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autumnslance · 1 year ago

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FFXIV Write 2023 Day 21: Grave

The road into Coerthas was a pleasant one, with a cool wind blowing off the mountains to keep the summer heat at bay as they left the shaded boughs of the Twelveswood. Evienne sighed as the pressure of the Hedge faded behind them, her conjurer’s senses sensitive to the Woods and the Elementals within.

The trees shifted in kind as they thinned, more conifers mixed in as they were treated to rolling meadows on these foothills, grasses and flowers rioting around them.

Her companion looked almost giddy atop his chocobo, and the white bird reacting to his excitement, her own step bouncier. “It’s just like I remember,” he said.

“So far,” Evienne warned. “Do not be surprised to find things different once we reach our destination. It has been fifteen years, Zaine.”

“I know, I know. I am remembering to ‘manage my expectations’, my friend.”

She privately doubted it, but it would be unseemly to argue the point. The Midlander was young and impetuous—which did make him one of the best fighters she ever had the pleasure to work with, and an asset to the Path of the Twelve. And, privately, she enjoyed his boundless enthusiasm and optimism.

Could do with slightly less sass, though. The boy’s manners oft times left her sighing in frustration.

The hamlet of Fawn’s Hollow had seen better times, she thought, as they rode among its buildings. It was a sleepy little farming village; always had been, likely always would be. They were far enough south that the buildings were mostly built of wood, with foundations and perhaps partial walls of stone. But some buildings were empty, and there was obvious space for more animals than she saw in the barnyards and open stables, even accounting for the sheep that must be out in the fields at this time of day.

“No one rebuilt it,” Zaine said, incredulous, as they paused in front of a ruin of a house. It had been burned down many years ago, the still-useable materials long since scavenged, the frame and rotted remnants left to the elements, in between two other homes. The one to Evienne’s left had a slightly-less-weathered addition built on the side facing the burned house. The building to their right had been repainted recently, its trim and windows redone, so it was hard to say what damages it had suffered, if any, from the event.

Zaine dismounted, patting Snowlight’s shoulder as was his habit, as he stepped between the low garden walls and into the short front yard. “I remember this fence being taller.”

“You were a child,” Evienne said, dismounting from Sunflower. “Of course all looked larger.” She tried to keep her tone kind for him.

“I suppose so.” He walked up the two shallow steps and into the ruin of his childhood home. “I know I’m not likely to find anything here, either,” he continued. “Not sure what I’m looking for, really.”

Evienne said nothing, simply nodded. She turned, sensing the attention they had garnered, and so saw the middle-aged Hyuran man coming to hail them. She signaled to Zaine to let her speak first. “Hey now! What might you two be doing?”

She smiled politely. “Hello, and we are sorry if we are causing a disruption. My companion, you see, was born here, but has been abroad many years, and wished to visit.”

The man peered as Zaine came closer, the fellow’s eyebrows raising halfway to his receding hairline. “That can’t be little Zaine Striker?”

“Yessir, I am.”

Evienne had to admit Zaine cut quite the figure in his adventuring gear, with the war axe on his back. He wasn’t especially tall, nor broader built than average, yet the confident way he carried himself made him seem bigger somehow, like one of the heroes from the stories.

And to many people across the realm already, he very well might be.

Evienne, for her part, was simply happy if the boy did a better job trying to keep himself alive—but that was what she was for.

“Well I’ll be,” the man said, shaking his head. “Last I heard, your ma’d taken you and your sister to Thavnair. Now here y’are. Look just like your pa, too, even got his eyes.”

“So I’ve been told,” Zaine said. He looked shy for a moment. “I was wondering, is Nana Michelle still here? Or…?”

“Ah, she is,” the man said, shaking his head. “She’s not long for this world, though, Halone bless her. Helped raise up the children in this village long enough she certainly deserves her place in the Heavens.” The man considered and then pointed toward a small house with faded blue trim. “Still in her same place, with folk checkin’ on her through the day. Could be she’d like to see you, and hear of your family since…well, since leavin’.” The man looked at the ruin of the house.

“I’m surprised no one rebuilt it,” Zaine said.

The man shook his head. “No one knew who had the deeds after, and your ma hadn’t the mind to settle it before leavin’, with the runaround the magistrates were given’ her, not to mention the Inquisition investigation. It mostly served as a warning that the war can even touch us here. Then many of our younger folk left to find their fortunes elsewhere, after we had a few bad seasons. There’s talk of clearing the lot entirely to repurpose, but always something else to do.”

“I see,” Zaine said. “Well, we don’t want to take too much of your time.”

“Oh not at all, not at all,” the man said, urging them to follow him. “Not every day one of ours comes home, and from Thavnair! What a difference that must be!”

“It is,” Zaine said, smiling politely.

The man jabbered on, pointing out places and people for Zaine to remember, as he took them to the house marked out as Michelle’s.

From conversations on the way, Evienne knew that the distance from his mother’s family, and some sort of issues with his father’s he was never clear on, meant Zaine had not spent his first ten years with the usual support of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Nana Michelle, a woman widowed young with no children of her own, had aided his parents in caring for Zaine and his sister. And, apparently, most of the rest of this village.

The man knocked, a young elezan woman answering. “Visitors for Nana,” he said. “She’s not sleeping, is she?”

The woman shook her head. “She’s having her tea, and will be pleased to see you.”

“I shall wait—”

“You’re coming too, Evienne,” Zaine interrupted. “She’ll be happy to meet my friend.”

The young woman led them in, and introduced them to an elderly elezan woman sitting in a chair propped up by pillows at a small table. She beamed. “Oh, Zaine!” she said, holding her hands out.

He took her slim, shaky hands and gently squeezed them. “Hello, Nana, it’s been too long.”

“It has, it has! I’ve gotten some letters from your mother over the years, dearie, but I didn’t know you had returned to Eorzea!”

“She wasn’t too pleased with the idea, to be honest,” he said. “But I wanted to return.”

“Of course, of course. And this is your friend?”

“Evienne, my comrade in arms. She keeps me in one piece.” He grinned.

“Thank you for that, dearie,” Michelle said. “Please sit, both of you, and join me. Patrice, dearie, can you get them—”

“Already working on it, Nana,” the young elezen woman said, soon bringing them mugs and plates.

They passed a pleasant hour, Zaine and Michelle catching up, and Evienne only had to kick his shins twice the entire time to remind him of manners; he was perhaps the best behaved at table she had ever seen him.

But eventually, the elderly woman needed her rest after tea. Zaine was quick to get up to help her stand, and she reached up to pat his cheek.

“I’m so glad I got to see you, dearie, even as bad as my sight is now,” she chuckled. “You should visit your father, too.”

“I plan on it,” he said quietly.

“Very good. Do send my love to your mother and sister, dearie. Gracious, little Aeryn must be quite the lovely young woman now, like your mother at that age.”

Zaine grinned. “I suppose, though Mama’s still the prettiest woman on Hydaelyn. You still give her stiff competition though, Nana.”

Michelle chuckled. “Charmer; it was lovely to visit, dearie.”

Evienne listened to them give their goodbyes, lingering as much as possible before the elderly woman simply had to be put to bed. Then Evienne gave her own, proper goodbyes, signaling to Zaine it was well and truly time to leave.

As they left he let out a deep breath. “It was nice to see her; I doubt I will again,” he mused.

“We never do know,” Evienne countered. She looked at him. “Are you ready to visit your father, then?” she asked gently.

He nodded, and turned to the lichyard behind the little chapel.

They did not speak as he moved between the graves, searching for the right marker. “There wasn’t much left, from what I remember. He was in the center of the fire. The Azure Dragoon said he was taken quickly by the dragon.”

Evienne simply nodded, and pointed to a marker. “I think there.”

Zaine followed her eye, and then went that way. It was a simple mark, with Corran Striker’s name and dates of birth and death, ‘faithful husband and father’ scrawled below.

“Hello, da,” he said quietly, pulling a pressed Nymeia lilly from his pack to leave at the mark, then bowing his head in prayer.

Evienne did as well, waiting for her companion, as he finally paid respects to his lost parent and the changes that had brought to his childhood.

#final fantasy xiv #ffxivwrite2023 #lyn writing #backstory #legacy #pre-calamity #coerthas #eastern lowlands #path companion #Zaine Striker #Evienne #Nana Michelle #Fawn's Hollow #just under the wire again #what if Zaine had a path companion and it was the fussy proper elezen lady

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chojrak-making-things · 2 years ago

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Not so long ago I rearranged attic, near Simako room. Later I added few toyboxes and plantbox. It was supposed to be a Shizuko office room and study, when she was a writer, but roof is leaking. So computer + water is not good connection. Since I’m not an expert in CFE (constrainfloorelevation code), I’ll wait and move them later to another house, less... humid. Conifers tree scent might be nice, but rotten wood less. I wonder if I would care as a ghost, probably not. 🤔

and btw, sorry for dark screenshots. This town is kinda that way and I always forget to change settings of lamps. Don’t want to destroy atmosphere of this house too. In next one I’ll take more care of that.

#ts3 #the sims 3 #sims 3 #moonlight valley

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keepsdeathhiscourt · 3 months ago

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Pairing: Steve Rogers x Original Female Character

Rating: Mature (18+ Only)

Summary: Journalist Andy Elliot’s life takes an unexpected turn when a chance encounter with Steve Rogers pulls her into the orbit of the Avengers. As she begins investigating a seemingly straightforward story, she uncovers threads of a deeper conspiracy that hint at something far more dangerous. Meanwhile, a growing connection with Steve adds an emotional complexity neither of them anticipated. But as the stakes rise, Andy realizes that her curiosity may have placed her in the crosshairs of powerful enemies—and that her bond with Steve might be the only thing keeping her alive.

Series Masterlist

Read on A03

Warnings: Violence, Language

Additional Tags: Tags: Canon Divergence, Also Canon Compliant (in a roundabout way), Slow Burn, Friends to Lovers, Protective Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Eventual Romance, Suspense, Strong Female Protagonist, Political Intrigue, Canon Typical Violence, Language

Chapter 1: Beginnings

Somewhere in the Colorado Rockies - Summer, 2014

Captain Steve Rogers surveys the horizon with a keen eye as the Quinjet shifts into stealth mode, vanishing from view with a shudder. The sun dips lower toward the horizon, casting long shadows across the forest, transforming the trees into dark, exaggerated silhouettes. The warehouse nestled between them is unassuming—steel beams and concrete, with warped glass peeking out from behind boarded-up windows. He takes a grounding breath, filling his lungs with the crisp scent of pine. The woods are silent, a near-perfect picture of peace. Too quiet, too still. It sets his teeth on edge.

There’s still no sign of life as he stalks the perimeter, keeping the abandoned structure in his periphery. Overgrowth grabs at his ankles, and climbs its way up the dilapidated walls; the ideal front for someone who doesn’t want to be found.

A faint rustling to his left catches his attention and he glances over just in time to see Romanoff fall into step beside him, silent as a wild cat. He doesn’t flinch—a testament to how well they know each other now, though he still wonders how she does it.

“How are we looking?” he murmurs with a sidelong look.

She shakes her head, a flash of red in the fading light. “Circled twice. All quiet out here.”

He nods, pressing his fingers against his earpiece. “Barton?”

“We’ve got some company.” Barton’s voice crackles through the comm, louder than he’s expecting. Steve winces—still not fully accustomed to Stark’s gadgets. “A couple of heat signatures inside.”

“Define ‘a couple’.”

“I’m counting half a dozen on the ground floor, another three on the upper level,” Clint whispers. “Should I move in for a closer look, Cap?”

“No,” Steve shakes his head, despite knowing Clint can’t see it. “The front entrance is locked up tight. We wouldn’t be able to back you up fast enough if you run into trouble. Just hang tight until I give the order.”

He hears Barton’s level voice give him an affirmative before the line goes quiet. The tall blades of grass fold beneath his boots as he moves toward the east side of the building. All the while, he sticks to the long shadows cast by the ancient conifers, careful to stay out of view.

A breeze kicks up, rustling the branches of skinny aspens, divesting them of their fading leaves. Somewhere within the stand of trees, Wilson and Stark are combing the woods. It’s been a while since he’s heard from either of them, but that doesn’t worry him. If they’d found something, Stark would have been the first to broadcast it.

“Rogers, what are you doing?” Natasha’s voice cuts through his thoughts.

“Looking for a way in,” he says, stepping over a rotting log. There’s no need to look back, he feels the disapproval rolling off her in waves.

“This is supposed to be a fact-finding mission. No contact. Fury—“

Steve stops, turning to face her. He knew the mission as well as she did and had sat next to her as Fury gave the the rundown. Suspicious activity in an abandoned mining town in the Colorado Rockies, linked back to some names on SHIELD’s radar, back when SHIELD still existed; notable amongst them were a few high-profile chemists.

“If Fury wanted it done his way, maybe he’d get his ass out here himself for once,” he interjects, a rare note of irritation in his voice. “I’m not about to leave with an unknown chemical agent at play.”

“I gotta agree with Capisicle on this one, Nat,” Stark chimes in over the comm. “Not sure what they’ve got, but I know I don’t want them to have it.”

Sam quickly voices his assent while Clint diplomatically refrains from weighing in, likely too focused on his own task. Outvoted, Natasha sighs, but doesn’t argue further, only gives Steve a long, unhappy look before trudging after him through the foliage. They’re halfway around the building when they finally hear from Barton.

“Looks like things just got a helluva lot more complicated,” he murmurs, voice clipped.

“What’s going on Clint?” Natasha’s brow furrows, underlining her concern.

“Civilians.” And they both freeze.

“How many?” Steve asks.

“Two so far. First floor, near the back office."

“Shit,” Sam’s voice comes clips through the earbud, articulating Steve’s exact thought.

His eyes drift to Natasha, exchanging a loaded look. She answers his silent question with a determined nod.

Meanwhile, Stark asks, impatiently, “What’s the move, Cap?”

The gears in his brain turn furiously, sifting through strategies as he surveys the flattened grass, the gray lines of the warehouse.

“Sam, Tony,” he starts. “You two take the top floor. See if you can get in through one of the open windows. Your focus is the civilians. And be careful, we might have hostages on our hands.” He adds the last part for Stark’s benefit more than anything. He doesn’t doubt Tony’s commitment to the mission, but he understands his propensity for rash action. “Clint, stay put and be ready to cover us. Nat and I are going to come in at the ground floor as a distraction.”

“On it,” Wilson says, and though he can’t make out Tony’s exact response, he knows he’s agreed.

“Rogers,” Barton cuts in some time after they break to find an entrance. “Looks like there’s a door on the west side. Boarded up from the interior, but once you’re in, it’s a straight shot to the guards.”

“Thanks, Clint,” Natasha replies. The comms go quiet and she turns to him. “Looks like we found our way in.”

In theory, it should be a short journey to the west exterior. But the stretch between, loaded with a minefield of dead branches and brambles, makes for difficult ground, even for a super soldier and an expert martial artist. They make slower progress than he’d like, taking up the lead with his shield raised to level the largest of obstacles and paving a path forward for Natasha. Still, stray branches scrape at any exposed skin and more than once, only one of them stops to pluck an offending cocklebur from their suits.

Finally, they reach their destination—a dented side-door, rusted to a muddy shade of brown and covered in dead vines. It’s so well obscured that Steve nearly misses it. Nat stops him with a hand on his shoulder, pointing it out with a toss of her head. It takes a few passes, but they clear enough of the vines to find the latch. All it takes is one experimental turn to confirm his suspicion; not only is it boarded from the inside, but the lock is rusted shut.

He glances back at Natasha, who takes a step back as he winds up. The shield slams into the door with the shriek of metal on metal, his shoulder leaning in to support the blow. The boards burst in an explosion of splintered wood, the hinges following after as the door gives up the ghost, collapsing inward with a resounding bang.

