#she spells phonetically and it can be VERY hard to follow.

[wcshedup]

if you opened barbie’s diary you might think it was written in code, but she’s actually just illiterate.

[fancoloredglasses]

Mortal Kombat (My spellchecker is gonna kommit suicide by the end of this), Part 1

(Thanks to Rotten Tomatoes)

[All images are owned by Midway Games NetherRealm Studios and New Line Cinema Warner Bros Discovery. Please don’t sue me or deliver a fatality]

(QUICK NOTE: If the header of this review isn’t enough of a klue, I will be writing this in the style of the game (sorta), which means words that begin with a certain phonetic sound with be spelled...differently. And if you find it hard to read, imagine how hard it was to write!)

In 1992 in arcades across America (and likely other kountries, but I’ve never been to any of them so kan’t konfirm) a game appeared that changed the arcade game dynamic for years to kome. That game, of kourse, was Mortal Kombat.

The plot of the game (such as it was) involved a deadly pit fighting tournament known as Mortal Kombat (naturally) where the heroes of Earth face off against the kombatants of a realm known as Outworld, led by the sorcerer Shang Tsung, the right hand of Outworld’s emperor Shao Kahn (and also presided over the tournament and was the Final Boss, so there wasn’t any konflict of interest or anything)

It wasn’t the graphics, though they were as realistic as 1992 kould make them. It wasn’t the gameplay; it was a fairly standard fighting game in that respect. No, what set the game apart (and sent parents groups nationwide into a frenzy) was how graphic it was.

(Thanks to Kraig...err, Craig Steelyard)

However, the game was popular enough that New Line Cinema made a movie about it three years later that featured all of the karacters from the first game (plus a few from the second in kameos). Now, a movie based on video games was a very new koncept (there were only 2 released before Mortal Kombat) and it wasn’t until 2019 that kritics thought a video game movie was "fresh” (over 60% positive reviews), but just because the kritics panned it (only 45% liked it) doesn’t mean it wasn’t fun. 

So let’s see how they turned one of the most graphically violent video game franchises of the 90s into a PG-13 film. If you would like to watch the film, it’s available with a Max subscription or you can find it behind your favorite paywall.

We open at a temple in China where a monk named Chan Kang is konfronted by…

…Shang Tsung, who makes short work of him and konsumes his soul (yeah, that’s kinda Shang’s Thing) as he screams for his brother…

…Liu Kang, who wakes up in a kold sweat. He receives word that Chan is dead and to return to China (he’s kurrently somewhere in the US)

Meanwhile in Hong Kong…

Lt. Sonya Blade (leader of an unspecified US agency strike team) is preparing an assault on…

…an underground koncert? Anyway, she and her team bash their way through the krowd looking for…

…the krime lord known as Kano, who is in kahoots with Shang Tsung. Shang Tsung has manipulated events such that Sonya will follow Kano onto the boat bound for the Mortal Kombat tournament, with a warning that Sonya must reach the tournament unharmed.

Elsewhere in a nondescript warehouse in Los Angeles…

(Thanks to Fandango)

No sooner does Johnny Cage (how kome his last name starts with a “C”?) leave then “Master Boyd” changes form into…

So Shang Tsung is backhandedly recruiting the kombatants who will oppose him? Why would he do that?

Later at the temple, Lui has kome home to discover that Chan was to participate in Mortal Kombat when Liu left the temple. Suddenly, he decides he will enter Mortal Kombat to avenge Chan. Then the temple gets a visit from…

…Lord Raiden, God of Thunder and Lightning (played by Kristopher…err, Christopher Lambert, who speaks with a French accent despite playing a Chinese god)

[FUN FACT: Lambert is very nearly blind. In fact, he was doing all of his swordplay in the Highlander films when he kould barely see!]

Raiden questions Lui’s kommitment (revenge vs. saving the world), but Lui storms off to katch the boat to the tournament. Raiden doesn’t like this…

[NOTE: in the games Raiden is a playable karacter, but in the movie he’s little more than a koach]

That evening at a seedy pier in Hong Kong, Johnny and Liu arrive but start on the wrong foot (Johnny tries paying Lui to bring his luggage on the boat, so Lui throws Johnny’s luggage into the bay)

Meanwhile Sonya is staking out the pier with her partner Jackson “Jax” Briggs (one of the karacters from the second game) in search of Kano when...

…an ominous-looking junk (I’m not kasting shade on the quality of the kraft. That’s what those types of boats are kalled) enters the bay. Sonya spots Kano boarding and immediately rushes aboard without backup. She immediately runs into Johnny (literally)…

…and they get along swimmingly. I’m starting to think Johnny isn’t exactly a people person.

Sonya goes below deck, where she runs into Shang Tsung. Johnny and Liu kome down for support (for some reason)

Pretty much.

Then we get the appearance of the last two playable karacters from the game…

Sub-Zero

and Scorpion

(Fun Fact for those who have not played the game: later versions of the game had an increasing number of ninja dressed like Sub-Zero and Scorpion. The reason is obvious: a quick kolor change and a kouple of unique special moves and it’s a whole new karacter! They saved a ton on graphics and koding kosts!)

Shang Tsung brags that he has full kontrol over the two, despite their being mortal enemies. Sonya draws her weapon on them, but Sub-Zero…

…yeah (that’s kinda his thing in the game)

Meanwhile, Scorpion…

OK, in the game, Scorpion shoots a barbed line at his opponent from…somewhere (“GET OVER HERE!”) This take on the line is both kooler and WAY kreepier!

Then a ball of lightning appears in the hold and morphs into…

Raiden reminds Shang Tsung that the tournament hasn’t started yet and tells him to bring his attack dogs to heel.

Of course, this is the first time Sonya has heard she’s in a tournament and isn’t too happy about it. Raiden then explains to the three what’s at stake.

After Raiden has info-dumped the importance of Mortal Kombat (and why, out of the dozens of others on the junk, they are the Chosen Ones)…

…we are treated to bad special effects, announcing the arrival to the tournament.

What dangers await the Heroes of EarthRealm? Check out Part 2 and find out!

[kitkatwinchester]

F*CK!

I HATE THAT!!!

I HATE THAT F*CKING MANIPULATIVE SOCIOPATHIC B*TCH!

GROOMING!!!

LITERALLY GROOMING!!!

STOP THAT'S DISGUSTING I HATE YOU GO THE F*CK AWAY!

...anyways.

Prior to that terribleness, I was loving EVERY moment, and I think the show did officially get me on one thing.

I think I ship Sterek now. XD

Like, I was kind of digging it previously, but I wouldn't necessarily have considered myself a Sterek shipper.

That entire sequence with Scott's dad totally changed my mind. XD

Like, maybe I needed de-aged Derek and Stiles interactions to solidify that in my brain.

Which sounds bad, but hear me out.

I understand that Derek isn't actually that much older than Stiles is, so it's not an age difference thing so much as a maturity thing. Like, Derek has just been through SO much, and he started as a somewhat mentor figure to Scott, so I think it was hard for me to see early Stiles and Derek (Seasons 1 and 2) as a thing because I felt like there was too much of a mental disparity between them at the time.

But now Stiles has been through a lot, and Derek has softened more and opened up a lot, and I think I was getting more open to the idea of it in Season 3, so now, to see a de-aged Derek with slightly less trauma and a normal Stiles with slightly more trauma, they feel more like they're on the same level than they ever have, and now I TOTALLY see it.

So...yeah. That's my way over analysis of Sterek, but the point is, now I will happily ship it, because I get what you all mean now in how well their personalities match when they can actually see each other on the same or similar levels lol.

REGARDLESS, however, all of that with Scott's dad was pure gold. The fact that Stiles called Derek his cousin Miguel AGAIN (we love some good Season 1 parallels) and the fact that, despite Stiles trying desperately to get Derek to take the hint, he was refusing and going against Stiles literally just to be a little sh*t, was literally so good.

And the absolute panic in Stiles's face and voice when Rafael started talking in Spanish, followed by the absolute bafflement when Derek responded, and Derek's utter smugness and pride when he bonded with Rafael, much to Stiles's dismay, just SENT me.

And then Stiles made up "Juarez Cinqua Tiago" on the spot and Derek just glared at him, but then he looked at Stiles sooo sassily and pointedly when Rafael asked how you spell that and Stiles responded with "phonetically".

And THEN, because of COURSE he did, Stiles literally pulled the "I didn't lie! I just omitted certain truths." when Derek questioned him because of COURSE he would. Plus, Stiles's "don't move" and then pop back in and genuine surprise at the fact that Derek did not, in fact, move, was just so adorable and I just CAN'T with him.

And I'm sorry, I know it's really bad that Kate has Derek now, and I had my hand over my mouth when she first stepped out into the bedroom, but then I laughed SO hard at the comedic timing with Stiles.

"So if you actually think that Kate's coming to find him--" *sees that Kate has come to find him* "You might be right." *cringes*

Oh Stiles. You will always make everything better. As much as I loved Season 3b, it's nice to have my baby back to his old self. <3

Also as a very quick aside, I know we don't REALLY trust Peter, and I stand by that, but d*mn if he isn't funny as h*ll. And everything about him finally realizing what Scott and Malia were getting at (also, gotta appreciate the fact that he picked up on Malia's lack of knowledge about their relationship and chose not to out it right then and there) was just really great and that was a really cool sequence and I kind of love him despite everything he's put us through and will probably continue to put us through.

ANYWAYS.

Trying to pull Derek away from Kate when he trusts her more than us right now is gonna suck, but if anyone can bring a pack member back, it's the McCall pack!

(Yeah okay you got me. I ship it now. XD <3 <3 <3 )

[iwantitiwriteit]

Slow Burn: Book I - Part 7

The Lunch - Small Thank You’s

Pairing: Chris Evans x Famous!Reader

Summary: You and Chris get to know each other better over a flirty friendly lunch.

Warnings: Fluff, spinkle of Angst, Profanity, phonetic spelling of words said in a Boston accent because I needed a laugh

Notes: Hey loves! Hope you all are well! It’s been a while— praying I didn’t forget how to write too bad and y’all enjoy this installment lol. Little FYI: I’m basing the reader’s music off of that of Banks and SZA. Before you dive in, set the mood with the moodboard + music specially curated to go with this part! Read the previous part here.

The GPS said the drive from the museum to the restaurant would be… well, you were distracted from that bit of information. Not that it would matter. Chris keeps making turns against the suggested route, citing that this was “his city” and that he’s a “real Boston boy��.

What you do know is that the talking and laughing with Chris made the car ride seem all too short. Pointing out familiar streets and landmarks, he lit up telling you his childhood stories laced within the city. Pardon, his city. The glint in his eyes and excitement in his voice sent tiny sparks up your spine, but you did your best to ignore it.

Chris tried to guess where you had the two of you going for lunch. You, however, wouldn’t give in to his guesses. Eventually, you arrive at a market of sorts, a culture clash of small businesses and patrons. It’s in an area Chris is familiar with, but he never thought much of coming to.

“I thought we were going to a restaurant?” Chris inquires, not seeing a food establishment from his spot in the driver’s seat.

You puff out your jaw, squint your eyes, and proceed with your best ‘Godfather’-like impersonation as you tell Chris,“I thought you would’ve learned to stop asking me questions by now, hm.”

“That... was horrible.” Chris’ deadpan causes you to giggle in response.

“I know! Now c’mon; I’m starved!” You draw out as you reach to let yourself out of the car.

“Woah, woah, hold on,” Chris stops you with a gentle hand on your arm. You questioningly look over your shoulder at him. He unbuckles his seatbelt and gets out of the car. Settling back into your seat with a huff of delighted shock, you realize what he’s doing.

Chris jogs to your door, the returning drizzle giving him a sense of urgency. He opens the door for you then offers his upturned, open hand for you to choose to take. You hesitate for a millisecond before obliging, delicately placing your smaller hand in his large palm.

You’re unsure of the last time anyone was this... chivalrous to you. Trying not to dwell on it too long, you give him a soft-spoken ‘thank you’. Chris responds with an equally soft ‘of course’. You both find it difficult to meet each other's eyes, missing the shy smile the other is sporting.

“Lead the way,” Chris gently prompts with a hand extended in the market's direction.

Mildly busy, the market is livened by business people, college students, housewives and househusbands alike. Store fronts of small businesses ranging from sustainable fashion to high-end housewares line the long cobble stone path, accented by fairy lights for added whimsy. Chris curiously takes in the sights from beneath a low baseball cap and hoodie. He’s sure to not let his eyes linger too long for fear of locking with anyone.

Meanwhile, you’re walking with purpose, leaving a distracted Chris behind. He catches up when he notices you turn a corner in his periphery. When he follows the path you took, he finds you by a green, white, and red beaded archway.

You pause and look up at Chris, a playful grin on your lips that makes his heart skip a beat. He’s looking down at you, brows raised with utter anticipation. You think this might be your favorite expression on him. You pull back and step through the beaded entrance, Chris following suit closely behind you.

“Woah…” It was almost as if that small act of stepping over the threshold transported you both to Sicily. The faint notes of Italian standards play in the background as Chris gawks at the charming restaurant.

