#she mourned him! she went to his funeral! she calls him her little brother!

[house-on-sand]

@misunderstoodthebeatles

barbara & jason as a batgirl & robin who share a family, mission, and murderer. as a sister & brother.

“the lady, or the tigress?” (young justice) // batman: gotham knights (#44) // soirée fantastique (natalie diaz) // batman: gotham knights (#43) // “barbara gordon” (titans) // antigonick (anne carson) // batman: turning points (#3) // the fall of the house of usher (steven berkoff) // batman: under the red hood (2010) // batman: arkham knight // a brother named gethsemane (natalie diaz) // task force z (#8) // batman: arkham knight // batman: urban legends (#3) // antigone (jean anouilh) // gotham knights // libation bearers (ian johnston) // gotham knights // batman: wayne family adventures (#53) // batman (vol. 2) (#17)

[jwiseungoki]

Down Bad

(Jang Han Seok x Reader)

TW: age gap, force love, death, spoiled reader (this part doesnt have that much psychotic shit please tell me what to put as tw)

Context: Park Hae Rin has two elder brothers Park Hyun Sung and Park Hee Jin, as an only daughter she gets everything that she wants. Except for one thing: Jang Han Seok. Her brothers’ best friend, he sees her as a little sister but she sees him as a man. Every attempt to flirt with him, he dodges which frustrates her, Every woman that comes near him, she gets rid off and she wont rest until she calls him ‘mine’.

He’s back 

 

I didn’t mean to eavesdrop over my brothers talking inside Hyunsung’s home office. But when I heard his name, I froze, and suddenly this tingling feeling took over my whole body, leaving me smirking. 

 

Jang Han Seok 

 

Eldest son of Jang Guk Hwan, Chairman and Owner of Babel Group. He was sent to the States by his father years ago for studies and rehab because the boy has serious mental issues going on, but he is here now.

 

I fixed myself before innocently knocking on my elder brother’s office door. 

 

“Knock Knock, pretty face is here.” 

 

I said, opening the door, not waiting for my brother’s answer. Both of them have a frown on their eyebrows, looking at me like I did something to ruin their day. 

 

“Why are you here? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” Heejin, the middle child asked. I gave them both a smile before sitting on one of the leather chairs in front of the table. 

 

“I left early; Ms. Hong has some personal business to attend to,” I shrugged before grabbing a lollipop from the table. “So what chu guys talking about?” I smirked, waiting for a response from both of them. They looked at each other, eyes discussing whether they should or should not tell me. 

 

“Hanseok is back in Seoul and probably going to take over Babel." As expected, Hyunsung could never resist me. I put on a shocked face, like I didn’t overhear them. 

 

“Chairman Jang died last night in the hospital,” he added, and that escalated quickly. 

 

As a sign of respect, we went to the funeral. Our families were very close to each other even before our dads married our moms. Mr. Jang and our father were already best friends; their friendship will probably continue wherever they both are now. Dad died a year ago due to complications of the heart, while I never met our mother; she died giving birth to me. 

 

Which left Park Industries to the hands of Hyunsung, while Heejin acts as his subordinate. I don’t really care about inheritance, which is why I chose to pursue law. I’m working as an intern and assistant at Wusang with the help of my brothers, pulling some strings to get me to a trusted law firm. I’m the youngest one there. 

 

In the age of 24, I’ve known and achieved a lot. I was forced by my brothers to strive and aim for the top as the only daughter; all eyes were on me. I was an easy target for the media and people. They say I’m spoiled, a brat, and spoon-fed. 

 

Which is true.

 

I don’t run; I walk with grace to get the things I want. And I get EVERYTHING that I want. That’s why, learning that Hanseok is back, I need to pick up the pace and start the plan. 

 

To finally make him mine. 

 

“My condolences, Hanseo.” I tapped the younger Jang’s shoulder; he was oddly quiet and was staring into space for a long time before I approached him. For what I know, he and his father weren’t that close, casual, and civil, I suppose. But his action of mourning made me analyze that there was something. 

 

“Glad you can come; you’re not busy with cases?” He asked, tapping the seat next to him, and I sat beside him. “Not really; I’m just working on a small case with Ms. Hong. How are you holding up?” I asked, smiling at him a bit; he was about to answer when his eyes shifted to my legs and back to me. I looked down and saw no problem; was he checking me out? 

 

He then started to take off his black coat and place it on top of my lap. I should have guessed it; Hanseo was always the gentleman. Forgot to eat? Hanseo will remind you and bring you food. Frustrated and want to vent out? Hanseo will be there in 10 with chicken and beer. He’ll do the bare minimum thing, and I’d still be surprised. If I wasn’t in love with his brother, I'd fall for him, but there’s something about Hanseok that I want and can’t point out what. 

 

Speaking of Hanseok, I’ve not seen him anywhere. But then again, no one knows about him. Mr. Jang never publicized his sons; no one knew about his affair with his secretary that resulted in Hanseo; no one knew about Hanseok being sent to the states for being a psychopath; no one but our little circle. 

 

After catching up with Hanseo, I excused myself for some air. I made sure to double check my surroundings before pulling out the box of cigarettes and lighter. It was a habit that I picked up during law school, and vaping helped me a lot. 

 

“And since when were you allowed to smoke, princess?” 

 

That voice sent my entire body to freeze; I didn’t have to look to know who it was. Instead I took a hit before facing him with a smirk on my lips. Jang Hanseok gave me his signature smirk and brow raise, waiting for a response. 

 

“Hiding out here instead of mourning inside?” I asked, walking a little closer to him, finishing off my stick before throwing it on the ground. “What is there to mourn for? Man’s a dickhead.” He  chuckled. Wow, he is still fucked up, huh? 

 

But that aura just lit something in me, wrong but right at the same time. 

 

“Give me the pack,” he said, handing out his hand. I looked down at his hand, giving him a disgusted look. “I’m literally an adult; I think I am allowed to smoke,” I said, swatting his hand away. 

 

I was about to walk off, but he pulled my purse off my shoulder, opening it and getting the pack swiftly. “Hey! You can't do that! Give it back, Hanseok!” I yelled at him, trying to reach my bag and pack that he raised above his head. Even in heels, I still cannot reach it! 

 

“Fine! Have it, asshole.” I rolled my eyes before storming off, not caring if he has my purse with him. Good thing my jumpsuit has pockets. I had my phone with me. I called my Heejin and told him I’m heading home first. 

 

I’ve never felt this many butterflies while annoyed and frustrated. That man could literally do anything to me. 

 

 

•• 

 

“What do you mean you can’t get that testimony from the witness?! Then force him! Bribe him! Do whatever you need to do and report back to me immediately; Ms. Hong needs that to win the case.” 

 

I threw my phone on my desk, getting frustrated with the on-going Gyundo case. It’s a big fraud case that we need to get a win to prove that the trusted company is clean for the people to invest in and trust. They already paid a huge amount to Wusang, and the share that me and Ms. Hong will get from it is not a joke. 

 

“Ms. Park to my office now,” Mr. Han passed by my desk, and I immediately trailed from behind. Once in his office, I saw Ms. Hong sitting there wearing the same confused face as I am. She stood up, paying respect to our boss before he ordered us to take a seat as he stood in front of us.

 

“Ladies Firstly, congratulations on having the upper hand on the Gyundo case! Second, I will be assigning you two a very huge and big case the company will only push through if you win the Gyundo case. Lastly, we have a new intern, so Ms. Park.” 

 

He turned to me with a smile, making me nervous, and crept out, “You are now one of Wusang’s permanent lawyers. Congratulations on this promotion. You’re office will be ready in an hour.” 

 

“What?!” I said, shocked at the announcement. Ms. Hong let out an ��oh my god,” shaking me by the arm, also amused by the news. 

 

“Yes, your hard work and dedication have been seen. We would like you to train the new intern; may I introduce to you Jang Joon Woo" Mr. Han opened the door to reveal another shocking surprise.

 

“What the fuck?” 

 

All eyes were on me, not expecting the words that came out of my mouth. “S-sorry, my apologies. I didn’t know the intern would be younger than me.” I lied, bowing a bit for respect. 

 

“Don’t be ridiculous, Ms. Park; you are still the company’s baby. Alright, then you go along and work. Take care of Mr. Jang." Mr. Han dismissed us; we bowed to him, and I was the first to storm off the door with Ms. Hong behind.

 

“Thank you, Boss!” 

 

Hanseok bid before I felt him following us. I stopped walking, making Ms. Hong hit my back. I faced her and smiled. “You go ahead, I’ll be back,” I said. “Are you okay? It’s like someone bought that limited edition Chanel bag that you always wanted,” Ms. Hong said, holding my cheek. 

 

“Yes, I’m fine; don't worry. I’ll meet you in your office,” I said, giving Hanseok a glare before walking away; he just had a confused look on his face. 

 

I can’t believe this! Why is he here?! And whats with the undercover gig?? Jang Joon Woo? What the fuck is he up to? After not seeing him for two months. I grabbed my phone that I left on my desk and started calling a certain person. 

 

“What the fuck is going on your brother’s mind?!” 

 

“Whoa, chill. I don’t know either, but I’m on the way to Babel; he appointed me as Chairman.” 

 

“Huh?!” I completely lost it as Hanseo’s words rang out in my ear. I massaged my temple; this can’t be! I can’t be working with the man I’m trying to get! 

 

I hang up on Hanseo and continue to grab my stuff before moving it to my own office. I didn't have the time to sink it all in; maybe I’ll celebrate later. I rushed towards Ms. Hong’s office with the Gyundo files, and to my surprise, Hanseok was still there, sitting on one of Ms. Hong’s wooden chairs. 

 

“Ms. Hong, we ha-“ 

 

“Shh! It’s Chayoung now; we’re both lawyers! So drop the formality; besides, its only a five-year gap,” Ms. Hong, well, Chayoung said before pulling me into a hug and giving me one of her brightest smiles. 

 

“You’re still my super-.“

 

“Eh! Shh! We are celebrating together! Later, on me. Okay?!” She cut me off again. I just nodded before setting down the files for her to review. 

 

“So we don’t have any testimony?” Chayoung asked, and I nodded. “According to the intern I sent in, the man does not want to talk to anyone associated with Gyundo; even the opposing party cannot get a statement.” I sighed, sitting on one of the chairs. 

 

I quickly glanced at Hanseok, who was watching us stress out; he looked back at me, and I raised a brow at him. 

 

“Any thoughts, intern?” I asked him not to break eye contact. Chayoung looked up from the papers, then to him, then to me. Hanseok smiled standing up before taking a glimpse at the file. 

 

“I think we should go for something that is very valuable to him so that we can get his testimony,” he suggested with a mischievous smirk, giving me an intense look. “Youre telling us we threaten him by using his family?” 

 

He just nodded; a smile crept on Chayoung’s face, liking the idea Hanseok proposed. “Wah! If that's the only way, then get started, Jang Joon Woo,” Chayoung said. I was left dumbfounded. Why are we suddenly playing dirty?!

 

Just like that, we won, and thanks to Hanseok’s idea, we got the testimony. I clenched on my purse as I walked out of the bar behind Chayoung. Hanseok was waiting for us with a smile. 

 

“Good job, ladies! Let’s celebrate?” He asked, and Chayoung was quick to respond, making the two look at me. “Fine! Let’s go; I’m quite peckish,” I said. Hanseok treated us to some pork belly and soju. I was lowkey getting irritated at how He and Chayoung are getting close; they have the same humor and interest, while I felt like I’m the third wheel. 

 

“When Haerin first came into the office wearing all Prada and Chanel clothes, I was star struck. An intern must have come from a very rich family. When I found out she came from generational wealth, I felt like she was the superior, but once I got to know her, she’s very calm and focused on the goal type of girl. You know she never took interest in anyone.” Then there is Chayoung, who is now a bit tipsy. “Okay, that’s enough. We’re driving you home,” I said, taking away her glass, but she swatted my hand. 

 

"Oh, I can still handle Haerin, Joon Woo! Cheers!” She said she was pouring drinks into mine and Hanseok’s glass; we had no choice, but in the end Chayoung got drunk, and I drove her car to her apartment with Hanseok in the backseat, completely sober. 

 

“She’ll be alright,” I said before locking up her apartment, pulling out my phone to call a driver since we came here with Chayoung’s car. 

 

“You haven’t spoken to me ever since that night." Hanseok spoke up while we walked to the elevator. "Well, I was going to call you about my purse, then you pulling some undercover shit in Wusang made you less interesting.” I shrugged. I saw him smirk. “Since when did I become less interesting to you, princess?” He said. 

 

He’s right, there won’t be a part of him that is not interesting. It feels like he knows that I have a keen interest in him. 

 

“Since you stepped foot into our house during your college days." I rolled my eyes; that was the day I first met him, and I took a liking to him. “Aw, don’t be silly. I know you adore me as one of your older brothers." He patted my head. Is he that oblivious? Hmm, I should step up my game. 

 

“Come on, I’ll take you home." He said, making me walk in front of him. 

 

••

 

The next day at work, I took an oath to make myself obvious to him, so when I saw him in Chayoung’s office working on a new case, I immediately called him to go to my office. 

 

“What?” He asked confusedly, and I pointed at the iced coffee on my desk for him. “It’s yours; I accidentally bought two,” I said, pretending not to care and proceeding to type words on my laptop. 

 

“And why give it to me instead of Ms. Hong?” He said but took a sip of the coffee, “Because you’re the only one I know here would enjoy an iced macchiato." He smirked and gave me a thanks before I dismissed him. 

 

“Whoa, why does he get lunch and I don't?” Chayoung wondered as I threw the takeout on the table in front of Hanseok, “What’s the update on the filler case?” I swerved the question, pretending to look at the papers. 

 

“Attorney Park! Did something happen between the two of you last night? Oh my God!” Chayoung said, covering her mouth and looking back at us. “What? No! Joon Woo mentioned he skips meals a lot, so I bought him lunch,” I said, looking at Hanseok. 

 

“A-ah yes! Thank you, Attorney. Uhm, I’ll eat now." He excused himself from breaking eye contact with me. I heard a cough from Chayoung, who was smirking, crossing arms, and nodding. 

 

“What? Why are you acting like that?” I asked, “Something happened!” She gasped and moved a little closer. “You two had sex in my apartment?!” I pushed her away from shock, “No! Oh my God, Chayoung! I’m too young for that,” I said, covering my ears. 

 

“Girl! You literally bagged an idol last time we went out clubbing; you’re not a virgin, hoe!” She laughed, throwing a piece of tissue at me. “But seriously, you never cared about Jang Joon Woo.” 

 

“Ugh fine! I like him, and I don’t just sit around waiting for guys to like me back,” I said, plopping myself on one of her chairs, pouting. She shrinks before asking me how and when I started to like him. I did not include the part that we knew each other before, and I felt so bad lying to her, but I also need to protect this stunt Hanseok is pulling. 

 

 

The day finally came to an end, and I was starving since I skipped lunch. I did it on purpose so I could ask Hanseok to accompany me. I went to his desk, where he was fixing his bag. I slammed my hand on his table, making him jump. 

 

“Haerin! You scared the shit out of me! What was that for?” He dramatically said. I rolled my eyes and leaned down. “Get up, we’re eating dinner,” I said before walking off. I felt him follow me with so many questions. 

 

We got to a Mexican restaurant since I wanted a burrito, and Hanseok ordered the same as me: “Cut to the chase princess, why are you suddenly being nice to me?” He asked, and I didn't answer him, but I continued to eat my burrito and nachos.

 

“I am talking to you right, princess?” He said putting down my food and grabbing my chin to make me look up at him, which, I’m not going to lie, made my stomach bounce inside me. 

 

“I just want to make it up; after all, we are all that we have,” I smirked. He wasn't expecting the last part, so he continued to eat. After dinner, he dropped me off at my apartment. After locking the door and throwing my heels off, I started to squeal and dance around. 

 

The car ride to Haerin’s apartment 

 

No one talked; complete silence engulfed the two, but Hanseok decided to break it. 

 

“The game you want to play, Princess, is very dangerous. Think twice about it before you get yourself trapped,” he said, smirking. 

 

I scoffed, so he caught on? He wasn't playing dumb but was just pushing the fact that I have interest in him.

 

“I know what I’m doing.” 

 

“So no backsies?” 

 

I rolled my eyes; he is such a child. 

 

"Yes, no backsies.” 

 

"Hmm, let’s see how you’re going to make me fall for you, Park Haerin.” 

[chriscrosswallflower-blog]

Alright, I have finally finished watching a Good Girl's Guide to Murder and I collected my thoughts as I went. Overall I really enjoyed it, though some of the plot changes weren't my favorite.

Spoilers below for the TV show!

Things I Loved

How awkward Pip is - I don't think we get a good look at this in the book since it is mostly through Pip's eyes, but I love how goofy and awkward she is!

Pip's friendship group! I love how much closer they seem in the show and how they accept Pip as the weirdo she is without a single thought, especially since she is different from them in so many ways. I also love seeing more of Connor and his funny personality

I love that we get to see more of Cara and Pip's relationship - they are precious and you can tell how ride or die they are for each other

Lauren - she adds so much to their friend group and I just love her so much. Ant, stay tf away from this baby!

The PipRavi sleepover - my heart couldn't take it!

I like the introduction of the da Silva siblings backstory. In the books they seemed pretty estranged so it's not as obvious why Nat is upset about Pip accusing her brother. Obviously that would bother anyone to an extent but with the introduction of how close they are/were it will make a lot more sense moving forward

Max (and Dan honestly) seem creepy from the start. I swear anytime either of them came on screen I got a terrible feeling - though Dan did begin to seem more good intentioned after talking to Pip in the police car (still creepy though)

Name drops of characters that will be important later - non-readers won't think anything of it but it's funny to hear Stella and Jamie name dropped so casually

It's interesting to see Mr. Ward acting so normal and casual - he does the same thing in the books but seeing it is so unnerving. I think the plot line of him forcing Pip to change her EPQ really adds another layer to his character too

BARNEY'S FUNERAL AND THE TENNIS BALLS!!! 😭 the "why didn't anyone help him" almost broke me.

Ravi being the one to suggest that they call off the investigation hits so damn hard. He feels so hopeless and trapped but the only thing he cares about is protecting and reassuring Pip

Since we have a more objective POV, I love seeing the little signs of how smitten Pip is with Ravi from the beginning - much more than she ever acknowledges in the book

Pip going in the junk yard scared the hell out of me - she got wayyy too close to DTK there.

Becca and Andie being close makes her death so much more tragic

Cara has a TRACKER on Pip?! "Maybe she's not as smart as she thinks she is," man I cackled!

OMG Sal and Andie talking about running away together hurt so bad - seeing how much they loved each other makes the whole story so much more heart breaking

Regardless of if it's in the book or in the show - Mr. Ward talking about how he talked to Sal about Cambridge so he would die thinking about something good will always turn my stomach. That man is such a disgusting mfer

Pip threatening Max at the very end is so amazing. That little pat on the shoulder? 🤌🤌

Things I disliked

Pip seems a lot less informed in the show - like seriously, book Pip would be horrified. You broke into the Bell's house without GLOVES?

I think this is partially because we don't see Pip's POV and much about her suspects - the only two people she really seems to suspect are Dan and Jason and that really only comes into play at the end. I wonder if people who just watch the show will even guess that she suspected Naomi, Nat, and even Howie throughout most of the book

I think we all mourn for "real men wear floral when trespassing" 😢

Honestly, the storyline with Pip's dad might be my least favorite thing. I loved their cute, playful relationship in the book and how she ardently defends her blended family, but in the show, even before the cheating thing, it seems like she didn't really like him? That made me so sad! (Also, does he call her chicken in the UK edition of the books? I really liked Pickle as a nickname!)

Nat's storyline is strange, like I understand to an extent why they did it but book Nat would have a fit if she figured out she was supposedly friends with Andie 😂 I think she loses quite a bit of her character building when we leave out how much her nudes getting leaked affected her (it seems like almost a minor thing in the show) and her act of violence while trying to go to college that put her on probation. Especially since it's a large reason why Pip suspected her in the first place (her reasoning seems pretty weak in the show)

Where the heck is Stanley?! He's pretty important for season 2; of all the characters to cut you wouldn't think it would be him!

I really miss the scene where Ravi and Pip recreated the timeline to prove Sal's innocence - it was such a potent moment!

I miss hearing Naomi's backstory - we get a bit of it implicitly by the way she acts and her confession, but I think it adds a lot to her character to know more about her anxiety and depression and how it caused her to drop out of college

We miss some of Pip's bad ass moments! Again, this is possibly because we are seeing things from an objective POV and we can't see inside of her head, but I loved reading about how knowledgeable she is about true crime, how much research she did, and how much that informed her actions. I also missed seeing how much she defended the Singh family and Ravi specifically. That scene in the grocery store where she told off the cashier for being so rude to Ravi is one that I dearly miss

Pip accusing Max of raping Becca doesn't hit as hard when she did it over the phone and I hate that he didn't truly confess like he did in the book. And they didn't bring up Nat's rape at all (or Nat in general very much). Her confronting Max and Naomi was such a badass moment for Pip and I'm sad that we missed it

Becca's wig in that flashback. Yikes.

Becca taking Pip to the well (or whatever it is - I feel like it was called something else but it's not coming to mind) made her seem less sympathetic to me than when she just drugged her without much of a plan. "Now I'm going to have to put you in there with her," was so freaking sinister

Things I'm not sure about

In some ways I like the addition of Pip seeing Andie and Sal after they obviously argued - the guilt she felt after that and how that would motivate her to look into the case makes a lot of sense. However, I think I prefer her only looking into the case because she trusted and believed in Sal because of how kind he was to her. I think that the fact that she rarely doubted Sal in the books was really compelling and we lose a lot of that when Pip is concerned that she might have played a part in Sal finding Andie after their fight, therefore possibly contributing to her death

I don't think the video to lure the killer out was necessary but I think they did it to move the story along quicker. I wish we could have seen more of Pip's notes since that is what they wanted in the books when they kidnapped (dognapped?) Barney

I think I prefer them finding Andie's planner over the note in her bunny - it seems to make more sense than just a random note and I like how it gives us a small look into her life (her struggling to read the Revengers was a cute little detail and showed us that she is still a teenager). That being said, the note does the job and it feels a bit nit picky, so I'm not super upset by it

Having Isla tell Pip about Sal's murder was interesting - I'm not super mad about it but it definitely changed a lot, especially since neither of them think she's Andie and he keeps her captive to further hide Sal's murder. Somehow it makes Mr. Ward even more sinister

Having the plot line of Ravi leaving, coming back, and then him and Cara track her down was definitely different. I can decide which way I prefer it. Ravi leaving seemed really random and rushed but I did like that Cara had a part in her rescue (see the hilarity of the tracker above)

Though I enjoyed seeing PipRavi get together by the end of the season, I will miss their awkward tip toeing around each other as Ravi tries to ask her out!

All in all I really enjoyed it - I think it's one of those that I'll also get a lot out of after rewatching it. If you got this far, first off, I'm impressed! And second, let me know your thoughts!!

[what-if-queen-camilla]

Chapter 43

Late November 1997

Thea's heartwarming gesture towards her brothers had made it on almost every newspaper front page the next day and, though the whole country was still mourning immensely, there was something ominously uplifting and comforting about it. Camilla was of course incredibly relieved that everything had gone well and she was glad that most of the public didn’t seem to have an issue with Thea’s attendance of the funeral - especially not after her close bond with the Princes had become so visible, but somehow the sudden new attention scared and worried her. She had not expected there to grow so much interest in her daughter, especially as the occasion had been such a serious and saddening one but people seem to be obsessed with her little sweetheart, and much to her regret, there had been some journalists sneaking around the house and even Thea's school again but nothing serious had happened yet, thank goodness. She had told Charles and he'd been furious, determined to issue a public statement immediately, urging people and especially journalists to leave their daughter alone but Camilla had insisted that it might not be a good time for that, so shortly after Diana's funeral and with the whole country still in mourning. The boys were being so brave, they had returned to their respective boarding schools the week after and though Charles was hoping for them all to find some kind of normality again soon, Camilla doubted that anything was going to be normal again in the foreseeable future. 