The debris crunches underfoot. He steps through first, on high alert, Natasha close behind. The vibranium shield hovers over his midsection and he emerges into the center of the room. Several pairs of wide, startled eyes green him, and for a split second, the warehouse is eerily silent—the calm before the storm.

Then, chaos erupts.

Armed men spring from behind cargo crates and support columns, guns aimed at the intruders. A flash of blue light and shattered glass signal Tony’s arrival through a second-floor wind, followed closely by Sam. Nat takes position and one of Barton’s arrows whistles through the air, embedding itself into the shoulder of the man edging towards Steve’s unprotected flank. The man cries out, staggering to the side, and the rest of the guards open fire.

Steve raises his shield just in time, the gunfire ricocheting off its surface. The onslaught is relentless, and trapped behind his shield, it’s impossible to gain the advantage. Wordlessly, Natasha angles herself behind the shelter of the shield and his shoulders. They’ll have to wait until the guards run out of ammunition.

The barrage slows, followed by the telltale clank of reloading. Seizing the opportunity, Steve shifts onto the offense and surges forward. The shield arcs down, slamming mercilessly into a man’s abdomen, sending him crumpling to the ground. He follows up with a punch to the jaw, knocking the man out cold before kicking his gun away.

“Rogers, behind you!” Natasha’s voice rings out.

Steve spins around, finding himself staring down the barrel of a gun. Before he can react, the assailant staggers to the side, rifle waving precariously. Natasha's legs are wrapped around his torso, an elbow hooked around his throat. Her jaw clenches and Steve winces as she snaps his neck with a grim determination, letting him drop as she lands gracefully on the floor.

There’s no time for words. More guards are coming. Steve and Natasha fall into a sort of rhythm, moving in tandem like two separate parts of the same well-oiled machine. They fight back-to-back, Nat ducking under his arm to land a blow when he goes high with his shield.

Steve allows instinct to take over. There’s a familiarity to fighting, one he dawns like an old sweater; a neat order he’s accustomed to that could almost be considered comforting. The repetition of muscle memory underpins the thrum of adrenaline. He’s never sure if it’s the serum or the years of combat under his belt, but there’s a simplicity to sinking into habit and letting his body take over.

The warehouse exists in its own world. He isn’t sure how much time passes, only that his shoulders grow heavy and sloppiness creeps into his movements that tell him it’s been a while. If he’s tiring, then their enemies must be exhausted—what’s left of them.

Two guards remain on the bottom floor. From the fleeting glances he can spare, things seem to be grinding to a close above as well. He grits his teeth, felling another opponent with his shield just as Natasha takes down the other.

Chest heaving, he wipes his glove against his forehead, dabbing away some of the sweat stinging his eyes. A red and gold blur arcs overhead. Stark sweeps over the balcony and into wide open space with an armed guard in each hand. One minute they’re thrashing against his grip on their collars, and the next, they’re sailing down, down, down where they meet the unforgiving pavement.

He and Steve exchange a terse nod as Sam emerges from behind a cargo crate, guiding a woman in a lab coat.

“She’s alright,” Sam assures him, though the woman’s trembling hands and wide eyes tell a different story. On his other side, Steve spots a man with cracked glasses, looking nervous but steady.

“Looks like Wilson found our civilians,” Tony says, landing a few paces behind him. “Good work, birdman.”

“Where’s Barton?” Natasha asks, scanning the area.

“Making sure the back office is clear,” Sam says as he guides the woman to a seated position. “You’re safe now, ma’am. Can you take a few deep breaths for me?”

The man with the broken glasses hovers nearby, but before Steve can ask after him, a shout erupts from the backroom. Barton crashes through the wall in a shower of drywall. Stark is there in a split second, catching him before he can collide with the ground.

But there’s no time to check on them. A hulking figure emerges from the wreckage, a man with a scarred, expressionless face that oozes experience. Steve’s heart rate kicks into overdrive as the man levels an AR at him.

“Get down!” Steve roars, hitting the deck as a fresh round of gunfire explodes above him. The air fills with the acrid smell of gunpowder, it burns his eyes as he takes stock of his companions. Natasha has taken cover behind a metal beam, Stark and Barton behind broken cargo panels, and Sam is shielding the civilians under an overturned desk.

Steve’s jaw clenches as he prepares to move. The clearest path to the threat was his. He surges forward, shield raised—half-battering ram and half bullet-repellent. It covers him as he charges headlong into the onslaught.

He reaches the man in seconds and channels the momentum into a powerful downward swing. The shield cuts the air at the same moment his opponent raises the heavy artillery to meet him. Metal meets metal, the impact sending Steve skidding backward.

This wasn’t an ordinary soldier—they were dealing with an enhanced being.

In seconds, the man seizes his opportunity and is bearing down on him. His teeth grit together so hard they seem likely to break. He cedes another inch, boots squealing against the ground. His knees threaten to buckle beneath the pressure, but he pushes back. Almost…there…With a grunt of frustration, the enemy leans in.

It’s what Steve’s been waiting for. The man leverages his weight onto the shield. The second he’s beyond the tipping point of equilibrium, Steve rolls out from underneath. Left with nothing beneath him but air, the soldier stumbles forward. In a fluid motion, Steve finds his feet and delivers a well-aimed right hook to the man’s jaw.

The man wavers, disoriented as Steve presses his advantage. Behind him, he hears the telltale noise of Stark’s suit powering up, catches a glimpse of Romanoff and Barton sneaking up on his flank.

They’re moving into position. It’s all a matter of playing for time now. Luckily, Steve’s always been good at causing a distraction.

“So, you get a little serum in you and think you can play major league?” he taunts, circling the man. “Why don’t you tell me who you’re working with and maybe I’ll take it easy on you?”

Righting himself, the soldier lunges with a growl, but Steve dances out of reach, slamming his shield into the man’s ribs. He staggers, then pulls himself up, but Steve doesn’t miss the new limp in his gait.

Romanoff and Barton were nearly in place—

“Enough!” A new voice cuts through the fray.

The warehouse stills as everyone turns toward the source. The man with broken glasses stands at the center of it all, a syringe filled with a glowing blue liquid held to the neck of the trembling woman. “I would think very carefully about your next move if I were you.”

Steve’s eyes narrow. Sam’s hands are up, backing away slowly. The woman’s eyes squeeze shut, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Easy now,” Sam says, his voice calm. “No one wants anyone to get hurt.”

The scientist laughs, wrenching the woman’s head back. His eyes lock on Tony. “You’re a smart man, Stark. Why don’t you guess what’s in here? Or better yet—let’s find out together.”

“Tony,” Steve warns, his voice low even as Stark’s suit powers up with a whirr.

“Even think about pulling that stopper, and I’ll blast you to kingdom come.”

“Alright,” Steve says, trying to de-escalate the situation. “You have our attention. Now, what do you want?”

The scientist smirks. “What I want is beyond your comprehension. But I’ll settle for safe passage for me and my…escort.”

His eyes flick to the hulking soldier, who has staggered to his feet.

“Give us the hostage and the vial, and you have a deal,” Steve counters.

“You strike a hard bargain, Captain.” The scientist’s smirk widens. “But negotiation is all about compromise.”

In a flash, he releases the woman, shoving her forward with brutal force. Sam catches her just in time, pulling her to safety. The soldier moves with inhuman speed, grabbing the scientist and bolting up the stairs.

Steve is off in an instant, vaulting over the railing and chasing after them at breakneck speed. Natasha and Barton are right behind him.

They burst onto the roof just as the helicopter’s propellers began to spin. Steve hurls his shield with all his might. It strikes the blades with a screech, wedging itself between them in a shower of sparks.

The scientist stumbles backward, narrowly avoiding the sparks as his bodyguard levels a gun at Steve’s chest.

Before Steve can react, backup arrives. Natasha and Barton flank the soldier as Tony swoops in overhead.

“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” Stark taunts.

The blades beat relentlessly against the shield, their progress slowing but not stopping. Time is running out.

The scientist seems to realize it too. His grin widens as he holds the vial aloft.

“Barton!” Steve barks as the shield flies free, ricocheting off the brick wall. The soldier hauls the scientist into the helicopter, but not before the vial slips from his grasp, tumbling into the emptiness below.

Stark hesitates for only a moment before diving after it. Steve catches Clint around the waist just as the helicopter breaks free, the cable snapping.

They topple backward as the helicopter becomes a shrinking dot on the horizon. Moments later, Stark reappears, landing a few feet away, holding the vial aloft with a triumphant grin.

“I’ll take my payment in the form of compliments and a really greasy pizza.”

#steve rogers x oc #steve rogers x ofc #captain america x oc #captain america x ofc #steve rogers fic

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nothingofvaluewaslost · 5 months ago

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STORY: The Maiden of the Shadows

A gothic horror story. Out wandering aimlessly, Adam is surprised by the rain. He climbs in through a broken window in a derelict mansion, and has to make his way through a building where something else is lurking.

Some swearing. No other objectionable content.

If you liked it, push that button! Ring that bell!

The Maiden of the Shadows, by Christina Nordlander

Adam had been walking for some three hours when it started raining from the grey sky. He didn’t have an umbrella with him, he didn’t have anything. It wasn’t a downpour, just chilly and insistent, but after about a minute he felt it through his greying nylon jacket and in the back of his neck. His jeans were getting dotted with wet. He was walking on a road of shiny oil gravel, without markings and without a name. In summer, it would be beautiful here. The few spare birches that grew along the roadside barely gave more shelter than the empty sky.

He turned off on a dirt road that was turning into brown puddles. It headed towards the endless strip of spruce forest that lay parallel to the road, so he took it in the hope that it would lead him in under the branches.

The forest towered up around the track, and he crossed to the right to get shelter.

When he looked right, it was growing lighter. The conifers were mixing with deciduous trees, branches where dark-burnished rags of leaves hung. Where the ground rose stood a mansion, a wooden façade whose colour had faded until it no longer had a name. It was an abandoned garden around him.

The snarled grass was already damp where it dragged across the legs of his jeans. Grass and blackened brambles and saplings, you couldn’t even see where the path had run. He made his way around the house, towards the front. Out in the grass stood a statue, pale grey like the clouds, and he took a detour to look at it. It was a bit smaller than he, without a plinth, propped up against a weed-covered pile of dirt where one elbow and shoulder had started to sink in. It depicted a classically beautiful young woman with detailed crisp curls, frozen in the moment she shied back in terror of something unseen. Maybe it was supposed to be the viewer – him, now. That made him crack a smile.

A few steps away was a thin wrought-iron tombstone, keeling a bit. A younger Adam would have walked over and read it, if it was legible, but now he’d rather not look at it. It had always felt weird that people had made tombstones from metal, something else perishable. For that matter, he didn’t know that it was a tombstone. It might have been an antique signpost of some kind, a memorial plaque.

The portico was set between stone pillars in light stucco, not deep enough to shield him from the rain. There was no doorbell. He knocked several times, then he pounded on it, yanked the brass knob and made it rattle. There was nobody in there. He looked into the keyhole, as if this were a computer game, but he only saw darkness, hazy with his eyelashes. The brass fitting was oxidised and cold against his eyebrow.

He tried the door again. The pink paint was scuffed, but underneath were many inches of solid wood and metal.

He stepped outside. Raindrops landed on his shoulders. There was a raw smell in the air that made him think of dusk, but dusk was far off. He rounded the corner. All ground-floor windows were boarded up with plywood. Someone was taking care of it. In real life, you didn’t leave Gothic manors unguarded.

He took shelter beneath a clump of trees with dark wet bark, and when he glanced up, he saw it on the other side of the branches: blackness, a broken window.

It was on the second floor, but one of the trees stretched its branches close enough that the twigs must have slid on the pane, like in some cosy children’s book – it might work.

He grabbed a branch as thick as his wrist and pulled himself up from the wet grass, feet finding bumps and sawn-off branches in the trunk. It was about as bad a set-up for climbing as you could imagine, wet bark smearing his palms and trouser-legs. He wasn’t dressed for climbing, and his fringe – ratty dark – dragged in his eyes, but after dad’s death, it had been as if he’d been given some drug, everything bad about a drug, something that numbed him and cut off part of reality. He had no reason to give up. A questionnaire at the counsellor’s office at uni: Have you had suicidal ideation? Have you taken unnecessary risks with your health? It wasn’t so bad, not being able to feel anything.

He was up in the canopy, and made his way out on the branches sprawling towards the mansion. They carried his weight. There was one to stand on and edge outwards, and one almost parallel to hold on to, as if this were some adventure bridge that was designed to let you progress.

He was close to the window, the flaked and bubbled paint in the window-sill, but he had to look down to avoid the shards in the frame, and that was how he glimpsed the abyss between the dark leaves below. The grass looked close in the spike of adrenaline. He was less than a body-length from the window, he’d be able to lean and grab on to the sill, but there were those tall shards. Some were almost as long as his lower arm. He had to choose between the transparent deep and the window, so he knocked the longest ones in with his arm in the jacket sleeve, then threw himself forward, pulling himself over the sill. Something sliced into his pectoral muscle, his nipple, but he was already weighing over on the other side. He swung his leg over, knocking out a couple more splinters before sinking down in the discoloured stain inside the window, a puddle of transparent shards around him. He unzipped his jacket, pulling up his jumper and T-shirt.

“Shit, shit shit shit...”

It sounded high-pitched in the enclosed silence.

He looked down at his chest, pale like something that had lived underground, with a bit of curly iron-dark hair. The wound was just a scratch. It welled with signal-red blood while he watched. He pressed his white tee against it. How the hell would he have reacted if he’d been seriously injured?

The room around him was big without furniture, with a wooden floor that was dry away from the window, and spotted wallpaper that had been beautiful, a dark golden ground with a trellis of brown garlands. Darker silhouettes, higher and lower, showed where furniture had stood. How old was the house? He wasn’t good at gauging the age of buildings. More than a hundred years felt exaggerated, romanticised. It smelled bitter with woodwork and printed paper and cold damp.

He didn’t go back to the window. As long as he didn’t look outside, he still wasn’t sure. When he turned his head, he saw the silhouettes of the charcoal-grey twigs against the overcast.

Down to the ground floor. Perhaps the door could be unlocked from the inside, or perhaps there was some back door. Worst case, he could knock out a plywood sheet. Whatever happened, he wouldn’t fall.

He wandered out into the shady corridor. All that was of any value had been taken, of course. Even the floor must have had some layer on top of the untreated boards. A wallpapered door at the end of the corridor might have led to an attic stairway, but he had no reason to go that way. He couldn’t hear dripping. This was what he’d been after: he was out of the rain, he could investigate. The scratch down his chest was throbbing. He pressed his hand against it through the tee. It had to be the irritation of it starting to clot.

His soles smacked against the boards. When he looked back, they were still leaving moisture-dark unformed prints, but maybe not much longer. He looked into all the rooms he passed, but of course there was nothing to see. He wasn’t interested in guessing which furniture had formed which outlines on the walls. One large room might have been a dance school, a ballroom, without any outlines. Two large, mullioned double windows faced out on the sky and a bit of the dark spruce tops. Here he could feel a different smell than that of compacted wood and abandoned building. It wasn’t disgusting, just raw and alien. It made him think of the ocean, deep down.

He walked up to one window where the squire or his beautiful daughter might have stood during some dance, with lit chandeliers reflecting on the nocturnal forest edge. He’d never been good at gauging directions in buildings in relation to the outside world – the climb would have shaken up his sense of direction in any case –, but he was standing over the slope down to the wet brown dirt track. It was still raining, but you could only see it against the dark of the forest. It wasn’t much more than a drizzle.

There was a light scraping.