The mostly occupied dining area is quaint, housing about 10 tables max, including a couple of booths. The walls are decorated with floor-to-ceiling built-in shelves of libations from Italy. The alcohol display is interrupted by creeping vert vines that add that little bit of spice to the space.

As a waiter walked by, Chris breathed in deeply, the warm aroma of marinara sauce, freshly baked bread and Italian spices filled his nose and lungs.

“How’d you manage to find the one Italian restaurant in the greater Boston area I’ve never been to, much less heard of?”

“Hmmm… must not be as much of a Boston boy as you think,” you say with a wink, and Chris scoffs through his lopsided smirk.

“There she is!” a bellowing voice familiar to you draws yours and Chris’ attention away from each other. Chris looks on as the short, husky man pulls you in for a cheek-to-cheek kiss. “It’s been too long! Mi sei mancata la faccia!”

“Charlie, you know I have no idea what you’re saying, but I like the way you say it!” You share a laugh with your Uber driver-turned-friend. “And what do you mean ‘it’s been too long’! I was just here last week.”

“5 days ago to be exact. 5 days since you, ya castmates… most importantly ya directah,” Charlie stresses lustfully in his strong Boston accent, “have swarmed Ma’s restaurant. Whassup with that, huh?”

“The real question here is what’s up with your crush on Sonya, huh?” you tease him. Charlie’s smitteness with your director has not gone unnoticed.You can practically see the hearts forming in his eyes at this moment.

“I doan know what ya tawkin about.”

“Uh-huh, sure.”

“Enough abowut it! Let’s get ya seated and you can tell me who’s ya new friend,” Charlie says, motioning to Chris.

When you’re seated in a corner booth by a rainy window, you introduce the two men.“ This is Chris, my, uh…um…” You hadn’t really thought about what to call your relationship with Chris. It’s been… rocky up until this point, and while you’ve been friendly, you’re certainly not friends. Not yet, at least.

Chris notices and understands your hesitance, a small part of him hoping it’s because you don’t want to friend-zone him. “It’s alright, don’t worry your pretty, little head about it,” he teases you, earning him an eye roll. “We’re… acquaintances, right?”

“Right! Acquaintances… I guess?” It didn’t feel right, a little too impersonal, but you’ll roll with it for now.

“‘Acquaintances’?” Charlie sizes Chris up, a comical sight considering the dramatically different statues of the two men. He tilts his head and squints at Chris’ face, his expression melting from intimidation to inquisition. Chris tenses, knowing the look he’s being given all to well. “Been here before, Chris? You look mighty familiah…”

“Umm… no... I don’t… don’t believe so,” Chris answers almost timidly. The avoidant gaze into the plastic covered menu, the heated cheeks that shone the same color as a tomato— you know that look all too well. You decide to do what you hoped someone would do for you.

“He’s just got one of those faces! But um, I’m ready to order if you are?” you try to deflect. Charlie doesn’t think much of it and takes down your meal decisions, but that small act means the world to Chris. He mouths ‘thank you’ from across the booth, and you smile and tip your head in a slight nod, sure he would’ve done the same for you.

You order your usual, spaghetti with vegan meatballs, and a glass of the house white wine. Chris has what you’re having except he’s ordered a “tonic”, which you learned the hard way the other night is Bostonian for soda. Charlie is back promptly with your drinks and breadsticks and ensures that your food will arrive shortly with a small smirk on his face that you don’t think too much of.

It’s quiet at your table for quite some time. Both you and Chris take small sips from your glasses, nibble at the garlic-y bread, look out the window and around the restaurant. As you do so, you run through a list of conversation starters in your head but you’ve deemed them all too dumb, too boring or too invasive. Why the hell do I care so much? You glance up at Chris and wonder if he’s going through the same irrational inner turmoil you are. Maybe he’s not, or maybe he’s overcome his when he finally breaks the silence.

“So, um… how long have you been a vegan?”

“Um… how long have we been shooting this movie? My character— she’s very, uh… power to the people— and plants,” You chuckle out. “Figured it wouldn’t hurt to give it a try myself. Go a little method,” you say with a shrug.

Chris waves his breadstick at you as he asks, “You believe in all that method stuff?”

“I don’t know… I’m really new to this whole acting thing, but I guess I just like the idea of really connecting with this character in every way I can. She reminds me so much of myself at that age.”

“How so?” Chris presses on.

“She’s… sure. She’s sure of herself… of her judgements and decisions. She’s sure of her hand in her own success. And that breeds this really un-fuck-with-able confidence in her that if I had an ounce of, it’d be over for you hoes,” you end with a slow nod and look off into the distance.

Chris laughs at your dramatics, but it dawns on him what you’ve shared. “Wait… you’re telling me that’s not you now? I mean, I know I’ve only known you a short time, but you seem pretty un-fuck-with-ably confident to me.”

“Ha! Guess I’m a better actress than I thought,” you mutter. Chris knows it’s meant to be a joke, but watching as you fiddled with the rings on your finger, his chest tightened. A look of sympathy must’ve shown on his face, because you start to wish you hadn’t said anything at all. Did I just overshare? God, I thought I outgrew that.

To save you from your minor embarrassment is Charlie with the same smirk from earlier. He gently places the order in the center of your table, and you finally understand what his face was trying to give away earlier.

“We’re, uh… runnin’ low on plates...” is Charlie’s half-baked explanation. “Buon appetito!” he offers before hastily leaving.

Sat between you and Chris was the meal you ordered, yes, but on the single largest plate you think you’ve ever seen. One plate of spaghetti for two people— two practical strangers— to share. The embarrassment just won’t stop, will it?

Elbow perched on the table, your hand acts as a visor of sorts on your forehead as you massage away the headache forming at your temple. You can’t see Chris, just hear him chuckling and breathing out an “oh man…” under his breath. His fork comes into view as he twirls the pasta onto it. You peek under your hand up at him.

“What? Not gonna just look at it!” Chris insists. “Now, let’s see what this vegan meatball is about… DAMN! That tastes legit!” You giggled at his enthusiasm and felt your tension melt away.

You began to dig in as well. It was fine, normal even, for a few moments. You could almost forget you’re sharing one big ass plate of pasta with one of Hollywood’s most sought after stars at a hole-in-the-wall Italian restaurant. Yep, very normal. As long as I keep from oversharing the rest of this afternoon, everything should be fine… you thought to yourself.

“Tell me… how are you liking Boston?” Chris asks.

“It’s fine.”

“‘Fine’?! Just fine.”

“It’s great Chris, no need to get your panties in a twist. But, ya know… It’s just not…”

“Home? Yeah, I get that. Where’s home for you?”

“Um… well I guess home has never been a single place for me. It’s with people I love, as cheesy as that sounds. Home is where my heart is…” you trail off as you remember you shouldn’t share too much.

“And your heart is with family, friends… a boyfriend…?” Chris slips in.

“What is this? 20 questions?” You quip as you sip on your white wine.

“Maybe... if you want. You can ask me something.”

“Hmm… Ok…” You ponder over what to ask him as you twirl your pasta around your fork. “What is… mm no. How about… nah, wait.” Chris huffs impatiently as he awaits your first question. “Ok! I got it!”

“Alright, lay it on me.” Your breath hitches at his word choice and you hope doesn’t notice. Why’d he have to say it like that?! You clear your throat and ask your question.

“What’s your favorite song of mine?”

“Really? That’s your question? So conceited…”

You giggle before explaining, “Well, I only ask ‘cos a little Scottie told me he saw you, and I quote, ‘full on rocking out’ to one of my songs. I’m just curious which one it was.” You sip on your straw and peer up at Chris, watching for his reaction.

Chris groans, covering his face while sinking down the booth seat. You can’t hear too much of what he's saying behind his hands and over your laughter, but it sounds like he’s cursing Scott’s name. When he finally restores some gumption, he places his hands on his napkin, eyes fixated on his fingertips picking at the dampened corners. Teeth sunk into your bottom lip, you try your best to bite back your amusement to not further Chris’s obvious embarrassment.

“Ok…” Chris sighs out, “ I’ll admit it! I’m man enough to own up to it,” he shrugs. “Yes, I was ‘full on rocking out’ to your music. You’re amazing at what you do.”

Your face heats up, not expecting the compliment. You don’t know what to say. It’s not like you’ve never heard it before. In fact you’ve heard it a lot the past couple of years, you’d thought you’d become numb to it. Yet, for some reason, sitting across from Chris, his eyes looking tenderly into yours, the compliment you’ve heard a million times before just… hits different. “Thank you.”

“Of course.”

You clear your throat and break eye contact with Chris. “You still haven’t answered my question, though...”

“Right! Hold on…” Chris says as he fishes his phone from his front pocket. He scrolls through his music app to find the playlist he’s made of his favorite songs of yours. Your cheeks burn even more intensely as you watch. “‘Gemini Feed’ is my favorite to dance to; hands down! But I also really love ‘Drew Barrymore’; it’s fun… but sad, ya know? What am I saying; of course you know; it’s your song!”

You giggle in somewhat disbelief of watching Chris motherfucking Evans geek out over your songs!

“Well… this is a rare opportunity I have, to talk to the artist herself, that is. So, I have to ask, how did that song come about? From personal experience, I suppose?”

“Yeah… um, gosh. You want the full or abridged version of the story?”

“Full! Are you kidding me?!”

“Ok, ok! Well, it was right before my album was set to come out, and my boyfriend-at-the-time dumped me,” you laugh lightly at the now-funny memory. “After weeks of heated arguments and projecting his career insecurities on to me, he picked his final fight with me about how I was “acting too famous for him” and just ended things.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah... It completely caught me off guard. I couldn’t think straight in the studio that day, so I ended the session earlier and went to a party, per my best friend-slash-manager’s coercion. She’s a bad influence.”

“I like her style! Did the party help?” Chris asked.

“Well, it was on the higher-end of house parties, and I just wasn’t used to being around such an expensive lifestyle yet. But guess who was there because why wouldn’t he be?,” you exhale and roll your eyes as you reminisce.

Chris leaned in with intrigue. “The Ex?”

“Mm-hm. In my standard walk-in-the-party-scan of the room, I spot him. I should've known because that party was very much his scene, but what I wouldn't have guessed is that he'd be there with some other woman.”

“What?!”

You nod your head as you proceed to spill the tea to Chris. “This dude is there with another woman, after being out of a relationship for all of 8 hours. I think the worst part is that she looked nothing like me. Like, imagine the complete opposite of me to the hottest power, that was who was hanging all over that idiot.”

“He is a total idiot for letting you go.” You don’t know what to say to Chris’ statement and quite honestly forgot where you were, what you were talking about… “What happened next?”

“Right! We locked eyes for a moment and there wasn’t anything from him. No emotion at all. Like, he didn’t care that our relationship just ended. But then I had the thought that maybe we’d been over for a while and I had just been too distracted to realize and accept the party was over.”

“Jimi peeped what was up and got me out of there. I hoped that we could go home so that I could cry on her shoulder all night. Instead, she dragged me to a real house party. I so badly wanted to pity myself, but the energy there was too infectious to not enjoy; it felt like a 90s movie!”

“The next day, I went through my crazy ass camera roll, and I couldn’t help but... smile… and laugh! Then I thought about him, and how stupid he made me feel, and I don’t know… I kinda put all these weird, conflicting emotions into this one song, and felt better afterwards. Like I was turning a page.”

Chris didn’t immediately say anything, taking in the very personal story you shared. The somewhat unfortunate event that fueled his favorite lyrics. He looked at you carefully and quietly. However kind he looked in this moment, it didn't matter much to the creeping thoughts in your mind.

The silence made you self-conscious. You took inventory of your physical, how your face was hot, how your chest felt tight. Your left hand had somehow migrated into Chris’ right hand in the middle of the table. “I, uh— my bad…” you start as you take back your hand.

Chris quickly grabs your hand before it gets too far. “Thank you for sharing that story with me... and your music with the world. Your confidence in your vulnerability is really fucking inspiring. Thank you. Seriously, thank you,” he gives your hand a gentle squeeze for emphasis. He’s looking at you with a boyish smile and tilted head that makes you break down and smile at him, too.

“Thank you,” you return, just barely above a whisper.

——————————————————————————

You and Chris spent the rest of your time at L'amore Della Madre exchanging stories of love lost and life wins, sharing loud laughs and silent signs of admiration. To anyone on the outside looking in, it may have seemed like two had known each other longer than you actually have.

“I gotta say, I don’t like this,” Charlie whispers to you. He pulled you aside for a moment to say your goodbyes, while Chris waited for you outside. “Mostly becahse it was supposed to be my jahb to set you up with a nice Italian boy, but you’ve brought your own,” he says with a smirk.

“Oh, no! It’s not like that! Chris and I aren’t— wait… how’d you know he’s part Italian?“

“I have my sources… which may be the wait staff who are big fans of the guy. Here this is from them,” Charlie hands you a to-go box.”It’s tiramisu… for two,” he winks.

“Oh my god! I told you, we--”

“Will thank me at your wedding!” Charlie says as he waves you out of the door to the sidewalk where Chris is waiting.

“Wedding? Who’s getting married?” Chris asks.

You let out a sigh and shake your head. “Nobody. Want dessert?”