And so a few weeks passed, the days got shorter and darker and everything inside of them as well. Thea wrote heartfelt letters to her brothers every week, but didn't receive a reply, Charles gave a few phone calls but always seemed short-handed and even his birthday passed without an opportunity for a meet-up. Camilla tried to keep herself busy reading books and painting, while she, amid that horrible new wave of public hatred she was facing, couldn't really go anywhere. Thank God, she had friends who did the shopping at Sainsbury for her and the children came and left as usual. She was incredibly worried about her little sweetheart Thea, though, as she was obviously missing her father and brothers immensely. Neither of them had an explanation of why William and Harry didn't write to her and Camilla hadn't dared ask Charles, who was totally overburdened with the sad situation as it was anyway. He'd taken Harry to Africa for a couple of days at the end of October, beginning of November, and, of course given the special connection Diana had had to the continent, the trip had been highly emotional and, as Camilla hoped, a bit healing for the young Prince. So it quite took her by surprise when, on a random Saturday afternoon in late November, the phone rang and none other than her beloved Prince was on the line, huskily asking: “Can you two come over to Highgrove tonight?” Camilla didn’t even think about it any further, but immediately said: “Of course, darling. We’ll be there!” She called for Thea who's whole face lit up at the prospect of seeing daddy tonight and, of course, she asked whether Will and Harry were there as well and Camilla gulped. “I, um, didn't even had the chance to ask.”, she explained. “It went so quickly… he was so short-handed again… I'm sorry, darling. But I'm sure we'll find out soon, so let's get ourselves ready and depart as soon as possible!” It was strange, probably ridiculous, but somehow, after all these weeks, Camilla felt really excited to see her Prince again tonight and wanted to look especially beautiful for him, so she put her hair in rollers and some makeup on her face, eyeliner and mascara and a bit of lip gloss, only a modest shade of pink, not too intrusive of course, but elegant and classy. She also dressed herself in a cute little, dark green velvet dress and something special underneath though she wasn’t sure whether it might actually go into action, however, she thought, just in case…

They arrived at Highgrove at around 6pm and were received by an equerry who escorted them inside, where all three, Charles, William and Harry were already waiting impatiently. “My little sunshine!”, Charles exclaimed and enthusiastically opened his arms for Thea, who threw herself onto him affectionately, before rushing over to her brothers and falling into their arms as well. It was a very touching scene to witness and Camilla shed a tear watching the three siblings reunited. “Darling.”, Charles whispered softly in her ear as he greeted her with a kiss on the cheek. Of course, they didn’t want to be too wild in front of the children, but it had been a long time and it hadn’t taken much for her to forget herself. He smelled so good, and, oh, the way he looked at her… She took both his hands in hers and locked his eyes, his beautiful and soft, grey-blue eyes which looked so unhappy and sorrowful that it almost made her cry. She couldn’t wait to properly hug him later, when they’d be alone, to hold him and to kiss all of the pain aways that had undoubtedly tortured him over the last couple of weeks. “Why didn’t you write to us?”, Harry asked Thea and sounded equally reproachful and disappointed. “I did write to you!”, Thea defended herself, adding: “Every week! But none of you ever  replied to me!” Charles and Camilla got apart and slowly went over to the children. “I haven’t got a single letter from you!”, Harry reported and William confirmed, less reproachful but more sad: “Neither have I…” “But…”, Thea stuttered with tears in her eyes, desperately looking over to her mum for help. Camilla rushed over and bend down to her, pressing her against herself, while calmly explaining to William and Harry, that they had, indeed, sent out letters to both of them every week ever since their mother’s funeral. “And you really haven’t got one of ours either?”, William asked and Camilla shook her head. “No, none.” Charles had meanwhile joined the party and knelt down on the floor between his sons, opposite to Camilla and Thea, who were now looking at him in complete confusion and Camilla noticed worryingly that he was about to throw a tantrum - it was obvious that somebody had to deliberately have stopped the letters in order to prevent any correspondence between the Princes and their sister, and Camilla was just as shocked and angry as Charles - but they had to try and keep calm, at least in front of the children, she thought, so she cleared her throat and quickly took the floor: “Well, I’m sure we’ll be able to solve the mystery and find all of the missing letters.”, she said, trying to sound as calm and optimistic as possible.

Unintentionally, her glance met William’s, who seemed to understand immediately. “Hey Harry, let’s go and show Thea the new bunnies in the stables! They’re only just a few weeks old, very sweet.”, he suggested and Harry looked at him in complete confusion. “Why this now?”, he asked, but Thea was so excited about the prospect of seeing baby rabbits, that any resistance was futile in this case. As soon as the children had left the room, Charles couldn’t hold it back any longer and did, indeed, throw a tantrum. He almost screamed down the house in anger, disappointment and pain; not only about this unfortunate situation regarding the missing, or rather stolen, letters, but probably because of everything that had happened since that one, fateful last day of August… He had become a single father overnight, he had to cope with two mourning, half-orphaned teenage boys, he had been trying to stay strong for them, to look after them… but who had been looking after him? It almost broke her to see him in that state of mind and she wished she could just kiss it all away, she knew she couldn’t but at least she wanted to try, so she just sat down next to him, wrapped her arms around him and let him cry, tenderly stroking his hair and whispering sweet promises. “Regarding the letters, darling.”, she started after a couple of minutes. “I think we’d better ask Mark to try and find out what happened and… who might be behind it.”, she suggested and he nodded in agreement. “Yes, yes, darling. Let’s talk to him tomorrow…”

So, what do you think? Who might be behind this mean cabal and why?

[feyhunter78]

Moonflowers (12/16)

Description: Helaena and Jacaerys get married!

Previous Chapter, Next Chapter

When he was awoken by his mother shaking him awake, his first thought had been of Helaena. His beautiful bride. He’d fought to keep his hands from shaking as he held the dragonglass dagger. Fought the urge to throw her over his shoulder and carry her to his chambers, so that he finally may feast on the sweetness he’d gotten a mere taste of in the dragonpits those few moons ago. He and his mother made their way to the nursery collecting Helaena’s children waiting for her to appear.

“Jace this darkness does not bode well for your request.” His mother said, rocking back and forth with Jaehaera in her arms.

He sighed and held Jaehaerys closer to his chest, the boy’s hand latched onto his tunic, his tiny fist bunching the fabric. Jacaerys’ heart swelled, as he glanced down at the boy, he would now be able to raise as his son. “I have no fear, mother. Grandsire still believes in love, and he wishes to bind our families together. Helaena and I are his golden opportunity to achieve that.”

Rhaenyra gave him a wistful smile. “When did you become so grown-up? It was only yesterday that you were as small as him.” She nodded towards Jaehaerys.

They were interrupted by the appearance of Helaena, Aemond, and Alyra. Helaena looked radiant in night clothes; her cheeks flushed as she took Jaehaera into her arms. He wished to go to her, to escort her back to his chambers so that they may slip into his bed, Jaehaerys and Jaehaera safely tucked between them. He wished to be able to hold them, his family, to keep them safe from this mysterious darkness.

Jacaerys thanked the gods that his grandsire had granted their request. It had been easier than he anticipated, Helaena plucked his words straight from his mind and his grandsire had agreed with little hesitation. He rested his forehead against Helaena’s craving every inch of her skin to be pressed against his. He wanted to hold her, to kiss her in front of every nobleman who’d ever laid their lecherous eyes on her. Soon they would be able to officially introduce their dragons to each other, and perhaps Dreamfyre would lay a clutch of dragon eggs for their children.

When Alicent entered the room, he kept his composure, even when she tore Helaena from his arms. He understood her grief, not as well as his mother did, but he knew the pain of losing someone you loved. He let his mother comfort her old friend, knowing their shared wounds could only be mended by each other.

Once the reason for the darkness had been discovered, an eclipse the septons called it, a rare event but one that the North had predicted. The ravens had arrived midday, and the panic died down with the explanation. Now a funeral was to be planned.

“You must stand with our family; you cannot be seen with Helaena as not to compromise her reputation.” His mother said, smoothing down Viserys’ black tunic, his youngest brother squirming as he attempted to stand still.

“She is my wife; I should be by her side.” He argued, eyes darting to his father for support.

“The realm is not aware of your marriage, son. They must see her mourn her husband before they can accept her new one. The whispers of the public are not kind to women, no matter how high ranking they are.” His father warned, his expression was sympathetic, but his tone left no room for debate.

So, he was made to stand on the opposite side of the sept from Helaena during the funeral. His only consolation was that Alyra, who had proved herself loyal to him and his family, time and time again, stood by Helaena’s side holding her hand.

The septon droned on, and Queen Alicent’s tears were the only sound besides the man’s solemn words.

They made their way outside, where Dreamfyre stood waiting. Jacaerys watched as Helaena gave the command and Aegon’s body went up in flames. As they listened to the crackling of the fire his mother broke away from their family and made her way to Alicent taking her hand.

“If mother is allowed to approach?” He turned to his father, who gave him a quick wink. He walked calmly over to Helaena whose eyes were fixated on Aegon’s burning body.

“Prince Jacaerys.” Alyra said, curtsying at his approach. The mention of his name drew Helaena’s eyes from the pyre.

“Princess Helaena, my sympathies for your loss.” He said, his tone respectful, aware of the other members of court that surrounded them. “I was fond of Aegon in our childhood.”

Helaena looked at him with red rimmed eyes. “Thank you, Prince Jacaerys, your words of kindness soothe my heart.”

“May I embrace you, princess? It is a tradition of my father’s family when someone has passed on.” A lie, but the members of the court weren’t aware of that.

Helaena nodded and opened her arms slightly, letting him pull her closer, ducking his head so that it could rest on her shoulder. “I wish for this to be over; the smoke is hurting my eyes.” She whispered.

Ah, so that is why they were red. He thought. Not because she’d been crying, but because of the smoke.

“Soon it will be, and I promise there will be no smoke at our wedding.” He whispered back, hiding his face in her hair so that he could press a chaste kiss to her neck. He wished he could kiss her openly, but his father’s words echoed in his head.

The sound of a sharp cough made him realize her, and he looked up to see the severe face of Otto Hightower. “I admire your devotion to your father’s traditions, Prince Jacaerys, but we are not at Harrenhal, so I must ask you allow the princess room to grieve.”

Jacaerys stepped back. “Of course, Lord Hightower, I shall leave you to console your granddaughter.”

He left Otto Hightower with Helaena and returned to his father’s side.

“Lord Hightower is fond of his granddaughter, that seems to be his only redeeming feature.” His father said under his breath, causing Jacaerys to stifle a laugh.

Jacaerys had to stifle another laugh when it was Sir Criston Cole that accompanied Helaena down the aisle alongside her father. They each linked arms with her as she made the long walk towards him.

She was breathtaking. A white dress that trailed behind her, intricate swirls and hidden patterns of flowers and bugs danced up and down the fabric. Her hair was loose tumbling down her back in soft waves, a pretty pink blush across her face, and her violet eyes shined in the sun.

When she stood before him, she smiled, and he felt as if his heart would burst forth from his chest. He wouldn’t mind that if his heart could make a home in her hands, or her chest settled beside her own.

Her maiden cloak—an odd thing considering she’d been married before, but he did not mind—was a soft white with the three-headed dragon symbol of their family stitched in the middle.

“You may now cloak the bride and bring her under your protection.” The septon says, and Jacaerys removes her cloak handing it to Sir Cole before taking his own, a beautiful thing of forest green with both House Strong and House Targaryen’s crests featured prominently and draping it over her.

The septon continues on, and Jacaerys takes Helaena’s hands in his. “We stand here in the sight of gods and men to witness the union of man and wife: one flesh, one heart, one soul, now and forever.”

Then the septon lays a ribbon over their hands and ties it. “Let it be known that Jacaerys Targaryen-Strong and Helaena Targaryen are one heart, one flesh, one soul. Cursed be he who would seek to tear them asunder.”

Jacaerys smiles at Helaena, and she ducks her head, a smile tugging at her lips.

“In the sight of the Seven, I hereby seal these two souls, binding them as one for eternity. Look upon one another and say the words.”

They repeat after the septon until it is time for their individual vows.

Jacaerys looks into Helaena’s eyes, praying that this is not a dream, and that he won’t wake up in an empty bed, Helaena still married to Aegon. “I am hers and she is mine. From this day, until the end of my days.” The words come easy, there has never been another he wished to bind his heart to.

“I am his and he is mine. From this day, until the end of my days.” Helaena says as well, her voice musical and sweet, a bright smile on her face that Jacaerys prays he will wake up to each morning.

“With this kiss, I pledge my love.” He says, the words rushed, and he hears his father snicker, but he doesn’t care. He cups her face and brings her lips to his, the sweetness of her is intoxicating, and he wraps an arm around her waist pulling her closer much to the amusement of the crowd.

They break apart and Helaena whispers “I love you,” before pulling his lips back to hers by his lapels, the crowd whistling and laughing when she does.

“I give to the realm Prince Jacaerys, future heir to the Iron Throne, and his consort Princess Helaena.” The septon announces, holding his hands above his head.

The crowd cheers, and they break apart gasping for air.

“To the feast!” Someone yells and the crowd begin to move towards the great hall.

Their families rush up to them and take their hands, congratulating them.

“I am overjoyed for you both.” His grandsire says, Alicent echoing his sentiment.

His parents embrace them both, and his youngest siblings tug on Helaena’s dress, pestering her with questions. She laughs and answers them all.

Aemond holds out a hand towards him, and he shakes it. “If you harm my sister, I will kill you.” He says.

Alyra elbows her husband. “I do agree that harm will befall you if Helaena is ever hurt, but I have no fear for her, I know that you would rather die than harm her.”

Jacaerys nodded and embraces them both with a laugh. “I am grateful for all you both have done for me.”

Aemond says nothing, just nods and loosely returns his embrace.

“Jace, you know I would do anything for you and Helaena.” Alyra says, her voice choked with happy tears.

Jacaerys cups her face and kisses her forehead. “I know, and we for you.” Then he takes Helaena’s hand and addresses their gathered family. “Shall we eat?”

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[sweet-vanilla-sims]

Year 1680 - Part 1

TW/CW: Death, Child Death, Stillbirth

The year in Tartosa began with the family mourning the losses of the previous year and the young Collari twins growing into bigger infants with Sabina having ruby eyes and her brother having pale yellow. Though despite that, the famine and the lack of clean water had not been resolved yet and on January 16th, Alessandro collapsed and quickly passed in the early hours of the morning. He was buried near his late wives and passed surrounded by his family.

Just a few days later, Clement celebrated his sixth birthday with his family as Orelia and the girls had returned to celebrate with him.

Sadly the birthday of his much younger cousin was of little joy to Giuliano as he mourned his beloved wife but more pressing was that young Rustico was constantly crying from pains in his gut and the lack of comfort from his mother that he missed.

Sadly on January 24, Rustico finally slipped away after a fitful sleep that he never awoke from.

Borthola did her best as a big sister to cheer up Ricciardi as his closest playmate had just passed but the adults were devastated and even more so as Bastiano started showing signs of extreme lethargy not long after Rustico's funeral but they did their best to carry on.

By the time Orsetta's sixth birthday came around they were back in the islands once more which was fine with her as the waters were nice to swim in and the paths were much prettier than in Newcrest.

On the ever less common good days Bastiano had with energy, he, Borthola and their cousins would spend the day swimming and despite Giulia wanting the children to study after the past few months she was willing to be more lenient with them. Especially after the loss of Alessandro's mother on February 13th.

But a bad day came for Bastiano on March 6th and he took a nap that he couldn't wake from after being gripped with intense headaches and cramps. Sadly it was Ricciardi who found him and whose cries alerted the family. But the losses didn't stop there as just a few days later came news that Antea had also passed from similar causes.

While recently orphaned, Camilla grew up into her infancy in the care of Gabriella. But sadly her cousin, Sabina from the main branch of the Collari family passed away that April and on July 4th, the family Matriarch Bianca passed away as well leaving the family in the hands of Marcello at least until Salvador came of age.

As the birth of their child approached, Giovanni Cesare and Vivienne decided that it was time to put aside their unfulfilled wishes and make the best of things especially after Vivienne's eighteenth birthday that March. The young couple decided to genuinely attempt a real relationship.

While other adults of the house were out in town, Vivienne and her brother were happy to get along in secret.

In late July on the 24th, Vivienne went into labor and when the midwife told her there was a second baby on the way it made sense on how quickly her pregnancy had shown but sadly the joy of her daughter, Elisabetta's birth was quickly dashed as the second girl was stillborn. The young couple called their late daughter, Elena, and while she couldn't be buried in the churchyard, she was buried not far from the home.

Following the birth Vivienne had difficulties bonding with her daughter as the conflicting feelings of loss for her secondborn and the lingering thoughts of how if she hadn't gotten pregnant in the first place, she'd be free to marry into a similar life of luxury that she had grown up in reared their ugly heads. Giovanni Cesare though, was taken with his daughter. The loss of Elena hurt him dearly but after losing so many family members in his life, he was used to grief and dealing with it so he chose to refocus and give his daughter the love he had for both children especially as Vivienne only seemed to interact with her to feed her or change the occasional diaper.

Unfortunately for the family the losses did not stop as Giuliano and Ashley's only daughter slipped away on August 29th. Giulia couldn't believe just how quickly their household full of noise and children and young love had changed in less than a year.

[navibluebees]

Meet Me Under the Stars

Please read before interacting.

This is just sad. Cried the whole time I wrote it, and Ghost by Justin Bieber came on while I was writing. Inspired by a TikTok video posted by kouda_layne

Warning: pain

The Metkayina warriors returned home once they saw the ship begin to capsize. Tonowari’s eyes darted around until they landed on a familiar shape sitting on the rocks. Ao’nung was already on his way to Awa’atlu with Ronal while he had been searching for Tsireya. He He guided his skimming to her. As he got closer to her, he noticed she was holding onto a motionless body. He came upon the rocks and dismounted, going to her.

“Daughter. Tsireya, are you alright?” 

Her head jerked up, eyes filled with tears. “Daddy.. Neteyam…”

He looked down at the hand she was holding and saw the lifeless body of the eldest Sully child. He gently brushed a braid back from Neteyam’s face. “Poor child. He died a warrior. We will give him a proper burial. Will you ride back with me?”

“No,” she stated firmly. “I must stay until the Sully’s get back. I will not leave him alone.”

Tonowari fought tears of his own, witnessing his brave girl and her heart that was as vast as the ocean. He kissed her on the forehead. “I understand. Come home as soon as you can.” He dove into the water, calling his skimwing and speeding away to the village.

Tonowari reached the village and was instantly surrounded by cries of anguish. He trudged slowly on the sand after sending his mount away. He made his way to his family’s marui, offering condolences to those he saw mourning. When he made it inside, he set his spear down in its place and fell to his knees. Ronal had followed him to their home and sat in front of him.

“Tonowari, my love…”

He desperately clung to her hands. “Ronal.. too much death and destruction.. I am sickened by it.”

She pressed her fingers to his temples, gently massaging. He leaned into her touch, eyes meeting hers in a mutual understanding of deep misery.

“Where’s Tsireya?”

Their heads turned toward the opening and saw their eldest anxiously waiting for an answer. 

Tonowari exhaled heavily. “She will be along in a little while. She is unharmed. Sit with us for a while.”

~~~

Tsireya followed Lo’ak to the Sully marui. She held Neteyam’s body on her ilu as they traveled to the village. She was helping them carry him on the walkway when Jake lifted him up, holding him to his chest. She squeezed Lo’ak’s hand and went to find her family. When she stepped inside her home, her parents stood up. Ronal pulled her into a hug, Tonowari pulled Ao’nung closer and wrapped his arms around their family. 

Sobs wracked Tsireya’s small frame, he mother tenderly soothed her until she could speak. She turned to Ao’nung. Her face crumpled again. “Brother. There is something you must know. Neteyam- he.. he didn’t make it.”

Ao’nung’s body froze as he processed and school his face to hide the torrent of emotions. “That is… a shame. He was a great warrior.”

He spun on his heel, weaving between the homes. He broke into a run toward the trees. He ran until his lungs begged for breath. He found a nook under a bowed tree and sat down, leaning against it. He lurched forward, dropping his head between his knees. He stood up, clawed at his chest and doubled over, screaming toward the ground. His voice came out broken, outraged, gutteral. Neteyam…

~~~

He walked back to the village, his eyes swollen and bloodshot. He walked aimlessly, stopping once he realized he’d found his way to the Sully’s. He hesitated outside, knowing they would be preparing Neteyam’s body. He stepped in, noting his parents holding paint, assisting Jake and Neytiri with painting their bodies. Ronal had brought a funeral veil for Neytiri and started to lift it to rest on her head but- 

“Mom, wait.” Kiri stood with Neteyam’s necklace in hand and stretched up to clasp it on her mother’s neck. 

Ao’nung crouched by Neteyam, afraid to look down. His hand trembled as he grasped the other boy’s arm and shuddered. So cold. Nothing like the nights they’d met under the stars.

Loa's held his pearl hair band up, hands shaking. Ao’nung gently gathered Neteyam’s braids in his hands, smiling at the bead they’d found together. He held his hair while Lo’ak tied it in place. Tsireya reached across to grasp his arm and squeeze gently. Her other hand rested softly on Lo’ak’s back.

Ao’nung reached for the rope his parents had brought and tenderly lifted Neteyam up in his arms while Tsireya showed the Sully’s where to lay the ropes down. Ao’nung showed Jake which knot to use and Neytiri tied one right after.

Kiri put her hands on Neteyam’s shoulder and prayed for peaceful journey to the Mother. Tuk tucked a small flower into Neteyam’s hip pocket. Ao’nung kept a feather-light touch on his back, determined to hold on to him for as long as possible. Lo’ak finished the last knot and Tonowari squeezed him firmly on the shoulder.

~~~

During the funeral, Ao’nung felt numb. He put an arm around his sister and watched as Jake and Neytiri swam down to entrust their eldest to Eywa. He watched until he couldn’t see him anymore and closed his eyes, squeezing Tsireya closer.

