#reminder of mortality in a beautiful chapel for the man you love as a way to tell him HE’S the single reminder of mortality in you and that

[yandere-daydreams]

Title: A Departure.

Commissioned by the very lovely @ohsotearful.

Pairing: Yandere!Scaramouche x Reader (Genshin).

Word Count: 1.3k.

TW: Spoilers For Sumeru's Story Quest, Unhealthy Relationships, Mentions of Physical/Psychological Abuse, Themes of Forced Codependence, and Maladaptive Coping Mechanisms.

You arrived at the door of his shrine with no less than a dozen guards in tow – an even mix of Fatui soldiers and Akademiya matra. The most brazen among them attempted to follow you inside, but you dismissed them with a quick shake of your head, a pointed look to the more senior members of the mismatched legion. This was a well-trodden routine, by now, although one you never dared to come with the same entourage more than once. Your husband’s recent distance had not softened his jealous edge, and although you weren’t fond of those most complicit in the newest stage of your captivity, no mortal crime could be worthy of the wrath of such a violent god.

Your footsteps echoed – clipped and solitary – against the bare walls of the stone chamber. The architects of his divinity have already been sent away for the night, leaving you alone with the half-finished mess of wires and metal that was your husband’s fixation. The Shouki no Kami, you could remember the Doctor calling it during his first visits to your estate. A ridiculous name for a ridiculous machine that would only serve the ego of a ridiculous man. Bile rose into the back of your throat at the sight alone, but you swallowed your anger. He’d never been able to react to your rage with anything but his own.

You paused at the monstrosity’s feet, and his voice came to you – reverberating in the back of your mind like the final tones of a chapel bell. “Beloved,” he whispered in the back of your mind, sending a pang of pure agony through your skull. “You aren’t supposed to—”

“I will not hold a conversation with a mumbling voice.” You cut him off swiftly, teeth grit and eyes narrowed. “Either I will speak to my husband's face or I will not speak to him at all.”

A moment passed without a response. Then, stiltedly, one of his monstrosity’s hands tore free from its scaffolding, lowering itself to the ground beside you. With some reluctance, you stepped into his palm and allowed him to raise you to the frontmost panel of his abomination. You refused to call it a face, because to call it a face would be to admit it was his face, which would be to admit that this strange machine was in any way an extension of him. The metallic panel raised and disappeared into some unseen cavity, revealing the hollow, unit chamber behind it. Revealing your husband.

Or, rather, revealing the mess he’d made of himself.

He had never been the pinnacle of beauty, but his pale skin now seemed bleached and colorless, his lithe form limp and crumpled. Glass tubes filled with a pulsing, violet substance had been drilled into the nape of his neck, the base of his spine, the curves of his shoulder bones, and the smile he paid you as he came into view was labored, a fight against some artificial exhaustion. Before you could think better of it, you stepped out of his palm and into his chamber, falling to your knees beside him and wrapping your arms around his neck. “You are,” You pressed your lips into his temple. “the biggest idiot,” Then again, into his cheek, the curve of his jaw. “I have ever met.”

He let out an airy chuckle, melting into your chest. “It used to take a vat of water and thirty minutes of electrocution to make you kiss me like that.”

You ignored the phantom rope that coiled around your lungs at the reminder of the first decades of your relationship. You tried to think of it as little as you could, but his vision had always been more rose-colored than your own. “Can’t I show my husband affection?” You raked your fingers through his hair, resting your lips against his forehead. “It’s not as if I’ll be able to kiss the metal coffin you’re locking yourself inside.”

Another laugh, this one more labored than the last. “You could, if you wanted to. Just wait until it’s finished. It’ll be more glorious than you could possibly imagine – a vessel befitting of the most powerful archon this wretched world has ever bowed to.” He attempted to straighten, only to collapse under his own weight. “It’ll be an improvement to this form, at least.”

“I quite like your current form. It’s only a shame it has to house such a rotten personality.” You looked outward, to his empty shrine. At the time of your last visit to Inazuma (meaning, at the time of your last successful escape from your husband), his creator had still been locked inside a similar cage, or so another yokai had told you over bottles of sake and a game of cards. That visit had been one of your shortest. He knew you too well, by then, and it’d only taken him a few weeks to realize you’d run where you always would - home. “I suppose I’ll be left in the care of your doctor, when you’re finished.”

His response was immediate, purely reactive; a sudden snarl paired with a flash of bared teeth. “Dottore should be thankful to so much as breathe your air. You’ll be the paramour of a god.”

“I’ll be left alone while you turn yourself into a monster.” Your voice was hollow, distant. Even now, months into his transformation, it was difficult to describe the flavor of your devastation. He’d taken you from the place where you belonged and kept you as a trophy. He’d denied you any companionship aside from himself and cut away parts of your world until it revolved solely around him. He tucked dried flowers into the letters he wrote you near-obsessively whenever he couldn’t be at your side. He carved open your skin then demanded you keep your own mutilation out of his sight. He used to read you myths and fairy tales for hours every night, when human language was still foreign to your tongue. He was the closest thing to a friend you’d ever had.

And he was leaving you.

You wondered, briefly, if this was how he felt whenever you tried to get away from him, but discarded the thought quickly. It was your heart that ached the most in the wake of his betrayal, and your husband never did have one of those.

“I can’t remember the last time I was on my own,” you admitted, a pained smile tugging at the corner of your lips. “I won’t ask you to stop. It’s just, when you’re done, I—” The air snagged in your throat. You inhaled sharply, then rested your head on his shoulder. “I’d like your permission to return to Inazuma, my lord.”

Silenced lapse, thick and heavy, between you. He was the closest thing you had to a friend, which meant he knew just how where to plant his knife and, more significantly, just how to twist the blade.

“No.” Stern, stiff, unyielding. Rather than softening over the centuries you’d spent together, he only seemed to grow more callous. “There’s nothing for you, there. You’ll stay here, with me, and I will rule this rotting land with you at my side.”

You opened your mouth, prepared to protest, to argue the way you hadn’t since the first years of your imprisonment, but closed it just as quickly. You buried your face in the crook of your neck, and your husband let you, eager to soak in the touch you so often denied him. Fire, despair, anger bit and thrashed inside of you, but it was all you could do to hold him, to keep him near.

It was all you could do to think of what you would become, after he was taken away from you.

[sonwar]

i hate talking about nbc’s hannibal because i feel like i can never fully encapsulate everything that show is about or everything it makes me feel or that it’s both dark and messed up and also the most romantic and passionate piece of media i have ever encountered

[whirlybirbs]

;   NIGHTFALL & DAYBREAK   ---   1 OF 2.

summary: you’ve grown close to obi-wan kenobi in his time warring with the trade federation upon naboo. but, as his time spent upon diplomacy comes to an end with the death of his master and knighting, you must say goodbye to the man you’ve come to care for.  ;   ---   read part two here! pairing: handmaiden!reader x padawan!obi-wan, established in a few drabbles of mine that can be read here. wordcount: 1.8k warnings: none, just a lotta angst & tenderness.  a/n: i was sad about obi, ok?

Qui-Gon is laid to rest at nightfall.

In that small, royal chapel overlooking the lake country and vast waterfalls surrounding the Theed palace, the Jedi Master finds peace. Under the glow of moonlight, his soul joins the well of the Force in the afterlife – his mortal body forgotten in a bath of flames.

Your eyes can hardly leave the face of the now-Jedi Knight across the room – Obi-Wan is standing tall, hood pulled over his head and eyes set on the sight of his Master’s laying-to-rest before him. The gaze there is hollow, lacking his usual vivaciousness, and his mouth is pulled into a tight grimace.

He does not cry. He will not.

Not in front of the Royal Court.

Not in front of Anakin.

Shoulder to shoulder with the other handmaidens, your heart aches to cross the room and hold him; you wish for nothing more than to soothe the grief set so firmly across his face with a kiss. But, instead, you stay rooted in your place, throat tight with worry and mourning, as a good handmaiden would. You are simply that – not the woman the Jedi Knight has come to care for. You serve the Queen, and he serves the Force, and after this… well, he will be tasked with training Anakin and the likelihood that you may never see him again is one you’ve tried to avoid confronting.

Your heartstrings snap violently at the thought; enough to make you sick.

That night, you’re one of the last to leave – paying your respects to the Jedi Master, you bow in prayer, before touching the altar and finding Obi-Wan’s eyes. He’s staring, far-off from this moment, but softens at the sight of you.

You retire early – finding yourself drowning in the despair that hangs over the palace; your balcony doors are open, welcoming the warm summer breeze as you swipe at stray tears. Curled in a tight ball upon your sheets, you try to calm yourself down. It’s to no avail. Your satin nightgown, dark as the night-sky, clings to you as you try your best to swallow your all-encompassing grief and knot your fingers in your hair. You worry the tresses. You try to breathe.

Obi-Wan would want you to be strong – you need to be. For him.

You’re about to gather a robe and set out to find him when there’s a faint knock upon your door; you know it’s him, just from the rhythmic peck of his knuckles against the wood. It’s his staple, slower now and weighed down with exhaustion.

The moment you fling the door open, you’re greeted by his tear-stained face in the dimly lit hall. The warm light from your bedroom swallows him completely  and shows his pain, clear-as-day, strewn across his face. His eyes are raw, swollen and tired. His robes hang off him, sleeves stretched and worried.

Upon the sight of you, equally as heartbroken as himself, he chokes a sob.

Quickly, you usher him into an embrace – it’s tight, the kind where he wraps his arms around your ribs and buries his face into your neck; his chest quakes, suddenly, and you push fingers through his hair as he muffles another cry into your skin.

Your heart aches. Shatters, nearly. The sound is horrifying.

You urge him up, fingers falling along his jaw to wipe away the falling tears. You can’t help your own sadness, now flowing across your cheeks – you whisper softly:

“Come lay down.”

He obeys wordlessly, nodding shakily as you close the doors to your bedroom behind him. He’s on the edge of the bed, knees bouncing and chest shaking – his face is in his hands, tears staining the dark wool of his robes – when you return to him.

You fall beside Obi-Wan, wiping your own tears away, as you croak out a soft apology.

“I’m sorry,” you breathe, hands finding his shoulders, “I’m so sorry, Obi –”

He shakes his head, swallowing his grief for a moment as he looks up at you; his face is soft, echoes of appreciation set in the tiredness of his blue-green eyes. “He was… He was one of my closest friends. He taught me all that I know and –”

Obi’s voice cracks, splintering into shards of heartbreak that he tries to catch in his open palms.

It hurts. You feel it drive straight through your chest.

You rub his back, turned completely to him on the bed – your other hand moves to steal his, knotting eager fingers in his hold. He squeezes them tightly as he speaks.

“I’m scared.”

You exhale softly, leaning to take his face into your hands. He lets you guide his gaze, face within inches of yours as you speak kindly.

“Obi-Wan… You have nothing to be afraid of,” you murmur, thumb gracing his cheek, “You are kind and loving and strong and… You are ready for whatever the Jedi Council wills. I know that – as do you, deep down. Master Qui-Gon knew as much as well. And Anakin –”

He winces, trying to pull away. You, however, don’t let him. You hold his face a bit tighter.

“Anakin is lucky to have you in his life.”

He’s quiet for a while, lips moving to try and find some words to explain how he’s feeling, but… the longer you hold him, face wrought with worry, the more he sense you may be right, and perhaps fearing fear itself is what his mind has begun to do. A vicious cycle, Master Yoda had once said.

He exhales slowly, turning on the bed to encompass your hand with his own upon his cheek. Obi-Wan turns, kissing your palm gently and letting his eyes slip shut.

You sigh. He kisses your fingertips, one by one.

It’s when he opens his eyes that you know you cannot live life without him. That look – one warm, kind look – spells out the love that has grown between you both in the last handful of weeks.

You wonder what your life was like before he waltzed into it, lightsaber in hand and charm aplenty.

…You find you can’t remember. Nor do you want to.

“Obi-Wan, I –”

“– I will not forget about you,” he breathes, “I… I don’t believe I could if I tried.”

You wonder if he’s reading your mind.

Certainly not, he could never – you’re not weak-minded. You’re strong and radiant and glowing in his heart with the same centeredness that the Force creates; he feels no fear when you’re present, only calm and only love. More love than he knows what to do with.

“I return to Coruscant tomorrow evening,” Obi-Wan continues, noting the way you turn your gaze from him. Through your skin he can feel the discomfort at the idea ripple around you like a roaring river within the Force. It drives a great cavernous divide between his words, the hurt striking him in the lungs and robbing him of his composure, “I-I’m sorry – it is my duty –”

His voice wavers. You swipe at the tears welling quickly, nodding.

“I understand,” you manage, letting him move to dart a slow kiss across your cheek, “You are sworn to the Jedi. It is selfish of me to want you for myself.”

His chest aches. Gentle eyes roam your face, his hands now cradling yours.

“If you asked,” he mutters, gaze falling to your lips, “I would leave the Jedi Order.”

You recoil. “Obi-Wan –”

“Utter it once and I will; you have… you have stolen my heart,” he exhales slowly, a small smile coming to his face, “I tell you that because I know –”

“I would never ask that of you.”

You finish his sentence with your protesting, all without even realizing it.

A slow smile creeps onto his face that reminds you of home. “Exactly.”

You manage a laugh – cheeks glistening with tears and lids swollen with heartache – and duck your face when he runs his fingers through the hair along your temples. He urges forward, sandy brows raised.

“I mean it.”

“I know you do.”

“Visit me,” he breathes, “On Coruscant.”

“…Will you write?”

Obi-Wan’s heart nearly melts with the quiet hesitancy that you ask – he’s putty in your hands, leaning into a kiss that is warm with love and reassurance; you smile at that, happily pulling away as his hands cradle your cheeks and chase the question with his affections.

“Of course!” he lands another kiss on the corner of your mouth, then another on your jaw as you squirm, “You need not to ask –”

“You are a Jedi Knight now!” you cry quietly, in good humor, “You may not have time for a simple handmaiden from Naboo…”

He pulls away, eyes shining with an emotion that makes your heart feel like it’s finally anchored after a storm.

“You are the most beautiful woman in the galaxy. The stars are jealous of your beauty; you outshine the moon, and the twin suns on Tatooine chase your wonder across the sky everyday – I promise you that I will always have time for you.”

The sob that escapes you startles not only yourself, but Obi-Wan.

You find his arms easily, burying your face into his chest as you both fall to the sheets. He’s quick to coo, hands rubbing along the bare dip of your spine, and mutter words of apology – you cling to his robes tightly.

“Stay tonight,” you breathe between sniffles, raising your head to eye him sprawled against the pillows, “Beside me.”

He doesn’t protest. Just kisses you sweetly, and nods, nose brushing yours as you prop yourself up on his chest – the Jedi Knight’s gaze is heavy with adoration as you do, swiping at the tears along your cheeks.

“You mean the world to me,” he says.

“And you to me.”

As the moon wanes in the sky, you fall asleep in the arms of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Come morning break, everything will be different.

You try your best to pretend sunrise will never come. You hardly sleep, waking to kiss him a hundred times throughout the night. He does the same, trying his best to remember the dips of your body, the curve of your smile, the color of your eyes. Sleep is restless and unwanted. Both of you evade it in favor of each other.

But morning comes as it always does, and after breakfast, Obi-Wan leaves on a Senate transport – Anakin’s hand in his.

The last you see of Obi-Wan Kenobi is a sad smile as the ramp closes with a hiss. The last he sees of you is a tearful smile, hidden beneath a pale pink hood, as you stay rooted beside the Queen of Naboo.  

Until two years later.

[sabraeal]

The Noblest Prince the World Hath Known

Written for @onedivinemisfit on the occasion of her birth!! She asked for a little bit of an Scandinavian Lore AU we had tossed back and forth a year ago, with Shirayuki as a huldra and Obi as svartalfar, and I was all too happy to oblige.

When father sat upon Tanbarun’s throne, he loomed head and shoulders over any who approached, a giant among men. Yet Raj sits in the very same chair, and he has to crane his neck to peer over the crowd.

It’s unfair, that’s what it is. He could see the doors if he wanted-- he’s not small, like Clarines’ prince. Or well, their second one. He hasn’t had the pleasure of meeting their king-to-be, but he’s heard rumors. Three whole alen if talk is to be believed; which it never is, and even less so now that he’s seen Zen is only little over two and a fot.

But if it was, the first prince of Clarines would be able to see the doors from the throne-- which he never would, because only the royal line of Tanbarun was allowed to sit upon it. But in this particular thought exercise-- what his tutors liked to call the tedious puzzles they inflicted upon him as training and to increase his moral fiber-- he could and he was, and Izana Wisteria, due to be first of his name, saw easily from one end of the hall to the other.

Unlike Raj, who could not. Or rather, unless he wanted to look like he was trying, which according to various philosophers on the subject of royalty, was a mistake that could only result in tragic consequences. That’s the hardest part of this whole princing business--  trying to look like you’re not trying while you’re really trying quite hard.

“Do you see her?” His neck aches from all this effort. Especially all the effort he’s putting in to make it seem effortless. “Is she here?”

“It does not seem as if she is, Your Highness.” Sakaki shifts beside him, needlessly vigilant and still mild as ever. “Do not strain yourself. I can see quite easily--”

“You don’t need to rub it in,” he mutters, slouching into the red velvet. “You’re an adult after all. If my father is any stick to measure myself by, I’ll be quite tall, Sakaki. Even taller than you. Three alen at least!”

“Of course, Your Highness.”

“You might try to sound like you mean it.” He folds his arms across his chest, elegantly sullen. Father might say such a look isn’t becoming of a man of his station, but Raj can name at least three ancestors whose official portraits contained a regal slouch. That seems more than enough to prove his point. “Why isn’t she here yet? Doesn’t she know royalty arrives last? It’s terribly rude to make a prince wait.”

Sakaki clears his throat. “Not for the vette.”

Raj huffs, cross. “I don’t see why not! It’s a simple precedent. One does not keep their betters waiting.”

His aide hums, gaze fixed to the doors. “In the opinion of the vette, they have no betters.”

“No betters?” Raj squawks. “Did not the Lord give man dominion over the land and the animals? And then among them, did he not raise up his chosen as kings?”

The muscle in Sakaki’s cheek twitches. “Yes, Your Highness.”

Raj throws up his hands. “Then what’s the problem?”

His aide clears his throat, so delicate, before he says, “I am afraid they are not much moved by the laws of Christ when so many of them are older than the Lord himself.”

He doesn’t realized his jaw has dropped until it is cushioned by his cravat. “You cannot be serious.”

Shirayuki-- the protector of the wood herself-- hardly looks older than twenty. A damn sight younger, by his count. He’d accept a hundred years for her, give or take, but older than Christ--?

Certainly not. “Don’t be ridiculous, Sakaki,” he scoffs, waving a hand. “You should know better than to believe old wives’ tales. Nothing could live so long.”

“Yes, Your Highness.” His mouth pulls thin. “Still, they do not consider themselves to be subject of any mortal king. They rule themselves.”

“W-well we didn’t tell them they could do that!” Raj sputters. His fingers loop into the grooves of the throne, golden claws dripping down from his fingertips. “Ridiculous! What makes them think they can flout the will of God?”

Saki’s mouth twitches; it is not toward a smile. “What do they need with the Lord’s kingdom when they were once gods themselves?”

He stares, heart beating fast in his chest. “You don’t believe that.”

“No, Your Highness.” Sakaki’s shoulders set in a tense line. “But it doesn’t matter what I believe. It matters what they do.”

Raj’s mouth works uselessly, trying to bid an answer to fall from him lips but--

But he is saves but a stir in the crowd, by the grand doors swinging wide, and there she is--

Shirayuki.

Her hair shines in a burnished halo, reminding him of nothing more than the stain-glass angel in the chapel, her arms thrown open over the altar, blazing in the morning sun. It is no wonder than man used to look upon women like her and call them goddess when even he, Defender of the Faith, the Lord’s most devout champion, sees her and only divinity leaps to mind.

“The vette is here,” Sakaki says.

“I can see that,” he snaps, jutting out a hand. “She’s standing right there!”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

The nobles bend to her in awe, but it is her companion that keeps them skirting back, fear in their eyes. Obi may be as formally dressed as any man in this room, but whereas Shirayuki can pass for something more than human, he is something less. His teeth flash sharp and white against the black of his skin, so dark that he seems to consume light rather than repel it.

Svartalfar, some whisper, but on the same breath, demon. Even wearing his master’s livery, Obi cannot escape the suspicions of another, darker one.

“You’re supposed to open the floor with her.”

“I know that!” Raj jolts from his chair, storming down the dais. “I planned it!”

Sakaki lingers a step behind him. “Of course, Your Highness.”

Raj slows his stride as he approaches, taking care not to seem too eager, too hurried. He will be king one day, after all. A king rushes nowhere; the entire world spins at his pace--

“Prince Raj.” A slender hand holds itself out to him, and when he chases the sun-kissed skin, it leads him to Shirayuki’s radiant smile. “You’ll face me?”

He scowls, shoulders itching beneath the wool of his jackets. “Coming from you, Lady Shirayuki, that sounds like an invitation to duel.”

“Then let us set our terms.” There is no malice in her words, no challenge; only the playful sing-song of her kind. “We’ll see if we’ve managed to improve this bond between us.”

Her shadow huffs at that, but it’s good humored, no threat within it. Even Sakaki’s hand doesn’t stray toward his hilt.

“If you have selected the ballroom as your field of honor, and dancing as your weapon--” he takes her hand, guiding her into his arms-- “then your victory is assured.”

