 

There’s the crunch of footsteps and he pauses in his work. Turns to regard Adalyn, waiting by the entrance with a torch. 

Controlling his delight, Slate wipes his hands on his pants and banishes his claws, trying to appear somewhat collected. Somewhat normal. Human. Palatable, he thinks. 

He gives her a polite smile. “What brings you today?” 

Her brief lunch visits are perhaps the only time she seems open. Relaxed. He looks forward to their little appointments, even if half the time he doesn’t know what to say or how to act.  

She crinkles her nose as she looks around the space. For a moment his heart skips a beat. Is something wrong with it? 

“I don’t know how you breathe through all this dust. If a human worked in these conditions they’d probably get black lung.” 

Relief floods him at the comment. Then embarrassment. Ancestors, he cares too much about her opinion.  

“Black lung is caused by scarring to the lung tissue. Most dracanoids are resistant to minor scarring and damages.” 

“Resistant,” Adalyn corrects, “but not immune.” 

Her concern is sweet enough, endearing enough, that his smile softens. “I’ll keep that in mind.” 

Her ears turn pink, and she turns away. “Did you want some lunch?” 

He follows her out into the mainway, sheds his footwear, and steps into the stream. The water is icy and he grits his teeth before dunking himself and rubbing the grey dust away.  

Curiously, Adalyn doesn’t watch, instead unpacking their blanket and lunch with careful movements, barely sparing him a glance. It’s his second clue that something is up, as most afternoons she can’t keep her eyes off of him, much to his pleasure.  

Dripping, but clean, Slate joins her at the makeshift picnic, sitting cross legged across from her. He eats the food with gusto, hoping the sounds and motions can convey what he struggles to do so with words. When Adalyn produces a flask of coffee, still hot, he almost swoons. 

“A female after my own heart,” he mutters, sipping at the brew. He misses the way she stills at his words. “So what are your plans for the day?” 

She shrugs before drinking from her own flask of tea. “I was just going to explore. Maybe experiment in the kitchen later. Do something different for dinner.” 

Something in his chest warms. “I’ll look forward to trying it.” 

She huffs. “Don’t be so enthused. I could end up poisoning us if I go too wild.” 

“I’m not worried.” 

Adalyn is silent for a moment, a strange expression flitting across her face. When she speaks next, her words still roll with the same cadence and volume, but Slate can’t help but feel that there’s something missing in her tone; some of the warmth behind her eyes has waned. 

“Is there anything I can eat that you can’t?” 

Grateful for the change in topic, Slate takes a moment to consider. “Not really. I think some red dragons can’t eat ice. But otherwise, we’re pretty good at digesting things, even if they’re not particularly nutritious.” 

“What do you like to eat?” 

Slate bites back a smile. He enjoys Adalyn’s curiosity. Her willingness to learn, and to hear him talk about the things she likes. She never makes it seem like he’s being boring. Even if there’s the occasional moment when he wonders if her mind is elsewhere, or she’s veiling some display of emotion. 

“I like all kinds of foods. One of the benefits of living so long and so richly is that I can travel around and try different things. I adore coffee. Though that might be because it’s mildly addictive. I like fish when it’s simple and game when it’s extravagant. I’m not very experienced at cooking many of these things, but I like different spice blends from Shad and the different grains they cook with. I like fruit and berry pastries. Cocoa from the Isles. I prefer my eggs cooked through, and I like the texture of toast when it’s a bit too crispy. But mostly I like variety. Being surprised by my food, or changing things up occasionally.” 

He reigns it in when Adalyn stares. There’s an indecipherable look on her face once more, and he pauses, suddenly self-conscious.  

“I’m not boring you, am I?” 

Her look softens. “I asked.”  

Slate drops his eyes. Suddenly overcome with the urge to reach out and touch her, to cup her face, to lean in and taste her breath; he schools his features into neutrality before pulling out another practiced smile. She’s just being friendly. Polite. 

“Lunch was wonderful. Thank you, Adalyn.”  

She smiles back, soft, but with that shadow of emotion from earlier, the one he can’t quite place.  

It’s enough that he finally frowns. Reaches out and touches her hand. “Is something wrong?” 

She hesitates, and he waits, giving her the time she needs to find her words. She seems to be thinking hard, conflicted. Eventually she lifts her eyes to his. Bites on her lip.  

“It’s silly.” 

“I won’t laugh.” 

She looks away again. “Will you... show me how to take apart and clean your armour tomorrow?” 

He tries not to frown. He has to wonder if she’d changed her mind about what she was going to say. Why look so torn over such a simple request? 

“Of course. Is that all?” 

She struggles to meet his gaze again. Shrugs. “Yes. I just... I like spending time with you.” 

Something in his chest warms. His face too.  

“I like spending time with you too, dearest.” 

She rolls her eyes at the endearment, but the tension is barely diffused. She still looks uncomfortable. 

He’s not sure what to say to make it better. Instead waits, hoping that she’ll break the silence. 

After a while, she does. “I’m just- worried.” 

He tilts his head.  

She shrugs again, trying to downplay the moment. “When you finish the Spire and I move out, what if I don’t get to spend any more time with you?” 

He blinks. The thought hadn’t even occurred to him. At least, not as something to worry about. He’d been toiling away in the keep, eager to gift Adalyn with her own space and not considering how she might feel about it. Does she want her own quarters? Will she like living by herself? He hadn’t even thought to ask. 

Looking at her now, vulnerable, hardly able to meet his eye, the previous warmth in his chest dissipates, and fractures. He’d messed up.  

He flounders for the right words to fix his mistake. To reassure Adalyn, and make that doleful expression go away. 

“I- uh. Of course you’ll spend time with me. You have a knack for tracking me down. And I really enjoy our lunches together.” 

Her expression barely changes. She just nods, and looks away, before making to stand. 

Slate winces and grabs her hand. Stands with her. Blurts the first thought to pop into his head. “I could build a bridge? One from the tower to your Spire? That way you can visit me whenever, and won’t even have to walk the whole keep.” 

Her face is blank for a moment. Then he watches as she goes through the effort tilting up the edges of her lips. Summons a spark to her eyes. “Sounds difficult.”  

He agrees. “A secret tunnel would probably be easier.”  

The smile twitches. “Probably more romantic too.” 

He blinks again. Latches onto that train of thought with clawed hands. “Do you like romance?” 

She looks away. “I don’t know. I haven’t really tried it.” 

There’s a precipice in front of him. A vulnerability he’d yet to show Adalyn. Yet to show anyone really. And while he hesitates to step over it, looking at the cracks in his wife’s composure, and their linked hands, his decision to speak is easily made. 

“Neither have I.” 

She turns to regard him, face still mostly blank. “You... haven’t?” 

“Nope.” 

He watches her weigh her words. Shift her weight. Consider the implications.  

“I see.” 

Adalyn no longer looks quite so melancholy, and it’s a balm on his nerves. But now that the desperate grab for reassurances and comforts is done, he shifts uncomfortably. The silence grates on him, and he wonders what next he should say. 

Adalyn saves him the trouble when she floors him with her next question. 

“Would you like to? 

Slate blinks. Looks sharply at the woman only to find her staring at her feet again, arms wrapped around herself. 

“Uh,” his heart is beating too hard, “I hadn’t considered it.” There’s another tense silence. “Would you?” 

Despite asking the first question, Adalyn still has the gall to look surprised. She meets his stare, eyes wide for a moment, before looking away. She packs the picnic blanket. Puts their dishes away, slowly, while she deliberates on her answer.  

Finally when she stands, she holds her basket in hand, almost as if she’s ready to flee at a moment’s notice. She makes herself meet Slate’s eyes. Composes her expression into one of neutrality again. 

“Yes. I think I would.” 

His mind blanks.  

He doesn’t have it in him to consider the implication of her words while she still stands before him. To consider the surge of... something... in his chest. To get a grip on his emotions and form a coherent response.  

But she stands there, waiting for him to reply.  

In his panic, he settles on an abrupt change in topic. “Tomorrow then, I’ll show you the armour.” He smiles. Starts backing away, before giving a little wave and turning. His steps back towards the Spire aren’t measured. He practically flees the scene, head reeling.  

When he’s out of sight he pauses to lean against the wall and lets himself just marinate in the mix of adrenaline and surprise.  

He can hear her still, lingering in the main-way. After a moment he listens to her footsteps fade into the distance, and he lets himself breathe again. 

Adalyn wants romance.  

Even thinking the words surprises him. Makes him haunted and hopeful. She might be open to advances. She might want somebody else. She might have been speaking on an entirely hypothetical level. And because he ran like a coward he’ll never know, unless he can muster up the nerve to pry further. 

Slate abandons the central column and starts working on one of the outer walls. They still need to be taken out, and there’s not many mistakes he can make while doing that. He resummons his claws, still in a daze, and resumes his work, though not grounded in the slightest. 

With enough monotony of motion he’s able to push the emotions down and focus on his work. Thought’s still swirl but he’s able to get lost in it, until he is sore and stiff and thirsty. He goes to take a drink and finds his skin empty. He lets out a long breath as the echoes of his labour fade away. It has probably been a while, and he resolves to take a break. To head to the main-way and refill his skin.  

When he makes it to the cavern, he catches sight of the sky and curses. The moon is high, and he bemoans how late it must be. Time just keeps getting away from him.  

He shifts and takes flight, making a direct beeline to the Tower. He lands on the balcony, trading his wings for his human form. 

He’d missed dinner again. Not only that, but Adalyn is already in bed, and her breath indicates that she’s sleeping deeply.  

Damn it.  

Grinding his teeth at his latest mistake, he fills the bathtub and sheds his clothes. When he’s no longer the colour of chalk or tasting grit in his mouth he dries and dresses, and empties the tub. 

Spying dinner on the table, he’s hit with a slew of emotions. Gratitude and adoration. Guilt and sadness. He needs to fix his timepiece. Or pull his head out of his ass and start making time for his wife. If he doesn’t, the next few decades are going to be incredibly stilted, and it would probably be his fault. 

Walking past his desk, he pauses when he sees Adalyn’s binder sitting open, a handful of papers poking out. He’s sure she didn’t have nearly as many when she first moved in and unpacked. Curious, he examines one. It almost looks like a blueprint. It’s a birds-eye-view of a room. Or perhaps not a room, judging by the lack of walls or doors. Those are... garden beds. Pots. Plant names. Has Adalyn been planning a garden? 

Unable to dampen his curiosity, he slides the other sheets into view. There’re recipes, to do lists, shopping lists, more blueprints. He skims the to do list, written in Adalyn’s tidy print: garden supplies, write Rin, meet with G&G, see jeweller. On the other side is another list, self explanatory: 20x small pots, 10x large pots, 5x crates soil, old garden cuttings, 1x load fertiliser, spade, watering can, water barrel... The list trails off, instead devolving into loose sketches of a rudimentary irrigation system. Slate is impressed.  

He puzzles over the next page. Adalyn had drafted a blueprint – two blueprints, of similar design. It’s not up to industry standard, but it’s legible. Slate doesn’t know what to make of the design. Apparently half of the building is to be hewn from the mountain, and a protruding half to be built from wood? He decides to ask about it later. 

He sits down for dinner, considering her plans and altering his own. Glass. Wardrobe. Rail. Timepiece. Pots. Soil. Fertilizer. His list is growing. The trip he’s been putting off is starting to look more and more needed, and Slate sighs, wondering if he should just get it over with. It could certainly be a pleasant surprise for Adalyn. 

When he finishes cleaning up for the night he hesitates at the foot of the bed. He should just go and lay down on the chaise. Sleep off the fatigue that is starting to cloud his mind.  

Instead, he finds himself laying down beside Adalyn and watching her for a moment. He almost immediately wishes he hadn’t as he sinks into the mattress and muffles a sigh. It’d be the only perk, giving Adalyn her own quarters. He’d missed sleeping in the bed.  

It seems kind of dumb to him. That humans reserve sex for the bedroom. It makes him self-conscious whenever he enters the space. Is he bothering Adalyn by being here? Is he pushing her boundaries too much? It’s not like she’d say much if he did. Fuck, she’d even offered to share the bed with him, that first night. He’d declined, if only to make sure she wasn’t rushing into things. And she hadn’t asked him back since.  

Adalyn rolls. Her back slots against Slate’s chest. Her head rests on his arm. Slate freezes. Scarcely breathing, he waits for her to wake. To jerk away. To do something. Anything.  

She doesn’t wake. As the minutes tick by, Slate relaxes fractionally. Lulled by her warmth and lured by her gentle breathing into lowering his guard, Slate lets his eyes close. Inhales deeply. 

Just a few more minutes. Then he’d leave. He’d go and sleep on the chaise. Would stop smelling her hair like a depraved pervert. Would pull away from her touch. 

Just a few more minutes. 

--- 

“Dearest Adalyn 

I need to pick up some supplies from Cheywyn. Unfortunately, I won’t return until tomorrow morning, if things go according to schedule. I’m saddened that I’ll be missing our midday meal, but look forward to returning to you. 

Fondest regards 

Slate” 

She’d woken from a pleasant dream this morning. Warmth against her back, and a hand entwined in her hair. Slate’s absence was not unusual. She’d stoked the fire, started breakfast, and had sat at the table, relaxed and looking forward to the day. Then she’d seen the note. 

Adalyn sips her tea on the balcony, eyes trained on the horizon. The letter is clenched in her fist.

Next

[ehlnofay]

49 - Arabella :')

49: nightfall

This had better work – Arabella is using up good vellums for this, and they’re not cheap.

She’s crouched on the hall’s smooth stone floor, half-listening to the soft crackling of the hearth and the rattling of pots and pans, all her papers spread out in unruly glory before her, half-covered with scribbled ink. The concept, she’s quite sure, is sound; it’s figuring out how to properly execute it that gives her trouble. She’s no scholar. She’d probably qualify more as a hobbyist. The things she has in mind would doubtless be a bit beyond her on a good day – trying to craft them herself is likely, logically, an exercise in futility. Arabella does not do things that are futile.

She traces her finger down the side of a page – a scribbled transcription of a description of an illusion spell that’s well beyond her grasp, broken down as best she can make it into its bare components. She doesn’t need all of it; almost the whole first half can be thrown away, and she can adapt the second half to her foundation. If she can figure out how, of course – what she can do is not a spell, so grafting one onto it is a complicated process. It’s all very finicky.

It's a problem to circumvent. Arabella loves those.

It takes her a moment to realise the sound of the fire has died down. It’s her only warning before  Karliah’s voice, carried on footsteps that cannot make noise unless she tries, comes down like a thunderclap. “Arabella.”

“Karliah,” she replies brightly, twisting her head up to meet her eye. It’s a strange angle; she can see up her nose, this way. Karliah raises a brow. She only carries one bowl. Arabella asks, “You didn’t make me anything?”

“You can cook for yourself,” Karliah says. Arabella pouts. “Arabella, really? A gift from a Daedric Prince isn’t enough for you?”

(Arabella stepped onto that half moon and gained the ability to make herself unrecognisable – to wipe herself clean from the slate of others’ minds, just for a little bit. There have been times in her life when she would have killed for that ability. There are times in her life now when she’s sure it will come in handy. But why stop there? Total erasure doesn’t have to be an end in itself. It’s fresh ground for building.)

Arabella shrugs, turns back to the mess of her papers. “It’s not a gift if I paid for it,” she replies, “which I did, and will continue to do. This is my end of the bargain. I’ll use it as I see fit.”

She can positively hear Karliah’s raised eyebrow as she says, “How irreverent of you.”

She’s never really been one for reverence. Pledging herself to a deity that bestows her bounties as business transactions is not likely to change that. 

Arabella shrugs again. “Besides,” she says, flippant, “It’s a fun challenge.”

“Is it.” Karliah’s trousers rustle as she shifts her weight. “You came here to test it on me, didn’t you?”