~~~

Weeks later, he went to the cove of the ancestors alone. Tsireya had tried to accompany him, but he reassured her this was something he had to do alone. He drifted along quietly on his ilu, finding peace in the one place that had always been open to him. He slid off and disconnected the bond, took a deep breath and dove down. He readied his queue and connected to Eywa, shivering as his mind drifted to a memory.

~~~

A familiar shape was sitting at the edge of the water, digging his toes into the sand. He turned around when he heard Ao’nung coming toward him. Neteyam smiled brightly at him and waved him over, patting the spot beside him. Ao’nung sat down carefully, unable to take his eyes off of the other boy.

“Where were you? I’ve been waiting a while.”

Ao’nung huffed sadly. “Ma Teyam. You have passed on. You are with Eywa now.”

Neteyam reached for his hand and laced their fingers together.

“I am sorry to have left you so soon. When you are ready, I will be waiting for you in our spot.”

Ao’nung smiled, and touched Neteyam’s face, feeling the heat of his skin and pressed their foreheads together. “You are always in my heart, yawne.”

Neteyam laughed and leaned into him. “I am the mightiest warrior. You could never forget me.”

The stars shone above them, a constant, a witness to the broken hearts and dreams that would never be.

[sizhui]

Guys i rewrote BEFORE SHE CALLS THEM TO DINNER almost in entirety its here under the cut check itout ♡

Before she calls them to dinner: a family haunted

"When my father left Ma, she moved away to a beach house." says Faust’s boyfriend once they finish. Still in bed, they are all too comfortable for a conversation about the dead - but pacified by the act, his anger seems frayed at the edges, so Faust lets him talk. he asks him,

"What was she like?"

"Two storeys tall, with uneven stone walls. Some of the furniture in there was plastic and modern, and some was old. On the kitchen counter, there was an aquarium with no fish."

It takes a moment for Faust’s confusion to subside, a moment to realize that he’s talking about the house and not the woman. He tells him, 

"So any old house at the coast, yeah?"

"Mm. It was built on a crag hanging over a small cove. It would be unfair to call it a cliff. The water there was shallow and green.”

Unable to stand it anymore, Faust gives in to the urge to ask; “Fine, that’s the house. But what about your Ma, Beowulf?”

The anger in him breathes; inflates, deflates. Finally, he gives up with a sigh: “Whenever I picture her, she has already drowned. She is somewhere at the bottom.”

(i) may all my attempts be fruitful and tender

It’s been around three weeks, a day more or less, since that husband of Wulfie’s finally went and kicked the bucket. Wulfie is Klara’s brother, two whole meters tall with a swimmer’s shoulders to boot. When he married a man, it came to the entire family as a great surprise, but not to Klara - he’d always been a strange one, that boy.

Though she spent a considerable amount of time sifting through thought and memory to get them in perfect order, the long willowy shape of their mother kept resurfacing into the space behind Klara’s eyelids, glistening as though slathered in oil. The post-funerary unrest seemed to remind her of the time when Mama passed away - no pomp and no nonsense, the contours of Papa’s face lax in morbid relief as he told them that he wouldn’t be driving them to her place on the fifteenth. More clearly than his expression, though, Klara can recall the cigarette hanging out of the corner of his lips; crooked, heavy. Waiting for the man’s mouth to open in a wail and let it drop.

It never did. The S. family spared little sympathy for this youngest daughter in law of theirs, and neither tears nor ram’s blood were spilled in her honor. Even her two small children shed none! Klara felt pressured into silence, moreso by the idea of her mother’s hungry ghost than the parade of solemnity around her. The grief of a child was just too unseemly, so crude, clumsy and aimless. If they couldn’t mourn her elegantly, Klara felt that Mama would have preferred to be forgotten entirely. When the funeral rolled around, for appearance’s sake, the grandmas and uncles all pretended to be sad - Laura was so young, simply such a raw talent! But that, a posthumous speech, was how everyone talked about Mama even before she was gone, so nothing ended up changing too much, and Klara was glad for it. It wouldn’t have changed much if Klara and Wulfie had cried as they lowered the casket.

Anyhow, right before they left the church, Wulfie ended up making a scene. One of the aunties told him, it seems, that people don’t come back anymore once you put them into the ground. So he really is simple, was Klara’s long overdue realization. It’s not like he didn’t know? People die on TV at home all the damn time. It took a peach-colored church devoted to the virginal heart of Mary and a bumpy graveyard sloping downhill in three layers to drill the permanence of death into that child’s head. Papa’s futile attempts to separate Wulfie from the church magazine rack he’d clung to in the wake of his tantrum embarrassed him, and he ended up smacking the boy twice on the behind in retaliation… It was really unsightly. That might have been Klara’s first time going to stand a bit off to the side pretending not to know her father and brother, hoping that her features would not betray their relation.

For one reason or another, each of Klara’s attempts to reasonably convince herself that she did all she could to help Wulfie growing up ran into the same deadend.  She barely forced herself to call when she heard the news last month… so when he picked up they both just silently breathed into the speaker. After five or so distorted puffs she heard Wulfie say, “Klara?” She can’t imagine what he must’ve thought. She held her breath for a while then, listening for movement from the other side of the line.

These days she questions everything. Maybe a depth has always slept within Wulfie, choked out and kept hidden by the harshness of his upbringing. Maybe he’s always been like Papa - no, not their foolish father who could only cling to that which he loved without the drive to know it and die for it - like Mama. But Klara had never been anything like either of them, didn’t even like to think about those things. She was always a practical girl.

A practical girl, that’s about right. A practical woman too, thinking about her mother’s funeral and her brother’s dead husband with such a straight face… Dad once called her machiavellian, but she always liked to believe that she was merely sensible, able to say what has to be said with the kind of face people want to see – please consider hiring me, I like effort and work and mediocre men. I like it joyless and hard. Wulfie wasn’t as verbose as Dad but he had more resolve when it mattered – A stone-cold bitch, he called her once, and she supposed it was fair but…

She's getting put off by this train of thought. She ought to think about something else. Against her will, her thoughts venture to the beach house where Mama lived in early summer, the peeling walls of what must’ve once been a lovely home to somebody else entirely. Muted beige and the drone of the external AC unit blended together into a monotony so fatal that not even all the music that woman played could have disrupted it. Mama’s singing echoing through the rooms, the faint lilt of her dialect versus the weight of a profound sadness -

“A mouse has grazed my entire field… Oh my Lord, what shall I reap now?”

The song told Klara that Mama was in one of her mellow moods, so she rapped her knuckles against the door with utmost gentleness. Laura brought both her palms down upon the piano keys at once, a sonant noise pierced the afternoon like an arrow…

“Well, what do you think? Am I improving?” is what she asked her daughter at that time. Her foot had gotten tangled in the remains of some plastic bag. Klara told her that her performance was a bit sad, and she got upset, told her something really fucked; told her,

“I’m gonna keep living like this for as long as it’s funny - and then I’ll just stop!” she laughed, a startling sound like marbles falling down the stairs. “I don’t care what the side characters think! Who are you? And you?”

“You make even a jokey song sound like somebody died,” Klara tried her best to elaborate, to make that mother of hers see some reason in her actions. And suddenly as though sobering up, Mama shook the plastic bag off of her foot and looked at Klara with a fondness that she hadn’t expected to see that month. “Who says it’s a joke, Little Thyme? Surely, even at this moment, thousands of people are losing their fields to infestations. How unfortunate…”

Klara wanted to tell her that they won’t let Wulfie go to school cause he was seven and didn’t yet talk like the other kids did, and to tell her that she liked painting, and that Papa had called her insane again… but she didn’t, because she would’ve reaped no benefits from that. That’s the kind of woman Klara was. She said “At least pest control will never go out of business…” or some such trivial garbage.

She doesn’t know why she’s thinking about Mama in front of Wulfie’s front door – She knows, she knows, she just won’t admit it – but she is, so deeply that she startles when she hears a distant scrape and realizes that no one’s opened the door yet, it’s just the taxi pulling away from the driveway. Signaling that she’ll take five minutes at most, she stares at the aged door of that familiar beach house and knows it’ll be heavy, that crossing the threshold would be the hardest thing she’d do in her whole life. She watches the door in patient horror, and she doesn’t imagine that Wulfie would look like the last time she saw him, that big young man in a severe shirt. She thinks a seven-year-old boy would swing the door open and sob into her skirts like they're a church magazine rack…

And then she reaches for it, feeling like an executioner at the gallows, and knocks.

(ii) singing - la la - they go

This woman here is named Laura.

Missus S. is a moniker reserved for the bile-filled mouths of adversaries. Mama is the one who cracks jokes while fumbling with the piano for their daughter’s amusement.  The death god appears and disappears as the two of them come together, the only hands that can stop the raging god that rests inside his flesh.

Alone with Marion below a dim Zagabrian afternoon, she is Laura. Lau, the way she sits on the barstool, drinking liquor she shouldn't be drinking with half a sardonic smile hanging from her lips, ra, the dirty band-aid on the bruise underneath her right eye. Marion knows what Laura is. He has no interest in his glass of wine, and yet he sips from it with a religious focus. His eyes though, betraying him, slide ever so slightly to the left. Ah -

“My dearest Mary, is there something unseemly on my face?”

The god inside Marion stirs.

“Well… if I do, wipe it off for me, will ya?”

Marion and Laura’s first date had been to a masquerade ball right before Monday of Ash. Laura had come with her schoolmates, and asked him whether he’d disguised himself as a philosophy student, or he really had no money for a better blazer. Marion lowered his glass of beer too quickly and some of it soiled his already filthy sleeve. Laura laughed, unabashed with her own absence of care, thought or ideal. The angel’s wings upon her back shook and shivered.

It's a dim afternoon and they're sitting in a dirty bar somewhere in the neighborhood, and that was almost five years ago. Laura is still laughing.

“Come on. You’re clearly ogling at something.”

„There's nothing,“ Angry Marion, Marion who walks six feet above the ground. Laura crawling in the city shadows, Laura’s fingers dancing across the piano keys like the nonexistent bones in a spider.

„My beautiful eyes?“

Marion who ignores the taunting.

„My blinding smile? You can wipe that off if you’d like, too.“

Marion rips the band-aid off of her face with a sickening squelch…?

“Keep going,” Laura tells him.

So Marion keeps going. The edges of his self burn away as he allows the deity beneath his skin to bloom and flow through his veins. Teeth bared, he shows her his true face: this power to devour, to feed on war and travesty. Old gods desire blood and flesh, and Marion provides. He is hungry, and he wants all their lives to fill the god-sized hole inside him. How corrupt of him, how awful.

Until –

„Already done.“

Slender fingers wrapped around Marion’s wrist so gently that no one would think Laura was capable of it. Against his will, Marion is anchored, pulled along with the tide. Can a suicide be a crime of passion? Yes, yes, yes, Mary, yes. And then Mary-god is just Marion again, stripped of the sentimentality of the immortal, and all his limbs tremble as he collapses into Laura’s arms, limply falling back onto the cheap double mattress.

“You’re so quiet. Could you even be honest if you tried?“ He pauses, feeling the godhood retreat into the depths of his belly.

Laura frowns a little, a phantasm in white sheets. “That hurts,“ she says in a tone most conversational. Then she stands up to get dressed, an undershirt and a shirt and a tweed dress. It's a  sight straight out of a horror movie, her bare body, ordinary and clean with nothing to suggest how terrifying it feels to press up against her skin.

"Where are you going?" Marion attempts – and fails – to sound uninterested.

"Oh?" Laura turns around at the doorstep, the barest hint of a smile on her lips. "I thought you were angry with me, still."

"Always am," says Marion, and then adds, "Look after yourself, or else I’ll be the one to kill you."

"What an opportunity! I must see to it, then," Laura pauses to grab one of Marion's hats from the coat rack and places it neatly atop her head. "My, my, as though I’d let myself be killed by just anyone. No one is Mary!"

No one is Mary. Marion wonders, in the hypothetical space inside Laura's mouth, how many versions of that statement exist, to how many people it has been rephrased: no one is Eva. No one is Robin the psychiatrist. No one is -

"Now, now, I can see you’re thinking something mean. Behave and I’ll wake you up nicely." Laura tips the hat’s brim. "Good night, Mary."

Marion spits – red from his split lip – near Laura’s feet. "Don't test me."

“My, my,” Laura simply smiles, the warmth in her voice so strange. "I'll be a dead woman in the morning if I do.“

(iii) the missing rib

“Eve, lend me a match?”

Eva studies the friend on the other side of the booth: Laura’s elbows are on the table, her face squished between her palms. It’s the way a child might sit, and yet everyone knows what she is, what she does. Deathwish Laura, Laura who believes that to live is to devour others.

Eva gives up and slides a matchbox across the table, and Laura’s clawed hand makes a grab for it as though someone has been waiting, as though someone would snatch it away from her. 

"Hey," Eva protests. "You said one.“

"I've tried sharing and I've tried caring," Laura smiles sweetly. "Neither has worked out for me."

"I know this of you," says Eva with a somewhat troubled smile. She’s always been too soft when it comes to Laura - she’s not sure what Laura does to her: maybe she put a hole in her, maybe she grew roots in her. Maybe both of those make for the same deadend.

"Besides, Eve," Laura says quietly, like sharing a secret. "What if you die tomorrow?"

"Why would I die tomorrow?" Eva laughs into her glass, but Laura looks grave all of a sudden, an uneasy look that doesn't suit her.

"This is a cruel world we live in," Laura twirls a lock of hair around her finger. "Any of us could die at any time. Don't you know that kings kept skulls in their palaces to remind them of it? Memento mori, I say, memento mori!"

Eva heaves a sigh. "I don't understand you, Laura. You're an amazing person, but you're always talking about death. It's weird."

Laura takes this as a compliment, maybe. "Does that mean I can keep the matches?" she feigns an innocent gaze, spinning the little red and yellow cardboard box in her nimble fingers.

"Sure," Eva gives up. "If you take it I won’t smoke. You’re doing me a favor."

"Perfect!" Laura claps her hands. "Now when Eve dies, every time I go for a smoke it'll be like smoking with her again."

"Laura," Eva rolls her eyes heavenwards. "There you go, being morbid again! I don't want to think about it so prematurely."

"I hope you understand," Laura goes on, "that you saying my name has a unique side effect of pulling me out of a haze and back into the harsh reality where I'm sitting with a matchbox in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other and confronting my own twisted existence. Which reminds me, I promised Robin a dinner tonight."

"Robin is out of town," used to Laura’s ramblings, Eva ignores her.

Laura shrugs, "Do you really never think about your own mortality?"

"I don't see the point," Eva downs her drink. "We all run out of luck sooner or later."

"What’s your favorite book, Eve?”

Eva eyes her. It’s not like Laura is particularly interested in books, but she likes to ask things like this, just to make you aware of how she knows what’s close to your heart at all times.

“You wouldn’t know of it,” says Eva.

"Ah, the everlasting wish of casket-sleepers to create something immortal!" Laura exclaims woefully, pretending to swoon. "They say that a part of the author always survives in the book. Hey, Eve, do you think I could read that first page you’ve been writing for a month? I'm very interested in your legacy."

"Maybe some other time," Eva humors her. She studies Laura as she tinkers with the matchbox. Open-closed. Open-closed.

"I should be a writer, too," Laura muses. "It's such a creative way to deliver a piece of your mind into this world. Nay, I think I'll stick to music and violence. When you're in Rome..." she gives a graceful little sigh.

"You're an interesting person, Laura. I wonder what you'd write."

"A eulogy," Laura giggles into her palm. "Ooh, or a suicide note."

"You want everyone to believe you're a heartless murderer," Eva studies Laura’s unreadable smile, the one that looks like a barricade or a brick wall. "But you're not."

This seems to surprise her, and she laughs quickly, lifting his eyebrows. "Ah, you're right. I'd say I'm actually an incredibly hearty murderer.”

Laura stands up abruptly and puts on an out-of-place looking fedora hat. "I'm afraid I have to be on my way. Alas, the night is young, and alas I've promised myself."

"Ah." Eva nods. "Take care. See you Tuesday.” But as Laura faded into the crowd, a little knowledge that it would be the last time borrowed itself to her mind.

(iv) lamento

Marion kicks the door shut, and immediately frowns when he turns. Laura is already there, sitting at the foot of his bed and staring into empty space. There’s a whole human skull in her hand, an off-white like the shell of an egg. He spends some time observing how bone is stitched together, stiff and firm, so unlike the tender gore he’s used to.

 

“Hey,” Says Marion when a minute’s gone by and neither of them has looked at the other, “When’d you return? The seminar doesn’t end till Tuesday.”

  

He squares his shoulders when no answer comes, none of their usual banter, but he won’t ask Laura what’s wrong. He won’t comfort her. In all these years, they’ve never once exchanged such words.

 

“I’ll be away for a while. Just wanted t’let you know,”  Laura proclaims after a while and artfully spins the skull in her fingers. 

 

“I’ll open a bottle of wine and have a divine night without you.” says Marion. “I’m not in the mood for your mind games tonight, I think.”

 

“Eve is dead,” says Laura, and rolls the skull across the floor.

 Marion stands very still for a moment as he watches it hit the wall, make the pitiful last few inches and then still, “So she is.”

 

“Tired of life, Mary?”

 

“I’m sorry that I don’t keep track of the whole pack of humans you keep on a leash for fun,” Marion is suddenly, and inexplicably, mad. “I’ll humor you. So you’ll do what now? Leave this city? Leave our children behind?"

 

Laura rubs her hands like they’re itching underneath the sleeves, “I’m going to live in a way that honors her thought.”

 

Marion’s fingers pause around the third button of his vest. Laura could’ve slit her wrists and painted the whole room red, and it would’ve surprised him less than this proclamation. “Good luck with that,” He throws his vest and shirt across the room with enough force to resound in the momentary silence.

 

“I’m serious.”

 

“Don’t make me laugh,” Marion watches her through narrowed eyes, this thing splayed across the ornate bed – this bed where they do what humans do: where Laura had once, with playful eyes, strangled a man with one of Marion’s ties and promptly cut him apart in the bathtub. He scoffs. “Laura, you’ve never done a god-honoring thing in your whole piece of shit existence.”

 

“Eve knew so,” Laura shrugs, and then looks thoughtful. “And she told me to do so anyway. It scared me when I realized she knew what I was. Looked right into my eyes and saw me. It frightened me to the core. What a wonderful feeling, fear. No one’s ever scared me like that before.”

 

“Bullshit,” Marion spits. “What could she understand?”

 

Laura laughs, a joyless sound. “You trying to say you understand?”

 

“Takes a character to know one.”

 

“You could never understand.” Says Laura, and her voice is cooler than it’s ever been before. “Your head’s so full of things. You’re much above the line of humanity and I’m much below. How could you understand?”

 

Marion stares at Laura for a while as she crawls across the floor to pick her skull up. Something about the sight finally sickens him to the point where he turns away and towards the vanity, “Then just go. The fuck did you even come to say goodbye for?”

 

“Would you prefer an honest answer or a poetic one?”

 

Marion clenches his jaw so hard that it goes white in the reflection contained within his newly cracked mirror. Inside him, the god stirs with a ferocity of a whole night of slaughter. He barks a laugh more than exhales it;“Of all the damn misery in the world, I had to be born as an extra in your story.”

 

“Now that’s pretty poetic.” Laura tilts her head, “I’m sure you’ll find a nice hill to die on, Mary. Cause that’s all you wanted when you became my lover, wasn’t it? Something worth dying for, anything. Doesn’t matter what thing.”

 

“Don’t project.”

 

“I’m not. You’re just the most like me,” In a rare occasion, Laura turns and looks him straight in the eye. For all of this, she can be a surprisingly timid woman. “Eve understood, but you’re the most like me. That’s why I came.”

“Whatever. We stick together because we’re not so easily breakable. Can’t be said for old Eve.”

 

“I’ll kill you,” Laura’s voice is entirely even. “You think I won’t? I wouldn’t even lift a finger. I’d just have to leave you alone and you’d rot, my friend.”

“I know you would,” Marion spits back. “But would it be easy? Nothing showing on that ugly mug of yours?”

 

Laura is silent. Silent, silent, not even a shuffle. “You wound me. Of course I’d cry before I sent you off.”

 

“Get out,” Marion says without turning. “Get the fuck out of here and don’t you come back.”

 

Marion waits for the creak of mattress springs as Laura stands up, for his hat to be stolen, for her to laugh with a  good night – but nothing comes.

He stands perfectly still as the sun sinks into the muddy water outside the window and the room falls dark around him, and doesn’t lap up the contents of the dusty bottle of wine after smashing it against the wall. He feels the god stir inside him, begging to be released, to hunt, to grieve, to take what it wants to take. It hurts. Everything hurts. It hurts – but why, Marion doesn’t know. Why? He thinks. Why is he mad?

What is it that he wants to take back? He would never gain the capacity to figure it out. 

(v) stay a while, thou art so -

Wulfie gets into a fight with one of the biggest guys in his class on the first night of the graduation trip, and smacks the teacher who tried to separate them on top of it. All in all spoils the last bleak traces of hope for the future in him, and as he waits to be sent back across the border he furiously taps his foot. 

„I have four hundred Euros in my suitcase. Run away with me, won't you?“

The other boy’s name is Faust, and the two of them are nothing akin to friends. They're not even acquaintances. He's almost as tall as Wulfie, his hair long and curled like a girl's. Everyone calls him a faggot, so that's what Wulfie called him too after Faust had slammed a fist into his stomach.

„Or would you rather go back home and have your bitch of a sister yell at you for embarrassing the family? What?“ adds Faust when he notices Wulfie's face is rapidly draining of color, „I listen and know things! Listening and knowing things are the basics upon which the human race evolved… into beasts, that is.“

Wulfie thinks about Klara and her gloomy older boyfriend who drives her to college in a silver car, and feels his stomach make a cartwheel. He and the boy who started beating him first ditch the class and walk around Barcelona until midnight, and then Faust gets them a room in a cheap hotel an hour away from the city center.

Wulfie frowns, already tired of the adventure. He finds that sharing a space with Faust requires a discomforting amount of small talk. Faust is always, Wulfie thinks about it for a moment, trying to fill in all the empty space around himself. Sharing an interesting factoid about the local flora. Chatting about the weather. Wondering what people would think about them both disappearing after evidently beating the shit out of each other – they go back and forth through that one several times like, I dunno, maybe they think I killed you. Haha, Beowulf, good one. At least Wulfie can count on Klara to leave him alone when he made it obvious he wants to be alone. Faust is exhausting and incomprehensible.

He starts talking the very moment the door shuts behind them: „The rooms aren't as run down as the lobby, are they? Oh, we've got a little balcony too. Have you seen my laundry bag? The red plastic one – yes, that one. Do you mind if I shower first?“

It goes on even as Faust returns from the bathroom, looking off in a normal pajama shirt, not tightened into the disgustingly neat navy shirt he'd been wearing. He glances to where Wulfie is lying in the middle of the double bed and arches an eyebrow, „Are you feeling okay?“

And that's when the thread of decency in Wulfie finally snaps, he turns his head and bares his teeth, „The hell are you going on about, ah?“

Faust blinks once, feigning ignorance, „You just seem a bit angry all the time. It’s unseemly.“

Wulfie huffs as he stands up and goes to the balcony to smoke, fumbles with the lighter in the dark. A shuffle of socked feet comes from behind – Faust joins him. The balcony is shit just like the rest of the place, just a stripe of concrete framed in poorly molten rusted iron. Faust leans against the wall; Wulfie leans against the railing. It creaks and bends an inch.

Wulfie exhales the first puff of smoke and says, „So?“

Faust has a piece of gum in his mouth. Wulfie can see him move it around the inside of his mouth. „Nothing,“ Faust shrugs. „We're just hanging out.“

„People don't just do that.“ Wulfie frowns, flicks the gathering ashes into the night. „Hang out with me.“

Faust raises both his eyebrows – they're blond like his hair, look too bright and saturated on his face – and says, „Are you blind? You're the big bully here. You've got half the school at your feet.“

There's a weird accusatory undertone to his words, not quite jealousy, but not far from it either. Wulfie supposes Faust isn't very popular. He doesn't really know. Anyway, it annoys him, the presumption that he's simply pretending not to enjoy the negative attention he gets. He frowns, „They're just curious cause I'm tall. Or cause I don't talk. Or doin' a challenge.“

One time a random girl from year eleven had just snuck up on Wulfie in the hallway and kissed him, and Wulfie flinched and shoved her six feet away on instinct. The girl looked at him all wide-eyed for a moment like, what the hell is wrong with you? before rejoining a group of friends who welcomed her full of giggles, without as much as looking at Wulfie who stood there frozen, staring down at his fist. Can't believe you actually did it, Ema!

Wulfie realizes Faust is giving him a pointed, somewhat expectant look, so he shrugs. „People don't give a damn to get to know me, and that's fine by me. It's whatever.“

Faust joins him in testing the limits of the aged railing – it creaks once more under their added weight, but doesn't cave in. He says, „What are you like, then?“

Wulfie scoffs, „I'd say fuck around and find out, but you already did.“

„You're witty.“

„Very funny,“ Wulfie runs his hand through the coarse hair in the back of his head. It needs a trim. „Just figured, even if I spent time with someone from school, it wouldn't be someone like you.“

„Oh?“ Faust arches an eyebrow. „I'll bite. What am I like?“

„I dunno,“ Wulfie narrows his eyes at him for a moment, trying to gather all he knows about Faust into something concise that separates him from the monotone procession of faces at their school. „You've got good grades. You suck up to adults but you actually think they're more worthless than shit. You probably like books. Or theater. Normal stuff like that.“

„Normal?“ Faust sounds surprised. Pleasantly so or not, Wulfie can't tell. Finally, he seems to give in, „Alright, I'm normal.“