Quite dashing all in all, if he does say so himself. A real tour de force

The crowd gasps, though not at his prowess; that is solely the provenance of Shirayuki’s dress-- or rather, what is inside it. He leads her onto the floor, and that they all see what he did that day in the woods outside Tanbarun: a beautiful woman whose back cuts away from her flesh, as hollow inside as a log.

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” She grimaces as the orchestra hesitantly plucks out their next piece, eyes still stuck on the huldra in their midst. “I’m not exactly, um...”

“Come now.” He smiles wide, cajoling. “I have seen Zen’s winged vette on the floor. Even with a fraction of her grace, surely you are nothing but a-- OW.”

“I warned you,” she hissed, the cream of her face flushing a rosy pink. “I’m not very skilled in, um...” She bites her lip; less divine presence and more comely young debutante. “My gifts lie in other areas.”

“Ah-haaa,” he groans, resisting the urge to cradle his foot. “Yes. I’m sure I’ll be glad of that later. For now we must...make do.”

She nods, and ah, she makes it so easy to forget is not some pretty mortal girl. That is the way of the huldr; always longing to be human. “Sorry.”

“No, no.” This time the band chooses another, easier tune, upbeat but well-paced. “This isn’t the first time I’ve had a terrible partner, if you can believe it. I mean--” Sakaki glares at him from across the floor-- “not that you’re terrible.”

“It’s fine,” she giggles, stumbling over her feet. “There’s no reason not to call a spade a spade.”

He stares down at her, her cheeks rosy as any maiden’s. “I think you will find very few people think that way.”

Her brow quirks, sly. “Ah, I forget. Mortals are so fragile. Even your feelings are delicate.”

“A funny thing for a vette to say,” he scoffs, leading her into a turn-- one she botches, stumbling over her own feet. “Wasn’t it one of yours that wanted to destroy the world because it bothered him that another was so well loved?”

He expects her to frown, to show him the same gentle disappointment he’d come to expect from her these last few months, but--

“They did.” Her mouth curves, mischievous. “Perhaps you should take that as a warning, Prince Raj. It could take so little to displease me.”

She’s teasing; the humor lights her face like the sun does the dawn. But his heart sinks even still, hand tightening on her waist.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you did want to demand satisfaction,” he admits, sullen. “It was my duty to keep you safe, and I’ve done a terrible job of it.”

She laughs softly, like the babbling of a brook. “Prince Raj--”

“No, it’s true,” he insists. “What good is a prince who can’t even keep a woman from being kidnapped in his own castle? Name your second.” He winces. “I suppose it is Obi, and I have no chance at all.”

She shakes her head, mouth curved in a rueful smile. “You’re not the first to blame himself for my troubles, and it’s no more your fault that his. Besides, you aren’t Zen,” she reminds him, “you have only men at your disposal. And no man is a match for a vette.”

He bites his cheek. It had only taken him, the useless prince of Tanbarun, to chase her away from her place of power. Whatever the vette had been, they were it no longer.

That wasn’t a point to bring up on the dance floor, however.

“I’m glad you wore the dress,” he says instead, and this time when he spins her out, she comes back gracefully into his arms. “I was afraid you might not like it.”

“Ah, yes.” She blinks down at the gown, missing a step he quickly compensates for. “It is quite...revealing.”

“I thought it made a point.” His fingers twitch on the silk. “Though I must admit, I wasn’t quite sure where to hold you.”

Shirayuki laughs, bell-like and clear. “I’m just like anyone else.”

Raj glances at her from the corner of his eyes. “Far from it.” He coughs. “I’m glad to see that you’ve recovered from the last time I saw you.”

He nods at the buds that stud the line of her back, the moss growing lush along the edges of it. None of the brown lingered, nor the bare patches.

“Ah.” Her gaze tangles with his, his heart beating faster. “What withers only grows back stronger. I will bloom again.”

“Lady Shirayuki, when it does...” His heart pounds, words choking him with their earnestness. “I would like to see it.”

Her feet still entirely beneath her. “If you are asking me as a friend, Prince Raj...” Her mouth breaks into a wide smile. “The sure. Happily.”

[concussed-to-pieces]

Devotion

Fandom: WWE

Pairing: Drew McIntyre/Named OFC

Rating: Holy shit M.

AN: Heard through the grapevine that my boy Drew might have done the Lord’s work recently. In honor of that momentous occasion, I dusted off what was originally meant to be part of @hardcorewwetrash ’s Summer Writing Challenge (because, you see, I am a terrible person and never managed to get my act together for that, I KNOW YOU’RE SHOCKED). So now for Valentine’s Day you get old gods, boardroom meetings, wilderness excursions and past life reminiscing. Basically, my brand. 

Enjoy!

[!TRIGGER WARNING!: For mild ’breeding kink’, graphic violence and death. Stay safe!]

[!WARNING!: Rife with historical inaccuracies. This also may be considered religiously offensive, for which I apologize and advise you to proceed with caution.]

.........

The devotion was what caught his attention in the beginning.

Truly, the fact that he had solidified on 'he' in the first place spoke volumes. Take one of the faithful. Always prodding at him, making him toss his head in dismissive annoyance. Take one of the faithful. 

The incense was lit in the chapel for yet another vigil, another plea. He tasted iron when he appeared, the atmosphere thick and stifling with the whine of the fair-weather faithful hoping for their fortunes to improve. Godhood was barely above a burden and the Higher in the pantheon well knew his grievances. 

He was Actaeon, ruler of forests and wilderness, his domain stretching from proud mountain peaks to secret moors that man had yet to tread. It fell on him often to mediate in this modern age, where the incense was few and far and boardroom meetings broke untold hours. Greedy men overreached again and again, hand over fist in a mad dash to their own demise.

He had settled on the name Drew McIntyre, and through it all Drew sat. Certainly, he had traded the gilded pauldrons and breastplate for a razor sharp suit, but his story was lauded as a cautionary tale and little about him looked tamed despite that. His piercing blue eyes still glowed when his irritation reached a boiling point, his mouth set in a grim line that was about as hospitable as a kodiak's roar.

I will give you nothing, said those cold eyes, and it will be far more than you deserve. 

Hunter, the man who had once been known as Hades, was at the head of most conference tables. Always clad in some kind of glamour that hid his true form, flanked by his loyal Persephone Stephanie and Cerberus split into three bodies. 

Back and forth they went, Actaeon halting progress and Hades or Zeus or Dionysus or whoever demanding more from him. More land, more resources, more more more. Drew took sadistic pleasure in entangling the god-moguls and their flunkies in red tape, dangling fertile rainforests in front of their noses only to snatch them away due to easily-overlooked technicalities.

After the Fyre festival fiasco at least Dionysus (calling himself Dolph these past few centuries, who knew what the next would hold) was humbled, twiddling his thumbs and staying relatively quiet during meetings. Drew got the feeling that it boded ill though, since it meant that the reveler was actually listening. Possibly. Cerberus, or rather, the three men that Cerberus had become, always confiscated all cell phones before their meetings commenced, so Dolph (and anyone else for that matter) had no distractions.

Whenever Zeus was involved, the shouting matches kicked off quickly. At Hunter's behest he grudgingly went by the name Vince, though even after all the years he still sometimes failed to respond to it. He was not nearly as powerful as he once was, of course, no one believed like they used to, and he clung to the old ways while Hunter struggled to reason with him. All the eldest god wanted to do since he and Hera had become estranged was lift weights and watch professional wrestling; it was a miracle that he even made appearances anymore. 

…

The ruler of Hell always put Drew up at the same damn hotel chain every time he managed to drag the belligerent patron into their meetings. Hunter didn't lack devotion. His contract with old man Vince involved such incredibly far-flung stipulations that for all intents and purposes, every exchange of goods in human hands netted him some percentage of adoration. Hades operated by the philosophy that 'absolute power corrupts absolutely, but slightly less than absolute couldn't hurt, could it?' 

The chain of hotels was one of those oxymoronic minimalist-yet-decadent types, decorated sparsely with furniture that boasted too many sharp edges. Drew always felt uncomfortable and he was certain that was the intention. Hades was all about subtle threats. 

You're on my turf, wild god. Better remember that.

Drew was on a first-name basis with most of the concierge staff in every location he frequented, accepting his room key with a roll of his eyes and some tired comment about how he was back in town for business. 

Running into an animal not in the lobby was...unprecedented. 

He stared down at the cat. The cat stared back up at him, licking her chops while she lounged in the middle of the hallway. Her muzzle was speckled with the remains of whatever she had eaten last and Drew immediately extended a hand for inspection. 

He wasn't as well-respected amongst the more domestic animals and the cat took her sweet time meandering towards his fingers. Once she reached them though, she was all purrs and apologies. Lost, she hummed, her whiskers tickling his arm. Help me?

"Where's your keeper, little miss?" Drew asked in a gentle voice that most humans hadn't had the privilege of hearing. 

The cat offered him a look that was a shrug, shaking her body to jangle the tag on her harness pointedly. 

Drew chuckled, picking her up and cradling her in the crook of one arm. "We will do our best then, won't we?"

…

They didn't wait in the lobby for very long. Fifteen minutes maybe, Drew sprawled indolently in a chair that wasn't quite large enough for him. The cat purred away in his lap, happily kneading and getting white needle-like hairs all over his expensive suit pants. Not that Drew cared, he'd sooner rip the whole damn suit off and saunter back to the wilds where he belonged. 

Patience, Actaeon, he reminded himself with a heavy sigh. A few more days in this brimstone nightmare.

One of Aphrodite's own appeared before him looking attractively distraught and his breath hitched, sending the large man into an embarrassing coughing fit. The woman gestured at the cat in his lap and Drew hurried to stand, floundering with the slumbering feline. "Ah, I had no idea that-" He began, somewhat confused that she didn't seem to recognize him.

"Thank you so much for finding her!" The woman said fervently, grasping his hand.

Drew received no supernatural warmth from her touch, just mortal worship so heartfelt it hit him square in the chest. She wasn't one of Aphrodite's? How could someone so beautiful simply...exist? Surely, there must be some mistake. What was this feeling of deja vu that threatened to overwhelm him?

"She was no trouble." Drew assured, "Came right up to me when I got out of the elevator. I'm Drew, by the way. Drew McIntyre." He raised an eyebrow pointedly. 

No realization of his true identity seemed to be forthcoming, the vision in front of him introducing herself in turn as Lyssa. The name alone sent another jolt through him, much to his chagrin. Her smile was like the sun and Drew wondered if she was possibly one of Apollo's creations. Apollo had no real touch for beauty, though. Hephaestus? 

"Can I get you a drink or something? I'm only in town for a conference, so I'm a little booked as far as breakfast would go." She sounded self-conscious, fidgeting with the cat's fur instead of making eye contact. 

"How about dinner?" Drew asked, startling himself with the ease of his own suggestion. "Maybe tomorrow night, depending on when you fly out of here?"

He needed to talk to Aphrodite. Immediately. 

…

Alicia took one look at him and tried to shut the door in his face. Drew barely caught the edge with his hand, giving her a smile that bordered on a sneer. "You've improved your craft, love." His tone was half impressed, half dangerous. "Setting one of your beauties on me? One who doesn't even know who I am?"

"You've got some real nerve coming here at this hour." Aphrodite muttered, the flawless woman clutching at her silk bathrobe. 

"It is noon, woman."

"Never mind that, what the hell are you talking about?"

Drew shoved his phone in her face, startled when she immediately looked (of all things) jealous. "I'm talking about this one. She's got a cat. And she's been crafted by you."

"She's not one of mine. Hera above, I wish I could take credit for that." The goddess replied crossly. "As far as I can tell she's the real deal." Drew was speechless and Alicia seemed to realize, a smirk turning her mouth up at the edges. "You're infatuated, aren't you?"

"No." Drew said firmly. 

"Mm, you're really going to lie to me about matters of the heart?" Aphrodite crooned. "It's been millennia since your little incident with Artemis. Still sensitive? I would have thought you'd forget."

"I was torn apart by my own dogs. Sensitive doesn't begin to cover it." Drew fidgeted with his phone, closing out the Instagram page. "I dinnae what to do." He admitted.

"Take her out, knock her up, tell her the truth or don't, and welcome another litter of demigods into the human world." Alicia said in a deadpan tone. "You really are so boring sometimes. It's no wonder you're the one who always gets your memory stripped, you're practically mortal levels of boring."

"I…" Drew hesitated.

Aphrodite softened, her sharp contours glowing ever so slightly in the dim hallway lighting. "You deserve adoration just like the rest of us, Actaeon. I know you've basically appointed yourself as nature's protector and as such have decided to distance yourself from humanity's praise, but humans need gods like you. Ones who don't play games with them." She said gently.

"If I do this, she...Aphrodite, mortals are so…"

"I know, they are short-lived. It's better to take your happiness where you can find it though. Don't live a lie, Drew." Alicia tapped her fingers to her lips and then pressed the kiss to his cheek. "For luck and nothing more. I know you wouldn't want my help anyways." Her laughter was a merry sound, bright even in its falsehood. 

…

It's better to take your happiness where you can find it.

The goddess of love's words haunted Drew while he prepared for this little...appointment  with Lyssa. 

Don't live a lie.

Was that what he was doing by shutting everything out? The whole debacle with Artemis, while indeed millennia past, still turned his stomach. His own fine hunting dogs tearing him apart would never leave his long memory, regardless of how many times Zeus humbled him and cast him to Earth with no recollection of who he was. Was he hiding? Was he really so afraid that something like that would happen again? He had traded his mutts in with his pauldrons, but he still occasionally felt echoes of their presence. As though he could turn around at any second and see them all eagerly awaiting his orders.

Drew huffed at himself, squaring his shoulders while he retied his tie and struggled with his top button. He wondered vaguely whether it would still be so difficult if he had picked a more feminine-presenting form as opposed to masculine, though he liked the form he had settled upon. Perhaps a bit too much. The broadness of his shoulders could be a little...difficult to fit into the dress shirts he was made to wear, so the battle of buttons was a familiar one. But that same broadness emphasized his physique and catered to his not-insubstantial pride. He had lasted this long, and what was the point of even having a form if you weren't content with how it appeared?

His reflection studied him from the mirror, blue eyes clouded with rumination on his past. His neck strained at the highest button with every swallow and so finally Drew sighed and left the offending button undone, carefully slipping his tie out of his collar after a moment of thought. Better to seem casual than tightly-laced. 

…

"So, to business, if this is something you want to pursue." Lyssa folded her hands. "I'm not looking for anything serious at the moment. If you're married or romantically involved, I'm not interested. I can't afford to be pulled into a pissing match, not with my career at stake.  That clear enough?"

"Crystal." Drew chuckled, appreciating her plain speech. "Games like that don't yield fruitful results. I'd rather be trusted." 

"Well my cat trusted you, so that's a step in the right direction." She smiled at him and Drew nearly choked on his drink. "You already have my number and I have yours from the cat debacle. What's your schedule look like?"

"I am free this evening, if you have the time. When does your flight leave tomorrow?"

"It's an eleven o'clock. I'm already packed, so I guess tonight will work fine." Lyssa sounded for all the world like she was planning a meeting. 

"Come with me?" Drew requested, rising from the table and offering his arm. She took it without hesitation or shyness, strolling to the elevator with him. "I understand the anonymity of this setup may be what you find most appealing. Rest assured, you will hear no questions from me unless you wish them asked." Drew deliberately kept his tone light. 

"I appreciate that." 

His own rising apprehension aside, Drew did his best to relax. It would do him no good to display the tension he felt. It was better to keep this as businesslike as possible, for his own comfort as well as hers. If they continued on in this manner, maybe he would learn why he felt like she was so damned familiar.

...

It was always attached somehow. He had never really noticed it before Lyssa, but now it gnawed at him. He wondered whether this hunger was why Aphrodite had been so glib about him spawning a litter. Did she know? Did she put the fire there to begin with? 

He knew he was being irrational. Aphrodite couldn't come close to his control, time beyond time having passed since the carefree days of his youth. Actaeon had failed, but Drew McIntyre would not. This arrangement didn't have to sour with reproductive ruminations. It didn't have to, but…

There was no harm in fantasizing about it. The desire to take Lyssa's unwitting worship and make it something...real.

She had, of course, been very up front with him. She was on medication, he would use protection, it was all standard procedure as they were both responsible adults. There was a relatively low risk involved and honestly Drew wasn't particularly keen on raising a brood in the first place, just being involved in the creative process. The notion excited him much more than it should have: the idea of coupling with her, breeding even, until she was overflowing. Being a god, it was far from an impossible task. Drew wasn't ashamed to admit he could behave more like an animal than a man, this fallible flesh doing him in time and again. At least she could keep up with him when it came to sexual appetite.

She would text him occasionally even if they hadn't planned on meeting up. Hell, even if they weren't in the same state. Just little snippets or questions about his day, maybe a picture of her cat.  Drew found himself slipping into the habit of checking his phone regularly, coming to learn that she frequently went hiking when she wasn't involved in business. She claimed to love the woods more than anyone and the God of the Forests had to suppress a roaring laugh at her declaration.

Not even Zeus himself could have rid Drew of his grin when Lyssa casually mentioned that she wouldn't mind some company on her next camping trip. He had been having a terrible day, but that message lifted his spirits instantaneously. He pondered at that for a split second, somewhat confused. Since when had he become so attached?

"Is that a smile?" Dionysus queried from across the boardroom, his eyes wide over the Greek salad he had ordered for the lunch break. "It is! What happened to brighten you up, Doomsday?" Dolph practically bounced around the table to plant himself in the currently-unoccupied seat beside Drew, batting his eyelashes at the large man. "Aw c'mon, you were so chipper a second ago!" The blond whined.

"I have a migrating headache." Drew said dryly. "It comes and goes. Seems t' increase whenever you're around." 

The reveler's response was an ear-to-ear grin and he leaned forward to rest his chin in his hand. "Do tell." He purred. Roman (the largest portion of Cerberus) looked up curiously, as if he sensed the shift in the atmosphere of the room.

"No." Drew snapped, already inches from wringing Dionysus' neck. "Whatever I'm pleased about has nothing to do with ye an' yours. Dinnae try my patience." 

"Psh, ever since Artemis you've been so-" Dolph didn't even get to finish his sentence before Drew was towering over him. 

"Actaeon." Hades' glare was smouldering at the edges. "Not in the conference room. You know the rules."

"Easy now, boys." Vince chimed in, clapping his son in law on the shoulder. "We don't want anything getting out of hand, do we?" Outside, the clear sky rumbled threateningly. 

Hunter sighed in annoyance. "Old man, you know you can't do that shit anymore. It upsets their meteorologists."

"I am Zeus! Why the hell should I give a crap about their silly weather men?"

"Enough. And you, Actaeon-"

"Dionysus never takes me up on my offers." Drew's teeth were bared in an infuriated grin. To his right, Alicia clicked her tongue as if to voice her disapproval.

"Whoa, whoa! I'm more of a lover anyhow, you know that!" Dolph looked wildly uncomfortable, like he had just realized that maybe pissing off a person who stood head and shoulders above him was a bad idea. 

Actaeon exhaled hard, forcing himself to take a step back from the situation. "Later." He said finally, entertained by how Dolph's face paled beneath his fake tan. 

…

"I needed this more than words can express." Drew breathed, his hands carding through her hair in an oddly affectionate way. Well, oddly affectionate when he considered the position they were in. Lyssa's nose pressed to his pelvis, throat flexing around his cock, every swallow making Drew grunt or snarl. "You are too good at this." 

He knew he had to keep his voice down. They might have parked the rental a good distance away from other vehicles, but it would do them no good if a passerby noticed her face in his lap. Drew half-groaned at the idea of being interrupted, feeling her tongue bathing the base of his cock as best as she could. 

"I'm close Lys, can I…" He trailed off, gritting his teeth when she pulled off his cock and started stroking his shaft with her hand. She rested the engorged head of his dick on her tongue, maintaining eye contact as she did. Drew had to remove his hands from her hair, one gripping his thigh and the other clenched into a fist so tight his knuckles ached. "I'm coming, love, I-" He choked his words off as best as he could, trying to stay silent. 

Drew was not a particularly quiet individual, especially during lascivious activities. He liked to think it was part of his charm, the blunt and brazen honesty of his own failable flesh. Lyssa certainly seemed to appreciate it, if the way she squeezed his thigh while she swallowed down his release was any indication. 

He went boneless in the driver's seat, panting a little. She rested her cheek on his thigh, smiling up at him in a manner that was wholly self-satisfied. Drew chuckled, running his fingers through her hair one more time. "How is it possible to enjoy you as much as I do?"

"You're just easy to please." Lyssa teased, giving him a soft bite on the inside of his thigh before beginning to straighten herself out. 

Drew followed suit and then stepped out of the small car, stretching his arms overhead with a drawn out hum. A deep inhale filled his lungs with the fresh forest air and he sighed happily. Nothing better than that smell. 

Her forehead bumped between his shoulder blades and she stayed there for a good minute, her arms around his waist. Drew felt something stir in his body, satisfaction, contentment and he cleared his throat, resting his hands over her own on his stomach. "Thank ye for invitin' me. I promise it'll be worth it." He murmured. 

"Mm, I'll hold you to that." 

After collecting their backpacks from the trunk, the two of them set out down one of the many trails. Not that Drew particularly needed a trail, but he knew that bushwhacking on their first outing into his domain might set her on edge. 

He let her lead the way and they made quiet conversation as they hiked, Drew keeping an ear out all the while for any nearby beasts. She seemed entranced at the way the birds drew close to them, a hummingbird boldly zipping back and forth in front of her nose at one point. 