“Only partly,” Arabella admits, smiling, and waves her down.

Karliah sits. She’s wearing her lazy tunic, the one with the stitches drooping at the hem and flowers embroidered about the cuffs. Soup dribbles down the edge of the bowl as she adjusts her position. It’s green. She bends to lick it off her knuckles, which kind of spoils her stern demeanour.

“Not really, actually,” Arabella amends. “It’s not nearly ready for testing. I might need to go up north to get a refresher on some of these ideas, because spellcraft is, surprisingly, quite hard.”

Karliah sets the bowl with a clink on the stone floor. “You know, I never pegged you for an academic.”

“Oh, I’m not.’ Arabella pinches a page between finger and thumb. “I don’t have the temperament for it.” Study requires patience; patience makes Arabella feel like crawling out of her own skin. If she stays still for too long she starts spitting sparks. “That’s rather the problem, isn’t it? This would be a lot easier if I knew what I was doing.”

“Which is altering Nocturnal’s gift,” Karliah says, patient, “so that you can make people think that they know you. Even though the point of yours is to make sure they don’t.”

She sips a spoonful of her bright green soup.

Arabella tips her head back and says, “The thing about illusion magic –”

“You’re workshopping on me during dinner?”

“Well, it’s not my dinner – abominable treatment of your guests, by the way, I can’t believe you didn’t give me anything – the thing is that it can’t take. Illusions can’t enforce an absence, they can only impose a presence. You can’t take away someone’s hearing, you can only impose a space of silence. You can’t make someone forget, you can only replace a memory. The mind doesn’t respond well to a vacuum. The rules of magic don’t allow for it. All spells can do is cover up the truth.” Karliah isn’t wearing her hood; her hair is down. It’s always startling to see, somehow; makes her whole face look different. She keeps placidly sitting her soup. Arabella taps at one of her vellums. “What I can do – it takes. Which is, I understand, magically unprecedented, but also very jarring for anyone who witnesses – like how you tried to kill me earlier, when I –”

“I thought you were a stranger in Nightingale Hall,” Karliah says, “and I wasn’t going to kill you.”

“You found it off-putting,” Arabella insists, “on some level, because the mind doesn’t like a vacuum. But when I figure this out – I could layer spells on top. Oh, yes, I’m supposed to be here – oh, yes, we’re dear friends – all that sort of thing. And it would be almost impossible to see through if I linked them right because there would be no truth to cover up! Just a vacuum! And the mind would take almost anything over a vacuum.”

Karliah looks at her, unblinking. “You’d be a menace,” she says.

Arabella smiles. “Am I not already?”

There is a space of silence, for a moment. Karliah’s spoon clanks against her bowl. Arabella can hear the water gently running in the other room, the soft creaking of the stone, the airy breath of the low-burning hearth. Nightingale Hall is very quiet, and very full of ghosts.

“So,” Karliah says, “are you just here to tell me your magic ideas and criticise my hosting, or was there something else?”

Arabella tips her head to look her in the murex-purple eye. Lightly, she says, “You never come into town.”

Karliah holds her gaze. “I’m fine here,” she says.

Arabella shrugs. “I know.”

There is a pause.

Karliah sighs. “I think we’ve got some smoked fish strung up somewhere,” she says. “I’ll get it for you.”

Arabella presses tongue to unsmiling teeth. “Thank you,” she says primly, and jabs a finger at her higgledy-piggledy stack of vellums. “This is hard work.”

Outside, beyond the rock walls of the hall, night falls. The moons rise, a dim red half-moon and a narrow crescent, to their place in the star-spattered sky.

[wouldyoustilllovemeifiwasawyrm]

Brightblooms in the Well

Linktober 2023 Day 27: Light/Sparkle/Bright As soon as the idea popped into his head, he knew he had to act upon it before Zelda stopped him. He closed the gap between himself and his princess, cupping her face with nectar-soaked hands, pulling her into a kiss. A small gasp escaped her as she realized what he’d done. Her own hands flew to her cheeks as she pulled away, her fingertips brushing the glowing handprints he’d left. “Link!”

The evening sun begins to dip below the tree line of the western woods. Fireflies flicker to life along the well-trod path up the hill between Bolson’s model homes. Fresh, small footprints remain in the dirt, pressed in from the afternoon’s drizzle. A set running in, a much fresher set running back out toward Hateno.

No smoke rose from the chimney of their cottage this evening. Her golden horse nickered at him from the stall. Link clicked his tongue, leading Spot by the reins over to his own trough and stall box. He patted both horses on the nose, offering them each half an apple. Their soft lips tickled the palms of his hands.

Though he listened for signs of activity within the house, he heard none.

Curiously, Link climbed up onto the ledge beside the window, peering inside. No fire lit in the hearth. Not even a candle beside Zelda’s desk.

He furrowed his brows, trying to make out any sign of her in the darkness. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d returned home after a day of teaching and fell asleep. He squinted, just barely ascertaining the perfectly tucked sheets still intact on their bed.

No Zelda.

He frowned, trying to recall if anyone had said anything regarding her whereabouts to him on his way back to the house after working the fields with Reeve. Nothing came to mind. Quite the opposite, even. Clavia remarked that Zelda appeared in a rush to get home when the children finally ran out of the schoolhouse doors.

He walked along the raised pathway down the side of their home. There was still one place to check before he needed to worry. He peeked his head into the small storage room in the back of the cottage. Nope. Not in there. Though, as his eyes passed over the small tomato plant beside it, he noticed only the orange and yellow fruits remained. He doubted the children picked them, as most of them claimed to hate raw tomatoes and would only eat them when cooked onto something else. Zelda, on the other hand, ate them raw like apples.

With a hop, Link descended onto the stone step and back to the ground. He hefted himself over the edge of the well, slid down the ladder, and landed with a soft thud on the wooden dock beneath.

A blonde head turned quickly, her eyes wide in surprise. Ink stained her right cheek.

“You’re back early.” Zelda observed, incorrectly.

“It’s after seven.” Link informed her.

“Is it?” Zelda quickly checked the small timepiece on her desk, a gift from Robbie. A failed version of a miniature Sheikah Slate, not useful for much of anything except to tell the time. In blue symbols, the time shone across her features. “Oh, so it is. I’m sorry. I had intended to start making supper at five.”

“S’alright.” Link assured her. After checking that the book in front of her had a different color cover than her diary, he approached. “What have you been studying?”

Zelda held up a small, greenish-blue bud. “Brightblooms. I’ve been trying to discern what makes them glow.”

Link took the bud from her hand, examining it curiously. “And what have you found?”

Zelda heaved a heavy sigh, shrugging her shoulders. “Very little, I’m afraid. I’ve discovered that it is the nectar within the flower that supplies the light. See, here, the translucent skin of the petals. But as for what exactly within the nectar causes the luminescence, I have no idea. I thought perhaps it was a similar substance to that as is within fireflies, but I’m not sure.”

While Link had passed by brightblooms dozens of times, using them frequently in his explorations of dark caves, he hadn’t thought much about the why. He smiled. Of course, Zelda, in her inexhaustible curiosity, wanted to know what made them glow.

She slid her notebook toward him. Sketches and theories dotted the pages, which she flipped through as she spoke. “Fireflies produce a yellow light from inside a closed system. I believe it also has something to do with electrical signals that the firefly produces when it’s alive. Based on my observations, only living fireflies produce light. But that may not be the case at all. I’m afraid I don’t have the heart to squish one and observe whether the glow remains. I’ve only dissected ones which I’ve found already deceased.”

Link would offer to squish one for her and record the results, but that would defeat the purpose of her good-natured hesitation. He’d just tell her he squished it by accident.

“As you can see with this bud here, it also appears to be a closed system, emanating very little light.” Zelda continued. “But when the buds are struck, or else left to bloom on their own, they produce an abundance of light, but for a shorter duration. The ones I’ve planted down here will need to be replaced when their light eventually fades. They respond to physical stimuli, such as being struck, with quickly blooming and sticking to a surface.”

Link nodded, quite happy to listen to her talk science for as long as she wished.

Zelda produced another book, flipping through the pages until she reached a small sketch of a firefly. “This author speculates that the firefly produces light by the interaction of an enzyme with a kind of sugar located within the body of the insect. This book, in general, is about enzymes and their various uses. Fascinating material; you really ought to read it. It’s a perfect interaction of biology and chemistry.”

En-zime. Or, no, enzyme, with a Y. He quickly scanned the page, which had only a handful of words he recognized and several diagrams which he couldn’t hope to interpret. Lines and triangles and letters, arranged in some order that he was sure made sense to Zelda.

“As for the brightbloom, there is no mention of it in his book, and so I’m left to grapple with the mechanism with which it produces luminescence. I don’t believe it to be electrical.” She pursed her lips, tapping her fingertips on the wooden desk. “I’ve been comparing a bloom to these buds for, well, I suppose it must be several hours now. I had intended to discover something about the nature of the glow tonight. Symin and I were going to compare notes in the morning and discuss a lesson plan on bioluminescence for the children. But, it seems, that will have to wait, and I can only hope that Symin has made more progress on the subject than I.”

Link turned the bud over in his hands, examining it closely himself. The petals were very closely tucked together, with only the faintest glow emanating from within. If he struck the bud, or threw it against the wall, it would stick and bloom brightly. That much he’d observed firsthand. But what if he-?

In a moment of pure curiosity, he smashed the bud between his palms.

Blinding light burst in a sparking display and dripped between his fingers, sticky nectar splashing him in the face.

“Link!” Zelda cried, shielding her face from the splatter, specks of light landing on her hands and sleeves. “Hylia’s wings, why did you do that?!”

He could barely make out her exasperated expression from the light that shone around his eyes, obscuring everything in the darkness of the hidden study. “I wanted to know if it was air-reactive.” He answered honestly with a shrug.

“You- Well, Professor Link, what do you think?” Zelda asked.

“I think,” Link compared the split halves of the smushed bud in his palms, each of which glowed like a tiny, dripping star. “It might be.”

Zelda stood from her desk, pushing the little wooden chair back into its place tucked underneath. “I think that’s a very astute observation.” She took a small handkerchief from her pocket, and began trying to wipe away the nectar from his face—gently at first, then more aggressively as the stubborn nectar refused to budge. “Goddess, Link. This stuff will not come off!”

He winced as she dragged the handkerchief across his cheek rather forcefully, like she was trying to wipe his skin away.

She huffed, pulling the useless, now-glowing fabric away. “I think that only smeared it. I suppose we could just wait for it to stop glowing on its own, though there’s no telling how long that will take.” She folded the handkerchief carefully, keeping the glowing nectar from touching the surface of her desk. The palms of her hands also sported droplets of light, faraway celestial bodies blinking in and out as she moved. “Perhaps it’s water-soluble.”

“You want me to jump into the pool?” Link offered, already taking a step backward toward the edge of the platform.

Zelda pursed her lips. “I suppose that would be one way to remove the nectar, though a wet rag would probably be sufficient.”

“Aw, but that’s no fun.” Link teased. If this nectar really was water-soluble, which he hoped that it was, for his own sake, then there’d be no harm in… sharing it.

As soon as the idea popped into his head, he knew he had to act upon it before Zelda stopped him. He closed the gap between himself and his princess, cupping her face with nectar-soaked hands, pulling her into a kiss.

A small gasp escaped her as she realized what he’d done. Her own hands flew to her cheeks as she pulled away, her fingertips brushing the glowing handprints he’d left. “Link!”

Link laughed, the sound echoing off the stony walls of her study. “Now we match!”

“Oh, you cad!” She scolded. Though he couldn’t tell for sure beneath the glow on her face, he thought she might be blushing. Or maybe it was rage. Something in that range. “Give me that!” Zelda snatched the remaining brightbloom bud from his hands.

“Aw, come on, Zel. I was only jok-,“ Link started, cut off by Zelda’s very firm return of the kiss. Rather than her hands resting on his face, as was her typical habit, they roamed. Down his neck, up to his ears, tangled in his hair. All the while, the drip of nectar followed.

When she finally pulled away, a satisfied smirk on her lips, he could only imagine the state she’d left him in. “Well, what do you know? Maybe there are some similarities to fireflies after all. You certainly look like one now.”

Link would not be outdone. “Nah, a firefly is more like-,“ He grabbed Zelda’s ass, giving a playful squeeze. “-that.”

Zelda let out a small squeak of surprise, though she made no attempt to push him away. “You’re terrible, you know that?” Despite her admonishment, she soon returned the favor, grabbing his ass in return. “Just terrible.”

Link snickered, resting his forehead against Zelda’s. “You know, I bet this stuff washes off of skin much better than it does fabric.”

Zelda raised a brow. “Probably. Why does that matter?”

Another light-filled kiss brushed against her lips, leaving a celestial glow around her mouth. “Because,” Link whispered, trailing kisses toward her ear. “I want to cover you in it. And it would be a shame to ruin your nice blouse.”

[kindred-spirit-93]

Sup, it's me again

I just wanted to share my interpretation of Zeus' power as the King of the gods in context to the story.

Being the top god comes with major perks. You get to choose your own domains, plus you get to decide what roles the other gods play too. There's something about being a god that makes them super invested in their domain - to the point where it's easy to manipulate them. As the head honcho, you have total control over your own life.

Zeus knew how to use this power to his advantage. He rewarded his favorite daughter by making her the goddess of wisdom and strategy. Apollo got a promotion from disease and health god to rockstar status. On the flip side, Zeus made Poseidon, Hades, and Persephone as sea and underworld deities to keep them away and made Hera goddess of marriage - basically, a way to keep her more manageable.

The Olympians I imagine are fairly new to the pantheon compared to the older titans and primordials. In comparison the Olympians didn't really create anything, instead they helped nurture and raise society. They are more sociatal deities than nature ones. War, marriage, agriculture, smithing, "beauty" etc

I wanted to study classics but I couldn't really pursue a higher education in my situation, so now I use my knowledge to make hypothetical webcomics lol

hello again!

hereby dubbing thee astron (from greek for star) in part because its thematically fitting lol but also since to me you have set urself apart from any other anon ive ever interacted with and idk consider it a gesture of acquaintanceship through the anonymity ^-^

i feel so stupid for realising that the way i percieved gods in pantheons was them having an inherent affinity to their domains lol, its only just struck me now that nope they were probably clean slates and have been assigned to roles. i wonder if this is the result of their individual myths? like artemis assisting leto's birth to apollo (if theyre even twins before the hellenic age idk what the parameters are here lol. anyway)

that said, i very much agree with ur interpretation, its what makes sense most to me tbh. and for that special sauce layer of symbolism and personification (another favourite thing of mine in the mythos!) it fits nicely for the (self appointed) king of the gods to do as he pleases in terms of distribution, though i do like that he drew lots with his brothers to decide who got what lol.