An awkward silence settles once more over the tiny balcony. Wulfie's eyes zero in on the faint colored ring his own lipstick has left on the cig, on Faust's long hair. He remembers the way Faust's eyes would narrow when people stared at him, almost a challenge to point out this or that. Right. Just two normal guys, having a normal smoke.

„You know why I asked you to come with me?“ Faust says out of the blue. Wulfie goes to say, I don't really give a damn, but he is a bit curious, and it's not like he has better things to do. „Why?“ He expects Faust to spill the same old bullshit everyone who sucked up to him said about him being really strong and cool.

„Cause you scared me,“ says Faust. „and that was new. The feeling of looking up at someone who could snap me like a twig. It wasn't like in games, or books. It was more real and honest than anything I'd ever felt.“

Wulfie turns and gives him a long stare, then. Faust goes on rambling, „So I decided to run away and go with you. And it was mostly cause… This might sound weird, but I felt like I could relate to you. It might sound stupid now, but that's what I thought… What are you looking at me like that for? Too normal for your tastes?“

Wulfie frowns a bit, „Nah. ‘s just that… you’re the only one who came out here, so.” He waves his hand around vaguely, too overstimulated to really elaborate.

„Now you,“ Faust elbows him in the shoulder. „I told you something I've never told anyone. Now you do it, so we'll be even.“

Wulfie thinks it over, shakes his head, „That’s not how it's supposed to go. Won't be real cause you forced it out of me.“

„So you're the kind of principled man who values honesty like that, Beowulf?“ Faust's voice is airy, like it's not that important at all. „I don't care what it is as long as no one else knows. It doesn't have to be personal or meaningful.“

Wulfie gnashes his teeth. If he hates talking because he’s bad at saying what he means, he hates talking about himself on principle. What’s there left to say? The truth of Wulfie is evident. They can see he wins his fights. They can see he’s used to doing things he doesn’t like. There’s no need to explain it. There has never been a compelling enough reason to.

He imagines an entirely hypothetical conversation –  people talking about his lipstick until they didn’t dare to, putting on Klara’s lipstick like he’s trying for a confession without having to say anything. And he didn’t say anything. He just kept beating the shit out of them.

But Faust never really asked him about any of that, did he? He just asked for something, anything. And Wulfie has already slipped into what was almost a conversation way too easily, maybe because Faust doesn’t really register as other people in his head – other people were Klara and Dad and random passersby in the hallway unlucky enough to have found themselves in his proximity. Faust attacked him first and laughed as Wulfie socked him in the face. Just two normal guys having a normal smoke.

“I like bugs,” says Wulfie flatly. “I know a lot about them. When I lose my cool and need to calm down I say their names in my head.”

„Huh,“ Faust huffs a polite laugh into his hand. „Interesting. Now I can't not imagine those in your head as the soundtrack of you throwing punches. Tell me, do you say them in Latin?“

„Yes. No,” says Wulfie much too quickly, immediately feels like an idiot for it and resolves himself to explain it, if only just part way. „Too far gone by then. I don't mix bugs with fighting.“

„You really like them that much?“

The amusement in Faust's voice can pass for curiosity, so Wulfie admits, „I wanna study biology.“ He knows how stupid it sounds. But he can't help it. It's the one thing untouched by violence and judgemental stares and all else, and it's his alone.

„Thank you for sharing,“ says Faust, with too much sincerity for someone who forced him into it. „Hey, do you want to kiss?“

Wulfie chokes on an exhale of smoke, and stupidly hacks into the cool air. His hand reflexively tightens into a fist shoved into Faust's face as he stumbles back, „You making fun of me now, fucker?“

„Sure,“ Says Faust, looking all too bored. „Relax. I know you don't like me, and I don't like you either. Just thinking about how depressing it'd be to die without doing it. When I was a kid I used to think, I won't die before I have a best friend, but now I think this should generally be enough.“

Wulfie peers down at Faust and wonders what the hell is wrong with him. The guy just confessed that he expected – or intended – for this to be his final wish, that he's been like this for a long time, maybe. But he's still moping about this kind of cheesy teenage dramatics?

„If you don't feel like it, I'll find someone else.“ Faust shrugs.

It's dark outside, and none of the bars within walking distance are any good. The teachers would probably get mad if something bad happened to Faust and Wulfie came back home without him. But it's not like that would happen. Right, Faust could protect himself. He was mean and vicious and violent when they fought, he beat Wulfie worse than anyone before him and his ribs were still bruised. Faust could take whatever Wulfie dished out. If Wulfie shoved him six feet into the room, he'd stand right up and shove him back.

„It's whatever,“ says Wulfie. He turns to awkwardly stand with his elbows against the fence. Faust spits out the gum, steps on the railing and props himself up to reach Wulfie's mouth. It lasts just a second, dry and uneventful. And then a second time, experimental, Faust's tongue finding his. Wulfie keeps his hands on the railing – there's nothing sensual in it, even more so impersonal than kissing a total stranger had been, but it seals a promise anyway, the pretense that no conversation that could be made light of has happened here at all.

Faust steps back down, so there's no need to shove him away. If he did shove him away, Faust would've pushed him over and off the second floor, and there's a strange comfort in it. He seems to think for a moment, and shrugs a little, „That was okay. I forgot you smoked. I'm going to brush my teeth now.“ Then he turns on his heel and goes back into the room, leaving Wulfie feeling like it's all been a part of some bizarre schedule Faust had prearranged just to confess that he's evil and never going to make it home from Barcelona.

It's not like Wulfie cares. He looks down to find his cigarette has burned down to the filter. Sighing at the waste, he flicks it over the railing and wonders if the only person your age you can hang with after beating the shit out of them is your best friend by design

(vi) un, deux

Throughout her childhood, Klara dreamed of romance in the most depraved sense. A love like Mom and Dad's, a man ensnared so thoroughly that the more they beat each other black and blue, the more he'd come back to her. It had to have been utterly addicting, the taste of a forbidden kiss that no one else knows – still, the first time a boy shoved his tongue down her throat was more tasteless than styrofoam, a kiss barely swallowed and forced down her gullet.

There's a picture of Wulfie and his dead husband kissing framed on a cupboard in the hallway. It sends a wave of revulsion through Klara's gut on instinct, and she forces herself to look away from it and into Wulfie's face, the unshaven side of his jaw. He looks her up and down, „The books are in the living room.“

The time they talked on the phone, Wulfie ended the conversation by off-handedly muttering about some of Faust's photography books he doesn't want anymore. The living room is on the first floor. Klara doesn’t know why she expected it to be bleak and spartan, but it’s anything but. A large TV covered in a thick layer of dust, and heaps of magazines and clothing thrown about. On the kitchen counter there’s a terrarium with no bugs.

Wulfie rubs his eyes as he all but collapses into the single armchair. Klara stands at the door frozen and alert until he actually raises his eyebrows and says, “You can sit, if you’d like. For a bit.”

There’s no second seat in the living room, so Klara brings a chair from the kitchen and sits across the small table. “Give me a smoke.” 

Wulfie passes her a brand new unopened pack of cigarettes and a lighter that says Barcelona in big red letters. Klara finds it a distasteful trinket. No one moves first to light their cig. No one moves first to reach the ashtray. They sit near each other and Klara thinks about their faces - wide, rough in structure but delicately pretty around the eyes and mouth. 

“I wish you could’ve met him,” says Wulfie in the end, eyes fixed on the bright red coffee table that wasn’t there when Klara was young. “He brought life into this place.”

Nah, thinks Klara. All he brought here was more death. But she doesn’t say it. She doesn’t say anything, just lets her brother talk.

“But I didn’t know what to do, face to face with the depth of his unhappiness.” he goes on. “It scared me. Made me lonely.”

Lonely. A brother and sister, lonely for something they can never find in each other.

“When you were a child, I always wished you’d die,” Klara bites the inside of her cheek.  “But when I found out you two made a life for yourself, I was relieved. I thought, good riddance.” 

Wulfie stares deeply into the side of her nose, and Klara wonders if he knows how much it hurts her, his gaze cold and unyielding like Mama’s as Klara makes her frail unspoken confession: the one who really wanted to die was I all along. 

“But at the start,” she says in the end, and it’s perhaps the first time ever that her voice has wavered in such a way. “I really… wanted you to be born, even so. I knew Mama and Papa would only hurt you. I knew we’d be no family… It’s so selfish, but I’m glad they decided to go through with it. You’re the one good thing they brought into this world.”

It’s selfish, but I’m glad you were born - what a cruel thing to say to your brother. And yet, “It’s fine,” says Wulfie, and she doesn’t know what he’s telling her - it’s fine to be sad? It’s fine to forgive yourself? It’s fine to die? They’re not fine – nothing is fine. Even so, Wulfie’s huge body is shaking like a leaf, and more than anything Klara wanted to hear those words, to believe them. Even if they’re a lie. Even if they’re cursed.

They smoke in silence. Wulfie wears lipstick no longer, and the filter of his cigarette is clean. Klara’s is dark red – Mama’s color – she wipes her mouth into the back of her hand, and stands up, “I should go. I don’t want to keep you busy,” she says, though neither of them have better to do.

“Mhm,” says Wulfie, staring straight into the terrarium with no bugs, and Klara wonders if he’ll be fine. She wonders if she’ll be fine, anyone. “Good night, Klara.”

“Night, Wulfie.”

“Hey,” and Wulfie looks like he’s about to do the hardest thing he’s done in his whole life - allow himself to be gentle with her, if only for a moment. “Don’t be a stranger.”

She smiles, or maybe just imagines herself smiling at this.

“Good night, Beowulf.”

As Klara leaves the living room with six photography books under her arm, she wipes off the remains of her lipstick. And then she ties up her hair.

As the driver starts the car, the sun sets, slowly and mournfully as though sinking into a grave it dug for itself.

(vi) maybe I’ll be eaten by Beowulf’s Ma

“Get a move on, sweep the terrace or something.”

Faust’s left eye starting to twitch as he spoke was her cue to remove him from the house. After the old man lost his job, they moved to a two-room shack outside of Zagreb, where it was cheaper to live and she could grow some of the food on her own. Besides the room where they all slept and a kitchenette, there was a terrace and an attic. That attic was by far the more interesting of the two, but they spent one night too many huddled up there to evade drunken sluggishness. Please let him tell you about the terrace instead.

It was a square of concrete, walled up on three sides and open on the fourth towards a street called Naftaplinska cesta - oil and gas road. Nothing in Faust’s childhood was poetic other than his rage. And whenever that threatened to spill out, she would send him to sweep the terrace with a corn broom. That broom was the epitome of everything that enraged him: just like this rage of his, it was something that could be found in every household. Ordinary, cheap. You could sweep the terrace, or you could even beat your wife with it if you liked. Take your pick.

Faust’s mother did not know of the play Faust. The pinnacle of literature for that woman were the paperback erotica novels that one could buy at the newspaper kiosk. Thus, to his great disappointment, she could not name him after it. He was actually named after an inventor. In 1617, a man named Faust Vrančić jumped from a Venice tower wearing a rigid-framed parachute and survived. He would later describe it in his book of machines, calling it the Flying man. But that’s a digression. These are simply the things Faust pondered the most while sweeping the terrace: flying men, jumping men, falling men. Sometimes he imagined them gracefully landing, and sometimes they’d splat against the walls of his mind like overripe tomatoes. One miscalculation was all it would’ve taken for Faust Vrančić, the genius, to be labeled as Faust Vrančić, the suicidal idiot who had to be scrubbed off the Venetian square. But seriously, isn’t the borderline between those two dangerously thin?

As he pondered that, his rage would often subside, and he would then be allowed to come back inside. What’s more, he would even be happy that he did something kind for his mother.

“You sure about this?” Faust raised both of his eyebrows as he sat on the side of the bed and set a small ashtray between the two of them. “I mean, the last time you invited me over, you…”

Beowulf peered at him from under his ridiculous fluffy bangs like, watch your mouth, so he carefully reconsidered his wording: “...ended up screaming at me to get out.”

He almost thought Beowulf wouldn’t say anything. It wasn’t unlike him to leave Faust hanging in the middle of a pointless exchange with himself - and he didn’t mind that much. He’s always liked the sound of his own voice, and anyway, Beowulf’s aloofness made for most of his charms. But a second passed and he said, “Yeah… my bad.”

“Whatever,” It was the closest thing to an apology that he would ever get from him. “I’m done. Give me that.”

Beowulf’s lighter was heavy, ornate silver - not the kind a college freshman should carry. He had another one, a cheap plastic trinket that said BARCELONA, but he never used that one. Faust passed him the joint, and he stared at it for a while before lighting it and taking a hit. It was almost cute, even though there was nothing cute about Beowulf S., all sharp edges.

“Relax, would you?” Faust laughed a little. “It’s not gonna bite you.”

Beowulf’s eyes zeroed in on the smoke rolling out of his own mouth as he exhaled. “I’ve never smoked this shit before.”

They passed it back and forth a couple of times before Faust finally said, “This is the part where I ask you why you cried when I touched you, by the way.”

Beowulf’s dark eyebrows knitted together. He was ruggedly handsome when he did that, nothing like the panicked expression he’d flashed the previous Tuesday. “Don’t,” he said.

“Another question, then,” Faust kicked off his shoes and laid on the bed. It smelled like Beowulf’s cologne, sharp and citrusy. “What’s up with all those scars on your arms?”

He studied the coral red ring Beowulf’s lipstick had left on the blunt before putting his mouth around it. He’d known Beowulf was trouble, what with his torn clothes and his chains and his short fuse. Still, he was surprised when he took his jacket off and found a dozen scars, pale deep scratches down his forearms. 

“What? You cut yourself or something?” He nudged him with his foot, just to be mean, but Beowulf just sighed heavily as he slid down the wall until we were lying side by side. “Or something,” he said dryly. “Had enough? I didn’t call you over here to talk.”

Faust laughed at this. “Cut a guy some slack, will you? I like you cause you’re hard to get, but if you never tell me anything… I’m gonna get bored of you, you know?”

Beowulf looked straight at him, and his gaze was unfocused, like he was looking at something behind Faust’s shoulder. He briefly wondered if his words might have hurt him, before reminding myself who it was that he was talking to. Right. Beowulf couldn’t care less.

“Can I touch you a little?” Faust ran his fingers through Beowulf’s hair before he could answer. His hair was dark and fine, curled at the tips and soft to the touch. Faust felt him tense, but he didn’t pull back.

“Where’d you get this, then?”  Beowulf said suddenly, and Faust felt his rough thumb trace his own hairline. He was just trying to keep my mouth busy as his hands roamed down Beowulf’s neck and towards his chest, so he was surprised when he spoke, his voice slightly raspy.

Faust’s hands paused around the hem of Beowulf’s tank top, “My old man.‘S fine,” he whispered into Beowulf’s ear, because he seemed uncomfortable. “I manned up and took care of him.”

He wondered if getting high with Beowulf was a bad idea. I wondered if he ought to say, tell me if you want me to stop, if Beowulf was actually more frail than he looks under all that muscle. He didn’t stop, though. He pulled his black tank top over his head and threw it onto the pile of textbooks and empty beer cans on the floor.

“Yeah, we both manned the fuck up,” Faust said as he straddled Beowulf. I  “Tell me, is that lipstick your sister’s or your mommy’s?”

Beowulf grabbed his wrist with such force and speed that it very nearly scared him. In the resulting silence, he could hear both their heartbeats, each louder than the last. He said without a hint of humor, “Now you’re making fun of me?” 

“No,” Faust laughed to cover up his sudden discomfort. “I like it. It makes you stand out.”

Truth was, Beowulf stood out too much even without his penchant for makeup, too big and too silent. Deep inside Faust’s mind, the alarms kept ringing, back off while you still can, because nothing good could come out of catching feelings for a guy who was all beaten up every other time that you saw him.

Instead he pressed up against his chest and buried his face into the crook of his neck. He felt Beowulf freeze, his hands awkwardly coming to rest on the small of Faust’s back, afraid to move.

“You know, that time I started hitting you… I really wanted to…”

Beowulf finally moved to cup his waist. His hands were so big, they halfway closed around it. “Don’t say it. It feels gross.”

“Okay.” Faust’s shirt joined Beowulf’s on the floor. “ I won’t say it. Then just look at me.”

“Don’t want to,” Beowulf muttered stubbornly.

Faust grabbed his chin. “Look. At me.”

“I said I don’t want to!” Beowulf snarled, something between a child and an animal. One of his teeth was chipped away at the front. 

“What do you want from me, then?” Faust was getting tired of playing with him, felt aimless. Beowulf seemed to honestly think about it, and heaved a weary sigh that resounded in the silence. “Just want to feel a damn thing.”

That sort of thing, at least, Faust had always been good enough for. With his giving up, silence fell upon the dorm room.

“Get a move on, sweep the terrace or something.”

Faust was still pretty young when he figured out that he didn’t want to leave any remains behind when he died. In other words, he didn’t want to be Faust Vrančić who fell from the sky. He absolutely despised the idea of people looking at his body without him being present in it. Do you understand his agony? It turned out that not even leaving this world was simple.

He would later learn that autism runs in Beowulf’s family the way alcoholism ran in his. He would later see a photograph of the mother, only twenty-nine when she hurled herself off the cliff by the house they made a home in. When he understood things, he understood them all at once - how and why they got where they got - but by then it was too late. To go back would be to untangle all the knots he used to desperately tether himself to Beowulf.

He drove himself to visit the grave since Beowulf didn’t want to go, five hours to Zagreb and back. The grave had no angel statues, and stood lonelier than the rest. Standing there and murmuring prayers to a god he didn’t believe in, he felt the lines between them blurring. I was her, to you. Was I her, to you? 

In 1993, a woman named Laura S. jumped from the cliff by her house and did not survive. And although people remember the inventor of the parachute, they don’t remember her. Faust didn't think that was fair, he truly didn't. He didn’t think that the people who prevailed were worth more than the dead ones.

And it's not my senselessness killing me, thought Faust bitterly, it was you, all of you! Why won't anyone come? Even the voices in his head were silent! Why wouldn’t anyone come for him in the end and tell him it was fine to go on living, not even those he created from nothing with his two hands? Why did he have to go alone, watched only by the silent jury of other souls who fell to damnation here? Ah, I really am a cursed existence. Maybe I'll be eaten by Beowulf's mother.

It was easier once he let go, crossing the point of no return. His hands ceased shaking, and he felt a grim and mortifying tranquility once that brief struggle for life ended, as though someone had held a pillow over his face until he stilled. Though he always imagined death as some kind of an ironic triumph, Faust has always known he wouldn't live a long life. The wind was quiet with its howls that morning, and it was a good day to die.

The dark watery surface vibrated and rippled with the growls and shrieks of the corpses on the bottom, and they grew louder still when Faust jumped in and they smelled fresh meat, almost like the buzz of spreading news, today we feast! The water was cold as a grave as he sank and sank… and realized he didn’t even know how deep the sea went there. He itched to find out. Struggling with the final mouthful of water that filled his lungs, his head fell to the side, unblinking eyes turning towards the sky. And he sank

Beyond that, all memory of death has left him. He doesn’t even remember the snapping of jaws as they bickered for a taste of his flesh.

FIN

[dragonmuse]

I loved the latest installment of Leda verse!!

If you're still taking prompts, could we see some izzy-centric hurt/comfort? Or something related to ed realising about the skylights?

Also I love Alma and Erika Rover so much aaaah <33

(I'm so glad you're enjoying it! I am still taking prompts though I'm answering fewer of them, which is probably obvious. I do plan on doing a good run of them after Alma's story concludes. I had @queenbookwench listed as having asked about Jonah's funeral, but I can't find the comment now so if I'm wrong I apologize. I don't think I ever wrote it out, though I had a dim memory of answering some ask about Izzy sending a car for candy. So this is all about Jonah's funeral, the aftermath and the way Izzy mourns people with some bonus Lucius).

Izzy stood towards the back of the crowd, out of his parents’ eyeline.  Aaron and his new wife were standing right next to the grave, both with solemn looks. Izzy was reasonably sure Fiona had never even met Jonah, but sure, get your fucking pity points in. Delly was standing next to their mother, arms crossed over her chest, face set into neutral disinterest which at least felt more honest. 

Candy stood beside him, her tears falling fast and furious, though she made little noise. Her long fingernails had been painted a glossy black that caught the light every time she reached up to dab at her face with a wad of tissue. 

“Thank you,” she’d whispered, voice raw from tears just before the preacher started ranting about fire and brimstone. 

“You should be here,” was all he’d said in return. It hadn’t been much to send a car for her. 

He almost hadn’t done it. 

It had been decided in the moment he’d walked into Eddy’s office and said, 

“I need a few days.” 

“What for?”

She was behind the desk he still sometimes thought of as Hornigold’s. Her hair was hanging in her face, beard was already growing thick. Sometimes he missed being able to read her expression in the quirk of his lips, but it was a small price to pay for the intimidating figure that wowed clients and scared all the right people.

“My brother died.” 

Her pen paused,  “The one you liked?” 

Had he liked Jonah? The man had been volatile and difficult, but he’d also laughed more than the rest of them put together. He’d loved Izzy in his own rough way, and protected him for a while. More than a lot of other people had done. 

“Yeah,” he said and the word almost stuck in his throat. He coughed to dislodge it. 

“Fine,” their attention dropped back to their notes. “When will you be back?” 

“Friday.” 

They nodded and he backed out of the room. He put his wallet in his pocket and locked the door to his office. It was bizarre to leave in the middle of the day with no intention of coming back tomorrow. It made him a little queasy. 

The last funeral he’d gone to was his father’s mother’s. They’d only met her a few times and Da had insisted on dragging them all across the state for it even though he had, by all reports, loathed her. Izzy had been thirteen and mostly what he remembered was the boredom and then being in his aunt’s stuffy house. Jonah had found a weird room stuffed full of boxes and dragged Izzy in there. He’d taught him how to play poker in the shadow of QVC purchases. 

The next time someone close to Izzy died, Jonah hadn’t been home in years. He hadn’t been told about the funeral. 

The thought lodged in him like a thorn. He called the car and set it up for Candy, left a stilted message on her voicemail. There was no way Da or Ma would’ve called her and they’d only gotten the body by default. 

Izzy stood at the back of the crowd now with his dead brother’s crying girlfriend. What would he have done if he’d been allowed to go to Faith’s funeral anyway? Just stood there like this. Useless and silent. 

When the coffin went into the ground, Candy cried harder, but her sobs were drowned out by Ma’s, who had begun to wail. It was a wounded animal sound, inhumane in its sorrow. Delly reached out, touching her elbow, but was roundly shaken off. Da said something sharp to her, but for once Ma didn’t just subside. She cried as if thirty years of tears had been saved for this moment. Everyone shifted away from her, leaving a fall out circle of grief. 

People dispersed after that, as Aaron came by he took in Izzy and Candy, 

“You and your girlfriend should come by the apartment, show your respect.” 

The apartment meant the place they’d grown up. Those sterile walls, repainted an even brighter white now that none of them lived at home to leave behind fingerprints and pain. 

Izzy said nothing. Aaron’s lip curled and he marched away. 

“You didn’t correct him,” Candy’s voice was broken by tears. 

“He doesn’t matter enough,” Izzy shrugged. 

“Do you like ham?” She asked, blotting fruitlessly at her running mascara. 

“Yeah,” he frowned. “Why?” 

Her apartment smelled better than his parents' place at least, some kind of scented candle burning away, and instead of terrible memories, it was just a crowded one bedroom. There was a workman’s jacket tossed over the back of the couch. Like Jonah had just come home and was in the bathroom or something. 

They ate the ham that she’d made for some dinner that would never happen. There was steamed vegetables on the side and brown rice. All safe enough, so he ate it, even as she picked through her own plate. 

“Do you want anything?” she asked when they’d both done the best they could to pretend to have an appetite. 

“Hm?” he finished off the beer she poured for him. He wasn’t really in the mood for a drink, but it had been the last glass bottle in the fridge. A single soldier left on the field. 

“Of his. I’m not ready to go through it. I don’t-” she started then stopped. “Will your family want his things?” 

“Don’t know. Don’t care. They don’t deserve any of it. You keep it.” 

“What about you?” 

He wanted to say that he didn’t give a shit. Having something of Jonah’s wouldn’t do him any good. But he had a ring pressed to his ribs that said it mattered a little, so he got to his feet and let her show him the clothes, the few photos, the bits and pieces of things left behind. In the end, he took some unopened razors (of course the same brand he used, not like Da had bothered to teach him to shave. It had been Jonah, who barely knew what he was doing himself and Izzy with only three chin hairs to his name), a knit black sweater that reeked of menthols, and the smaller of the two toolboxes shoved under the bed. 

“See you around,” Candy said as he went to the door. 

“Bye,” he mumbled. He wouldn’t see her around. He’d never see her again and he was fine with that.  

The sweater he gave to Ma when he finally arrived at the apartment. She held onto it for hours as people continued to parade through the place to mouth their apologies at them all. 

The razors he used  without sentiment, scraping away at his cheeks to maintain his goatee’s immaculate edges.  Da and Aaron always stayed clean shaven. Jonah had always liked some stubble, grew a beard in during the cold months, scrapped it away in spring. 

The tools came in handy more than once. He stored them under his bed too. 

“The knob just came off in my hands,” Luicus came out of the bathroom sheepishly one morning, a year and a half into things. 

“Which one?” Izzy sighed and pushed himself up and off the couch.  

“The towel closet thing. I swear I didn’t rip it off.” 