It was an old house, a lot of wood, it must settle and shift almost as much as a living body. He turned, not as quickly as he’d wanted, his gaze tried to cling to things. There was nothing in the ballroom behind him. The doorway on the corridor was a dark rectangle.

It hadn’t just been a creak. It had been the sound of something inside.

He glanced both ways as he emerged in the corridor. There was nothing moving. He didn’t run, he cast a quick controlled glance at the deserted doorway on the other side and hurried along the corridor, in the direction of the stairs. His steps were loud, but there was no other sound underneath them. He didn’t hear the scraping again. With each minute, it became easier to believe it hadn’t been anything.

The corridor turned ninety degrees and continued. Up ahead to the left were the dark-painted stair rails, and straight ahead, at the end of the corridor, an oval full-length mirror on a stand. He squeezed his phone through his pocket. Out here it was useless as a slab of glass: if anything happened, he hadn’t seen the name of the road, he didn’t even know the name of the area. Maybe he’d need the torch app when he got to the ground floor.

Nothing moved in the mirror when he got closer. The glass had been knocked out of the frame, but something was stuck to it, a yellowed note. He was level with the staircase now, but he took the five remaining steps to the mirror.

A quick dragging and twisting sound came and vanished to where he couldn’t hear it.

He spun, but the corridor lay quiet, just grey and sepia in the poor light, nothing that moved.

He stood there. His heart pounded until it jarred, it pressed the body’s layers of bones and organs against each other, and he had a little localised pain in the right side of his neck where he’d turned it too quickly. It wasn’t going to pass, not as long as all his muscles were tense.

“Hey?” he said. “Is anybody there?”

The adrenaline and the surroundings made his voice different, so much he might not have recognised it. No-one replied.

He raised his voice a bit:

“If this is your house, I’m sorry. I’m on my way out.”

No-one replied.

He hadn’t imagined it. Was it some kind of animal, then, a bird that had flown in through the broken window and nested in here?

He walked up to the mirror, with the full space of the corridor behind his shoulders. A few straight-edged shards of mirror were still attached to the old cardboard backing. He took a look at his face, so that the worst wouldn’t frighten him. It wasn’t pale, it was red around the eyes and cheekbones. But that was natural, fear made the blood rush to your brain, same as rage. His hair was just a little smeared in his forehead from the rain. The pink was gone from the whites of his eyes. You couldn’t tell it had been there.

The note wedged under the frame was a browned newspaper clipping. He unfolded it, hearing it rustle. Almost the entirety of it was a monochrome photo of a painting, small and blotchy with the print and the aged paper. It was painted in a lush, realist Academic style, but the motif was modernist: an older gentleman with sprawling moustaches, Panama hat and tweed jacket – the artist himself? – on a soft lawn, with a faun, a gorgon with short snakes curling from her scalp, and an anaconda-sized snake slithering through the grass in the foreground, framing the image. In the background, the lawn sloped to a little copse and a shiny pond where a mermaid frolicked. There was no caption with the artist’s name, or he could have looked it up. The few words that had got in from the column above only said:

hope to live on for generations.◼

He bent closer to the clipping. The background – could it have been this garden, but in the summer and cared for? It felt like he’d seen a pond on the way up, maybe clogged with dark luxuriant grass. The copse wouldn’t be identifiable, the trees must have grown huge.

A movement flickered in the mirror shard.

He ended up standing, frozen, gaze fixed on the glass, as if just his gaze could hold the thing in there at bay. He couldn’t bring himself to lower the paper, not even that movement. He looked over the upper edge.

A thin sallow human figure was standing far behind him in the corridor – a girl. She kept her eyes on him. She was so far off, she was no bigger than a plastic keyring charm, but something was wrong with her.

“Hello?” he shouted.

Perhaps she hadn’t heard. She turned, disappearing through a doorway. A few seconds later he wasn’t sure she hadn’t been his imagination.

That smell lay heavy and chilly in the hallway. He knew that was how the old pond would reek.

He spun towards the dark-stained staircase and flung himself down it as fast as he could without tripping, one hand squeaking on the handrail, and he couldn’t run fast enough, he didn’t want to control his steps. The dusk rose around him, as if he were descending into water, and he babbled lyrics and nursery rhymes to keep any sounds away.

He emerged in a hallway, evening-dark, taller in the ceiling than the upper floors, echoing and stately. Here he had to take out his phone and switch on the torch. The beam trembled where it cut through the dark, because he didn’t know what he was going to see. (She’d been behind him.) He didn’t hear anything in the stairs. The beam slid across crisp plasterwork along the roof edges, high spotted skirting-boards.

The front door loomed before him. In the gloom, it was a big theatre flat where everything might have been made of cardboard, all parts were equivalent, and he yanked at it and tore at the doorknob in both directions and it didn’t move.

He let out a long staggered breath. There were other windows, other ways out. The beam found a narrow wooden door at the end of the hallway. He took ten quick steps and turned the doorknob, and this one slid open. The smell of basement blew out on him, and more of that scaly deep-sea smell. If he hadn’t had the torch switched on, it would have been just a black hole.

There might be windows down there, maybe easier to crawl through. The beam swung down through the blackness.

A step creaked, up in the staircase where the light fell in.

He tottered down the stairs, the beam bouncing up and down the concrete wall in front and showing nothing. The stairway swung out into the basement, a narrow irregular room. There were no windows that weren’t boarded up, he saw blinding threads of white light around the frames. Maybe it was just taped cardboard. He ran out across the floor and tripped. The floor was uneven, maybe just stamped earth: mounds and smooth puddles. The shock was so intense, it wouldn’t have made any difference if he’d fallen and slammed his forehead.

But he didn’t know how far it went. There were basements that opened into food cellars outside. One of his friends in primary school had had one. At least he’d seen how the room narrowed into vaults, tunnels? The beam flicked across the floor as he jogged.

The basement door clicked. He’d slammed it shut, hadn’t he? As if a closed door could keep it out. If it’d been standing far down in the stairs, it would have seen the door move.

Part of the wall had collapsed in a landslide of earth and rubble. A dark opening was visible on the other side. He flung himself in.

It, the passage, ended three feet in, so shallow he could have reached the back wall with his arms. It was just an alcove of concrete and clods behind the slide. When he tried to gauge how deep it was, he stuck his fingers into chill and almost greasy soil. Little white maggots would be crawling in there. He manoeuvred himself around, so that he could look out into the basement, even though his soles made many kinds of small noises.

The heap of dirt blocked his view of the stairs, but he could see a pale grey light that fell maybe halfway down. It hadn’t been there before. Feet scraped on the concrete steps. His hearing used all the energy that the rest of the body wasn’t allowed, it calibrated every sound and couldn’t fool itself that they were moving in any other direction. The feet scraped too much, like they were shod with nails. They dragged more than they should have.

The light, he’d forgotten the light! He struggled with his phone and could barely switch it off, his fingers were unusable beneath a layer of sweat. After a couple of seconds he pressed it against the nylon of his jacket and almost sobbed when he saw the little light around the edges die. It was gone, but that being was in the basement, between him and the stairway. His heart pounded like it might never slow down, as if it was what would kill him even if he got out of here. He crouched down in his alcove, so that he could keep his gaze on the dusk, the dusk that might have been infinite. When he was a kid, he’d read that wild horses on the steppe had only survived by galloping through brushfires, not by trying to outrun them. That was the only way to get away from a brushfire, running towards it. But not now when his pulse beat until it threw out the membranes in his eyes, when he could only suck in little scraps of oxygen to keep his body alive, when the world around him was so weakened that it felt like it might open in cloudy holes and he would have somewhere to crawl out.

He pressed his back against the back wall, where he was sitting in the cold. The slide provided cover. If the being stayed at the bottom of the stairs and only looked out in the basement, it would hide him.

Something moved again. Those steps, nail-filled, were getting closer. Why had he believed? He pressed himself backwards, making himself smaller than he’d thought he could ten seconds ago, and his heart must still be crashing but he couldn’t hear it. He squeezed his eyes shut so he wouldn’t have to see.

Something, not the feet, something smoother and longer, slid across the rubble. Now he could hear a little hiss, the sound that turned a little key in your spinal cord even if you’d never heard it before.

He didn’t open his eyes. The hiss, the snake, slid closer to his face. Something tickled his forehead, so light it might have been his imagination, until he felt a fist-sized head prodding him.

Keeping his eyes closed was easier. They didn’t bite humans unprovoked. He was just a saggy mountain of flesh, the only movement was when his chest twitched. He imagined that its long body was grey, like moonlight. Another snake found its way across his shoulder, head raised, towards the gap between his collar and neck. He kept his eyes closed, he didn’t know whether it was a different snake or if they grew out of the same breeding-patch, a branching nest. The fear had swelled to its full width and didn’t exist any more. If he got out of this, he might never be able to be afraid again, like an impotence in the brain.

The pressure on his shoulder and face lifted. He could still hear the faint hiss, with air in between.

“Are your eyes closed?” she said above him. “You will look.”

Her voice was pitted iron, like she hadn’t spoken in a year.

Two hands gripped his shoulders, fingers that felt like they just consisted of joints, nails he could feel through his jumper. That was when he knew that his eyelids were the only defences he had, two walls of fine flesh, and that opening them would let in insanity and perhaps worse.

“If I don’t look, will you let me go?”

He couldn’t believe it was his voice. Now he had to breathe in. She didn’t smell like unwashed human. That pond reek was in his nostrils and far down his windpipe, his lungs.

“I can force your eyelids open.”

The grip on his shoulders slackened. It didn’t let up yet.

“You will have no choice but to look, and when you look, you will be dead.”

He pressed his eyelids together as if he could clamp the bones of his skull down over his eye-sockets. He wanted to press his face into his kneecaps, but he didn’t know what she’d do if he made a sudden movement.

“Medusa?... Gorgon?”

It came out as a sigh. He felt like he could have smiled. He was outside the rational world and didn’t have to be afraid any more.

She didn’t react at first, then her fingers tensed around his shoulders, hard enough for him to feel the freezing tips of her nails. Her grip softened a little again.

“If I open my eyes, will I be petrified?”

It was the kind of death you’d never had to imagine, never fantasised about in boring classes to prepare for the tiny possibility. Now he couldn’t imagine that it wouldn’t hurt, that you wouldn’t feel different interfaces of jagged mineral pass through your tissues, parts of your heart solidifying and come away from the fleshy ones. (That was assuming you’d die, that your consciousness would go out.)

“You will look.”

She hadn’t replied. Her accent was something he’d never heard before.

He pressed his knees against his body, twisting as far as he could into the alcove, gaze as far from her as possible. She didn’t stop him, but her hands were still on him. He could hear the staccato hiss of her snakes, the dry rustle of scales on scales.

He let his eyelids flicker up, so that he could make out shapes before they got colours and textures. If she’d been in front of him, her eyes, would he have had time to close his?

He could see the soil and the rocks in the alcove, the darkness that made it deeper, and hear a sound of running water that he hadn’t been aware of. Maybe it was just a drain, somewhere outside.

It was gloomy, rather than dark. Now that his phone was off, grey light sifted in from the windows, where it was still daylight. He couldn’t glance towards them. If it’d been completely dark, could he have barrelled past her and gone for the stairs? He could fantasise up anything. If he closed his eyes now? He’d be vulnerable, worse than vulnerable, the whole basement was a bone-breaking trap around him and she wouldn’t even need to do anything, just have to watch it toss him down and knock him. If he rigged up some sort of armour, just tied the jumper over his face? It would give him longer protection, but as soon as he fell, it would only delay her a little longer.

(Could she see? An odd question, why wouldn’t she see? Her eyes were weapons, not entrances. They were intended for something to come out.)

“I’ll go,” he managed. “I’ll leave and won’t come back again, I’ll forget where this is... why do you want to kill me?”

He still had the phone in his hand. He squeezed it until it felt gigantic in his fingers, bigger in his thoughts. She couldn’t know what it was, she hadn’t taken it. He didn’t have an address, but the house was off the E22 – to the east, nearer the coast, they could track his phone, couldn’t they? If he got it switched on, got a quick message out to the emergency service, then stalled her until they’d had time to get here. That required two actions: writing the message, and getting her to keep talking. He switched on the phone, all he needed was a blind click of his finger.

She drew a sharp breath. At his question, not at the phone. It sounded like a hiss.

“They are the ones who choose to look at me.”

It was hard to gauge the nuances in that alien voice, but he thought he heard something new this time. Did that mean an opening, weakness?

“If I close my eyes,” he began, “and get out of here without looking at you, will you believe me?”

She was silent behind him, for so long, it was possible that she hadn’t heard.

“Do you call yourself a man, if you don’t look at me?” she asked. “For men nor women can refrain from looking at me. They must see the wonder.”

Was there a ferment of spite in her voice? There he had a weak point, but he was so tired, it felt like death would be less horrible than what led up to it, than the wait.

She spoke again:

“Lie, then.”

Her voice wasn’t aggressive. It almost played with him, pulled him onward.

“Say that you don’t want to see me. You always look. You might think that you speak the truth, but you have never looked away.”

He drew a clumsy breath.

“I want to see you,” he said, his breath hitching for a second. “Will you let me see you?”

He listened to her rough breaths – but this was what she wanted from him. Her hands lifted from his shoulders until he couldn’t feel them any more.

He opened his eyes again, focusing them as hard as he could on the phone. Something pale flickered on the edge of his vision, but he still breathed, and he didn’t let it distract his gaze.

The screen had gone cold again, the phone was just a little slab of black glass, an expensive mirror. For a moment he wondered if the light might be too low for reflections. In that case, he didn’t have anything to fear.

“If you’re going to kill me anyway, can I ask a boon of you?” he said, hearing his voice grow fainter and stronger again. “Please, sit still. Don’t try to make me look.”

He couldn’t keep up the glossy hardness all the way to the end.

She gave a little “hm”, oddly human in her voice. But she wasn’t going to do anything, she wasn’t going to grip his head and twist it around. She was so certain that he would fall regardless. I haven’t done anything for her to hate me so.

He didn’t turn his little mirror towards her head straight away, because he didn’t know whether it would even soften her gaze, or whether it might work on him like a burst artery in the brain. He found part of her in the mirror and traced his way up her body. It was the aesthetics of porn, starting at the edge and working your way to the good stuff.

A foot, and that was when he knew that this wasn’t just madness, because it wasn’t shaped like a human’s, it ended in thick snarled claws. Maybe it was twisted, or it was just the way she sat. Up a leg, sallow as if she never got any sun, and on to her body, naked, not enticing. Her breasts were flat as if hunger had trapped her in some stage of childhood. What did she find to eat out here? He didn’t have to ask, he didn’t have to spend his last energy on that. He didn’t see much dirt on her, and again he thought of ponds, of deep lightless tunnels where you could hear water.

Something light flew across the reflection, a jumpscare, like a hand, but her one hand was on the rubble and the other was hidden by her side.

He needed to look at her face, but her garlands of snakes, he had to focus on them, the way you couldn’t look away from a snake when you saw it on a forest trail: the hovering threat. They were conscious, their own lifeforms; they played in the air around her face, watching him with eyes like tiny bright diamonds, their own muscle-strength keeping them raised for the strike. Once it would have been something beautiful, the young woman with her crown of high rearing serpents and her feet like eagle’s talons. They looked sickly and discoloured, almost the same sallow shade as her skin. Did they eat, or did they get nourishment from her body? The old question from when you read about Medusa in third grade.

He counted the snakes, he needed to, he needed to keep his eyes on them. He counted fourteen, but maybe there were more at the back of her head where he couldn’t see them. At least one of them just hung, dead or unconscious. Its tongue was sticking out of its mouth.

He needed to hurry on to her face.

“Please, don’t move, I want to look at you...”

He tried to see her face behind the moving snakes that grew around it, but it was hard, it was as if he had to physically press his gaze past them.