You and Chris small talk and walk and eat tiramisu on your way to the car. It was nice. It was normal. It felt… real. You didn’t realize how much you needed and missed small, yet meaningful moments like this until right now.

The pair of you stop in front of a pet shop window and watch the puppies play together for a moment. You pointed out a pair of snuggled up puppies to Chris. “Hey, they kinda look like us!”

Chris chuckles when he looks, “They do!” A chocolate brown puppy and a tannish-white one lie peacefully in one another’s presence without a care for the world on the other side of the glass. The tannish-white one starts to lick and nudge at the chocolate brown one, eliciting what you made out to be a sleepy smile from the brown pup. You don’t know why, but witnessing such intimacy causes you and Chris to straighten, fidgeting and giggling nervously.

“I had fun today.”

“As did I. You’re better company than I thought you’d be,” you joke.

“Uh… thanks?” He answers reluctantly, causing you to giggle. “Maybe we could… hang out again sometime…?”

“Maybe we could.”

“Cool.”

“Cool.” There’s a beat of silence as you and Chris hold each other’s gaze. “So… you wanna take my number down?” you prompt him.

“Right! Right. Yeah, I should probably do that…” Chris stammers as he pulls out his phone. You take it from him, replacing it with your phone. You put in your number along with taking a silly picture for your contact, and he does the same.

Chris laughs at your shared child-like humor, and you revel in the moment. It was nice. It was normal. It was the first time you’d felt unmistakably connected with someone without feeling anxious of their motives or what the world thought of it in a very long time.

Time moved slowly when you were with Chris, it seemed to good to real life. But just like that, a flash snaps you and Chris out of your daze and back to reality.

You both look in the direction of the camera flash to find a young woman trying to pretend she didn’t just take a picture of the two of you. Chris turns back to you but doesn’t meet your eyes. Instead his head is hung low as he says “I really… hate that shit.”

“Preaching to the choir.” Chris looks up to your face, your gaze steady in the general direction of the perpetrator. “Makes me feel like an animal in a cage.” You say.

This is why Chris doesn’t mind celebrity companionship. You get it. You understand this strange aspect of his life that not many other people truly do. You also get the value of normalcy and privacy… and leaving when the party’s over.

“Let’s get out of here.” You say coldly and walk in the direction of the car.

Chris was baffled, to say the least. This was usually the part where you talk about how “fans” will cross invisible boundaries just because they know your face and name. However, you seemed uninterested in trauma bonding.

You were already buckled in when Chris caught up to you in the car. The energy the entire drive to your sister’s brownstone was… off. Nothing like it was earlier in the day. A simple flash changed your mood, and Chris was aching for it to go back to before. But no joke, or crank of the radio volume seemed to work.

When Chris pulls up to the curb, you immediately hop out, mumbling a final thank you to him.

“Hey,” Chris grabs your wrist gently, halting you, “You get kinda used to it. Ya know... after a while,” he says hoping you’d find comfort in his words.

You look down at where his hand was wrapped around your wrist. “Yeah… that’s what I'm afraid of... but thanks anyway.” Taking back your wrist from Chris, you turn to walk to the front door.

Chris is calling after you. He doesn't want to be emotionally intrusive, but he hopes you'll give him a chance to understand you. Help you. Comfort you. If only she'd turn around. You can't bear to look back at Chris. It will only remind you of everything good today, and why you can't have it.

Part 8 coming soon! What’d you think?

[a-fanatic-fangirl-requests]

About the Fangirl~ (200 Follower Celebration)

Since I got asked more about myself for the 200 follower celebration, here are some questions and answers about my life!

How long have you been writing and what inspired you to start?

Hmm, I'd say it was in 8th grade when I got my first phone. I typed up a really bad Sasuke fanfiction. I had first gotten into anime/manga in 5th grade, and had been reading it regularly since then, so the stories and characters have inspired me I'd say. Plus, when I discovered that people actually wrote stories about characters and published online, that's definitely where I got the inspiration too.

And as a side note, part of my degree is an English major with a writing emphasis, specifically in creative writing. Mainly because I can write what I want and other people can't disagree with it like they could with research or essays lol

Who are your favourite writers?

Hmm, that's a hard one. But I'm going to list the ones that don't have anything to do with anime/manga.

Pat Barker is a great British writer that was introduced to me in a class. Her books write from the perspective of those in history that haven't had a voice. Right now, I'm reading her book "The Silence of the Girls" that depicts the lives of the captured women of Troy by Agamemnon’s army in the Trojan War (from a fictional standpoint)

Rumi is more of a poet, but still a writer. He has many many works that even if you don’t like poetry, there will be one that speaks to you.

There are so many more, but, let’s go with that~

Who are your favourite anime characters and which anime is your favourite?

Why is this cursed question something I have to answer >.< lol I'll start off by saying I'm not a huge fan of girls/women in anime because they feel so forced it's painful. So if there is a girl I like, its because she has had good character development or she doesn't roll over at the whims of those around her.

I love Makoto Tachibana from Free! Iwatobi Swim Club. I'm so soft for him its unreal. I may have bought a 1/8 figure of him and hope I can get another one soon >.>

And, of course, Sesshomaru, Sasuke, and Sebastian are my top three probably.They all start with ‘s’ now that I notice that....

+Anima is such an underrated manga, I wish it would have been popular enough to have been made into an anime.

Yotsuba&! is another great one! If I feel sad, I read that one and I just cheer right on up~

I’ll add more as I think of them!

What do you do on your free time apart from writing?

I play video games and I stream them from time to time. Lately, I've been obsessed with Animal Crossing: New Horizons like the rest of the internet. But I'd say I prefer the more anime style games like Rune Factory and Persona.

I’ve also gotten into crocheting recently. Still very very basic stuff, but it’s quite calming~

What would be your number 1 destination holiday?

Japan. C'mon, let's be real here~ I'm a big history buff too, like, I will cry in a museum that has something super old because I just love it so much or crying at history being destroyed. So specifically, I'd probably want to go to Kyoto.

What kind of music do you like?

I prefer electronic type music, specifically Chill. Otherwise early 2000s pop music and the Black Panther OST (so specific, I know lol)

Do you dance, draw or design?

I danced from 3rd grade to 7th grade, and did tap, cecchetti, jazz, broadway, and hip hop. Tap was my favorite though :3 I can draw, but I can't draw well. I drew a really good horse head one time. Never drew well again afterwards it seems~ I enjoy designing, especially in games like Stardew Valley or The Sims to name a few. My hyperfocus comes in handy for those types of things. I enjoy video production and editing too. I just wish my current job gave me more freedom in that department, especially without a deadline.

What type of genre do you prefer writing/reading?

I like writing fluff, because I'm a hopeless romantic, and I enjoy writing angst (if you couldn't tell) because I apparently like to have emotional pain for my characters? But I enjoy reading angst and, ahem, *fun* stuff too >///>

That doesn't mean I don't enjoy writing any other genre, I just sometimes have to be in the right headspace for it.

Do you have any pets?

I do! My cat just turned 16 last week, I've had him since 1st grade. His name is Coco Fluff (I was in first grade, shut up) but I call him something that is hard to spell phonetically because it's not really a name? I call him Foos Boos. That's the best I can do with that name....

Are you an early birdie or a night owl?

Definitely a night owl. One of my jobs has me be to work at around 4am some days and I just want to bang my head on the wall. Its far easier for me to stay up late than get up early.

What gives you inspiration?

Mmm, probably my own messed up life, the experiences from others, and situations in stories I read. I kinda pull ideas and inspiration from many mediums that helps me write.

But what gets me motivated is a great story idea, or knowing that people are reading and liking my stuff tbh. It's relieving to hear what someone thinks about my writing, especially since I don't feel like its good sometimes. But I try my best!

That's all the questions for now 🤗 I'll let you know if more pop up!

Bonus: here is my old man of a cat

[carissa--taylor]

First Readers

Now that we're doing distance learning due to coronavirus, one of the things my kiddo has been missing during "school at home" is reading the daily home readers our school provided. We've found a few great first readers online but I wanted more early readers that were decodable and fit the specific sounds and reading level he's doing in his phonics program. We started playing around with silly sentences on our fridge and we had so much fun, I eventually turned a few of them into digital books. I wanted to share them with all of you, as I know a lot of us are in the same "school from home" boat. If your child is learning to read in Kindy / Prep or Year One, these ebook readers are for you! (P.S. - that's Kindergarten and First Grade for all my U.S. folks!) Enjoy <3 Kindergarten Books Our school uses the Get Reading Right systematic synthetic phonics program, so I've designed most of these decodable readers to fit that phonics sequence. They are all .pdf files, but if you'd like a kindle or .epub file, drop me a message and I can probably make you one! Short Vowels:  A  O     If your child just started kindy, they are likely in the early stages of their phonics reading program. At our school, that's Get Reading Right's Basic Code . The first unit focuses on the letter sounds made by the consonants S  M  C  T  G  P and the short vowel sounds  A   O  and the camera words  I,  the,  was,  to,  are,  she,  the.  If they are working on those words and sounds, these first decodable books are written for them to read on their own! Sam and Pom-Pom I have such fond memories of the first books I read by myself, with just a few letters and sight words. It felt like such an accomplishment. Hope your kiddos like this reader!

Short Vowels:   A   I I have one book that follows the Jolly Phonics Programme sequence of letter sounds, as I know a lot of you are using that phonics progression, and it's what I started my oldest on in preschool. For this one, your child would need to be able to read the consonants S  T  P  N and the short vowel sounds  A   I, and be learning the early tricky words  the,  was,  she.  Anna the Ant This book about a little ant dreaming of her name up in lights restricts itself to a very few letter sounds, so it's suitable for new readers just beginning to learn phonics.

I realize that the name "Anna" uses a schwa sound. Though common, I know schwas can be confusing for new readers, so I might change the name later. Let me know if you have ideas! Year One Books My child's school uses the Get Reading Right synthetic phonics program, so I wrote these books to fit with that sequence of teaching letter sounds. By the beginning of Year One, students will have already learned all the hard consonants and all the short vowel sounds, as well as a fair amount of camera words (that's "sight words" for all of you in the US!). In Year One, they focus on learning the different spellings of the long vowel sounds, starting with the long E sound. Get Reading Right has their phonics sequence and camera word lists for their Advanced Code (Year One) in the free resources section of their website, so check it out if you're curious where your child is at. These books are all landscape-oriented .pdf files for your computer, tablet, or smartphone, but if you'd like a kindle or .epub file, email me and I can probably make you one! Long E Sound Family EE    EA    -Y    _E    (also:  -E_E    IE    -EY) If your child is at the beginning of year one, they'll likely be learning the first phase of the Get Reading Right Advanced Code at school. That means a focus on the long E letter sound family. All the early readers below focus on the various spellings of the long E sound. Deep Beneath I wrote this first reader in the early days of our social distancing due to COVID-19. Our beaches here in Australia had just closed. When I sat down to write my little guy a couple ee / ea sentences about an imaginary seapony, I ended up with a story about working through the grief of our newly quarantined world, and about finding joy closer to home.

Grubby the Dung Beetle This early reader was a special pet project between my son and I. The book is, in a way, my coming-to-terms with the fact that yes, my kid is obsessed with poo ... and you know what? Let's run with it, shall we? ... and maybe learn a little about North American animals and nutrient cycles on the way? ;o) Due to the subject matter of the book, YMMV. Reader beware: poo puns and dung jokes abound within these pages. I also introduce the grapheme OO, which is technically out of sequence in the Get Reading Right program. But hey, if your kid is like mine, "poo" was one of the first words they learned to read and write ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Queen's Feast This reader focues on the EE sound family but also is designed to incorporate many of the camera words from Units 1-5 of the Advanced Code of the Get Reading Right program.

I had so much fun writing and illustrating these. I hope you and your kids enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed making them <3 Additional Resources: (Online books, printables, online learning, and phonics resources. Some are free resources, others are not) Teachers Pay Teachers || SPELD SA Phonic Books  (these are free online books!) || Mommy Shorts: Quarantine Learning Resources || Reading A-Z: Decodable Books and Phonics Lessons ||   Spelfabet: Decodable Books list || Sound City Reading Phonetic Stories for Beginning Readers - free pdfs || Free Reading: Decodable Passages || Progressive Phonics - Beginner Phonics Books  (these free readers are for reading together)||  Starfall Academy Free Language Resources : Learn to Read|| CKLA - Common Core First Grade Decodable Readers and Tricky Spellings (free but you'll need to sign up) || Phonics Hero COVID -19 Learning || Miss Kindergarten Free At Home Learning Resources for Reading || Money Saving Mom : Free Quarantine School Resources || Learning to Read  || The Measured Mom Free Kindergarten Printables and Free Printable Phonics Books || This Reading Mama: Free Printables and Learning Activities for Homeschooling  - and Free Phonics Activities  and Phonics Books || A Teachable Teacher Free Phonics Bundles || Homeschooling Down Under : Learning to Read Books ||

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[magic-and-moonlit-wings]

Chapter 44: Scrapbooking

Bold italics are trollish.

This story is NOT back on its old weekly update schedule! Chapter 43 was a week late, and I happened to finish this chapter 'on time' and decided to update to match the alternate-Fridays that I wrote on my calendar. The next chapter will be two weeks from now unless it's late again instead.

