#snow glitters and so shall I

[earl-grey-love]

I love how every makeup advice I have ever read about my skin tone is like DO NOT wear glitter!!! and I was like duly noted and proceed to use glitter makeup almost exclusively

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Vil, Jack: a Strength that Shines

Ayyy, it’s the childhood friends (?) from the Shaftlands!! It feels like forever since we last got any significant interactions between Vil and Jack. Nice to see them chatting again~

bdjwvsjsGuabs THAT GROOVY THOUGH… Vil looks so judgmental and dismissive 😭 Channeling all his Mean Girl energy to diss Neige Snow White, lol

A Tale as Old as Time.

Four sides drew together to form a glittering box. A lovely maiden rested within the coffin-like casing of the photo frame. Her lips as red as blood, her hair as dark as ebony, and her skin as fair as snow.

She was circled by foliage, her sun-dappled face tilting up, disarmed by some distant call. The girl cupped her dainty hands together, housing a small baby blue bird in her palms. Kindness, goodness, grace—she exuded all of them.

Vil scoffed, tossing golden hair over his shoulder. Her smile was reminiscent of a rival celebrity, one pure as a dove's feathers.

So carefree, so cheery.

How irritating, he sighed.

"One ought to be more cautious in the woods. Who knows what dangers might lurk nearby, wishing to enact harm upon her.

"For a glamour shot though... Hmm, yes. This composition is acceptable. The sunlight is angled upon her face in a pleasing way—it casts a golden glow on her pale visage and highlights the highest points: cheeks, nose, chin, and forehead. The impression is one of total innocence.”

A soft grunt sounded from beside him.

"She's... shining," Jack commented plainly. His critique, clipped. “Didn’t you do a photo shoot like this recently? Similar place and everything.”

Vil’s beauty was momentarily marred by a grimace. “Yes, as promotional material for an upcoming film. However, the feel of it was completely different than what you see here.”

Shadows instead of sunlight. Temptation in the place of innocence.

He, poised amid the creeping branches and dark leaves, a tatter cloak clinging to his curves. A single, crimson apple in his grasp, a sultry look directed at the camera.

He tried to picture himself like the girl in the frame countless times over. Kneeling among the woodland creatures, smiling so serenely. Any pro could pull it off—he included.

But the image never turned out right in his mind.

Not the right amount of sweetness, not natural enough.

Not quite the same.

Not at all.

Blood, sweat, tears. Sacrifices made at the altar. Yet still, the world yielded nothing but broken promises and shattered dreams. The splintered parts and shambles of them, he gathered, forming his own makeshift hope and determination.

He couldn’t give in here.

Vil’s perfectly groomed brows scrunched up.

“I shall have to endeavor to work even harder. I’m not satisfied with things as they are now.”

“Heh.” Jack cocked a small, lopsided grin. “Keeping on the grind… That’s just like you. You've got this."

“Obviously. Nothing will get accomplished otherwise.” Vil’s eyes passed over to the beastmen. “Presumably, you are doing the same."

"Yeah. Haven't skipped a day of my training regimen." Jack slapped a hand on his bicep, which fit snuggly in his glittering white sleeve. "We'll take out RSA next track and field meet!"

"I'd certainly hope so. If I am to taste sweet revenge, I'd prefer it be by my own hand... but I trust you to deliver in my place. I expect good news when next we speak. Do not disappoint me."

"Yessir!" Jack's tail wagged enthusiastically. He stood alert, saluting like a loyal knight. “I'll do my best!"

“Then it looks as though we both have our long-term goals set.” The dorm leader planted his hands on his waist—slim, cinched.

"Yours is...?"

"To surpass myself." Vil jerked his chin toward the girl in the painting. "To shine so brightly that my name not only goes down in history, but overshadows that which was written before."

"That's some big dream you have." Jack shook his head. "The scale's beyond what I can imagine. But knowing how stubborn you are, Vil-senpai... You seriously won't quit until you make that dream come true."

"My, my. Stubborn, am I?" He smirked, arms crossed. "I do believe it takes one to know one.

"You stand back and watch. I'll show you just how dazzling I can be."

His eyes held a steeliness to them. It was matched only by the same in Jack’s. Two strong men and their wills, meeting on equal grounds.