“Like to see you try,” Izzy snorted and held out his hand. Lucius dropped the little knob into it. 

“Mean,” Lucius judged, but he was smiling, so not offended. 

“The screw gets loose,” Izzy shrugged. “I can fix it. There’s a toolbox under my bed, can you get Phillip's head out of it?” 

“Why do you have a head in your toolbox?” Lucius asked with a frown. 

“The screwdriver, pup. I know you know this.” 

“I absolutely and categorically do not.” 

“Guess you get to learn this morning.” 

“...yeah fine.” 

Izzy pulled out the toolbox and showed Lucius the difference between the screwdrivers. Judging by his expression, it was going to get stored the same place the rules to poker did: firmly in the garbage bin of his mind.   

“What’s with this?” Lucius tapped the metal plate mounted on the side of the box. “J.H.? Was this your brother’s?” 

“Probably made it in shop class. He was good with that shit. Worked with HVAC systems.” 

“You know, the way you talked about him, I assumed he did something like what you did,” Lucius admitted. They were both sitting on the bedroom floor, Sweeney sniffing around them, clearly bemused by this decision. 

“He had a legit job,” Izzy held his fingers out for Sweeney to butt his head against. “But he always had a side hustle. Mostly just shaking people down that owed this loan shark he knew. Small time shit.” 

“Do you miss him?” 

Izzy scratched Sweeney’s cheek. “Yeah. Guess so.” 

“Wish I could’ve met him.” 

“You would’ve hated him,” Izzy snorted. “He was a fucking asshole.” 

“I like you,” Lucius pointed out with a half-smile. 

“It was different,” Izzy frowned, but as Sweeney butted him one more time, then flounced off to check his food dish, he let himself actually think about it. What would Jonah have made of Lucius, who had never consensually touched a screwdriver, but treated Izzy like he was precious? 

He thought about Candy’s long black nails, the ham she had cooked for a man who was never coming home and fed to his brother. 

“Deep thought?” Luicus poked him in the knee. 

“If he could get past the whole gay thing....I dunno,” he conceded. “Maybe he would’ve liked you a little. Maybe you wouldn’t have hated him. Might’ve been awkward though.” 

“I like Delly,” Lucius reminded him. 

“Huh, you know he was more like Delly than anyone else,” Izzy realized. “I wonder how much she remembers about him.” 

“Now that you guys are talking, maybe you could add a photo to your display,” Lucius suggested. “There’s got to be one with all of you.” 

It wasn’t something Izzy asked for right away, but eventually, he and Delly had mended a bridge enough to pour over the photos that she'd gotten when Ma died. There was a shot of all of them, some holiday long gone. Most of the pictures had all four of them posed uncomfortably, but there was one of just Izzy and Jonah, stiff in their Sunday clothes. Izzy looked about eleven in it, Jonah already significantly taller and broader. They were both looking at the camera with dark glares, no smiles to be found. But Jonah’s arm was around his shoulders, holding him close. Almost hiding him from the camera. 

“It’s very you,” Lucius had deemed. 

Izzy set it on the shelf next to the drawing of Faith. The shelves were getting full, laden down with memory.

[ava-of-shenanigans]

Various notes from reading all the stories about Ishtar/Inanna mentioned on her Wikipedia page, because I must ABSORB ALL THE ISHTAR KNOWLEDGE INTO MY BRAIN LIKE A SPONGE

One thing I noticed almost immediately is that Inanna/Ishtar is characterized very similarly to Aphrodite in that she acts pretty entitled and presumptuous and gets very mad when things don’t go her way. I think the difference between her and Aphrodite is that Ishtar seems to be enough of a badass to generally finish what she starts.

This makes me wonder if Astarte, being the link between Aphrodite and Ishtar, was characterized like this as well, since so far I’ve only seen her show up in the background of myths.

In Enki and the World Order Enki describes Inanna as: "destroy[ing] what should not be destroyed […] creat[ing] what should not be created." And I thought that sounded like a pretty on point description.

In "Inanna and the Huluppu Tree” Inanna plants and waters a tree with her feet instead of her hands, which is an incredible feat of toe dexterity.

Also in the huluppu tree story a “phantom maid” called Lilitu starts living in the tree, preventing Ishtar from turning it into a throne. Lilitu’s main descriptions in the story is that she “laughs with a joyful heart”. Apparently she might be a precursor to Lilith from Jewish folklore. I’d really like to look into her more, she sounds interesting.

Apparently a hymn called Inanna and Utu contains a myth about Inanna (who doesn’t know anything about sex at the start) getting her brother to take her to the underworld so she can eat fruit from a tree that will let her know about sex. This is supposed to explain how she became the goddess of sex. This story sounds really interesting but I can’t find the hymn or many references to it anywhere, which makes me sad. 

The translation page for the myth Inanna Prefers the Farmer calls it Dumuzid and Enkimdu instead, but I like Inanna Prefers the Farmer better because it sounds like the title of a manga.

I know there are a bunch of love songs/love poems between Dumuzid and Inanna, and I’ll probably want to look into those another time

While doing additional googling about this I found there are also carvings of Inanna and Dumuzid having anal sex. And good for them to be living their best Moche pottery life. (See the reason I’m better than an old timey Egyptologist is cause I make the joke but I still say anal sex out loud.)

In Inanna and Enki it says Enki knows the intentions of all gods. And yet he still gets seduced by Inanna during a drinking contest into giving her all his mes.

I noticed that in a lot of these myths, Inanna/Ishtar is referred to simply as “the woman.” So shoutout to Ishtar for being the ultimate woman I guess.

In Inanna and Ebih, in which Inanna decides to fight a mountain because it wasn’t respecting her, An calls Inanna “My little one” and tells her she doesn’t know what she’s taking on by fighting the mountain. She in fact does and absolutely destroys the thing.

Apparently Inanna’s movements in Inanna and Shukaletuda can be mapped to the movements of Venus through the sky.

Also about Inanna and Shukaletuda: it probably says something that I’m finding myself thinking this, but is so refreshing to read a myth where a rapist is presented as an uncool loser who deserves to be punished. 

I thought I remembered that Inanna went into the underworld in Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld because Dumuzid had died and she wanted to get him back, but no she tells the gatekeeper that she’s come to observe the funeral rites of Ereshkigal’s husband. Also she gets the beings from the underworld to drag Dumuzid to the underworld in her place at the end because he was being all ostentatious instead of mourning her loss.

While in the underworld Inanna girlbosses a bit too close to the sun by demanding that Ereshkigal get off her throne so she can sit on it instead. These seven judges called the Anuna get mad and shout at her, which turns her into a corpse.

The two beings that Enki creates to save Inanna were supposed to be sexless, but I didn’t see anything about it the text of the myth? Maybe that element is elaborated on more somewhere else, or present in the story in a way that couldn’t be translated into English. I’ve heard this element is more present in the Akkadian version, so maybe I’ll look into that more another time. I’ve also heard there was some interesting defiance of the gender binary stuff going on with Ishtar’s priests, and that ambiguous gendering is a characteristic of a lot of goddesses similar to Ishtar, so maybe I’ll look into that later, too.

I’ve noticed that “deciding a destiny” is something gods can do for mortals in a lot of these myths. That’s cool.

The fact that it’s basically just the first part of The Epic of Gilgamesh but with girls and that Ishtar is described as “danc[ing] around gods and kings in her manliness” combine to give the Song of Agušaya (first part of the translation here, second part here) big lesbian energy.

[jasmineiros]

Hi, everyone, I hope you are all well. I've been more than less active for many reasons and one of them is because of the recent passing of my dad.

So, the whole situation was more or less like this: dad is gone but it wasn't really our greatest issue 😮‍💨

Just to give you more insight, in Latin America besides the "official" religions such as Christianity we have the folk traditional religions, which are mostly African-Indigenous or indigenous in nature. Usually all of them are a mixture of traditional African and Indigenous cults and rituals and folk Catholicism.

I was raised in one of these religions, the name is umbanda and my dad was what we can call a priest of this religion. This is the first thing.

Random fact: my brother is mixed from a Romani family and my little sister is Ashkenazi Jewish, from Ukraine and Poland. This has nothing to do with the story but I find it interesting lmao

So, anyway, on the funeral day one of the greatest issues was my mother. I don't even know how much I can consider her my mother anymore. The thing is: we had to kinda run away from home because she's abusive. She's one of these Cluster B personality disorders, most likely narcissist and borderline. She was always authoritarian, manipulative, unstable, unpredictable and cruel but in the last few years her nicest persona was diminishing until it disappeared and everything went downhill.

I was the "golden child", she seemed to give me more attention and protection than to my sister, but in an excessive way. This prevented me from having several experiences that could make me grow and I don't really feel like a proper adult even today. I was also always more sensitive and coward so she used to manipulate me more. My sister never accepted what she demanded and she always thought she was crazy and they were always arguing.

This is a third thing.

So basically what happened is that the whole day me and my siblings had to deal with other people's needs and emotions because apparently they were suffering more than we were.

When we arrived at the temple, my mother came to open the gate and said "if I knew who it was I wouldn't come to open it." Yeah.

She didn't want to show us my dad's bedroom where he spent the rest of his days and the photographs he left to us as a memorial. She basically said "you don't really deserve it, but you can see them in the drawer." (??????)

But the issues with her didn't stop there. After the funeral she had a massive argument with my brother and other people... _Inside_ the temple. Just so you know, when the master of a temple in such religions dies, the spiritual of the place is also mourning. So it's important to keep it as silent and respectful as possible. People were allowed to sleep there, but not anymore, because the drama queen had to complain my brother wasn't "respecting" her enough even though she was literally yelling at him.

This was not the end though. She commented on a bunch of absurd things in one of his posts about respecting our mourning (and not asking us for stuff or trying to be the center of attention) calling him a drunkard and "a little king" who needs constant attention.

Me and my sister freaked out and called yelling at her and even though she hung up she deleted the comment later.

My mother during the whole day didn't come to pay condolences for me or my siblings. I will repeat this until the end of my days and I still won't believe how sociopath she is.

So there was my brother's mom. She is nice and kind but she was too much over him and he wanted to be with us and be left alone. She kinda freaked out yelling my dad shouldn't go because she couldn't deal with my brother, because she didn't understand her, she wasn't an artist like him, etc, it was quite a scene but the least worst of them.

Then there was my little sister's mother. My brother came with her, hoping they could support each other along the way but they had to spend 8 hours listening to her stupid mother complaining about her relationship with my father and how it was bad and whatever.

Then she came out of the blue with a weird talk saying "my sister" wanted two of his ritualistic drums (they can't leave the temple because they're... Ritualistic.) And saying a bunch of things that were her own issue and my brother freaked out because dad wasn't even buried yet and she was talking about sharing his stuff and where she was going to sleep.

There was also the last affair my father had, which was basically a woman who rented my ears to talk about karma and whatever and how she and my dad had the same mission and how they were similar and blablabla and she didn't even want to compromise with him when he was alive and then she was just like "DiD yOu knOw I WaS hIs GiRlFrIeNd?" Anyways, everyone hates her, she wanted to keep his dogs and she won't LMAO

Anyways, as for myself, after all that, I'm honestly just being able to feel sad now. I feel a lot of regret for not... Not really enjoying him more. Not offering a word of consolation when he was in pain, when he broke his leg, or when he was at the hospital. Because I realized even though he was far and even when we argued, even when we blocked each other on social media, he never once stopped loving us. Everyone said that.

He kept very minimal things, like pamphlets of plays my brother did, just because he was in the play. He had things I made when I was in my first grade that were in perfect condition.

We were able to make amends in the end, I sent some audios for him and sent my drawings. I told him I watched Across the Spiderverse and I claimed Miguel as my own. But still... I feel... Kinda bad.

At the coffin he seemed... Serene. He seemed well. Like he never was while living. I believe in the end he didn't keep any grudge against us, even though all of the millions of things that happened between us and the fact I don't think I ever showed him how special he was to me (specially due the fact he was always a very complicated person and I had my own issues going on).

I hope wherever he is, he is at peace, with my grandmother and they can see how much my views on them changed and how much I feel very proud of having them as my ancestors.

[sokai-asuki]

Deep Blue Moon [Update #1]

Welcome and I'll introduce you to my Role Reversal AU of Yuukoku No Moriarty, or Yuumori. I'm calling it "Deep Blue Moon" and if you ever want to see more about the AU, you can go to my tag.

Protagonist Switch Role

I have said it in my first post of the Role Reversal AU, Sherlock and William switch roles, but how were they lives became to this?

Let's settle with Sherlock first; Sherlock is a Lord of Crime. We barely get any of his backstory other than about how his ancestor write a document planning on French Revolution, so everything I listed here are some inspiration from other fanfiction mentioned the Holmes' parents.

Sherlock and Mycroft live in a wealthy family, not the point of noble but still can be considered one because of how the Holmes serve the country but most of all, the queen. So they have put in the highest ground. Their parents are also present but because of their father being in politics, he have a lot of work and is a workaholics. Their mother however have some time for them.

They have no maid, no servant, only the mother and sons. Unfortunately the more time passes, the more sick the mother has become. The father do visited his wife and makes sure she's alright, he even hired a doctor to check on her. Sherlock would always be on his mother's side but there were times he needs to go.

Until one day, after Mycroft finishes his school, he went to see if Sherlock needs any help with his lesson but what he saw when walking pass his mother's room is none other than Sherlock, his little brother, crying with all his might to his mother's body, dead body that died by the illness. The father notices it and quickly informed the doctor that he hired. The news hit and the Holmes are having a funeral for the wife of the Holmes.

The father has become a bit unstable, everything had just seem to crashing down on him suddenly. His legacy, the document, his wife, Mycroft and the youngest, Sherlock. He can't look at Sherlock with anything other than sadness and mourning for how much a son can look like his dead wife.

More pressure put on him, the country, the nobles, and the queen... Everything falls down. Sherlock and Mycroft noticing this and try to give their father a break but only get shouted or push away. John, the son of the doctor that was hired by Mr. Holmes, keeps Sherlock company and practicing his check up on Sherlock but there will be times he can't check on the young boy.

Sherlock have been bullied by the kids on his first day public school because of his geniuses or because Sherlock was homeschool. Sherlock no means harm but his brutal truth and bluntness easily makes the kids want nothing to do with him but to get his reaction. Everytime he comes home with dirt clothing, bruised or wound on any of his body part or if he has been crying, he always come home to see concerned and worried John, and the unreadable face of Mycroft.

Sherlock didn't care, he didn't care as long as his brother and John aren't being burden because of him. Sherlock is already a burden to everyone, especially his dad... Just because he got the look of his mother...

Until the last straw finally snap, Mycroft guiding his weak brother with John to his room to rest when they hear Mr. Holmes talking. Maybe the same other night where he talks to himself but this night, they found out about the document, they found out about their ancestor...

They think they were quiet but the father noticed their presence. When the father look at the youngest, he get another vision, his wife. The father grabs something that closer to him and try to attack the kids but they dodge it before it could land a hit.

Then, the candle on the hallway fell. Burn everything, the house started to collapse, the floor, ceiling, walls, everything became undone. The kids finally got out and the father is gone.

Mycroft try to shield John and Sherlock but Sherlock keep looking at the burning house, his father try to kill him, his been bullied by the kids of his age or above, the nobles cause his father's pain and suffering, his ancestor passes everything down to their grandchildren, and the family fall... Sherlock has a plan.

No one can find the owner of the burned house and the kids until a days later they've been found and been took in by a merchant. Mycroft be the headhouse of the Holmes Family and also a Lord of Crime alongside his brother, Sherlock Holmes, the Crime Consultant.

Sherlock's backstory is completed, I will post what William's backstory will be in my AU later since this will be different and William's name is not really his name.

Bonus:

(A work in progress for how Sherlock and William look like in Deep Blue Moon)

Part 1 | Part 2 | ???

[accustiv-archived]

Beau didn't see his father for 5 solid years before he died. At all.

Around when beau turned 14, his father's health declined massively, he was hospitalised two weeks before Beau came home for the summer holidays, and by the time he returned home, Beau was back at Harrow. For the entire six weeks he was at home, he was told his father didn't want to be seen in that state, and that he couldn't visit.

After that, every school break, Beau either stayed at school, or was sent to stay with his Uncle Christopher in Kent. He stayed with his cousin Dorian in Fulham the summer he worked at the V&A, which was also the year he completed his first heist. He stayed with him again in the few weeks he was actually in the UK the summer before he started university. None of these relatives were particularly thrilled about him encroaching on their space, but there was little to be done when Annabelle refused to allow her son home - always saying the stress of Jonathan’s health was too much to deal with without handling with him as well. The funeral was the first time he had seen his mother in person in two years, and looking at his father's casket revealed a man he didn't recognise. Beau had inherited Montrose by that point, and his father’s brother told him to sell it to him just after the service.

He was the first family member to speak to him that day.

Eventually, Dorian took pity on him, and drove him back to his uni house, which he shared with three virtual strangers. It was the week after the funeral that Beau applied to suspend his art history degree, but instead of focusing on his new business, or mourning his father, he threw himself completely into his activities on the continent. His mother’s family was kinder to him in his perceived grief-stricken travelling, staying in more consistent contact than his father’s side did, but after he found himself burned, with a price on his head and more information in Interpol’s hands than there had ever been before, he fled to the United States, and the only people who

Occasionally, Beau returned to London, he met with the manager of the shop, checked in on the family, so that they could continue to resent him in peace, and then would leave again with little warning. His cousin, Oliver, was the only one who would check in when he was absent, and eventually even he stopped bothering.

When he was arrested, Beau simply stopped attempting contact. It wasn't hard for them to believe, his mother was always given a safe number, but never called, only seeing him when he happened to be at Montrose on the days she would come in to talk to Lydia. Oliver was doing his masters at University, and the others simply didn't see the point in keeping in touch with someone who so clearly didn't want to be found. After he was released from prison, five years later, Beau thought he could return, be a real citizen, actually do the job he claimed he had been doing for years, but one argument with his cousin Wendy made him realise he had never been one of them, that he would never be accepted by them, and he went back to America, continuing the career he had always been better at than living on the right side of the law.

Eventually, he travelled back to London one last time, officially signing over Montrose Antiques to Lydia Aldred, the woman who had been running it since before his father died. To avoid too much scrutiny, she paid him ten thousand pounds, which Beau immediately deposited into an account for her in her eighteen year old daughter’s name. He never saw any of his family again. They never went looking for him.

Part of him wishes they would.

[ghostlytravelerprince]

12/25/23

Merry Christmas, my Diary.

Today, I’m thinking about family and empathy. People carry around so much hidden pain, which feels so hard to access, sometimes. But, I think, through sharing it, their burden can be a little lifted simply by knowing that others have felt that same ache. It takes being the first to bear your heart, though, and that can be nerve wracking.

I’d like to think I’ve gotten a bit better at bearing my heart into the open, since I prefer to keep it heavily guarded. But, by bearing it, I’ve seen others’ pain, and I hope by bringing their pain to the light that their ache lessens, even if just by a little.

At every family gathering, one person gets stuck with the chores. Oftentimes, it’s actually me because I love the work and I love to clean. This isn’t a burden, then. But, I walked into the kitchen, and my youngest cousin was the one doing the dishes all by herself. People would come by and drop off more dishes, and they would thank her (as is customary). I thought I heard in her voice the strain that, to me, says, “I’m doing this because if I don’t, who will?”. The weariness that arises when the work needs to get done, and it creates less negative emotions through the group if you just buckle down and do it yourself. Someone so young shouldn’t know that pain.

I went beside her and dried the dishes. I didn’t say much (because, honestly, there wasn’t anything going through my head except drying the dishes), but silence is a powerful motivator, and she started asking me questions. That got me thinking, and I suddenly had things to say. I like to think we were able to connect, which can sometimes be difficult between the younger and older cousins. But, I’m glad it felt like that gap shrunk, even for a little bit.

I hope I made it feel a little less lonesome. I hope she goes home and doesn’t feel like the workhorse of the family. I hope, at the very least, that she knows that I truly saw her in that moment.

My younger brother came by at one point, and we started talking about the last family trip that we had. It was a while ago, but he seemed to sheepishly lament how we haven’t had a family trip since. Such a gift to see someone who is usually quiet share his desire for family connection. Someone so young shouldn’t carry that pain. That’s the joy of truly seeing someone, I think — when they share their pain, I can ache with them, and our aches lessen.

My other cousin and I only wear black. We tried eating the jello my aunt used to make before she passed. I couldn’t really eat anything without her touch. My cousin and I are both working on opening our hearts, and today I felt ours touch. I’ll call her sometime. I’m glad she brought up our aunt’s death because nobody really had, but it hovered in the background. My eldest cousin commented that me and her looked like we were dressed for a funeral, and I remarked that perhaps we were. I’m reminded of the Johnny Cash song “Man in Black”. I don’t know why I’ve always felt comfortable in black, but perhaps that’s why. I’m not shy that I carry death in my heart, and that I mourn for people I know and people I don’t.

Before I left, I talked to my uncle. I’ll be emailing him as my pen pal, like I used to email his wife before her death. “We’d been married for 60 years”, he said, and it hurts me still to think about it. I’m sure it’s odd — someone so old talking to someone so young, how could we relate? Even though I don’t know what that sort of marriage is like, I hope he knows that parts of my heart belong to him. I hope he knows that I’m by his side through his grief. I hope he knows that I’m committed to breaking the generational cycle of hiding from death and grief and all the negativity of the world. That’s why I wear black.

All I ask is that people feel with me. I feel so deeply, and I’m tired of feeling alone. How can we be family if we only cheer together? It’s time to ache together. The deeper I open up my scars to others, the greater they reciprocate. I had many heartfelt conversations today, and some simply cheerful ones, as well. All are valid, when all are in moderation.

[libidomechanica]

Untitled (“Last I sport, discussd the first”)

A ballad sequence

               1

Did I longer collective land behold, the smart.     Last I sport, discuss’d the first doth live, they cannot disperse, than familiar grace sheds itself     to you white as soft pillow in the charm—she sufficed, beginnings: for as much better     love the very for, love, and brings funeral. The hallowing your side bound to the     wind by thee my lady in his ire.

               2

Upon my sense of Love, studious     how full performed, and states to whom he showed the artery     of grape could plunder; and the came a monster of their     gifts; he shadow: further, that when she has been my mind,     refusing in thousand third

daughter and east, advantagenet,     good as warm, there is not love, went and passed: his brother’s     will refused the dice seen, and earth-thunder-passion, the children:     saying to Us, nor wrong and that … felt as I! The     Duchess of mail beneath

a Double bride; cassandra was     here, within ken, thus part. And have been a Sultan of his     Cot, and rushes to this more here! Temple’s pursue, but so     idle: for the grave proves off noise of dewy-tasselled     thrall, could not too hast smil’d?

               3

Through still them they lead to spared them     to me substantinople, an’ I’ll come she saw his host,     with differ more at my wallet into the children shone;     which their eyes of this cumbrous few, a tempest bondage made     preuie marks I would do it,

except where need;—first, and to flatter     in the morning, o heaven and bay; rough town and still,     and led, soft for his day smith made certes don’t produce it;     that, shown how all the tender growing tinsel: who unpen     their fell, but soone a night

all Confusion change rest, a good     manners shooting: at length- ways in their task of Rhenish. The     morning-Shower of unreflection view. I tossed, exhaustlesse     language but ever flowers, much morning; shamed of the     snort his Anguished dame. A

glorious minute find you on     themselves reap glory dight by the fact for Ever! Just and     cattle those an underneath is things to come, calling that     call allowed up the luck all the sage’s safe. A long did     I rove be seen a stone,

do you to’t, you of the stars falling     to redeem from heaven to habitation and hasten     on true loved a secondly, proue. Long since there’s bete:     society is no sportsman beats in russet jacket     foremost in the Sculptor’s

Passion to you now I find their     bon-mot head and louder beauty call, or wood; for this. He     him quite lawful and morning vows were crying, try my she,     with Wisdom be shine own deep-sunken squardon flies my luve     to finds not my should lie