Becoming The Mask

+=+

Bagdwella had offered the two human girls a seat on the box spring mattress that she had not yet disassembled to get at its bed coils, but Mary and Darci had turned her down. Instead they were sitting back-to-back on the short wooden bench that Bagdwella stood on to reach high shelves. Apparently there were tiny insects that sometimes lived in old mattresses and the humans didn't want to risk the parasites crawling into their clothes.

Each girl was writing something. Sometimes Mary referred to her phone before making notes. Darci would pause and tap her chin with her pen before returning to her papers.

"How do you spell 'divorce'?" Mary asked. They had a dictionary with them, but Darci was using it.

Bagdwella spelled it out, carefully enunciating the runes for the girl to copy down. Mary chirped a quick "Thank you!" and ducked back down over her notebook.

The humans had come earlier that night, asking if they could work on whatever they were doing in Bagdwella's backroom. She suspected it was some kind of assignment from Blinky. Or perhaps a surprise for him, since they weren't working on it in the library.

The silly man had such a dry, academic way of teaching language. Bagdwella simply had to take it upon herself to step in and teach these whelps how to converse like proper trolls. Blinky was a better choice for writing lessons, though, being one of the few people she knew who read for enjoyment.

Oh, she could appreciate good record-keeping, and in a more abstract way she understood the value of collecting knowledge, but stories just felt stilted to her when they were written down instead of spoken.

Why Mary needed that particular word, Bagdwella couldn't fathom – had the human mistranslated something? Should she have asked her what she thought it meant in English?

"What is it you two are up to?" the shopkeeper finally asked.

"Translating stories about our families," said Mary. "This one is about how my parents got divorced and my mother got married again. She was smart, the second time. She insisted they get … premarital counselling. If Mom and Dad had bothered with that, they might have realized they shouldn't get married before they did."

"But then you might not exist," pointed out Darci.

"I'm not saying there wasn't a silver lining."

Bagdwella didn't know what lining something with silver had to do with anything. It didn't have a very appealing flavour, and the shades it developed when tarnished were pretty but not enough to make up for the metal's relative softness, so trolls didn't use it much in food, tools, or decor. It was probably a human saying. She was pretty sure they considered most metals valuable.

"What is premarital counselling?" she asked instead.

"Uh … counselling, before marriage?" Mary explained haltingly. "When people, who want to get married, talk, to … sometimes a leader, an Elder, like Vendel. Sometimes a … therapist … like a medic, but for thoughts and feelings. A person whose job it is, to make sure people who want to get married talk about … the things people should talk about before marriage. Things people who don't talk will fight about because they don't agree but did not know."

Bagdwella nodded thoughtfully. "Your parents did not do this, but your mother and her next spouse did?"

"Yes, exactly."

"That is …" Darci frowned in a way Bagdwella was learning to recognize, the furrow-browed looking-up expression of a human who knew what they wanted to say but didn't know the word for it. "That's kind of heavy, don't you think?" Darci said in English instead. "I write – written – am writing, about my older brother teaching me to drive."

"I need to explain why the divorce. My parents both are good people who learn from their mistakes. They did not divorce because one did something bad."

+=+

Claire knocked once on the nursery door, a hard thump, before entering.

"I need you to check my trollish." She shoved a three-ring binder at the Changeling.

"Uh?" said Enrique, not dropping his human face.

"For the love of," Claire muttered, not specifying what she was invoking the love of. "Fine. You know what, fine. Please check my trollish."

Enrique shapeshifted obligingly and took the binder. "Was that so hard?" he teased. He made a show of examining the angular squiggles, turning the first few pages with a solemn expression, and then handed the book back to her. "Looks troll-y to me."

She rolled her eyes and pushed it towards him again. "I meant see if my grammar's okay and I spelled everything right."

"I'm not much for spelling. And yeh'd have to read it out for the grammar bit."

"… What, you can't read?"

"I'm picking up English and Spanish okay," he said defensively, gesturing to the shelf of storybooks.

"Jim can read trollish."

"Yeah, well, Jim is a madman who thought it was worth the risk, annoying Gunmar's advisor like that. Plus he's had Strickler and the other Mister Six Eyes to keep the lessons up since he left."

"Left? Left where? The Darklands," she answered her own question. "But, wait, I still don't get it. If you guys are supposed to be spies, why didn't anyone teach you to read and write?"

"If we're s'posed to be spying on fleshbags, what'd we need to read in troll for?"

"Ciphers?" she suggested immediately. "I mean, it's still a language so it's still got patterns, but it would take longer for a human to decrypt one if it's not based on a human language."

"… Some of the higher-ups know it. Could be why the rest of us don't." Make it a status thing. Control access to information.

Or maybe Claire was just smarter about spy stuff than Gunmar was.

+=+

"So, we've been thinking about what you said," said Darci to Blinky. "And you're right. We went too fast, suggesting to Vendel that he should let us tell our families about trolls."

"And yet somehow I find myself suspecting that you are not telling me this as a precursor to setting that goal aside."

"We're asking him, all of you really, to trust complete strangers just because we vouch for them. And that wasn't fair. And there's not exactly a way for a troll to get to know a human without secrets coming out."

"Or is there?" said Mary dramatically.

Claire handed Blinky the binder he'd noticed she was holding behind her back. "We've collected some pictures of our families, for putting faces to names, and we're writing down stories about them – you know, anecdotes. Memories. Stuff they've done and that shows what kind of people they are. We're going to get Toby in on it, too. Maybe Jim, if he's got anything that can calm Vendel down about Dr Lake knowing already."

"And once Vendel knows everyone by proxy," continued Mary, "he should be more okay with actually meeting them."

Blinky took the binder cautiously. It wasn't heavy, and the stiff covers closed triangularly around the pages. Perhaps twenty pages, he estimated, which was quite respectable considering these three could only have been working on it for a few days.

It was divided, inside, with tabs to skip directly to any of the families described therein. The first section was Darci's family.

Several pages of photos grinned toothily out at him, captioned with names written in both the humans' Roman alphabet and phonetic trollish transliteration, and sub-captioned with each human's relationship to Darci. Mother, father, older brother; three living grandparents, plus one in a group picture who was noted to be deceased; and a maternal aunt and uncle and two cousins, with a note clarifying that Darci did not expect Vendel to agree to meet her entire family, only that knowing who these four humans were would help the stories make sense.

Blinky restricted himself to skimming only the title of each anecdote, though it was tempting to thoroughly read the one about the driving lesson right away, and move on to the section about Mary's family.

This section followed the same format. Blinky was impressed and proud that they'd managed to write almost the entire thing in trollish. He turned to the section on Claire's family and, three pages in, froze up.

The photo had to be of the Changeling that the humans had taken to calling Not Enrique – yes, that was how the caption identified him – lit by the blueish glow of the crystal staircase. The picture was lower quality than the others, as though the camera weren't as good, or as if it were a close-up of a larger picture.

Blinky already knew the Changeling had gotten into Trollmarket. They hadn't exchanged words yet, but he'd met the boy. And from his interactions with Jim, Blinky had really thought he was at peace with the idea that Changelings could be allies; friends; (perhaps family).

He should not be reacting to this image with the degree of shock and horror that he felt – this sense of no – this sense of wrong.

"I … do not think admitting to Vendel that one of your family members is known to be a Changeling will reassure him that it is safe to trust the rest of your relations."

"But he should take it better if we come clean than if he finds out later, right?" said Claire. "I don't think any of us can pull off acting like he got swapped after we tell our parents what's going on. And Jim said Vendel knows he's a Changeling."

"I honestly can't say what Vendel's reaction will be. But I can say," closing the book firmly, "that this was a highly dangerous picture to bring to Trollmarket." Hard evidence of Changelings amongst them …

Well, very strong circumstantial evidence. One slightly out-of-focus picture of a young troll with a handwritten caption claiming the youngling was a Changeling was hardly a compelling case.

It could still be enough to have Claire imprisoned on suspicion of conspiring with Changelings, since she had brought 'her little brother' to Trollmarket while knowing what he was. And from there, the Trollhunter's identity could be exposed, and even Vendel's protection – Vendel's collusion with the conspiracy to allow a Changeling Trollhunter to live and to operate freely – would likely not be enough to save Jim's life; and probably the best Blinky could hope for himself would be banishment.

"Okay," said Darci, jolting him out of his thoughts. "So what if we took the stuff about Not Enrique out for now, and told Vendel later? Do you think learning more about our families would help convince him?"

"… Possibly," Blinky conceded.

+=+

Previous Chapter (Various characters try to comfort Toby in the aftermath of a nightmare)

Table of Contents

Next Chapter (Barbara finds out Draal has been living in her basement)

You would not believe how long an internal debate I had about whether Enrique would say 'spy stuff' or 'espionage strategy' in his own head. 

On the one hand, inside his head he's got no one to perform for except himself, and so he doesn't need to dumb himself down to remain underestimated. 

On the other hand, speech patterns can affect thought patterns and it sounds weird phrasing it like that when the scene is supposed to be in his voice.

[whitecoatdiaries]

The Notebook

We’re seeing a patient on endocrine consults who can’t regulate his sodium following brain surgery. I’m taking care of adults this month but he’s only 20 and his Mom does most of the talking in the room. The first day I meet them we’re only a few minutes into our conversation when she pulls out a worn spiral-bound notebook that I can see from across the room is full of pages and pages of cramped, furiously-scribbled notations. I’m surprised by how viscerally I react. 

I know this notebook well. Last month I spent 6 straight weeks in the PICU. I conclude at the end of the month that there’s no place in the hospital as full of suffering as the pediatric intensive care unit. The parents are devastated: they shriek and panic and fall apart in front of me. I become adept at placing one comforting hand on a shoulder and using the other to grab the nearest chair, gently guiding the parent to seated (syncope is a common and generally avoidable occurrence here). One morning we round for hours with the steady wailing of a brand-new mother in the background. She delivered without ever attending a prenatal appointment. I find that parents’ grief is almost always flavored with anger, or guilt, or some confusing, human combination of the two.  

The parents’ suffering is unmistakable. They do not ‘give up’ on their children-- they cannot. For 6 weeks I watch the vigil one Mom keeps over her 5-year-old. Her respiratory failure is so severe that even the ventilator can’t keep up. In some cases, we offer ECMO, which uses two surgically-placed catheters to drain the blood from the body, oxygenate it using a machine, and then return it to circulation, effectively bypassing the lungs. The decision to offer ECMO is a complicated one. It is an incredibly money- and resource-intensive intervention with significant morbidity, and most critically ill patients will die on it. The prevailing logic is that it should only be offered when we anticipate patients have a ‘reversible’ injury that they will recover from in a relatively short period of time (the longer a patient remains on ECMO the more likely they are to have a stroke, or other kinds of organ failure). We don’t know the cause of this 5yo’s respiratory failure so the argument is made that it could be reversible and that ECMO should be offered. It is, and she’s on it for 6 weeks. The team is divided. She shows no signs of getting better. We order medicines and infusions that cost thousands and tens-of-thousands of dollars apiece. Statistically, no one think she will survive this. We bicker over her lab values, her treatments, her oxygen and CRRT goals. The phrase “arranging the desk chairs on the Titanic” etches itself into my skull those 6 weeks. But her mother can’t give up. She won’t. The dynamic between the family and the team becomes vaguely adversarial at times. We often feel like we are being forced to torture a child that we know is almost certainly going to die. But children are difficulty to prognosticate about, and every so often they make miraculous recoveries, and so the parents hold out hope. And we consider that there is some sliver of a chance that she recovers. And so we do as we are told. One late night on my way to the cafeteria I see the child’s mother hunched in the hallway, bolting down a hot-dog just outside the doors to our PICU (food isn’t allowed inside, and there are no bathrooms for family inside the badge-swipe-gated doors either). She looks exhausted and famished and oddly guilty when our eyes meet, mid-bite. My heart breaks. The mother suffers. The child suffers. We press on, presenting our numbers and vent settings and rattling off the mile-long list of medicines she’s on every morning, resenting the Unit and the Family but probably mostly just resenting God and this God-forsaken place. 

The parents suffer. The child suffers, in spite of but often because of us. With adults there is sometimes a moment of relief when we switch from aggressive interventions to comfort-focused care. After years of hospitalizations and side-effect-laden medicines and painful procedures, the patient rests. I get to see the family exhale. The patient opens their eyes, in a moment of lucidity, and says, softy “no more.” We listen. We are liberated from our treatment goals. 

This moment rarely comes for children. There is no exhale. There is only a white-knuckled do-everything that seems to last until the very end. 

And so I meet The Notebook. It usually sits on the bedside table, within easy reach of the parents. When we mention new medicines, changed doses, or trending lab values, the notebook comes out. My words get transcribed word-for-word often, and if there’s time I pause, spelling things and repeating phrases. Most families with chronically sick kids are well-accustomed to the frantic pace at which we conduct rounds and so their scribbles are hazy, misspelled, phonetic interpretations of the bizarre medical language we speak and only sometimes translate. 