Jack simply nodded—an acknowledgment, an acceptance, of his upperclassman’s confidence. Overwhelming, like a powerful wave, a strong storm, a blazing inferno. He almost felt compelled to drop to one knee, to kneel before such a presence.

Vil turned away from the painting, his arms unraveling from one another. His movements were graceful, nearly ballet-like. And his expression—

Jack caught him mid-laugh. The snooty, airy kind, half-sincere, half-sarcastic. Brows upturned, mouth twisted in a faux sympathetic smile. Flaxen waves framing his lovely features.

His lips moved.

“I’ll topple you from your throne,” Vil vowed.

It was then that Jack noticed.

Vil-senpai's shining like the fair maiden.

[secret-smut-sideblog]

Gold Satin Dreamer

Gale × F! Tav (named)

18+ rivalry, rough semi-public sex, dirty talk, possessiveness, aurum hot girl antics

Inviting his radiant wife to give a presentation at Blackstaff, Gale notices the longing gaze of his less than friendly colleague...

Masterlist

-

"Nervous, Dekarios?"

He leveled his gaze at his colleague. Organizing the papers on his desk for a countless time.

"If your 'betrothed' is as brilliant you've been rattling on about, I'd be nervous too." The cutting jest in his voice never tired.

The professor of Evocation had been something close to a rival at Blackstaff. The rest of the faculty waned from distracted to lovely. The head of Divination had actually come to know him as a friend, a calm presence that he sought on hectic days.

She popped her head in now. Eyes alight with excitement.

"She's just arrived, Gale."

Shit. He had planned to meet her at the gates.

"If you'll excuse me, I need to meet my wife." His voice clipped and pointed, straightening his robes.

"Oh, I'm not going to miss this. I've been greatly looking forward to meeting your accomplished spouse." He took up pace behind Gale, steps preening in their jaunt.

Gale hid his smile. Oh, he'd see soon enough.

They swept down the tower, Gale electing the long route over teleportation for his own satisfaction.

"Do you think she'd give a demonstration for my class as well?" Laurna whispered, taking up pace on his other side.

"Possibly." Hesitation bit at his words. "I don't want to push her."

"A wilting flower? I expected more from a hero of Baldurs gate."

"Ignore him. I'm sure she'd love to visit at the least."

He rounded the last stairwell, seeing her shape take form in the lobby.

Already, a small crowd had formed. She was still in her winter robes, head covered in a thick hood. But her radiance was hard smothered, and any new guest at the elusive Blackstaff Academy was regarded with great curiosity.

"Welcome, my love." He greeted her breathless, coming up to instinctually twine his hands around her hips, but remembered his setting at the last moment. Opting to take her hands instead.

"Hello, Professor." She smiled up at him, taking the remainder of his breath. "I'm tracking snow onto your pristine floors."

"Oh, pish posh." He scoffed. "Anything you track in is gracing our presence."

Fenrun snorted behind him, and Aurum's eyes flicked to his. The insufferable man fell quiet.

Immediate, he could see understanding glide across her eyes. Putting together faces to the context of his daily regailing when he would return home to her. Regarding the man with indifference.

"Oh, this must be Laurna." She turned to his ally, her hypnotic voice welcoming. Dropping her hood.

Aurum shed her cloak easily, in a lavender robe that swept behind her. Chest wrapped in a thick black band underneath.

Her golden hair unfolded behind her in a burning curtain. Just cresting above the base of her spine. Her slanted eyes lifted to stare pale otherworldly beauty into them.

He heard Fenrun take in a slow breath behind him, and felt a swelling of malicious pride in his chest.

Uncovered, she had cast the most powerful spell. And she knew it.

"Is there somewhere I could put this?" She offered sweetly, folding her cloak over her arm.

An attendant rushed forward.

"Of course, I'll keep this safe."

She smiled softly at him, handing it off graciously.

"Thank you, you're too kind." Her eyes poured serenity into the boy. He froze, the cloak nearly forgotten in his hands.

Gale smiled at him. Recognizing the same starstruck glitter in his eyes he had on that beach so long ago.

"Shall we?" She sighed, finding his eyes again. Smile twitching up in that mischievous tick that he adored.

"Oh, lets." He laughed.