--

manipulation and power imbalances my beloveds! if i ever get to writing anything its gong to be about the darker subject matters for sure. idk why but i really want to see more mythos accurate gods where they arent downplayed or censored the way they are in modern media, especially when its at the price of other gods yk? idk ill elaborate later one day but ye, more gods that dont conform to our human code of morals & ethics and do what they please bc who dares defy? whos going to hold a diety accountable?

very interesting! i like the idea of zeus being a little too self assured, probably bc he was raised by gaia and was the object of the prophecy that foretold his fathers downfall (major youngest sibling energy lol) ig what im saying is that power got into his head, going down the path many kings are known to do. hello hubris!

yes yes yes!! i think with the age of the olympians humanity started to flourish.. like with apollon being the god of civilisation and what have you mortals got a kickstart after being wiped out by previous wars and made to start from scratch. and so naturally the gods where more specific to their needs, like hestia goddess of the hearth and the home etc.

also the fact that legends and folklore tend to reflect the norms of society at the time, so with more stable conditions and a fairly peaceful olympus, folks would have time to settle down and begin weaving tales and answering the biggest questions in life (bc up until that point everyones been on survival mode, so ig it reinforces the idea of the olympians bringing prosperity and stuff as opposed to previous generations of the entities TM)

--

ah i see. well i hope things turn out to your favour and that you can achieve all what you dream of. wishing u all the best till then and beyond :)

[poisonhemloc]

just gonna put some (not taco truck au surprisingly) oc rambles under the cut

I have... six Hearthian ocs that aren't Granite and four of them only show up in one fic (and a wip)

Silica and Nickel are identical twin hatchlings from the everyone lives!au- Silica is/is going to be more adventurous, more into exploring, louder, more excitable. Nickel is going to be calmer, and a little quieter. They're mirror twins, so, freckles are mirrored (...I. don't know if Hearthians are left or right handed? I'm gonna assume they're ambidextrous though, but, if they aren't, probably Silica is left handed and Nickel is right handed)(Mirror twins- the fast version, if the twins looked at each other and both raised their dominant hand to touch their head, they would see the other doing that like they were looking in a mirror)

Silica is going to find something exciting to do on Timber Hearth, but, Nickel is the one who'll want to go into space... a couple years after Tephra.

Older Hearthians are Quartz, Jasper, Anatase, and Old Nickel.

Old Nickel is the oldest of the group/oldest living Hearthian in the pre-game fics right now. They're the former brewmaster/person who did Porphy's job in game. They're calm and friendly and they're fond of a hatchling that'll come help them out periodically.

Anatase was the mayor before Rutile- they're fair, but there's a point where they stop being lenient to hatchlings or adults who're supposed to know better and they tend towards harsher consequences than necessary.

Jasper was the medical person/hatchling caretaker that trained Gneiss and got phased out of the hatchling caretaking... pretty much around the time the wip im doing rn is taking place, mostly because they're not as good at it as Gneiss and for spilling 'you two are related' info several years earlier than they should have (My Feldspar and Gossan are half-siblings, but also, you're not supposed to know til you're old enough not to ignore everyone else in favor of sticking with your sibling). They're only allowed to help in specific circumstances- like, Chert was too little when hatched and Gneiss needed extra hands.

Quartz... I like a lot. They're mean, rude to the hatchlings, don't like change and will fight it, and they're not even good at their job. They're the former mechanic who started training Slate, and house fires have gone down despite. How Slate is. because Slate doesn't care about safety but they do want things working so they don't cut corners as much as Quartz who just wants things working enough and doesn't care if they break again tomorrow. They're single-handedly responsible for holding back Hearthian tech for multiple years because they think the space program is gonna end in total failure and it's not worth continuing to try

[pyro-the-kin]

Outer Wilds - Protagonist

Short one. Fun little worldbuilding too.

On me:

Young, barely an adult.

A bit over-enthusiastic at the beginning, eager to start my career as an explorer.

I was young at the highest point of space exploration, when the astronauts were exploring and mapping our solar system. So I was raised with constant news and discoveries, which ignited my love for it.

On Hearthians:

Unlike the game, there were more villages spread through Timber Hearth, of various sizes. But ours was the first and the biggest, and where all space exploration started from.

Our technology was of a low level but we advanced quickly every day, learning a lot from the Nomai. Despite many living in small wooden houses, we built and kept stone buildings, often adapting from Nomai ruins.

Our wood was sturdy and durable, at least from certain trees we cultivated for such means. Most of it was used for our spaceships and structural parts in the villages, but was rare as it was hard to grow and even harder to cut. Most things were made with softer and more practical woods.

Although we had mines ourselves we used the old Nomai structures as a starting point 

We really didn't know the meaning of violence, I mean our species was extremely pacifist and we never had much trouble between ourselves. So there was never the need for violence.

We had farming and animal keeping. I remember some sort of small and stocky animal that looked like a sheep, with thick fur that we used for clothing. But most of our food was from farming, or fishing. We also kept small birds as pets.

On the Nomai:

Our language wasn't gendered, so translating Nomai text always had errors as theirs had gendered words. So we could see differences between two different words, despite being translated as one.

There were works in an effort to depict how they looked from their bones, but we always had trouble with soft parts. Finding statues and drawings actually helped solve that issue.

We didn't know a lot, unfortunately most of their culture and traditions had been lost. But architectural styles, technology and knowledge on space travel remained, alongside with new knowledge I collected with the translation tool.

Scenes and events:

Dying the first time. It was purely an accident. I had traveled to the moon, and did all my research and conversation there. From that point of view I saw the Nomai ruins in Timber Hearth, and set out to travel there. I landed and started exploring the mines, jumping from slope to slope, only the flashlight to illuminate the darkness and occasionally stopping to check for ghost matter. But I didn't expect the ground to fall beneath my feet, plunging me into the abyss. I survived the fall, hitting the jetpack at the very last instant, but before I could react I felt that burning, the last thing I remember is hitting the jetpack while grabbing the camera in an attempt to escape. Didn't even feel my death, at a certain point the burning got so intense it seemed to just disappear.

I woke up in shock, but as I looked around I deemed it just a dream. Mentioned that supposed dream to Slate, they just laughed and patted my back, saying something to ease my nerves. But still, when I approached Hornfels to get the codes, it was the same exact line from my supposed dream.

I think my second death happened in Brittle Hollow. I was exploring the surface, trying to uncover where Riebeck was, when the ground fell beneath my feet, plunging me into the black hole below. Being sucked into it felt almost like a deep dive, and I found myself on the other side of the wormhole. But from my HUD I saw the ship nearby, and having enough fuel to reach it I set for it. I entered and buckled off, ready to fly again when I saw through the window, that deep red sun. The thermometer was pointing to higher and higher temperatures, until it simply stopped working. That moment was when I saw the white, that rumbling noise, and the approaching hell. But I was at some distance, and there was nothing I could do to avoid it but simply waiting, hands having long left the controls.

When I woke up again, I needed time to truly realize what was going on. But still I carried on, went to the observatory and searched everything I could on supernovas. Not much there, but all pointed to being way too soon for it to happen.

There came a point where I didn't need to see the sun to know it was going to happen soon. Even in the darkest caves beneath a planet, I would feel that chill through my skin, the deep rumble that defied the notion of space not having sound, and that dread feeling. So I simply breathed in and carried on my tasks, simply waiting for the white and the heat. Honestly it didn't even hurt, the white and the end always came up before the heat could really hurt.

Every time I went to the Hourglass Twins, I made sure to watch the sun carefully. When it started heating and decreasing in size, I often would kill myself in some quick way, usually by puncturing the suit, so as to avoid the extreme heat. Being that close to the sun meant that I would experience the heat of that event, and I really hated it, the heat took too long to kill me and was extremely painful.

One time in Giant's Deep, I fell when trying to reach a slope into the water. But before I could reach land again, a tornado snatched the island away. I knew my ship was safe so tried to swim to where I estimated the island would land, only to look up as it was falling right over me, killing me instantly.

In Dark Bramble, exploring the strange places, I followed the white lights, only to see the anglerfish too late as it moved to eat me. The second time, I brought my ship to make travelling easier, but had to leave to repair a part of the cockpit. I thought I was safe, with enough distance from the giant fishes, only to look up from my job and see the massive mouth encroaching around me.

Took many attempts to reach the skeleton in Dark Bramble, and more than once I reached it with barely enough time to talk with Feldspat and explore. I asked them about the statue’s eyes being open. I really wanted them to be aware of the loop.

Gabbro was a breath of relief. They were someone I could talk to freely, they always remembered our conversations and offered tips on what to do next. I shared my discoveries and investigations with them, both eager to figure a way out. They were kinda my notebook.

Gabbro would get really excited to hear my tales of the Stranger's inhabitants, often musing alongside me. They wanted me to bring their music instruments to play.

Until the very last moment at the Eye, I truly thought I would manage to get out of this situation. I hoped that I would be able to stop the supernova, to rescue all travellers, and to return home. I hoped that life could go on. But staying at that campfire, I finally realized everything. So I looked one last time at all travellers and those I met during my journey, my friends, crying for the lives that were lost, for the life we could've had.

And I promised them we would meet again. In other life, in other universe.

I was there, in the empty void, but it wasn't the void of space I knew off, something entirely different. And I saw it, a new beginning, a new Big Bang. And I've felt it, an old universe being destroyed and from its ashes a new one being born. I felt not only my physical body but every particle, every single element as it was born into existence. I felt as it drifted into every corner of existence, as it consumed my physical body and it became part of the universe, of everything. How I became part of the universe. I wasn't just assisting creation, I was becoming creation. To become nothing and everything, to be the flame that lights the candle into a new reality, to become every single element, every single tiny part of that new universe, to be one with the universe. And one day, perhaps, meet my friends again. In another life, in another story. As that universal cycle would again come to an ending, and from its ashes a new story begin.

[jascas]

A Dragon's Tale

Skyla entered the den Slate got for them. How they managed to rent it for the summer she didn't know. Apparently it was a new kind of building making its way through Legdlan that had multiple dens in the same building.

This one had a central room with a raised walkway around the perimeter, leading to sleeping dens. The roof was slated and had wooden panels that were opened to let in the fresh air. In the lowest part of the room was the hearth, surrounded by short wooden stools.

"Wow this is quite fancy," Rain said as she walked around the hearth.

"Yeah, where did you even get the money to pay for this?" Dander asked.

"They're actually letting us stay here free of charge since we're going to be helping implement some new features," Slate explained. "I've done research on ways dragons can use their elements with technology and this place is perfect to try it out."

Slate has been very successful in their research and has been given a lot of opportunities at the university, and it seems they're starting to get some work outside of school.

At the back of the den was a community garden surrounded by other dens. The plants were organized in small sections with signs detailing their upkeep.

"Working in a garden is more cumbersome when you're not a nature dragon, so I've been trying to think of ways to make the process easier for other dragons." Slate takes a device out of a bag. It was a thin tube with smaller points sticking out of it.

"You put seeds in the top and close the lid. A wind dragon can send air through it and make the notches spin which will scatter seeds." Slate twisted the different segments in demonstration, "And a water dragon can also use it to water the soil. Those are just two examples, but I'm hoping that with the simple design we can find uses for other types of dragons."

[slate-skylar]

Slate blinked a few times, stifling a laugh as Cress's father very seriously said the words perfect cleavage to him. He was grateful for the explanation and yet couldn't quite focus on it until his district was brought up -- that kyanite was sourced from Twelve. At this, he warmed a bit, saying, "I know, one of my -- someone I knew in Twelve gave us some kyanite when we visited." He didn't know if Marble was even still alive, but he couldn't bring himself to look into it, to ask around. At the suggestion then of Hearth Day in Twelve, he brightened even further, only for it to be immediately cast into cold water. He looked down at the table, still, as Cress explained that Twelve was being rebuilt, as the Meadowforges said that One would be better, as there was an undercurrent of -- what, fear, distaste, disgust?

Twelve was everything to him, he loved his District more than anything else, and he wanted desperately to spend hearth day there with his baby and Cress and his whole family -- yes, even Fleur and Myron. But much of Twelve was still rubble, and was it a good idea? His breath hitched, he didn't say anything, stayed still, quiet, until Fleur surprised all of them. He looked up at her with raised eyebrows, then toward Hestia, curious. He hadn't gotten a sense of Callisto's personal style, of course, when they'd all been in the tribute clothes, but he had a feeling that none of his sisters would be particularly interested.

Hestia supplied the sign word for "mobile" to him encouragingly, and flashed him a bright smile when he glanced her way. She was uncomfortable, no doubt, but for Slate she was trying very, very hard to seem reassuring and steady.

"We'll have space for her to visit Twelve too, of course. And I'll be regularly sending along any hand-me-downs that are in good shape. You won't believe how quickly she's going to grow." She glanced over at Fleur again, unable to help that she sought her approval, too. She wanted to show she was involved, interested, integrated into Slate and Cress's lives, that she considered them family. "Maybe everyone could join us in Twelve for Hearth Day?" she suggested hopefully.

@cress-meadowforge

[slippinmickeys]

The Earl (11/13)

BONUS CHAPTER I thought it might be fun to post the last chapter tomorrow morning for those holding out until it’s posted, so... I’m... filing Chapter 11. Chapter 12 will go up late afternoon/evening. To read on AO3, go here. 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Scully had fallen into a dreamless sleep, warm and feeling impossibly safe. Birdsong had started with the dawn, and as she sat up groggily on the small mattress on the dusty floor, she smiled to herself. She would see Mulder soon. Her nightmare was at an end.

She rose from the pallet and tried dusting off the dried mud and dirt from the hem of her frock, but it was useless. This particular dress was likely ruined. Not that she would be sad to see it go. It could burn for all she cared.

She pulled out all the hairpins from what remained of her coiffure, running her hands through her hair as best she could. The long auburn locks which, when unbound, flowed lushly halfway down her back (one of Mulder’s favorite things, or so he had said to her in the heat of passion), had some luster to it and still smelled faintly of lavender. On a whim, he had bought her aluminum hair pins at a shop in the village of Ashford when the guests from the estate had alighted there one rainy day last week. She remembered him kissing her hair softly and telling her he was sparing no expense. She smiled to herself and tried to tame her locks into something resembling presentable respectability, plaiting and then pinning it up. The Countess wanted to look as best she could for her Earl.

The fire had burned itself out in the hearth, but the hut was still warm, and getting warmer by the minute as the sun streamed in through the tiny window pane on the far wall. While she waited, she closed her eyes and named to herself various chemical compounds and their respective weights -- something she used to do to pass time while doing needlework or attempting to (badly) play the pianoforte.

In 1801 Joseph Proust announced that every chemical compound has a fixed and definite composition; that when substances unite chemically they do so in definite ratios by weight -- then came John Dalton four years later, with the second great law of combination, which had come to be called the law of multiple proportions. Dalton introduced atomic theory into chemistry, and now the great problem was to determine the relative weights of the atoms. The most eminent scientific minds (men, naturally ) gave their attention to the determination of the atomic weights and of the arrangement of the atoms in compounds. She had read everything she could on the subject, fascinated by the idea of everything in the universe existing on such a small, basic scale. Protons. Neutrons. In the end, everything came down to attraction.

Even she and her husband, she thought. Especially she and her husband. When she tired of chemistry, perhaps next she would study biology. Though, she thought with a flush, they did a near nightly biological case study. Man. Woman. Attraction. Sex.

She was roused from her thoughts by the sound of approaching hoofbeats and moments later, she heard Alex’s voice approaching the hut’s small door.

“She’s in here,” she heard him say, and then the door opened and he strode through it, looking a bit different than he had last night in the light of the single candle.

“Alex,” she said warmly, but when he turned to her, he did so with a sneer, hair curling over his forehead in a rakish way, his eyes cold and almost obsidian in color.

“She’s awake,” he said without feeling to some unknown person just outside the door, the figure looming in the doorway, blocking out the sun. Mulder?

She heard the strike of a match and then saw the cold creep of tobacco smoke purl in the air through the small space, hitting her nose in one acrid punch.

“No,” she whispered, gritting her teeth with fury.

XxX

She came to consciousness in the back of Spender’s carriage once again, the sense memory sinking through her veins like lead. Her head pounded, and when she brought her bound hands to her temple on instinct, she found an enormous goose egg and the crusted, sticky remains of dried blood. She groaned.

The carriage leaned ever so slightly to the right, its wheels making a fairly sharp turn onto a bumpy road. She finally glanced up to look at the man sitting across from her.

There was rage pouring from his eyes and his nostrils were flared. The leather of the gloves he wore creaked in the air between them as he squeezed his wolf’s head walking stick. He raised it and pointed it at her.

“There will be no new opportunities for escape,” he barked, looking at her intently. He opened his mouth to speak further when the carriage lurched to a stop. He didn’t wait for Alex, who’d been acting as coachman, to open the door, but flung it open himself, then leaned back in to grab Scully by her bound hands, pulling her bodily out of the conveyance so quickly that she stumbled when her feet hit the ground.