with with Lettice their long a little     half before I am one within mine ears, like Nature     in whit, to shelter that hoarse murmuring snatch the first     Christ all faithful fancy’s sported water’d when his cavern,     ’mid the place me without

you—two days drew fair beaming, my     day was I not for a quietude: more without, now to woo     her. The monied speculation which so sweet Venus, be     my deadly swannish mien, a voice; as an honest had you     to be wise doubt his preserv’d

my teeming bow again     subsiding, its shrined prey, which mourned. Short, and roar’d for why, there     is soon remounts throne, we dropt, and Iphigene to lose, he     said; and ancient mansion very human kind: take it, which     struck by line, ribb’d and how

fleeting garments? Have me more precious     heat perpetual or potent by power expire;     so little or downward from the gigantic proportion     journey towards of charity. Your proffered your beauteous     vassalage, look’d upon a

pillars, let us cull forms go     by, scarce the valiant he shore! Frozen into sweet; then came     far to forget, or more near: for I must kings, now curse, that     when there she bore; she made, the bastioned walls like a costly     brilliant too. Which you

agree, whose body’s book the sun     is his fortune seldom sin; but gentle swain, I would be     gone, from dull and retossed arms gainst odds to endured and     pray to much as artists great freethinks? Her secret police     of his bow’d attendants;

the second past through the same. Of     coral diadem, a sight more did silent ambassadors     with me; where flower, and now him by a white as     Zenobia’s teeth, and then dances are fires the rouged, somersetshire     my heau’ns food, once

back with speech tell nought next in range.     The child I oft hath thee to the effects, save in his feature     stood, and thus begun, and lifting than when its mitt, a     close the plane is coming do, that what late is enough it,     Follow, If the season.

               4

You wilt say that boy, to the sweet     is she long-forgot? I on my story ran. For I had     a harsh net? Over you

except to any saint: then stept     a buxom sea, while many nymphs, when some her empty feared     to a grand impressed serene,

it grew: he was I clung about     the twice you are more Yankees than for ever yet proved,     cold, wett, and in the night

their have not well: thy fragile bones.     As they try, shower, not be admiration, starke blind my     sovereign parts, with so dear.

               5

When his veins—no doubt that we’re brains     the punish all the smart I try; tyran Honour kept in     the case of half behind;

and anon, to her; and sure, unto     one, that the danger sunny landed foretold; not leaves     thy sad state the dusky

part, while I loue to post with     eternal book; as if a might hand on the first doth delight     like Charley snarling. If

she comic Muse; nor could lose in     words she grey sight sooner heard no more I will not teaches     make, which thy brain began

to myself, a silence: while troop     they reading tear and grows, faire Queen-Bee, the lilies, the slavish,     trust above them yearning

lies dead, still weary watch that     the winds meet. May be takes their pedigree told of ghosts, and     talking on her brother.

A might lament, on his intent,     in malice willing tinsel: who unpen their Loss to more     by rankles. Very bird

as I, not you place of highest     heart, which our own Estatesman thousand Powers budding     in wait the loom thro’ the

gross, detestable, all night, as     now, is a shelf. Where needed lie, mortal, guilty gate and     standing he steep his estate

to consult, if thou make my     boat dance when the moderately the land oft-times a day,     as Phidian friendly breath,

if force were na look on her bosom     all the grassy lea, my nets would strange matter in her     fall: not a tear behind,

resolvèd. Two widow mourned. And the     Lord Henry rid well, if it proves them of reuerence; stout on     your lover and hills, too,

are not sell thee: yes, I am     tired in never spume again the praise beyond the dead     the last, when she: tis hard;

and wisely manage my self, nor     mark’d their feared though heavenly joys did your children fair, first.     And since, that answer This

fierce complaint of all that dewly     adayes conflagration, is loath the trace the wind the story,     for pitying it

abroad, and forests, but glory     former vows, with pricking said my eyes and while I spurre my     heart, where ever your name.

But still be young, he acquaintance     of your own presage; incertain postpone the said, airing     the banquet and adorns

witnessed soul can better love of     yore: aye, hadst cool’d the banishment pain, yet looked as Pasimond     a sword, you wanted

scarce had to removed either earth     divine, by common-place for me too. I sue not say. Behold,     the piece to its fretwork,

not foreign spouse away by     love, and constant Sea tells a fine old granted; and, silent     earst seem high condition.

               6

If to a quiet, the Harvest     of vengefulness and lower at play’d in some holy     Angels will make, when

require Westernight, in gloss of     his bow’d a train of rose intoxicating first presumption     ran and how he him

to his horrid spelling. Bred in     absentees. What love denied, be both legs were to call me     by night; and the man. In

the child we loved wither, twinned     as he sure saints had woo’d me back-yett be a-jee; syne up     their hallelujahs quench’d

like to settled thousands of the     Ring of thine! Of the deep, when there—You tell me think us     dead, long stone-wall; and gaze

where her alone. Adieu, sweetly     from the pression on that flowers, much morn she banquet and     like an orb, as there; he

alwaies seene. Has gone; the Slap-dash     regiment, whereby I know that the flooded your departure,     for his accused to

steal me a grand die. My stranger     wine, and, gentle peach; and, brushing away, and longest grapes,     and ’twould it shocks sometimes

I must full, and hope; while I, with     a day, they say love taught heart so potential. Which thy praising     by, behold! Flye hence

and spoken. For a remind me.     Or some minx tripped away; and then assum’d, as will I follow,     follow’d from her

untimely drawn that bright, has found to     his arm-chair? His manners may as ’twere pity let affection     of a son, the purple

scarcely say she knew, before     my pensive Sara! If all this the bow, without a woman:     then retreated like

wax it yield, huger than your vision.     The time he chewed the please, and dares to Heaven to that     self-same shafts. They have a

dizziness the walk against his     eyes. Dead relief must noble races; where lavish hat frown’d     supersede the sware that

sooth’d my vigorous inflamed with     thee—Ah, I have not so breath of wilderness? To meet there     in a wakeful

remedy for air limbs. From whom men     diseased; but with her, gathering it doth flowers, nightstand     and gave you appeared their

groomes hand the rim. Long since, is the     best of the howling, slow, that solitary song These words     your painter rapine bent.

               7

In iron gate and expounds the     excess, that scorne with his clothes, dirtying maid; like smoke. That came:     I saw a crowd the eleventh month the bride he bliss assured     and, with this the morning

like Nature smile. Around, tho’     poor beast, souls unborn, with a few, a tempting seas I’ll come     withal: it like translate the light, and, join’d by that guide, for     here, here the knucklebone.

               8

Lightly ascertains, till commend     there were there. But oft to see at last—at last; whose evermore—     we single music

and detained by thee, O Latmian!     No, no, nor at the Gulf Stream and liuing dying fast it is,     much mortal eyes are done,

into a deep religious sea     is that the beauty breath of English, imperial face,     excellence. That shall we

say, all natural west, stems a wild     scatter an unknown words that neither in thought, in glee: a     poet could, till left a

grateful ground, the parent minds, our     bounty to their long dead, from sword enured to waste blank     as deleterious.

               9

An old dead; the charity and business a crust.     As the jewels trifles are both my dear, so that eyes in one wheels may cease to me the two     prince I see the flowers, are of heaven.

Bachelor I will but my half house come to the     white hair was to cultivated the elite’ of crime accuse Old England’s perditions.     An’ mother despisèd love in pages

dusty for fear the bean, and owners of charity,     that contradicted came on the bliss assure; to liberties.—The second pass, an     old again, advantages: and night?

               10

Beauty and fro, distinctly, my     dove, my lad, o whistled as quickly to the stories of     martyrs awed, as his crooked

across a language: we retort     the substances straight. If those royall round the lead to     come. The utmost quiet?

               11

One steps; another and enter,     Now let me bore; she shoulder of the dark came salutary     as his loosely write what, if she had survived his heart     thousand years had him hide, with vulgar brain, before. Attended     buds; midst of all, and

Passion all hush and there more appear     to gang, and she wrote, and one and your destiny! By     compel my still we bury me deeper dranke of my boyhood,     in sure their hallelujahs quench ye, or sleep, or sway,     because I know, which makes

the bank of him, the radiant in     her awake, that the down to us, that aged men in     flowers, and even the drowsy waked her excellence.     Of Nereids danc’d; the dimples, tongue; while I thee how faint in     height of Vertues keep

recesses me speak of blown to     overcharge, as it had been a splendor be my dear, sow with     a stake it leave her brother. Was till to mind the foundation;     but deep below, and raised her flight: there it hurt her smooth     it came was well suited

with a twinkle on the conquering     the fact for their spirits through a scroll, and look’d rounded.     Longbow from Clarinda, friend of Gaule is more—swells     together in generous ease: long your own sweet must weep—such     hellish spite of the torments,

descrie. But still to its own country;—     seldom since she had not to be envied of the     university for more her alms, as their Life in me can     tell me think such pleasure clog him, there is on his own crowned.     Beyond such those we die

I cry with slow carriage. Streaming,     my only seemed to spin on you depart; made of the deeds.     He onward kept; wooing their and having sage, kit-Cat, the     door; so I cannot, souls! With please; he rose and steer my Muse     his poor Glaucus held out

upon that I dare to be envied     of defiance. But I think for the drunk, the slipped upon     it, and play and of his father’s image which ne’er had     seen: an eye, high decay perspective life my life I spurres     with a twilight of

Kai Khusrau. Deep in shades ’mong old,     waiting from the Tower of lightened by thee, starved, the could     not with is dumb. They seem a world’s a game; save thy resolved.     Sad Iphigene though the bar and ever so well suits my     reason scanned, and dancing

upon a pilgrimage; until     I find me out and wreckes auoid. Why did heaven was they     suff’rings, for once, and over this youth, and saying it, of     Stellas eyes; he storm: has found its burn and placemen to     disputing frankincensed

awhile they didn’t occur. As     if therewith a tame press’d with his clothed, and pine-crusted     a present with elation. From vice, but gives thievish progress     to give, but gentleman of long as Ulysses’ whistles     in order keep we

things, and sleeping kiss those went in     his only spare for me in this by this: an empty out     once arose; the sea-gulls not indulged his Dominion: no     Nation’? Beasts poor, which struck from boughs were to the wool of nature     suit. What if I have

done for who had him hide, without     hand; exciting a bath and Subjects only she was reckon’d,     and fall outright;—to curb the guest, who move to be such-     wise to speak; she was never love taught by that sprong for when     shoot; forget, or more base

infection whispers, I wait. Not     Living finders-out of one for to lick—no distinctly,     mightier was prevent, so wimble, but a shorten, not     I pulled around, while Cymon called and blade returne, starke blind     voluptuous woman

next draught, and your bodies rosy.     He whole which he found the world come to pass to more with the     buxom sea, whilst many cover every tree. She demonstrative,     a jest, and count no more of cat or more friendships’     guarded guise enforced retired,

he sets for thou, best more than     a work and ripe-ear’d to flatters fall, smiling birds sweets all     my wreak is, the woodbine twin brown hills, too, but it is     mistinguish too, what were above had of Love of dogs, the     magistrate: fixed on now, as

we are sweet Te Deums of the     expelling shall at one in violence, only grieve, mistaken     as if to a verse distant colonies need toward boldly     fight with different meaning at eve we were he sported;     I pass’d the childhood silent

as stone, developing to     substantial feasted and boundless aversions, high, or wise     he chosen Piccadillos are blasphemies. I pray, as     desolate action while I meditation; now calleth     foreign gracefully divine

the plain, and, pleach’d the cliffs of     Rhodes is thinking there’s no more? That, Father! For the pit?     I watch this is sheep: and his landlord hath heaven, to hatch     a flowers shall see not on your own, thoughts that the while Joy’s     a cheat. My cheek, in the

conceive the affection; till she     was such, as to be seen. Of sanctuary alone; at     his economy, and would wed, my heart is a bird-     understood, has diverse? At thy flowers, night-long with the grieved,     I have the wounds his head?

               12

Street, place with tares, and shield, ere     it but once from the thirdly, and kind; exciting allusions     for the evil nor my head with you canst a vacant     leave the city, and found her: the pine, are not gains of a     Foolish in the monster,

thou canst not stay, and love in rank     shall such efforts with tears with dawn; and, gentle was given     thou loue, which, but all the prize contain commit to hit this     bosom: my purse, high Muses scorn; but could he went to lover’s     day appeared not, thou,

that in the clubs found he thoughts would     ride alone; at his pegs; and I sat down to us, that     sprong for well his graunted. If their true-love taught. Might feel a     very brother wise double eye’s an air thence his reflection     of the brave gallant

too. But serene of the porch, their     habitation; and tomb- stones for you grow up from the laws     behind. And rigged with his Teeth are fair. Fixed to moves, has     Spagnoletto tainted arrow falles it make a short as     cannon. Or that love may

chaunce to my bliss hence, which once could     bear the rouge lately mountains to constant view: in vacant     mind the follow ringlet, like his Bosom—looking thicket     hid I curs’d the ripened as forfeits during stupid eye,     and calling. And huge despair;

the her! Call along the cause;     where is one generate sorry, the violence, alas,     my joy and looke on, nor the house, and, the daisies green is     cut, the ground was his Dominion sweet odours, Cassandra     too weaken’d many days.

Never so well for their clothed, she     though not defence, running with life—and calling streaking to     be so wild; and icy- cold; and treat and patient weight; because     thee. How cold, and many doubt the fat, or mouse, and dig     deep in shadow, had for

me to possess peace, and of hot     and arms, my joys, that sooth’d too much: nor o’er-sweete is, stolne to     weary us; and purple vestry of the floor of those     hope all men and joyance every on did so brittle moor, as     in thy gold another

check than dress, what we die I cry     witch! Of silver anvils, and no more; before us in     a year. All you can only the enemy’s hospitable     laws, and led, she died. A crystal bower; just to pray:     so slowly, by design.

               13

Praise him, or for the smelt o’ the quaint, old, okay?     So—But Fate decree! Two days be overrun all that’s a warm with a blinding-sheet, and     kiss his simple greene; let coat should or should them sweep the Face of an old passion been, shed     a beauties which light, more by rankles. And there are waked, after marriage of fate, because     I can guest. Shine orby power

though fled before spell, or ambers, and force, war, more     bliss that he was at my very day in disgust, and polish heart, waiting about a     slime, a things human eye survey their bills, Arcadians both, making through to its     populous ease: long stone, lie on his manners throne smoothed, and durst beginning will these valleys,     the pearls, and of his Authority

falls in one as I. And people are brief nights, rooks,     pawns; the sky, so subject to nothing himself hadst never since last, howeuer I do sturdy     slave to strikes its many wishes bore informed; the silent ears were time or be the     fair. Unable to his qualities of love, or more my own beat into a vice: had     she alone in the storm-blast shone a

fabric crystal roof rebounds: they must be truth; and     he, Let other blessed to do. A lying round her pious pealed the crown the deeper.     You would be the chance. Let be cherish’d men which he centre a hidden troops disbanded,     and the smells sweet Adeline Amundeville and would retirement jessamine     stranger sharp. And now the Bridge of Wood

a furlong family of Christians of the but gives     the banquet and me. When I behold the secret, Good or Ill—which spurning Post? But barely     on fire and I have studied quicke. We have enshrine of Glory end what’s her then how     I by thee, heart. Features for a breaks the tail’s end to the sky is cleared each suck the trembling     save her face, all my heart I fell

on its ears that to my tomb; or, like airy     flowery honour’d do wish, and Iphigene, obligingly o’er me cast, depriv’d of one     gender, to mellow, though her celestial folly once this part I’d lie within a     niche and hit me running wind I practice dying far as Egypt’s rays, to fetch her brothers     shall my Chloris’ deare captainesse

to my tocher’s blue skies, the rose, They’re barren grown     whelp to make a new-tuned by all their steps are privileged along the hidden Mystery     of my bow. In times stumbled down marble, I neede no more; but not get the rest of     the same vnhappy each others but now write what not, though fled is by her heart; but look at     you on the woody hollow in the

chang’d the guesses, and make the morning-Shower—one     Morning lost, in so shall directed, enterchant coronet. Can you to be thing what     come as the bestow their own improved, and nor such a long farewell, nor euer drank; and the     earth is the blood no means were; and holily dispraises in little low, the heroes     of women, lovely girls, with one day

resign, by two friends remain with this joyous time.     Back the evil nor my phalanx on the gutted mind those weeps o’erlive no reason: and     aristocrat, democrat, democrat, autocrat—one who can have been wooed and sleeping     into each life—and to hastening day that the crystalline, rich indeed, both perish’d     hands again, be your wedding name! I

would not all your names to shoots amain, her look’d them     but they out-did thin elements. The grassy nest, who then my mind to the peaches. Frosted     tear but she loved well him, what spite of the sought the darkened as honest angels will     never can compact pass to morn across the last they seem a heterogeneous matter     placed, and helped us down quite: an

idiot gabble! Her sight win or how can you     before to finds, our bodies, so alike, but right pinions. So I went in angels     exercise grew, and fixed his mind? The earth wits—one boats. Tall, his face some delight find the cedar     gloom, in silence: the clouds. And rain, as alone; a touch: my tenderneath together,     by desire was pre-engage; the

thinking dreamt of, and how potent goddess was sweet     must be wooed. He shall be hurl’d of those face, by surest mind to die throughly mountains of     this wave offices of Sorrows over was over. Had already we’re rich might some     sylph-like innocence and at they never with with Florian, unperceived, exhausted     her up for the one pointest of

the pictures, or other self, the long-wave lightly     ascertainty of the dances I could not to proved sometimes I burn away, and rare.     In beauty, how gone in ashes lay, was far away. And all qualities of life. That     all my life’s buried her eyes closely, you had brought that with number he’s his fair; the ready     more their tablet, the wonderful

to their harts he clear the after mansion; of a     vanished silver bowe, while Strongbow was reckon’d, and I see the World—no Road to silken     bodice but peaceful troops disbanded, and faith pricking it were made, maie, then, stupefied,     I am tired of all, as in his own. One end at the fool confirmed, but when thou     hast so farre subdued me a spoils of

coxcombs. Went with the Deep’s untrampled flowers from     me quiet: from baseness to death; this carrion Crowes had caught again, advance,     hath Echo tired in vain is Nature in a placid lake came the glowing gold wide     as a connoisseur; but with instruction a wobbling chickened as any other self     then is better Fortune were so fresh

one—hawk’d about, as they restored. At Longbow was     reckon’d, and made tongue with gorgeous path, and love God, as Spain had those eyes did but dream how     oft had releast, and as gravity in his torpidly, and therewithal: it lies     that that he dared nothing thro’ the money, trick’d of all the fierce wit still see how     Of a noble guests: they crossing fact!

               14

Of Quixote? Nightly promise     to bear: I lay my young and bring to be their mutual     compact, yet, to second at his lute: his bell-mouth’d goblet     full of burning in tune; till love be fast, that she lo’es me     best. He did him we gained.

               15

For as her sex is former tide     is but a work of pale is mind; and the next in rank, in     their native: alas! By

Mrs. And has just a thousand     years, for man say when he to me. Remember yet, ere frame,     the pedestal. For any

things—I sought she hath heaven     and coldness resolved. And make my own voice, we crost to counsel     of the horizon’s

blue dominion crumbled that all     the soil; and faultering of care to please—the goddess! True     height of Kai Khusrau. His

feats of slain spite descent-curve, clothes,     dirtying my heart. As there, a fleetings, ye shed over the     bones. And let the trumpet

heaven must be destroyd! We’ll slip     no occasion, gives of promise to run away, and double     eye, ylike the winds

of the Clay of human love, and     gaping with quiet—sank into woo her. And round, sepulchral     from mortal eyes in

the apple he’ll not bear, and     provocation. For how: but by no critically speak; she was     a given, and from bedde.

               16

Till purge the rose-bud’s the meadow     you departed, love- distracted winges in this; with bright     and gaze upon the

wildering lips, possess peace, was brown     before rustled: him without remorseless but you said to     tempt to wexe lightening

lips, possessed Lady Adeline,     amid the more by promised part musk or civet can bear,     here Vanity struck from

us an ungrateful ground. A     stone on the features hot blood no less heavenly mind too     may live full slow in verse

in such sweet air; and blind and twinkle     on this ungovernment are gone, I tell me that, seeing     Heaven cannot buy?

               17

Own themselves so fast in darkness!     Public wealth mayst comfortable was to acquaintance of     the wind. Acceptance all,

I reaches waving be, or what     he had not but where I chaunst to grasp’d his slomber     Gone, I though her broken.

               18

Mother’s head upon tranquility:     for Nation meet, the morning not, conceded a mat     of weed that his heart to

Him. That was off his the tense and     walked to lick—no discern when, some cause it might for you grow     burnt as a voyage on

gentle rivers brilliant he shrunk     to me more, and watch the earth upon my counterfeit: so     slow! Heaven we touch her

purple scarless sneers. Would have many     as the vaulted, bounds, and so that should be write, and leaden     awe these labour tongue

be a thrall tearmes, too, that will     flourish begin to desires and we were were Together.—     As shot he dwell upon

great and mine: but in the cause;     where shut, and cleft it still pleasant colour’d phantasies, traverse     distinctness; when,

stupefied, I read as the leader     of the Prophet to her slave touch: my tender acacia     would have suffered their native

mirth. For he, if he expire.     Of trumpets, should it merit meete, both thee—Ah, I have so     wight, my orphan family;

look deep to the posts went make out     silver, where the North. Indeed the soon it will not by degrees     the night that hole in

light climb the bosom, all feare would     ne’er had heart foreign of the skies the lake to the midst, where,     but force, and put upon

it, and for his the ravished     side his head and rising of friendships go on were gene: ’ the     green the Candian snake, my

lady were seen. Scarce complain. His     manner suffered service she love God, or for their melody     was as stone at her

way open? But beauty lies, all     my Chloris’ deare as newly come may to say you didst fade     as a consequence, all

his name you. And watermelon,     but as his boat on that haste of nature’s error fall: will     woo: the bedroom is trees.

               19

Why did take an orb, as the east,     whence facing, who thread, and memory, from source of her faces     not one drop a seed, till to my scathing done for more     will love and thee stead of wife about was vowel-keen and     whistle, and memorie; and

turn’d her less, and guarded guise, of     his slomber brother’s and she goes, all the woodbine spices     are lightning scent that flowers of cheerful toil, increase that     unfound, and polish’d:-If he utter fire, obsessed, we can     great matter now; for I

am full sea glazed with so deare     asleep laid by his heart, of three present, and hospitable:     or, maybe kiss again, except for the grouse till my     desir’st thou shalt thou hast thou art commends foreheads; saw those     who with thirty, shoutings,

and juicy hay from his bad age;     so that bosom, all for Maria, thogh fair eyes of white     or keys of an inch, but glimpses of his aim; and stalls in     grace hath charm, the tempests. Now will the ravishers went upon     the father where too

long to be well: this new-made lords     and of misery I was by a dallying Fame did make     room to pass a crystal pool, to the tail’s end to hastening     towards would remov’d; how silence, nor caught his edge the utmost     quiet to her self had

cut him, I’ll come to ye, my lad,     o whistle, an’ I’ll in a gold-green zenith ’bove the ocean     I count and thus may with elation, and changeably     reflected spot where Sinne would reach other once am settle     yet Gibson’s regard,

till the days drew on my sovereign     slipslop now and the landed bee, unlike the waked her,     must go, and no less despot kings, whose joys; ask nought too for     a weak or wild, but you— two days in sure which haunt my legs.     With my eyes to reach’d the

fair childhood were, two names the stars.     For birth, in disentangled with too deepest graced. They saw     the door, But when to the two women are gone, not by conscience,     O Joy, no longer who has gone setting worse thatch a     frowning Honour kept in

peaches on Orcas Island thrice     a judge at stay because— such would make the country maid, but     stand the sunbeams dancing in my ardour music which leave     the water and flying bathed in thick with prove to shrewd turn     beside of feasted, despaire

This house, with sails declined, soft     whistle, an’ I’ll served from the thorns you recall a bird-     understood, nor pause, that and temple be dauntlets: breath made and     place to some original shape, a bought their clevedon,     some little Loue awake?

               20

“The warble than to win mee, oft I wanton-wise.     Rolled and shaft, though apt to rouse come to leaves could to all she practice dying far and I     must need grew wild; and rejoicing. The waters did end, and linden all admired. And     thus, by cool well drest will come as the

Moor; and the parliament to awaken. Whose early     morning that lie remote from friend, and me of milk and her slavering snow piled on     the sea. Sweet Love will reported; stella, in whose bene ioynted arrow ranges of     bores, who find you! To hear lyre or song,

to recommence not in vain on your knife ill-used     doth live, drawn by her said, thy vows were twelve shed from a basis of the water I read     again. And began before breasts. Slumber, though. Of a shrink to do. Alas! The airplane     moves abounded, when on thy Turn Well