Drew laughed at the obvious plea for attention, extending a finger to the tiny creature. "Feisty today, aren't we?" He asked softly once it had landed. "You eat well enough with all the feeders around." 

The bird voiced its grievances with hummingbird feeders, much to Acaeteon's amusement. In the meantime his hiking companion shrugged out of her backpack and shuffled closer, her eyes fixated on the complaining bundle of feathers. "How did you do that?" She whispered.

Drew tilted his head. "They come to me." He replied nonchalantly. "This one wants me to grow him more red flowers. I am no miracle worker, little one."

"Oh sure, yeah. He's talking to you. I'll bet." Lyssa gave him a smirk. 

"How else do you think I got your cat back to you so simply?" Drew asked, raising an eyebrow. "She is a headstrong beast."

"Well so am I, but here we are."

"True enough." Drew shooed the bird off and sidled up to embrace her from behind. A teasing finger toyed with the fabric of her t-shirt across her chest, making her laugh quietly and tap his hand away. "Not nearly stubborn enough to resist me." Drew continued, his voice low and gravelly while he pressed close and palmed her breasts. 

Lyssa gasped, her eyes darting back and forth as if worried that someone might see them in this predicament. "Drew-" Her indignant hiss of his name tapered off into something a little less stern than she probably would have liked. Her nipples woke under his circling assault, pressing hard against Drew's questing thumbs.

"What's wrong, Lys? You've gone quiet." Drew whispered raggedly, "Did you see something? A beasty, come to devour you whole?" His left hand slunk past the waistband of her hiking shorts, questing blindly downward for what he sought.

"You're not being fair, you got off in the car." Lyssa protested, her voice cracking slightly. "Don't tease me, Drew-"

"I'm no tease Lys, I intend t' deliver on any threats I make." Acaeteon mouthed at her ear and reveled in the way that she went pliant against his body. Her worship was sweeter than all the praise of humanity, her trust in him explicit and heady. "With just my fingers, lovin'? The first of many, we'll say." Drew promised.

"I'd love to see you try."

Drew's strong fingers tweaked one of her nipples at the same time that his other hand found sanctuary in her underwear. "Naughty girl." Lyssa sighed and writhed back into him, blissfully ignoring that they were still very much out in the open. "I love how quickly you change your tune when you want somethin'." Drew chuckled, fingers stroking and then spreading her slick folds open. 

When Acaeteon took on a task he deemed important, he poured himself into it wholeheartedly. Not many things outside of his interactions with Lyssa really warranted that level of commitment. 

"Lys." He breathed while she choked on her breath and shuddered through an orgasm. "You are not making this easy on me."

"I asked you to come with me for a reason, Drew." She panted when she could talk again, whimpering quietly after he withdrew his fingers and licked them clean.

Drew kissed her fiercely, tongue licking into her mouth to give her a taste of herself. "And what reason might that be?" He asked once they had parted again.

Lyssa stared up at him in a daze for a good few seconds before snapping out of it. "What? Oh! Oh God. Um, later. I'll tell you later. Look, we still have a long way to go!" She floundered, struggling to get back into her pack. Drew rolled his eyes but remained silent, choosing instead to help her put herself to rights and buckle her straps.

...

The campsite she had picked was conspicuously secluded, which Drew made a mental note of. Lyssa seemed excessively nervous for someone that Drew had already been intimate with, the young woman getting their tent poles mixed up several times despite her familiarity with said tent. 

"You seem tense, Lys." Drew teased once she had finally gotten everything squared away. "I hope I didn't wind you up too much."

"Drew, I…" Lyssa trailed off, sighing. "I want to ask you for something. And I'm sorry if you think it's weird or...like, if I make you uncomfortable. I promise I would never want to make you uncomfortable."

Drew raised an eyebrow. This sounded more serious than he had anticipated. "Speak your mind, love. Whatever it is, I'm sure I can handle it."

Lyssa looked so pensive that Drew was legitimately concerned, the smaller woman taking her time to settle into a chair beside the fire pit. They hadn't lit the fire yet as the summer weather was warm even in the evenings, but Drew had made certain to find a small amount of dry firewood for safety's sake. "This is super dumb and if you want we can just forget it." She announced firmly. 

Drew couldn't help but laugh, doing his best to mask the anxiety gnawing at his gut. "I think I'll be the judge of that, love. What's this turrible question of yours?"

"I kind of...I mean I've...look." She exhaled and glared up at him with a strange ferocity. Drew's pulse quickened at the intensity of her eyes. He felt like he was being appraised, but also, strangely, like he had done this all before. "I've got this...thing that I like."

"Ye. Bit difficult t' miss, love." Drew grinned and she buried her face in her hands, groaning loudly until he apologized and promised not to make any more jokes about his thing she liked. 

"This is hard to talk about so please, just let me talk." Lyssa said sternly. "This isn't something I've told anyone else and I've never acted on my...urges...before." 

Urges. Actaeon's mind raced. Mortals had very few urges that they catered to, what on earth could she be talking about?

"I've always had this...kind of...thing for. Um. Someone having multiple orgasms. I-In me." Lyssa had actually closed her eyes to say it, her knuckles white with the grip she had on her trekking pole. "Like sloppy, barebacking I guess? Breeding? I dunno. I've seen some stuff and I feel like I'd want to try it out, but I've never met anyone that I trusted like that u-until you of course and I really didn't want to get gangbanged so like it's really cool that you can do multiples, your stamina is insane-" 

She carried on rambling as what she said rang in his ears. Breeding. Drew was upright before he realized, stalking across their campsite with a certain, single-minded intent. "Lys." He said hoarsely, kneeling in between her legs. She kept her eyes closed, like she could ignore him somehow. Her face was all red and Drew wanted to laugh, to ease her worries and make light of this, but he couldn't find the ability. "I will do whatever you need me to, lovin'." He murmured. "If it's breedin' you want, it's breedin' you'll get."

Lyssa peeked at him. "What, seriously? J-Just like that? You don't think I'm fucked up for wanting something so weird?" Her faith in him was like warm sunlight after winter. 

"I wish ye'd told me sooner, truthfully." Drew admitted, "could have saved a bit of trouble for the both of us." He took her hand and kissed her knuckles. "How much preparin' do you want?"

"Pre...Preparing?" 

"Ye. Do y' want to eat? It'll be a long night. "

"I-I mean we already ate lunch--" 

"That we did." She was adorably flustered about this whole thing. "What will you say when you want me to stop, love?"

"I'll say...um, I'll say." Lyssa glanced around. "Tent?" She suggested.

"It has to be somethin' you'll remember. If you'll remember that an' use it, absolutely." Lyssa nodded jerkily and Drew exhaled hard, rising to stand once more. "Alright." He muttered, stripping off his shirt. "Up."

"Up?" Lyssa squeaked.

"Ye." Drew lifted her from the chair, her legs instinctively wrapping around his hips. The large man buried his face in her neck, littering the sensitive skin with kisses and chuckling as Lyssa squirmed in his arms. Her little gasps spurred him on and he fought with the drawstring of her shorts, settling for lacing his fingers at the small of her back to support her while she struggled to undo them herself. 

"Drew, you gotta' put me down-" Lyssa began. 

"This is takin' too long." Drew interrupted, itching to rip the shorts clean off. He sulkily dropped into a crouch, letting her stand so she could actually slide the shorts off and save them from the terrible fate he had planned. "Underwear too, come on."

"So impatient! Guess I should be happy I'm not the only weirdo around." Lyssa teased breathlessly, obliging him with the underwear.

"Bra. Unless you want it ripped."

"Don't you dare."

"I will. Get it gone, love."

Lyssa grumbled, "fine, but I'm leaving my shirt on. Last thing I need is someone coming across us totally naked."

Drew was relatively certain that he was sliding into an Old God headspace, his mind running wild with the idea of reveling naked in public like Dionysus. In the meantime, Lyssa put her hands on a nearby tree trunk and just looked back at him as if to ask what he was waiting for. Drew growled a little louder than he meant to, the telltale sheen of slick on her inner thighs more than enough to stir his blood. 

"I will fill you until I'm empty." The wild god assured softly, fingers dragging through her hair. "Until I am entirely spent. Over and over until your hunger is satisfied."

"You sure do make a lot of nice promises." She replied faintly, arching her back. 

"I'm going to breed you, love." He warned. 

"I certainly hope so?"

"Excellen'." Drew unzipped his jeans and freed his cock, loving the way she shivered. "To business. You remember what ye say if y' need me to stop?"

"Y-Yeah, yeah, tent." Lyssa nodded.

"Very good." Drew slid his cock along her entrance, the heat of her taking his breath away. She was already soaked, ready for him, and he permitted himself a momentary loss of self control. Drew kicked her legs a little further apart, roughly shoved his hands up underneath her shirt to cup her breasts, and then sheathed himself in one steady motion.

Lyssa panted out his name as he started to move, the wild god feeling her worship wash over him. It had never been like this before. There was always the catch, the desire to be granted something in exchange for their meager adoration. But here, now, in the sanctuary of the wilderness, Lyssa gave freely of herself to him out of sheer faith that he would be able to fulfill her.

It was intoxicating, heady and rich like his first breath of mountain air atop Sgùrr Alasdair. Drew inhaled sharply and proceeded with his task. He had promised to breed her, and so he would. 

"Lys," he murmured as he sank onto his haunches and took her with him, settling her into his lap more firmly. "I will need you as close to me as possible, love. Don't want to waste a drop."

Lyssa barely managed another nod as his hand wrapped around her throat to hold her steady, her own hands grasping hungrily at his still-clothed thighs. Drew rocked his hips up against her, jolting her entire body with every thrust. His other hand yanked her shirt up over her breasts, baring her to the world. He was enjoying this, he realized dimly, this salacious act stoking something long dead in him back to life. 

His first orgasm struck at the same moment as hers, Actaeon grinning fiercely at the way she arched and crooned to him. But he ached for more. She had asked to be bred and Drew would oblige.

"I want you to grind against me until I paint your insides again." Drew snarled, his shoulders taut. "We will sire demigods, lovely and terrible as the sun."

"You say such nice things it's not even fair-" Lyssa protested, making him laugh breathlessly. His release trickled down his shaft, further slicking her needy body. Lyssa's moaning rang in his ears and Drew bit down softly on her shoulder, laving the spot with his tongue afterwards. 

He would give her exactly what she had asked for. Until he was spent. Until he gave out. In the face of such freely-given worship, what else could he offer?

...

The dream bled in slowly, firelight the first thing she noticed...

"Lady Lyssa?" The voice of Sir Drew roused Lyssa from her musings and she looked up from the fire. The large knight was studying her, his curiosity bordering on impertinence. "Pardon me, Lady Lyssa, but yer hem is smoking."

Lyssa squeaked and frantically floundered back a pace from the small fire. Digging her fingers into the dirt beside her, she smudged out the lazily-smoldering lace on her skirt's hemline. "Thank you, Sir Drew." She sighed sadly, holding the now-ruined lace up to the light of the fire. "Just one more thing I've lost, I suppose."

Drew bowed. "I am n' longer a knight in your father's employ, m'lady. I have nae such title." His rich brogue washed over her, giving her the peculiar feeling of being warmed from the inside out. 

"You're leagues more of a knight than that scum my father was willing to sell me off to." Lyssa huffed in aggravation, hugging herself for warmth. "You're still Sir Drew to me."

"Your kindness is, as always, a beacon of light in dark times." 

"I'm not being kind, I'm being honest." She muttered. 

Drew fidgeted with the penannular brooch on his shoulder, sliding the ring to loose the needle and unwrap the thick folds of his tartan. In a few moments, the heavy woolen garment was draped over Lyssa like a shawl. "There's no need for you to be close 'noigh to the fire that y' hem is burnin'." He said gruffly, now clad more plainly in his armor alone. "I can't have you catchin' your death."

Lyssa buried her nose in the tartan, the durable fabric worn soft in patches from years of use. "Thank you, Sir Drew."

"I am sworn to keep y' safe to the best of my ability, Lady Lyssa." He puttered around the fire, snapping a few branches over his knee to feed the small blaze. "The chill from the moors can get into a man's bones. God-fearing country it might be, but I wager that there may be older gods roamin' these lands at night." Drew mused quietly, almost as if he was talking to himself.

Lyssa pursed her lips and clutched the tartan a little tighter. 

Drew seemed to notice her discomfort, turning to offer her a quick grin. "Afeared of the dark, m'lady?" 

"Not of the dark, but what's in it. And you saying unsettling things like that is hardly helping." 

"You've naught to worry about while I'm here, Lady Lyssa. I'm much more fearsome than whatever ye could think up." The knight assured her, his eyes unnaturally blue even in the golden light of the fire. 

Far off, a wild creature howled. Lyssa tried not to jump, she really did, but there was no hiding her flinch.

"It's just a wolf, Lady Lyssa. They'll stay away from the fire." Drew soothed, one large gauntlet hovering above her shoulder. She found herself wishing that just once, the knight would drop his polished veneer and hold her.

"I'm sorry, Sir Drew. It has been...these are trying times. I don't mean to be so fragile." Lyssa mumbled, shame catching her words in her throat.

"It is nae easy feat t' leave hearth and home behind. There is no need t' apologize." Drew assured her. "I only hope we can get y' safely t' the coast."

"I have no doubt of that with you at my side, Sir Drew." 

"I must confess, I am a bit concerned about what y' father and betrothed will do to me once yer safely away, m'lady." Drew placed his hand over his heart. "But my own fears are naught in the face of yer peril, and so they will be laid to rest in as timely a manner as I can manage when yer safe." 

"Drew, do not say such terrible things!" Lyssa protested. "As if you would not be accompanying me!"

"Yer father took me in when I was but a lost stripling wanderin' the moors, Lady Lyssa. He gave me a purpose, a goal. I cannae easily forget that." Drew murmured. "Not even for you."

Dismay gripped Lyssa's throat like an iron claw. "Surely after all these years of faithful service, you've earned a moment of selfishness?" She felt at that moment as if she would have made a deal with the Devil himself to keep her devoted knight by her side.

"Aye, true enough that might be." The blue-eyed man allowed, a rueful smile touching his mouth. "But one often leads to another, as the sayin' goes. I'm loathe t' leave ye all the same."

"Is what I want not part of your plans either, Drew?"

"Lady-"

"It's bad enough to be treated as if I am being unreasonable for not wishing to be auctioned off with the summer home as an attractive virginal decor piece, but to have you spouting such ridiculous platitudes is-!" Lyssa sputtered furiously, her words failing her in her rage. Drew merely sat there in silence while she stomped her feet. "It's outrageous to assume that I could get far on my own. I've barely ventured off the estate since my father acquired his lairdship."

"Are y' sayin' ye would go willingly to that mon, trot yerself off t' market?" Drew challenged, "If I wasnae here, ye'd lay down for some elderly laird to further yer sire's plans?"

"Never." Lyssa barely suppressed a horrified shudder at the notion of sharing her wedding bed with the repulsive man her father had chosen for her. Drew's blunt, honest way of speaking had her all flushed in the face. "I don't know what I would have done. Perhaps I would have died." 

An ugly oath left Drew's lips at her flippant words, the large man muttering an apology for his rough language. "'Fraid I'm showin' my hand a bit, Lady Lyssa. Y' shouldnae say such turrible things." 

"Would you miss me, Sir Drew?" She teased, the laughter leaving her tone when she saw the way he was looking at her. 

"Like the moon misses the moors, Lady Lyssa." Drew had never been one to use flowery terms, so this unexpected foray into almost poetic territory left her a bit breathless. 

Lyssa clutched the tartan, his tartan, even closer. "It is rude to jest so, Sir Drew."

"I am not a jesting mon, Lady Lyssa." Drew's eyes had softened. Normally they were sharp and calculating; the knight took his duties very seriously and it was rare to see him at ease. Not that he was particularly lax at this moment. His sword was still belted to his hip, though he had left his claymore on the ground beside the fire.

"I know. I am grateful for that, Sir Drew." 

He leaned in closer, improperly close, and yet she felt no need to scold him. He often wore his long brown hair braided while he rode to keep it from impeding his vision, but a few enchanting strands had managed to work themselves free during their hurried flight from her father's estate. They gave him an air of dangerous sensuality, the unfamiliar sight of him even slightly unkempt enough to send Lyssa's imagination running wild. 

"I would miss you more than I can articulate." Drew sounded sincere, his voice dipping slightly. "The idea of...the idea of you sufferin' under someone y' do not love and didnae even choose, it is." He paused, obviously searching for the right word. "Intolerable." His burr rolled the word thick, sending an indulgent shiver down Lyssa's spine. "I am naught but a lowly mon who's broken his vows of service t' yer household, Lady Lyssa. But I swear on my life that you shall be free as a bird from this," He gestured vaguely, "nightmare y' been trapped in."

Lyssa rested against his shoulder, the firm press of his armor cool on her burning cheek. "Sir Drew, you are no longer in service to my father. You agree, yes?"

"Aye. Much as it pains me, I've betrayed my master." Drew sighed. 

"And I am fleeing from my title, my lands, everything I once held dear, yes?" Lyssa's grip on the plaid whitened her knuckles. Drew's reply was a slow nod, the knight's brow furrowed in confusion. "I would very much like to do something then. As one soul to another, without the concerns of titles or birthrights getting in the way." Quickly, Lyssa leaned upwards and pressed her lips to his slack mouth. 

Drew started, grabbing her arm to prevent her from retreating after her unwisely bold choice. Lyssa was certain her cheeks were even rosier than before, squirming under the intensity of the look he was giving her. "Y' can flee from yer title an' lands, but I willnae let ye flee from me." Drew murmured finally, cupping her face. "Why would ye torment me so, Lady Lyssa?"

"Just Lyssa, my dear Drew." Lyssa took a deep breath, "I can think of no other way to convince you to stay with me. I have no dowry now, no land, no-" Drew kissed her roughly, the fondness in his expression when he pulled back catching Lyssa even more off guard than the kiss. "Drew, I…" She swallowed hard, nerves twisting her words into a tight little ball. 

"The kiss wasnae t' yer likin'?"

"No! No no, the kiss was perfect. I'm all out of sorts." Lyssa confessed, "I had not realized that you, er, reciprocated my feelings. That should make what I'm about to ask of you a little simpler, but…oh dear, I had not thought out how I would do this."

"I will do my best t' aid ye however y' need, my lovely Lyssa." Drew replied firmly.

"I'm certain you will, and from what I've heard this is not a particularly unpleasant task. F-For someone like you, anyway!" Lyssa felt like she was drowning. "Drew, I would implore you to grant me this one request. I will never ask for another thing as long as I live."

"Speak your mind, Lyssa. Whatever this request is, I'm certain I can fulfill it." 

"I need you to deflower me." Lyssa blurted out in a rush, then buried her burning face in the tartan spread across her lap. "If that...issue is removed, I'll be of no real use to my father and he may let us continue in peace." She soldiered on, her words muffled by the fabric. 

Drew made a sound in his throat that was distinctly foreign. "I...dinnae think I heard ye right. Did you say-"

"Oh, don't make me say it again!" Lyssa begged, thoroughly humiliated. "This is all so embarrassing, Drew, please-" 

The tartan was tugged from her unwilling grasp, Drew's heavy gauntlets somehow deft enough to fold the sturdy fabric. "Many's the night I thought of such things, Lys. 'Tis nae shame in it." He assured her, a teasing smile on his mouth. 

"Maybe not for you." Lyssa retorted. One of the aforementioned heavy gauntlets tucked beneath her chin, tugging her eyes up to meet his own. 

"I am deadly serious, Lyssa."

"Yes, well, so am I." The young woman huffed, feeling thoroughly foolish and exposed without the warm drape of his plaid to shield her. 

"I hate that y' come to me with this request out of necessity. I had hoped…" Drew trailed off, shaking his head. "I suppose it doesnae matter now. I will serve ye in this manner as well, my love."

"Love? Drew, this i-is a matter of...you don't have to--I assure you I don't need to be coddled-"

"Hush, Lys. I want to." He murmured. 

His enthusiasm was evident in the way that he swept her up into his arms and carried her to their humble shelter, in the way that he didn't seem able to stop kissing her. The large man appeared to get himself out of his armor by swearing alone, his mumbled apologies doing wonders for Lyssa's nerves as he fought with the various buckles and latches. 

She couldn't help but get caught up in it all, hungry for the new sensations he graced her with after he abandoned removing his greaves in favor of other activities. Drew was, of course, miles more experienced than her, his rough touch equal parts soothing and maddening.

Lyssa had been warned about the pain by well-meaning housemaids, unable to keep from cringing when Drew finally settled in between her legs. "I...Drew, please just…" She struggled to get the words out, making him pause.

"Shall I stop, Lys?"

"No, no. I have to do it. I just know it will hurt." 

"You could lie to yer father, if ye are truly afeared of this. I willnae do anythin' without y' wishes." Drew assured her, smoothing her hair away from her face. "I won't tell a soul about what has already happened."

"We must do it." She insisted, frowning fiercely. Her hands clenched into fists on the sheepskin beneath her. "I am prepared, Sir Drew."

"I would give my damned life to have our first time together be out of newlywed affection, Lys. It wounds me than I cannae give y' any better than this." Drew sounded distraught about the whole thing, and that was enough to get Lyssa's undivided attention. 

"You...want to marry me?" She asked softly.

"Christ woman, I don't know how much more plain I can be." Drew shook his head, smiling sadly. "I would marry ye in a heartbeat. Tis' bittersweet, this act, stealin' away what I would have wanted y' to give to me willingly."