What he saw wasn’t horrible. It was testy, the same sour-milk colour as the rest of her body, cheekbones high with starvation and a tenseness around the orbital ridges. He didn’t know whether it was from annoyance and hunger, or something caused by her eyes.

He didn’t look straight at them, he couldn’t bring himself to, but he had a sensation of something pale.

He lowered the phone until it only reflected the dark of the ceiling.

She was speaking again:

“Are you going to tell me that I am beautiful?”

That was something the monster only said when it was a trap.

“That wasn’t what I was going to say...” It turned into a pause, longer than he’d wanted. He was so wearied by the fear. “You look like someone who might be a friend.”

Now he needed to keep his gaze on her, because that might be the only thing that would even the imbalance between them, but he couldn’t see anything change in her face.

She wasn’t touching him any longer, but something jolted. A few pebbles rolled down from the slide.

He needed to speak again:

“You don’t come from here, do you? Did they lock you up?”

She drew a breath as if she was going to hurt him.

“They came with mirrors and cloven sticks. We lived in a warm pond between trees. But I can’t remember the names of the trees... I can’t remember what name I had there.”

If it sounded dreamy, it was because the rage was clouding her mind.

She sat silent, as if she’d gone into a fugue, but then she went on:

“They brought me here for humans to look at. And I looked – at – them.”

He wasn’t able to ask her about anything, not in this state. There were colourless voids there, maybe more than a century of voids, that he would never know.

“Are you trapped in here? I can help you out...”

“Out, among humans?”

For the first time, he heard what her laugh sounded like.

“I am a curse.”

He got more words out, but his voice was slow. He was so worn out by everything.

“In that case, you have at least one human who wants to be your friend, if you will have him.”

She was silent for so long, but when he glanced to the right, he saw her hand lie on one of the runners of the earth pile. It had spiral-grown claws, like her feet, but he didn’t know whether that or its skinniness made it more alien. He would come back with food for her, meat.

“Do you think it will be that easy?” the Gorgon said, and it was as if she was sampling the bitterness. “That the love of a pure youth can burst the power of my eyes and turn my little sisters into soft curls?”

Adam touched her hand, then put his own over it. She didn’t flinch away.

“No. But I will stay here for as long as you like.”

He inched a bit, still with his back to her, until he found a space where the rocks didn’t poke into his flesh. The air came out of him in long faint breaths. When he looked down at his body, monochrome in the shadows, he barely recognised it, as if he’d expected something older.

He closed his eyes. With the upper and lower eyelids touching, he felt a new security.

“You will look at me, sooner or later.” It didn’t sound like mockery.

“If you don’t want me to, never.”

She inched down and stayed sitting, back against his. None of her snakes touched him. He felt her breath through her ribcage, he felt her hand in his palm, and it didn’t feel any different from a girl’s.

THE END

#fiction #horror #urban fantasy #gorgon #gothic #monster

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unenvs3000w24 · 9 months ago

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Medicine Wheel for the Planet by Dr. Jennifer Grenz

As a bookstore worker, I’m currently reading an advanced reader copy of a book called Medicine Wheel for the Planet by Dr. Jennifer Grenz. As I have begun reading this memoir, I’ve realized its connection to this class and would like to discuss it briefly. The book will be available for purchase on March 26th of this year and I encourage anyone who is intrigued by this post to go out and find a copy for themselves!

Dr. Grenz is a Nlaka'pamux Indigenous person from British Columbia who worked as an ecologist for many years and has considered it her passion from a very young age. This is a job that appears, from the viewpoint of friends and family, like you’re making meaningful change in the world by leading tasks such as cleaning up ecosystems and stopping the spread of invasive species. However, after working in the field for some time, Grenz (2024) began to realize that a lot of the work she was doing was actually meaningless and didn’t really have any positive effect on the environment. When brought up to colleagues, Grenz was met with a coldness, as if this was an unspoken thing about the field of restorative ecology. It seemed as if others within the field were privy to the pointless nature of their work, and yet wanted to put their heads down and ignore the repercussions. One example of this was when Grenz (2024) led a group of ‘at-risk’ youth on a mission to plant hundreds of conifers in an empty lot throughout two months of treacherous weather and only two years later learned that every single tree they had planted had died. Throughout this experience, she had questioned things like who is going to maintain these trees after we’re done? Is the ground here even receptive to growing plants? Why are we doing this? But she had learned to internalize these doubts. There are many examples of experiences like this throughout the book. The question that Grenz (2024) raises is, “are we really fixing it or are we working mostly to alleviate our own environmental guilt?” (p. 29). I think there is a lot of truth to this question that could be posed to much of the Western world. We often do things that we feel are “good”, not because communities that were affected by our previous actions told us it would help to reconcile the past, but because it will make our white-centric brains feel good about ourselves. This is certainly the easy route out of making real change through activism and is not often challenged.

Grenz (2024) later decided to take a break from this career path and along the way, met an Indigenous Elder, Luschiim. This new chapter of her life led her to combine her prior knowledge of Western science with her Indigenous worldview to approach restoration ecology from a new perspective, or rather, one that she hadn’t been aware of before (Grenz, 2024). I haven’t gotten very far in the book yet but I gather that she will go on to discuss the ways in which Western science is built upon Christian beliefs and how we can start to unlearn the Colonial-centered ideas that we have internalized. I look forward to learning more about Dr. Grenz’s journey and may even post more about it as I read further. I’m not entirely sure that I’m supposed to be discussing the book in such detail before it’s released but I think it’s okay (and maybe even encouraged for publicity?). Anyway, I could talk about this for a long time but I’ll keep it short. Please leave any thoughts below, I’d love to start a conversation about this.

Grenz, Jennifer. (2024). Medicine Wheel for the Planet. Knopf Canada.

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endlessknights · 3 months ago

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Here’s her family tree (character notes under the cut)

-Direwolf and Cave-Bear are twins, and a lot younger than they look. Running a kingdom will do that to you. As will being related to Cave-Bear.

-Still, Cave-Bear is the oldest Queen the IceWings have had in a while.

-Cave-Bear has a reputation for being downright nasty, but the behavior is mostly because she’s so tired of being around suck-ups that she WANTS someone to finally talk back.

-Mastodon’s plan for taking the throne is just laying low until her mother either abdicates or kicks the bucket. She knows she can’t take Cave-Bear in a fight, and is even less willing to risk it now that she has kids.

-Equus has no plans for marriage, kids, or the throne, thank you very much. She is perfectly fine being the Cool Single Aunt (aroace icon).

-The only reason they ignored the family naming conventions for Muskox was because Elk begged Mastodon to let him name their next child for MONTHS.

-Pleistocene is about the same age as Conifer, and has big plans for her future career as a jewelry maker.

-Mammoth met Fir during his first visit to the MudWing kingdom (she and her sibs work as servants in the palace) and was smitten immediately.

-Their relationship was supposed to be a secret, but the cat was out of the bag once Conifer came along (a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one).

-Fir struggled with motherhood at first, since that isn’t exactly something MudWings typically do.

-Mammoth still bounces back and forth between the Ice and Mud Kingdoms, but he makes as much time for his daughter as possible.

-Conifer enjoys her visits to the Ice Kingdom, even though Queen Great Aunt Cave-Bear is very openly unhappy about her and her mother being there.

WoF sona time!!

Conifer, the Mud/IceWing! She’s awkward, overdramatic, and just straight up-rude sometimes, but she’s trying her best despite herself.

Also did a little base edit of her to get her general design down before I added my own design elements into the mix!

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bread--quest · 2 years ago

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20 (alone, finally), jaylen alonzo?

20. alone, finally

cws very brief death mention and like...being kind of in shock? but mostly it just. uh. it got long. so

jaylen alonzo is a member of my fanteam, the portland nor'easters! she's fine with any pronouns but usually goes by she/her and has unilateral hearing loss (hearing loss in one ear), and is generally just some guy.

In only a season with the Nor'Easters, Jaylen has gotten used to being driven home in the Snowmobile along with the rest of the team. They're usually a lot like middle school bus trips, really--lots of loud chatter and laughter, the occasional sing-along. The noise makes it hard to make out any individual conversations, but that's okay. Jaylen usually sits in the back of the bus and plays a game on her phone, or posts on Tumblr, or gets lost in the Amazon Basin in Google Maps, or does whatever her favorite hobby of the week happens to be. Sometimes Madeline or Maxi or Saffron comes to sit with her, and they chat for a bit as best they can, and that's nice.

Today, the bus is silent.

Saffron and Acadia try to stir up some conversation towards the beginning of the trip, voices falsely bright, but no one rallies to take up the conversational thread. When Abbie stops the Snowmobile outside Stephen's house and he picks up his stuff to leave, Acadia calls "Be careful!" after him.

This is part of the routine. Stephen is supposed to turn back, grin, say "I'm always careful!", and then leap over the steps and generally land in mud or narrowly avoid a fall.

Tonight, he just says, so quietly Jaylen wouldn't be able to hear him if not for the silence in the rest of the bus, "I'll try."

After that, Jaylen takes out her hearing aid, thinking foolishly that it'll somehow make it harder to hear the silence. It doesn't, obviously--silence is silence no matter how well you can hear it.

Their newest hobby is Post-It note origami, and they throw themself into it wholeheartedly. They've folded about 6 tiny paper frogs and are considering trying to name them when the bus halts again and someone taps them on the shoulder.

Jaylen looks up. It's Amelie Conifer. She looks like she doesn't really want to be here, but that at least is normal.

"It's your stop," she says, gesturing towards the door.

Jaylen nods, collects her stuff, puts her hearing aid back in, and stands up to go. On the way out, impulsively, she hugs Amelie. It stands there stiffly and doesn't hug her back, but that's normal also. You wouldn't expect a tree to hug you back.

Once she's in her house, Jaylen sighs heavily and sinks to the ground, back against the door. After a few minutes of sitting there, she stands back up, drops her backpack by the door. She'll unpack it tomorrow.

She takes off her shoes, at some point. She spends several minutes standing in her room, staring blankly ahead into nothing. Then she sits down, or at least finds herself sitting down.

Star player Jaylen Hotdogfingers is incinerated!

She takes a deep breath. The weight of what just happened seemed to hang heavier when there were 13 other people remembering it alongside her. Here, in her house, she can try and forget, for just a bit.

"You are not Jaylen Hotdogfingers," she reminds herself. "You are Jaylen Alonzo, and you're not a star player for anyone. You're an average player for the Portland Nor'Easters, and that's it."

She paused.

"You're an average player for the Portland Nor'Easters, and a pretty decent slam poet, and that's it."

Another pause. Jaylen gets up and begins to walk around her room. "You're an average player for the Portland Nor'Easters, and a pretty decent slam poet, and a vintage fork collector, and that's it."

She pads downstairs, wondering idly if she has any noodles left over from last night to eat. "You're an average player for the Portland Nor'Easters, and a pretty decent slam poet, and a vintage fork collector, and a licensed moose fighter, and that's..."

#oc: jaylen alonzo #i love her to death #thankfully in the minor leagues (where the noreasters are) theres no incineration so i dont have to!! yippee #chattin #deathmason my friend deathmason #sonder scribbles #fan: gnym!!#thats my askbox cleared of fic writing games also!!! going out on a GREAT note #asked and answered!!

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lifblogs · 3 years ago

Text

Whumpay 2021: Day 27 - Accident

Missing All the Fun

read on ao3 1636 words graphic depictions of violence, star wars, the clone wars, prequels, obi-wan kenobi, anakin skywalker, hurt!obi-wan kenobi, fighter accident

Blast, this is why I hate flying.

Obi-Wan considered himself an excellent pilot (though he would never say so), but he still hated anything to do with flying. He wasn’t sure which he hated more, Anakin flying, or himself having to go into battle in his fighter.

Right now it was definitely the latter because if Anakin had been flying, perhaps his ridiculously fancy moves could have prevented all this. And by all this, well… First Obi-Wan had been fighting against the Separatist fleet, no problem, and then his ship had been shot at by vulture droids. Maneuvering away from those had caused him to crash into another fighter. His engines had died, but with nothing stopping his ship it just kept on moving. Now it’d been pulled into the planet’s orbit.

He didn’t fancy landing down there. All he saw as the ship was dragged in were mountains of ice and snow dotted with vast forests of deep green conifers.

Then, as if things weren’t bad enough, before he was within the atmosphere, the controls short-circuited, then overheated, and there was a fire in his cockpit. Problem with that was that the pressure was increasing. Increase enough, and… boom!

Not very pleasant, Obi-Wan decided.

The oxygen was decreasing too, the fire feeding off of it.

“Arfour, can’t you do anything about this?” Obi-Wan asked, voice pitched high with panic.

The droid beeped a non-committal answer at him even as she got to work.

In a few moments the computer was back online, except there was still the issue of the fire.

Arfour screeched and whirred at Obi-Wan as the ship plummeted into the atmosphere.

“No, no use,” he said, trying desperately to pull up. All that did was have the ship tilt wildly and then start barrel-rolling. Oh great. “Left engine’s still dead!” Arfour snapped at him. “Well, can you at least lower the pressure?” Obi-Wan asked, trying hard to not panic as the air became too hot, and his ears popped, and sweat was immediately soaked up from his body into the hot, dry air.

He tried to get control of the ship, feeling about it with the Force for some way to fix this predicament.

“Master, what kind of mess have you gotten yourself into this time?” Anakin asked.

Finally, someone who would know what to do.

“It’s not like I did it on purpose,” Obi-Wan argued.

Arfour sent him a message over the screen, and despite all the spinning and careening, he was able to take it in.

He tried to kill the engines, and thankfully air resistance and turbulence began to slow him down.

But still, there was Arfour’s plan.

“Are you serious?” he cried at her. “An explosion? Anakin, Arfour’s going to set off a controlled explosion on the ship.”

“With your pressure out of control that’s actually a great idea.”

Obi-Wan would’ve rolled his eyes if he wasn’t being thrashed about the cockpit.

“Of course he agrees with the droid,” he muttered.

“Arfour,” Anakin commanded, “hurry.”

“What?”

“Only way to depressurize the cockpit. Either that or I break the glass and you get sucked out and mercilessly crushed.”

“No, no thanks. I think I’ll stick with… with blowing up.”

Everything was beginning to grow blurry, the heat pressing in on him, smoke filling his lungs. He couldn’t even cough, had to just sit there and suffer from the forces around him that were out of his control.

The heat in the cockpit was rerouted to the back of the fighter, and a burst of explosion had the pressure returning to normal. Cold air filtered in, beginning to clear the smoke. Obi-Wan was relieved at being able to breathe properly again.

The explosion rocketed the ship forward and down, and Anakin began to join him in the insane dive.

“If I can attach my cables—”

“No use,” Obi-Wan said after a cough, gasping. “Your ship will just get caught up in this whole mess.”

Still, Anakin tried to attach the cable.

The cable attached just fine, but now his engines had to work doubly hard to try and slow the momentum of Obi-Wan’s fighter.

It pulled Anakin’s own fighter along, and to Obi-Wan’s surprise, he heard his former Padawan laughing. Laughing!

“Don’t tell me you’re enjoying this.”

“And you’re not?”

“I hate flying.”

“Don’t worry, Master. I got you.”

More cables were attached, and at the right angles to minimize the amount Anakin’s engines would have to work.

Obi-Wan’s ship slowed, but they couldn’t get it to stop.