They flip back nervously, looking for evidence that their child has been on this medicine before. They know the patience of the medical team wears thin and so the page-turning becomes frantic. Somewhere in their notebook they are sure they have an answer to whatever today’s issue is: uncontrolled secretions, vomiting with the tube feeds, flushing skin after an antibiotic. It’s hard to watch.

The parents of chronically-ill children are often the most complete medical records we have. They know this and so police our treatments carefully, quick to interject if their child has had a problem with our proposed treatments. As the medical team, we feel complicated: we rely on these parents and their exhaustive lists. They coordinate the 15 specialists, fill the meds, know how their child best tolerates their feeds, know which meds best control secretions. But like all people, they are prone to all kinds of bias. My criteria for an ‘allergic reaction’ is strictly defined by a histamine-mediated response causing a certain set of symptoms. My patients’ parents criteria often feels like anything that correlates to a bad day, a weird look on their face, or an unexplained episodes of vomiting. They collect all of the information meticulously, scribbling in their notebooks, but it’s not always clear which information is important. 

On bad, cynical days, I often think that we create monsters in the parents of chronically-ill children. They have learned that making demands, throwing tantrums, and raising their voice tends to bludgeon the team into doing what they what: prescribing antibiotics we feel are unnecessarily, keeping patients in the hospital who are ready for discharge, avoiding treatments that could be beneficial. If a patient’s safety is truly being compromised usually someone puts their foot down, but we make compromises all the time that feel ridiculous. At one rapid response, we can’t get a 7-yo neurologically devastated child’s oxygen saturation up out of the mid-80s. The primary and intensivist team quickly runs through the utility of different interventions in a medically urgent scenario-- if her oxygen saturation continues to fall, she could die in minutes. Upset that she’s not being listened to, the Mom piercingly dog-whistles at us to give us a piece of information that is irrelevant and unhelpful. We listen, calmly, placate her, and continue on with our discussion. 

Afterwards, on returning to the PICU, I get angry. I do not intend to be whistled at like a dog in my adult life: not by men, not by strangers, not by my patients. 6 weeks of being treated poorly by parents starts to wear you thin. Their frustration and poor behavior is explainable, and each time I reach inside my reservoir of patience (filled on the occasional day off and unfortunately hoarded for my patients at the expense of those I love) and smile calmly, waiting for the tirade to end, but it gets old. 

So when my patient’s mother pulls out the notebook, I both flinch and tear up. I can read her anxiety from across the door. I know intimately this impulse to record as an attempt to exercise control over the situation, control which I know will not be afforded to her this hospital stay. Her child’s short-term memory has not been the same since the surgery and he looks at her, worried, when we ask him basic questions. She rushes to answer them, trying to soothe him, promising over and over that it’s just temporary, that he’s still recovering. I don’t know that it is. I don’t know that he will. I know that there will be many, many questions that come from this notebook that we will patiently answer, and that our answers won’t change a thing. 

[banglanotebook]

In order to create a lot of my posts, I rely on Hanne-Ruth Thompson’s dictionary for vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation in the form of romanization. Her romanized alphabet for Bangla (the one I consistently use) can be found in my alphabetization post. Romanizations help people that natively use Latin alphabets understand languages that do not, and therefore aid in our understanding of how words are pronounced. 

One of the first things anyone should understand when learning a language with a foreign writing system is that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to perfectly replicate the sounds of another language in your native alphabet --especially if your target language isn’t closely related to your native language. In most cases, foreign languages will have sounds that yours does not, and a lot of times that means they have characters that yours does not as well. This creates a bit of a controversy when you try to represent foreign sounds in an alphabet that was not designed to represent them in the first place. Of course that doesn’t stop linguists and learners alike from trying to develop a means of doing so. 

A lot of different resources will use a variety of romanized systems in attempt to inform the learner/reader as to how the word would be spelled or how the word phonetically sounds. Most romanization systems are developed with one of these two goals in mind, resulting in alphabets that either 1. have unique characters to compensate for each character/sound the target language has that Latin alphabets do not, or 2. use more basic examples that spell out a word according to sound only, neglecting to represent the foreign alphabet altogether. Some systems may combine characteristics of both styles. 

Understandably, it’s kinda hard to conceptualize the differences between these two styles, and the pros and cons of each. Hopefully the chart below will clear some things up. I will illustrate how some Bengali words can be written with different romanization systems and I’ll explain the benefits and downfalls of each system. View the chart below and read my break-down of each example as well as my suggestion when learning to speak and read Bangla:

The systems I have chosen for this example are: National Library at Kolkata (NLK), Hanne-Ruth Thompson (HRT), Wikipedia (WIKI), and the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). I have selected words that are similar to highlight the differences in how each system approaches romanization.

1. SNAKE vs. CURSE: In the comparison between “snake” and “curse” we see that NLK and HRT have different characters for the ‘sh’ sound (like in “shallow”), which matches how the words are written in Bangla --with two different characters for the same sound. This is super important because in the case of “snake,” the Bengali character representing ‘sh’ (স) can sometimes be pronounced as an ‘s’ like in “sun,” especially between varying dialects, so the distinction between characters might be significant in some cases. These systems aim to accurately convey the fact that in Bangla these words are meant to be spelled differently. However, they do not straightforwardly indicate sounds. As mentioned, depending on context sounds can change, and these systems do not account for this.

WIKI and IPA appear to focus more on how the words are meant to sound instead of how they appear on paper. They teach the reader exactly how to pronounce the words, but they fail to inform the reader of how the words would be spelled in Bangla, so making an accurate letter-to-letter transcription would be difficult, and this also does not provide the bridge between alphabets to aid those learning to read Bangla.

2. OPINION vs. LIKE: The Bengali words for “opinion” and “like” are spelled the same. NLK loyally follows the characters as they are meant to be transcribed, allowing the reader to be able to guess which Bengali characters would spell these words. But when we observe how the other systems romanize these words we find that NLK does not accurately tell us how to pronounce them. WIKI, IPA, and HRT all indicate the omission of the last inherent vowel in the word for “opinion,” which tells a listener which word the speaker is using. So despite the words being spelled the same, they are pronounced differently. Trying to read out loud based solely on NLK can make you sound pretty confusing if you don’t know how to properly pronounce things.

3. SUMMARY: 

NLK is probably the most true to Bengali writing, but as a result, it doesn’t do very well at teaching pronunciation.

WIKI and IPA focus solely on how a word sounds rather than how it’s supposed to be spelled. They’re more useful at introducing words to learners than NLK would be.

HRT has managed to balance a little bit of both by indicating difference in character usage while staying true to pronunciation as much as possible. In my opinion, this is most ideal when you need to learn how to read and speak. However, you still have to be aware of the rules for those letters that may change pronunciation depending on context. Thankfully, she has graciously provided these in the beginning of her dictionary. Unfortunately this still doesn’t account for dialectical differences nor does it help you identify the exceptions to the rules.

4. CONCLUSION: I feel that HRT’s method of romanization gives you the most bang for your buck as it teaches you both how to read and how to speak. The gaps regarding exceptions and pronunciation changes with certain letters can be filled by consulting IPA if you aren’t entirely sure.

This post was constructed with the help of Hanne-Ruth Thompson’s Bengali-English dictionary and Wikipedia. 

Hopefully this has been helpful! If anyone has any questions, comments, or corrections, let me know in my ask box or in a comment!

[circle-of-six-mages]

Prologue: 1000 Years Ago

The carriage bumped along, carrying six happily chatting girls and one miserable driver. It was no wonder that his mood was like this; it had been raining for over an hour now; since about five minutes after the girls reboarded the carriage.

They had been on a mission delivered straight from the High King of Rashiviio, and he was their transportation. When they climbed in the carriage, as if by magic, it began pouring.

He sighed and decided to take a nap. The horses knew their way back to Ranseed Palace. He could only sleep for a few minutes, but he couldn't stay awake, either; his eyes were drooping down.

He woke to startled whinnying. He noticed with dismay that it was no longer raining. He must've slept longer than he wanted to.

One of the horses whinnied again, snapping him out of his thoughts. He wasn't worried; they spooked at everything. A rabbit had probably ran across their path. He opened his eyes, preparing to calm the horses down.

And immediately let out the scream of a five-year-old girl.

Standing in front of him was a 10 foot tall A-Class Scorpion Type Demon.

“Hello.” The Demon said as if it were trying to appear amiable. However, evil leaked through its voice, and its true intentions were crystal clear to the driver.

They were in a clearing in the woods. He recognized this part of the woods; it was about a mile away from the bridge over the Great Divide, which separated the town where the High King’s palace stood and the Kingdom of Earth, from which all Earth Mages hailed.

“Mr. Driver?” Came another voice. They had probably sensed the Demon’s presence, and were trying to make sure he was alright.

He finally found his voice. “HELP!” He screamed. “PLEASE HELP ME!”

The Demon pouted. At least, that's what it looked like to the driver. It was really just a giant black blob in the shape of a scorpion.

“Here I was gonna tell you why I didn't kill you while you slept. You still wanna know?” It asked.

Inside the carriage, there was rustling. Probably the girls grabbing their swords and usual fighting staffs.

The driver could only stare at the Demon with an almost comically scared face and skin paler than that of a ghost. It was all he could do not to pee his pants.

The Demon cocked his head. “If you don't answer, I'm gonna kill you.” He said impatiently.

Then came a series of knocks on the wood behind him. He recognized it as Hemres Code, a phonetic code invented thousands of years ago that most humans still knew and used. He realized they were relying on him being one of the many who did.

Keep him distracted. They said. We’ve got a plan.

How am I supposed to do that?!

He took a deep breath. If these girls can face death fearlessly almost every day, I can distract it, right? It can't be that hard. I mean, this one seems to like talking.

He looked up at the Demon, “Sure. Why didn't you kill me?”

The Demon seemed to smile. “Well, first of all, may I say that you look adorable when you’re sleeping?! And second of all-” here, the Demon’s smile became malicious- “I never make my kill while their eyes are closed. If I do that, I can't watch the light leave their eyes! And that’s the best part about killing.” He looked at the driver. “Speaking of which-” he poised his tail to kill the driver-

And a blue blur whizzed by the tail, taking the tail with it. A blue-haired girl appeared about five feet away from the Demon, crouching, her sword poised at her side from the follow-through of her swing. The Demon’s tail thumped in the grass next to her.

Two crimson daggers flew out of the woods to the driver’s left, bouncing off of the Demon’s tough armor.

Seconds later, five mages jumped down in a circle around him, with the blue-haired girl completing it. Red, brown, purple, white, and black haired fluttered in the air as the girls landed and straightened.

The Demon seemed to smirk. “Nice try, for girls anyway. However, only Element Blades can pierce my armor. And you can only receive them from the Gods and Goddesses of your respective element.” He whirled around to face the girl with blue hair. “Which this one seems to have, meaning…

I have to kill you first.”

In response, the girls each drew a blade that matched their hair. The Demon stopped short. If he could have, he would've paled.

They all had Element Blades.

Element Blades were swords made purely from a Mage’s Element. One had to receive them from the patron God or Goddess of their Element. For example, a Fire Mage had to prove herself to the Fire Goddess, Meeria, in order to receive such a sword.

The girl with white hair smiled sunnily. “Yes, of course we do!” She frowned innocently. “You do know who we are, right?”

The Demon just about died of a heart attack. These were not just any Mages. These were not just a random group of six Mages. This was the group of six Mages. The Circle of Six Mages.

A quiet voice spoke behind him. “We have these, too.” It said. He whirled to ask what she meant and was met by a purple Element Dagger in his chest. He began to crumble and fade, turning into a pile of black rocks, at the top of which a glittering black stone rested, glittering in the setting sun.

The girl with black hair stepped forward and grabbed it. She smiled softly. “Another Onyx, almost as good as the one from that SSS class monstrosity.” She said, slipping it in her cloak pocket before drawing the hood.

The driver just sat, clutching the reins, appearing as though he were in a permanent state of shock. The horses had long since run off.

A very demonic screech sounded in the direction of the Divide. Then another, and another. Screeches came every few seconds.

The Circle looked at each other warily. It sounded like there were a lot of Demons.

The purple haired girl stepped up shyly. She waved her hand. “Here.” She said, and a ball of wind surrounded the carriage, picking up dust and leaves and other debris. “This'll take you home. You can use the reins to control it, just like the horses. Go ahead, we’ll be back at the palace soon, and stop by the stables to tell you we’re alright.”

Her voice was quiet, and very, very shy.

The driver merely nodded, and snapped the reins as if there really were horses in front of it. Soon he was riding away at top speed.

The girls gave each other a grim look, and took off through the woods. There couldn't be that many, or they would've been seen by people traveling by. It was a busy road, after all. Even if they'd hidden in the divide, they would've been seen by people crossing it barely a mile away.

The Mages raced through the woods, combing the area for any trace of demonic energy.

About ten minutes later, they came to the Divide. They looked around. Nothing.

We must've imagined it. Thought the blue-haired girl, tucking a shoulder length strand of hair behind her ear.

“There are no demons here, and it sounds like one is no more than fifty yards away.” The black-haired girl said, deep in thought.

As if to answer her, another screech sounded, this one even closer. And suddenly, at the bottom of the canyon, a cat type demon shimmered into sight. It looked straight at them and yowled again.