Lyssa sought a kiss which Drew gladly delivered, the young woman whimpering into his mouth. "I will be brave for you, Sir Drew." She gasped, wrapping her arms around his neck. "I leave myself in your care."

Drew returned her embrace, sliding one hand beneath her body to cradle her against his chest. Lyssa felt him prodding at her entrance and she turned her head away, too scared to watch. He was patient though, gently coaxing her to ease into the motion of it so that when he did finally breach her, it was as if he was coming home. "Gods, Lyssa." He choked, shifting his hips to settle himself. 

Lyssa felt hot all over her body, the pain melting into pleasure that seared her core and left her panting for breath. She was wet enough that her slick ran down her thighs, coating Drew's groin with her arousal. The knight groaned. "Is it alright?" Lyssa asked shyly, her fingers toying with the hair at the nape of his neck. In reply, Drew exhaled an oath and she felt him tense.

"Perfection, Lys. You are Gods-given perfection." He said hoarsely.

The distant sound of an approaching horse was what roused the two from their post-coital drowse. Lyssa was unsure if she had truly been sleeping, or simply lazing beside the large man. The contentment leaked away, leaving her cold and wishing wistfully for more time. 

She rolled onto her stomach, stretching. Drew kissed her forehead and then draped his tartan around himself, securing it with his brooch at the shoulder. He had never actually removed his greaves; they rattled slightly when he stood. "Stay here, my love." His smile was tight.

The instant he left the tent Lyssa was hurrying to redress herself. A terrible feeling came over her, almost as if she was having a premonition. Fear and despair waged war in her heart while the galloping hoofbeats grew ever closer. 

"Ho there, Drew of McIntyre!" 

Lyssa squeezed her eyes shut in dismay. That voice belonged to the son of the laird she had been promised to. The flaxen-haired man was not an overly intelligent individual, as made abundantly evident by his lonely arrival. 

"Greetings to ye, Dolph." Lyssa was immensely jealous of how calm Drew sounded; why had she not insisted that he gird himself properly in all of his armor? "What brings ye to my humble hamlet?"

"You can drop the act, you shameless Scot." Dolph announced pompously. "The very notion that you thought you could get away with this-"

"I'm afraid I've no idea what yer on about, Dolph." 

"My father's betrothed! The audacity of you, stealing the poor girl away in the night like you're a damned highwayman." Lyssa lifted up the rear of the tent and slunk out, risking a peek around the corner. Dolph had dismounted to thump a finger into the center of Drew's broad chest, the blond looking disheveled and annoyed. "You must return her at once, or I'll-"

"Aye? You'll what." Drew growled. 

Dolph squinted suspiciously up at the taller man. "Drew, I see no reason for you to be so heinously uncooperative. Unless…" The blond trailed off. "Oh. Oh ho, McIntyre! It's to be like that, is it?!" He yelled, his hand flying to the guard of his rapier. "Your crimes will be punished tenfold, baseborn, if you do not produce Lady Lyssa!"

"Ye would attack an unarmed mon, Dolph? I knew ye were a coward, but this is a bit too rich for me." 

"Pick up your blade then, you cur!"

Lyssa inched backwards to the small copse of birch trees where their horses had been secured, her hands shaking nearly too hard to untie her mount. The gentle mare nudged her sleepily, nosing at her dress' pockets for a treat. Lyssa pressed her forehead to the animal's side, inhaling deeply in an attempt to calm her frantic heartbeat. It will be fine.

The ringing of steel on steel and a scream of outrage from Dolph shattered her attempt, the young woman wheeling to face the campsite. 

Drew and Dolph were trading blows beside the fire, their swords gleaming in the hellish light. "Drew!" Lyssa cried before she could think better of it, covering her mouth a second too late. 

The larger man glanced towards her, distracted, and Dolph seized the opening. The blade of his sword pierced the unarmored man's chest and stabbed deep. The two men froze, Drew staring at Lyssa and Dolph staring at his sword as though he couldn't believe what he had just done. 

"I…" Dolph began warily, jerking his rapier free and taking a step back. The blade was brilliantly red. Drew collapsed to his knees, dropping his own sword to press the folds of his now-ruined plaid against the mortal wound. Dolph's face hardened and he readied his blade once more.

Lyssa bolted forward at the blond man, not entirely certain what she was about to do. She had no weapons of her own. All she had was her body. "No!" She screamed, flinging herself between Dolph's sword and Drew's hunched form.

The pain was real, tangible, no dream. It stole the very breath from her chest. Yet she clung to Drew even as Dolph's blade slid home between her ribs.

"Lady Lyssa…" Drew whispered, a shaking hand coming up to tenderly cup her face and wipe away her tears. "Dinnae fret, my love. We will meet again." His other hand grasped in the disturbed dirt around the dying campfire, landing on the pommel of his faithful claymore. "I swear it."

He gripped her tightly and with a roar of exertion, he swung the large blade one-handed. All Lyssa could recall was his eyes, fearsome and brilliant in the dark of death that enveloped her. 

God-fearing country it might be, but I wager that there may be older gods roaming these lands at night...

…

Lyssa jerked awake, uncertain of her surroundings. For one terrifying moment her dream seemed like reality, the tent overhead the tent that she and her knight had-

"Drew?" She called, fumbling out of her sleeping bag. "Drew?" He wasn't in the tent beside her. Lyssa rushed to pull on her socks and boots, half-frantic now. 

She poked her head out of the tent, squinting in the pastel blue light of dawn. The forest was lively around the tent, birds having their morning chatter. Drew's boots were missing from the shelter, as well as his towel and grooming kit. Perhaps…

Lyssa struggled upright, flushing a little at how difficult it was to just move. Delicious memories warmed her from the inside out, stirring her blood. She felt almost guilty, giddy and still panicky at Drew's absence. 

It turned out she hadn't needed to worry. Drew was perched on a smooth rock beside the river, tiny travel mirror in one hand while he carefully shaved. A small turtle had taken up residence on the rock as well, basking comfortably in the first warm rays of sunlight. 

"...and I said that of course, of course I'm goin' to have an issue with him litterin', it draws the bears in. And do ye know what that fuck said t' me?" Drew paused, like he was waiting for a response. "Nae, he said 'why should I care, I'm here for a day hike and bears only come out at night'. Truly, the mon wanted to die." The large man sighed, another sure stroke of the razor ridding his neck of stubble. "So then-" 

"You two enjoying your conversation?" Lyssa teased, deja vu striking her hard when Drew turned to give her a quick smile. It was as if she had done this all before, but how could that even be possible?

"Ah, I see I'll have to work harder next time. Ye can still walk!" Drew jibed, making her blush hard.

"I had the weirdest dream, then I woke up and you weren't there."

"Oh? Do tell, love. I'm not quite done here anyway."

Lyssa settled onto the riverbank alongside the rock, pulling off her boots and dipping her feet into the chilly water. She didn't speak for several minutes, just listening to the river and the quiet scrape of Drew's razor on his throat. "I dreamed that we were in Scotland."

The razor noise stopped abruptly. 

"Old Scotland, though, not like modern day. You were a knight and I was some sort of nobility. I guess...I think I'd been promised to an older guy? Like an older guy wanted to marry me and you were helping me run away because I didn't want to marry him." Lyssa hugged herself, pointedly staring down at the water in an attempt to avoid the look she was sure Drew was giving her. "It was so real, less like a dream and more like a memory. I could feel it, how scared and uncertain I was, as though I had really gone through that experience."

"You dreamed of Scotland?" Drew's chuckle sounded strange, forced. "Dinnae realize I had that effect on folk."

"I don't think I've ever even seen a picture of Scotland, but somehow I know that's where it was. I'd bet on it, I'm that sure." Lyssa insisted, still staring at the water.

The large man cleared his throat after a minute and moved to splash some water onto his face. Lyssa noticed that he had nicked himself while shaving, the blood blotting his neck. Drew didn't seem particularly concerned about it though, scrubbing roughly at his face to rid himself of any leftover residue. "In your dream, was I still Drew?" The question was posed casually, like he was asking whether she had seen his keys or phone.

Lyssa smiled, feeling oddly wistful. "You were, one hundred percent."

Drew's shoulders relaxed slightly, the planes of his back becoming less pronounced. "Good."

…

McIntyre.

Lyssa's heart sank at the list of pages that came up just by searching that one name. Motto Per Ardua, dominion over Glencoe, Hebrides, a clan that kept to itself for a majority of history...maybe she would have better luck researching their tartan. Something to confirm her suspicions.

However, the very first image had her staring wide-eyed at the screen. There it was, plain as day, a background of forest green and navy shot through with bands of red and white. She remembered the rough and worn patches of it, the way the white bands were more prone to snags than the red. How could she have known that was their plaid?

She reached for her phone, but then paused. Drew had been strangely standoffish since they had returned from their camping trip, still eager to engage sexually but not so much in conversation. If anything, it was almost as if he was sexually frustrated. Lyssa felt weird about the whole scenario, flattered by the attention but unable to forget that incredibly realistic dream…

Speak of the devil, her phone vibrated. 

-I know this is tactless of me, but there's rumors of a spot opening up at HHH. Still looking to jump ship from your current endeavor?

Lyssa laughed aloud, picking up her phone and typing out a reply.

-Gods you're mean. I miss you too.

-im serious Lys.

She raised an eyebrow at the missed capitalization. Normally Drew was fastidious about his texting. 

-I think you'd do well in this position. When can I see you again?

-Why? Is it because you liiiiiiiiike me? Do you miiiiiiiiss me?

-I thought THAT was fucking obvious.

…

"Dolph!" Drew roared, his hands around the reveler's neck before he had finished saying his name.

Dolph squawked, eyes bulging slightly. "What?! What did I do?"

"You killed her, that's what you did!" Drew snarled. "Ye miserable, low-lyin' scum!" His blood was boiling, brogue tar-thick in his mouth. He was certain he must sound like a raving lunatic.

"Drew, please." Alicia said quietly, touching his shoulder. "I didn't explain things so you could fly off the handle-"

"Trust me, love, this ent flyin' off the handle." The large man seethed, "you prick. You prick!" 

"I'm still very confused-" Dionysus managed to say.

"Actaeon, he wouldn't remember either. Both of you had been tossed for some crap you pulled. You were just acting out your mortal roles, it's no one's fault."

"He's about to shuffle me off the mortal coil-!" The blond squeaked, thrashing in Drew's iron grasp. "Aphrodite do something!"

"What the hell are you idiots doing?" Hunter asked incredulously as he emerged from his office. "Can you two stop fucking with each other for five minutes?" 

"I am about to make an opening in this company's ranks. We could use a new social media director." Drew replied curtly, as though he wasn't choking the current social media director to death.

"Not like that, you're not!" Hades snapped. "We have interviews, paperwork. That kind of shit. We play by their rules, Wild God, otherwise we get pantheon gaps and that crap ends well for no one."

"I resign--!" Dolph gasped, waving his hands in the air. 

At those words, Drew slacked his hold slightly. "Swear it on yer soul." He demanded. 

"Yes, absolutely, whatever you want." The blond wheezed. "I'll fill out the forms Hunter, I don't care, just get me the hell away from him!"

Hades sighed, rubbing his temples. "Dare I ask who you have in mind for the position, Actaeon?"

Drew's grin in reply was slow to come, his dimples displayed prominently for a brief moment. "Oh, ne'er ye worry. You'll meet her soon enough."

…

“You've got some explaining to do, McIntyre.” Lyssa said firmly, her hands on her hips. Her cat undermined her authority thoroughly by winding around Drew's ankles, purring loudly. “Why am I having Renaissance faire dreams, accurate ones?” Your family plaid, the moors... She bit her tongue and waited impatiently for his answer.

“Would that I could explain, Lys.” Drew looked pained, “I doubt that ye would even accept the explanation if I gave it.”

“If I'm going to be working at the same company as you-”

“Ah, ye. See, I'm not the only one there with a little...oddness about them, love. I'd warn ye not to pry, but I know that's a damn lost cause.” Drew rested his hands on her shoulders, blue eyes searching her own. “All I ask is that ye are careful. Old...older...er, people work with us.”

“Just like the old gods that wandered the moors at night?” Lyssa challenged. Drew closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose in an exasperated gesture. “How long are you planning on lying to me, McIntyre?”

“Christ woman, I'm not lookin' to get ye killed again!” Drew snapped, then swore under his breath. “Look.” He finally said fiercely, “You died in my arms once. You gave me everythin' you had, down to lettin' me thieve yer fuckin' innocence away on a filthy sheepskin. I was supposed to keep you safe. Instead, we bled out together, 'twined in plaid and cinders.” Drew pressed his forehead to hers. “I can't do that again. Please...don't make me.” He begged, his voice cracking.

Lyssa sighed, folding her arms but not pulling away. “Am I going to regret taking this position, Drew?” When he hesitated, she puffed out a breath. “Okay, fine. At least answer this: are you planning on telling me what's going on?”

“Gods, Lys, you have no idea how much I want to.”

She patted his elbow, then pulled away. “Great! I'll make us some tea and start to fill out that transfer paperwork. In the meantime, you can get started with that explanation you owe me.”

“Now wait a minute,” Drew began to protest, catching her hand before she left the living room. “Lys, ye know I cannae-”

Lyssa tapped his nose, barely stifling her laugh at how his eyes crossed momentarily to track her finger. “You can, and more importantly, you will.” She gave him a peck on his slack mouth and then slipped free of his hold to head for the kitchen. “Love you!” She sang.

...

After she left the room, Drew touched his lips, the dark-haired man still a little bewildered at the abrupt turn the day's events had taken. “I...I love ye too, Lys.” He said softly, probably too softly for her to hear.

It was better that way. Less complicated. Yet as she pored over the forms he had brought and attempted to pry scraps of information from him, Drew couldn't help but feel at peace. Brittle, fragile, intoxicating in its novelty, her trust in him stole his breath and her questions kept coming.

He would tell her the truth in its entirety someday. For now, however, he would let her spin whatever wild ideas she wished. It was better that way, after all. Mortals were so short-lived, and it was better to take his happiness where he could find it.

[aboleth-eye]

help me prove something to a friend. Clerics. holy priests spreading divine word and being sweet and light. that ISN'T ALL clerics right? so, clerics of like, the war domain don't exactly have to be friendly hugs and sweetness. my friend says most clerics are naturally good because they worship a god. i said that the cleric might very well reflect on the god they worship. war isn't friendly, storms are dangerous, nature can be cruel, etc. im not saying they have to be evil, but you get it right?

Oh geez.  A cleric’s personality is completely separate from the choices they make, and the deity they worship shows that the cleric understands the power of the deity’s domains (e.g. storms, beauty, war, etc.).  The classic D&D cleric has faith in their deity’s power--and has decided to express that power in adventuring beyond the cloistered chapel/church life.

I think this misunderstanding comes from the original base cleric of D&D 5e.  From what I understand WotC created the base cleric class to fill the role of the healer, not to be a hardened battle priest with the potential to do great good or evil.  It’s the additions and homebrews, targeted towards different divine entities and domains that really begin to capture what clerics can be.  As far as I can tell, clerics automatically in 5e use healing magic and turn the undead--there is not proper “necromancy cleric” as of this point (at least at the start of the new edition).

I’m going to reference D&D 3.5 for my strongest experience as a cleric.  I once played an aasimar cleric devoted to Obad-Hai (D&D’s TN “Green Man”), except her personality was complete archetypal Disney Princess.  But instead of worshipping sunshine-and-happiness Ehlonna, she believed in the potential of the natural world and that the mortal world needed to be reminded of the respect its power deserves.  I chose that despite her deity not having the most investment in mortals and civilization, and often riding on the philosophy “let nature take its course”; my cleric was thrilled to live in the natural world and protect the creatures sheltered within it.  I loved my aasimar cleric Halo so much--but my DM at the time singlemindedly punished her a lot for not going murder hobo like they expected and “disrupting” his exploitative murder-railroad.

   Here’s a story I posted years ago about her and one of the ways my DM punished me and Halo--thank goodness that campaign fizzled out before something worse happened.

In 3.5, a cleric’s chosen patron deity determines right out what alignment they are.  Clerics must be within one step of their deity’s alignment--e.g. a Lawful Neutral deity could allow LN, LG, LE and TN clerics to serve them.  A CG deity would allow CG, CN, and NG clerics in their faith.  And their ability to channel positive or negative energy (to heal/inflict damage and turn/control the undead) was also determined by their alignment.  Good-aligned clerics automatically heal and turn the undead, evil-aligned clerics inflicted damage spontaneously and rebuke/controlled the undead.  A cleric of TN, CN, or LN alignment would choose which side they’d embody at 1st level--choosing positive energy or negative energy.

And here’s another thing that bothers me about your friend’s comments: clerics aren’t automatically "friendship is magic” and sweetness personified.  Clerics are priests, zealots and holy knights (different than paladins) who have gained their deity/entity’s favor to channel their miracles every day.  They are battle priests, taking their faith as a weapon and throwing themselves into battle with heavy armor on.  Sadly 5e shrank a cleric’s armor proficiencies, but in 3.5 clerics were known for wearing everything from light leather to heavy fullplate.

My final gripe: just because they “worship a god” does not make them a good person.  I know 5e doesn’t really gel well with monsters with class levels, but in 3.5 and earlier editions there are all sorts of antagonist and NPC clerics that cause problems because their deity told them to.  For instance, you could have clerics worship the classic Demon Princes (e.g. Neeoghu, Zuggtmoy, Malcanthet, Graz’zt, etc), the Archdevils (Dispater, Baalzebul, Belial & Fierna, etc.); heck, there are all kinds of evil gods too.  Think of Nerull, Erythnul, Lolth, Tiamat, Piscaethces, etc.)  And there’s plenty of non-good deities to choose from too, that don’t require a character to act sweet or good--some require you to be impartial judges, nature worshipers, high seas pirates, undead army commanders, \gravediggers, tricksters, blacksmiths, etc.

What I’m trying to get at is that D&D religion kind of works the same way as real-world religions in terms of having varied personalities worshipping the same god/deity/deities.  Or at least it should--and 5th edition should catch up to its pretty great past to offer options for better play.  Your player (I’m guessing) has this image of clerics because of what is available for 5e, or maybe they’ve never been in an evil-alignment one-shot or lacks other experiences with varied clerics.  

But fear not!  The homebrew community for 5e seems to be wistful for earlier editions’ options, and I’ve seen some interesting cleric homebrews for domains outside of the current class limitations.  Let’s home WotC and D&D 5e embrace the community’s passion for unique expressions and character choices.  And I hope this long, long post helps!  Thanks for submitting your questions!

[jacksoncenter]

Works Without Faith

I attended a funeral last week, which was a strange experience for me, because it is the first one I have ever attended. I did not know the person who passed as well as I would have liked to, but she was a massive figure in Northside and the surrounding communities. Her name was Mama Kat. Mama Kat was a woman who regularly volunteered with St. Joseph CME’s Food Ministry (AKA Heavenly Groceries), where food is collected and given to people who otherwise may not be able to afford it. That’s really an understatement though; she was omnipresent. Of the many volunteers that came through the Ministry, most of them recalled getting to know her as one of the most impactful parts of the whole experience. I count myself among them.

The day before the Funeral, the Jackson Center held a meeting, and everyone was asked whether or not we were willing to go to the funeral to show support for the family. I was the only one who hesitated despite half the table being populated with the Center’s other Summer Fellows, many of whom had been working at the Center for a much shorter time than I had, had known Mama Kat for a much shorter time than I had. But I hesitated, and I said, “My concerns are that I have a meeting at three, and I’m not sure I have the right clothes.” I did have a meeting, but I knew that we would be back before then. I knew I had the right clothes, but that was all that came out of my mouth when my real hesitation was that I was terrified at the idea because I did not know how to act at a funeral.

I have trouble coping with the thought of my own mortality, let alone how to properly respect someone who had just crossed beyond the veil. Besides, I didn’t see myself as very religious. I didn’t go to church very much at all growing up, and my interactions with religion had only ever been linked with those who wielded dogma to justify their bigotry, or else quietly went through the motions of faith without truly believing. I didn’t know what to expect, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself.

Della, our former Executive Director looked at me and said, “we will be back by then, and there is no right outfit.”

So the next morning I got up early and donned a white dress shirt and suit jacket I had recently brought back from my hometown on a whim, along with black dress shoes I didn’t know I even owned. I gently fastened a thin black tie around my neck that I had borrowed from a friend a long time ago and never given back since we mutually forgot about it. My entire outfit was an accident, some sort of serendipity that I started off that morning struggling to rectify. Had things been slightly different I wouldn’t have had that outfit.

We got into the car and drove out to the chapel in the country. Looking out at the woods as we passed by, they reminded me of the mountains and the pine forests which have surrounded the homes I have known in my life. We made small talk on the way and remembered Mama Kat’s life. I wished I had more to say, and I wished I had known her better. I wished I had put in the work to know her more before she passed.

We talked about how fortunate it was that The Jackson Center had preserved so many Oral Histories of Mama Kat, so that even though she had passed, her words would not be lost. Even though she was gone, her spirit could not be extinguished and would continue to live on in the hearts of those who remembered her voice and the ears of those future children who might know her through the stories we had saved.

When we arrived at the funeral, I was still anxious. Most of the people there had known Mama Kat for much of her life, were related to her, or worked with her. I was a just a white guy in a suit that no one knew, who had hardly ever been to church in his life, who didn’t believe in God, or in the Heaven that Mama Kat’s family knew she was cutting up in right as they spoke.