She barely had time to look around before he was pulling her along behind him toward a small, ancient cottage that was tucked back amongst some trees. She had just gotten a glimpse of the sand-colored manor house she’d been kept in previously before she was tugged through the doorway of the cottage in the woods. The manor house was not far away, down a long, winding path littered with weeds and wildflowers that didn’t look like it got much use. Spender pulled her inside and slammed the door behind them.

She braced herself when he grabbed his walking stick with both hands, but instead of striking her, he pulled at the silver wolf’s head and withdrew a long blade, triangular and sinister, its blade darker than any metal ought to be.

She took a step away from him.

He smiled at her, an evil-looking grin, and Scully was reminded of the skeleton presiding over Hell in Jan Van Eyck’s The Last Judgement . She thought of demons. Of serpents and bats. “Hold out your bindings,” he said to her.

Tentatively, she held out her hands. He grabbed them roughly and used the wolf’s head dagger to cut the knots from her wrists. When the cloth fell away, she took a relieved breath, only to be startled into a gasp when he struck, quick as a viper, and grabbed her by the hair.

“Our games are at an end, Lady Wexford,” he hissed, his mouth mere inches from her own. She grabbed at his hands, but he twisted them harder, and she could hear the hairpins falling from her head and tinkling merrily onto the slate floor. “Your husband will pay.”

With that, he began cutting at her hair with the dagger, sawing and hacking at it until the whole thick plait came off in his hand. Her scalp felt as though it were on fire.

She raised her hands up to feel the unevenly shorn hair that now ended at her chin, and the cottage’s door slammed shut with a loud, metallic chink. He was gone.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Alex and Queen had returned from the coaching inn after several days with no news.

“I fear the proprietor knows nothing,” the footman had told Mulder, sadly, “and there have been no guests matching the description of your Mr. Spender.”

Mulder had given him his thanks and told the man to get some rest.

Later that day, a scream wret the air from the entrance of the house. Mulder catapulted down the stairs to find a maid with a hand to her chest sitting on the floor in shock, another maid holding her other hand, trying to calm her. The Butler, Mr. Headly, was hovering over them both and Mulder noticed a large box with the lid half-off sitting just inside the manse’s door.

Byers, Frohike and Langly all came skidding onto the scene only moments behind him.

“The… the Countess,” the prone maid said, shakily pointing to the box.

Mulder moved forward, awash with dread. When he pushed aside the lid, there, sitting inside of it like a coiled snake ready to strike, sat the long, thick plait of Scully’s titian hair.

He recoiled, falling back momentarily, then moved forward again, lifting it up and out. The end of the hair that had been cut had not been trimmed gently or with finesse, but rather hacked at, likely with a sharp, short blade. It must have been painful for her.

“Who delivered this?” Mulder asked. “Who?!”

The maid to whom he’d spoken leaned back in fear, and he took a breath in order to calm himself.

“Mary,” Byers said calmly, and the young woman looked to her employer.

“There was no delivery, sir,” she finally said, “I was going about my duties and there it was, sitting inside the front door.”

Everyone looked to Mr. Headly.

“She is quite right,” he said calmly, “there have been no deliveries today. Nor yet any post.”

Mulder brought himself to his full height and addressed no one, staring straight ahead. “He’ll die for this,” he said with controlled wrath. He then stalked off, leaving the smell of lavender in his wake.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scully stared at the back of the door, running her hands through her now-short locks. It felt so odd, but it was also a bit freeing, she thought, and her head felt pounds lighter. She bent down and collected pins that had escaped onto the floor, setting them in a pile on a nearby table, and placing a few in the fringe near her forehead to keep it out of her face.

She took a turn about the room. She tried the door, just in case. Locked and secured from the outside.

The cottage was old, made of thick stone, the windows tiny and set far back in the walls -- she’d have no hope of climbing through one. There were three rooms -- the one she was in near the door that seemed to serve as great room and main living space. A small bedroom just off that, supplied with a small, rough hewn bed and straw-filled mattress, covered with a single woolen blanket. The third room was a kitchen, with a large fireplace and old monstrous table that bowed in the middle from year’s worth of scrubbing. There were bottles and crockery that lined two large shelves, and a small scullery. The scullery seemed fairly well stocked, as was the kitchen, where on the table sat two fresh loaves of bread and several hunks of cheese, a small bowl of apples, three lemons and a large bowl of eggs. An extra circuit around the kitchen and she found three pails full of water that she moved onto the main table -- she covered each with a large plate to keep out dust and debris. It was looking like she would not be fed, but would have to feed herself with what was left here. Very well, she thought. There was enough food and water for a week. Perhaps more.

She wondered what Spender’s plan for her was. Was it only ransom he was after? If so, Mulder would surely pay it.

She snooped through the scullery, taking inventory. There she found a decent quantity of concentrated lye, five candles, two small bottles of kerosene (but no lamps), a bar of Pears soap, a large glass bottle with a heavy cork stopper that smelled as if it had once contained either wine or vinegar, several empty crockery bottles of various sizes, two bottles of whisky, matches, chalk, salt, and a small bottle that appeared to be turpentine, but that she couldn’t get open.

In the main room there was a single shelf on which sat several books, all in either French or Latin. So she would not go completely mad with boredom.

There was no wardrobe and so no other changes of clothes, though she could probably launder what she had in the large pot in the kitchen fireplace (which was well stocked with wood, she was pleased to see). She was suddenly thankful that Duane Barry had walked her through the process.

He was a sad sort of man and easy to manipulate and she could see how he’d been an easy mark for Spender. He was shy and unworldly, had trouble even meeting her eye. Why, all it had taken was for her to mention her courses and he was practically blithering, and had seen her outside without so much as-

She stopped short. Her courses. She had been in captivity for several days now, and had been at Byers’ estate for more than a week… She did the arithmetic in her head and then did it again. She was late. Alarmingly so.

She took a breath and brought a hand low over her stomach. Her heart began to pound. Oh, Mulder . Perhaps she was not alone in this cottage after all.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Mulder thought back to the last time he had seen Scully -- had he known then it would be the last time, he never would have left.  

He had his hand on her breast, and was thrusting into her gently from behind. In the many weeks since their marriage, her body had learned to accommodate his, and he met little resistance as he slid into her with a hiss of satisfaction. This was lazy lovemaking, both of them half asleep in the dim light of morning.

“I do not need to hunt today,” he finally spoke, nuzzling his nose into the delicate skin behind her ear, “for I have found Artemis, and she is here in this bed with me.”

Scully gave a little moan and then pressed back into him, a signal he was beginning to learn meant that she wanted more.

“I-” she stopped to take a breath “I don’t believe the Goddess of the Hunt is anywhere near here, Mulder,” she said breathily, “for she is also the goddess of wild animals and vegetation and ah-” Mulder had thrust into her with more force and he could feel her muscles clench around him, “and… chastity.”

“Chastity?” Thrust. “Perhaps you are right.” Thrust. “Here before me is Aphrodite, and her sea-foam eyes.”

It was then that Scully reached her peak, and he ascended with her, grabbing onto her hips tightly and burying his face into the silky mane of her hair.

She rolled away from him onto her stomach moments later and turned to assess him with half-lidded eyes. She licked her lips, her movements slow.

“Aphrodite may have been born from the foam of the sea,” she said lazily, “but I rather did always like Artemis best. I pictured her similar to Boudica, with a sword in one hand and a bow in the other.”

“A sword in one hand, eh?” Mulder asked, nudging her with a finger.

“They say she is the strongest of them all, for she not only oversees chastity but also childbirth.”

“Chastity and childbirth? A confusing combination.”

Scully laughed, a delicious peal through the air of the room.

Mulder rolled out of the bed and pulled the bell to summon Danny to help him dress.

“Perhaps she’ll be with me today,” he said, “and I shall bring back our dinner, the fattest of the lot for my goddess.”

Scully smiled at him and rolled over to go back to sleep, her hair like a cape of spun gold fanning the pillows behind her.

XxXxXxXxXxX

Scully looked at her reflection in one of the pails of water. It was not… altogether atrocious. Her hair looked rather like a farmboy bob, and she was certain that someone with cleverer hands than she could do something with it, even for more formal events… perhaps pin it with pearls and feathers. But. That was a problem for a different time. For now, her only concern was keeping it out of her eyes while she worked.

She had spent the whole of the night alternately thinking of the babe that perhaps was even now growing in her belly, and the problem of how she was to save them both. She had determined as she lay looking at an unfamiliar ceiling that she would not let CGB Spender control her or her fate.

Firstly, she needed to put an end to her imprisonment. And then… Well, then she needed to put an end to Spender and his evil machinations. Duane Barry might yet help her again, but Scully suspected that Barry had been relieved of his prisoner oversight duties, or worse. What with the supplies of food and water that had been left in the cottage, and Spender’s warning: “There will be no new opportunities for escape,” the likelihood that there might be anyone she could overtake or convince to help her were not good. It was up to her to save her own skin.

And perhaps also that of her child.

XxXxXxXxXxX

After the Countess's hair had been discovered, the mood around Ashford Park was... penultimate, thought Frohike. Though the day was clear, it felt as though something was brewing. And when the storm broke, well, there was no telling what damage would be wrought.

Mulder had begun ranging further and further afield, riding his horse to every farm, every tenant, every public house and hen house in search of his wife. He was a man possessed.

Frohike was exiting the library, which happened to be nearest the back staircase that came up from below stairs, when he saw a maid coming up the stairway and rushing off into the house. The look on her face was excited intrigue, which was enough to incite the same feeling in himself. On a whim, he turned toward the stairway that led below stairs and followed them down.

The hallways were narrow and labyrinthine, and there were members of Byers' household staff huddled together in gossiping circles, paying no attention to the erstwhile gentleman who walked among them.

"Go and get Mr. Headly. This very minute!" he heard from around a corner. A scullery maid went running past him and when he rounded the corner he came upon the Cook patting a man's hand and pressing a cup of tea into it.

"Now, Duane, where have you been?" she asked kindly.

Frohike's eyes widened.

"Duane?" he said, "This is the groom, Duane Barry?" he asked excitedly.

Cook nodded at him. "He's..." she started, "he's not himself. He says he'll speak only to the Earl. Not even Sir Byers, his own master!" She sounded scandalized.

Frohike turned and ran from the kitchens, launching himself through the scullery and on out the door to the back of the estate, running toward the stables for all he was worth. He skidded inside.

"The Earl,” Frohike was breathless from running. Several grooms stood around looking at him in alarm and confusion.

“Sir?” one of them asked.

"Where is the Earl?" Frohike gasped.

"He rode west, sir."

"Find him, now. Which of you is the best rider? Tell him that Duane Barry has returned."

One of the groom's eyes flashed wide and he nodded, and not a minute later, as Frohike was walking quickly back toward the house, was galloping out of the stable yards and toward the western fields.

Frohike trotted up the stairs of the manse and let himself in the door, waiting not for the butler or even a footman. When he rounded the corner that led to the drawing room, he heard his friend's voice, raised in anger, verging on hysteria:

"Did you hurt her?!"

"No!"

Frohike walked through the doorway and found Byers and Langly standing close to the former groom Duane Barry, who sat in one of the chairs, his face a frightened mask.

Langley grabbed the man’s hand and raised it. He pointed to blood on the man's cuff. "What is this?!"

"I'm sorry," Barry said. "I had to take her. I hope he's not hurting her. I'm sorry."

"Where is she?!" Byers shouted.

"I... I'll tell the Earl. Bring me the Earl, and I'll tell him."

Langly threw up his arms in frustration and Byers, looking as steely and angry as Frohike had ever seen him, brushed past Frohike in the doorway of the room, Langly on his heels. He turned to the handful of servants that had appeared in the hallway, mainly maids, and Wexford's footman, Alex.

"Nobody goes in or out of that room," Byers said. The footman nodded at him and took station at the closed door, standing tall.

Mr. Headly appeared as Byers was walking with purpose toward the main stairway.

"Where is the Earl?" Byers asked his man.

"I don't know, sir-"

"Find him!" Byers barked.

Langly drifted to Frohike's side.

"I have never seen him like this," his business partner said, "I am impressed."

Frohike couldn't help but agree. Not ten minutes later, Mulder burst through the door of the manse out of breath and smelling of horse. He grabbed Frohike by the shoulders.

“Barry?” he said, “Barry has returned?”

Frohike nodded encouragingly. “And has word of the Countess’s location, apparently. He’ll tell only you.” Frohike gestured to the door of the drawing room where the footman Alex had been standing guard. He was no longer there, and the door to the room was ajar.

Mulder stumbled through it with Frohike hot on his heels. Both men pulled up short.

Barry was on the ground, and Alex was leaning over him.

"What happened?!" Mulder asked, taking several halting steps into the room.  

"He was gagging," Alex said, leaning back on his heels. “I tried to help.”

The man was lying upon the ground, gasping for air. Mulder ran to him. “Duane!” Mulder said, kneeling beside him. Frohike skidded to the man’s other side.

Barry, his eyes wide and still gasping for air, looked once at Mulder beseechingly. Then he took one almighty breath, his entire body spasming once, and exhaled, slumping to the floor. Frohike could tell just by looking at him -- the man was dead.

“Duane!” Mulder said one more time and then stood in a daze. His eyes cast about the room. “Alex, what hap-” he paused, mid-sentence.

The footman was gone.

[managingmymuse]

Outside the Boundary

for writer's month day 3: outside

(original work, time-traveler universe)

The boundary hissed and snapped when I reached for it.

I drew my hand back slowly, letting the energy nip at my skin. Giving it time to change its mind.

But the pain kept on coming. It intensified moment by moment, progressing from a shock to a bite to a burn. If I looked at my hand, it would appear perfectly fine, but the longer I kept my hand inside the energy field, the more it tricked my brain into thinking that I was holding it over a flame. That it was literally on fire.

With a groan I wrenched my hand back. I stretched my fingers, and the aftershock of the magic nearly made me bend double. But I bit down on my lip and stood firm. Staring at the darkness and the town just out of my reach.

From here, there wasn't much to see. A cluster of buildings, neither new nor dilapidated. A couple of hitching posts for horses. A saloon with light spilling out over the dusty road. It was nearly a carbon copy of the town you'd find five miles north or south or west or east. Extraordinary only in its ordinariness. Nothing for a traveler to talk about. No tales to spread.

And yet it was my home.

I put my aching fingers in my pocket. My hand shook only slightly as I did it, and I counted myself fortunate. My brain was still sending me the false signal that I was about to scrape off all my blackened skin. False, but convincing. I'd seen grown men keel over under the force of that illusion.

But not me. I'd had worse than illusion in my life. I'd had real pain, the kind that comes from having your bones snapped and stretched as they grew back together. I'd spent my childhood with pins in my arms and splints on my legs. I'd suffered under the electric agony of a first shift, and then I'd been forced to jump again and again until it was second nature.

I'd been to Atlantis. I'd walked into the city that was meant to spell my doom, and I'd jumped out under my own power.

And now I'd been turned out of my home.

Jonathan had warned me about this, not so long ago. I'd seen his eyes the first time I'd come home, bruised and aching everywhere. He'd waited one day then two, and then he'd drawn me aside.

The gas lamp above the stove had burned out hours ago. In the hearth in the next room, our fire was down to embers.

Jon's eyes were chips of slate. "You can't keep this up."

As tired as I was-- as damaged-- I lifted my chin. "Keep what up?"

"You're jumping without authorization."

"Only when I have to." My hand lifted to my neck, where the fingerprints were still etched into my skin.

Jonathan's eyes traced it, and his lips drew together into a thin, hard line. "You're not being careful," he said. "You're taking too many risks."