She took his hand and swept forward.

Laurna chatted with her brightly as they walked. Heads turning and bodies pausing in a wave as she glided along. Her focus on her conversation and the pull of his hand.

Her power of awe never stopped thrilling his heart, but here it felt three times more potent. Swelling his chest. Peacock in his stride.

Fenrun followed behind, tail between his legs. His wounded pride not enough to disengage him from her presence.

He pointed out interesting landmarks as they passed. Speaking low in her ear. She would pause at these sights, tilting her head in interest.

At a statue of a drider, she drew forward. Softly touching along the marble.

He waited, smiling at her. There was something about touch. She always sought to feel that which caught her interest.

"My love, I'm not sure you're allowed to touch that." He teased.

"I'm being gentle." She stepped back and slid her eyes to him. "It's exquisite, and I like to touch exquisite things."

His heart jumped, knees threatening buckle.

Maybe she was too powerful.

"Where to next?" Her voice casual, sweeping back to his side.

"Ahem, if you're looking for exquisite, might I offer my classroom." Fenrun stepped forward, finally jumbling his bravado back into place.

She tilted her head at him.

"And you are...?"

Gale nearly barked out a laugh, having to smother it in a bite of tongue.

"Fenrun Deomat, Professor of Abjucation. A most esteemed welcome to you, our brilliant guest." He gave a suave bow.

She stepped forward, peering up at him. His breath held, bravado washing away again.

"Charmed. Aurum Dekarios, of Orndeir bloodline."

He stepped back, a spike of awed fear in his eyes.

She knew what that name meant. And she didn't reveal it lightly.

"Of course. A Sunlord... If you'll excuse me." His words came out rushed and breathless. Retreating back towards his classroom.

She watched him go, folding her hands behind her back. Glacial eyes cold in their follow, jaw tilted back.

"He reminds me of Lorroakan." She glanced at Gale. Her eyes returning to soft interest.

"Spot on." He tapped his nose.

She crinkled that genuine crooked smile at him, setting his heart fluttering.

"Your class?" She offered, glancing at the great clock on the wall.

"Ah! Yes!" He started, leading her by the lower back in a brisk walk.

"It was lovely meeting you, Laurna. Thank you for being a kind presence for my husband."

Laurna blushed, doing a little dance on her feet.

"It was heavenly, meeting you. You're... just as he described." Her voice soft in reverence.

Aurum waved as they departed, picking up pace with his fast clip. Long legs giving little effort.

He entered first, the usual rabble of noise picking up.

"Alright, I know you all have been very eager." He started, capturing their attention.

"Our guest speaker is here, now-" He held a stern hand in pause to the several hands that had shot in the air. "She has a very special demonstration for you all. I will remind you of your manners and the decorum befitting students of your caliber. Understood?"

A few heads nodded, eyes darting to the doorway in anticipation.

He sighed in rueful exhaustion, giving his students a loving glare. Eyes catching hers just beyond the doorway, beckoning her in a nod.

She stepped in, moving with all of the grace of a lily floating on a pond. Coming up to softly caress his hand in hers.

"Relax." She hushed, seeing the tension under his shoulders. "I agreed to do this. It's okay."

He released a tense breath through his nose, nodding. Wanting to kiss her, but settling for a squeeze of her hand.

She surveyed the gathered students with the same bright interest they studied her in.

"It's so nice to put faces to names, he speaks about you often." She began, stepping down from the podium.

Gale's breath held as she moved down to stand amongst them. Some rising from their seats, staring up at her with unabashed awe.

"Have you told them what I have planned?" Her eyes cast up to his.

"Oh, they insisted it stay a surprise."

She smiled, turning back to her flock.

"Well, this will seem lewd then." She laughed, bright wind chimes. "So bear with me."

She reached behind her, unclasping the band around her chest. Pulling it through the front of her robe. Taking a deep, satisfied breath. The false sun had been significantly cooled but still left a noticeable glow in her chest.

Several gasps rang out, those who weren't already standing rising to feet. Bodies moving forward, hands unconsciously raised to chests.

"This," She began, beckoning them to draw closer. "Is a fragment of an epic spell. How many spellcasters would you guess that takes?"