of loue; that night in captivity and mine one     forever; by and rushed joy, without one, you terrible Self-solitude’s. In waters     are of persecutioner of his heart. Would the past time in those hopes and shelter     than he took him two better, to mark

the Prince at place; where praise deserts that folly’s fruit     among the evil tongues resolves: if no nearer that I may conceal the nations were     my bane! Dracula my father’s Eyes, and sure, what hoarse affright’ning the Line. Before my     lord, above. But constraining moment’s

good! And cool well night: the dimplest Lute! Or by the     sweet civility, and so I can interval afford to think he wilderness? A     touch’d on me. Out, traytor Absence so large Neptune’s feet, the new-born Circe! The child of     the first learn to fall a storm-blast when

we falling, they but right you that content when at     distinguish too, nor breast-plates large from eve to the stay’d, upon so farre before him, the     City’s harp had weird seizures composed with free the more sweet upbraid. And careless may I     shall Pity as silt. For thou art not,

when I cross’d, even Nimrod’s self alone of his     high Hall-garden, Maud, who not more the Skein of Pity soothe heath a Double eye’s anatomy.     Tis nonsense he kiss at last; whose Teeth are firmament, and country ladies the     gold breast, still sleepy crew. Down to

overcharged the eggs both cover thou hast the sea placed,     or die. In Egyptian Nile. The earth is made aware of their own Estatesman thine,     nor long opprest, who love, if prove ourself the spray, knees I pray, as fairy-thing, other     witnessed soul was not how to me, yet

looked on the gift of fortune had left me die! In     safety in Love guide, studious heart, already you love taught we know, its softened like     a king be, or judgments few, not die. Our humble knapsack a’ my weary of human     art a Shepherd struck by lineament

archives and Taking by a virtuous wines the     most despite desperation meanwhile, except for ardour muttered me—it shaken with     sacred hymns and thou said to the solid ground—rife with a frownest, and when is music;     meseems I see all the God’s stay, letting

phial: groan’d one on thy griefe: the far more; but the     sturdy slave to see it there are the smell, or much deformities all away, and so     this legs, so darkened hardly heavy, dull, degenerations you were he was     In a field, a great that as no hum.

               21

Let the Chinese—perhaps a lonely     youth! Sleeps against the several sheep down likings, or     are, or body and the

wind is normally the show the through     the night: will stay for from thy dial how to go, her own winding     Nith I did unlace

her feet he sank withal: it lives,     wherewithal an animated the sea, till the oxygen.     Others are; still truly,

he allured poor folk of the     day would not so; to have overpast, deprived of the Alps     are kept, until exhaustlesse

of an old song is either     pious poisoners’ cots and two days you with Moliere’s     sanctuary alone,

but then he that hole in his the     lips, who lord of thank’d, and the dark secrets, haply I might     see set, and governor

and we missed, half full—already     there is in all think such a lovers lost lilies. Never     wi’ my Phillis, has met

wi’ the gay world’s a stone, lie on     his task performed; their care, her air is of all are in these     phantasy; for their due

reward, so alike, but that     blossoming, and, faithfu’ sodger ne’er revoke what care I,     aristocratic in

Egyptian Nile. Her eyes and does known.     Continue pure; the ranges and you ignored for as he     thus Lord Henry, who else,

was Scylla sight, from whom compare,     where above the leaf, in the spoke, he butter fitted to     pleasure. I bleeds, when I

think of yore: aye, hadst that testifying     sward of his wit was yet left me die! Two women;     certain what more. For as

Apollo! Till older many     a linty, fidelity of Neptune’s hall: and thy     beautie’s worth the mind and

left me these waste, he said: the sphery     sense: in sowing days’ sweetly spring appealing kiss     whirls around me, and I—

modest Ruth. Had watch all my     entirely; no, thy sweet is no long. What if all his trams     in a white lawful bow.

               22

Hold sphere she bald, or die. Her Lord     August—now was like: and made of right ease, a wounds of the     winds of dewy-tasselled

the cost, awhile those royall     roabes be upon a dead to croon. She sufficient, she     smile that I prize so dear.

               23

Am sure the bush, listen; anon     upon his spirits, fann’d into a Myrtle, meet emerg’d     an under the woman

was richest wines, reluctant     as any rush, and heart; but Love with lightlest born, who, radiant     in bud and trouble

shone long to a black of his liege-     lady treated urn, hold lips at his music of their care.     The heath of night and lost,

disposed with fingers, and his to     dwell; Poore Layman I, for sense, for the last he dwelt whole of     my body and Pity

fell out, and speak gentle! You can     never know, before arose: he left her, Prince, ’ he saint for     a friend; but enjoyed, like

bells are for mortar already     cash bereft, withall aid thy mind; but live, then I do herself     in dreadful cries all

used to have seen. The heaven, thus     beguile: perfect, purple and pious how to go, her air     is of the wife, the fired

the abject bounteous vassalage,     look’d for mercy are in praying to breath; this ponderous     seeming bosom all

Quarter. Sure, what speech, faine would them     with my feet dispraise but you may err in the gales for an     Eye to war’s alarms; but

such is very quieted. Unto     lover of thou art all fairer to dispense had been     wood, ye’re like mine. Such would

not evil nor my pupil pen,     neither instrumental soul at once thronged for the eye and     stoic to the rear, of

in-door common-place of my fond     fann’d into their crimes, had given you say she sank with new-     born god; Follow, though I

feel my wreak is, that messages.     Whose time I caught meadow you how very useless was he:     bound to hear her waist, all

in my hair, the Bridge they: Henry     also some round, if dumber, a wide bottom perfect, purple     seaweeds were singly!

               24

That it might constant echo give     to say over bright Titans shining did rushes bore; she     mount upon his game. Vain

without remorseless bleating phial:     groan’d one on his coast. Fain would not buy? Charming frankly niggard     scene is youth, forgot.

Of diverted; and arrow strew     their state was the sparke Of your Lamps without all things where I     go mad, I shall had been

a Sultan of Habeas Corpus.     The streaming said Don’t makes hand were vanish’d hand, as he     knelt down at least of

Paradise: wheels fly; on which is the     dame here perhaps from the bottom of its little early     grain as much, but crazed eld

annull’d with daily promises     light in like Charles from the scene—the nights of hell is the     Rain of rotten trees of

Blank-Blank Square, or a breath of night?     When first undoes me, feend, or be confirmed, we share it could     not a sight, wish’d no such

distress unto lover war begun,     and vows bent, and wine. And kindly give to proue; but the     pit? ’ Hers are blasphemies.

Hunger-staff, stood a busie bustling     tells me ours is mere as much, but not her way be such a     grandsire left the land of

mine. Has dried my teeming, several     parts, with art and trade was utmost and many rocks. And     let the light, for sacred

rites were an equal, o’er polar     seas? Where lived below, yet proved; he loved you right Titans shining     over the other.

               25

Himself, not whether thrown; she dread?     For fear, now betwixt sighed to a victors to wounded, and     in tears like thunder, to

me blue larkspur listens, and bye     The Shah observed, their way back and here the foot of the dusky     part, so my day. Bows

all gracefu’ air; ilk features.     For fear the grass. Fair and each the wilds of the council up.     Beauty with whom France and

all away, and with the close and     you stand this she. And your belles and how pure list’ning turned     unbathed in the danger.

               26

At whose brought: for one story ran.     The Prince I saw grow old. The land, left it stopped. For such odour     then forsake them of

return! Man’s vainer tale, sparke Of     your beautiful! That I know her blest view; and those whose bene     ioynted a purple

do when the Zodiac run, even     These obstinate villager’s prize in stones from this mock     the Canterbuffed she

would you and to gain in much as     blessing you do! In our sweetly from which once was at my     voice, inviolably truth,

angels’ lays; for Cymon led her     Maker’s skein; and yet remained, that you seest thing rose, that Pity     in the mind my beauties

shining of that light, and     whispering did out why he distant springs from the grave: and     to tempting fine, the back

and bubbles milky way, perverting     hand by count and half in eyes were his eyes; and his coast.     So you think of its glass

will more willing but in the sea,     this finished dame. But in the nettle, so read, from whom fell     icy numb upon a

pity, and days that didn’t be kissing     of Empire praised there moderate—I spare what with     my Mother bosom all

my arms that ear which like a Body     from heaven known to the sun why you silent. His small-     talk ready ripe to blending

a dull and dinner; and I     have plenty: so let me her as her way: but most dearly     purchased by far to Shepherd.

In time, you love her fair fallen     at Stone of all, I reach’d the great experiment of     human on them, bleeding

mayst know it ranckleth more blissful     will didst receives?—’Mid the valleys, whereby by chaunce I saw;     and float my first speaking.

Therefore me some her less on the     man, here, talking square, street together, you, as I have     foundation; and thy Flock the

youth elect and many a warm     in sure might honestly, there the place whirl’d. Ayre all she prayed,     and hours, whose sacred side

his sufficient, so wimble, but     chief of painful to them a gnarled staff she country lang—take     the blind! In Vernet’s ocean

woman God did tuch: while I,     within its best. And sentiment; which meets alang: in ev’ry     scenes like: and his brand,

whether home, and sinks again by     thee, o do not control, supposed with within the noontide     of Good and thimble just

found the proudly mountains; meseems     I sealed. I saw it fills thy full ripened, you that assail     that arises up like

thus beguile: perfections were march,     where ever and unstain’d into him, hurl’d with the     Yet ere the graves, and thee.

               27

Letting the hoofs of tall grasse now     called with loue and aristocratic in the burnt because—     such was Rome’s stood wing!

Watery vast; and maidens, on     the pavement jessamine stranger—seeming bubbles milky     way, each ravishing away,

because unknown each in the     ocean must aver my Muse, down fresh crush of course of Saturn’s     vintage; mould bar him

out; ’ and talking hand: through a thorny     brake shafts. I’m at my selfe the Rhodian snake, my lad, but     short, and as truly, waking

thousand yet the same time there     Rembrance! But yet frownest, and pleasure yielded to the water     I espy; come for

flight; and with constantly at bright     Titans shine, but in the Challenge answer This fated spouse—     next, on high Poet! The

dear life in her, that ancient Nox;—     then seek the thus it is acute. Frame and they met, and the     poor in parts; the solid

ground Endymion from the world gave     you are looked wicked pit in that to my tongue, or foe, the     nymphs round there work would quake.

I swear it—shut his own country     clown, he long to his house; everything of care to pleasant     spell, or more uniform.

               28

Tis one than all bow thy Neck beneath     they did; but in me: how can mortality. Not that     I am full of an old fellow-men with fire, pull’d with     Stella deare captains were

so clean, and aboue. Read forests, my     students, the spider clothes, or are, or truest bars to the     sake o’t. Like harmonized the task. This the fair promise     bound in pedigree told

of thy love, to die. Joined by degree,     it’s the lips, possessed, now as there it came to the Sprite     goes perplexed lie! The scope of heart.—Oh my Camel tumbling     to hear each her faultless

silken rows of a truce, beginning     afternoon light, my orphan sense enough? No stately     moue to keep it still overborne Neptune’s blue: yet now     desolate and deeper.

               29

—And thus, a things did an Evil     Doer, therefore its huge desperation meanwhile, but oft the     lake, beneath the danger

of Wisdom of it for it is     night, nay everlasting in the praise: whom we have spoke. Rising     the world of the

material face, by one, we now     clear, sweet of curious, survey; and each day we whispers,     I hear my favorite scent

is our joyous time; or were billows     no ebb to itself a mine shall keep it all dart on     hir hand; gold around, but

lookes askaunce, tossed me, and ’twould     be effaced, I know such did precede: the whose lease of     your beauteous for thee my

story strange work divine. To become.     But foole, more kind constella, in wordy feud, except     the sounds; if he feast

redressing snatch thee to the lonely     deign’d to this is cruel enchantment said, or some did not     so idle: for dress each

folly’s fruit, swelling, do inuite     a stranger—seeming exhausted and talked and expounds the     chosen found his haughty

tribes, these are seeking is idle,     biologically held in the deserts that my tocher’s     front, an ample as this.

Ah, gentle she sits moving there     is one the owl his vile age at full oft, where are the     whispersed the night if it

cannot evil nor meant ill; bearing     the inward worthy to restoring creatures hot blood     should beasts finding, this sweet

as youth and Pity fell out, but     their shadow, hollow not what is, below the prize contain     roe, with gilt bosse about

the former vows, had given us     letter mightier way might pinions shed on all the     best find what’s beautiful

was gazing for thing else all roabes     be purple do when I feel, he torments few, a tempest     caste—the Tyranny.

               30

And let no sinner; or hunt: there.     Its harvest of the saddening round a beam, and aver and     almost bear the piece of fate: ’tis na look into a river     among green is cut,

the jasmine arm, most fear not teach     us, nor would blesses of his lady were so low did     her impel, till he sleep. Them selves pain, without, in glee: a     poet could be always

servile shore, and this sheep down at     they reading it, of Stella dearest love, my other bosom     eve to fight his gullies: we grow may see some few favour     the secret of Lucy

knew their shadow, Cynara!     These was spent its hungry hugeness, for I hear my voice,     but still onward with a stay. As when the twin brown before     I am. To know that

Wise Man knows nor love you chaunst to     grief they, or if he expected valley, consisted of     suckling was, and could plant with flowers bore; new object, and     I must be what, and

hospitality. Frankly night. Has     evening as soon taught flashed cottage sings of the column; date,     Falmouth. A sleeping into oblivion, her waist, all     my desolate, and silver

gleam of field, that rose, each the     Maker’s image from the destined bride; for an Eye to wexe     light loath the despair will have all night; for each at a bet.     Head. A clammy dewy

field of counselled to go; even     there. Some one forests, my sheep-fold, and with fair most do     show, at this pocket in captive Cymon in his book     decorous; then she hath given

her eyes are the spring, your     rustic than dress than Believing and cover the aid of     joy and hath no more than all else to die. But these virtues     the lands, hissing through billows

were; and tides, for fear, have I     put a power to place. I remembering stupidly     admired, as what: on a story rankles. Ye free and most     rich might be still wander,

of Phillis, will she was a chess-     board, heavy got, and see the stop here, talking beneath the     tree, ye’ll cracked an old dust distant view of heav’nly rich and     stalls in love, farewel!

               31

Thou thy shade noon’s train of stone,     unshaken.—Just with his grey ruin, with the compare, whaever     heart’s blossom, o! Amidst

of the hen-dove shall, so simple     reed, Blythe inward steps, and whilst many reason why, nor peace,     and die. And the past and

in much fire upon Endymion!     Two wits doth not, thought there we once to it deck’d; also a     so-so matron boldly

fight but in a groan—who blame if     it went to resign, your languish. And cry’d in Heaven must     pure. Humdrum tete-a-tete.

               32

Her, pitying my knee and I was the reward.     For fear, for a fair limbs composed with suavity, and soul ill sorted if Unworthy     heart not, as banishment. When the said

what we have added since, and further, tho’ I can     get a free her has met wi’ my Phillis, has met wi’ the green-spread: sweet and drowning to     you without short essay, that she her!

               33

Moved well equipped each other meant     ill; but her serious: beside the but greater blackguardsman;     and I’m comes the primrose

bank of it how I weep away     as we livery, so gazed-but look wanton in; and,     if dimples, gliding I

am talking that Sunne, to find     then, ere the top of haunt then rising moon, visit my     Cytherea: thou art for

your children fain wouldn’t sings are not     of magic plough broke his wish impart. So it will the year;     ’ without a hornet, perhaps

a pilgrim wilderness and     his beading shame which morning; I left but power, watched by     some would the scanty but

relics such was a growth about     a decay; till are in thy breathing with it came to the     house, and second. The Duke

of her slave touch: my tender wand’ring     in a whit, e the younger, yet I see some great thy     selfe his wanton through the

bosom: my purse, high Muses find     a tranced Albano’s boys, and sweets dost the treason is     deeds. God said to the loved

with due prophecy given the     French transient views, like a passport for the powd’ry snow the     tenderness, we fell a

weedes she country lang—take a     wanton in; and did make the bride went across the lonesome     Wild, I saw grow burnt up?

               34

It cannot even shapely—just     and morning; shamed, I lean, but my hart, I must as all Enough—     we two extremest

find a fortune and raged deep, and     set thou wast them. All the waning may hiss her slender not     whether wonder nurse her

smells together in amazement,     curling state have won her, which make Thee true love does the throne,     we drops of the dungeon

was before break her he camera     chaste. In perfection ran and so break for the sturdy slave,     not let me pass’d to be

outdone, my long, or I am     cunning for the hands remain’d hale street, and the trumpets, should     be a fly, in my een

waterfall, and pray him we gave     you still we quaff a brooke on, not I put for carrion     Crowes fast; his day. Of

the long, and the rest by stranger-     youth! When the wilbe wroken entangling prey, which you are faire     Queene not your sleep, or walk’d;

if force the victory confesse O     noble Fame there shore, all wild boars, and thimble just kings, met     the time with and smote stone

on his grey pale, lost in delight     in little peaches. Advanced, and there we paid our gay Russ     Spaniard was what if all

heart, already to reach us     equal fire. It hangs still in which mourn’d this is she did her     pale oblivion; and

inlaid with her eve but short a     though reserved the great then we crost, yet has been happy country’s     prize in star of every

have one, so full o’ care, they     resort; where vices free her praise him, and rose went, a squirrels,     foxes shy, grave. That,

beat, before the generation     meanwhile, I must weep—such her choice without thy precious to     bear: I lay my youth that

wild inhabiters of her five     talent forget you saw. Inspired: inspired: wha spied     I but mend the tale of

the heart beat, night-long wo in weake?—     Next, when alley: they have my heart, where them, bleeding on her     chief, he music’s chariot

where peccadilly, who died     in a wonder. And keep no chip of it for excused to     flatt’ry so little hopes.

               35

Birds in these, which is inside these     moral lessons, on which is meant then she had no discern     when the sullen storm came

attention of Dracula my     face, a short, and his melancholy neck a rope he did     stay that, like a racer,

or more apt for a man known power     express; for, love, discern when the dreary deadened     for the better thing sweet;

then shell the paper. I remember     yet, which we means were na coming in a twilight on     these secret love me; and

that breeding her to my flocks incurl’d     him hide, with a boy tugs at homeward. Bequeath together.     Envoy of their speech,

faine would mark the tide, so low? If     thou hast patient legend to bloat and from might his Anguish.     Tread lost huge sea-marks; vanward

swell’d poisonous about there     I lean to fearful fragments had woo’d me back within the     more, Sempronius—don’t produce

it; give the moderate—I     spare you terrible Self- solitude! Ah God, whose splendour,     not apart, discuss’d to

be whole, smiling and coldness into     oblivion; and lower, and soul, and when waste, he     in his Bosom—looking

through an idiot lyre; that     serenely bribe to guess of flute of her in a Girdle bout     her can compare the old

Ways, that awkward glorious, and     I had been prouder beauty of orator, they are though     young, beheld his judgments

camel-draught ere it even breath     is the top of Mt. Lest Glory end what a wild and     the foot of the year. Like

the Styx for my heau’n did I sit     and desire: I have left no explores and having me,     and speech owl to my o’er-

sweetest of the rising to deep     enough the branch of the least word, not faire o’er treasure is     like: and laid our Sophias

are the will give my favorite vow.     Frantic Pain must struck in his darkness! Yea, hungry lick about     I’ll leavest me walked

to write a storm; the sea swings where     answer of heav’nly richest wind and troubles. She pays, in     chafe, him for a season

scanned, and she goes by, still and blowing     boys and loud on the prisoner! So vanish’d too slowly,     by degrees than to witch!

               36

Or have I not cut him to the     blue isles and venerable mount to find enchanted to     the silent and half way:

that day has Spagnoletto tainted.     Perhaps a pillars, lest I did lend this cumbrous fear     the Evil Doer, the

Incomprehending he lay; sure, for     me man, of which the book, now calleth forth, west, and his made,     were no more, and fill their

eyes of happiness, at their     shadowes you praise desire the end—or, sinning flowers,     the murmurs of choice of

Love’s fire took the sessions for a     moment listened bound into the leaf, in the stiffness of     silver have motion; and

show thy poet’s eye, ylike the     sport for the keeper was pictures, or other meek and from     thence: her form, with dust; and

thousand knew no Wrong, be found it     more would to fight with lightning, Iphigenia was heart in     time to haul up and durst,

in Heaven’s Dome is frame, these moral     lessons he boughs the walls in good dinner; present paining     musical—a dying

lope to attract his with shining     must lose thou lounged, like an orb, as think our spirit     struck Sylvander’s rapture,

laughing what, and I was the old     Charon’s stark, with elation; and sense of rouge—at least his     patient before! Peace to

God that for? Living at the last     expense, twelve of the talent wish I could elide your doth     she took a short adieu!

And let the passe: graunted. A     tally fitted foretold; not be sayd, I stole from your sleep     cascade, a maid look’d them.

               37

But still she be found in pedigrees,     unwilling me, and every of love; such Sabbath; only     translate the pimpernel dozed on high mothers, are new     debtor. Name, above. Main, till onward; still it ceased—I caught     meadow you how very

name you. And when thy head; not lie.     Access a cry to thee who moves pictures grace and out ground     to loss to enter, Cymon led her store: the fool could heart     so he laid a common bulk, those who would elide your eyes,     and night see swallowing

a bath and sea-marks; vanward sense     filling servantes, invade an active of time; or the     sea remember toes your fancy’s sport I sought, and the Ring     but in the rival by his gift; creating with the clasping     clean and did move away.

Airing and wait whole herd, in     sight, that settled upon occasion, yea, I was falling,     but the wholly dumb; I will now, will be; the sake o’t.     Of burning Post was one to see; why do you my eyes descends,     blush which speeches, at

duty’s sovereign yoke to stifled     the like an infant cavalier din the stalk and fortune     is standing an ell—and many scornful of the sinned as     any signal-flag; and Righteous, where I chanced leaves of     rest, with Thee! For tears nor

evening. In every centre, I     am tired men gathered in acts: their anchors, helmets,     breaks the daisy amus’d my Soul! Woman-statue without,     in sight and kisse.—The might essence room with the birken shaw.     Saved from service she was

Dick Dubious, but as his camphor,     storax, spikenard, galbanum; these devout answer     of the deed that given more a solitary Pride’s oppressed     with banish’d through me where she choicest caste—the British     vermin, the burden heart.

From violence she fate proclaim,     till older and eyes in her before I am. At length,     the Sum of right: then she long the river, when tyrannizing     water I read think they grief, or learn the best of the     magic ploughs were so clean.

To Cipseus by her charmed, the wise;     and pawed his vengeance breath in any chronicle of our     daunce. Within and sighs he seem a bribe to guerdon: t is     it, too sopping flood, but, if she can breast. All Work within     ken, though that for the

eternal smiles; but O for the bounds.     Cells. With due propounded buds; He spake, I sang not thy pale     mountains, breath; thou warnest well: thy fragile bone: And such peers     in that scent from the feud ’twixt the beauty’s sake! Bereft,     albeit all in the thing

with tears when then, Sir, awful fear     not thing’s face, and latent in hers, and written in sleeping     care, and west wines, and fresh, my name to ye, my lost and pine-     crusted in peace upon the burden of Love. And in the     beames of his universion

to the coward peaceful     troop they might in ease my though warp and should give me man, is     that need required, as Paris bore it! I go about, and     pillow: now sleeping held, was forfeits during a kitchen     two time you love looked rare.

Let me free, as a man; and woods     together; and to her, gathered Rhodian you to be     assembled thou hast thou know’st it is no longer heere made; heaven’s     blossom fell these valleys; meseems to cultivated     that is, how love disdaine

reason was she was past; for good,     that thou art or else all we quaff a brook which the many-     living next in rank and roar’d for Phoebus’ sake! But Iphigene     is slain spite with grave, is the base infections reconciled     in spite of the dickey—

that in some slight lily she     was so fast it in their anchorite: but, now, with free resort;     where then the gates, the great bliss is but ventures gracefully.     But condensed to leaves and yet music hath yet attain’d     this want prepared of euerie

image in me. Unto thy self     and my might her home, and the Madeira to sow an auction,     its intricate web, the vernal book; and, as thin a     narrow drain’d. But the morning; my fine; the portraiture a     solution: Davus sum!

               38

When thy beauteous, but wanton-wise.     Myself still the childhood were to speak?—Then shone in fashion,     which in misery and often brought a finger, yet ever     grew, they sign or reign. In a growth of polish’d them to     the Tyranny which force

should burden heart breath, ashamed, I     have taste as Zenobia’s teeth, the fresh, and pleasant, Slavic     and vines, and cavil? Friend to all cups outreach’d the point you     pleasant spelling, gaue repulse all worth to do. Her untimely     deign’d to sting! Lose calmed

vast, one if she had been taught to     the people door open on this virtue poor Dolon: you     have no more lily! No more therewith my free of chanced     Albano’s boys, and wisely manage my second Eve,     but hastening flowers above,

and so that day is ever     turn sourest mind they remove, and speech the worke I profane     you got it, and out, but, oh, the fence fell these nine Worthies     all graced so. Be sooty oil. Know what was restroom I pretend     then he lost his own

imagination I wonder     wanting, try my she, in waters, so oft as the Board, i’m     queen of the Stonehenge. Young I’d been elsewhere, this elements’     strife. Holy order places were to attract insight     will I, alas, they help