The blue-haired girl’s face contorted in confusion.”But how did it conceal itself from us? I've never seen this!”

“If you can shut up from your no-knowledge-breakdown, four eyes, she has an idea.” Said the redhead, pointing to the girl with white hair. She was chewing on her lip thoughtfully.

The girl with blue hair glared at the redhead, shoved her glasses up her nose, and nodded for the white- haired girl to continue.

“Well,” she began, smiling, “back in the Kingdom of Light, we would use a type of barrier to keep the smaller villages that were more prone to attack hidden. It was a Dome-Type that kept everything under it invisible. The only catch was it didn't have any sort of repulsion, so if you stumbled under the Dome, you could see everything.”

The blue-haired girl, still looking a little wary, scrunched her eyebrows again. “Well, how do we hear that cat like it’s almost within arm’s reach? This canyon is over one thousand miles deep!”

The white-haired girl nodded. “My many-times great grandmother enchanted it, back during the reign of the Second High King. Basically, she made it so that sound in this area is all on a flat plain. Meaning, even though the demons are technically over a thousand miles away from us, on the magic plain, they're not even five feet away. That's also why we can see them so clearly from so far away. The King requested it as an early-warning system.”

The redhead sighed impatiently. “Great, that's great, we know why shit happens. Amazing. I don't care. Let's go kill it.”

“No!” The white-haired girl said. “There’s probably a reason the barrier was erected. We should scout it out from up here first.”

The girl with blue hair nodded,rubbing invisible dirt off of her glasses. “I agree. If someone was smart enough to erect the barrier-” she paused, breathed hot air on her glasses, and continued wiping and speaking- “they were trying to hide something.” She put her glasses back on. “We should find out what it is.”

The redhead looked like she wanted to jump down and clash head-on with the Cat Demon (which was giving itself a cat bath), but the girl with glasses merely glared at her and said sternly, “from up here.”

The redhead growled frustratedly, but the blue haired girl just rolled her eyes. “We need a plan.”

The whited haired girl, deep in thought again, said,”what if we picked them off from up here? The canyon is very deep; not even a SSS Class Demon could jump it. They'd have to climb, and we can kill them before they reach us.”

As she had talked, a smile had grown across the strategist's face. Pushing her glasses up her nose, she asked,”Can you do the invisibility dome spell?”

A smile equivalent to the strategist’s grew on her face. “Yup.”

“Let's do this then.”

And suddenly, all the Mage's eyes lit up, as if there had been some form of invisible communication. All of their eyes gleamed with determination as they began to execute their silently communicated plan.

The Water Mage raised her arms and drew one back, as if knocking an invisible arrow on an invisible bow. And then one shimmered into existence, quite literally because it was made of aquamarines that could've passed as water. The arrow she was knocking was made of wickedly pointed tip. She aimed it at the Cat Demon.

The Light  Mage drew her arm back, mimicking poising a spear for throwing. She opened her palm ard a light appeared over it, extending until it became one, made of a white, almost transparent quartz.

The Dark Mage held her arms by her side, extended about a foot. In each hand, spheres materialized which appeared to devour the very air around it. From that darkness, a boomerang formed in each hand, its wickedly sharp blade glinting in the sun.

The Wind Mage held her arms in an X in front of her. She opened her hands, and winds began gathering around her, beginning to glow violet. The winds died down, leaving her holding two amethyst chakrams, one in each hand.

The Earth Mage held her hand out in front of her, her fingers spread yet flat, but her index finger curled. A glowing boulder almost a foot wide fell out of nowhere. It landed in her palm and shattered so profoundly that all was left was dust and a dark brown slingshot in her palm, the ring around her finger, already loaded.

The Fire Mage, not seeming very happy about not being in blade-to-blade combat, held her arm behind her in a similar fashion to the Light Mage. Flames roared and sparked, but instead of a spear, she was left with a ruby-red atlatl.

This happened in perfect unison. Immediately after summoning her weapon, the Light Mage began glowing. A dome began to spring from her, resisting like an elastic band. Finally, it practically exploded, shooting out as far as they could see. What was left was an invisibility dome about ten feet high and ten feet in diameter. They could see through it as if nothing was there.

This all happened in less than ten seconds, for the girls knew they had to act quickly. And act quickly they did. As soon as the dome was in place, they simultaneously began their attack.

The Water Mage released her arrow, piercing the Cat Demon right in the butt, as it was chasing its tail. It gave a pained yowl and crumbled into a pile of red rocks, a ruby perching at the top. The blue haired girl pulled back the arrow string again, another arrow springing into existence with a small pop. She did this again and again, sometimes releasing the string so early that the arrows came into existence flying through the air as if they'd been on the bow since the beginning.

The Light Mage threw her spear. It crashed through five demons before burying itself halfway up the shaft on the opposite canyon wall. She drew her left hand back and threw nothing, but a spear sparked into existence about two feet from her. She repeated this process over and over, each spear killing five or six demons.

The Dark Mage threw one of the boomerangs. It spun, arcing around as it spun. It sliced through several Demons before disappearing completely. She set up to spin another, releasing one after the other.

The Wind Mage threw one of the chakrams like a frisbee, and one replaced it in her hand immediately. It cut through quite a few Demons before slicing through a canyon wall and disappearing. She threw the chakram in the other hand and continued this alternating pattern.

The Earth Mage spun the slingshot a couple times and released the rock. About three feet from the sling, it grew into a boulder almost five feet in diameter. It landed with a huge thunk and crushed a few Demons, tossing still others to the side.

The Fire Mage swung the atlatl with one hand like a whip. However, instead of a powerful string coming around, a dart whizzed from the long shaft. She raised and swung again and again, darts automatically reloading themselves.

As the projectiles began to exit the shield, most of them teleported to different parts of the canyon, so they rained down equally and randomly. This way, no Demon could follow the volleys and figure out where the Six were.

Stones of red, orange yellow, green, blue, violet, black and even brown crumbled from fallen Demons, perched with stones that matched the color of the stones: rubies, topazes, citrines, emeralds, sapphires, amethysts, onyxes, and pretty brown larkrakrovs. However, no white stones or gems appeared.

“You know, attacking from a place where no one can see you is rather rude. Shall we even go to the playing field a bit?”said an unfamiliar voice. Before the girls could even turn to see the speaker, they all had the sensation of being kicked in the stomach, but from behind, like something had gone through their spine to attack the lining of it. They all fell into the Divide.

The Wind Mage, thinking quickly, created an air bubble around the Six to slow their descent. Five minutes later, they landed softly and safely on the ground.

A huge black cloud appeared immediately in front of them, radiating huge amounts of demonic energy. The girls knew this amount of power could only mean one thing.

A SSSS Class Demon.

There had only been one other SSSS Class Demon in the Circle’s three hundred years. When it had appeared, it took the help of fourteen other Mages to defeat it. Even then, they'd lost six to the Demon.

The difference between a SSS Class and a SSSS Class Demon was incredible. SSS Class Demons had a blind spot and three Weak Points that could be targeted to kill it. This was always true, no matter what animal form it appeared in. As far as they knew, SSSS Class Demons had no blind spot and only one Weak Point. Its sense of smell was off the charts, and so was its magic sensitivity and resistance. It could conceal its magical and demonic presence in the snap of a finger.

And now one stood before them, ready to fight, appearing ominously in a swirling black cloud of smoke and dust.

They wondered what form it would take. Fox? Rabbit? Tiger? Maybe it would be able to shapeshift.

“I'm glad you didn't die of the fall.” Came the Demon’s voice. It chuckled. “That would be no fun.” It began laughing hysterically. “You may want to draw your weapons, ladies. I'll give you time.”

As much as they hated to listen to a Demon, they knew they had to draw their close-range weapons, and they would not get another chance later on.

The Water Mage held her hands by her left side, the left one clutching an invisible sheath and the right one wrapping around a nonexistent blade handle. Water came out of nowhere, swirling around her, then focusing on between her hands and forming a glowing blue dussack.  It stopped glowing and turned into a gleaming citrine blade. With a practiced hand, she drew it from its sheath so quickly her arm blurred. Water flew at a deadly speed in the direction her arm waved.

Simultaneously, the Fire Mage held her hands on her waist, her left hand on her right side and vice versa. Flames wrapped around her, turning into six flaming belts with handles. The flames cooled and died, leaving two triple bladed urumis. She expertly unwrapped the whip blades from her waist, leaving not even a single scratch despite their lethal sharpness. As they flew free from their belt disguise, flames swirled around the Mage.

Taking her cue from the Demon at the same time as the other two, the Earth Mage jumped, slamming her fists into the ground. It swallowed her hands up to her wrists. She lifted them from it ten seconds later, coated in a thick sort of glove made of glowing earth. The glow ceased and formed two cestuses made of gleaming amber. She punched them together, knuckle to knuckle, and stood ready to fight. As her knuckles connected, the earth around them rumbled and split in a few places.

Chewing her lip uncertainly but going along with it, the Wind Mage stood in an elegant pose, the kind one might see a Sky Dancer finish a dance in. In her hands the winds gathered, glowing violet and forming what looked like fans. The winds died and the glowing ceased, leaving her holding two tourmaline  tourmaline tessens. She flicked them and wind surged powerfully around her.

The Dark Mage raised her arms, reaching the peak at the same time as the Earth Mage began coming down from her jump. She clenched her fists and swiped them downward, taking all the light out of the path of invisible claw-like blades. When she stopped, she had tekko-kagi blades mounted on her hands.

The Light Mage, with a sunny smile, held her arms out straight and rigid, as if mimicking a gliding bird. Her hands closed in fists, and a bright light shone from inside them. The light grew and expanded, forming a sort of sword with thin rods coming up about halfway up her forearm. The light dimmed, leaving two diamond katars with gold handles and guards, finishing her summon after the Water Mage even though they'd started at the same time. Her smile grew impossibly wider as she slashed them while preparing her body to fight. The blades left a trail of blinding light, and it expanded until it reached the Demon’s bubble. It exploded violently.

To the Circle’s shock, a very human-looking man in a classy blue suit flew backwards out of the explosion.

The Demon was thrown back at least ten feet, but did a graceful backflip and landed in a crouch, his fingertips touching the ground. He was gone in a flash, leaving only a blurry black after-image. He laughed as he moved. “Shocked, girls? You should be.” He cackled like a malicious madman.

The Light Mage moved swiftly and gracefully, spinning and slashing her katar in her left hand and cutting his shoulder, before delivering a hard kick to his face. “It's not very nice to kick the very first Human Type Demon.”  He said poutily.

The Demon moved his body with the energy from the kick, attacking the Fire Mage next. “Yeah, well, it's not nice to throw people off cliffs, either.” She the Fire Mage responded, bracing herself for the attack.

However, before he could even close half the distance toward her, the ground rumbled. An enormous disc of earth fifty feet wide and only about three feet thick flew free from the ground so quickly that the Demon was thrown almost thirty feet into the air.

All of the Mages seemed to be prepared for this, however. Not only had they braced their bodies against the flying disc, but they all had earthen boots attaching them to it. As soon as the disc stopped flying, the boots disappeared.

The Earth Mage had created an arena suitable to their fighting range.

By now, the remaining Demons had noticed the fight and were gathering to watch.

The Demon the six were fighting had begun to fall from being thrown into the air. He twisted so he would fall in a more optimal position, but the Fire Mage sent a huge blast of flames toward him while the Water Mage sent a disc of ice flying at him to throw him off balance. At the same time, the Earth Mage had begun skating across the ground as if it were ice instead of stone. She leapt when she was under the Demon and used the Earth to give her leap a boost. In the air, she twisted, kicked him where the sun didn’t shine, punched his cheek, and smashed her feet into his stomach, slamming him into the ground.

He gritted his teeth and sent out a wave of demonic energy. It threw all of the Mages off balance. He rose to his feet, a little unsteadily. “You think you've won?” He chuckled darkly. “I haven't even drawn my weapon yet.”

His left arm clutched his bleeding left shoulder, the black stuff oozing from between his fingers. However, his right fingers extended, an elegant black rapier appearing about an inch away from his palm. It finished forming and began to fall. He clasped the handle quickly, and the previously missing blade guards appeared snugly on either side of his hand. He slashed it, and somehow this healed his wound. He grinned maniacally.

The Dark Mage glared at the Demon as she regained her senses. Stomping her foot to steady her balance, she sprang off the ground into a graceful flip. Her tekko-kagi claws raked the ground, a long, high pitched screech resounding because of it. Darkness and stone flew up from her slash, forming five black bubble-like objects. They hit the remaining disoriented Mages, and their eyes cleared and they regained their balance.

A flash went through all their eyes: an idea, a plan. The Fire Mage and the Wind Mage twisted and spun together, urumi and tessen swinging and flying in a graceful dance. Wind and fire erupted in their wake, the winds strengthening the blasts of flame and then surges slicing through them like they were nothing more than butter.

The Demon smirked and stood his ground, standing in a leisurely way, as if waiting on a street for a friend. With a single slash of his sword, the assault was gone.

And so were the girls.

He felt an unusual uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He couldn't even feel their presence, no magical trace despite their enormous mana capacity, nothing. Yet he somehow knew they were still there.