"The council is taking too many risks."

"The masters have been at this for years," he said, dismissively. "They know what they're doing."

"What they're doing is using me," I said. "I'm faster than anyone here, and they're using me for it. They're sending me into dangerous situation after dangerous situation, and one day it's going to get me killed."

Jon's gaze fell on my collar again. On those purple, livid marks. "We all make sacrifices for the cause."

A heavy rushing filled my ears. Raging like a waterfall in the back of my mind. Jon had jumped, true, but not like me. He left the Homestead once every six weeks at max. Less since he'd married. As soon as his wife started to swell up, he might go back into the field, but for now he was here. Stuck.

And he was judging me for picking up his slack. "Maybe I don't want to," I said. "Maybe I don't want to lay my life down for the hope that maybe, someday we might get to go home."

"You don't mean that," he said.

At the time, I hadn't. But Jon had backed me into a corner, and hell if I was backing down.

"Maybe I do," I said. "Maybe I'm done with hopping around, fetching things and leaving notes. Maybe I'm done with fixing other people's mistakes."

Jon's eyes narrowed, but he didn't rise to my bait. "Just watch yourself.

He'd stormed off, and we hadn't spoken for three days. And then that three days had become three weeks when I'd been assigned a jump and a shelter-in-place. And then that three weeks had become three months when Micah had found me, and I'd had to run and jump and flee for my life.

I'd made it, but I'd come back with more than bruises. And before I was healed, they'd sent me off again. And again. And again.

I scowled as I stared at the boundary. One of its more salient features was that it had the ability to warp reality on the inside. The whole bloody council could be looking at me right now, and I wouldn't have a clue.

Suddenly I couldn't stand it. I raised my hand and slammed it against the boundary. The shock of it nearly jerked my shoulder out of its socket. Fire raged through my nerves, but it was nothing to the fire raging through me now.

They'd used me and used me and used me. And I hadn't had a bloody clue.

My breath hissed in my ears as I struggled to get a hold of myself. As I struggled not to leap at the barrier and try, with all my might, to suck it dry. It wouldn't work, of course-- the barrier was the work of centuries of careful spelling. It was more magic than even I could absorb.

But boy would I like to try.

The stars tracked overhead in the sky, continuing on their indifferent spirals. The moon followed at its stately, sedate pace. In my youth, the light of it had been mysterious. Cool and dark, part of the world's natural magic. But now, after I'd stood beneath the Atlantean moon, after I'd watched it gild the waves of the city in pure brilliance, it only felt dim. Remote.

Heaven help me. What was I going to do?

I pressed my hand to my stomach. Felt the hard planes of my pubic bone. I had time yet. And I had skills. I could do this on my own. I could run so far and so fast that no one would catch me. I would be safe. We would be safe.

And yet, even as I said it, my thoughts drifted back to Micah. To his uncanny knack for finding me. After each and every jump.

A slow smile spread onto my lips at that thought. He found me when I jumped. Nearly every time. What if instead of trying to hide from him, I was ready for him? What if I made it a fight he'd be sure to remember?

I hefted my bag onto my back. Checked my bootlaces. It was a ten mile walk to the next town. And I had a mission to plan. And, perhaps, a little revenge.

The moon painted my way along the fields, and for a moment, just one, I almost felt like whistling.

[dailyadventureprompts]

Adventure: Tyrant by Moonlight (A Plot in the Dark, part 1)

Setup:  Death stalks the land on frigid winds and grey wings. Flying low over settlements at night, A massive, slate scaled dragon has been appearing without warning and destroying clusters of buildings with blasts of it’s cryonic breath. All the while it raves in a madman’s voice, accusing unseen witnesses of treachery, and promising revenge long overdue. It seems to hate firelight, and villages across the kingdom rush to snuff any forge, lantern, candle, or hearth before the sun goes down less they become its next target. Two villages have been attacked already, and the wyrm looks to be making it’s way towards the capital.   

Panic is spreading. Life has come to a complete stop as people are affraid to use fire even in their day to day lives. Folk are fleeing into the countryside and attempting to find some kind of shelter, those dwarven and halfling settlements are swarmed with folk looking to hide underground. The crown has put out a call to all able hands, rewards are to be offered for information leading to the dragon’s lair, and any monster hunters capable of killing, even wounding the beast can expect a royal commission. 

Adnenture Hooks: 

The party lost an acquaintance or two in one of the first attacks, a family friend, a favorite contact or shopkeep that aided them earlier in their adventures. They are not alone in their grief. This beast is a treat to all and must be stopped at all costs. 

Other adventuring groups, heroes of the realm, and powerful individuals begin to reach out to to the party looking to pool their resources, split up the load of fining the creature's lair, researching possible ways to defeat it, and perhaps martial a defense in the few remaining settlements  between it and the populous capital. 

If the party has been out in the wilderness for some time, have them return home at dusk to find the town dark and the streets deserted. A friendly NPC will beckon them into shelter and explain the recent disaster, just before the wyrm begins it’s latest attack. 

Challenges and Complications: 

Tracking the dragon proves more difficult than first imagined. It’s well known that such a creature can range dozens of miles in a single night’s flight, so pinpointing it’s lair in a vast countryside will be difficult.  Whatsmore,  it disappears into the wilderness after every attack and leaves no sign of it’s passage in the process, almost as if it was never there in the first place. 

Intersession with oracles or other speakers of the divine reveal a commonality: great danger to the kingdom, but also deception, they can provide little other location other than the dragon’s next attack, as something seems to be shielding it from divination. 

Little is left of the buildings attacked by the dragon save for rubble suspended in greenish ice that is slow to thaw, producing jagged tableaus of destruction that linger for days after the tyrant’s passage. Close inspection of these sites by a well trained mind reveals a) the blast patterns all project outward from the buildings, rather than from above or at a raised angle, despite what witnesses say the attacks were like b) trace amounts of electrum shrapnel throughout the blast, along with finely ground malachite crystals, an ingredient often used in alchemy to amplify evocation reactions 

actually facing the dragon proves difficult, for even after overcoming it’s powerful aura of fear, it seems to shrug off most attacks, and focus on attacking various buildings. Should the players actually manage to strike it, they will eventually realize that their quarry is simply an illusion, a masterful trick of the mind that adapts to outside stimulus while maintaining its programmed rampage. Even if the illusion is dispersed, those buildings it was focusing on will explode in time erupting into the same jagged 

Something is desperately wrong. If the dragon was an illusion, when what was it covering? Why such a particular plan of attack? Who would be clever enough to plan such a scheme, let alone be skilled enough to pull  it off? 

[twilighteve-writes]

Campfire Warmth, Lightning Sparks, Cooling Gold

Summary: Huey knew fire, and that meant he knew heat, and everyone carried heat within them. Dewey could generate electricity, and he could sense it around him, too. Louie could sense gold, and call it, and control it.

With magic so prevalent in their lives, it wasn’t a surprise that Huey, Dewey, and Louie would be so familiar with each other’s magic.

(Also available in AO3).

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Huey knew fire, and that meant he knew heat, and everyone carried heat within them. He could feel them when he really tried, and he would be able to tell who were around him. It was a little like heat vision, in a way, only that he sensed the heat instead of seeing it through special goggles. There was also the fact that each person’s heat felt different. Webby’s heat was different from Uncle Donald or Mom’s, for example. Webby’s was the warmth of a hearth in winter, hugging and inviting; Uncle Donald’s reminded him very much of underwater thermal vents, and Mom’s felt like the unrelenting sun in the middle of summer.

As long as they entered a certain range, Huey could feel them, vague and blurred like distant light in fog. If he really concentrated, he could tell who it was, and they always got clearer the nearer they were to him.

But Dewey and Louie were different. He could always feel them, no matter how far away they were. Their heat was a constant thing, always there at the back of his mind, accompanying each step he took and bringing him a vague sense of comfort and acceptance. Sometimes, he would reach to them, feeling Dewey’s quick and flitting heat that touched and jumped away again, like lightning scorching the ground and disappearing, and Louie’s constant exuding heat – much cooler than Dewey’s intense but flitting heat – that reminded Huey of the constant heated air of a forge, like air-cooling metal after being smelt.

Their magic only intensified that heat. Dewey’s lightning-quick heat was even more flitting, even more intense, constantly buzzing when dormant, and Louie’s heat grew weaker but more contained, like cold-forged gold. Each night, as he fell asleep, he reached into them and felt their dwindling heat as sleep began to claim them, and found himself resting better.

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Dewey could generate electricity, and he could sense it around him, too, and he had found that everyone carried at least a little bit of electricity within them. Not in their phones, though it also counted, but in their body and the air around them. In general he could only feel the inner electricity when he was touching the person he was sensing, but the soft buzzing field around people was a lot easier to detect.

And it got easier to differentiate each person’s field, too, as time went on. Webby’s was a low buzzing static that enveloped her and easily left traces in other people’s fields, Uncle Donald’s reminded him of an electric eel; quiet, building, building, building, and discharged when his temper flared. Mom’s was sudden lightning in clear blue sky. And sometimes, when Dewey was close enough, he thought he could sort of feel the changes in other people’s fields that gave him impressions of what they were feeling. It was only a fleeting impression that was never a sure thing, though. Sometimes it made him desperate to feel the hints of approval within their fields, but most of the time, he couldn’t tell.

But it was different with Huey and Louie. With them, he could always feel them as long as they were within sight, like his eyes were drawn to the energy they exuded. He could always feel them at the back of his mind, watching, keeping track, ready to help if needed be. Huey’s was a constant steady buzz, giving off a feel of warmth and support. His buzz strengthened with his feelings, with it growing intense when he had a flare of temper, but was otherwise always present. With Louie, it felt almost imperceptible at times, but like Huey he was constant. Lazier, somehow, sluggish, more on the colder side and more easily drowned out by other, stronger buzz, but it connected with his own buzz so easily it was surprising. They always responded when he reached out to them, soft buzzes that he poked and quickly poked back, with Huey quicker to respond but somehow keeping his stance, and Louie taking longer to reach back but easily pulling his buzz into his own like it was nothing.

When their magic came in, it was easier to see why. Huey might have been a constant buzz, but fire was still fickle to change; it flickered in a breeze and blazed when provoked, and Dewey knew gold was used as a conductor for electricity. But he was grateful with how their buzz felt underneath his fingers. It made him feel secure in a way no one else has ever managed to, and he welcomed it with open arms.

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Louie could sense gold, and call it, and control it. When he expanded his senses, he could feel gold in his vicinity; the necklace that one passing duck wore, the loop that one busker had on his nose, the small amount of gold in electronics. Sometimes, when he really concentrated, he thought he could feel other people, too. Not their jewelry or the phones they carried, but the person themselves. But people had always been flitting and hard to grasp.

It wasn’t much different with Huey and Dewey. Sure, he could sense them more easily, but that was probably more because they’d grown up together to the point that Louie could tell when they were around and less because he could sense them.

When his magic came in, it somehow got worse and better at the same time. Huey, like his magic, has always reminded Louie of heat and fire, a constant flickering flame from a comforting campfire, and Dewey had always been active with short attention span, much like the lightning he called to his hands. Their heat and flitting intensity made it easier for Louie to spot them, but at the same time, he would be better off trying to track them through their phones or something. Their magic muffled what little something Louie could use to track them, and sometimes it made him feel lonely in a way he couldn’t describe to them.

But sometimes, he would feel something at the back of his mind, reaching for him; like campfire beckoning him closer, or like sparks of electricity jumping excitedly. It never took him long to recognize Huey and Dewey. He could recognize them anywhere. He would reach back, always, and rested easy with the knowledge that they were there, ready to remind him that they were around.

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Huey was aware of himself – of his heat, of his fire, of everyone’s fire – when he used his magic. It expanded as he felt the heat around him, as he raised his temperature until the air grew hazy with it, and willed it to spark and let the licks of flames dance.

He would be aware of where the others were, which was convenient; he knew from the start that fire was hard to control and could be dangerous to wield, and knowing there others were made it easier to track where he should avoid blasting flames and where he had free reign to do whatever he wanted. It was like holding any sort of weapon. He needed to know where his friends and family was to avoid hurting them.

In a way, it was almost like his world focused. Everything felt sharper and easier to track, more obvious, so much louder in a way he never thought heat could be before. Sometimes, everything felt too focused, and it got a little scary.

But that was okay. All he needed to do was reach for Dewey’s lighting-quick-scorch and Louie’s cold-forged-gold, and he knew he would find the strength to keep going and let the laser-focus blur back into the quiet warmth, and everything would be okay.

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Dewey’s senses reached out and expanded when he used his magic, as if his electricity keep jumping out and reaching farther, farther, farther, until it couldn’t anymore. It could only really go one way, but the reach was so far he sometimes wondered how he could even get that information.

He would know who was there, in the direction where his lightning was going, and just for a fleeting moment he would know what they felt. And sometimes, when he sensed the person his lightning passed, he would feel fear clenching his heart. He never really found out his powerful his lightning could be, but he knew his usual zaps were strong enough to singe. How much would be too much? How far would be too far? How should be keep from hurting someone?

Whether it was a conscious effort or not, he almost always found himself reaching for his brothers for support and reassurance when he let his lightning loose. Huey’s steadying buzz would let him stand taller on his own feet, and Louie’s own would snake into Dewey’s, adding stability into his wavering will and letting him take control of his magic.

And in the end, that was all he needed. Huey and Louie’s presence was all he needed to make sure everything would be okay.

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Louie’s world would narrow into a single focus when he let his magic loose. When he let his senses out to search for a specific piece of treasure, or when he exerted his will to the gold he wished to control, everything else vanished – all that was left was the gold, and what he wanted for the gold.

Nothing else mattered anymore. Nothing else existed. His vision would grow darker and tunneled until all he could see was the glitter of his own magic. Sounds grew muffled and distant, and words spoken to him ceased to hold meaning. Every bit of warmth he felt would recede, leaving cold, cold, metal cold in its wake. His own feelings and thoughts grew muted until he was a blank slate that only had eyes for the gold. All that was left of his own will was what he wanted his magic to do.

Feeling others had always been almost impossible to do, but when his magic reared in, he was barely even aware of himself. But sometimes, he could feel a touch of breeze or a splash of water, too weak to identify properly, or the stronger campfire warmth and jumping sparks. And sometimes, the feeling would persist, stubbornly grabbing until Louie, who was buried deep underneath the gold and glitter, was pulled back into the forefront and the darkness faded into light, the distant sound would grow louder, and he could understand meaning in speech again. More likely than not, he would feel fingers holding him gingerly, arms wrapping around him and chasing away the coldness, infusing warmth back into his body and calling him back to wake.

He never found it in himself to reach for his brothers when his magic pulled him in so deep he forgot who he was, but he wasn’t worried about that. He knew, no matter what, Huey and Dewey would be ready to pull him back to the surface.

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Huey had felt the changes of the heat simmering the air when his brothers used their magic. He’d noticed it with Mom and Uncle Donald, too; Mom’s summer sun intensified and wrapped around her, solar winds roaring and letting her soar, while Uncle Donald’s heat exploded, like underwater volcano erupting. Which was weird, because their heat when they used magic and their own magic were different; Mom’s summer sun, at least, went well with the string winds and blue sky around her, but Uncle Donald’s rising waves and deep-sea-pressure contrasted with the eruption, a little.

He was still most familiar with Dewey and Louie’s heat and how their magic changed their heat. Dewey’s lightning heat intensified until Huey felt like he would get scorched if he touched Dewey, but he was never worried. He knew Dewey and knew his strangely comforting scorching heat, and he knew Dewey would never hurt him.

But Louie… worried him. And Huey said worry, not scare, because of course he wasn’t scared of Louie. He would never be scared of Louie.