It hit the trees, Anakin’s fighter detaching just beforehand, and then it collided with the icy, rocky ground.

~~~

The cockpit was being forced open when Obi-Wan came to. It was something he could feel more than he could see. Blood was dripping into his eyes, and his head absolutely ached. His whole body ached, his spine feeling as if it had been ripped from his body and then put back piece by piece in the wrong order. His tailbone and hips and even his pelvis were alight with pain, like it was some substance he’d been injected with.

Bitingly cold air met him, and then strong hands grabbed him. Groaning, he was dragged from the cockpit.

An arm wiped over his face, and he blinked open his eyes. Oh, fantastic. The world was spinning.

He tried to fight it, but it was too much. Anakin’s worried face amongst a cold, clear day swam in his vision. He closed his eyes, moaning in distress.

“Don’t worry, I called down a gunship. Kix and some of the other guys are on their way. Are you alright?”

“It’s bloody cold!” Obi-Wan complained.

Anakin must’ve shed his robe because then Obi-Wan was being lifted up, and it was being placed between him and the snow. The upper part of his body was dragged into Anakin’s lap.

A droid nudged at his arm, an arm he wished he could pull back from the stingingly frigid metal.

“Arfour…” he got out.

“Yes, she’s fine. Hey, Artoo, leave it! We’ll have to take his fighter back to a cruiser and get it fixed up there. There’s nothing you can do.”

“How… How bad is it?” Obi-Wan asked.

“You or the ship?”

Obi-Wan tried to laugh, but that jarred him too much, and he curled into Anakin, groaning in pain.

“Both.”

“Ship’s worse than you, so that’s good.”

“Well I can’t imagine what condition it’s in if I feel like this.”

“I did a scan before I got you out. Nothing’s broken.”

“Joy.”

Obi-Wan began to shiver in the cold. Anakin was as well, but he didn’t complain. Years ago he would’ve. Years ago he was a boy whose only concept was dastardly dry heat that felt like it could suck out one’s very will to live. Now here he was in the cold, probably turning blue like Obi-Wan, yet all he did was hold him, remain sturdy for him.

Guilt struck him at that, when his bleary and addled brain could make sense of it. He was the master wasn’t he? He was supposed to take care of Anakin. Not the other way around.

Yet there he was, holding him, doing what he could to shield him from the wind.

“We’re in the atmosphere, approaching your location now,” Obi-Wan heard through the comms, but didn’t really make sense of it.

His legs were beginning to have sharp pains shooting down them. There wasn’t much that could be done for now. He just hoped beyond hope that sometime soon someone would put a large, cushy pillow under his hips.

Anakin temporarily removed his arm from Obi-Wan and said into the comms, “Good, you’re missing all the fun.”

The wind picked up as the gunship came in. Obi-Wan opened his eyes, not able to take not fully knowing what was going on. Anakin swam in his vision. Besides that, his vision was beginning to work fine. But the information his brain was getting began to make less and less sense.

Anakin spoke, his voice seeming to be traveling through a vast tunnel, “Don’t worry, Obi-Wan. You’re gonna be alright.”

Obi-Wan reached up for him with a trembling arm, tried to nod, and then he lost all sense.

~~~

“Here!” Anakin called through the flurry of snow, waving his arm to get the attention of Kix and the men. They rushed over, and Anakin reluctantly relinquished his master to their care.

“Can your fighter get off-world?” Boil asked.

“I’ll be fine. Just get him stable and make sure he gets back to his cruiser in one piece. I’ll be along shortly. And get Arfour on board!”

“Right away, sir.”

Fives was shouting orders, and getting to work, even as the stretcher took Obi-Wan away.

Boil stayed behind to place a hand on Anakin’s shoulder, and just from that simple touch, he felt some of the tension coiled tight in him bleed out of him. “Don’t worry, sir. He’ll be okay. You did good.”

Anakin nodded, and grasped his arm. “You did too. Okay, get him home.”

With a nod, Boil was off, jogging to join the rest of the men.

“Force, it’s karking cold,” Anakin complained, body shuddering painfully as he climbed to his feet. “Artoo, come on. We still have a fight to win.”

Artoo beeped in excitement, and Anakin laughed.

Before he got into his fighter, he spared one last glance for Obi-Wan. The gunship doors slid closed.

Right. Now time to focus.

Anakin fired up the thrusters and the engines and took off. Through the comms he said, “Blue squadron, I’m coming back to you.”

“Good, we saved some blaster fire for you,” Broadside answered.

With a fierce grin, Anakin responded, “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

His fighter left the atmosphere, and then orbit. Back into the fray.

#star wars #star wars fanfiction #star wars: the clone wars #star wars: the clone wars fanfiction #the clone wars #the clone wars fanfiction #obi-wan kenobi #anakin skywalker #hurt!obi-wan kenobi #whump #tw: graphic depictions of violence #fanfiction #writing #my writing

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juniper-tree · 5 years ago

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The real flora of fake Zion

Fallout: New Vegas was a formative game for me. It gathered up and solidified a lot of disparate interests I’d had for years: desert life, survival medicine and ethnobotany (what Arcade does), being dumb and causing a ruckus.

The botany really stuck with me. Still working on the desert life. I am an herbalist but not a botanist (yet—for now I just watch Joey Santore and vibe) but plant IDing is a fun hobby. And nothing’s more fun than looking at 10 year old brown pixels and figuring out what the hell they’re supposed to be.

Continuing my “video game plants in real life” studies (here / here), and because I can’t stop myself from writing plants into my story, here’s a non-exhaustive list of the flora unique to FNV’s Zion Canyon in Honest Hearts.

Ephedra viridis (Mormon tea)

Mormon tea, as you may surmise from its scientific name, is a main source of ephedra, and it will fuck you up. This is trucker speed. As for its common name, well here’s a long post on some of the evidence for and against the idea that Mormon settlers used this as a coffee substitute. If you would like to imagine Joshua Graham and Daniel’s speed-fueled arguments carrying on into the night, I will certainly not stop you. By all accounts, it has a nice flavor.

(lots more behind cut)

Adiantum capillus-veneris (southern maidenhair fern)

Maidenhair fern clings to rock faces and overhangs in Zion, with no observable soil and sometimes very little water - a xerophyte. It tends to cluster and spread in crevices, as around the opening to Crossroad Cavern above. This fern is pretty prevalent in actual Zion, so it’s nice they included some climbing/vining vegetation to break up all the brown-red rock lumps.

Quercus gambelii (gambel oak)

The gambel oak is indigenous to Zion, and in the game—as well as in life—you’ll see it in various states of coloration: bright green, rust red, golden yellow. It’s one of two tree species to remain in post-apocalyptic Zion, which is still rather lush and green compared to the surrounding wasteland. I imagine that without significant acorn-eating (and spreading) wildlife, the oaks don’t thrive the way they might, radioactive blight aside.

Datura wrightii (sacred datura)

Boy, they did a nice job rendering the sacred datura plant, didn’t they? Datura wrightii is as presented in-game: highly toxic, known to cause hallucinations and sickness (death, really, if you are not knowledgeable and skilled in indigenous peoples’ practices with it), and grows in individual green clumps in the desert soil. A poisonous little oasis with inviting, pretty white flowers.

I will tell you that seeing sacred datura in person for the first time (in Joshua Tree) gave me that “she is too fond of video games and it has turned her brain” feeling. I wanted to lightly pluck the flowers and have them disappear into my invisible backpack. I did not.

Pinus ponderosa (ponderosa pine)

It took me many go-rounds to decide whether the in-game tree above was ponderosa pine or douglas fir. Something tells me the design was more “generic conifer” and not as true to life as it might be. I’m fairly confident I picked the right one, and anyway, the ponderosa pine is much more interesting. Brachyptera is the subspecies which grows in the Four Corners area. It can grow tall and bushy like the digital ones up there at Ranger Substation Eagle, or it can grow spindly and bent with high elevation and wind.

Did you know ponderosa pines were used to test atom bombs in Nevada? They took a bunch of pines from elsewhere, planted them at Area 5, and then kaboom. The trees largely fell over (video of test). Seems like they could have guessed that.

Artemisia filifolia (old man or sand sagebrush)

The sages in Honest Hearts are very scraggly indeed, sharp, spiky silvery white shrubs without much soft leaf or fuzz, like real ones. They look a bit more like Artemisia cana (silver sagebrush), but perhaps they’ve just become hardened like everybody else in the Wastes. The sand sagebrush has tons of documented uses among the indigenous peoples of the west, including as toilet paper.

Others!

Unlike some of my other investigations into video game plants, because this is set in a real, identifiable place I can touch with my own hands and feet, I don’t have to make real plant analogues from fictional ones. Except in the case of broc flower and xander root. The wiki suggests broc plants resemble Sphaeralcea ambigua, desert globemallows, and while the flowers bear a similarity, I do think this is quite intentionally a fictional plant with fictional properties. As is xander root—essentially, a turnip. Turnips are very good for you.

Of course, there are other plants common to the Mojave Wasteland which I’ve not covered here: Yucca baccata (datil or banana yucca), prickly pear Opuntia cacti (the ones they’ve drawn look kinda like Opuntia polyacantha but Opuntia phaeacantha would be more correct for the region), Agave utahensis (Nevada agave - var. nevadensis wouldn’t be in Zion but var. kaibabensis would so I won’t be picky, and anyway who’s to say how plants spread after 2077).

#video game flora #fallout new vegas #fnv #post-apocalyptic botany #long post

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s11e17 · 3 years ago

Note

5 and 16, and then 22 for A Remembered Earth! <3

ohooo 💖💖💖 fyi im answering this on mobile so if the formatting is fucked im sorry 😭

5: Share a snippet that you’re proud of from an upcoming fic/chapter.

ok for context cas has been rescued from a djinn and is telling sam what he saw in his dream

“Okay,” Sam says, “sure. If you’re really okay with it, then yeah, I’d— I’d love to know what an angel dreams about.”

Castiel wonders how to say it. “We had a house,” Castiel starts, “me and Dean.”

It was a small house. Castiel remembers that vividly. It was tall enough to feel comfortable, but with only a single floor. Two bedrooms— their room, and a guest room. Roof access. It was the kind of house where you could bump shoulders with someone in the kitchen easily, the kind of house that built intimacy. Castiel remembers Dean standing in the back door with his coffee, face turned up to the sun, as he did every morning. He was so beautiful. He’d had a smile on his face, an easy and gentle smile. He’d taken a sip of his coffee, and said, glad we started shellin’ out for the good stuff, Cas, because he knew Castiel was behind him. After so long together, Dean could trust that Castiel would always want to watch him in the morning sunlight, freckles coming in across the bridge of his nose. Some days, Castiel would kiss his shoulder, and say, You are who I cherish most in my life. Do you know that? and every time, Dean would say, Yes, sweetheart. I know.

“We were so happy,” Castiel whispers. It’s all he can think to say. He looks at the sunset. Dean will come home in an hour with new parts for the ‘58 in the garage and a spring in his step, and Castiel will say, Welcome home, Dean, and Dean will say, Thanks, man. They will sleep in separate rooms. Dean has no need for the kind of love Castiel dreams of. Dean is already as happy as he will ever be. In his own way, in the way Dean has outlined with his words and his body, Dean has delineated what it is that he wants and what it is he finds unnecessary. Castiel is honored to fit almost entirely into what Dean wants. The only thing he wishes is that he could jettison the remains.

16: Do you stick to canon when you write characters and fics?

Definitely yes! I love & respect AU writers, but I generally prefer to stay in the canon universe. I just saw a post that described fanfiction as literary analysis which really resonates with me - I find it a conpletely different beast to original fiction (both fanfic & original fic are legitimate forms of writing, but for me, they're just completely different and have few transferable skills) so stuff like worldbuilding and OC-making doesn't come easily to me.

22: Have you used any symbolism in [the remembered earth]? What does it represent?

Ahhh!! wow what a question 🥺 there are a few I can think of now, looking back:

the small trees — little shrubs, round and brittle, nothing like the Californian redwoods or even the Virginia conifers — grow at half-height and half-density, cut down by the wind and the sun and the solitude. Dean can see right through them. in this bit, those trees are definitely supposed to parallel Dean himself (or rather, his view of himself).

Dean can barely imagine surviving another year, let alone ten. But he has reason to, now — him and Cas, and the smile that comes out of Sam every so often, and the girls, and Amanda, too. “Yeah,” he grits out, feeling it like an oath. She tilts her chin at him, and he nods back, like signing a contract. This isn't really symbolism, but I very much took this concept from Lee Maracle's novel Celia's Song, wherein an agreement between Celia's nation and the longhouse snakes is broken because many members of Celia's nation (I'm avoiding the name bc I've forgotten) were killed by a plague introduced by colonizers. It doesn't matter whether they had a good reason or not -- they were unable to fulfill the terms of their agreement (taking care of the longhouse), leading to chaos. Obviously you should read the actual book rather than just taking my typed-up-in-two-minutes-summary haha, but I am interested in the idea of agreements that last beyond your lifetime, intergenerational responsibility, and how the Winchesters fit into settler colonialism. This is especially relevant since spn is filmed on unceded Coast Salish territory.

#asks #💖💖💖💖

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foursideharmony · 4 years ago

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The Cat, the Prince, and the Doorway to Imagination (Chapter 5)

Summary: Roman confronts the other Sides.

Pairings: Platonic/familial LAMP/CALM, Platonic/familial DLAMPR

Content Warnings: Violence and threats of violence, nightmare imagery

Word Count: 3,194

Read on AO3: here

“Won't be long now,” said Mr. Beaver as the group rounded a low hill. The sun was just starting to sink, and the resulting shadow made them all the colder. They had been on the move for nearly twenty hours, with only brief and infrequent rest stops, and had long since begun dragging their feet. Their trail made a continuous ragged line through the snow.

“I can't feel my anything,” Patton moaned.

“Well if nothing else,” said Mrs. Beaver, trudging alongside him and patting his hand, “they'll at least have decent campfires where we're going.”

Another twenty-five or so minutes brought them around the base of that hill and the next one, and then the Beavers led the group up the slope of a third and tallest hill. “And here we are,” said Mr. Beaver once they reached the summit. “The hill of the Stone Table.”

The hilltop was a broad space, clear of trees, with a grim gray construction in the very center: the Stone Table itself. It seemed like the whole snowscape of Narnia spread out before them, all the way to the twinkling ocean. It would have been a lovely view if not for the circumstances that had brought them there.

No one greeted them. They thought at first that no one was even there, but Virgil pointed to a hunched figure crouched on the ground some distance away from the table, tending the embers of a small fire by means of an awkwardly long poker held at full arm's length, as if she were afraid to go too near it. She was very slender, with lightly tanned skin and misty pale green hair that stuck out from her head in bristly locks, falling down to merge with her dress, which was the same color and texture.

“Ailim, is that you?” said Mr. Beaver.

“Oh!” said the woman, rising to her feet in one motion, more gracefully than any human could manage. “Beaver...I wasn't expecting you.”

“Ailim...where is everyone?”

She shook her head with a sound like leaves rustling in a breeze. “A few are nearby, keeping to cover. As for the rest...they are safe in their homes. Where else would they be? Aslan has not come after all. Of my people, only my conifer siblings and myself are even awake. The rest of our cousins still sleep.”

“Ailim is a dryad,” Mrs. Beaver explained. “That's the spirit of a tree. In her case, a fir tree.”

“And you must be the humans of the prophecy,” said Ailim. “Do you know why Aslan has not returned?”

“B-beats me, Miss,” Patton said, teeth chattering. “The story seems to have hopped off the rails at some point.”

“Oh, how rude of me not to notice how cold you are. Do come sit by the fire. She crouched to poke up the flames, and used an equally long-handled set of tongs to add another log. Soon it was crackling nicely, and the Sides were clustered around it, sitting on small boulders that had been cleared of snow and soaking up the warmth.

“It doesn't bother you?” Virgil said as Ailim fed the fire again. “Burning wood? I mean, if you're a tree too...”