We walked in and through the beautiful church, and it was mostly already full. Soon enough we were ushered downstairs to the Fellowship Hall to watch the funeral on a television feed. Part of me had wanted to just stand against the wall for the whole ceremony rather than watch it on the television, but I knew there were more people coming in and there would almost certainly be people closer to Mama Kat than me who would have to watch on the television screen as well, so I just resolved to be present and listen.

To my surprise, all through the ceremony I couldn’t help but feel connected to it emotionally in ways I couldn’t really articulate. When I saw people walk over to the casket during the visitation and clutch the side of the box while staring down at their loved one, I felt that anguish and memory. When the church broke into song between speakers I wondered why I had to all but stop myself from singing along. Perhaps I should have sung along, but I didn’t know the words, and the basement overflow was not full of the singing and clapping that took place overhead.

But these feelings moving through me, this inarticulate connection, was only a dull hum compared to how I felt watching the pastor come to the altar and preach. He spoke of Mama Kat, of her work, of her character, and most importantly of the power of faith. Even all the caricatures of poor sermons in the world, full of hollow repeated verses and over worn Bible passages, could not have prepared me for the sheer power of someone using the text as a means for conveying their belief rather than someone speaking the same words as meaningless ritual. It was as if he were giving a speech through poetry as common prose, no matter how carefully chosen, would be unable to do the job. It felt as if something would be lost in those phrases like the energy between the words, the power of the lyric, or the context of the passage.

And so I wondered, a young man in an unfamiliar chapel who had never so much as stepped in a church since the age of six, why I felt myself on the verge of tears when the pastor proffered that “faith without works is dead.” Why was I shaken by the hymns? Why did my hands tremble at the sight of someone I had hardly known passing beyond this world?

I’m sure that many religious people might say that the power of the divine was affecting me, and I do not necessarily disagree. Many might say that I felt the awe of God.

But, despite my feelings, I grew up never believing in God, and I still cannot square my experiences with the existence of a God. So I’m left wondering what I do believe in.

Later that week I listened to another oral history we have in the archive at the Jackson Center. In it, the narrator speaks often about how he lets God use him, how he is often compelled to see and do things by something he feels is outside of himself; the power of God.

Strangely, the feeling is very familiar. The way he talked about being used by God sounded to me like the time I went to a protest and felt compelled to join the other activists in blocking an intersection. So filled with purpose was I at the time that looking back, the thought had not even crossed my mind that the action could have resulted in my being hit by a car or arrested. The way he talked about being used by God reminded me of how I felt when I had my first kiss, inconsiderate of anything other than the moment. The way he talked about being used by God reminded me of all the times I have reached out to someone I knew would have no time for me, but made time anyway. The way he talked about being used by God reminded me of how I have felt every time I have been brave in my life; every moment I made a decision I knew was right in my heart, in my bones, without being able to explain why.

How do I explain those moments to myself?

The short answer is that right now, I’m not sure.

What I do know is that those moments are necessary, that faith is necessary. Faith is in the bold, faith is in the world changing. True faith is inseparable from creating tangible change, because both rely on a suspension of material understanding in order to believe in a reality that is greater than the one currently experienced. How could protesting Candy-Coated Racism and sitting down in segregated stores, knowing you might get beaten by police or pummeled with a fire hose in order to secure a more just future that you can scarcely imagine, be that much different than having the courage to continue living devoutly through strife in order to live on eternally in a Heaven one can scarcely imagine?

Faith and Revolution have been long separated in the Western ideological canon, from the Cult of Reason to elitist critiques of the Civil Rights Movement, but I am beginning to think that this is a foolish error.

When that pastor said that Faith Without Works is Dead, he meant that it was not enough to believe in something without acting to better the lives of your brothers and sisters. Faith unmoored from a genuine mission to enrich the lives of others is hollow and vain. I would like to posit that the reverse is true. Works without faith are precarious.

The challenges facing this generation are colossal, are bigger than ourselves, and are so big that it is hard to feel like we are making any difference in changing them. People simply cannot understand the numbers of the big picture, you can’t visualize 3,000 tons of garbage. What we can visualize is our story, and what we want the world to look like in thirty years. Those who care most about creating a better world for our children, given a material understanding of our circumstances, are some of the most highly affected by anxiety, depression, and attention disorders. We are burnt out. We are tired. We are constantly second-guessing ourselves.

So often, our intense work is matched by an unrelenting nihilism that despite our efforts, things will never be better materially, and there is certainly no such thing as a life beyond this life where they will be better. But we need to believe that change is possible, that a better world is possible, because that faith is what keeps the lamp alight when all the other fuel has run out. For me, I think this means that my generation and activists writ large need to need to rediscover faith, a faith that feels authentic and true in our bones if not our heads. We need to decolonize ourselves and recognize that sometimes things can be true without being provable, at least on a personal level, even if that truth is not the existence of a God. And most importantly we need to feel genuinely that faith is radical, and radicals must have faith.

Faith without Works is Dead

Works without Faith don’t Last

— Wyatt Woodson

[darley1101]

September 4 Magic (better late than never!)

A/N Day 4 of the September prompt challenge being hosted by @i-dream-so-i-write. The theme for this one is magic. I am combining it with some requests previously made by my bestie @blackcatkita for the Bloodbound pairing of Adrian x Annabel /MC. The previous request is what was their first impression and how did they meet, what do they fight about how do they make up, and how much are they willing to sacrifice for each other any lines they won't cross. And for some resolution to Annabel's cancer diagnosis. I hope everyone enjoys. I did something different with this one. With the exception of the author's note, anything in itallics is a flashback. All flashbacks are from Adrian's POV, while all current time are from Annabel's.

Magic Is A 4 Letter Word ( L-O-V-E)

They say that at the end of a person's life the moments that defined them flash before their eyes.  Lying there, eyes glazed in pain and heart fighting the inevitable end that was coming sooner rather than later, Annabel's thoughts are consumed with Adrian. There are flashes of her childhood in Iowa in between the pivotal moments of their relationship, memories forced out of guilt because her parents should have meant more to her than the man sitting by her side, stroking the back of her hand in a slow, soothing motion. “Do you remember when we met,” she asked in a voice that sounded too dry and weak to be her own, yet she knew that it was.

“How could I forget?” Adrian mused. A gentle smile stretched across his full lips. Lips that pressed a soft kiss to the palm of her hand. Lips that murmured words about how right from the start he'd been enchanted by her.

Sitting with her back perfectly straight and her chin raised just a notch the newest candidate for Executive Assistant had an air of confidence that was both reassuring and, dare he say it, attractive. No matter how hard Nicole tried to fluster her or trick her into a questionable response, the young woman remained perfectly composed. In fact, the more Nicole pushed, the calmer their potential employee became. He could tell from Nicole's voice that she wasn't impressed, that there was something about the girl that she resented. Letting out a sigh, Adrian stepped into the conference room where the interview was being held. How many times had he told Nicole that she had to stop letting personal insecurities dictate who they hired? It was those insecurities that resulted in sub-par assistants that didn't know what they were doing or, worse, had no sense of loyalty. “Afternoon ladies,” he greeted, striding towards the file Nicole was drumming her fingers against. He snatched it from  her and flipped it open. Honor student with an Ivy League education. Charitable volunteer work that jived with their mission at Raines Corporation. The more Adrian read, the more impressed he became. “Annabel is it?”

“Yes,” the interviewee responded, her voice like a cool breeze on a hot day. Glancing up from the file, Adrian sucked in his breathe. Long, shiny dark hair. Intelligent hazel eyes that held his gaze. A slight body with just enough curves to stir something he'd thought long dead. There was something about her that set off sparks in his soul.

“You're hired,” he said softly, knowing it was the only way he could guarantee that he would see her again. There would be hell to pay with Nicole but he would cross that bridge when he came to it. Besides, it was his company and the girl would be his assistant.

“I almost turned the job down,” Annabel chuckled then wheezed, a cough tickling the back of her throat before erupting from her lips. Her chest tightened, wrapped in invisible bands that she knew wouldn't stop constricting until there was no air left in her body. During moments like this, when the changes in her body were almost too painful to bear, she had to remind herself why she had chosen this route. It was for Adrian. She'd done it for Adrian. Another cough wracked her body, spittle bubbling up in the corners of her lips. “Sorry,” she gasped, closing her eyes.

“Don't be sorry, murmured Adrian. Through her lowered lashes, she could see a sad ghost of a smile haunting his lips. He reached up, gently brushing a lock of hair off the apple of her cheek, his finger tips lingering just to the left of her mouth. “So...why did you almost turn down the job?”

The answer was simple: Nicole. Right from the start the other woman had made it clear that Raines Corporation, Adrian in particular, was her territory and Annabel was trespassing. Annabel had taken the high round, keeping things as professional as a vampire's assistant could, and doing what she could to show Nicole there was no need for animosity. Nothing worked. The harder Annabel tried, the more professional she tried to be, the more difficult Nicole made things. Life at the office became almost unbearable once Nicole figured out Adrian was seeing Annabel on a less than professional level. The jabs about Annabel's 'duties' had escalated to a point where Annabel had point blank asked the other woman if she was jealous or just plain bitter. It made things worse. After that Nicole made it her personal mission to make sure everyone knew how little regard she held for Annabel, including Adrian. It put Adrian in a tough position. He'd spent years trusting Nicole, giving her full access to his business in both the human and vampire worlds. It had been a mistake, one that had almost cost them their lives. Annabel had had the last laugh though. She'd put an arrow straight through the bitch's heart.

“Sorry,” she murmured, realizing she'd lost herself in a memory instead of answering Adrian's question. Her mind seemed to drift lately, caught between two worlds. “I'd rather not talk about her.” Nicole had already stolen too much time and energy from her, she refused to waste what little she had dwelling on a woman who had been so full of hate she'd sold out to the devil.

“What would you rather talk about?” The tips of his fingers trailed up and down her jaw line, sparking an ill timed excitement they could do nothing about.

“My funeral.”

A hard grimace twisted Adrian's features. It was a topic he liked to avoid, one that always circled back to him refusing to accept the inevitable and her wanting something from him that he refused to give. She didn't want to fight with him, not again, not about this. Yet, there were things they needed to discuss. “Adrian, please.”

It had been close to two hundred years since Adrian Raines had set foot in a church. Ironically enough, it had been for the same reason he now stood outside the simple red brick and white clapboard chapel that loomed in front of him. Closing his eyes, he stood beneath his black umbrella, letting the gentle patter of rain and the strains of Somewhere Over The Rainbow wrap around him. It was perfect and so completely Annabel. A lump of emotion swelled in his throat as his eyes flew open. He'd fought her on this, even going so far as to say it was morbid to plan her own funeral and then ask him to attend. Didn't she understand how difficult all of this was for him? He still felt lingering traces of anger, resentment, and the urge to scream, but most of all he felt regret. Annabel asked for so few things and she had trusted him with this. He owed it to her to see it through. He lowered his umbrella, collapsing it. Adrian cleared his throat, then walked up the steps and into the church. There, front and center, was the platinum urn Annabel had picked out herself, surrounded by hundreds of floral arrangements. God, he felt like he couldn't breathe. He had nobody to blame but himself for the scene before him. It had been his choice that led to this.

Slowly, his handsome features softened, his hand squeezing hers, and adoration shining his beautiful eyes. “There were so many flowers. Mostly pink roses.” Pink roses. They had always been her favorite. It was probably cliché, everyone liked roses and pink in particular was popular, but something about the flower made Annabel smile. Knowing that others had remembered that about her and showered her funeral with them left a warm feeling in her rapidly declining heart. She could almost feel it slowing, dying. “Your cousin Chazz gave a really beautiful speech on how your smile filled  a room with sunshine.” Chazz. It had been years since Annabel seen her favorite cousin. Their last moments together had been  a tight hug and a promise to stay in touch before he drove out to California to start his new life working for Castle Talent Management. Had she told him how proud she as of him? She couldn't remember. The distance had done what it did best and they'd gotten lost in their own lives. “I think the hardest part was seeing your parents. They looked so broken, Annabel.” He squeezed her hand again, a little harder this time. “Your mother thanked me. She thanked me for being there for you. Do you know how hard that was?”

Almost as hard as the phone she'd forced him to make informing her parents that she had died in an automobile accident. It had seemed kinder than the truth: that cancer was ravaging her body once more. The 'accident' had also provided them a reason for having her 'body' cremated. “It was the only way,” she reminded him, gasping for air as her chest once again tightened. The end was near, she could feel it. The last of her mortal life was seeping away.

The ability to create a new life was something Adrian had never fully embraced. It seemed like too much power and there were too many things that could go wrong. Adrian had learned that the hard way. For every person he turned, there was the one who didn't. The one who, no matter how careful he was, turned feral and had to be destroyed. He'd already watched one woman he cared about fail to transition, he wasn't sure he could handle it if the same happened to Annabel. Annabel. Just her name filled him to the brim with love. Everything in him screamed that changing Annabel was a bad idea, it went against everything he believed in. Yet, he knew there was no choice. He'd been prepared to loose Annabel to old age but not to the disease eating her alive. They had been to specialist after specialist, the best the world had to offer. None of them had good news. The cancer was too aggressive and any treatments they did would only prolong the inevitable: Annabel was a ticking time bomb. His breaking point had been Annabel asking him to not forget her. It was the deciding factor. Life without Annabel wasn't life at all. And what was the point of having the magic to change a life if he didn't use it to save the only woman he'd ever really loved.

Death happened with a whisper of a breathe across her slightly parted lips. She'd been lying if she said her last mortal thought hadn't been about fear, but as quickly as the thoughts invaded her mind they were gone. There was a moment of stillness, of floating in a vast expanse of nothingness, before she let out a loud gasp and her eyes flew open. It was like magic. One moment she was dead, surrounded by a thick, black fog, and next she was alive again, ready to face eternity with the man she loved.

Perma tag list: @debramcg1106 @josieschoices @boneandfur @speedyoperarascalparty @christopher-powell @tmarie82 @blackcatkita @mfackenthal @hamulau @endlessly-searching-for-you @umccall71 @damienazariostan @drakelover78 @penguininapinktuxedo @eileendannie @kingliamthirst @stopforamoment @writtenbycandy @lizeboredom @alicars @choiceslife @leelee10898 @choicesfannatalie @liamxs-world @boneandfur @blackcatkita @umccall71@eileendannie 

[zeciex]

Obsidian & Angelite Ch. 10

Oya has spend centuries bound to one single plot of land when one day a stranger with a voice of velvet and presence that can only be described as dark and outmost interesting. He comes with an offer she can’t refuse and suddenly her entire world changes, both for better and worse.

But what does Langdon need of her? And how can she use him to get what she want? Maybe they’re bound by something bigger than fate.

Warning: Dark themes, Strong Language, rape mention, blood, death

A/N: Since tumblr kills everything with links, I’ll reblog this post with the links to previous chapters and archive link

The stone ground of Venice clicked under their heels. Around them buildings rose from the floor, some old and cracked while others remained fine and proud. It was beautiful, with arches of all kind cut out from stone and marble, with channels and gondolas, green plants in window sills, marble statues. It was a whole other world than what she knew.

Michael had held out his arm for her to take and like that they walked over the stone, backs held straight, following the black wings in the sky that soared through the air. Tourists and inhabitants took pictures of them and why wouldn’t they when the two matched so perfectly, so out of place with their clothe that resembled something more fit for the runway than a walk through a tourist attraction. Michael wore a deep emerald green velvet jacket with a black shirt underneath, a fine black vest over it to keep the onyx tie in its place. On the tie were small silver specks, barely visible to the eye. His shoes were fine and polished with silver tips. In all honesty, he looked like a young god.

When she first saw him she stood still in silent admiration of his angelic look that turned something darker by the serpent gleam in his eyes. At the inner corner of his eyelids were the same emerald green that matched his jacket. That matched her.

Oya’s dress were black, the fabric thin and all too showy for casual wear. It showed the soft skin of her breasts covered in tyl that drew all the way up around her neck and only two strips went through the see through fabric covering up her nipples. The sleeves were puffy, with small silver specks. Her black hair waved over her shoulders, covering up heavy emerald earrings shaped as snakes.

This was what they wore, their war attire, their war paint. It was showing the best side of themselves, cover up insecurities and instead make them sharp weapons to be used ruthlessly against their enemies. And this was the exact reason why their pictures were taken.

They walked towards what looked like a cathedral, the roof in high bows, with spires shooting up from the fine stone, reaching towards the sky. Statues were carved out of marble, all of old deities and gods, none of which Oya recognized. Columns held it up, thick and round, with patterns carved finely into them just like the carvings on the walls. Outside the heavy wooden door, dark against the sandy walls, stood guards. They kept the tourists from entering, they stood as the first line of defence.

Oya’s crows landed on the roof, basking their wings and crowing. Craw, craw, craw. An omen of death. As they approached the crows landed at the stone floor, watching the guards look at each other before walking towards them.

“The cathedral is closed to the public, you’ll have to return another day,” one of the guards voiced first in italian and then in english. Oya and Michael continued towards them. “I said-,”

“We heard you,” Michael voiced, elegantly moving a finger through the air. The guards stiffened with their backs completely straight, eyes blank. They turned around and walked back to their spot by the door. Oya slipped her hand from his arm, walking further towards the cathedral, hand stretched out in from of her, moving it softly through the air as if she were moving it through water.

The spell put up were intricate but not unbreakable, it was to keep mortals and other witches out, it was to keep her out more specifically. Now that her chains had been broken her power had grown, flourished in the release and with Michaels guidance controlled. She crouched down and started to draw on the marble floor, a half circle resembling the sun with four spikes running through it, in each compartment she drew different sigils and outside a square. Her crows jumped closer curious of her movements and when she suddenly stood they violently bashed their wings in surprise.

She wanted to the antique door, disregarding the old wood and what the chalk might do to it and began drawing a square on it, each side given a symbol. Michael came up behind her, intertwining his fingers with hers when she finally finished drawing. The chalk discarded over her shoulder to break against the stone floor. Their powers laced together, humming at their fingertips. Words that had not been spoken for centuries left her mouth soon to be replicated by Michael who followed her lead.

He didn’t question her methodes, he didn’t correct her or think that he knew better, that his way was better, instead he allowed her to do this her way, it was her revenge and he would not stand in the way of that.

There was a part of him that wanted to tear down every column, every statue, every fucking stone and see it sunk to the bottom of the ocean for what they did to her, the pain they had caused her. But he knew just how much revenge was worth and how much it meant, she needed to be the one to do that, not him. He was there as a spectator, a witness, support.

The chalk seared itself into the door, glowing embers following the pattern, edged and still burning. The spell was destroyed, the defence fallen. With a groan the door was opened by the guards that closed it behind them as they entered.

The inside of the cathedral was all marble, arches cut from stone, statues with a dead gaze staring after them. The arched ceiling were covered in paintings, trimmed with gold and safferic blue. It was beautiful and old, a reminder of a different time. The air was still and cold, the only warmth coming from the candles.

Oya and Michael walked further in, passing rows of dark wooden benches all faced towards the magnificent alter and the circle of chairs all manned by witches and a few warlocks. They watched silently as the two of them approached, some panicked while others kept a mask of stone on their face resembling the statues. The seat with its back towards the altar, the single tallest chair, were manned by none other than her mother, dressed in a fine tailored suit that matched her surroundings. Her hair was pinned up in a tight bun, not a single hair out of order.

Obsidian eyes ran over the two intruders with a cold glance. “We knew you’d come.” It was strange the way her voice carried through the room, distant and cold but somehow striking. It had always been like that, devoid of warmth especially towards her oldest daughter.

“You think your little protection spell would keep me out?” Oya questioned and found her voice just as cold as hers. She entered the circle, all eyes on them. Michael stood a few paces behind her, hands calmly held behind his back while he observed with mild indifference towards them.

“No,” Haesoo spoke calmly. “You’d find a way to get in regardless of the spell.”

Oya glanced to her sister that stood a total opposite of her own form, embraced by golden sunlight, catching her blond hair that fell in soft curls down around her shoulders, lips fine pink and skin pale and soft. She wore a dress of white fabric, stars and suns and moons cut into the fabric. Darkness met with light.

“We wondered who it was that released you, who could be powerful enough to do that without our involvement,” Haesoo stood from her chair. With her mother standing it was as if it send ripples through the room, the rest of her coven moving in their seats ready for a fight. Michael wasn’t having it, he clenched his fist in the air and brought it down with a harsh swing to his side, nailing every single member to their seat, unable to move. The only one he let go was her direct blood, her mother and sister.

The sound of her mother's steps rang out into the silent room, echoing over the marble floor, climbed the arches and walls, filling it up with one step at the time. Oya remained a statue of stoic nature, calm beneath her mother's hardened gaze. The sound of flesh hitting flesh replaced the sound of her steps. It screamed in the cold room, making the flesh of her cheek red with scolding, the bite of her mother’s palm a familiar sting. Michael moved behind her, she felt his anger through the tethers of magic around him but he contained it to a poisonous glare.

“I knew I should have left you to the wolves when you were born.”

Oya rolled her head back in place, eyes black orbs fixed on her mother with a cold anger Michael couldn’t help but be proud of. Hidden beneath the stoic mask, the child that wanted nothing more than her parents approval cried. No matter what ones parents did to their child, there would always be a part of them, a tiny part hidden beneath layers of emotions, that wished for their parents acceptance, their love. She was no different.

“I was weak, you were my flesh and blood, my first born. How could I do such a thing?” Haesoo’s voice wavered if just a little. Softly she brushed the hand that had stuck her daughter over her burning cheek and it broke something within Oya. She flinched away from her mother's touch, anger burning in her eyes, tearing up her throat.