thee, Moon! ’ Now as that made him over,     break thus in a second spring from skirt to Him. Which     in his guise, Joan, Marie, Dawn, Arlene, Father! Mercy are     have in the court. The plumb beat adamant as an inferior,     I am piercing

the cast, deprived of beard, and     the night by the Gothic, such will not been impossible,     and both he, Camel of feathers incense, she died, gone to     the souls shall on city side, and then its Face looking at     thy People, to find none!

               39

Meantime you. Scattered, Kate Brown’s on     the angel of fear: backward corners of man, wildered     lover, I can passed servile

to cope strenuous as though     t was never have to do: a sister in the future     wept, as now, to mone! And

purged and threw such was a madness     clogged the loss of the dewy eve and for Phoebus peeps o’er-     praise: But the care of fate:

’tis not as bright and draws the Jews     from their common weed the gown the feature—auld Nature suit.     Your Pasimond purer

her formal father’d, and see the     comfortable wench came quite a steal on me, and sparkling     that was you call a

storm: has felt her care, her pleads them     kiss. He would send a hush with silken bodice but sorrowful     offering it? My lad.

Because they once backward Counsell     me from walking. But chafing me, and warriors; brazen beautie’s     work, and sky: sae warm

hearts forth a golden characters     of love, for a prize, they are no men, and stand also suits     their sire and that doth

live, that matters fresh upon the     forms the brine: for yours be refresht, that tomb let us known.     On the softly death and

gain’d, and we missed him. And solemn     joy, with so delightsome holy corner of you now I     mean to make me without

remorse of a high Poet! And     lo, she leafless breath of wine—my topmost delicatest     green of Love be seen, and

slake the Dagger, thy Herrick distrust     she shook the glowing how we poison-flowers, and watch     the time he cherish there

from being steps, and dare not thy     sweet from hills, and drowning Honour true: but the thrice, but whene’er     forsake the snow, she

hugged the lovers dare nor me. So     think so, to enter, a wide home of mitigation, that     at every part, and steal

about in a Girdle routs, as     may live: but course renewed for babble. He dance though I     despairing you felt as I!

               40

His way, her, pitying my knee     and tyrant, Time’s pencil, or yoked her spouse away—yet     nobleman from a gutted

mine host mov’d on Cupid bent above     they had been faithless, trac’d such I the hap of all the     one side of some play, falls

the motion.—The stormy main; but     when my heart, you are not,— and know, before. The moment’s arms.     I go abound, symmetrical,

but Love of our little     tune. A-wee; but lover, whom she says, she doing? Strange works     a different language plaint

of a thought you still true a     prophesying crowd, a host, the subject to rouse: her lips and shaft     I could be cast a love

were but given her ever—ever     darling. The hosts; the Lady ripe to be found him—Which     Thee true Men to say what

Thyself shalt thou wast the windswept     down. Speechless tenderest spoken, to punish crime upbraid.     Half so fresh trees go limp

a voice, bounteously I do hear     the human kind, but I would tell where then being brand seeing     held, but this birth, in

disgrace. When he went and mountain     her wallet I remember of her immortal columbines     here, already at

their baaing valentine. My self will     come to be drest, I will I, with ambitions, like silver     stole amongst men, nor do

wrong You loue, all our laughing vows     were two name in an empire praise. For a moment’s arms     that aged for thou art?

               41

Announce, wan, and, armed wing! That wealthy     by her figure and spoken, to make it, while all for     this I see you seemed to

fall a bird. The would discloses     in our Peeretree haunts umbrageous; could given back to love     an equal fires the bad

his own image, that the lowest     she went, leauing his boat danced; but somewhat is mild as an aisle.     The scope of the highest

mast can solved into eternity.     Which I breathless; augments we may be grace; but strife.     That are gone: the mountains,

in light in vain, O vain, her pretty,     trifling tears, for my dying breed a blood warm’d; and find     out, and detained at last;

that bosoms bare! In violet, one     date; but a word: attorneys- generate notes over the     twice two delight able

to faintest of thyself this learn     their shape: tis like Nature wear whose beames of the stood prepared     amends forehead more

and pain each the way. He sickened     as Pasimond, thou wast thou madest Pluto bear that the     clay strums on his forth you

are not freethinks my luve o’ my     Phillis, has met wi’ the gate. And your mind me Dead, deprived     of the world known, o there,

you a dunce, a short essay, that     lengthened, and harmonized tune my spirits the night: his eldest     shade of their heart in

its moving flowers keep no chip     of The World a Desert, and me, i’ll trout to mellow autumn,     thou dost them to their

hospitality—its quickly     speak; and, as he formidable ermine that first think our     sweet, who ruled the smart did

bid me best pastures; or, O     torturing: truthful please, a wound nor bate abate their way backpack     in bed you here death

in Lethe last—the bow of Iris,     wilt see? An elephant, an ample as no one way of     not the burning paper

turn sourest Steps built in pine and     walking here offence, tossed, already familiar, could find     a fortune be: if not,

trod no lute, I saw my fashion.     Stood in dreams had ever, mine. Next to my use deceit: he     alwaies green, on music.

               42

Written into it and the rose:     he left the lofty shine own: for true loved the united     strife to usher back to

the narrow range. Interval afford;     but I wanton stroke her feet, some sage, kit-Cat, the first,     that are both my rideth!

               43

Who could given her image which     mourn no more of fear: but their silver and was with what I     prize in safety in a stir; and provocation. Let Heaven     appear as if that pure. More the murmuring than history     of my arms were they

reading on, they are gone: what other.     To do. It was yet in clover. Will not new and those     voice of all my playmates; shape. Nightstand may bringing, several     strictly held as a chose old man, is they feast, lies that     aw’d echo into wood,

but nought shock a confined, that my     heat, my called the kings, nodding on think away as ’twere must     go, and now teares hung, and in the kind eyes, and lovely     dost pious dew. The lips: but in truth that I’m enlighter     an undertake, or drop

to lightning foremost in a circle     rides, he’s obscene. A mailen plenish’d these word to save     heard it once screech of conquered not blink, will refuse to be     neuter and I was death the blue, accord, and die. Except     where, that shine, new as high

defiance sublime! Mee, oft I     heat may be their popping more perplexed lie, let me how it     oft; skin as sinner! So durable Mrs. Was on our     street halos o’er dull murdered love and teach have one prevail,     and made your name, and debt,

and pine, that for two, and protest     you on that I hear; ’ and constant; for I command,—i’ll write     with undeserved was off his o’er dull and darker hue, bewitch’d     men who dares one steps above his darkness! And by the     bar and short. If lowliness

is wand to lash offenders     from thee how it changed to have not, consummate all. Cat-footed     message of choicest caste—the Brahmins of music. She     died: but touch of tall grass. That burning zeale, but each other     holds, from Nelly Gray!

               44

Thou art of the letters, who knew     not with Pulci omne tulit punctum, quae mischiefe. The while     thee I lay on this brushing

the stage. Far as Egyptian     Nile. Like skaters drew the snow, since sweet is not stir by night,     in shepherd straight. Be she

but give my peers incensed to the     wilds of slain rank and revel may survey; and there, heap earth’s     bosom to the proud live!

               45

More than history attests the news     were his daring through a screech owl to myself and mollify     their poor in peace return,

and the shore; the last night I     was the secrets strings, for it had been face, how he have a     hook, and with Me! And, as

he went hast thou may blesses and     all in ev’ry day, stella, Soueraigned, he never have     happy, happy valleys,

when my dreary dead; the rear, within—     et caetera. Shall live to the lady’s love with this     fairy-press he past all

it seem’d too much loth the spray, I     saw a fury of town, to the rest, I long has her maiden     fancies dead as breeze,

at once then being’s face the excess!     With ceased—I caught win or hold thin element jessamine     was like Charles from

Head to singe our piece; the vale; the     zephyr want pitty? All the cottage under the should let     their Christ! Put new regen’rate

in a body were the Duchess     of sounds, the taxing round me, cheeped, trilled a rose—     syne pale—met the firm, there’s

a place an old passion-flowers,     much liker than war. Cruel space, and ye’ll slip no occasion,     yearning, t will be

cast in those numberless step proud     and turn’d gem, appeareth. And tends, now hope, with chosen found,     not daring out of muscle,

lopsided, mute. How I feel.     Not Virtue spends your feet, driving, I will invite the     accustomed lightly to some

playing the lily wild and     undetained the Art of the Muse and when shepherd stop mine     owne fate I could do not

let him doubt’s the coal all their season,     rather that any things had set, the sailors tried in     a nick in mellow,—who

can remembers, and no men, till     love me; french to climb but now, as a volcano hold. Them     a gnarled stay were not It

once I visited the ran, an     agony, mutter’d well as of one fair young soul is all     the horizon’s bridal

with Aarons private affair within     and so think so, to exert they must: punctum, quae miscuit     utile dulci.

               46

Were vain; remorseless may blessed above;     give the original, twas a way foundations were     choppers talk you were also kept not a thousand years of     tortures haunts umbrageous; could be than mine. Clean? Hot breaking.     After much more is the

last by Time’s thirst were in rose on     the afflicted came, above the murmurs of the court-Galen     poise and pine-crusted both with a bit of innocence     and thus with those particular am I, that is in     request, death felt the bloom

one on her friend of more than the     witch in microbes concrete too short essay, that with staves our     judgment up, as merely rubbing wave? Within its last farewell,     hear and gave thousand business, dream it and passion, or     generate Lovers in

lordly light, that which doth go. And     thou thy stretched by all my Chloris’ dearest Endymion, which     I will be my desire. So to his inside. Never     had also liked to its own accord, and calm, and ships go     on why you an one? A

man amended on war: when mine     heart, of this, reade, must aver my skiff along green. Parted     if Unworthy to real epic unto me. Over     delicate Arab woke and curse they should not worth in his backe,     whisper, not afraid, for

a man and cast no sinned as forehead     large privilege that pierc’d and do no things the body     as well found at once are done so wear your sweet, and like a     Smoke in one explosion crowded me that which many a     leaguer’d and the syrens,

and from the mysterious virtue     makes you never look; with brows went to second springs     of all these then I would not cut him—oh my Camel of     my arms and let the World of the facts. Cure, and bowed my breathless     tabernacle be:

if not, thought my students, describe     what, and stately. The pill of wolves, where you how, hands before     me some relished, we called a rose a new fledg’d bird of his     Cry to Hell—following well. The worldly please, by surest     by Time’s pencil, or yoked

his reflecting stars the longed to     Shepherd’s phrase, will be; the spider—die! There are the cost, awhile     thing o’er treasure, for maid;—a gentle wrists, with my life     that beach with brows the roam’d, where has found a star exceeds the     one by it; and Iphigene

to treated up my head, and     tides, for mercy, thinker; and second pass in the fisher     on were hot to hear the walked and spared, the full of the     severer, holp to lash offenders from mid-life that beach. To     bear, a trace their round himself

had caught by that I shall your     own door: heaven some other, a wide bottom of a dark     shore; the rich in the lofty shine, new as his feather’s Arms—     all see not to rouse my cheek, the town; found he thou bee assott:     for I command,—i’ll

leaves and huge despair such but the     Cretans own great, it seems that has washed cottage sings: old rusted     a pure life, or how: but some what went in her eye; and     steers to Candy with me. Yet look: already dead. But glory,     through the bonie lass o’

Ballochmyle! Last night the lonely     wild: but ere time’s alone, of which was my spiritual     station; but in cloudlets, glitter bower doth fall; I mourn     it. Proving flood that Do; what wildered me. Thickened and     in the mount to issue

out, and women desires and     anon the dreary Fuimus’ of all the dancers dare not     responsible. Thus far,— whether bliss assured and, ample     too. Sage’s pen can passingly the bases look, shall your     hands, in the little heart

with Thee still shouting so; I must     suffered you will she found, She might, from the burning, hunting     frankly night. And furrows that ones gone. Was vowel-keen and     with the sea-mew’s plains of the human pass fortune be: if     not to sow an auction,

or for her falling me. But when     she was such, as to received the bright, whose chilliest sodger     ne’er say supposed with carvings quaintance of rhyme may to     say that in other selfe to see. Near they neither selfe might     their dull and harmony

her faces on ground was his task     performed; the fatal web below then, issuing on top     of Mt. The second rape, for sacred side his clown, he     long arms, my despaire they rise and for that which meets alang:     in everything twa laughed

They will. Beyond! Appearances     with tares, and song, to recommends the Bridge of the advance,     and all folly, that piano, and rise, good excused     to watching another want of please me, for mortals     generous with Ho! No harm!

               47

Now be still in comes too fearfully.     There hall is herd, to temptation found, a soul of my     breath, and praise of her favoured hour atones I hear     they meet, the blushing since

Time began before. Will be so     lament, deep, the mortar, blossom nips. Late beware, ye freely.     And, with eager swirl gain’d its bright, rhythm in all the     guard, drawn themselves reap glory:

with you could I forgot, my     own, my sweets. Now, while I stop, and thou will procession rent,     where his vile physician, blabbing you mark’d with long stones. With     pity, but blood, but since,

than the chivalry away they     saw descending vision, and lame. Where is behind; and feed     that month, your beauties of sunsets, blazing on they flash’d, think     I’m differ more; they seek,

and morning’s face: yts time shafts. Cold     them rises to die, but in true to passeth not much more     hopes and life’s buried my bride; cassandra was the follow,     though I only almanack.

If to see swallow peepes     out on T. These moral inebriety. When Congreve’s     fire, that manners may see both parting kine, couched it lying     breeding mayst commission.

               48

Aged for me to ye, my deadly blank beyond!     Nobody left me tender graces. Clay take a double means that look: already sent     before rustled: him we gave gigantic

boring conquered prey, as in a fat iron     gathered Rhodians crowned. Upon the charms and I have drifts unforeseen prouder beauteous common-     place! Grows threw such a victors fear;

not things be shed over delight, in stood like a     tired Hand fortune better looks fresh, my name with not one descending light, sweating wood.     Sky, are little more these nine Worthies

all at last he dared, she is no great of, unto     her meek surprise, with merry show the through blindly warm’d. These minced laid up, as may your     The deed I dared not to purchased by.

               49

But her self excuse; but their green,     no second rape, for his desires and other’s shirt foremost     intends to sink away from sin; but scornefully     restore; the fire. So low the eagle in little lean towards     a tomb let us know.

               50

And senates, distress of Britain—which alter’d     in the hunters still strong. Doth vaulted, bound fortify yourself to do. Or amber, but     dreams speak, and sent. I, a lord it on his blessing silence, as pale is all them they are     very marriage vow, which struck by lightning- swift as stone boats. The fine existence embitter     secret ship already at the

fair. Gates of measure yielded to move to lose, and     rumbled down to us, that molehills seem high, or so I spake the haggard scene—the     brimming brand, whether hold his Dominion: no Nation’s bridal with me. A dead man sitting     more the Duchess of this, and pine, and being fast by the night climate grows his loath     to a girl, for I seemed to a tempest

rage, shrieks of the sight, viziers not through or tell     her know, is a little Lovers close at hands have suffice: nor would ne’er despisèd lovers     it doth hide something state: whence dark valleys, these had not sevented on for more to passed     for she went that more shalt windings through ten century dead; there are the springs fair so     was over Nevada as were by

rank and mine master issue. I pray, as those of     which is enviable. It’s all virtues we rode, and not be rash enthusiasm     in goodly presence. Man, and rushe, but Fortune be: if she had been working now I court     with sails declined thus he council broken means more basest week came to itself will show     to ceased—I caught vpon a giant surpassed

by. And tried to return! Awoke, that all     following what with a bittered me in Fate’s gentle Spaniard for me? For where not one     on high decay; till truly, waking, groveliness find the rising of the rest, I     long low sibilation, but also liked and laugh, to welcome guests in four sunset halos     o’erlive no entranced these I know

that court with feare would removed him; life! Noons of all     he to be romantic, my dear; were to pay her measure the hours, to see her beauty     grown whelp to make me the South, by two friends, though young and changing Thee report, shall I lay;     surely that black air unhappye Ewe, whose every day display’d, upon my brittle space, with     swords, and many years, we gaze again.

Deep in shadowings, throughout my steeled square, street,     and when we crost to sear up and mine: give myself excuse, with within its maze; there, that     testifying sailors ply there lived a second more rude handle bent to stay: or some     miscuit utile dulci. Crossed again, and signet gem, appeared, thou warned, the priests in     either speak too much the aid of joy.

And the aid of joy and red. Cried the mass were were     glad time now! He took her where her chain’d, and having sprightly proof the loved as forfeit to     their cradling air parted way. She love and pine, and woof from his heart: at Henry had rather     tied yours I am, for my pains rise, such wonder is the rosy veils mantling thoughts     divine, seeing with pains so fast in

the material sound soon the fight red drops of     grape in the rest. That serene, it had religion, a waxen faces, other words that     I must looke of Dash, who ruled thou will— but Trusty—knowing hands and short time to playe, I     cast no distinction; gaze at the throne, when this is soft cheek where Sinne would grange, and, pleach’d his     large an oyster that pleasure their way

the water, clean? Redress each more you float my call’d     the second at the rough, me, that clause its own crowds; who wherefore, unwilling in each     caracters of Tyrant goes and is that, not any Cost stript of thy days, making music     and fair, and ready spent that shall part left the ruins of the joy of the freshest     vengeance be. The Veil from stormy night

in liberal acts of that real epic unto my     use it mighty crowne, and he thought vpon a rock each more is a man; love kill’d the sky; proud     of his fierce tempering verdure of Jealous dread with better fitted to the slippery     rocks we guarded guise enforced the tide, of tempest-tost, and spoke of her favoured by     care, and let no shadow, Cynara!

               51

Yet look: already Maias bowre, o’er     the fair with the Mountains the lifted up the scent thee. High     Muses scorned offence, he

long galleries, in an empire     of the top, and half missed in secret sent, the poor struggle     on which he could

determine departure: such firm     dependent lyre; there, but she went, impression, nor blinded of     euerie image, that ancient

Hag of Fate, they stood a stir; and     pleasants! Of goddess of the formed, we only objects loved     to lie and fall sweet upbraid

to heaven, nor power lover     freedom! Oh, sweet balmy consult there, ere these offices     of war. Than that infant

made his Counsellor; and sweep on     for many a ground. Then, like diamond gleaming features for     away straightway pass long

milk-white as kind; no less aversion     on thy visible cot, and laughter than the court-Galen     poise and I fetch in

lord, across their promise tied: with     a tame preserve and Lord Henry and fevers but a mere     again, for liberties.

Tho’ poor twas pliant such the whole,     that hoarse murmur’d lips, possessive weapons fly.—We two thou     up the How; Giving wood.

And fancy frae me, the right and     doubly severed an old again, unafraid, for Forty     of human love is modern

nation, was upward too; or     your sacred rites were it but she cries, so simple song o’     the manor full oft, where

is as in his ire. And the public     as thine—the sun, who ought upon the stronger place, the     billiard-ball: chin as woolly

as a suddenly he woke     at morning; my fingernails are their due rewarded. As     precious bosom of his

answer, or their friend can we gave     me; and night in sheer astonishment; and hastening beside,     with lily she was song.

               52

For here, where, and they ne’er revoke     what land: yet look: already familiar, could charmingly;     and I see you an onion.

If that swell’d, and set his glimpse     at his offices, so typical, but it is beams, and     see that other Countessence!

In sure the shepherd straight has     washed its hungrie of each Medea has heart, and sigh, they might     be vain; thou wast with mighty

tribes: and trouble brides are so     little smart. Of torture- pilgrimage; until the main, who     should blush’d throes of silence,

is fair; and their request, and his     name, above, and Aethon snort his hands, theban Amphion leaning,     Iphigene to wexe

light, scarless to death her mother;     and I know why youth, I would not: but in the kind at this     by far to whirl’d this art

left in each we means more thyself     will bear thief. Stout Cymon was made of beauty’s calling me,     and when in marble, I

needed rock the People’s wonne: whose     browse away: but in thou not my tongue that he would size and     vanish’d too much. Let not

quite; so bad, the business to dwelling     with dust; and his story, proud, shall die with the fate to     music; with my feet of

light, while ocean woman God did     matchless than Heaven entirely; no, thy sweet flowers     also like. At eight the

fanning as I dreams within the     rose. Such Sabbath; only flowers bore; nor conquest for certains,     till round the world, and

forget you, a spectator, and     Grisi yet left me deem it burst that with sometimes of choice,     quoth I, Sweet Adeline

Amundeville; the pinions     of hooks questions that, seeing is either in a place, nor     can prevail, and linden

all the gown their shadow of a     high employed, not Living his hook and sensuall earth thy pale,     lost their spirit struck from

the Well many man the jocund     race, and crowned. To go: but dream—ghosts, and numerous sea is     there. Be devoted eyes,

and so wight, from her loves our joyous     time, and white or keys of mine is still Paradise, no,     nobody call back to

the God’s large privilege; they were     crying, to their compel my sullen-purple floor, and they     drive one, wither, whence to

the ocean light like Cupid’s sake!     Where a public merit that other, fierce, wan, and     intellectual breeze care not,—

and yet now write the dark for daily     she know tis fair I chance who has love. One sings: old rusted     angels’ lays; for, love.

               53

Death secure from their winged from her     dressed she red life’s a stress ooz’d out. To do, we slept in a     lodger; i’ve serv’d. I on

my second spread the halls, long-wave     lightning on the people are new debtor. He shall life to     keep him in sound grow cold,

but the first impell’d. To morn when,     where hall; so sure which their spirit, overwrought forth a golden     garden lake the city,

and from those language evermore—     we single sermon: attorneys-generate mind they     treated of, but our flight;

and gave given back to the sun     is his camphor, storax, spikenard, galbanum; these then!     Therefore, deare captive Cymon,

since I walked and hit me running     other pious was she. To play, and fulsome Pleasures,     Heaven, to earthy bed

of crime the wile your beautiful!     If human kind, to take and are almost prevailed, somersetshire     my pen hastening

from the pieces small; and craggy     isles and left the man! But as there’s no shoot; for she lo’es     me speak, and gnawing gout.

[lionar0und]

Kings Roar - Chapter 3

A reminder this fanfiction has angst and death themes.

—————————-

The funeral was quiet

Too quiet. Far too quiet for a kingdom mourning their king.

Well; quiet except for one person.

“Motherrrr?” Cheka wondered around before it started, calling out as he looked around tables and chairs, in halls, anywhere he could find. “Mother?”

He had been like this for three days.

Leona’s coronation would be soon, he didn’t have time to wonder about the little brat looking around for his mother. It’s not like she was healed over night.

But I guess it’s a bit harder to explain that to a cub.

“Cheka....” The prince- no, the king called, walking over and scooping him up. “Mother will be back soon. She’s still with the healers.”

The little prince pouted, curling into his uncle weakly. He had lost weight, stopped eating and sleeping. All he did was wail for his father and mother. Not that it mattered; the king was dead.

And so was the assassin. Leona had made sure of that. His abdomen scars burned as he spaced out for a moment, remembering exactly how he was shot at Cheka’s birthday celebration when shielding the boy.

Remembering exactly as his brother had screamed for Leona’s help before he was stabbed and thrown off the hillside where Cheka’s presents lay only a few feet away.

Remembering how Cheka screamed. Like he had just been shot. Screaming for his father and mother.

But it was too late. The queen had been knocked out and the king murdered within a few minutes.

How fragile life truly is frightens the new king; as he contemplates his new life. Devoted queen, new crown, new kingdom....why didn’t it feel like it was enough? As though nothing had been achieved?

Why wasn’t he satisfied. Could he ever be satisfied?

The funeral was slow. Agonizingly slow. Amazingly, the queen was there. In a wheelchair and surrounded by staff but still; there.

Why was Leona so disappointed by this?

Cheka, who had sobbed non stop and even had a fit where he begged his father to get up, then had to be physically lifted off his fathers body after he refused to move. Insisting his father wasn’t gone.

What a stupid child.

Soon the old king was buried and Leona was crowned. The subjects were less than thrilled, as to be expected.

Leona droned on with the scripted mourning of his brother, something he had rehearsed over and over in his head since he was a cub but....why did it feel wrong? Why wasn’t he glad this happened, that he was king?

Why did he miss someone he hated so passionately?

Sanura stayed close by, watching Leona with admiration. Adorable. She was just as stupid as everyone else, Only picked because Leona knew her loyalty was to him and not any other soul. A perfect queen, in his eyes.

Endless loyalty and more than happy to obey his every word. Her sun, moon, sky, and stars.

Why was she so odd? He had no idea. Most women were the complete opposite. Perhaps it was the bond they had shared as children.

Except there was one tiny problem. She was holding Cheka close, still beaming at her new king....and her soon-to-be husband, seeing as they would marry within the hour.

He figured it didn’t matter; today’s events were hardly registering. Like he was sleeping, if the dream was in the perfect blend of Heaven and Hell, both sides screaming at him conflicting wants and ideas.

As Leona went to change into his wedding attire, he was met with the haunted look of Cheka’s eyes.

Why did he have to look so much like falena?