“This was all fallen and dead already when it was gathered,” she explained. “No Narnian of good heart would ever cut down a living tree, or even take so much as a single branch. Sometimes an aged dryad who knows she will die soon will bequeath her wood to those who need it, but living trees are sacrosanct. Or,” she added sadly, “so it was before the White Witch came.”

“We'll figure something out,” Patton said. “I think…I think the Witch is hurting someone we care about too.”

“In the meantime,” Mr. Beaver cut in, “this lot needs food and rest.”

“Of course,” said the dryad. “There are shelters in the thickets on the southeastern slope, and provisions. Tap three times quickly and twice slowly on the large boulder and the fauns will let you inside.” She met each of their gazes in turn. “In the morning we must hold a council of war.”

*******************************************

At least Jadis's bed was comfortable enough.

Roman had found it eventually, after wandering the frozen castle for what felt like hours. It was only a broad, thick slab of ice on the floor, but it was heaped with enough blankets and furs that he was adequately shielded from the worst of the cold, both from the frigid air of the castle and the bed itself. He crawled in, his head still spinning, and wrapped himself in layers of bedding like a caterpillar forming its cocoon.

Sleep came quickly, but proper rest did not; Roman's dreams were full of ice and crystal and stone and snowflakes that came spinning down out of a black sky like tiny sawmill blades. Where they touched him he flinched and bled, and his blood was the pale turquoise of a glacial core. It whispered to him in sounds that were almost words and phrases in a language he only partially understood.

Perhaps he thrashed or cried out in his sleep, but if so, no one noticed or responded.

And with the coming of the dawn, Roman opened his eyes...and knew who he was. And what he was.

*******************************************

The war council never happened.

After their long trek, the Sides had just enough energy left to swallow a few mouthfuls of the stew the fauns had prepared and fall asleep on rough cots in a den of sorts excavated from the hillside. The Narnians hadn't the heart to disturb them, and they didn't wake until the sun was well over the horizon, and then only because a strange, piercing sound was blaring from outside the shelter, coming from some distance away. It was like a horn, but shriller, and it set their teeth on edge.

Bleary-eyed from stolen sleep, they bustled out to find their hosts interrupted in the act of preparing breakfast. “What's going on?” Patton yawned. “Is it time for the council meeting thingie?”

“We're not sure,” said one of the fauns, whose name escaped him. The peculiar sound continued at intervals of a few seconds, and seemed intended as a signal of some kind.

“Something is approaching!” came Ailim’s voice from the hilltop. “Let us all gather as a show of our numbers!”

“What numbers,” Virgil muttered, but he joined the other two, and the Beavers and fauns and other handful of Narnian citizens now emerging from their respective shelters, in hiking back up to the summit, where Ailim was waiting with another dryad, taller and wirier than herself. They got there just in time to see, bursting through the trees on the northern slope, a Dwarf they barely recognized as the White Witch’s driver. He was blowing on some kind of wind instrument that appeared to be made from silvery crystal—or perhaps ice—which was of course the sound they had all been hearing. Behind him, further downslope, there was some kind of commotion that wasn’t yet visible through the brush and piled snow.

“Narnians!” bellowed the Dwarf. “Make ready to receive your most exalted ruler, the White Warlock!”

“What?” Virgil growled.

“White Warlock?” said Patton. “No, it’s supposed to be the White Witch. A scary lady! I remember that part!”

“'Warlock' is a semi-archaic term for a male witch,” Logan observed.

“Guys, I have the worst feeling about this…” said Virgil.

More creatures were emerging from the trees on the hill slope, and it took the Sides a moment to realize that they were looking at a procession of monsters. First was a group of Goblin heralds carrying gonfalons that seemed to consist only of crosspieces crusted with masses of icicles. Then came a formation of Dwarf archers, and then several Ogres bearing clubs. Following this were a few Hags, hissing and pointing threateningly into the gathering.

(“What is this, the whole bloody entourage?” whispered Mr. Beaver. “Dear! Mind your language!” Mrs. Beaver retorted.)

As the procession reached the hilltop, it broke to its right, circling the space counterclockwise and fanning out along the other side of the Stone Table from the Sides and their allies, effectively corralling them—they could retreat, technically, but there was only one direction available; they would be easy pickings if they tried.

Finally, the White Warlock himself appeared, lounging in a fur-lined sedan chair on the shoulders of four massive Minotaurs. His crown glittered as he moved in and out of patches of shade and his robe was made entirely of ermine, with a train that trailed behind the chair for ten yards, held off the ground by a team of Yew-dryads, their short shaggy hair speckled with scarlet berries. The Minotaurs crested the hill, and one of them kicked snow over the smoldering campfire, extinguishing it. They eased the chair down, and the Warlock rose from his seat, stepped lightly to the ground, and turned to face them.

It was Roman...and he was wrong.

They knew what “evil Roman” was supposed to look like. The fans loved to imagine him, for some reason, and they tagged Thomas in their fanart of the concept often enough that the Sides were familiar with the consensus image: the haughty expression, the gaudy gold crown studded with rubies, and especially the transformation of his suit from pristine, heroic white to Disney Villain black.

It wasn't...it wasn't supposed to become even whiter. It wasn't supposed to gleam almost too bright to look at in the sunlight, so that even the ermine barely looked white by comparison. The gold braid wasn't supposed to be replaced with silver, nor the noble red of his sash with a dusky grayish mauve like dried rose petals under a veneer of frost. The crown was not supposed to be made of silvery ice, with only a single huge diamond set under the central point.

His hair was not supposed to be shot through with white strands that turned out, upon closer inspection, to be ornamentation of impossibly delicate ice filigree. His eyes were definitely not supposed to be gray, flecked with blue-green. And he was not supposed to be pale, but he was—paler than Virgil, if such a thing were possible, lacking even a cold-induced blush to his cheeks, yet without looking the least bit unhealthy. It was as if he had been molded out of ivory.

The only hint of warmth in his appearance was that diamond, which flashed all the colors of fire.

He was wrong.

“Hark! You are all guilty of high treason against the Crown!” he said without preamble, and his voice at least, if not the disdainful tone, was familiar. “Except you three,” he added with a curt nod at his fellow Sides. “However! We are in a lenient mood! Abandon your rebellion at once, and swear fealty to us, and you will not be punished...this time. As for you...” He addressed the Sides again, and for just a moment, his cold arrogance retreated, “...in exchange for your fealty, I will make you all lesser Kings in my court. Think of it! This glorious winter kingdom could belong to all of us!”

The Narnians shuffled on their feet, making no reply. The Sides traded glances, Logan frowning uncertainly and Virgil shaking his head with a haunted expression. Finally, Patton spoke.

“Roman...this isn't fun anymore, with you acting like this. This isn't how you said the story was going to go. Can we just...go home? We can talk out whatever's bothering you.”

It was shocking how quickly Roman's eyes hardened. “I will not be mocked,” he said, low and dangerous. “You have one day and night to change your minds...or else prepare for war. And these—” he made an expansive gesture at the creatures he had brought with him, “—are merely the outermost tip of my armies.” He returned to his sedan chair and the Minotaurs hoisted it up. The procession began to descend the hill.

“Down with the White Warlock!” blurted the taller Dryad, Ailim's companion. “Aslan is King!”

Roman's head whipped around to glare at her. Without a single word, he nodded to the nearest of the Hags, and she lunged at the Dryad, shrieking and making a throwing gesture. There was something like a flash of light in reverse—a flash of darkness—and the tall tree-spirit sank to the ground with a sigh.

“Muricata!” Ailim cried as one of the Ogres stepped forward and lifted the fallen nymph in one massive hand.

“Find her tree,” growled the White Warlock. “Cut it down while she watches.”

“No! Please!” Ailim begged. “She is my sister!”

“Take the other one as well. Let them both watch.” A second Ogre seized Ailim and began dragging her along while she screamed in terror and grief.

“Roman!” Patton gasped. “H-how could you?”

“Don't make me punish you as well!” Roman snarled. “Move out!”

The procession withdrew back down the hill, leaving the Narnians devastated and the Sides both bewildered and appalled. “So now what?” Virgil said, pacing erratically and pulling at his hair. “This is really bad, you guys. Super bad. We're not just talking rail-jumping here. Roman's taken a flying leap off...off something, I don't know, but there is something wrong with him. I thought maybe he was just throwing a surprise twist at us, but did you see him? That look in his eyes? This is so bad—”

“Virgil, you are spiraling,” said Logan. “Try one of your breathing exercises.”

“I don't understand,” said Patton. “Why would Roman go this far? Do you think he's mad at us for something?”

“It is possible,” said Logan. “He has undergone a number of upsetting occurrences recently, and his mood has not been the most stable. Then again, with his talk of 'swearing fealty'...perhaps he is simply craving validation.”

“Should we just give it to him then?” said Virgil. I mean if it's the fastest way to get him off the crazy train...”

“Unfortunately, I have to advise against indulging him in this,” said Logan. “While it may work in the short term to, as you say, 'get him off the crazy train'—which does not sound like a practical or enjoyable means of transportation, by the way—the likely long-term effect would be to encourage him to continue these destructive methods of addressing his self-esteem deficits.”

“Patton, you're the 'should' guy around here...what should we do?”

“I'm honestly thinking we should just leave. The best way to send a message that the game is no good, is to quit playing. He can grapple with his feelings as long as he needs to, and we'll be there for him when he's ready to come out and talk.”

“I would tend to agree,” said Logan, “but I doubt there is any way for us to leave the Imagination without Roman noticing, and in his current state he would be certain to take steps to stop us, possibly violently.” He began to pace rapidly, wearing a tamped-down groove in the snow. “However...perhaps one of us could make it back to the door undetected, leave, and come back with...additional resources.”

“What kind of 'additional resources' did you have in mind?” said Virgil.

“It occurs to me,” Logan said, still pacing, “that Roman is rather...comfortable, with the three of us. That may cause him to take our points of view for granted, which ironically makes him less likely to listen to us than to someone with whom he might experience more interpersonal friction.”

There was a beat while Virgil and Patton took that in. “Oh, no!” Virgil said after a moment. “If you're suggesting what I think you're suggesting, then...no. I can't agree with that.”

“Just so we're on the same page,” Patton said carefully, “you want to go get Janus? You think he could help?”

“I think his presence might shock Roman just enough to shake him out of his assumptions about how this story is meant to go,” Logan explained.

“You could be right,” said Patton. “Roman arranged all this because he hasn't felt much like a hero ever since we started including Janus in our discussions. But somehow he wound up going completely the other way, to being the villain. Maybe seeing Janus will remind him of what he's trying to avoid?”

“Okay, cool, so I'm outvoted. Coolcoolcoolcoolcoolcool. So which one of us should go?”

“I was planning on doing it myself,” said Logan. “It would not be fair to ask you to carry out a plan to which you object, and between myself and Patton, I believe I have a greater chance of making the trek without getting sidetracked or losing my nerve. No offense, Patton.”

“None taken. It's an awfully long way to go by yourself, though. Are you sure you even know the way?”

“I have an excellent head for navigation and I believe I can triangulate the location of the door based on our travels thus far. I would feel more confident if I had some form of transportation, however.”

“I can carry you, sir,” said a deep but young-sounding voice from among the Narnians. It was the largest of those gathered, a Talking Bear not quite full grown but undeniably burly and powerful. “Name of Stoutpaws, sir. I'm not as good as a Horse but I'll do my best.”

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Stoutpaws. My name is Logan. If we start now, I estimate you can get me to my destination before sundown.”

“You're leaving already?” Patton said, fretting.

“Roman has only given us until tomorrow, Patton. Given the round trip, I need to use every minute I can to make sure I bring Janus back here before the deadline.”

Patton strode up and pulled him into a hug. “You be careful.”

“Likewise,” said Logan.

“I'll guard him with my life, sir,” said Stoutpaws. He crouched on all fours so that Logan could climb onto his back and then loped away down the westward slope of the hill.

“Gosh, things are happening fast,” Patton said, watching them go. “It all started so simply.”

“Come on, Pat,” said Virgil with a lopsided smile that got nowhere near his eyes, “you should know by now that nothing in this mind of Thomas's is ever simple. And on that note...we should probably pull this bunch together and come up with some contingency plans, just in case Logan doesn't get back in time.”

“Yeah,” Patton agreed noncommittally. “And someone oughta buck them up. They just watched two of their own get dragged away by the bad guys to be...” He trailed off.

“Don't think about it too much,” Virgil said. “Just...yeah, don't think about it.” The gathering was breaking up, the Narnians returning dejected to their hillside shelters. Patton and Virgil joined them.

Unseen in the snow-dusted brush nearby, someone was watching...

#sanders sides #fanfiction #lamp/calm #Platonic LAMP/CALM #dlampr #platonic dlampr #narnia #sympathetic janus #sympathetic remus #villainous roman

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aiorevelations · 3 years ago

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A Number, Not a Name: Part 14!

Another chapter for tonight!! :)

Three months earlier:

The flight to Bulin was cramped. Sweaty and hot passengers all stacked on top of one another. I had no idea so many people visited Krudia now. Though I guess I wouldn’t know considering how long it’s been. Liana sat next to a window six rows back in economy class, wearing a blank expression on her face. Growing up she had always flown first class with her family but now she thought it best to have a seat near the back of the plane, not wanting to draw unwanted attention to herself.

The sound of a baby’s cries echoed through the cabin, joining that of the engine rumbling and passengers snoring as they slept. Liana let out a sigh. Children, though at times a joy to have and be around, often served as a source of annoyance. Especially when it came to crying children on a flight. Her thoughts were interrupted as a voice came from the seat beside her. “So what brings you to Krudia?”

Liana looked over at the older woman and smiled. “Business, and yourself?”

“I’m actually returning home. I just visited my daughter and her husband. They live in Hungary. Every time I visit they keep trying to convince me to move there. They’re always saying how it’s so much nicer and a much better place to live than Krudia. I know they’re right but Krudia is where I’ve lived my whole life. My family’s ancestral home. There is so much history, you know?”

Liana nodded. “I understand.”

“Whenever I visit them I make sure not to stay too long. Otherwise, I’m afraid they’ll persuade me to move.” She chuckled to herself. “Is this your first time visiting Krudia?”

“Yes. It’s my first time.” Liana lied. She hoped she sounded convincing enough.

The older woman seemed to believe her words as she nodded her head. “Well, I hope that you’ll find your stay here pleasant and enjoyable.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Liana turned to look out the window, hoping the lady would take it as a sign to end their conversation. But the woman continued to chatter on.

“If you have the time I would highly recommend visiting the Izmirlian Square. It truly is magnificent. The marble statues and fountains. The Ionic columns.”

Liana turned back to the woman. “Oh it sounds…wonderful” she replied in a disinterested fashion.

The woman clapped her hands once in excitement. “I didn’t even mention the square’s historical significance. You seem like a girl who likes history. I mean, who doesn’t like history. My ex-fiancé was actually a history teacher…” The woman continued to prattle on. Liana quickly looked at her watch and sighed. There were still nearly five hours left for the flight. I should have traveled in first class instead. “Though it may be somewhat difficult to have the best experience at the square, what with all the rallies and loud marches of Dalmar’s supporters.” Liana sat up in her seat as she heard Dalmar’s name.

“Dalmar? As in Davit Dalmar of Dalmar Petroleum Corporation?”

“One and the same.”

“I think I remember hearing that he announced a run for parliament and that it was met with a mixed reaction.”

“I’ve never seen a group of people more devoted to a person. And I’ve lived quite a while.”

Liana looked ahead, lost in thought. “You ever wonder what causes that much loyalty…devotion in a person, that they’d stay by someone’s side no matter what.” She said softly, a hint of sadness in her voice.

“Hmmm,” the woman thought for a moment. “Either love or desperation I suppose. Though in Dalmar’s case I’d be surprised if it wasn’t the latter.”

Liana glanced out the window again. “I have a feeling it doesn’t matter which one it is to Dalmar.”