“You had me raped,” she hissed out venomously. “You had me raped and left bound to that fucking place for centuries!” Her voice echoed through the chapel, climbed the sacred walls and made home under the arching dome, painted gold and blue. The magic in her lashed out, every flame rising to critical levels with a hiss and the many rows of benches screeched over the floor.

“You slaughtered a village did you really think that would be forgiven? I made sure we weren't all hunted and killed, I made sure the world thought it be poisoned water and not magic,” Haesoo exclaimed at her daughter. “For that I should have bound you to a cave never to be found. But I was your mother and I could not do that. I loved you, in my own way, and your sister begged for you to have a life, a proper one.”

“You never loved me. You hated me since I was born,” Oya said with a deep and hoarse voice. “Lies won't save you.”

“You never did believe me, regardless of my words.”  Haesoo smiled with sharp lips, eyes still as cold as ice. “But I did love you in a way. And you, my dear child, wanted to be loved so bad.”

“Years of imprisonment made sure that need were snuffed out. The moment you tore my powers from me, the moment he raped me, that need for you love died. You killed the girl and created something far more dangerous.” It was a wonder how her voice fell into a sneering drawl. For a moment she saw her mother’s eyes flash in fear, for just a moment. Haesoo had put everything into her entrapment, the spell draining every drop of magic in her blood. Oya could feel it, the void of it, the lack of magic around her mother's presence. There were nothing she could do, nothing she could protect herself with, she stood defenceless in front of a goddess and stared her dead in the eye. No one could deny she was brave in the face of death.

“If I knew you would break the spell, I would have killed you instead.”

“And now you’re without powers to defend yourself.”

“I’m without powers, yes. But I’m far from defenceless.” At this her sister rose in all her glory. Her magic radiated off of her with a pulsating glow, the feeling of sun climbing along Oya’s skin. It was strange how her sister had become the complete opposite, her magic being light and full of life while her own were dark and with a whisper of death.

“Oya,” her sister spoke, brows lifted in sympathy. She couldn’t get used to the blue in her sisters eyes, the color of clear angelite, beautiful. They matched with Michaels. Oya could feel him behind her, silently watching, his familiar tendrils climbing along her back with a soft caress, telling her that he was right there with her. His powers never wavered, never withdrew from her but instead luled her with its touch.

“You can still change. You’re my sister and I love you, please you don’t have to do this.”

The laugh that left her mouth were cynical and sharp. “I will do this. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be betrayed by the ones who should have loved you unconditionally! I trusted you and you held be down as I was raped and stripped of parts of me I didn’t think I could regain. And for that you will all pay.”

With a harsh flick of her hand Haesoo and Ina flew backwards over the floor, planting themselves firmly in their chairs, hands gripping so tightly at the armrests their knuckles turned white. She took over the iron grip Michael had held on the circle. Glass smashed above them, coloured pieces breaking in to much smaller speckles when they hit the floor. Her crows soared in and landed on her sisters chair, croaking and basking their wings at her magic.

She lifted one hand and watched as the coven did the same, forced to replicate her movements. They froze in position, some crying while others cursed, when their palms were forced to face up. The goddess looked over at Michael who stalked to her side, lifting his jacket to pull out a long thin dagger, the same one her mother had used during the ritual. He placed the shaft gently in her palm, letting his fingers trace the skin of her inner wrist. It was a sweet caress that stilled the nerves within her body.

“Don’t do this!” Ina managed to cry out.

“Please don't kill us,” someone else croaked at the same time.

“Oh, I’m not killing you. Most of you have done nothing but associate with the wrong person, the ones present at my binding died long ago, you’re just very unlucky. How you managed to stay alive all these years did surprise me, Mother.”

“I had to make sure you were never released.”

“You failed.” Haesoo looked at Michael, her face unreadable but eyes burning with anger Oya had seen so many times before when she was but a child. It was burning with disdain.

“Are you the one who took down the New Orleans coven?” Haesoo spoke. Her question halted her daughters ritual, who looked up at Michael. His face remained the same, the smug glinse in his eyes and a satisfied tug at his lips. There wasn’t a single hair out of place. He didn’t even blink at her question. Power, raw and unadulterated, emanated from every fiber of his being. In the face of this accusation, she couldn’t help the flutter in her heart.

“Yes.”

“Oya,” the fear was evident in her voice. “This man is far more dangerous than you can possibly imagine. He’s using you for your power. He will be your destruction.”

“This man released me, he didn’t tremble in fear of my power, he taught me control.”

“He is-,”

“I know who he is!” She screamed and let her power flicker out in the form of cracks climbing up the columns. The blade bit into her palm, drawing blood forth. It burned and stung, the pain nothing compared to the anger that was ignited inside of her. Did she really think so little of her own daughter that she wouldn't be aware of the circumstances? If Michael was using her then so fucking be it but she would not for one second let him destroy her, regardless of her feelings towards him. If he were her destruction she would be his.

Every palm held upwards now bleed, the steams of it running from the wounds and onto the marble, staining it red with blood. Michael took the knife from her and walked over to one of the coven members, her white shirt now ruined by the blade. He dried it off in her fabric before placing it in the pocket he had taken it from. One of her crows took wind under its wings and flew to land on her arm. It screeched as she picked feathers from its body, its claws biting into her skin and tearing at her dress.

“I will not kill you,” she voiced, placing a feather inside the wound and careful guided their palms shut around the feather. Some signed in relief and she couldn’t help but smirk at their naivety. “Instead I show you the future.” She when on to the next member and replicated the ritual she had just performed, placing the feather in the wound and closing their hand around it. Most of them shook, she didn’t know if it was out of fear or straining against her magic or just maybe it was at the prospect of facing of against a goddess of the underworld. There are no vengeance that can compare to a goddesses. “You will see and you will know. That is your punishment, knowledge of what the future will bring and how utterly insignificant your actions to prevent it will be.” Now every single wound were sealed with a feather. She let her tendrils grow, wrap around their fragile human from, go under their skin and reach into their very being. All eyes turned white, clouded by the vision of the future, the very vision she herself had experienced. It unfolded before them, the cries of billions, the bombs falling, the fear leaking into their souls. When they returned, their eyes were wide with horror.

“You will end the world because you weren't loved enough as a child!” Haesoo roared, trying with all her might to break free of her daughters hold over her body. Ina silently stared into the floor.

Oya walked to her mother, placing a hand upon her chest and forcing her back against the spine of the chair. Her mother clenched her hands, her wound bleeding in an endless stream while the other held the chair in a breaking grip. “I will burn this fucking world down because I can and you will all know what is coming but can do absolutely nothing about it. You are burdened with knowing and will never be able to tell anyone about it, not in any way.” She let her mother go, stepping backwards into the circle until her back were met with Michael’s chest. There in the middle the two stood, a pair of darkness. “I curse you with that but it is not the only curse. If you use magic, any form of magic, you will kill the people you love. For every flick of the wrist, for every spell, for every curse or blessing, whatever magic you use, you will kill someone in your circle, the more you use the more you kill.”

The feather burned in their palms, some screaming in pain, tears staining their cheeks in spite of wanting to remain as passive as possibly. The broke in the wake of her power digging into their very being. What they felt were a fraction of the pain she felt but the fear, the fear was a far greater weapon that caused so much more dispare than pain.

The feather grew into their flest and with black webs it climbed up their arms, under their skin until it settled in their hearts and only then the black webs disappeared. Her tendrils retracted, releasing them from their bindings. Ina gasped and fell to her knees on the ground, fingers gripping at the stone as if to steady herself in reality. Her mother weren’t so docile, she stood with force removing a carved out piece of the chairs arms producing a knife. She created a monster and she would do anything to make up for that mistake. With an angry howl she moved through the room, slicing through the air in an attempt to end her daughters life, to remove from the world what she brought into it.

Michael wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her back out of the way of the biting blade. The utter madness in her mother's eyes struck her, the desperate look of a woman who had nothing left to lose.

Oya stopped her, the anger burning through her skin, climbing over the floor with cracks to the marble. It climbed her mother’s pale flesh, blood pouring from the wounds that split open her skin, tearing through the fabric of her cloth with invisible claws. The noise she made, an inhumane sound caught between a wail and a blood curdling scream, echoed in the cathedral. The air seemed to vibrate the same way it does just before a thunderstorm, electricity knitting through the air.

“He will never love you, he cannot love,” she managed to utter as her eyes turned red and blood claimed the trail of her tears. There was a sound of ripping, of something being torn from her mother, yet she remained in one bloodied piece and fell the the floor lifeless. Her pupils had ruptured, exploded into the obsidian and ruby coloured eyes.  

Oya felt Michael beside her, his presence calming. It was strange how her skin tickles with the touch of power, she felt her blood course through her and heart beat with impressive force within her chest. Every part of her were electric. In this moment she felt the world gravel at her feet and she loved every second of it. She was drunk on power and smirked when her sister screamed at the sight of her mother’s body.

Michael let her turn in his arms so that she could look upon him. The fire in his eyes send vibrations down her spin and lit up a fire inside of her, the fumes from her powers igniting just by the look in his piercing eyes. There were no other words to describe it other than desire, unrefined and in its purest form. Their bloodlust had been satisfied, her vengeance taken with out most pleasure and now they longed for something other, a more carnal satisfaction.

“Lets go home,” she said and took his arm. Behind her she listened to the coven members mourn their leader, lose their minds in the face of annihilation and most of all her sisters cries. Ina had been the good daughter, the one who loved the most and were loved the most, the prodigy. She had lost her sister long ago but never accepted that she was dark to the fullest. And now, sitting by her mother’s dead body, the woman she loved the most in the world, she felt herself hate her sister.

Oya’s crows left the same way the came in, with a haunting laugh leaving them as they flew through the broken window, a mocking of the life that had been taken. They carried the soul of her mother, the messengers of death, their wings carrying death with them.

Vengeance were a virus, it spread and spread until there were nothing left.

[consummmatumest]

“But if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.”

Deuteronomy 4:29; King James Version

Dorothy Day Excerpt from The Long Loneliness (1952)

“THOU shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and with thy whole soul and with thy whole mind.” This is the first Commandment.

The problem is, how to love God? We are only too conscious of the hardness of our hearts, and in spite of all that religious writers tell us about feeling not being necessary, we do want to feel and so know that we love God.

“Thou wouldst not seek Him if thou hadst not already found Him,” Pascal says, and it is true too that you love God if you want to love Him. One of the disconcerting facts about the spiritual life is that God takes you at your word. Sooner or later one is given a chance to prove his love. The very word “diligo,” the Latin word used for “love,” means “I prefer.” It was all very well to love God in His works, in the beauty of His creation which was crowned for me by the birth of my child. Forster had made the physical world come alive for me and had awakened in my heart a flood of gratitude. The final object of this love and gratitude was God. No human creature could receive or contain so vast a flood of love and joy as I often felt after the birth of my child. With this came the need to worship, to adore. I had heard many say that they wanted to worship God in their own way and did not need a Church in which to praise Him, nor a body of people with whom to associate themselves. But I did not agree to this. My very experience as a radical, my whole make-up, led me to want to associate myself with others, with the masses, in loving and praising God. Without even looking into the claims of the Catholic Church, I was willing to admit that for me she was the one true Church. She had come down through the centuries since the time of Peter, and far from being dead, she claimed and held the allegiance of the masses of people in all the cities where I had lived. They poured in and out of her doors on Sundays and holy days, for novenas and missions. What if they were compelled to come in by the law of the Church, which said they were guilty of mortal sin if they did not go to Mass every Sunday? They obeyed that law. They were given a chance to show their preference. They accepted the Church. It may have been an unthinking, unquestioning faith, and yet the chance certainly came, again and again, “Do I prefer the Church to my own will,” even if it was only the small matter of sitting at home on a Sunday morning with the papers? And the choice was the Church.

There was the legislation of the Church in regard to marriage, a stumbling block to many. That was where I began to be troubled, to be afraid. To become a Catholic meant for me to give up a mate with whom I was much in love. It got to the point where it was the simple question of whether I chose God or man. I had known enough of love to know that a good healthy family life was as near to heaven as one could get in this life. There was another sample of heaven, of the enjoyment of God. The very sexual act itself was used again and again in Scripture as a figure of the beatific vision. It was not because I was tired of sex, satiated, disillusioned, that I turned to God. Radical friends used to insinuate this. It was because through a whole love, both physical and spiritual, I came to know God.

From the time Tamar Teresa was born I was intent on having her baptized. There had been that young Catholic girl in the bed next to me at the hospital who gave me a medal of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. “I don’t believe in these things,” I told her, and it was another example of people saying what they do not mean.

“If you love someone you like to have something around which reminds you of them,” she told me.

It was so obvious a truth that I was shamed. Reading William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience had acquainted me with the saints, and I had read the life of St. Teresa of Avila and fallen in love with her. She was a mystic and a practical woman, a recluse and a traveler, a cloistered nun and yet most active. She liked to read novels when she was a young girl, and she wore a bright red dress when she entered the convent. Once when she was traveling from one part of Spain to another with some other nuns and a priest to start a convent, and their way took them over a stream, she was thrown from her donkey. The story goes that our Lord said to her, “That is how I treat my friends.” And she replied, “And that is why You have so few of them.” She called life a “night spent at an uncomfortable inn.” Once when she was trying to avoid that recreation hour which is set aside in convents for nuns to be together, the others insisted on her joining them, and she took castanets and danced. When some older nuns professed themselves shocked, she retorted, “One must do things sometimes to make life more bearable.” After she was a superior she gave directions when the nuns became melancholy, “to feed them steak,” and there were other delightful little touches to the story of her life which made me love her and feel close to her. I have since heard a priest friend of ours remark gloomily that one could go to hell imitating the imperfections of the saints, but these little incidents brought out in her biography made her delightfully near to me. So I decided to name my daughter after her. That is why my neighbor offered me a medal of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, who is called the little Teresa.

Her other name came from Sasha’s sister Liza. She had named her daughter Tamar, which in Hebrew means “little palm tree,” and knowing nothing of the unhappy story of the two Tamars in the Old Testament, I named my child Tamar also. Tamar is one of the forebears of our Lord, listed in the first chapter of Matthew, and not only Jews and Russians, but also New Englanders used the name.

What a driving power joy is! When I was unhappy and repentant in the past I turned to God, but it was my joy at having given birth to a child that made me do something definite. I wanted Tamar to have a way of life and instruction. We all crave order, and in the Book of Job, hell is described as a place where no order is. I felt that “belonging” to a Church would bring that order into her life which I felt my own had lacked. If I could have felt that communism was the answer to my desire for a cause, a motive, a way to walk in, I would have remained as I was. But I felt that only faith in Christ could give the answer. The Sermon on the Mount answered all the questions as to how to love God and one’s brother. I knew little about the Sacraments, and yet here I was believing, knowing that without them Tamar would not be a Catholic.

I did not know any Catholics to speak to. The grocer, the hardware storekeeper, my neighbors down the road were Catholics, yet I could not bring myself to speak to them about religion. I was full of the reserves I noted in my own family. But I could speak to a nun. So when I saw a nun walking

down the road near St. Joseph’s-by-the-Sea, I went up to her breathlessly and asked her how I could have my child baptized. She was not at all reticent about asking questions and not at all surprised at my desires. She was a simple old sister who had taught grade school all her life. She was now taking care of babies in a huge home on the bay which had belonged to Charles Schwab, who had given it to the Sisters of Charity. They used it for summer retreats for the Sisters and to take care of orphans and unmarried mothers and their babies.

Sister Aloysia had had none of the university summer courses that most Sisters must take nowadays. She never talked to me about the social encyclicals of the Popes. She gave me a catechism and brought me old copies of the Messenger of the SacredHeart, a magazine which, along with the Kathleen Norris type of success story, had some good solid articles about the teachings of the Church. I read them all; I studied my catechism; I learned to say the Rosary; I went to Mass in the chapel by the sea; I walked the beach and I prayed; I read the Imitation of Christ, and St. Augustine, and the New Testament. Dostoevski, Huysmans (what different men!) had given me desire and background. Huysmans had made me at home in the Church.

“How can your daughter be brought up a Catholic unless you become one yourself?” Sister Aloysia kept saying to me. But she went resolutely ahead in making arrangements for the baptism of Tamar Teresa.

“You must be a Catholic yourself,” she kept telling me. She had no reticence. She speculated rather volubly at times on the various reasons why she thought I was holding back. She brought me pious literature to read, saccharine stories of virtue, emasculated lives of saints young and old, back numbers of pious magazines. William James, agnostic as he was, was more help. He had introduced me to St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.

Isolated as I was in the country, knowing no Catholics except my neighbors, who seldom read anything except newspapers and secular magazines, there was not much chance of being introduced to the good Catholic literature of the present day. I was in a state of dull content—not in a state to be mentally stimulated. I was too happy with my child. What faith I had I held on to stubbornly. The need for patience emphasized in the writings of the saints consoled me on the slow road I was traveling. I would put all my affairs in the hands of God and wait.

Three times a week Sister Aloysia came to give me a catechism lesson, which I dutifully tried to learn. But she insisted that I recite word for word, with the repetition of the question that was in the book. If I had not learned my lesson, she rebuked me, “And you think you are intelligent!” she would say witheringly. “What is the definition of grace—actual grace and sanctifying grace? My fourth-grade pupils know more than you do!”

I hadn’t a doubt but that they did. I struggled on day by day, learning without question. I was in an agreeable and lethargic, almost bovine state of mind, filled with an animal content, not wishing to inquire into or question the dogmas I was learning. I made up my mind to accept what I did not understand, trusting light to come, as it sometimes did, in a blinding flash of exultation and realization.

She criticized my housekeeping. “Here you sit at your typewriter at ten o’clock and none of your dishes done yet. Supper and breakfast dishes besides. . . . And why don’t you calcimine your ceiling? It’s all dirty from wood smoke.”

She brought me vegetables from the garden of the home, and I gave her fish and clams. Once I gave her stamps and a dollar to send a present to a little niece and she was touchingly grateful. It made me suddenly realize that, in spite of Charlie Schwab and his estate, the Sisters lived in complete poverty, owning nothing, holding all things in common.

I had to have godparents for Tamar, and I thought of Aunt Jenny, my mother’s sister, the only member of our family I knew who had become a Catholic. She had married a Catholic and had one living child, Grace. I did not see them very often but I looked them up now and asked Grace and her husband if they would be godparents to my baby. Tamar was baptized in July. We went down to Tottenville, the little town at the south end of the island; there in the Church of Our Lady, Help of Christians, the seed of life was implanted in her and she was made a child of God.

We came back to the beach house to a delightful lunch of boiled lobsters and salad. Forster had caught the lobsters in his traps for the feast and then did not remain to partake of it. He left, not returning for several days. It was his protest against my yearnings toward the life of the spirit, which he considered a morbid escapism. He exulted in his materialism. He well knew the dignity of man. Heathen philosophers, says Matthias Scheeben, a great modern theologian, have called man a miracle, the marrow and the heart of the world, the most beautiful being, the king of all creatures. Forster saw man in the light of reason and not in the light of faith. He had thought of the baptism only as a mumbo jumbo, the fuss and flurry peculiar to woman. At first he had been indulgent and had brought in the lobsters for the feast. And then he had become angry with some sense of the end to which all this portended. Jealousy set in and he left me.

As a matter of fact, he left me quite a number oftimes that coming winter and following summer, as he felt my increasing absorption in religion. The tension between us was terrible. Teresa had become a member of the Mystical Body of Christ. Ididn’t know anything of the Mystical Body or I might have felt disturbed at being separated from her.

But I clutched her close to me and all the time I nursed her and bent over that tiny round face at my breast, I was filled with a deep happiness that nothing could spoil. But the obstacles to my becoming a Catholic were there, shadows in the background of my life.

I had become convinced that I would become a Catholic; yet I felt I was betraying the class to which I belonged, the workers, the poor of the world, with whom Christ spent His life. I wrote a few articles for the New Masses but did no other work at that time. My life was crowded in summer because friends came and stayed with me, and some of them left their children. Two little boys, four and eight years old, joined the family for a few months and my days were full, caring for three children and cooking meals for a half-dozen persons three times a day.

Sometimes when I could leave the baby in trusted hands I could get to the village for Mass on Sunday. But usually the gloom that descended on the household, the scarcely voiced opposition, kept me from Mass. There were some feast days when I could slip off during the week and go to the little chapel on the Sisters’ grounds. There were “visits” I could make, unknown to others. I was committed, by the advice of a priest I consulted, to the plan of waiting, and trying to hold together the family. But I felt all along that when I took the irrevocable step it would mean that Tamar and I would be alone, and I did not want to be alone. I did not want to give up human love when it was

dearest and tenderest.

During the month of August many of my friends, including my sister, went to Boston to picket in protest against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, which was drawing near. They were all arrested again and again.

Throughout the nation and the world the papers featured the struggle for the lives of these two men. Radicals from all over the country gathered in Boston, and articles describing those last days were published, poems were written. It was an epic struggle, a tragedy. One felt a sense of impending doom. These men were Catholics, inasmuch as they were Italians. Catholics by tradition, but they had rejected the Church.

Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were two anarchists, a shoemaker and a fish peddler who were arrested in 1920 in connection with a payroll robbery at East Braintree, Massachusetts, in which two guards were killed. Nobody paid much attention to the case at first, but as the I.W.W. and the Communists took up the case it became a cause célèbre. In August, 1927, they were executed. Many books have been written about the case, and Vanzetti’s prison letters are collected in one volume. He learned to write English in prison, and his prose, bare and simple, is noble in its earnestness.