His favorite student piped up, a bright young man who reminded of a younger him. On tiptoes trying to see over shoulders.

"Hundreds!"

Her eyes caught his, smiling radiantly. She drew forward, the crowd parting for her. Taking his hand and encouraging him to the front.

"Very good. This spell took 194 spellcasters, all speaking at once."

"Now, I'd like to activate it for you."

Gale stepped forward, concern tight in his gut.

She held her palm up to him, tilting her head down in a bid of trust.

"I recovered this morning in preparation, I'll be okay." Her voice soft in assurance.

He relented, jaw still clenched. Nodding for her to continue.

"This is very dangerous magic, condensed in this way. A spell this large was never meant to be seated in a body, especially long-term." She explained, his students' eyes picking up their own concern.

"Miss?" The bright voice picked up in front of her.

"Yes?" She smiled at him. "What's your question?"

"Can I...?" He held his palm out in question.

Her smile widened, cupping her hand over the back of his.

"Of course. Tactile information is very important to me, too."

His palm settled onto her chest, letting out a little gasp.

"It's really warm!"

"It's a shard of sun." She offered, seeing the other students starting to form a line.

"Ohhh... that must hurt..." He hushed.

"It does. But not terribly."

"I'm sorry."

"You've nothing to be sorry for." She rubbed the back of his hand.

She allowed each student to take a turn, Gale's chest full to bursting with pride watching her. She was a natural with them, spellbinding effortlessly.

"Are we all prepared?" Her eyes moved over them, then up to him.

"Can you get the lights, Professor?" She winked at him.

He blushed, despite himself, and dimmed the room. Curtains magically drawn, lights snuffed out. Her bright chest the only reflection in eyes.

"Now, this spell had a very special component in its casting. You will hear more than just my voice, and it will get a little overwhelming, but do not be alarmed."

She paused, seeking understanding in the nods of heads.

"Okay, here we go."

She started in a hum, closing her eyes slowly.

Gale's eyes caught a figure who had slipped in the back, along side heads peeking in from the hall. A spike of shock when he recognized the shape in the dark.

The shard thrummed out of its stasis, pulsing out through her ribs. Her humming picking up into bright song, soaring up through the air. Light spread out through her shoulders, lifting wisps of her hair. Her voice picked up into a high sustained call, smothered light pushing out into the sunburst. A star of light hovering over her body again.

The voices came in, harmonizing into her sustained note. Following her back down through holy song. Dipping and weaving along her notes. The room filled with angelic reprieve. Climbing higher and higher.

When the church bells rang, she started to wind down. Pressing a palm to the burning light. Letting her voice drift down into a soft wail. A question, a request.

Her accompanying choir hushed with her, relenting to her call. Falling lower and lower, the sunburst retreating back under bone in response.

She closed her eyes again, ducking her head down. Moving through one more soft phrase before falling silent. Taking a steadying breath out through pursed lips as the room slowly went quiet.

He let her another moment of dark, knowing it took much more out of her than she let on. Wanting to go to her, to gather her in his arms. Decorum be damned. Then, finally, rose the lights again slowly.

"When an epic spell of this magnitude is cast," She began again, gently wiping her eyes with the edge of her thumb. "It calls on a terribly great power. It is done with intentions to gain, to control. To become something no sane person seeks."

Her eyes narrowed to deadly serious slits.

"It is a terrible thing to wield that power. It will pull the layers of your mind away. If there was any goodness in you to begin with, it will unravel it. It will unravel you to a singular goal. No matter the cost."

She palmed over her chest, speaking in a hush.

"It will feel worth it. The collateral."

The collective breath in the room was still held. Many heads now gathered, spilling in from the hallway.

"Keep mind of yourself, of your ambition. There are many great minds in this room, and that is a terrible thing to squander to the madness of that pursuit. Power like this is an insatiable, hungry thing. I promise you, it can never be fed enough. And the effort to keep it fed will destroy everything you could ever love."

"And if you still decide it's worth it?" Her voice dropped to a low warning.

"The collateral will find you."

She took one final breath out, then rose her eyes. An apologetic smile creased her face.

"Light is a heavy thing to bear. Forgive my dour presentation."

The air refilled the room, small nervous laughs picking up.