…..

Present-day:

The moon shone brightly overhead, illuminating the forest and the security guards with a pale, bluish light. The strong scent of pine filled the air, reminding Jason of the smells of Christmas time. All around he was surrounded by an assortment of trees, pine, birch, and conifer. He continued to follow the men as quietly as possible, careful not to step on any twigs or branches lying on the ground. The lights of the mansion had long before faded away into the black of night. Jason guessed that he’d come about three or four miles as he’d been walking for almost an hour. I just hope this isn’t a wild goose chase. Just then the security guards came to a sudden stop. Jason ducked behind a pine tree, keeping his eyes fixed on the guards. The two of them walked toward what looked like some sort of structure. Jason leaned forward trying to get a better look. It appeared to be an old warehouse. He made his way closer to the building and then darted to the trees on the south side of the structure. He reached the edge of the tree line and looked around in all directions. Seeing no one in sight he headed for the south wall of the warehouse. Carefully, he made his way along the side of the building towards the entrance. As he walked he heard male voices, he assumed from the two men he’d followed, grow louder.

He peered around the corner of the building and saw the guards by the metal door. One of the two men typed in a code on the security keypad. The door slid open and the two men entered. Jason waited several minutes to make sure no one else was around. He glanced around once again, before heading to the door. Jason quickly punched in the code he’d seen the guard type in the pad. Good thing I have Mom’s photographic memory. The metal door opened and Jason stepped inside the warehouse. He nearly flinched as the door shut behind him, leaving him in the dark. He still wasn’t entirely sure of this plan but it was too late to back out now.

He took a deep breath and walked further on. He anxiously looked around trying to locate any armaments that could be there or something that pointed to its location. Jason stayed on high alert, knowing that at any moment he could be spotted.

Near the middle of the corridor, Jason saw a door leading off into another room. He stepped through the doorway and scanned the space inside. The room was filled with lab tables and accouterments, mainly of a chemical nature. Beakers, tubes, and burners were strewn all over the tables. Some were broken, but it appeared most of the lab equipment hadn’t been touched. In fact, much of it still was contained in boxes stacked against one of the walls. The floor was covered in broken glass and what appeared to Jason as a reddish-brown “dirt.” The lab tables and equipment were also covered in the same substance. Well someone forgot to clean in here. He then saw what appeared to be traces of blood splattered on the floor and walls of the room. One could only imagine what horrors had taken place where he was standing. He swallowed as he felt an eerily sense of uneasiness begin to wash over him. He shook it off and made his way to one of the tables and quickly browsed the items placed on it. Finding nothing he dusted his hands off and headed back to the corridor.

Jason looked through the other rooms off the hall but found nothing except empty cardboard boxes. At the end of the corridor, he came to a stairwell. He quietly made his way down the stairs to the level below. At the last stair landing, he spotted the two guards he had followed walking down the hall in front of him. The hall was dank and dark, with two doors lining each side of the aisle. Warehouse pendant lights flickered from above, the only source of light in the hall. The only sounds were the scuffling of shoes against the concrete floor and voices coming from farther down the aisle. Jason didn’t know what was said as the conversation was in another language, he assumed Krudian. The security guards entered a side door on the left side of the corridor, the source of the discussion, and shut the door behind them. Jason waited a few seconds and then descended the rest of the metal stairs. He went inside the room to the right.

The room was small and box-like. A metal desk, layered with dust, filled the room. Under the desk was a gray shag rug that looked like it used to be white. He began cautiously pacing the perimeter of the room and walked to the desk, which he began searching through. All he found was some old tattered notes, crumbled together, in a drawer. Jason unfolded and laid them out on the desk. He couldn’t decipher much, but from the chemical formulas they contained, he guessed they probably were reports and results of the lab tests carried out. He placed them back in the desk and took his time closing the drawer. Jason started to exit the room when he felt something blow against his foot, a draft. He knelt down to the floor and saw that part of the wall did not go all the way to the ground. The gap was so obscure you’d never notice it unless you were actively looking for a hidden room or place where something could be hidden. He wasn’t entirely sure but there seemed to be another room behind the wall. Jason examined the wall and the floor carefully, trying to find anything that would open the door.

He spotted something, a mark on the wall. At first glance, it looked as though only a scuff or screw but if you looked closely enough you’d see that it was a very tiny button of sorts. Jason pressed the button and was rewarded with a metallic click. He took a few steps inside and saw it was a tunnel. Inch by inch he maneuvered his way through the boxes that lined that shaft, checking them each as he went along for any evidence he could find useful. At the end of the long shaft, he saw a door with a frosted window over which “Private” had been printed in gold lettering. Jason stopped at the door and twisted the knob. It didn’t open. He tried again, this time straining with the effort. It still didn’t budge. “This guy sure is a security freak” he muttered under his breath. “Good thing I came prepared.” Jason reached into his right shoe and pulled out a lock picking device under his foot. He inserted the device into the keyhole of the door handle and twisted it to the side. The door swung open and Jason stepped inside the office.

The room was covered all around with wooden panels and on the wall, directly in front of Jason, was an oak bookcase that took up its entire length. In the center was a large worn mahogany desk, its veneer long ago rubbed off. Behind it was a tattered leather chair. The only things Jason saw on the desk were a hand-blown glass lamp at one end and stationery and a pen on the other. He noticed that the top drawer had a keyhole in its center. He pulled out his lock-picking device again and placed it in the keyhole. The drawer came open and Jason peered inside. It was empty. He felt around the drawer trying to see if there was perhaps something he was missing. He found it. He discovered that the back of the drawer felt slightly different than the rest. The other part of the surface felt wooden while this section was smooth, almost like plastic. Jason decided to investigate further. He pulled out his trusty pen from his suit pocket. He clicked the bottom metal button and a blade released.

He started cutting around the suspect area. Once he was finished he pulled that section of the drawer away and discovered that it was a computer. The top of it had been made to look exactly like the wood of the desk. Jason laid it carefully on the desk, opened it, and turned it on. The computer screen flickered to life. On the login screen, Jason saw the computer was protected by a passcode. Thankfully, he had much experience when it came to computers and codes and was able to bypass the system in a few minutes. After accessing the home screen of the laptop Jason looked at the names of the different files. His eyes landed on a file titled “Feuersturm.” Meaning “Firestorm” in German which he then clicked on. Jason could sense that he was very close to the intelligence he and Tasha desperately needed. As the file loaded he silently prayed that it was what he was looking for. Even more fervently he prayed that he wouldn’t be caught. That was the one thing they couldn’t afford.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the file finished loading. Jason quickly scanned it. Unsurprisingly, yet still, frustratingly to Jason, the file was encrypted. He sighed. Well, this is going to take a while.

…..

“And this portrait,” Dalmar motioned to the piece on the wall, “depicts General Davit Ajemian.”

“Davit?” Tasha smiled. “You weren’t by any chance named after him were you?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I was.” He leaned in closer to her. “My mother was a historian and said she wanted me to be imbued with the qualities and traits that he possessed.”

“Oh?”

“Courage. Perseverance. Ambition.”

“You certainly have those qualities and then some.”

“Why thank you.” He took a sip from his glass. “There was a famous battle. The Battle of Sommone. Sommone is a small town about an hour or so away from here. It was the First World War and the Turks had invaded our country. They had nearly taken it over and all hope seemed lost. The country, the army, was prepared to surrender. Except for Ajemian. He led his troops bravely at Sommone and defeated the Turks. That marked the turning point in the war.”

“I can see why he's admired so much.”

“His philosophy on life, especially on that fateful day, is one I have taken to heart. Never surrender. No matter what setbacks, no matter what obstacles, I don’t accept defeat.”

“It seems you and I are kindred spirits. I don’t accept defeat…and I don’t take no for an answer.”

“Why do I have the feeling you’re trying to tell me something.”

“I am. You’re just trying your hardest not to listen.” Tasha sassed.

Dalmar smirked and took another sip of champagne. Try as he might not to be, he found himself fascinated by Tasha. The way she matched his fire and wit. Others would find themselves intimidated by his words, and even by his mere presence, but not her. He knew she had her eyes set on learning more from him. And he for his part was reluctant to give her that which she desired. It appeared they were at an impasse. Involved in a sort of dance, going back and forth. Caught up in a game few knew the rules of, but that they each were determined to win. It was only a question of who would prevail.

“Speaking of listening. I would love to hear your thoughts on the orchestra.”

“They are incredible.” Tasha glanced, beyond the men and women waltzing, towards the orchestra in the corner of the ballroom. “The musical selections for this evening have been wonderful. I especially love the piece they’re playing now, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. The way the music slows almost to a standstill and then how all the sections come join together into a crescendo. It truly is a masterpiece.”

“Mozart was indeed a musical genius.”

“He certainly was,” Tasha responded.

Dalmar placed his champagne glass on a marble table and extended his hand to Tasha. “May I have the pleasure of dancing with you?”

“Of course,” Tasha answered. Dalmar took her hand and the two of them made their way into the center of the ballroom. Tasha placed her hand on Dalmar’s shoulder while he wrapped his arm around her waist. Dalmar pulled her in closer towards him and they began to waltz across the dance floor. Tasha felt unnerved and even disgusted by being in Dalmar’s arms however as they danced she made sure to smile and laugh. As though she truly was enjoying being with him. Tasha knew that she couldn’t let her true feelings and emotions be seen while on this mission or any mission for that matter. It was part of her basic training as an agent. Repeated over and over to stress its importance. Whatever happened on the field, no matter how horrific or unsettling, you couldn’t let your emotions control you or your actions. That choice alone could be the difference between whether or not your cover would be blown.

Tasha’s thoughts once again drifted to Jason. He had been on her mind ever since she saw him sneak off into the woods earlier that evening. She had tried not to think of him, to not be affected by his actions, so she could stay completely focused on the task at hand. But so far that had proven to be impossible. She couldn’t help but wonder about him. What he was doing. If he was alright. Be angry at him for putting their assignment and lives into jeopardy.

I just don’t understand why Jason had to go off on his own like that. Is he trying to blow our cover? I guess Donovan was right about him. Most first-time agents are too eager to prove themselves. I just had to brush Donovan off, didn’t I? If this whole thing blows up. If we’re discovered…stop it Tasha. You can’t think about the worst-case scenario. Not now. I have to focus on Dalmar. Get the info we need…that’s the only thing that matters right now.

Dalmar looked Tasha up and down, and then glanced deeply into her eyes. “I have to say you look stunning. That color looks divine on you. It brings out your emerald eyes.”

Tasha looked down to the side and gave a slight smile. “I had to look the part. I’ve never had a gala hosted in my honor before. Or at least partly in my honor.”

“For you, I’d host a hundred galas.”

Tasha furrowed her brow “Really? A hundred huh?”

“Or a thousand. Whatever you’d like.”

Is this guy really acting like a love-sick puppy? I’m seriously not getting paid enough for this. But I might as well use it to my advantage.

Dalmar held his arm up and twirled Tasha. “Yet you can’t find it in your heart to even consider my request.”

“As I said before I’m in the habit of-”

“Not disclosing much to those around you. Though I must confess I don’t understand why. If you look at the great men of history they all had someone they could rely upon. Someone to confide in. Julius Caesar had Cleopatra. King Ferdinand, Queen Isabella. FDR, Eleanor. Nothing would satisfy me more than being that to you. Are you truly going to say that possibility doesn’t even interest you?” She paused. “Besides, I always have my way…eventually.”

Dalmar stopped dancing and thought for a moment. Tasha could almost see the wheels turning in his head. She waited anxiously for his reply. Hoping her words had been enough to convince him.

“One condition”

“And that is?”

“You promise to visit Krudia…and me…as often as you can.”

“As if you could keep me away.” Tasha flirted.

A huge boyish grin spread across Dalmar’s face. “It looks like we have a deal.”

“It appears so” she smiled.

“Well, if you’ll excuse me, I have a limo ride I need to arrange for us.” Dalmar slowly released his hand from Tasha’s waist and walked over to where Wilhelm was standing in the corner of the ballroom.

As Dalmar walked away Tasha let out a breath she’d hadn’t realized she’d been holding in. Yeah, I’m definitely not paid enough for this.

#AIO Fanfiction #aio fanfic #aio #Adventures in odyssey #adventuresinodyssey #jason whittaker #tasha forbes #jason and tasha #fanfic #fanfiction

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dredgenshrike-defunct · 3 years ago

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Appalachian Mountains

Kit reckoned the closest he ever felt to home was in the forest.

Not the EDZ- damn the EDZ. Old america had a lot of deserts but it had just as many mountain ranges. Places deep enough you'd find old decrepit white houses, unlooted. Places deep enough that no one'd hear you scream.

He came back here often, for different reasons. Usually alone. His shotgun hung loosely from his right hand, safety on as he stepped up the ledge. Poison Ivy licked at the ankles of his boots and so did old, dead bushes. The forest was so thick it was dark- most of the sunlight came from tiny spots on lines on the ground where the tree tops shied away from each other, but Kit knew these woods and could navigate them all the same.

It was different from how Shrike could- Shrike could track something for miles and then come back. He knew the way that pacific northwest forests grew- could get through the evergreens and conifers while barely glancing around to his surroundings. Kit just knew- like these forests had trails ingrained into his instincts.

Like his ribs were the twisting, thick tree roots and his hands could just as well match the shadows of branches on the ground. Where his eyes looked just the same, glowing in the darkness as any Mountain Lions. Until he knew exactly where he was- even in the middle of trees that looked all the same.

Shrike always used to warn him, that when the forest called you in such a visceral way, that you should never answer the call. Always used to say that that wasn't the forest and Kit thought it was bullshit. Only a force of nature could elicit something so deep and visceral, so ingrained in ones nature to bring them to actually answer.

Kit came to the place he was looking for by midday. The trees let up until sun scattered across grass, and an overgrown dirt road. It was an old town- and Kit passed by an old house that had its entire front part caved in. A barn with marks that stretched down its entire front and a school that looked half burned. He came to the back of the town- past a sign, half decrepit that said something or another about sinners.

The back held a church, gravestones littered out front. Kit stared for a minute before that feeling hit again- here.

He walked towards the church, climbing up the steps to stand in the doorway. Stained glass scattered light across the wooden floor is prismacolor, and he heard a nest of birds above him. Maybe bats. Kit didn't look up.

He walked to the back of the room, past pews that were long abandoned as his boots creaked these long sounds against the floorboards. The altar in the front had an old statue behind it but it had been long knocked down. He climbed up behind it all the same, crouching down at the sight of a door.

Kits fingers tightened around it until he pulled it open with some struggle. He stared down the steps uneasily, before stepping down slowly.

The walls were lined with stone and he was careful of parts of the ceiling that looked like they were soon to cave in. The middle of the room had a Guardian.

Dead. To something or another. Their chest was organic but had plants growing through it- gotten bad from Stasis Kit judged, from how the edges of the hole in the chest were blue. The front was clawed out but the back had pierce holes, like a giant deers antlers. Kit flipped his shotgun and poked at the Guardian with the stock. Long dead, and no Ghost, he guessed. Their legs had been broken, and kit muttered something over not liking that sight.

He continued passed them, towards the back. He kicked some dust away, before he leaned down. The soil seemed to grab at his legs, but Kit ignored it, knowing no harm would ever come to him as he dragged a skull from the dirt.

A wolfs skull, malformed. Too big. He held it up in front of him- examining it. He then shifted it until he could hold it by the front, switching his shotgun to his other hand and turning back around.

The shadows felt like they clawed at him, whispering but Kit ignored it. He climbed back out of the basement, shaking off the dust. He took the skull back out, pausing at the cross in front of it. He set it over the top, maybe in some sort of warning before he leaned down.