While I enjoyed the fresh breeze, the feel of salt water against the flesh, the keen delight of living, the knowledge that these men were soon to pass from this physical earth, were soon to become dust, without consciousness, struck me like a physical blow. They were here now; in a few days they would be no more. They had become figures beloved by the workers. Their letters, the warm moving story of their lives, had been told. Everyone knew Dante, Sacco’s young son. Everyone suffered with the young wife who clung with bitter passion to her husband. And Vanzetti with his large view, his sense of peace at his fate, was even closer to us all.

He wrote a last letter to a friend which has moved many hearts as great poetry does:

I have talked a great deal of myself [he wrote]. ButI even forget to name Sacco. Sacco too is a worker, from his boyhood a skilled worker, lover of work, with a good job and pay, a bank account, a good and lovely wife, two beautiful children and a neat little home, at the verge of a wood near a brook.

Sacco is a heart of faith, a lover of nature and man.

A man who gave all, who sacrificed all for mankind, his own wife, his children, himself and his own life.

Sacco has never dreamed to steal, never to assassinate. He and I never brought a morsel of bread to our mouths, from our childhood to today which has not been gained by the sweat of our brows. Never.

O yes, I may be more witful, as some have put it, I am a better blabber than he is, but many many times in hearing his heartful voice ringing a faith sublime, in considering his supreme sacrifice, remembering his heroism, I felt small at the presence of his greatness and found myself compelled to fight back from my eyes the tears, and quanch my heart, trobling to my throat to not weep before him,—this man called thief, assassin and doomed. . . If it had not been for these things I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning

men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding of man, as we now do by accident.

Our words, our lives, our pains—nothing! The taking of our lives,—lives of a good shoe maker and a poor fish peddler—all! That last moment belongs to us —that agony is our triumph.

The day they died, the papers had headlines as large as those which proclaimed the outbreak of war. All the nation mourned. All the nation, I mean, that is made up of the poor, the worker, the trade unionist—those who felt most keenly the sense of solidarity—that very sense of solidarity which made me gradually understand the doctrine of the Mystical Body of Christ whereby we are the members one of another.

Forster was stricken over the tragedy. He had always been more an anarchist than anything else in his philosophy, and so was closer to these two men than to Communist friends. He did not eat for days. He sat around the house in a stupor of misery, sickened by the cruelty of life and men. He had always taken refuge in nature as being more kindly, more beautiful and peaceful than the world of men. Now he could not even escape through nature, as he tried to escape so many problems in life.

During the time he was home he spent days and even nights out in his boat fishing, so that for weeks I saw little of him. He stupefied himself inhis passion for the water, sitting out on the bay in his boat. When he began to recover he submerged himself in maritime biology, collecting, reading only scientific books, and paying no attention to what went on around him. Only the baby interested him. She was his delight. Which made it, of course, the harder to contemplate the cruel blow I was going to strike him when I became a Catholic. We both suffered in body as well as in soul and mind. He would not talk about the faith and relapsed into a complete silence if I tried to bring up the subject. The point of my bringing it up was that I could not become a Catholic and continue living with him, because he was averse to any ceremony before officials of either Church or state. He was an anarchist and an atheist, and he did not intend to be a liar or a hypocrite. He was a creature of utter sincerity, and however illogical and bad-tempered about it all, I loved him. It was killing me to think of leaving him.

Fall nights we read a great deal. Sometimes he went out to dig bait if there were a low tide and the moon was up. He stayed out late on the pier fishing, and came in smelling of seaweed and salt air; getting into bed, cold with the chill November air, he held me close to him in silence. I loved him in every way, as a wife, as a mother even. I loved him for all he knew and pitied him for all he didn’t know. I loved him for the odds and ends I had to fish out of his sweater pockets and for the sand and shells he brought in with his fishing. I loved his lean cold body as he got into bed smelling of the sea, and I loved his integrity and stubborn pride.

It ended by my being ill the next summer. I became so oppressed I could not breathe and I awoke in the night choking. I was weak and listless and one doctor told me my trouble was probably thyroid. I went to the Cornell clinic for a metabolism test and they said my condition was a nervous one. By

winter the tension had become so great that an explosion occurred and we separated again. When he returned, as he always had, I would not let him in the house; my heart was breaking with my own determination to make an end, once and for all, to the torture we were undergoing.

The next day I went to Tottenville alone, leaving Tamar with my sister, and there with Sister Aloysia as my godparent, I too was baptized conditionally, since I had already been baptized in the Episcopal Church. I made my first confession right afterward, and looked forward the next morning to receiving communion.

I had no particular joy in partaking of these three sacraments, Baptism, Penance and Holy Eucharist. I proceeded about my own active participation in them grimly, coldly, making acts of faith, and certainly with no consolation whatever. One part of my mind stood at one side and kept saying, “What are you doing? Are you sure of yourself? What kind of an affectation is this? What act is this you are going through? Are you trying to induce emotion, induce faith, partake of an opiate, the opiate of the people?” I felt like a hypocrite ifI got down on my knees, and shuddered at the thought of anyone seeing me.

At my first communion I went up to the communion rail at the Sanctus bell instead of at the Domine, non sum dignus, and had to kneel there all alone through the consecration, through the Pater Noster, through the Agnus Dei—and I had thought I knew the Mass so well! But I felt it fitting that I be humiliated by this ignorance, by this precipitance.

I speak of the misery of leaving one love. But there was another love too, the life I had led in the radical movement. That very winter I was writing a series of articles, interviews with the workers, with the unemployed. I was working with the Anti- Imperialist League, a Communist affiliate, that was bringing aid and comfort to the enemy, General Sandino’s forces in Nicaragua. I was just as much against capitalism and imperialism as ever, and here I was going over to the opposition, because of course the Church was lined up with property, with the wealthy, with the state, with capitalism, with all the forces of reaction. This I had been taught to think and this I still think to a great extent. “Too often,” Cardinal Mundelein said, “has the Church lined up on the wrong side.” “Christianity,” Bakunin said, “is precisely the religion par excellence, because it exhibits, and manifests, to the fullest extent, the very nature and essence of every religious system, which is the impoverishment, enslavement, and annihilation of humanity for the benefit of divinity.”

I certainly believed this, but I wanted to be poor, chaste and obedient. I wanted to die in order to live, to put off the old man and put on Christ. I loved, in other words, and like all women in love, I wanted to be united to my love. Why should not Forster be jealous? Any man who did not participate in this love would, of course, realize my infidelity, my adultery. In the eyes of God, any turning toward creatures to the exclusion of Him is adultery and so it is termed over and over again in Scripture.

I loved the Church for Christ made visible. Not for itself, because it was so often a scandal to me. Romano Guardini said the Church is the Cross on which Christ was crucified; one could not separate Christ from His Cross, and one must live in a state of permanent dissatisfaction with the Church.

The scandal of businesslike priests, of collective wealth, the lack of a sense of responsibility for the poor, the worker, the Negro, the Mexican, the Filipino, and even the oppression of these, and the

consenting to the oppression of them by our industrialist-capitalist order—these made me feel often that priests were more like Cain than Abel. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” they seemed to say in respect to the social order. There was plenty of charity but too little justice. And yet the priests were the dispensers of the Sacraments, bringing Christ to men, all enabling us to put on Christ and to achieve more nearly in the world a sense of peace and unity. “The worst enemies would be those of our own household,” Christ had warned us.

We could not root out the tares without rooting out the wheat also. With all the knowledge I have gained these twenty-one years I have been a Catholic, I could write many a story of priests who were poor, chaste and obedient, who gave their lives daily for their fellows, but I am writing of how I felt at the time of my baptism.

Not long afterward a priest wanted me to write a story of my conversion, telling how the social teaching of the Church had led me to embrace Catholicism. But I knew nothing of the social teaching of the Church at that time. I had never heard of the encyclicals. I felt that the Church was the Church of the poor, that St. Patrick’s had been built from the pennies of servant girls, that it cared for the emigrant, it established hospitals, orphanages, day nurseries, houses of the Good Shepherd, homes for the aged, but at the same time, I felt that it did not set its face against a social order which made so much charity in the present sense of the word necessary. I felt that charity was a word to choke over. Who wanted charity? And it was not just human pride but a strong sense of man’s dignity and worth, and what was due to him in justice, that made me resent, rather than feel proud of so mighty a sum total of Catholic institutions.Besides, more and more they were taking help from the state, and in taking from the state, they had to render to the state. They came under the head of Community Chest and discriminatory charity, centralizing and departmentalizing, involving themselves with bureaus, building, red tape, legislation, at the expense of human values. By “they,” I suppose one always means the bishops, but as Harry Bridges once pointed out to me, “they” also are victims of the system.

It was an age-old battle, the war of the classes, that stirred in me when I thought of the Sacco Vanzetti case in Boston. Where were the Catholic voices crying out for these men? How I longed to make a synthesis reconciling body and soul, this world and the next, the teachings of Prince Peter Kropotkin and Prince Demetrius Gallitzin, who had become a missionary priest in rural Pennsylvania.

Where had been the priests to go out to such men as Francisco Ferrer in Spain, pursuing them as the Good Shepherd did His lost sheep, leaving the ninety and nine of their good parishioners, to seek out that which was lost, bind up that which was bruised. No wonder there was such a strong conflict going on in my mind and heart.

[peanutbutterisland-blog]

SHORT STORY - V4

A series of short stories…

SHORT STORY V4- written by Owami Jackson 

Once upon a time there was a Prince who was set to be the king of the biggest Kingdoms of the past decades, his father had looked through water and stone to find him a Princess worthy of his title, he finally found her in the islands of Morucu, she was said to be the most beautiful women in the southern and northern hemisphere. The King sent an invitation to the King of Morocco for their heirs to meet.

15 days and 15 nights passed and enormous ships sailed across the violent seas of the north and finally arrived at Nalia, the greatest kingdom on the planet earth, gifts were brought, animals, perfumes, spices, jewelry, silk fabrics and food was brought along with the beautiful Princess of Morocco. As soon as the Prince of Nalia and the Princess of Morucu meet each other in the great hall they immediately fell in love, their souls immediately jumped into each other’s eyes and it felt like they had known each other for the years, they talked all night about them being nervous to meet each other and getting married, a few days passed and the Prince and Princess could not keep their hands off each other, they laughed told each other folk stories from their countries and decided that they wanted to continue with the wedding

The wedding was the biggest the world had ever seen, the people of the kingdom ate till their belly’s where full and drank till they could not remember, Joy and laughter was amongst the air and it seemed everything was right with the world. The Prince and Princess consummated the marriage that night and the heavens and earth meet for the first time since God departed from the mortals of the earth. The next 5 years where glorious. Filled with love and laughter the Prince and Princess would take journeys in the red Forrest and make love on top of the great tree of blessings, one day they had such a good time there that they forgot to go back home and spent the night on top of the great tree of blessings, it is here where they first watched the stars and named each of them as if it where there children . The Prince and Princess where ready to take on their rightful thrones but the Prince had a little brother who felt he was more deserving of the throne, his jealousy grew more vile by the day and one day he decided to hire a common man to kill the Prince, on a day where it had rained harder than it has ever rained over the kingdom, the Prince was on his way back from the great Chapel and when he turned a corner he was stabbed in the dark, his blood ran cold across the marble floor, his Princess woke from a deep sleep and began to weep, his mother’s stomach tied and she could not move her legs, the Prince was found by one of the soldiers and alerted the high septor, as soon as the Princess heard of the news she wept till her eyes where numb and couldn’t cry anymore, the kingdom suffered it’s worst rainy season for a week and the funeral was held at the great hall, where the Prince and Princess had meet for the first time, everyone from the corners of the world came to show respect.

A year had passed since the Prince had died and it was decided that his brother was to marry the Princess of Morucu. She did not like this decision and tried to fight it but could not as both kingdoms had signed a treaty. Her new husband was abusive and a vile man, he beat her every night and cursed her every chance he got.

The Prince had reached the 7th heaven. Where the God of resurrection Abi erased peoples memory and sent them back into the earth as a new person. The God had seen the vile death that the Prince had suffered and felt sympathy for him, he gave him the decision to go back to earth with his full memory but in a different body, the Prince accepted. He came down as a common man in the village and blended in perfectly with the locals

5 years had passed and the Prince had settled in his village and new body, he had full memory and wanted revenge but as time went on he found himself caring for the village and wanted to help them out of poverty. he built schools and helped build a sustainable village, along the way he fell in love with a beautiful village girl and they got married and where to have a son by winter. His life seemed like it was moving on but then he heard of a group that was rallying all villages to take down the kingdom and he decided to join, over 2 years the group grew into a large army and the Prince was first commander, the day came to seize the kingdom, he gave his wife a fruitful kiss and his new born son a weaved leaf necklace and told them that he would be back.

The battle was fought for 3 days and three nights, the battle was glorious, and was named the Battle of the 7 villages, the Prince had taken over the kingdom and he decided to walk over personally to the great hall to kill his brother himself and as soon as he stepped his foot into the hall he saw the Princess of Morocco, he immediately cried and fell to his knees, the Princess tried to run away because she thought it was the solider from the village but he held her down and tried to explain everything to her, she was not having it and told him to kill her and leave her kids, it was at this time that he knew that time had left both of them and they could not have the love they once had. He named the stars that they named they kids after when they spent a night at the great tree of blessings. She broke down crying and realized that it was her first love, they both walked into the room where his brother was and they both held him down and killed him, as they where about to to walk out the room they where shot by an arrow gun by one surviving soldier and both fell to the floor and died

The kingdom was won over by the kingdom of the 7 villagers and peace was restored to the country, they decided not to kill the past oppressors but give them a second chance, there was no king or Queen, for the first time the state was diplomatic and you could choose a king, news broke that the Prince had died and a statue was made in his image to celebrate his legacy.

When he reached the 7th heaven for the second time the great God Abi asked him how his second life was and he thanked him for giving him a second opportunity at love and happiness and asked for two requests, because Abi was fond of the Prince he let him ask his request but told him he cannot choose who he wants to be in the next life and that his memory had to be erased, the Prince agreed and asked that he is brought back as the great tree of blessings and that the Princess of Morocco be brought back as a man who would win over the heart of his wife.

Every forth night the stars shined brighter and with color to remind the kingdom that there was once a love so great in the world that it broke the laws of death. And on this night The Prince’s wife married a knight she had meet during her time of mourning, they got married under the tree of blessings which was renamed the eternal tree.

[mxladymorgan-moved]

From his William and Mary chair where he sat cross-legged, right arm hanging loose to the side and hand holding a glass goblet of whisky, pirate captain Black Bones scoped the deck of his galleon, his blue eyes aptly coloured for the day, for today constituted a gloomy chapter in his biography. Today was the day of his death.

The Adamastor was all but desolate now while it had been so full of life the night before, buzzing with the sounds of the swabbies performing their one duty, of Navarro Lopo’s men cleaning the demi-cannons, of Spanish-sounding folk music plucked out of guitar strings and the indistinguishable voices of men’s chatter. How Bones missed it all already and how his heart cried for it, saving his face the trouble of shedding tears and thus of adding disgrace to dishonour. There was only so much he could bear.

The amber liquid rocked gently against the glass, a reflection of the tides in the captain’s chest. This ocean was self-possessed, pretty much like the calm before the storm or the serenity after the tempest, either metaphor would work. But neither would be true, for there was never a big disturbance in that heart of Bones’s, which had been taught how to be noble and remain collected, no matter how stormy the thoughts in his head might be.

In that chair, he might look enthroned, a king before his kingdom. But this was folly when his kingdom was deserted, his court and unloyal subjects gone. Bones took a sip of his drink, let it burn down his throat and warm his insides and with the comfort it offered, mourned his end.

He was captain no more. He was Bones no more. He was Morgan, the noblewoman of Shipwreck who had always dreamt of being a pirate and had once achieved this goal, with feet clad in male boots, feminine features expertly hidden and a male name presented as her own. This masculinity was dead and, with it, all her dreams as well. Only hope remained but it made for a very weak buoy.

There were steps. They grew louder as the man got near to her. From the sound they made and the sound of beads dangling along with them, Morgan knew the approaching man to be Santiago, her faithful quarter master who had stayed behind, she guessed, to look after her soul like he’d done with Bones’s. How right his claims of having a priest on board should the devil appear too soon with a tempting offer seemed now, when her soul was indeed of spiritual relief and guidance.

Morgan lifted her chin as high as she could and kept on watching the horizon, the buzz of the previous night still echoing in her ears. Santiago stopped behind the chair, slightly to the woman’s right-hand side. She swallowed hard, knowing this choice of coordinates was deliberate - the priest was showing mournful respect for his captain and offering a friendly ear.

Hell, did she love him for it.

“Which one is it?” she asked in a rhetorical fashion, though the question did demand an answer. “Salvation or damnation? You have surely come to present me with one of them”

Santiago could not, of course, see her face, and if he did not know the truth about his captain being a woman, he would have sworn it was Bones who was talking and this was a night like any other, only his cabin where they used to spend the night debating matters both sacred and profane replaced with the empty deck and the starry sky.

The stars, too, were the same ones of old, but now they did not seem like sparkly omens of fortune, but rather like cold and distant diamonds of mockery, spectators to the lady’s misery.

“Neither” he answered as though it were the simplest thing in the world. “Such things are not mine to offer”

“But you are a priest…”

“And a common mortal” Santiago interrupted, hands fondling the beads of the rosary around his neck in an affectionate way. Compared to what it represented, together with the Bible under his arm, he could not stop feeling small and humble. “Why do you think I stayed?”

Morgan had no answer to give but only because she did not wish to. Obligation as a crewman, duty as a priest, pity as man. Those were all valid reasons and all equally insulting to Bonaventura Santiago, a man who deserved no offence. Instead, she asked him “Do you not judge me then?”

Santiago’s eyes searched the sky. For him, the stars were still stars, part of God’s beautiful work. They were not there to do His benevolent work or to mock, though he recognised they were pretty useful things to sailors and not mere adornments. With a last gulp, Morgan finished her whisky. Santiago liked to take his time thinking before answering difficult questions and she let him take his time, like always…

“Many a time I looked at you and a proud man was what I saw. After seeing the way you handled the situation earlier tonight, my lady, I know a proud woman such as yourself would not suffer the trouble of hiding her identity unless it could not be helped. Judging… Is god’s prerogative. I am but a man”

Morgan closed her eyes as though she did not wish vision to interfere with hearing so she could comprehend, record and save the quarter master’s words in full. They were the kindest words any man had addressed her, saved for her beloved father. She did not smile with her lips but her eyes did, when she opened them again and turned her head just enough to glance at Santiago, who understood this as a beckoning to step forward.

“If what you say is true, then you are the best man I know, Bonaventura Santiago”

“Kind words, my lady. But I’m afraid God may disagree with you…”

At that, Morgan did smile. Santiago was always troubled with the ancient dichotomy, asking himself if it was truly possible for a priest to be a pirate and for a pirate to be a priest. It seemed obvious at first - no. No, because pirates were thieves by definition and murderers by necessity and there they were, two capital offences to God. However, when looking past definitions found in any decent dictionary, beyond words, it was a corrupted world Santiago saw, and pirates were not the sole ones to blame for it. His existence was not a peaceful one but, then again, it couldn’t, with him being a man of the Church.

It should be told Santiago had never killed anybody. As a quarter master, he enjoyed great authority, his power rivalling Bones’s before the crew. But when war was upon the Adamastor, and as a quarter master should, he would drop his own voice of command and obey his captain who, decided to redeem the dear priest’s unsettled spirit as much as it was humanly possible, always ordered him to get away from the action and look after the wounded. This order he would only ignore when he absolutely must in order to protect himself or his captain, after which he would lock himself in the ship’s chapel and ask for clarity and forgiveness for attacking a fellow man.

“Ah, God… Tell me, my priest… Why has God forsaken me?”

There was nothing Morgan wanted more than cry. Just cry the ocean she had inside out, even if she knew there would be no benefit in doing so. She blamed herself for her foolishness, for daring to dream it was possible for a woman to make it in a world of men, for putting herself in a dangerous position not many lunatics would - a woman concealed among dozens of men, placing herself on top, incurring on their wrath. She could still count her blessings and consider herself lucky to be alive or unscathed, for the men could have responded to her boldness with the worst kind of violence any man could do to a woman.

Still, she blamed God as much as she blamed herself. Who had put that dream, the drive, that daring spirit inside her in the first place? No, that was not it. She resented God, that was more like it. He’d placed all of those things in her heart only to take all opportunities to do so away… Yet, Morgan did not wish to provoke divine anger and thus did not offer the skies harsh words and pointed fingers, knowing many would deem it selfish for a woman of fortune and noble birth to behave like a spoiled brat or cry like a martyr.

The priest did not blame her for the thought, guessing that he, too, would think the same in her situation. Just to think… Bones had commanded his crew with justice and honour. The Adamastor Pirates were making a name for themselves as a crew more menacing than it should be when no crewmate possessed the powers of a Devil Fruit - it didn’t stop being a feat when most pirates went after the fruits. And after everything… A foolish mistake she could not explain had revealed Milady Carnahan Morgan to the ship’s crew and killed Black Bones.

Santiago smiled. Under all that calmness and higher aura some clergymen had, he was truly sad about the recent events. But he had an answer, nevertheless.

"My child… Don’t you see? He has not forsaken you. He has chosen you”

Morgan ignored his patronising smile and let the priest walk away. Taking a look behind, she spotted young paraty walking as though dancing about, nervously awaiting the priest. She guessed he had been sent by the handful of crewmen who had remained by her side to gather information and perhaps tell them what would be of the crew from now on.