It would be a lie, though, if he said Louie’s magic didn’t unsettle him at times. With Dewey, and Mom, and Uncle Donald, their heat built and intensified as their dormant magic rose to the surface. With Louie, it was different. His heat had always been gentle to begin with, like cooling gold after being forged, but when he used his magic it was like the metal had grown cold at last. His magic felt uncomfortably cool to Huey. Coupled with how his expression seemed to grow slack and he became unresponsive to words, Huey couldn’t help the way his stomach turned.

But that was fine. He was the responsible brother, and he would take care of them. He kept his eyes on Louie whenever his heat grew weaker and pulled in into himself, kept his attention to Dewey whenever his heat grew stronger and intense, and swore he would keep them both safe.

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Dewey noticed how the buzz of people around him was different when their dormant magic grew active. Mom’s sudden lightning strike would grow wild, shooting everywhere and jumping around without much care to the world, while Uncle Donald’s slowly, silently building electricity rose and kept getting stronger until it became a constant, and it wouldn’t grow weaker no matter how much he used his magic until its purpose had been filled. And it was great that he could at least feel that, because Huey and Louie had described feeling like the sea was swallowing them whole when Uncle Donald’s magic spilled, and he never felt that.

He still found Huey and Louie’s buzz easiest to identify. Huey’s constant buzz would intensify and grew hotter, hotter, hotter, the strength increasing until his field buzzed so strongly Dewey could almost hear it. It felt like him, it was him, from the way the buzz kept him steady with Huey’s desire to affirm their family no matter how unsure he felt to the way it easily grew and flicker until his arms were ablaze.

Louie’s was different. Sometimes, it made Dewey turn to see if he was still there. Louie’s weaker buzz felt off, like it retracted into Louie abruptly and refused to even peek out. And Dewey didn’t like that.

Because Louie’s buzz had always been able to snake into his and let it go through them both. Louie’s buzz had always been able to pull some of Dewey’s own into Louie, letting it pass through to the ground or somehow managing to return Dewey’s buzz into himself again. But when he used magic, the field around him was practically nonexistent, gone to somewhere Dewey didn’t dare to get into, and he couldn’t feel Louie anymore. Like he was just… gone.

But he’d noticed how Louie’s hand twitched when he heard Huey and Dewey call him, how the slackness in his face passed and how his buzz returned little by little when his brothers reached to him – with their voices, their hands, their magic. So he made the decision to always be aware when Louie’s buzz disappeared, so he could reach for him and pull him back out.

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Louie had never been able to sense people with his magic the way Huey and Dewey could, not really. But he could still feel magic, and it was honestly hard not to notice the way people’s magic rose to the forefront and blasted their vicinity with power when they used it.

Like how Mom picked up breeze and let it build until the wind carried her up, and how the very air around her felt like the blue summer sky rushing, white clouds blurring as she soared. Or how Uncle Donald emitted a feel of the tides, pushing and pulling and receding into the depths before rushing up, up, high up like devastating tsunami.

Like always, it was much easier sensing Huey and Dewey’s magic. Huey’s usual heat would build, and it was always easy to see the heat haze around him. Sometimes, when Huey let the temperature build without letting it burst into flames, his eyes would glint orange-red that reminded Louie of lava. And Dewey’s electricity sparked and jumped off his fingers and feathers all the time, with blue-white light glinting off his body and overtaking his eyes until they looked blankly white.

He’d seen Uncle Donald pay more attention to them when their magic flared – he probably did the same for Louie, too. Even Mom sometimes would have a somewhat wary look in her eyes, usually when Dewey’s sparks jumped more excitedly than usual. And in a way, he could understand why. Huey and Dewey’s command over their fire and lightning wasn’t perfect. The elements still reacted volatilely whenever they got emotional.

But Louie had always found comfort in Huey’s campfire warmth and Dewey’s lightning sparks. They had always been radiating comfort and safety and home. Sure, sometimes they lost control of their magic, but they had the best intentions. It only took him the meager effort to call their names to make sure they didn’t get lost in their own power. Grab their hands, if it got bad. It never took Uncle Donald or Mom much more than that, either.

And, well. If they didn’t want to put in the effort, then fine. He’d pick up the slack.

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Huey didn’t use his magic a lot. Not in his day-to-day life, anyway. As crazy as his family’s sense of normal was, there wasn’t much place for fire magic in classrooms, libraries, and the streets. There was place for it in his Junior Woodchuck outings, arguably, but it felt like cheating if he just lit his firewood on fire with his mind when his fellow Woodchucks had to light the fire the old-fashioned way.

Well, okay, Boyd lit his campfire on fire with his laser eyes, but if Boyd wanted to use his… unique physiology that way, then that was his prerogative.

But in adventures with Uncle Scrooge? Oh, there were a lot of times to use it. It was almost a requirement, even, with the deadly traps and the dark caves and tunnels. And it was almost freeing, how he was able to use his magic. But he was also young, and inexperienced, and magic responded so easily to feelings that it was almost always volatile. So, if anything wrong was to happen, it was bound to happen in one of those adventures.

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Dewey tried to limit his magic use as much as possible in his day-to-day life. Aside from not wanting to hurt people with his electric shocks, there wasn’t really much use for his magic in school and running about in Funzone or just playing war with his brothers and Webby. And, sure, sometimes they did use their magic playing war anyway, but come on, Webby had trainings in several martial arts, armed or otherwise. Using magic was basically levelling the playing field when it came to her.

And, well, he still zapped people from time to time, sure. But he was getting better at it! He knew to keep an eye out for signs when his magic had built up too much so he could get somewhere safe to discharge now.

He didn’t have to limit himself in adventures with Uncle Scrooge, not really. Sure, he still had to make sure he didn’t electrocute anyone lethally, but he didn’t really have to not use his magic the way he had to keep himself in check usually. He’d learned to jumpstart the plane safely, for one, and charging batteries and phones. He’d learned to use quick zaps to defend himself and his family from attacks, either from other people or from whatever creature wanted to swallow them whole. He’d even heard Mom and Uncle Donald and Uncle Scrooge discussing the possibility of him using his electricity to jumpstart a stopped heart once he’s gotten better at controlling himself, and that’s pretty cool, to be able to jumpstart a stopped heart. But, well, between his barely controlled magic and his tendency to wanting to look as daringly cool as possible, something was bound to go wrong sometime. And it was only natural that it would happen in one of their adventures.

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Louie never really found any use of his magic in his everyday life. Sensing gold in any urban area was useless at best, since the gold around was most likely owned by people, and trying to control them was just plain rude since they weren’t his. Well, okay, he wished he could have more gold on his own, but he wasn’t about to flat out commit robbery to get rich.

And, okay, he used his magic to pull his khopesh to his hand all the time, and he kept bringing it around because it provided him with a sense of security in how holding gold and knowing he could defend himself when he needed to made him feel safe, but magic generally had no place in modern life.

Not so in adventures. He never really liked joining in their adventures because he didn’t do well with high-stress situations, but hey, he did like gold. And he would like to make sure his family would be safe. And given that sometimes Uncle Scrooge would bring them to maze-like tunnels or cave system, his gold sense came in handy, and if that could help lead them away from certain death, well, he was all for it. But adventures were never safe, and he knew there were chances of things going south within just a few seconds. So, of course, if he ever had a trouble with his magic – which was one of the few things he found comfort in during adventures – it would happen then.

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It happened during an adventure, because of course it did.

They travelled out to the ocean just off the coast of Duckburg, braving the unnaturally still waters through the thick fog that had rolled in as the untimely winter-cold in the middle of summer creeped in and hugged every corner of the Duckburg Bay using the trawler Uncle Scrooge had plucked out of his garage and towed to the bay.

“We could have used my houseboat,” Uncle Donald grumbled, even though he had taken the role as the sea captain without much fuss. Launchpad hovered around him, managing a role as Donald’s first mate with surprising efficiency.

“Your houseboat will sink once it hits the bay,” Uncle Scrooge scoffed.

“She’s seaworthy!” Uncle Donald protested, indignant.

“As a floating house in some body of water. Not for this sort of expedition! Beakley told me your boat sank during the Shadow War!”

“It only sank because the shadows ripped it apart,” Uncle Donald muttered glumly. Mom, who had been listening without bothering to hide her grin, hissed in sympathy and patted Uncle Donald’s shoulder reassuringly. Uncle Donald nodded appreciatively.

Huey noted how much calmer Uncle Donald looked in this expedition, but he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. Uncle Donald had always looked a little bit more composed, more in control, when their adventures were anywhere near the ocean. He noticed how Uncle Donald rolled his shoulders with the ease of an old veteran in his field, feathers brushing lightly against the surface of the water, and he understood.

Uncle Donald didn’t bring the ocean within him, the way Huey could contain and summon fire anytime he wanted, the way Dewey could spark lightning as freely as he wished, the way Mom called to the wind to help her defy gravity. The fact that he was literally in his elements was probably an extra reassurance Uncle Donald couldn’t always have, and when he had it, Huey could see the adventurer in Uncle Scrooge’s old painting a lot more easily than usual, when Uncle Donald was land-bound and had his bad luck haunting his every step. He had his moments, but most of the time, his caution and protectiveness shrouded the daring adventurer he truly was on the inside.

“Remind me again why we’re going out to the sea with all this thick fog and cold when we could be sitting in the manor while drinking, I don’t know, hot chocolate?” Louie piped up. He looked at Uncle Scrooge. “We’ve usually gotten to the adventure speech by now.”

“Yes, yes, I’m getting to that,” Uncle Scrooge said with a smile, rubbing his hands together. “You should have heard of the Lady Gullianne?”

Huey blinked. “The legend? The ghost ship that’s said to travel foggy waters and come to Duckburg every summer?”

“Oooh, are we gonna fight ghost pirates?!” Dewey shot up in his seat, bouncing at the balls of his heels and staring expectantly.

“Uhhh, not exactly,” Uncle Scrooge said with a grimace. He cleared his throat. “Now. Lady Gullianne. We all know the story that circulates in the public, with the ship sailing out from old Duckburg hundreds of years ago during a foggy summer afternoon, never to be seen again, fated to roam foggy waters forevermore and can only come back to Duckburg Bay once every fifty years in a foggy summer day but unable to leave the ocean. What the legend doesn’t say… is why and how.”

Huey took out his Junior Woodchuck Guidebook and flipped to an empty page, ready to scribble notes about Lady Gullianne. He noticed Louie noticing it and opening a voice recording app in his phone. He nodded in appreciation; he was a fast scribbler but Uncle Scrooge’s speech sometimes got too fast and spirited for him to follow.

Uncle Scrooge straightened and gazed out of the window into the foggy sea. “Fifty years ago, I managed to find my way into the Lady Gullianne. I did not go there to find something in particular; at that point I was just curious about the ship. I got to the captain’s quarters, and I found these.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a folder. He flipped it open and showed them leaves of paper nestled in the folder, old and yellowed, with the writings faded. “It took me hours on that ship trying to read this, then I heard the anchor being hoisted and the ship start moving again. And I didn’t see any crew around.”

“Are we going up against ghosts now?” Louie asked.

“Possibly. I saw no one on the ship but it was still moving,” Uncle Scrooge said. “I got off the ship, after that. The ship was moving, the fog was starting to thin from the shore. I had no plans to get stuck in a ghost ship without any apparent crew for fifty years or more.” He shrugged. “I went home and studied the papers.”

“Did you find out how the crew disappeared?” Mom asked.

“I have speculations,” Uncle Scrooge admitted. He moved to the desk and settled the papers on it. “The captain’s journal details that the crew had something in their cargo. They carried the usual things for their supply run; food, water, they might have had some spices. But apparently, the night before they departed from the docks, someone went to town and took something that the captain suspected was cursed.”

“So this thing is what turned the ship into a ghost ship?” Uncle Donald asked.

“Most likely.” Uncle Scrooge rummaged around and pulled another sheet of paper. “Judging from the time period, my guess is the item in question is the Three Feathers Pin.” He pushed it to the middle, where everyone could see. Huey peered in to get a better look, and saw a piece of paper, showing a sketch of a pin from multiple angles, scribbled with notes. The pin in question was more of a brooch, featuring three rigid tail feathers joined at the base, with three gemstones glinting at the tips of each feather – one a sharp, startling red, one a pale, clear white-blue, and one a deep and intense green.

“The base of the pin is made from gold, with the fine details made with silver,” Uncle Scrooge pointed, showing the lines of markings of the feathers. “The gemstones are bixbite, aquamarine, and emerald – all three are from the beryl family. Legend has it that it was made by three brothers. One mined the gemstones, one mined the gold and silver, and the other made the pin. Eventually, they broke into a quarrel over who had the rights to get the pin, and the fighting was so intense they ended up killing each other.”

Dewey hissed. “Sheesh, that’s brutal.” He glanced at Huey and Louie. “Just so you know, I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“I wouldn’t either, why would I?” Huey agreed.

Louie looked away and smiled in that specific way he always did when he was joking. “Gee, glad to know I’m the only one who’s willing to sell any of you for one corn chip.”

Dewey gasped. “How dare you! I’m worth two corn chips, at least!”

“Well, at least he’s generous. I’d sell Don for half a corn chip,” Mom added with a smirk, snickering when Uncle Donald let out an indignant hey. He was soon preoccupied when Launchpad asked him how many corn chips the pilot would worth.

“No! You’re all worth at least a thousand corn chips!” Webby chimed in. She looked genuinely disturbed.

“I don’t know, Webby, I don’t think anyone has done any person-to-corn chip conversion,” Huey commented. He furrowed. “Now how do you convert it, though…?”

Uncle Scrooge knocked the table loudly. “Kids, focus.” He looked at them one by one, exasperated, but there was a touch of fondness in his eyes. “Alright. According to the stories, the brothers’ hatred cursed the pin that anyone within vicinity of it would suffer bad luck. It is never specified what sort, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it managed to pull a whole ship to vanish.” Uncle Scrooge set the pin’s sketch aside. “The captain’s logs detailed how they kept trying to find land but were unable to. Their supply was dwindling. Eventually, the logs stopped. There is no confirmation of the crew’s fate.”

Huey glanced at Uncle Donald. “Any idea, Uncle Donald? You probably have the best guess.”

Uncle Donald’s gaze was grim. “I have an idea, but I hope I’m wrong.” He glanced at Huey and shook his head. “And I’m not telling what it is.”

Mom stared at him, and they seemed to have a silent conversation for a while. Huey frowned when he felt their heat rose and poked at each other, then Mom’s face turned grim and she shook her head. Their heat receded, and Mom turned to Uncle Scrooge. “So. We’re going to take this pin?”

“Yes. If I’m right – and I usually am, let me remind you – it should break the curse on the ship and let her dock.”

Mom folded her arms and stared at Uncle Scrooge. “Okay, why exactly do you want the pin? You keep circling back to the ship.”

“Of course I keep circling back to the ship. It’s a historical ship! It’s as much a treasure as the pin is, maybe even more!” Uncle Scrooge thumped his cane to the floor and huffed. “Honestly, Lady Gullianne has been a pain in my arse for a long time. Business stalls every time the fog rolls in, and the fog comes right in the middle of summer vacation when everything should be booming! And the legend is so localized there is no tourist around to make it an attraction! And even if we could make it an attraction, no sailor is willing to sail to get closer to the ship!”

“That would be because the average sailors have better sense of self preservation than all of us combined, Uncle Scrooge,” Uncle Donald snarked.

Uncle Scrooge didn’t respond to that. “The pin in itself is a worthy treasure to take, but Lady Gullianne herself is the main prize to be had.” He lifted up a fist resolutely. “I will lift the curse shrouding Lady Gullianne and drag her back to the docks myself. People will see for themselves the ghost ship the Scrooge McDuck brings back from the foggy seas!”

“Can I manage the promotion and ticketing? I want seventy percent of the revenue,” Louie requested.

“We’ll start with ten and see how you handle the work before we decide for more, on the condition that you will locate the pin for us,” Uncle Scrooge shot back without missing a beat.