"No, the weight is warranted." The Blackstaff chimed in, drawing forward from her place in the back. "A fine lesson you've given today."

"Dismissed." She commanded easily.

The students filed out around them, tittering and waving goodbye to Aurum.

Only when the room emptied did she pick up again.

"I knew your father. I'm very sorry, Aurum."

"He was... he could have been a great man." Aurum hushed, pulling her wrapping around her chest. Gale took up behind her to attend to the hooks.

"You were a well-kept secret, I'm sorry there wasn't help for you in time. Things could have been quite different if we had gotten to you."

"I think about that often. But I'm not sure if I'd be here, as I am, with him..." Her eyes lifted to Gale's, brimming with love. "If it had gone any other way."

His heart ached, cupping her cheek softly. She leaned into his hand for a moment.

"But thank you, regardless."

Aurum smiled gently as the Blackstaff's hand rose to her chest. Pressing a soft palm.

She shuddered, her eyes squeezing for a moment before pulling away. Heavy with knowledge, giving her a sad smile.

"I must depart, but if you need to take another recovery, feel free to do so in my office. You can reach the Astral Plane there easily."

"Be well, Rosa'sune."

"Thank you. Bwaelan dro, uluvathae."

"Uluvathae, xiloscient."

He caught Fenrun's hungry eyes in the doorway, firmly fixated on her back. Giving Gale a spiteful glare, about to enter the room when the Blackstaff drew forward. Her body caging him out into the hall.

She cast Private Sanctum on the room as she left it, nodding at Gale with a knowing smile.

His ears flushed pink, but gave her a grateful smile regardless.

Aurum approached his desk, hopping up onto it. Tossing her leg over her knee.

"That wasn't too much, right? I didn't want to scare your students." Her voice falling vulnerable.

"That was... the best lesson my class has had in this room. I promise you that."

He came up to her folded legs, hand rising up her knee.

"Well, good then. Your colleagues seem lovely... for the most part."

A heat that had been simmering in his pelvis since that man's envious eyes had settled on her reared into a boil. His hand pushed up to her thigh.

"The way you denounced him. So casually..."

"What was there to appraise?" She smiled, her legs parting. Pulling him between with a loop of finger on the tie of his robes.

"A thoroughly unimpressive man. I've seen many of his ilk, and they have very little to offer."

At the word very, she cupped over his teaching robes. His half hard cock greeting her with a throb.

His hand slammed down on the wood next to her, breathing hard into her exhales.

"Keep talking." He urged. Pulling her robe down over her back. Unhooking the band once again.

"Oh, I'd love to." She purred, lifting her legs to curl around his hips.

"You know, I bet he's thinking about us in this room right now. About your hands on me."

He pulled her robe up over her hips desperately, groaning out when he saw she hadn't worn underclothes.

"Wanting to touch me like this, to see me strewn across your desk. Just outside that spell. Furious with envy."

She draped back, her breasts bouncing with the movement.

Precum pooled dangerously soon in his trousers, biting back in choppy breaths. Not even out of his clothes yet.

"Do you think he's imagining what I taste like? How wet my cunt is?"

She led him by the wrist to the heat between her legs.

He drew his fingers through her slick, leaning forward in a slump of shoulders at its power. Slowly pushing two fingers inside her.

She shuddered, arching back on his desk. Ribs rising into a curl as he pumped into her. Her voice coming out in needy moans.

"He could never be this good. No one could fuck me as good as you."

His eyes squeezed shut, focusing through the overwhelming drive in his pelvis. Nearly cumming in his pants. Realizing with haste that he couldn't bear much longer. Pulling quickly out of his trousers.

He slipped his fingers out and filled her with his cock in a fast thrust. Rocking her back on the desk.

She moaned out, legs curling.

"Please, harder. I want it to hurt. I want him to see me limp out of this room."

He nearly crumpled, his voice coming out in a desperate sound of affirmation. Flipping her onto her belly. Her full ass curling up high into his hands.

He slammed into her, bracing a flat hand on her lower back. Holding her down. The desk rattling hard under her. His body delirious with feral pleasure. The drive of his hips uncontrolled.

She gripped onto the lip of the desk above her, hips still pushing ever harder back into him. A sweet chorus of whimpers leaving her with every drive forward. Cunt starting to clench around him, a tight velvet fist constricting in a blinding suck of his cock.