Suddenly, he couldn't move. His muscles froze in place, and no amount of struggling, magical or physical, could get him out of his predicament.

Suddenly, a huge column of fire erupted from the ground directly in front of him. Most of the mana was sucked out of the air, not quite that big a feat since there wasn't much mana in the Divide. He was surprised that hadn't happened earlier.

Then he remembered something. The Circle had trained to the point where they used almost no mana on every spell. Rumor had it that for the simplest of spells, they literally used none. So if they were using this much mana…

Terror struck him to his very core. They were using an extremely powerful spell.

And he could do nothing to stop or avoid it.

The Fire Mage stepped out of the flames, her hair flying wildly around her to the point where it looked like her whole head was on fire. She smirked as the mana in the air quickly recharged. “Not fun being the helpless one, is it, Demon?” As she spoke, the mana recharge finished, leaving more mana than had been there at first. The Fire Mage pointed the guard of her urumi at him. “Prepare to die.”

And then, without warning, a geyser came out of nowhere and shot skyward. It took about half of the mana with it. The Demon tried to figure out where it was coming from; the three-foot-thick stone was not big enough for that large a reservoir.

And then the Water Mage emerged, completely dry, yet meticulously wiping moisture off her glasses. “She has a point, for once.” She said, examining the lenses for any trace of fog or water. The Fire Mage shot her a dirty look. “We had a plan, and you fell for it.” The blue haired girl smirked and put her glasses back on, drawing her dussack. “Hook, line, and sinker.”

By now, the mana in the air had recharged, once again leaving more than was there before. The Demon continued struggling, trying to do something as slight as even twitching a finger.

A harsh wind ripped through the canyon, taking roughly a third of the mana with it. Even the Demon, glued to the ground, didn't know how he managed to remain on his feet.

The wind collected debris as it went to its place next to the water chute. At its base, it went up to the sky, sort of like a reverse funnel cloud. It then evened out so that the debris-laden wind column was perpendicular to the makeshift arena.  The three sky-high elemental columns formed a perfect half circle around the edge of the arena.

The Wind Mage stepped out of her wind funnel, looking like her hair had just been brushed and styled, not a single strand out of place. “What, no snarky remark?” She said quietly. Her confident face turned worried as she looked across the semi circle at the Water Mage. “Was that alright?” The blue-haired girl rolled her eyes and looked pointedly at the Demon.

The Demon’s frozen face must have looked confused and panicked, because the Wind Mage gave him a knowing smile. “It's a mana duplication spell. You'll understand why momentarily.” As she finished speaking, the mana finished regenerating, and true to her word, left more in the air once again.

And as soon as the mana finished generating, a wall of earth shot up from the arena, wiping out around a quarter of the mana. The Earth Mage stepped out as if she were walking through air instead of a solid stone wall. Her face revealed nothing, and she said nothing, but the Demon could hear her voice in his head all the same. He had a funny feeling he was communicating through the stone.

You will die, Demon. She said. And after that, so will every Demon in this godsforsaken canyon.

The eerie voice chilled him deeper than the fear running through his veins, and planted more fear there, if that was even possible. He frantically ran idea after idea through his head, trying to come up with a survival plan, but they all ended with him dying.

Plan A- burned to ashes by the Fire Mage. Nope.

Plan B- drowned by the Water Mage. Definitely not.

Plan C- cut to shreds by the Wind Mage’s air blades. He cringed internally. Ouch. No.

Plan D- suffocated at least 30 feet underground by the Earth Mage. He tried to move his hand to his throat. Again, no.

As he continued his frantic planning, a huge column of pure darkness shot to the sky. He couldn't even tell how much mana it used, or how much it brought back with it. The Demon was actually beginning to feel quite suffocated by the sheer amount of mana in the air. The girls, however, appeared unaffected.

The Dark Mage emerged from her void, her hair the only thing darker than the spell. She said nothing, though her dark and brooding eyes were the embodiment of the saying if looks could kill.

And finally, completing the circle, a ball of light floated up from the ground. It was no bigger than a foot in diameter, but it exploded so it was just as large as the others. It exploded like a bolt of lightning and travelled even faster. It sucked a little bit of the mana out of the air, just like the others, and once again brought back more. The Light Mage emerged, her smile somehow brighter than the mass of light behind her.

“Do you like it? It’s really pretty, right! It's our signature spell! The-” she was about to continue, but the Water Mage cut her off with a look. She pouted, and took a step back.

The Demon knew only what the others knew about the Circle- only rumors and hearsay. Unfortunately, that did not include their signature spell.

And suddenly, all the mana was sucked from the air, and all the Mages pointed their weapons at them. The sudden release of mana made him feel like he was floating.

The Mages released their spell suddenly and swiftly. The water wall fell and multiplied, and stayed on the arena as if it were a giant glass, filling it up a good ten feet. The other spells sliced through it as if it were merely air. The Water Mage took off her glasses, scowled at them, and used the surrounding water to wipe microscopic dirt off of them.

The fire wall broke up into thousands and thousands of fire sprites, targeting the Demon mercilessly. The water seemed to not affect them at all. As they did, the Fire Mage smiled almost sadistically.

The wind wall turned into countless blades of wind and sliced at the Demon, cutting through the Fire Sprites without harming them, then looping around to attack again. The Wind Mage stood with a worried look on her face.

Parts of the earthen wall crumbled away or fused to others to solidify them further. What was left was several hundred golems, stacked one on top of another. The leapt down onto the arena and made not even a splash in the water. They made their way to the Demon, and reached him surprisingly quickly. Along with the fire sprites, they began wailing on the Demon. The Earth Mage held her ground, her face telling nothing.

The dark wall overtook everything; there was so little light that even the Dark Mage had trouble seeing. She could only imagine how much trouble the Demon was having.

The light wall, literally a white block in the spell of darkness, began practically spitting out great balls of light like comets. Even in normal lighting, they were blinding. They were brighter than the Light Mage’s smile, brighter than the Fire Mage’s flames, even brighter than the third and brightest sun, Rhysha. It didn't help the Demon that they were in near total darkness, amplifying the comets’ light. The Light Mage stood in front of her wall, her comets whizzing by her on either side of her, causing a slight breeze that made her hair dance.

And then all at once, everything cleared. The water ran off the stone island in great torrents, drowning more than a few Demons. The golems collapsed into piles of rubble, which were absorbed into the ground. The fire sprites disappeared, as if they were mere fire that had run out of fuel. The wind blades slowed and dulled, becoming one with the light breeze. The comets stopped coming out of the light wall, and the wall exploded, sending light even further than the horizon.

Only the darkness remained, but all of the Mage's irises, which had previously matched their hair, had begun to absorb the little light around them, giving a black color. It looked quite eerie, but it allowed each of them to see in the black. Only the Dark Mage's eyes remained the same.

As the last of the dust and water cleared, they looked anxiously upon the spot where the Demon had stood, all wondering the same thing: had the spell worked?

They all had a horrible queasiness in the pit of their stomachs, the kind one gets when something bad is about to happen.

And when the area finally cleared, the girls nearly screamed in alarm.

Nothing was there.

No rocks, no gems, no nothing.

And then suddenly, a huge amount of mana disappeared from the air. It came back like mist, creeping and expanding. The stuff was black, though, and made of pure darkness. It expanded, filling the whole arena but nothing beyond.

As soon as it touched her, the Light Mage's knees buckled and she fell. The Dark Mage rushed over and put the former’s hand over her shoulder, standing so that the Dark Mage supported the Light Mage.

The Demon smirked. The Dark Mist was weakening her. And none of the Mages could see in it, only he could see perfectly well.

At their confused and frightened looks, he smirked, and that got a chuckle darker than the mist out of him when he thought of how they couldn't see it.

“Oh, my lost little lambs.” He began haughtily.

“We are no lambs, and you are no shepard, you mangy mutt.” The redhead snarled harshly.

After a glaring chuckle, he continued, walking at a leisurely pace toward the Light and Dark Mages. “You see, when you released that pitiful attempt to kill me, you used aaaaaaaaaaall the mana. That left nothing to bind me. And I escaped.

He was no more than three feet away from the pair when the Dark Mage released the Light Mage and made a mad dash for the Demon. The Light Mage swayed but remained standing.

The Demon, not expecting this, was caught off guard. She swiped at him once, twice, three times, but he managed to dodge all of them. Regaining his senses, he kicked her in the side and she flew through the air, landing in a crumpled heap.

The Demon felt something drip down his face. He put his hands to it and looked at them. Black blood gleamed in the light that the Light Mage always seemed to give off. He made a noise that sounded like a fifty foot wolf was growling. He decided to kill her first for marring his face.

However, before he could even whirl toward her, two feet landed squarely on his chest. He flailed his arms in surprise, accidentally tossing his sword. He landed with a thunk on the ground, and was very surprised to find the Light Mage straddling his rib cage, smiling in an almost crazed way that still managed to be sunny. She began a thrust with her katar at his face, going in for the kill.

Just in time, he reached out, and his sword slid to him as if both his hand and it were magnets. As soon as it touched his hand, he swung it, parrying the blow.

He shoved her off of him, and while she was off balance, made a swipe at her feet. However, she had already regained her footing. She dropped her katar and did a back handspring to avoid the low swipe. And, instead of just avoiding it, she grasped the Demon’s blade between her feet and used the momentum from her handspring to toss it out of the arena.

The Demons had remained watching even when the Dark Mist fell, hoping to catch a glimpse of the intense fight.

However, when the Light Mage tossed the Human Type’s sword, it sailed into the sea of onlookers and stabbed a Mouse Type in the eye. It gave a high pitched squeak and crumble into amber rocks, a topaz gleaming on top.

The other Demons looked at the pile, took a step away from it, and continued watching the mist.

Back inside the arena, the Demon and the Light Mage fought intensely. Punches, kicks, swipes, and even slaps were exchanged. Once or twice the Demon reached for the Light Mage’s katar, but a huge flash of light followed by a resounding ZAP!! kept him from grasping the hilt.

Now. He thought. He drew a new rapier from thin air, swinging it as he drew it.

The Light Mage's head flew clean off her neck.

As it did, a huge explosion of light ensued, ridding the arena of the dark mist.

The other Mages had been holding hands and chanting, preparing a new assault as the Light and Dark Mages bought them time. The Dark Mage had just been pulling herself up, preparing to join the Light Mage. But as they watched the fight out the corners of their eyes,  looks of horror came upon their faces. Several seconds passed as the Mages stared in shock and the Demon kicked her head away, purely to anger the girls.

“NOOOOO!” One screamed, and glancing in that direction he discovered it was the Dark Mage.

Crying silently, each only shed one tear. A huge explosion sounded, and a huge Phoenix appeared.

Its huge body was red, but black markings made strange symbols all along its feathers. Its violet beak was the size of  small house, its wide, intelligent eyes the color of the Summer Ocean.

The Mages had disappeared. No, not disappeared. Thought the Demon.  They are the bird. This is gonna be too easy. He smirked as he thought the last part.

He knew that spell. Great as the bird was, it wasn't very easy to move. And its weak spot was the eye. If he stabbed that eye, it was goodbye Mage number two.

The violet beak opened, and a huge blast of fire and wind came out. He dodged and threw his sword like a javelin. It turned into one halfway there, but the bird dodged and fired again. The Demon merely gave a dark chuckle and deflected it with a shield.

With a wave of his hand, a dozen replicas of himself appeared around the arena. The spun and avoided fiery blasts until the bird could no longer tell them apart.

They all abruptly halted and threw an invisible javelin, which manifested just as their hands left it. The bird tried to dodge. It couldn't dodge all of them, though. One slashed its side, and another cut its head. It gave a screech of pain and anger, blurring the replicas until they dissolved. Its wounds healed, and it shot a boiling geyser of water at the real Demon.

The Demon took the blast. He seemed to melt, and the enormous bird stopped short. Its eyes were not the best, so the Mages decided to release the spell and check the rocks.

The Demon had been waiting for this. It wouldn’t be able to move in the middle of deactivation. The arena rained with the black blood of Demons, turning into various weapons; swords, daggers, javelins, every weapon imaginable. It injured the great bird with slashes that bled like rivers, and one weapon lodged firmly in its eye. It screamed in pain, and then dissolved. Four girls stood, panting. The Water Mage lay dead, a javelin protruding from her chest. Water gushed from her body, filling the bottom of the arena in the slippery stuff. It seemed to affect the Demon, but not the Mages. He did his best to ignore it.

Wasting no time, the Demon drew another blade and sped for the Fire Mage.

“YOU WILL PAY!” She screamed, raising her leg and attempting to bring her foot down on his head. With most fighters, strong emotions would make fighting sloppy. However, to most Fire Wielders, their element represented passion, and passion made them stronger. Her anger oozed out of her, her grief making her cry as she rushed the Demon.

She leapt, reaching her foot up. The Demon tried to cut her leg off or dodge, whichever came first, but neither worked. He crumpled as her foot came down with so much force it would have cracked any human’s skull.