What of them indeed? She stared again at the stars… The constellations may be different, but they always reminded the lady of her home island and its glorious black crown of glittering minerals… Shipwreck was all that was left for her now.

The Adamastor was hers - she had challenged any and every men who had wanted to take it from her to come forth and try her and none had dared - but she could not man it alone. A priest, a boy and a couple of able bodied sailors didn’t make a crew… The vessel required more manpower. Morgan did not know about her loyal companions, each now to his own fate, a fate she could not order and that she would not condemn, but she knew of herself.

In the morning, she would recruit a temporary crew to take her and the Adamastor home in exchange for a ship, which she would order from the local shipwrights and pay with her own money - the part that the quarter master had given her after sharing the treasure equally among every member of the crew before their departure, as ordered by the captain’s fleshy ghost.

Morgan knew Shipwreck could not be her finally destination. She was not ready to say goodbye to the sea and stay home just yet, waiting for the day her father would die and she would become Lady of the island. She would find another way to have her own adventures.

[shannaraisles]

Set In Darkness

Chapter: 50 Author name: ShannaraIsles Rating: M Warnings: Tooth rotting fluff Summary: She’s a Modern Girl in Thedas, but it isn’t what she wanted. There’s a scary dose of reality as soon as she arrives. It isn’t her story. People get hurt here; people die here, and there’s no option to reload if you make a bad decision. So what’s stopping her from plunging head first into the Void at the drop of a hat?

The Promise

Chancellor Roderick eyed the couple in front of him.

"This is is highly irregular," he said mildly. "It is more usual for a Revered Mother to perform in such circumstances. Surely Mother Giselle would be a more appropriate person to approach?"

"You are a high cleric in the service of the Chantry," Cullen reminded him. "Your ability to witness and validate a marriage is no less meaningful than that of a Revered Mother. And, as you may well imagine, we do not believe Mother Giselle would be willing to accommodate us."

"And this is truly your wish?" Roderick pressed further. "To be wed private and without ceremony, with the Maker's blessing?"

Rory felt Cullen look down at her, raising her eyes to his with a soft smile. Perhaps people would think they had rushed; perhaps they would complain about being denied the opportunity to stand in witness, but neither one was comfortable to be the center of attention. They had spoken about it at length last night, wrapped in each other's arms beneath the blankets, punctuating each agreement with kisses and touches that were as much an exchange of vows as any overdone ceremony might be. Nothing would change with this step; they already lived as a married couple, people already knew they had chosen one another for life. Let Evy and Rylen have the grand spectacle and all the attention - Cullen and Rory neither wanted or needed it.

"It truly is, chancellor," Cullen answered for them both, laying his hand over Rory's fingers where they rested on his arm.

"Mistress Rory, you have stated that you do not believe in the Maker," the chancellor said then, wary of sounding disapproving but needing to ask. "By marrying in the faith of your husband, you are pledging to raise any children in the Maker's name."

"My lack of faith is my own affair," she told him quietly. "I will teach my children about the Maker and Andraste." And let them make up their own minds, she added silently, feeling Cullen squeeze her hand. It was good to know he agreed with her on that point.

Her answer seemed to satisfy Roderick. "Very well. Please."

He gestured for them to step out of the little chapel and into the garden, still in shade at this early hour. There were few people about, only a couple of herbalists harvesting in the only patch of sunlight, getting a head-start on the day's work ahead. For the sake of their requested privacy, the chancellor walked with the couple to the furthest end of the garden, where the stone gazebo hugged the wall. Despite knowing next to nothing about Andrastian weddings, Rory could feel herself grinning like an idiot, quietly excited to officially tie herself to Cullen. The inner fangirl was torn between knicker-wetting delight, sulking about the lack of a pretty dress, and profound worry that going through with this would somehow signal the end of the dream. Rory was ignoring that last one. She had no power to affect the outcome of whether she was here to stay or not; what was the point in worrying? If she lived as though expecting everything to be ripped away at any moment, she would hurt not only herself, but Cullen too. If she spent her days always looking over her shoulder, she might as well go and hide under a rock. For better or worse, she was a part of this story; surely a little happiness wasn't too much to ask?

Pausing, Roderick turned to them, his dour face solemn. "Do you come to this place willingly to pledge your lives to one another in the Maker's eyes?"

Again, Cullen answered for them both, with Rory nodding emphatically. "We do."

"Then let us begin." The chancellor raised his hands in benediction.

"In the name of the Maker, who brought us this world, and in whose name we say the Chant of Light, I offer the blessing of Andraste to this promised pair. As Andraste knew the love and duty of marriage to a mortal man, may you share in her faith and fidelity; and as she knew bliss as the Maker's chosen Bride, may you, too, find joy in your union. Cullen Rutherford, you have chosen to wed this woman in the eyes of mortal man. Will you swear by the Maker and Holy Andraste to honor her as your lawful wife, as long as you both shall live?"

Cullen took Rory's hands in his, smiling down at her as she watched him with loving trust. "I swear unto the Maker and the Holy Andraste to love this woman the rest of my days."

Somewhere in the back of Rory's mind, the inner fangirl collapsed in a quivering heap, squealing incoherently about the Trespasser DLC. Rory herself tried not to giggle through the thrill at those familiar words. It was just as well they had decided to do this quietly, virtually eloping while still within Skyhold's walls. If anyone but Cullen had been watching her, she would have snickered at this very inappropriate moment.

"Rory Allen." Roderick waited for her to school her expression before continuing. "You have chosen to wed this man in the eyes of mortal men. Will you swear to honor him as your lawful husband, as long as you both shall live?"

The slight change in wording was not lost on the couple. Rory glanced at the chancellor with surprised eyes, genuinely amazed that such a pious man would make the conscious choice to respect her belief, or lack of it, in such a thoughtful way. He nodded encouragingly to her, the corner of his mouth twitching as her smile blossomed once again.

"I swear," she said earnestly, lifting her eyes to Cullen's as she squeezed his hands, "with everything that I am, with respect for your Maker and your Holy Andraste, to love this man the rest of my life."

Cullen's fingers flexed about hers, his loving smile both hidden and visible as she took the words given and made them fit. They might not share faith, but they respected one another's viewpoint too much for it to cause friction between them, and the one point in their future that might have offered an argument had already been settled with their compromise of the night before. But even so, she could see how much her adjusted vow meant to him, to have her acknowledge his faith even as she swore by nothing but herself to be his. And he didn't seem to be the only one pleased.

Roderick glanced between them, pleasantly surprised by her agnostic twist to the vows shared. "It is traditional for some token to be exchanged at this point," the chancellor mused thoughtfully, "though your haste would suggest that you have not had the time to ..."

He trailed off as Cullen reached into his mantle, presenting a slender gold band on his palm with an almost sheepish smile. Rory bit her lip, feeling her heart constrict as she looked at the simple token of love. It shone in the light of day, the wheat sheaves engraved over its surface glimmering even here in the shade. Such a small thing, loaded with so much meaning. She swallowed as Cullen took her left hand between his own, feeling his fingers shake just a little as he spoke.

"Months ago, you gave me a token to wear, and I knew then that yours was a love I would spend my life trying to be worthy of," he told her softly, seemingly unembarrassed to have a witness to these words. Her eyes flickered to his throat, where the faintest glint of steel betrayed the mabari charm she had given him what felt like a lifetime ago. "This was my mother's wedding ring, and her grandmother's before her. I would like you to wear it, Rory Rutherford, and to know each time you look on it that you will never be alone again. You are a part of our family now ... which my sisters will never let you forget."

The sheer weight of resigned humor in those last words saved her from tears. He knew how she had voluntarily rejected her biological family; how she had thought of Ria as family, only to lose her brutally; how alone she felt sometimes, with no anchor to hold her steady. And he was bringing her home with those words - offering her not just his heart and his life, but the enfolding warmth of his family, certain they would accept her as one of them without hesitation. A bright smile lit up her face as he slid the cool band of gold to its new home at her knuckle, raising her hand to kiss it as she swayed toward him. Those beautiful amber-brown eyes never left hers, promising without the need for more words that this was their new beginning, together.

"I bear witness, in the name of the Maker, and Blessed Andraste, whom he loves, that these vows are binding and lawful," the chancellor intoned, raising his hands to bless them once more. "May no man seek to tear them down, for they are made in faith and love." He paused, an unexpected smile lightening his dour countenance. "As I understand it, this would be the part where you kiss your wife, commander."

"Thank you, chancellor."

Cullen's handsome face creased into a delighted grin as he leaned down to Rory, capturing her own smile in a soft kiss that was at once overwhelming and nowhere near satisfying. And over too soon, the pair of them drawing back to thank Roderick for performing the not-terribly-well-planned ceremony at such short notice. The chancellor demurred and congratulated them, quick to leave them to their own devices and hurry off to attend to his own duties, one of which was to officially record their marriage. Left alone in the garden, Cullen drew Rory into the gazebo, behind one of the wide pillars, to steal a few moments in kissing his wife with tender leisure.

"I have a question," Rory murmured to him with affectionate mischief, when they finally came up for air.

"When don't you have questions?" he answered, a rare glimpse of the playful commander outside the privacy of their quarters.

He laughed softly as she rolled her eyes, denied the ability to prod his stomach by the unyielding plate of his cuirass. "So lucky I love you," she muttered teasingly, raising her newly decorated hand between them. "How come this fits me? I doubt your mother's hands were a match for mine."

Cullen cleared his throat, somehow managing to look guilty and exceedingly pleased with himself in the same expression. "I may have measured your finger while you were sleeping, and asked Dagna to adjust the ring accordingly," he suggested as innocently as he was able.

Rory chuckled, duly impressed. "May have?"

"Did," he admitted, lowering his head to catch her lips in another slow kiss, muffling her laughter at his sneaky preparations for a proposal he'd never had the chance to properly plan out.

She melted into him, but they didn't have time to indulge in lazy kisses. Skyhold was waking up, and they both had work to do. "Think you can hold it in all day?"

"I will do my utmost," he promised teasingly. "If only to see the look on Dorian's face when we announce this to them in the tavern."

"That's the only reason?" she asked with a laugh, still giggling when he agreed with another grin of his own. "Good enough for me."

As he kissed her once more, they heard the chapel bell sound, summoning Skyhold to breakfast and the long day ahead. With Kaaras due to return within a few hours, there was plenty to do; plenty to fill their time and keep them from spilling their news before the agreed hour. It would not be difficult to convince their friends to join them in the tavern for an hour this evening, nor would they have to stay for the entirety of the inevitable celebration that would follow. But Dorian had been right - everyone should know at once, if only to prevent anyone from being the last to know.

With the unfamiliar weight of Cullen's ring on her finger, Rory left him at the door to the hall, moving to where she usually ate with Evy and the nurses, aware of him watching her from where he settled down to eat with his captains. The room was alive with morning chatter, most people excited about the return of the Inquisitor and the arrival of a new shipment from Val Royeaux on the same day. No one seemed to notice the the knowing smiles shared across the hall, or the glimmer of gold on her hand. Or if they did, they made no mention of it. For now, it was their secret, and one Rory was happy to revel in for just a few hours, buoyed up to know something no one else could, for certain. That would all change by nightfall, but for now, there was a thrill in being secretly married. Ria would be so proud.

Yes, I took certain liberties with what Roderick is technically allowed to do within the Chantry, but it worked for me, so I guess we've wandered into another layer of AU.

[pope-francis-quotes]

5th May >> (@ZenitEnglish By Deborah Castellano Lubov) #PopeFrancis #Pope Francis’ Morning Homily: To Be Free & Close to Christ, Don’t Be Lukewarm in Faith Nor Worldly (Full Text).

Acknowledging We Might Slip and Fall, But Says This Is Slipping Before Becoming Free for Good

MAY 05, 2020 12:46DEBORAH CASTELLANO LUBOVPOPE AND HOLY SEE, POPE'S MORNING HOMILY

We cannot be lukewarm in our faith, and we must eliminate those attitudes and the worldliness, that gets in the way of a free and close relationship with Christ.

Today, May 4th, Pope Francis gave this encouragement to those watching his private daily Mass at his residence Casa Santa Marta, reported Vatican News.

At the start of the Mass, Pope Francis prayed for all victims of Coronavirus.

“Today we pray for the deceased who have died because of the pandemic,” the Holy Father said, acknowledging: “They have died alone, without the caresses of their loved ones. So many did not even have a funeral.”

“May the Lord welcome them in His glory,” he said.

In his homily, the Holy Father reflected on today’s Gospel reading according to St. John (Jn 10:22-30), in which several Jews ask Jesus to say openly whether He is the Christ. Jesus responds that He has already told them so, yet they do not believe.

This episode, the Holy Father said, is an invitation to reflect on our own faith. “Do I believe? What makes me stop outside the door that is Jesus?”

The Pope encouraged faithful to take account of stumbling blocks to their faith or take stock of the worldliness which can bog us down.

When our hearts are rigid, this impedes our faith, the Pope reminded.

“Jesus,” he said, “reproached the doctors of the law for their rigidity in interpreting the law, which is not faithfulness. Faithfulness is always a gift of God; rigidity is only security for oneself.”

A good woman, Francis said, came up to him once to ask his advice after she went to a wedding one Saturday afternoon, and thought that Mass would fulfill her Sunday obligation.

But later–he recalled–she realized that the Mass readings did not correspond to those for Sunday, and felt that she was in mortal sin because she had not attended “a real Sunday Mass”.

That kind of rigidity, the Holy Father stated, drives us away from the “wisdom and beauty of the Lord, and robs us of our freedom.”

Francis also lamented those who are “imprisoned by wealth.”

“There are many of us who have entered the door of the Lord but then fail to continue because we are imprisoned by wealth. Jesus takes a hard line regarding wealth… Wealth keeps us from going ahead. Do we need to fall into poverty? No, but, we must not become slaves to wealth. Wealth is the lord of this world, and we cannot serve two masters.”

The Pope named three other attitudes that create distance between us and Jesus: apathy, clericalism, and the worldly spirit.

Apathy, the Pope said, is a type of “tiredness that takes away our desire to strive forward and leaves us lukewarm.”

Clericalism, the Pontiff noted, seeks to put us in Jesus’ place. Instead of letting the Master lead, clericalism imposes restrictions that must be met before one enters the door of faith.

“It is a terrible sickness,” he said, “that robs the faithful of freedom and impedes them from going to Jesus.”

Often being worldly stops us at the door of faith.

“We can think,” he said, “of how some Sacraments are celebrated in some parishes. At times it is impossible to discern the grace and presence of Jesus.”

These, the Pope warned, are some of the things that stop us from becoming members of Jesus’s flock.

“We are ‘sheep’ of all these things – wealth, apathy, rigidity, worldliness, clericalism, ideologies,” he said, “But freedom is lacking and we cannot follow Jesus without freedom.”

“At times freedom might go too far, and we might slip and fall. Yes, that’s true. But this is slipping before becoming free.”

Consider, the Holy Father advised, whether we are free from these temptations in order to progress in the knowledge of the Lord.

Pope Francis concluded, saying: “May the Lord enlighten us to see within ourselves if we have the freedom required to go through the door which is Jesus, to go beyond it with Jesus in order to become sheep of His flock.”

The Pope ended the celebration with Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction, inviting the faithful to make a Spiritual Communion.

The Masses in Francis’ chapel normally welcome a small group of faithful, but due to recent measures’ taken by the Vatican, are now being kept private, without their participation. The Holy Week and Easter celebrations in the Vatican were also done without the presence of faithful, but were able to be watched via streaming.

It was announced at the start of the lockdowns in Italy that the Pope would have these Masses, in this period, be available to all the world’s faithful, via streaming on Vatican Media, on weekdays, at 7 am Rome time, along with his weekly Angelus and General Audiences.

On May 4th, the country entered its so-called ‘Phase 2’, where it will slowly relaxing some of the lockdown restrictions.

In Italy where nearly 30,000 people have died from COVID19, public Masses are still prohibited. To date, in the Vatican, there have been eleven cases of coronavirus in the Vatican, confirmed a recent statement from the Director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni.

The Vatican Museums are closed, along with the Vatican’s other similar museums. There have also been various guidelines implemented throughout the Vatican, to prevent the spread of the virus.

For anyone interested, the Pope’s Masses at Santa Marta can be watched live and can be watched afterward on Vatican YouTube. Below is a link to today’s Mass. Also, a ZENIT English translation of the Pope’s full homily is available below:

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FULL HOMILY [translated by ZENIT’s Virginia Forrester]

Jesus was in the Temple, the feast of Passover was close (Cf. John 10:22-30). At that time the Jews also “gathered around Him and said to Him: ‘How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly’” (v. 24). They made one lose patience and with how much meekness “Jesus answered them: ‘ I told you, and you do not believe’” (v. 25). They continued to say: “But are you? Are you? – ‘Yes, I told you , and you do not believe!’” “But you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep” (v. 26). And perhaps this awakens a doubt in us: I believe and I am part of Jesus’ sheep. But if Jesus were to say to us: ‘You cannot believe because you are not part of’: is there a prior faith to the encounter with Jesus? What is this being part of Jesus’ faith? What stops me in front of the door that is Christ?

There are prior attitudes to the confession of Jesus, also for us, who are in Jesus’ flock. They are as “prior antipathies,” which don’t let us go forward in knowledge of the Lord. The first of all is riches. Also many of us, who have entered by the Lord’s door, then stop and don’t go forward because we are imprisoned in riches. The Lord was harsh<when it came to> riches: He was very harsh, very harsh, to the point of saying that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle that for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven (Cf. Matthew 19:24). This is hard. Riches are an impediment to go forward. But, must we fall into pauperism? No, but we must not be slaves of riches, not live for riches, because riches are a master, they are the master of this world and we cannot serve two masters (Cf. Luke 16:13). And riches stop us.

Another thing that hinders going forward in knowledge of Jesus, in belonging to Jesus, is rigidity: rigidity of heart. Rigidity too in the interpretation of the Law. Jesus rebuked the Pharisees, the Doctors of the Law for this rigidity (Cf. Matthew 23:1-36), which isn’t fidelity: fidelity is always a gift to God; rigidity is a security for myself. I remember once going to a parish and a lady — a good lady — approached me and said: “Father, <I need> advice . . . “ – “Tell me . . .” “Last week , Saturday, not yesterday, the other Saturday, we went as a family to a marriage; it was with Mass. It was Saturday afternoon, and we thought that with this Mass we had fulfilled the Sunday precept. But then, going back home, I thought that the Readings of that Mass were not those of Sunday. And I realized that I was in mortal sin, because I didn’t go on Sunday as I had gone on Saturday, but to a Mass that wasn’t <valid>, because the Readings weren’t <right>.” Such rigidity . . . and that lady belonged to an Ecclesial Movement — rigidity. This moves us away form Jesus’ wisdom, from Jesus’ wisdom; it takes away one’s freedom. And many Pastors make this rigidity grow in the souls of the faithful, and this rigidity does not let us enter by Jesus’ door (Cf. John 10:7). Is it more important to observe the Law as it is written or as I interpret it, which is the freedom to go forward following Jesus?

Something else that doesn’t let us go forward in knowledge of Jesus is sloth — that tiredness. We think of the man at the pool: <he was there for> 38 years (Cf. John 5:1-9). Sloth takes away from us the will to go forward and everything is “yes, but no, not now, no, no, but . . . . ,” which leads one to lukewarmness and makes one tepid. Sloth . . . is another thing that impedes one form going forward.

Another, which is quite awful, is the clericalist attitude. Clericalism puts itself in Jesus’ place: “No, this must be like this, like this , like this and if you don’t do it this, like this , like this you can’t enter.” It is a clericalism, which takes away the freedom of believers’ faith. This is a sickness, an awful <sickness> in the Church, this clericalist attitude.

Then, something else that hinders going forward, to enter to know Jesus and to confess Jesus, is a worldly spirit — when observance of the faith, the practice of the faith ends in worldliness, and everything is worldly. We think of the celebration of some Sacraments in some parishes: how much worldliness there is there! And the grace of Jesus’ presence isn’t understood.

These are the things that stop being part of Jesus’ sheep. We are “sheep” [following] all these things: riches, sloth, rigidity, worldliness, clericalism, formality, ideologies <and> ways of life. Freedom is lacking. And Jesus can’t be followed without freedom. “However, sometimes freedom goes beyond and one slips.” Yes, it’s true. It’s true. We can slip going in freedom. However, it’s worse to slip before going, with these things that hinder to begin to go.

May the Lord illumine us to see within us if there is freedom to pass by the door that is Jesus and to go beyond, to become flock, to become sheep of His flock.

At the end of the Eucharistic Liturgy, the Pope invited <the faithful> to make a Spiritual Communion with this prayer:

My Jesus, I believe You are really present in the Most Blessed Sacrament of the altar. I love You above all things and I desire You in my soul. As I cannot receive you sacramentally now, come at least spiritually into my heart. As if You have already come, I embrace You and unite myself wholly to You. Do not permit me to be ever separated from You.

The Pope ended the celebration with Eucharistic Adoration and Benediction. Before leaving the Chapel, dedicated to the Holy Spirit, the Marian antiphon “Regina Caeli” was intoned, sung in Eastertide:

Regina caeli laetare, alleluia.

Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia.

Resurrexit, sicut dixit, alleluia.

Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.

(Queen of Heaven, rejoice, alleluia.

Christ, whom you bore in your womb, alleluia,

Is Risen, as He promised, alleluia.

Pray for us to the Lord, alleluia).

5th MAY 2020 12:46POPE AND HOLY SEE, POPE'S MORNING HOMILY