"Please, please, it's so good." She moaned. "Fill me full of your cum, Professor."

He braced desperately down on her back. Needing her to cum immediately, he pulled her long hair up in a tight fist. Slapping her ass in a crack of his palm. Snapping down again and again until she came, her skin blooming red.

She arched back into him, rising on forearms. Shuddering out a cry of his name, cumming in hard tremors. Pleading cries of pleasure rushing through her throat. Cunt fluttering in rapid fire demands on his cock. Her cum pushing out in waves onto her backside with every thrust. Coating his cock as it drove into her.

She went limp under him as he lost himself. Driving into her in vicious pulses, gripping her hips in white knuckles.

"You're mine. You can only cum on my cock." He growled. Her hips squirming from the overstimulation, nodding under him.

"Yes!" She gasped out.

He fell forward onto forearms, driving as deep as he could go. Possesive wrath taking over his body, his mind.

"Mine." He growled, pushing her shoulders down into the desk. Fully holding her down, his weight and vicious drives of hips commanding her body in place.

"All for you." She gasped, going limp to his force. "To do with as you please."

"That's right." He growled, biting into her shoulders. Marking her so there was no mistake. The print of his teeth bruising into her fruit.

"You are not going to clean up when I finish. You are going to leave this building my cum running down your thighs."

"Yes! Please finish inside me!" She begged.

He gave two more long, indulgent thrusts, then lost himself. Hips driving in bursts as his cum filled her. The wrenching ecstacy driving out of him in waves. The total abandonment of control, his body gone. Her cunt clenching pulling in vicious sucking pulses.

He collapsed against her back, after shocks of shudders pushing through him. Cock throbbing inside her emptied.

"Please tell me you can come home soon." She gasped, boneless against his desk.

He laughed, kissing the bruises forming on her shoulders. "Soon. I have to run through some papers, but I'll be home to you as quickly as my magic can take me."

She let out a little dissatisfied whine, twisting under him to pout up at him.

"Don't you give me that look." He huffed. His resolve suddenly hanging on by a thread. Weak to her wide eyes and plush pursed lips.

"But I missed you all day." She sighed.

His heart spilled out of his chest. Falling over her in a soft puddle.

"No. No!" He held up his finger in a point. "Bad!"

She curled a mischievous smile inside of her pout. Eyes twinkling with salacious glee.

"You're too good at pulling my strings, you menace." He laughed and kissed her tenderly, cupping her face.

"Now go on, before I lose my nerve."

"Hmm, okay!" She chirped, hopping off of his desk. Pulling her robe back over her shoulders.

"Oh, wait!" She turned as if remembering something.

Reaching between her legs under the drape of her robe, she gathered a trail of his cum from above her knee. Popping it into her mouth jovially.

"See you at home!" She lilted, giving a little wave as she turned into the hallway.

He shuddered, leaning on his desk for support. By the Weave, she will be the death of him.

~

[ghoulsbeard]

Strange, to begin with: bright sun from sun-up, and a cloudless sky, a high fast wind. Spring, in Skyrim; Kynareth must be laughing. Faralda strides bridge and battlement with her collar turned down and her hair swept up, to feel the sunlight on her skin.

The sea of ghosts seethes cheerfully at the rocks below the college. Gulls wheel and scream. The air is bright enough to see how bare and brown the main courtyard stands; a glittering chorus of icicles drips along their statuary... a few gaps, where prentices have knocked them loose with snowballs or sticks.

"You," Colette Marence barks from the great rime-frosted doors. "Hold! Hold right there!"

Their mistress of restoration is a font of unflagging energy; it is not past ten and she storms about the place like a stalking cloud of Aurbic lightning. The spring sunshine, weak as watered wine, draws roses from her tired cheeks. Her hair has already flown out of its tail in a curly brown-and-silver cloud.

"I've been looking everywhere for you.” A bony accusing finger waves around Faralda's face. "Have you seen the master wizard?"

"It's mid-morning," says Faralda. "She'll be beating Aren's carpets."

Colette gives her a look, a hairy look-- "She is not with the Archmage. I have already spoken with him; he has not seen her at all this morning."