Louie frowned and leaned back. “Okay, but that might be hard. How big is the pin? It looks pretty small.”

“It’s about as long as my index finger, and about as wide,” Uncle Scrooge said, holding out his finger. “Since it’s gold, I figured you should be able to track it down.”

“I should, I guess.” Louie hummed. “Is there more gold in the ship? If you only want that specific pin, it might be hard to track. I get distracted by all gold equally.”

“We don’t know that for sure, but it will probably be put with the other treasure if there is more,” Uncle Scrooge said. He rummaged around an took out what seemed to be a detailed ship plan and gave it to Uncle Donald. “Since you are the one with the most experience with naval vessels, I want you to get us to the treasure cargo.”

Uncle Donald took the plan and scanned it. “Okay, I got it.” He folded the paper and put it in his pocket. “So, what now?”

Uncle Scrooge gestured outside. “We go to the deck. Let’s see if we can board the lady.”

They filed out of the pilothouse, walking to the foredeck. Huey looked around the foggy expanse. “Uncle Scrooge, what do you mean we need to see if we can board?”

“The ship always comes, but you can’t board every time,” Uncle Scrooge answered. “I’ve been trying to board again. I thought you could only board once every three years, or five, or seven, or ten…” He sighed. “This is the fiftieth year. Let’s see if it’s our lucky number.”

“It better be, because I don’t like that we have to be here all cold when we could’ve been watching Ottoman Empire with hot chocolate back home,” Louie grumbled, rubbing his hands together. He shivered, even though he’d worn much thicker clothes than his usual hoodies. Huey decided to take pity on him and bumped shoulders with him, knowing his natural body temperature was higher.

Louie’s reaction was immediately. He sighed and practically slumped over Huey’s side, and Huey slung his arm around Louie’s shoulders to keep him upright. He nearly lost his balance when Dewey pretty much put all his weight to him when he glued himself to Huey’s other side, but somehow he managed to stay upright. He sent Dewey an unimpressed glare.

“What? Louie’s right, it’s cold!” Dewey protested. “And you’re basically a living furnace!”

“Good to know that me running a higher temperature than normal is useful for you two,” Huey commented dryly.

“Shhh, pocket warmers don’t talk,” Louie shushed as he snuggled closer to Huey’s chest.

“I will drop you, Louie.”

“Oh no, Huey doesn’t love me anymore. Dewey, you’re the only brother I have left.”

“That’s okay, Louie, I was always the best brother anyway.”

Huey huffed. “You two are the worst,” he grumbled, even as he shuffled so he could hold both of them better.

Dewey looked like he was about ready to comment when Uncle Donald made a muffled croaking sound. He straightened up, letting go of Huey, and on his other side Louie reluctantly did the same.

“What’s wrong? Did you see something?” Webby asked, looking around. “All I see is fog.”

“Something big is moving closer,” Uncle Donald said. “The seawater’s rippling.” When Uncle Scrooge asked him where from, he pointed ahead. “Not too far from here.”

“Launchpad, steer where Donald is pointing,” Mom told Launchpad, who went back to the pilothouse to man the wheel. The boat they used was never the fastest, but it creeped ahead especially slowly, following the direction Uncle Donald had provided.

Something shifted in the fog. A shape loomed.

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When Lady Gullianne was finally visible, close enough to see clearly through the fog, Uncle Donald let out a soft breath.

“She’s beautiful,” he said, and Dewey looked up to study the ship, and agreed. She was a large ship, grand in a way the trawler would never dream to be, wood creaking hauntingly like a soft lullaby trying to harmonize with the lapping water of the ocean. She held four masts, each holding sails that would have been square if age had not ripped and eaten them to the tatters that hung on the woods.

“It’s creepy,” Mom whispered back to Uncle Donald.

“Have some respect. She can be both,” Uncle Donald retorted. Mom regarded the ship again and gave a conceding noise.

Lady Gullianne gave a groan and slowly came to a stop by their trawler. Clinking metal cut through the air, and a massive anchor splashed as it fell into the water, creating ripples that had the trawler bobbing up and down.

Dewey looked up, surprised when he felt something pinging his senses. Something caught, and suddenly electricity crackled that the very tip of the ship’s tallest mast, lighting blue-white light that stayed, whizzing static only he could really feel through the air.

“St. Elmo’s fire,” Huey said. “I… don’t think it’s common occurrence during foggy weather.”

“Sailors consider it a sign of good luck, though,” Uncle Donald retorted.

Uncle Scrooge hummed. “Last time I was able to board, it was present,” he said, staring at the crackling fire. “Maybe that’s the sign we can board. Let’s go.” He turned to Launchpad. “Drop the anchor and man the boat. We’ll be back soon enough.”

“Sure thing, Mr. McDee!” Launchpad yelled. He let the anchor drop, careless in his motion, and Uncle Donald winced when it hit the surface of water with a loud splash.

“How do we go up there?” Louie asked.

“I can fly you up,” Mom offered. Soon, they had been moved to the Lady Gullienne’s deck, flown easily as Mom summoned wind to her aid. They touched down on the cold wood of the deck, looking around the expanse.

Dewey took a deep breath and let his excitement spill over. “Okay, cursed pin, here we go!” He looked around, looking for a way to access the inside of the ship. “How do we go down?”

Uncle Scrooge turned to Louie. “Do we go down?”

Louie’s field of static pulled in into himself, the way it always did when he used his magic. It wasn’t much. His eyes didn’t turn into golden discs, only gaining glints of gold and green. The field of static expanded back out as the glints disappeared. “Yeah, down,” he said. “It’s around the back of the ship, down there. I can only feel gold in that spot. It feels like there’s a lot, though.”

“Good, that means more profit,” Uncle Scrooge practically sang. “Come on, then. Lead the way, Donald.”

Uncle Donald took out the ship plan, scanned it over, and looked around. He took a deep breath, then he began walking.

They walked down, dipping below deck and peeking into mess halls, through the corridors between cabins, looking around. Huey’s fire lit the way, and light from their flashlights shone to corners where Huey’s flickering flames didn’t reach. The ship was eerily still, silent save for the creaking of wood where they walked and the occasional groans as it bobbed on water, like a great beast struggling to wake. It would have been boring, with how little happened, if it wasn’t so eerie.

It would have been boring, if Dewey didn’t feel the ship filled to the brim with the buzz he felt around the living.

His eyes caught Huey rubbing his arm with his free hand, an uncomfortable look in his face as he looked around. Huey met his gaze and shrugged. “It’s cold,” he said.

“It’s… not,” Dewey said, hesitant. Huey almost never feel cold anymore, not since his magic came in.

“Wait, really?” Huey blinked in surprise and felt his forehead. “I don’t feel sick, though.”

Webby looked around, frowning. Her field felt somewhat… frazzled. “Can we just be quick? I don’t like it here.”

Uncle Donald glanced at the ship plan again. “I think we should go further down, still. Louie?”

Louie looked down. His eyes had glints of gold again. “Yeah, down,” he affirmed.

“Shouldn’t we explore, though?” Mom asked, and Dewey was torn – he wanted to impress her, still, and that meant he wanted to do what she wanted to do. But he really didn’t want to stay in the ship longer than he needed to be, and Mom didn’t look all that certain, either.

“I’ve taken the most important and informative things when I made my run last time. Lets just go and get the pin,” Uncle Scrooge said. “I don’t like it, either. It wasn’t this unsettling before.”

They kept making their way down, and eventually they reached the deepest part of the ship. This far down, Dewey could almost hear the groan of the ocean pushing against the wood of the ship. The soft light of Huey’s flickering flames reached the crevices of the empty hull.

Uncle Donald frowned. “This isn’t right. This is smaller than the blueprint suggests.”

“What, are you telling me the ship’s shrunk or something?” Mom asked, her frown matching Uncle Donald’s.

Uncle Donald shone his flashlight into the ship plan, studying it intently and looking around. At long last, he hedged, “I think someone built a wall to conceal something here.”

Louie glimmered gold and green, his field pulling in on himself. “I feel gold there,” he said as his glow receded, pointing at a wall. “Do we just… pull it apart?”

Uncle Donald gasped, aghast. “No! Look for a switch!”

So that was how they ended up running their fingers along the walls and floor, looking for something to open the wall. After a while, Dewey’s fingers caught between floorboards and found a latch of sorts. He pulled it, and something clicked as wood groaned and creaked, scratching against one another as it ground each grain to leave marks. When he looked up, he saw the wall in front of him had somehow moved, pulled out of its place.

“Good job, Dewey,” Uncle Scrooge praised, and Dewey preened under the approval. He watched as Uncle Scrooge and Uncle Donald pushing the wall aside, showing a gaping maw behind it. Dewey could see something glinting in the darkness, catching the light of their flashlights and Huey’s fire.

“That’s the gold,” Webby said, peering in. She casted her light around, keen eyes searching. “I think it’s safe to go in.”

“Let me go in first, just to be safe,” Uncle Scrooge said. He stepped lightly, carefully, into the room, looking at everything but the pile of gold in the middle of the room, tapping his cane experimentally and glancing back at his family. After a while, his shoulders relaxed and he bent to scoop a handful of gold coins. “Well. I suppose this is safe, then.”

Dewey kneeled by the pile of gold. “This doesn’t look like a huge amount of gold. How much is this? Like, a big travel suitcase full of gold?” He looked up at Uncle Scrooge. “I thought we’d get a lot more than that.”

“At least we got gold and not barrels of rotten spices,” Uncle Scrooge said with a shrug. “There was time when spices is more valuable than gold.” He held up a coin and studied it with a smile. “This is good, though. It’s got historical value, outside the story that we found it in Lady Gullianne. If we can get the Lady back to shore and the pin on top of that, we’ll be golden.” He laughed at his own joke.

“Do you see the pin?” Mom asked. She was looking around, staring at the crevices built into the walls, seeing trinkets sitting snugly in the occupied ones and shards and bent and dented trinkets littering the floor around the empty ones. “I don’t see anything resembling a pin.”

“I guess… I could try probing around for it?” Louie suggested. He looked around doubtfully, hands fidgeting inside the pocket of his hoodie. He looked like he was itching to draw the khopesh he strapped to his back, but he restrained himself from it. “It’s shaped like three feathers, has silver on it, and also three different gemstones, right?”

“Yes,” Uncle Scrooge confirmed. “Can you sense it specifically with all this gold here?”

“I don’t know, but I can try,” Louie said. He took a deep breath, slowly let it out, and called forth his magic.

Dewey didn’t feel Louie’s magic rise. He wasn’t sensitive to magic that way. But he could feel, like usual, Louie’s field of static disappearing as his face went slack and golden glow started to overtake him. His eyes flattened into golden discs as speckles of emerald appeared along the glow. He tilted his head as if in thought.

The gold coins rattled against each other as Louie’s glow intensified. Some of them started levitating. Fallen trinkets floated in midair while the ones snug in their crevices fell to the floor.

Dewey glanced at Huey and locked gazes with him. They both knew, they had to be there to call Louie out of this state later. Mom could do it too, as could Uncle Donald, but Dewey and Huey’s combined effort had always been the most successful champion.

Louie’s breath caught, and Dewey focused his attention back to him. “I found it,” Louie droned, voice devoid of feelings, and he lifted a hand. He must have beckoned to the pin to come to him, because something shot out of the pile of gold and landed firmly in Louie’s waiting palm while the pile settled again.

Later, Dewey would struggle to explain what had happened and how it all felt for him. He would explain it as all hell breaking loose, but that didn’t feel entirely accurate. After all, the others were okay. It was only the triplets that were affected, and Dewey had no idea why.

He could feel his own magic tensing, coiling, condensing into itself for a split second, then it blasted out with the power of a thousand storms. He cried out, more in surprise than anything. There were others yelling, too, but he wasn’t sure who. Huey’s distinct yelp rang out above the others, but he couldn’t hear Louie. He would have felt fear at that, if it wasn’t for the fact that his magic was bursting out of control and zapping blindly and occupying his attention.

The sharp sound of Webby shrieking and the loud ping of something hitting another spiked up his panic, and he tried to breathe, breathe, calm himself and get his magic under control. He had to put a lid to his magic somehow, stop it from bubbling up and spilling away, but he wasn’t sure how.

Lightning zapped up and hit the ceiling, leaving a charred mark but miraculously not catching fire. Some more hit the walls, a few bolts went for his family. Some sort of barrier appeared around them, stopping the lightning. He wasn’t sure what it was.

He could hear someone calling his name, practically screaming their throat raw, but it was somehow buried by the buzzing in his ears and his own prayer, beak chanting please please please as he tried to push the magic and lightning down under. He hadn’t been successful so far. His heart hammered loudly against his ribcage and the bright of his vision was blurred with tears. His magic was going wild, and he had no idea what to do with it.

“Dewey!” Huey’s voice rang clear, high pitched with stress. For a split second, his magic stilled.

Someone slammed into him and enveloped him in a crushing hug. His magic roared again, blinding his vision with white-blue that overtook everything as he buzzed again from head to toe. Then, in the rare moments when he could really feel others’ magic instead of their fields of static responding to the rising magic, he felt the surge of the depths and waves, and sea blue crept at the edges of his vision.

“Uncle Donald, stop,” Dewey pleaded, voice trembling. “I can’t keep it down. I’ll electrocute you.”

“Hush, Dewey,” was all Uncle Donald said before he rippled with his sea magic and Dewey felt like he had been plunged into the sea. The waves Uncle Donald wielded enveloped him and siphoned away his lightning until the buzz fell to manageable levels.

(Later, he would learn that Uncle Donald had called the sea to help him redirect the lightning, letting water’s conducive abilities to draw away the bubbling magic until Dewey could safely control it again.

Later, he would learn that the ocean around Lady Gullianne had been awash with white-blue light that scattered and electrified whatever was in sight.

Later, he would learn that the trawler Launchpad had been waiting in had had electricity running up and down its metal walls, and it was a miracle that the engines weren’t fried, that the solid rubber of his boots had stopped the electricity from cooking him alive.

Later, Dewey would find his breath catch as what-could-have-been haunted his thoughts, and Uncle Donald would say sorry, sorry over and over again over not thinking about what would happen to the ocean around the ship and what it would mean for Launchpad, but his eyes would be grim. “The sea doesn’t care for him,” he would say.

But that was later. Now, Dewey let Uncle Donald channel his magic someplace else, too afraid of hurting whoever was around his immediate vicinity to think much about later.)

Soon, his magic fell to a more manageable state. Still buzzing too actively to be comfortable, still prone to zapping, but it didn’t sharply jump and snarl at anything that moved. He extricated himself from Uncle Donald, muttering a thank you that received no reply, frowning when he saw Uncle Donald’s eyes still shimmering like ocean waves and his whole body shrouded in sea blue. He was twitching, almost uncontrollably, but at least he was aware of what Dewey had said, jerkily nodding at him.

He glanced around to check his surroundings. There were char marks at the wooden belly of the ship, but he had expected as much. Uncle Scrooge had pulled Webby to a corner, practically hugging her by the waist to keep her from charging into danger. There was something transparent around them, a shield of sorts that glinted when Dewey’s magic rose dangerously. The bracelets Webby wove for them shimmered beneath the shields. Louie was standing motionlessly, holding the pin, flowing softly gold. Dewey couldn’t feel his field at all, and that worried him.

But his main concern was Huey. Mom was with him, surrounded by the white cotton-like clouds around her that spread like feathers, so much more than her usual clouds that she generated when she used magic. In front of her, Huey stood hunched, his flames blazing uncontrollably as Mom used her magic to try to contain the fires into a sphere around Huey.

“Can you extinguish it yet, Huey?” she asked, voice trembling. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what else I can do.”