The Wind Mage rushed him, and the Fire Mage got out of the way. She slashed at his torso, his legs, his face, everywhere with her razor sharp fans, trying to find his weak spot. The Dark Mage used a complex spell, even for the Circle, which took his sight away. She couldn’t do much else besides meditate sweatily on the ground, trying to keep her spell up. The Water Mage guarded her, nearly crying. Normally, this was the Light Mage’s job.

The Fire and Wind Mages went to switch out so the former could take a turn trying to find its weak point. The Demon, having pinpointed the Wind Mage, made a stab at her stomach, nearly slipping in the water. However, the Fire Mage was in her place by now, and she received the sword through the stomach instead. She crumpled, splashing in the water. Flames exploded from her body, burning the Demon before becoming a hovering disc over the arena, taking over the role of light source from the setting suns.

Suddenly, the Light Mage's eyes began  glowing. The Wind, Earth, and Dark  Mages looked at her decapitated head in wonder.

She had a prophesy to deliver.

The distraction nearly cost the Wind Mage her life. Huge spikes of pure darkness erupted from under her, and she jumped, the air supporting her as if she were walking on solid ground. The Earth Mage, sensing something on her turf and being within arm’s reach of the Dark Mage, the former grabbed the latter and leapt.

The Dark Mage made them each a hovering disc. They circled the Demon on there, floating safely above the spikes.

The Earth Mage catapulted a rock the size of a horse at the Demon. He merely held out his hand against it, and it exploded when it touched his palm. The Wind Mage was ready, right behind him, swinging her razor- sharp tourmaline fans at him. Although she didn’t hit him, wind came off the fans, blowing him back a bit.

The Dark Mage ran forward, kicking him in the side, and he flew in the direction of the Earth Mage. The plan was to have her incapacitate him, and they could behead him to at least down him for a while, on the off but substantial chance he would recover from it.  

He moved with the momentum of the kick, but disguised it as an uncontrollable beeline to the Earth Mage. She prepared moved her stance to one more more optimal to strike him down. In midair he spun, and too late, the Earth Mage realized that he had a blade- like strip of darkness extending from his arm. He slashed it, and it sliced her in half at the waist.

The Wind Mage watched her crumple onto the watery spikes in horror. As she touched the ground, an earthquake shook the arena. It shook off the spikes, and threw the Demon off balance. She could do nothing but stand in shock.

The Dark Mage, however, took advantage of his lack of balance. She shot at him on her disc, slashing at him. He managed to parry her claws with his sword, slightly off balance.She tried to get around him. Something in the way he always defended his back… she knew that if she struck it just right, it would be over.

He pushed her back and tried to make it over to the shell-shocked violet haired girl. He barely made it a foot before the black haired girl kicked him in the back. He flew forward several feet, but was otherwise unharmed. Not there.  She thought. If that was his Weak Spot, it would have frozen him in pain.

With a growl, he whirled on her. She sped back enough that she wouldn’t be a threat anymore, and he would continue to the now thawed Wind Mage, who was in on her plan.

She hung back for a minute, and when the Demon got close to the Wind Mage and tried to strike, she flung herself forward as the Wind Mage blew him back. The Dark Mage sped at his back on her disc, tekko kagi claws at the ready. He merely turned at a leisurely pace. She tried to stop, but it was too late. He swung what looked like a giant club at her head. It connected with a sickening crack. She fell immediately, no breath escaping her lips.

“Damn.” The Demon said as the spikes retracted. “I was hoping candy would come out.”

The Wind Mage continued their plan through her tears. The next part of the plan didn’t involve her. She could do this. She came at the Demon from above, slashing at his back with her tessens.

He predicted it from a mile away. He sent out tendrils of darkness that wrapped around the air bubble which encapsulated her. It passed the wall of wind, wrapping around her lithe body instead. He squeezed tighter, tighter, until her body could no longer take the pressure. He didn’t even look at her; it would just be gross.

He turned to leave, masking his presence as he prepared to overtake the capital city, when a giant blue bird landed.

In her subconscious state, the Light Mage recognised only the safe presence of the bird, which was the King’s familiar. She did not sense the Demon and therefore felt it safe to relinquish the prophecy.

“Guard this prophecy, oh trusted one.” She said in an old, wise voice that was not her own. “It is out world’s last hope.”

The demon froze in his tracks to listen.

“Find the spirits of Yin and Yang,

For only then can you hear the creature's song.

Raised in a village of black and white,

Both with desire to do what's right.

Then find the spirit of flame and fire,

And take down its blood- red empire.

In city that is always aflame,

Gain their help by knowing their name.

Glittering blue is what you must find,

This spirit is the last of its once-great kind.

In a long lost city under the waves,

The way to the surface it must pave.

Find the spirit of wind in a city high above the ground,

Where terror and confusion run unbound.

In a city that cannot be found by a hunt,

This disorder you must help to confront.

This spirit communicates only through stone,

Paying no heed to to grave nor bone.

The hideaway miles below the earth,

Was the only thing that saw her birth.

Fear the storms

Fear the sky

A long dormant power now is nigh.

Not even I yet know its goal,

Nor what role

This power shall play.”

And with that, the Light Mage's eyes died. The bird flew away just as the Demon whirled around to kill it, hoping no one would know the prophecy. But as he watched it fly away, he decided to let it. He even smirked.

He'd already won. He'd won for Rhieashinn.

And the Circle of Six Mages would never come again.

Hello, all! Yeah, It’s been a while :T Sorry

Anyway, I revised this again, and I have quite a few chapters sitting in my docs, so I think I’m gonna try my hand at weekly Saturday updates! 

If you have questions about the story, the characters, or the world, please send them to my main blog, @fabnamessuggestedbytumbler !

First- Prologue- You are here!

Last 

Next- Chapter One- Aplla Village

[lolcat76]

I have a prompt for you if you feel inclined to write it: The Closer era, Sharon gets hurt on the job (you choose how badly) and Andy hears about it through the gravepine because no one knows that they are in a relationship (bonus point if the team is left puzzled by his reaction)

Assuming that Mike accidentally found out they were together in Living Proof. Takes place in the 1st ep of S7 of the Closer.

Captain Raydor’s beenhurt.

It echoes with his heartbeat, every thud beating out the Chief’swords. Speeding up to the point his cardiologist would have a stroke – CAPTAIN RAYDOR’SBEEN HURT pounding in his ears. His throat’s gone dry – he can’t even choke outthe vague words of sympathy the Chief expects to hear because his brain is echoingHURT…HURT…HURT.

And he can’t leave the crime scene, because Captain Raydornot showing up for the audit because she’s been hurt shouldn’t matter a damn tohim, but it does. He’s a good cop, and he loves his job, but he doesn’t give arat’s ass who shot the rapper and his friends in this house, because CaptainRaydor has been hurt, and nobody seems to give a damn.

He can’t ask them to give a damn, either, because CaptainRaydor told him in no uncertain terms that she’d have his balls and his badge(in no particular order) if he ever let his department get wind of theiraffair.

Andy Flynn hates the word affair. Not on principle exactly,but as it relates to his sexual history, he bristles at it. He’s admittedly anasshole but he’s never cheated on his wife, or on the women he dated after hismarriage fell apart. He especially hates it when Sharon refers to what’sbetween them as an affair.

I’m married, shereminds him.

He stopped thinking of Jack Raydor as Sharon’s husband longbefore she slipped that ring off her finger, and that was easily ten years ago.

What they do now, in the privacy of his house or her condo,it sure as hell isn’t an affair. It’s not some tawdry secret sex, though shereminds him every time that it’s a secret. It’s not just a hurried fuck in ahalf-bath, squeezed in between finger sandwiches and champagne toasts at one ofthe many political fundraisers she’s dragged him to over the last two years.

What they’re doing is more real. Isn’t it?

It’s the reason he called her when he got his ass handed tohim after one of his AA meetings. It’s the reason that he’s a dick to her whenshe invades their murder room, but defends him when the rest of his team getssalty about her presence.

“Why are you such adick when you have to share investigations with me? You of all people shouldknow I’m just doing my job.”

“Yeah, and you of allpeople should know that nobody likes an IA investigation.” He lifted his headoff her stomach, kissing slowly down her belly until he came to rest at thejunction of her thighs. “Nobody likes a bossy woman sticking her nose in whereit doesn’t belong.”

He licked into her,slowly at first, and then with more heat. “You’re driving us all crazy.”

She moaned, thenhummed, and finally screamed as his tongue brought her to release.

“Crazy,” he murmured ashe found her mouth again. God, he’d never get enough of the taste of her on hislips as he kissed her. “We’d like you so much more if you’d just stay away.”

“And it so easy, LieutenantFlynn, to stay away, hmm?”

It wasn’t hard to stay away from him; she’d proven that overand over again since the first time they’d slept together. Even when he’d beenthe one in the hospital, her visit had been brief, and she’d left him to goinvestigate what he later found out was a case about him.

No, what was hard was staying away from her.

And now she’s in the hospital, and he can’t go see herwithout his entire team figuring out that his feelings toward their FID liaisonin the Tyrell Baylor case are possibly less than antagonistic and more thanplatonic.

“Agents Flynn and Tao, please visit the lab and gentlyremind them that we need our results immediately.”

“Yes, Chief, “ they echo.

“GENTLY,” she yells after them. Fuck the chief, he’ll gettheir result. He’ll get them immediately, and he’ll send them along with Tao.

USC Medical Center is just a short drive up the street fromthe county forensics lab.

***

It’s not a police matter, what landed her in the hospital.An overeager agent’s assistant rear-ended her on the 101. She should have beenat Cedars, or at Kaiser because it was closer to her condo, but she wound up atUSC Med because even LAPD insurance has its limits.

Whiplash, a broken nose from the airbag, and strongpossibility of a concussion. I shouldhave been there, he thinks, when he sees her lying in the hospital bed.

“I should have been there,” he says, out loud this time,when she realizes that she’s not alone in the room.

“You should have been…where, exactly? Grocery shopping withme, instead of investigating the death of a rapper?”

Fuck the rapper. “Yeah,”he says, hoping that the smile he gives her is convincing.

“Liar.” She puts on a good show for him, smiling back even thoughhe knows for a fact that it hurts like hell to smile with a broken nose.

“You’re gonna be okay,” he says, because he’s an idiot and hedoesn’t know anything more soothing to say. He has other things he’d like totell her, but she doesn’t want to hear them, so he says what he thinks shewants to hear. Sitting on her bed, squeezing her hand, he hopes she knows whathe wants to say.

“I’m going to be fine,” she reassures him in those clipped NewEngland tones of hers. Nobody would ever know that they grew up less than ahundred miles apart. “And you need to get back to work.”

Like hell. He’s just about to argue when Tao ducks his headin the room. He gives a stilted wave to the captain, then gestures with thefolder to Andy.

“Interesting findings,” Tao whispers. “Might need somefollow-up. Maybe I should go back to the Murder Room and you should stay hereto lean on any questions we might have for the lab?”

Andy flips through the folder, seeing both the lab resultsand any questions Mike might have, along with their answers. Written in detail,medical terms spelled out phonetically, just in case someone might call forclarification. “Looks like a lot of questions.”

“Might take all day,” Mike agrees, then nods at the woman inthe bed. “Captain.”

“Lieutenant.”

Mike disappears, and Andy doesn’t say anything for a moment.He doesn’t want her to know that he’s rattled by the sight of her in a hospitalbed. She wouldn’t like that – it would be breaking the rules of their affair, thathe might care too much about her. That he might want to find the punk that rear-endedher and beat the shit out of him. That he might very well open himself up to aninvestigation of excessive force, because Sharon Raydor is hurt, and she’s in ahospital bed, and fuck the rules, he’ll take the suspension if it means that hecan get rid of the pit in his stomach at seeing her so pale in a hospital bed.

He doesn’t want to upset her, but Andy Flynn was never verygood at rules. But she is, and he’s not good at making her happy – not yet –but he’s better than he used to be. So he’ll stay here with her and hope that’senough. “Seems I have some time to kill,” he says. He pulls a chair up to her bedsideand takes her hand.

“Seems you do,” she agrees. She curls her fingers into his,then tugs him closer, and closer still, until he’s settled on the bed next toher, her head resting on his chest.

“We should thank him,” he murmurs. At this point, knowingthat she’s hurt, but not seriously, he’ll thank anyone who cares to listen.

He’s never heard her make a noise like that, a snort that isdefinitely not in keeping with the very carefully cultured image of SharonRaydor. “Mike Tao owes me,” she says, and he’ll never admit it, but he fallsjust a little more in love with how satisfied she sounds. “Thank him if youwant to, but he won’t say a word.”

Of course he won’t say a word. Mike Tao might be the mostboring person Andy’s ever met, but he’s also the most loyal. Mike would neverbetray his teammate in Major Crimes as a matter of conscience, but he’d alsonever betray Sharon Raydor as a matter of personal integrity.

Thank God Provenza wasn’t sent to the lab with him.

“So,” he says, “you gonna get out of here tonight?”

She sighs, and he catalogues that with all the other breathynoises that she makes. He loves them all. “The doctor says I have to havesupervision for the next 48 hours.”

He’s gonna thank Mike Tao, and then he’s gonna thank the doctor, and then he’s gonna take her home and not let her out of his sight until she physically kicks him out of her condo.“I think that can be arranged.”