He carved 'Fire and Flood' across the cross, with the claws on his gloves before standing back up. Fire for what had clearly been burnt- flood for what looked like water damage. He looked back at the town, knowing he wasn't that great with words. He looked back at the cross…

Kit stepped away, walking into the forest and it was a few hours before he returned. He set a decrepit deer skull at the bottom of the cross, half grown over with moss and leaves. He stood back to stared at it, setting the shotgun stock into the ground.

Deers and wolves beware.

The woods around him seemed to hum with some kind of appreciation. It looked like an altar, borne of hatred and death and Kit supposed that wasn't false. Damned be the deer, with crowns of spikes and damned be the wolves, with mouths of razors.

Kit moved on.

☆

The air near the peaks was colder. This kind of cool that felt too nice- something he'd love to have often. A fog covered the low ground, shifting around his every step. He could see animals stare as he walked by but Kit wouldn't hurt them. Instead, he came to his own area.

He wondered why he chose a house so far away from any transmattable zone sometimes. Exploring was fun but even a straight hike to this place took a while.

Kit opened the door, and it creaked slowly. The inside of the house had filtered sunlight, with things painted on lighter walls and plants sitting on every windowsill.

He went through to flick on the lights, peeling off his helmet and setting his shotgun against a door. He stepped to the kitchen, unwrapping his cloak-like coat and setting it against it.

Kit opened the window above the sink, not jumping as a grey-blue cat popped up after him. He grabbed some dried fruits that he kept stored- before popping back up and reaching out to pet the cat.

"Looks like your hunts have been going well, mellilla." He said, noticing the cat seemed just as plump. She wasn't his, in truth- Feral in most ways, but she adored him. He adored hee too- gave her the name of Goose in the end but she usually was called by some sort of nickname.

He stepped out towards the back door, as the cat jumped down to the counter then to the floor to follow him. He stepped out and sat on the steps outside, cooing something. A small dark creature, with white marks waddled out, squeaking at him.

Kit held his palm out flat, with the dried fruit inside. The skunk grabbed one of the pieces, squeaking at him a few more times before beginning to nibble at it.

Kit chuckled, watching the thing eat. He reached out in his opposite hand to scratch at its head. "And scavenging seems to be going well for you too, Mi ocelle." He set the rest of the fruit on the ground, leaving the back door open as he stepped inside. He heard the skunk grab another piece, before scampering after him with tiny hops.

Goose rounded at his legs, mrow-ing at him before jumping back onto the counter. He reached out to pet her, and she purred as she rubbed against his hand. Kit stared ar her for a moment as he pet her, thinking. He wondered if….

Hmmm. He wasn't sure. He was bad at gauging if people were cat or dog people- and as Kit turned around to gently pick up the skunk, wary of startling him, he realized that skunks were an acquired interest of having them as pets as well. They could be affectionate, very affectionate, but needed some time to warm up, and some slower actions to not scare them. He pet the skunks head- who he had lovingly named Apple- gently, as it nibbled on more fruit contentedly.

Kit looked back at the Cat, setting Apple back down. "It seems I need to either go fishing or shopping for you, princess. Apple's getting all the food and you look so left out…" He giggled, as the Cat meowed back at him. "I know! It's such a travesty…" Oh, he loved how talkative Goose was.

Kit scratched under her head, before patting his thighs and backing off. "C'mon then girl. Lets go get you some fish. Traveler knows I couldn't leave you out." He said, turning to step back out the door.

He took a breath of the air again as he stepped out, and down the steps. Past the dried fruit that Apple immediatly flocked to again.

Oh, how he had missed this place.

#//not rp #//writing #Four Of Cups ☆ Kit #//this is probably dogshit i just wanted my thoughts down #//im tired

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atamascolily · 4 years ago

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lily liveblogs BBC Atlantis 1x02, “A Girl By Any Other Name” (first half)

I actually watched this months ago, but I got interrupted about halfway through, and then there was a global pandemic and I lost my groove. This got super-long, so I’m gonna post it in two parts.

Thanks to @girlwhowasntthere for her help in making sure I could see it, and also for pointing out that Ariadne draws a stone in the first episode (which I totally missed!) so she's not just resting on her privilege there. Good for her!

In the pilot, we were introduced to Atlantis through the eyes of Jason, a dude from our world who has surprising connections to this city of dragons and despots that nobody *cough ORACLE cough* wants to tell him about. But he's managed to pick up two new friends - gruff-but-not-so-secretly soft Hercules, and Pythagoras (yes, that one) - as well as a love interest, an ominous enemy, and Not Die several times in exciting and dramatic ways.

Based on the teaser, it looks like the show is about to introduce another female character, which I am super-excited about, even though the name "Medusa" brings up All Kinds of Questions.

(cut for length and for lots and lots of botanical confusion)

Forest at night. Woman running through the woods while something ominous chases her. Are there forests in Atlantis? I don't remember seeing any in the surrounding wide shots when Jason first showed up from the beach. Where the hell is this supposed to be?

(Side note because I am a Certified Plant Nerd: Where was this FILMED? I'm gonna guess England because BBC and also the leaves look SUPER TEMPERATE, there are definitely maples in there.)

Woman collapses and the camera focuses on her bracelet, which I am sure will be significant later on. We don't hear anything, she starts to get up and I brace myself for a jump scare.

She's got a necklace, too, and I wonder if that's a Plot MacGuffin or if she just has good taste in jewelry.

Ok, so we see her pursuer sneaking up on her, and she turns, and we see it for the first time from her POV and... it's a cave troll! Or something very much like it. She screams, we go to credits.

None of the credits are backwards this time, and I'm so relieved because THAT WAS ANNOYING.

I like the juxtaposition of the ocean and the ruins, then the view of the city, because this show is called ATLANTIS, which implies it's really about the city as a whole (or the city as a character) rather than Jason, even though Jason is the protagonist and audience surrogate.

There are some mountains in the background that look like they COULD have forests, and I will reserve judgement until I see the sets in the daylight, but those mountains look like they ought to be chapparral or the local equivalent, NOT the kind of forest shown in the opening. I'm just saying. I have strong opinions about flora and I will share them.

I am so curious where Atlantis is supposed to be, but I think it's Crete? I'm going with Crete for now until I get more information.

Jason is tossing rocks into a pool because... he's just that bored? Missing the Internet? He's wearing a leather tunic thing and not shirtless, but I'm sure he'll lose it by the end of the episode.

He hears something and gets up and sneaks up on the person coming in the doorway, but I already know it's either Hercules or Pythagoras, and most likely Herc, so I am not surprised when it's Herc. Herc is late AND drunk and Jason is pissed. Apparently, he and Herc are working as security guards for a rich merchant?? (So that answers my question about how they're making money and paying the rent!!)

Jason runs to the Oracle's temple because he's in dire need of Cryptic Exposition and also a Greater Purpose in Life and where better to acquire a Noble Destiny?

"You should not be here," says the Oracle, which is just a classy way of saying GTFO.

"I need answers," Jason demands.

LOL, not happening, dude. She only deals in Cryptic Sayings, not answers. (Although kinda ironic given that the Delphic Oracle’s motto was “Know Thyself”.)

Jason mentions that the minotaur dude claimed he had a great destiny and you can just see the Oracle rolling her eyes, and be all, And you believed him?? LOL.

But Jason DOES have a destiny, even though it doesn't feel like it so the Oracle has to explain that this, too, is also a part of his destiny, and he should just lean into the suck.

Jason calls bullshit. Oracle explains she's trying to protect him, and "all will become clear", mic drop. Jason walks away bummed, but it's DESTINY for him to be confused right now, and I am sure he will have some sort of Character Development about this by the end of the episode.

Herc fell asleep on the job and wakes up to being licked by a goat, which is probably not the most undignified thing that will happen to him in this episode. Also, somebody stole his keys and robbed the thing he was supposed to be guarding, so I'm sure this will end well.

Cut to Herc trying to explain this to Pythagoras, and Pythagoras is calling bullshit. Pythagoras notes the goat slobber and does the best eyeroll to Jason, I love him.

(Hercules is like the roommate from HELL here. How did he and Pythagoras end up rooming together in the first place?)

There's a knock on the door, but it's not the angry merchant, it's the CALL TO ADVENTURE... an old man who's heard that they killed the Minotaur and wants help locating his daughter. I'm picturing an Atlantis version of Sherlock Holmes starring Pythagoras and Jason and it's awesome.

Herc does not want to touch this with a ten foot pole but Jason is bored and eager to help, and so Herc is going to get dragged into this whether he likes it or not. He tries to reject it on the grounds of money, but it doesn't work. The old man talks about his "duty as a father" to make sure his kid is safe, and that's all he needs to say to get Jason on board, because Daddy Issues.

Jason and a new female character, Corinna, are in the palace, trying to be stealthy and they run into Ariadne, which is... awkward. Jason tries to explain, and Ariadne says it's forbidden for Jason to be here... why? Because he's a man? Because he's a stranger? Because he's on Minos's personal shit list? I need some context here.

Jason quizzes Celandine, a kitchen worker, and learns that Demetria, the missing girl, went to the forest to gather herbs and was never seen again. I don't understand what Corinna's role in all this is , but she persuades Celandine to help Jason out by showing him the place where Demetria went.

Time for another marketplace chase! This time it's the merchant after Herc. Meanwhile, Celandine takes Jason to a forest that's super-arid and looks nothing like the one we saw in the opening. There's rock outcroppings in the background, too. No leaf litter at ALL. All dry ever greens... and then a wide shot showing a hill that looks like chapparral, with a series of mountains beyond THAT that look more temperate and have actual snow capped peaks and those are NOT IN THE CREDITS, NONE OF THIS GEOGRAPHY MAKES ACTUAL SENSE, BUT FINE.

Also, it makes zero sense that Minos would send kitchen servants to the forest WAY outside the city limits... wouldn't it be easier for everyone if they sent special people to do that and the kitchen just picked them up or bought them from poorer folk who did? Where are the roads? Are there any surrounding villages and encampments outside the walls? Shepherds watching their flocks? A road? How do the servants know where to go? What stops them from running away? Etc. Etc. I HAVE QUESTIONS, OKAY?

Cut to them in a different forest - still evergreen trees, but a different kind. Looks like a plantation. Everything is too neat and open and in rows. There's greenery, but no sign of any herbs or really any kind of understory. LOL.

Are we there yet? Jason wants to know.

These woods are rich with herbs, Celandine says, and I can't tell if she's being ironic or not because I DO NOT SEE ANY, THERE IS NOTHING BUT CONIFERS HERE, CONIFERS ARE NOT HERBS (though they can have medicinal uses!). Then she adds "If you know where to look" and pulls a knife to stab an unsuspecting Jason while he's looking at the ground, so I guess that answers that question.

(For the record, Celandine is a toxic plant that is actually native to n. Africa, and the Mediterranean and western Asia, so I kinda saw that coming from the name and also the ominous music and close-ups of her face.)

Jason wises up in time to Not Get Stabbed, and Celandine runs away. Jason chases after her, and I saw some FERNS this time in the chase scene, but again NO LEAVES or much in the way of forest diversity at all. Celandine drinks something that looks like poison and dies while Jason is interrogating her. The troll-creature lurks in the woods.

Pythagoras IDs the poison as hemlock. (LOL, of course he would know!) The only reason he doesn't mention that it killed Socrates is probably because Socrates hasn't been born yet, but I am sure the writers were tempted. Jason fell asleep in World History, and also every Literature class ever, because he has no idea what a thyrsus is, or who Dionysus and the maenads are, so Pythagoras and Herc get to explain for the audience! Apparently, the satyrs kill any men who crash their clubhouse, so that's what the troll thing is, I guess?

So apparently the maenads just kidnap girls to join their cult? This is not how I remember it, but okay, fine, let's have the all-female religion be EVIL for DRAMA. Does this mean the trio's going to cross-dress?

Demetria (?) is trying to dig her way out of cell, only to get called to a Secret Evil Ceremony that involves blood, chanting, and tearing apart a dude with their bare hands. Oh, wait, no, they just toss him to the cave trolls (LITERALLY LURKING IN A HOLE IN THE GROUND), which is easier to show on network TV, I guess.

Jason breaks the news to Demetria's father, and he's... aghast. "I won't allow it!" he cries. The show has not explained why it's a bad thing to be a maenad... aside from the whole killing people bit, but I mean, the king kills people all the time in the name of the gods, what makes this any different? (I mean, Minos's evil, but still! He's in charge!) Why can't Demetria be a maenad and still work in the palace and visit her dad? Isn't that what Celandine did?? I AM SO CONFUSED.

Also: father trying to control his daughter's actions is historically accurate, but sits poorly with me, even though she WAS kidnapped in this case and doesn't want to be there. But what if she wasn't? So far the show hasn't explained to me why EVERY WOMAN wouldn't want to be a maenad. Hanging out in the woods without any men and a lot of intoxicants sounds... way better than almost anything else they could be doing.

The old man collapses in grief and Pythagoras is also a healer, because he makes an infusion of what sounds like "Magnolia remenalis" (??). Which is odd because that genus is located in the Americas and eastern Asia, and even assuming trade routes from China are a Thing here, that wouldn't likely be a part of the typical pharmacopeia, especially if Pythagoras has no money...? And I know there are a bajillion species of magnolia, but I've never heard of this... and would he call it by a Latin binomial anyway? But if it's not that, what is he TALKING about? THIS IS WHY I HATE WATCHING THINGS WITHOUT SUBTITLES.

The old man guilts Jason into going after Demetria, of course, thanks to Daddy Issues. Herc is pissed, especially when he realizes they put the old man in his bed. I love Pythagoras's little smile when he explains that Herc is in charge of their guest, since he's not going on the Mission of Certain Doom!

Herc is so predictable, lol. He brings up the prospect of faking his own death to get out of his debts, and I CANNOT HELP BUT WONDER if this is going to be relevant later on. Like... faking your death so the maenads don't find you, perhaps? And changing your name??

(dear writers, if you don't want me to guess your plot twist, please don't PUT THE WHAM LINE IN THE TEASER, kthanx.)

OH MY GOD THIS IS THE SAME FOREST WHERE THEY FILMED THE FIGHT SCENE IN THE FORCE AWAKENS ISN'T IT? I *RECOGNIZE* THIS PLACE!!

(yup, definitely England. Puzzlewood, almost for certain.)

Of course, the most appropriate way to spend the night is to make a fire, eat soup, and tell ghost stories about maenads first, right? Right. The forests rustle. There's a cave troll stalking them. (Yes, it's supposed to be a satyr, but it looks like a cave troll from LOTR, okay??) He tosses something in the food, which probably means it will only impact Hercules, lol. Hallucinations, maybe??

Why anyone would trust Herc with night watch given his track record, ESPECIALLY these two, I don't know, but PLOT.

Yep, definitely the old mine in Puzzlewood. I'd bet money on it.

Herc follows a woman who looks like an elf from LOTR, lol... but it's a satyr in drag. (Or a hallucination?) IDK why everyone is making a big deal about the maenads when they mostly just stand around and let the male satyrs handle everything.

RUN, HERC, RUN! He's rescued by... Demetria, who also wants to get away. Somehow the satyrs don't see them? *shrug*

Demetria uses Herc's knife and cuts herself and walks out with a bloody mouth, claiming the satyrs killed Herc and she drank his blood... I mean, won't the satyrs call her on it?? But the ruse works and she leaves with them.

Meanwhile, Jason and Pythagoras slept through the entire night without incident, and I just... the satyrs KNOW THERE ARE THREE OF THEM. How come they didn't just slaughter them in their sleep, or at least attack them??

Also, if the satyrs only eat human flesh, how does the ecosystem even WORK? How many of them are there?? How often do they eat? Are they omnivores or obligate carnivores? I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS.

#bbc atlantis #lily liveblogs

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