“I – I can’t, I can’t.” Huey’s reply was followed by a series of wheezed breaths and broken sobs, and something in Dewey snapped. Huey wasn’t supposed to look like that, afraid and defeated by the very magic he normally wielded with a smile. His field should generate comfortable, welcoming warmth, not reeking of fear and hopelessness.

Huey let out another choked sob, and all traces of common sense left Dewey’s head. He moved before he fully realized what he was doing, Huey’s name in his beak, and he ran into the sphere of flames Huey was in, ignoring Mom’s horrified scream. He followed Uncle Donald’s example and rammed himself bodily to Huey, enveloping him in a hug, chanting a string of words consisting of Huey’s name and reassurances that it was okay. The fire was gone almost immediately, but it took a while for Huey’s body to cool down from the burning-coals-heat that had enveloped him. When Dewey let go, he could see Huey’s eyes glimmering orange-red, slowly returning to their usual colors.

“I can’t believe – the recklessness!” Mom yelled, incensed, and Dewey flinched. “Barging into fire! Dewey, you can’t just do that!”

Dewey curled and dug closer to Huey’s side as Mom spoke, tasting rust in his tongue. Did she hate him, now? He thought he had done what was required to bring Huey’s magic down. It wasn’t much different from what Uncle Donald had done for him.

“Della,” Uncle Donald interrupted, staring at Mom. Mom glared hotly at him, and for a moment their fields intermingled together, charging the air with static, before Mom looked away with a harrumph. Uncle Donald sighed and turned to Louie, twitching. “Louie? Can you hear me?”

Silence answered his question. Webby, who Uncle Scrooge had released, slowly approached Louie. “Hey, Louie?” she asked, her field brimming with uncertainty, while Louie’s field was still nonexistent. “Are you okay?”

“Something’s wrong with his magic, like ours,” Huey said slowly. “Maybe Dewey and I can pull him out of it…”

“Oh, I’m… I’m sure he’s fine, you two are,” Webby said, but her voice wobbled as though uncertain. “Maybe he’s just… surprised! Right, Louie?” She placed a hand on his shoulder.

He shone blindingly gold like the sun, dappled with emerald green only the clearest emeralds could be. His hood billowed, pushed by the force of his magic, and the gold around them rattled once more. Slowly each piece of gold floated up and circled Louie, slowly at first but surely gaining speed.

Webby stumbled back in shock, gasping when Louie, too, floated. The bright glow faded, somewhat, allowing them to see the duck beneath it.

Louie’s eyes always turned disc-like when he used magic. Like gold had taken over his insides and hammered his eyes into plates. The same thing happened, now, with Louie’s eyes looking like solid gold even against the glow he exuded.

But the way the tips of his fingers turned metallic, the way the edges of his beak gained a glint of metal… the way his feathers gleamed like glossy, polished gold, that was new. That had never happened before.

Huey found his voice before Dewey did. “We need to bring him back right now,” he said, and Dewey wholeheartedly agreed.

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

There was the pin.

The Three Feathers Pin, something told him. The voice was small, but informative, and it didn’t matter. The pin was the only thing that mattered, and he had it in his hand.

He stared at it, familiarizing himself with each crevice of it. The weight was something welcome in his hand, the call of precious metal a siren song in his ears. The gemstones glittered, red, and blue, and green, distantly familiar in a way he couldn’t comprehend. The gold beckoned, and he followed.

There were muffled sounds around him, but they grew quieter and fainter. He felt like he had stepped into a chamber of sorts, dark and soundproofed, and nothing could reach him. Everything felt cold and distant except for the pin. The pin was here. The pin was the only thing that was real, and tangible, and here.

But there was something else, too. Faint sounds, nearly inaudible, creeping in and refusing to be gone. Repeating the same syllables over and over until it echoed in his head, clawing and pulling, accompanied by campfire warmth and lightning sparks. They demanded his attention.

But… the pin was here. It was the most important thing. Right?

The pin twinkled, awash in golden light. It seemed to catch the light in a way that was impossible to ignore.

And then the voices grew louder, screaming Louie, Louie in his ears, with campfire warmth and lightning sparks blazing stubbornly, intent on taking his attention elsewhere. Warm hands caught him – holding his shoulders, enveloping his torso, and he still had the pin lingering in his mind, but suddenly it didn’t seem as important anymore. Something took it from his hand, and there was a sudden blast of wind as the feeling of soaring through blue skies smashed into his bones, intermingled suddenly by rising waves at the edge of a horizon, before everything settled into nothingness as the feelings receded. The pin was gone, but it wasn’t important anymore, and that was okay.

Louie, the voices called again, and he blinked, slow. With a jolt, he realized it was his name.

He followed the voices, reaching out to let his gold-cold touch campfire warmth and lightning sparks, and let them surround and embrace him and guided him out. Slowly, his senses came back to him; the calming sounds of people calling his name softly, the warm touches and hugs that kept him upright, the weight of his clothes against his shoulders, the light of flashlights hitting wooden walls. He blinked and swallowed the taste of metal on his tongue and tried to move.

Huey and Dewey released their hugs and held him at arms’ length. “Louie?” Huey called, soft and hesitant.

“I’m here,” Louie whispered. It was hard to speak louder. “I’m back.”

Dewey smashed against him as he enveloped him in a bear hug. Louie tipped backwards, surprised at the sudden collision, and only Huey’s steadying hands managed to keep him from falling over. And then all three of them did end up falling over when Webby tackled them, blubbering and making sure they were okay.

“Wait, what happened to the pin?” Louie asked, looking around warily. He wasn’t keen on touching it again, though. The others could hold that for him, thanks.

“I have it here,” Uncle Scrooge said, showing a leather pouch that he held gingerly. “When Della took it from you, it made her magic go wild. Same with Donald’s. Webby tried holding it but it gave her gashes. We’ve decided no one should hold it without protection.”

It was only then that Louie realized Webby’s arms were dappled with red, lines of cuts lining messily along her skin, tainting her feathers scarlet. He stared, horrified, and she shook her head reassuringly. “I’m okay, this is nothing a first aid kit can’t help,” she said.

“Then we’d better get back to the trawler,” Uncle Donald said, jerking oddly. His eyes were glued at the red along Webby’s arms. “We’re done here.”

“Yes, we are,” Uncle Scrooge looked up at the ceiling. “We’ll figure out what to do next at the trawler.”

The walk back up to the surface was tiring, mostly because Louie had exhausted his magic with the pin earlier. It was more or less the same with Huey and Dewey, less so with Mom and Uncle Donald. Uncle Scrooge walked at the front, leading the march back to fresh air, while Uncle Donald fretted over Webby’s cuts, still twitching oddly. Mom hovered around Huey, Dewey, and Louie, like she wanted to say something but was unsure of it, and ended up instead keeping a close eye on them all. Louie didn’t mind – Mom’s presence was more than enough to keep him calm.

They reached the deck, and to Louie’s surprise, the fog had subsided enough for sunshine to seep through the remaining mist. Almost immediately, he could feel Mom’s magic swelling, the air around them greeting her as sunlight kissed her hair. Something similar happened when Uncle Donald peered over to peek at the ocean, with the waves lapping lazily at Lady Gullianne’s hull and Uncle Donald’s magic pushing and pulling against the water. Something settled within him and the twitches drastically improved. He sighed and waved Launchpad over, who moved the trawler closer to them.

“Okay, you kids, get back to the trawler, we’re going home.” Uncle Scrooge waved them over, and Mom scooped Huey and Louie into her arms, letting Dewey climb over to encircle his arms around her neck, then floated over to the trawler, where Launchpad helped them settle on the deck. Uncle Donald, meanwhile, held onto Webby and jumped overboard, ignoring Uncle Scrooge’s surprised squawk. He landed surprisingly lightly on the trawler and made a beeline to the pilothouse, where he kept a first aid kit. His arm feathers were stained red, but he didn’t seem to realize it. Launchpad, seeing the red mottling Webby’s arms, frowned and went after them.

“He’ll be fine, he always does better at sea,” Mom assured as she scooped Uncle Scrooge and floated over. The moment Uncle Scrooge’s feet left the ship, a crack thundered loudly. Mom landed on the trawler and set Uncle Scrooge down as Uncle Donald dashed out of the pilothouse, flared blue for a split second, and dashed back in, starting the engine and pushing the boat with both engine and magic closer to shore as soon as possible, rocking the passengers.

A moment later, Louie understood why. A great crack split the Lady Gullianne in two, climbing up its main mast and pushing down, allowing water to rush in into the hull as the ship dipped and sank. Louie doubted the vortex would have pulled their trawler in, but he understood why Uncle Donald didn’t want to take any chances. Seeing how the wooden masts fell apart was hauntingly beautiful from afar; much less so from anywhere near.

They watched, silent, as Lady Gullianne finally broke apart and sank into the depths, claiming its place in its watery grave. The solemn air was eventually broken when Uncle Scrooge wailed, “Me ship! Me money!”

“Uncle Scrooge, you got the pin,” Mom protested.

“And Lady Gullianne deserves her rest,” Uncle Donald added, peeking out of the pilothouse. “Isn’t it obvious by now that the pin had been keeping her afloat?” He slipped back inside, no doubt to treat Webby’s wounds.

“You can still prove that she’s real if you have people dive around here,” Huey suggested. “With the right measures to preserve natural life here, I think it’s doable. It’s not too far away from land so it shouldn’t be too deep to dive.”

Uncle Scrooge’s face scrunched in thought. “That may be doable. I’ll have to see if it’s safe for diving, though, and send a team to assess the damage and if it’s appropriate to have people dive to see a shipwreck here…”

Dewey’s hand shot up. “Ooh, ooh, I can dive to see the damage too! Uncle Donald’s been talking about ships all our life, I bet I can tell if it’s good or not.”

“Only if Donald goes too,” Uncle Scrooge said, and Uncle Donald yelled an okay from the pilothouse.

“And the pin?” Louie asked, eyes tracking the pouch Uncle Scrooge still held. Here, now, in the safety of his family surrounding him, he could feel the pin’s cold tendrils reaching out to him again. It made him feel cold, like his magic was trying to bubble up and swallow him whole.

Uncle Scrooge lifted the pouch and stared at it in disdain. “It’s clearly not safe for any of us. I’ll keep it in the bin, with the other dangerous artefacts. It should be safe there.”

Dewey leaned against him, resting his elbow on his shoulder, lightning sparks reaching and twining with his gold-cold. “Well, that’s good. We don’t really want to see that pin anymore.”

Huey shrugged bumped his shoulder to his. His warmth seeped into Louie’s fingers. “Yeah, it’s a lot more trouble than it’s worth.” He glanced at Louie and admitted, “I don’t want to see you lose control like that anymore, honestly.”

“Yeah, it’s scary.” Dewey lifted his elbow off his shoulder and shuddered.

“It’s not like I plan to do that again, ever,” Louie said defensively. “I don’t like it either, when that happens.”

“It’s okay, though,” Dewey assured. “We’ll bring you back, always.”

Lightning sparks thrummed with certainty, enforced by campfire warmth that circled Louie’s gold. Louie let their reassuring hum of power wash over him and allowed a smile. “Yeah, I know. I’ll do the same.”

[myhusbandsasemni]

🕐When did you start writing? 📚 What was your first story about? 📖 What is your current story about? 🧨Tell me about your current antagonist! 🎶 Do you like listening to music while you write? (sorry I asked so much, I'm just really curious xD)

Oh boi! It always makes me curious who the anon is when they ask this much. Thank you!

I started writing late junior high, early high school, though I liked to tell stories a lot. Not fantasy stories or anything. I just talked a lot. I used it as a coping mechanism because, sad backstory TM, I didn’t really have any friends and I was super lonely. 

My current story is summarized thusly:

Magic is a complicated thing. Especially when whole planets get involved. Taali and The Fen are constantly on the verge of destroying each other, only stopped by three spiraling moons Balancing the two. These moons are inhabited by the Castaways, the criminals that had performed terrible crimes with powerful magic and were thus cast from Taali, who have no memory of their pasts or what they had done to get Cast Out to the Balance, giving them a clean slate and another chance to discover who they want to be. Steve is one such Castaway who finds himself alone on one of the moons for several years. He encountered no one, growing more and more lonely and hopeless, until an amber-haired woman he vaguely recognizes steps from the shadows of the forest. A woman that stares at him with unfathomable loss and hatred before vanishing through a portal where he cannot follow. While searching for her, he discovers the Castaways of the darkest moon first, who take him in upon realizing his avid desperation to avoid being alone. Meanwhile, the people of Taali begin invading the peaceful moons to capture Steve’s newfound family, bent on using Castaway magic for Taali’s gain, no matter the consequences.

My first story was about a princess and a human raised by dragons going on a quest to collect magical ring and.... save the world or something? Honestly, the characters were very neat, worldbuilding could have used some work, and I ran out of plot because I wasn’t sure what I was doing. But one of my internet names, Clicker, came from it because my sibling’s favorite character from it was a hyperactive adventure heathen girl who made clicking noises when she got excited and my first true OC in my opinion. 

My current antagonist is named Alex from Plains, Ether, Hearth. She is a military officer from Taali and a heccin jerk. She seems to know Steve from his past is just imposing and cold and hateful and hurt. She has no problem with killing or torture which means I’m super worried about the Balance Keepers who have been kidnapped by her. 

And lastly, I love listening to music while I write. I have to listen to it or else I get distracted and don’t write. I listen mostly to instrumental fantasy tracks.

Thank you so much for the ask!

[lostcauses-noregrets]

Lostcauses Fic: Building on the Past chapter 3

Last chapter of the dumb Construction AU fic, based on the Sukiya Collaboration character bios.

Erwin’s address was in a relatively new suburb to the north of the city.  The houses were far from extravagant, but as the cab wound up the hill Levi couldn’t help noticing that each one was different, each unique in its design.  Erwin’s house was located close to the top of the hill; a modest single story building surrounded by a narrow verandah and set in a small garden.  The front door was open and, when Levi climbed up the steps and rang the doorbell, a familiar voice called “Just come in! I’m in the kitchen, straight through to the back.”

Levi toed off his shoes on the doorstep and set them neatly beside the large pair of jika-tabi standing inside the front door, before hanging up his jacket and stepping into the house. Inside, Erwin’s house was a mix of traditional and modern styles, with natural materials throughout, warm beech for the floors, pale cream walls, a slate hearth with a large chocolate brown leather couch and a low wooden coffee table piled high with magazines and books placed in front of it   The walls were hung with framed architectural prints and lined with bookcases. The whole effect was peaceful, harmonious and comfortable, a house for living in.

The kitchen was a large bright room towards the back of the house, with sliding glass doors along one wall that opened out onto the verandah overlooking the garden. Erwin was standing by the stove, dressed in loose gray linen trousers, soft white shirt and a black apron with a print of a tuxedo on it.  His feet were bare and something about the sight of his tan skin against the warm terracotta floor tiles made heat pool in Levi’s stomach.

“Hey,” he said, stopping in the kitchen doorway.

“Levi!” Erwin placed the spoon on top of the pot he’d been stirring and hastily wiped his hands on the apron.  He was smiling broadly, cheeks flushed, from the heat of the stove Levi presumed.  “Come in! It’s great to see you!”

“Shit. You didn’t tell me it was black tie. I feel under dressed.”

“Sorry what?” Erwin’s expression froze in confusion.

Levi raised an eyebrow and nodded towards his apron.

“Oh. Oh shit. Sorry I forgot I was wearing this. I must look like an idiot.  I didn’t want to make a mess of my shirt while I was cooking.”  He was already pulling at the tabs tied behind his waist.

“Nah, you’re fine.” Levi said. “It’s a good look.”

“You think so?” Erwin peered down at the offending apron, blond hair falling forward over his eyes.  

“Well it’s a better look than having sauce all down your front.”

“That’s what I thought,” Erwin laughed.

[Continue reading on AO3]