"He wouldn't see the nose on his own face," Faralda grunts. "Well, and what do you want? Shall I shake him until Ervine falls from his pockets?"

"Your trouble, Mistress Faralda, is that no one boxed your ears when you were a young hellion. Younger," she amends. "I'm off to the lecture halls. I wish you'd see to her chambers."

"If there's a corpse, I'll summon you and Phinis."

"Mara mind your tongue!" Colette snaps. She's knitting her fingers guiltily together. "If you... I would owe you a favor."

"Don't be silly." Faralda claps a hand to her stooped shoulders. The wind is turning: pine and fresh snow, distant smoke. She tramps up salted steps to wander the College warren.

The master wizard's door is shut and locked. Faralda beats it until it rattles against the lintel. "Ervine," she barks. "Are you yet living?"

Magefire sputters on the wall. The long row of living quarters is otherwise quiet, at this hour; down in the common, prentices squeal and bicker. Tolfdir's reeling laughter rings from the stones. She's leaned against the doorway, lighting her pipe, when the lock sighs through a weak spell and clicks open.

Ervine's door likes to jam in warmer weather; Faralda shoves it open with a shoulder, wood and hinges wailing, and slams it shut again behind herself. The room is a tall dark cavern, smelling of herbs and burnt wax.

From the lone window-- small and thin-- a bar of white sunlight.

"It is you," a voice croaks. There is a rattle of a cough, or laughter. "I thought I was dreaming again. What do you want?"

The darkness resolves into shades of grey and brown. A shrubbish shadow, buried in the bed, with a weary round face, grieved and pasty. The stump of a candle on the bedside table, a stack of letters, a stick of wax. A green jar of ink. An empty cup.

"What ails you, master wizard?"

Ervine breaks into true laughter, then. She has never heard the woman laugh before, and hates the sound of it at once-- sour and pitiless.

"I am perfectly capable of my duties. Come a little closer and see for yourself."

She does, with her fingers twitching for a long curved dagger she no longer carries. Over-tired, she imagines Colette's diagnosis, in her clipped tones. Over-worked. Hale, besides. Constitution of an ox.

Something in her eyes, she thinks. She's seen a few deckhands with that look, that dullish beady glint... "You are not prone to fits of melancholy."

"You do possess a lovely arrogance, Faralda."

"So you've taken after Aren." She casts a disgusted hand about the dark room. "Licking your wounds in a drab little hole."

Ervine's dark eyes flash when she lifts her face. "Go to Colette. Tell her I shall see her at noon for a tisane."

She should have directly ordered 'get out'. Faralda bares her teeth in what might pass for a smile. "I will not."

"Will you not?" Tired amusement.

The cup catches her eye. "I'll fetch your tisane."

"Never mind the tisane."

"Berries, then." She draws her bag from within her sleeve, cloudberries and a little elk jerky, and sets it on Ervine's blanketed lap, and pulls it open with a finger. "Eat. You look like death."

"I really couldn't," Ervine says, in the same stern voice she uses to admonish prentices and professors alike. "Put that away, if you would."

"Hemicrania."

"Of a sort." She ought to look shrunken and small, swathed up miserably like this. She's as grand and stolid as ever. The grave face. The firm steadfast mouth. "You can tell Colette I said so."

Faralda risks another long, searching look at the letters. The seal on the first is freshly broken. Ervine winces. Her thick hand knots itself in the blanket.

"Ill news, was it?"

No reply. She watches Ervine's face. The twitch in her cheek; the hair standing greasily on the side of her head. "I'm sorry," she offers, and Ervine looks up fast as a gannet, and her mouth twists, and she barks laughing.

"'Sorry'," she gasps, in between peals of barking bitter laughter. "'Sorry'. Yes. Of course."

Faralda reaches for her other hand, trembling atop Ervine's thigh, and feels her pulse rabbiting in the wrist. "It will pass."

"Ce jeu féroce et ridicule, quand doit-il finir?" She smiles. "As the poets say. Out, Faralda. You do not want to play nursemaid at my bedside, I think."

"Of course not." She lets Ervine's wrist fall. "I cannot leave without you, master wizard."

"No?" Ervine drops her smile to her lap, where her fingers are buried in the blanket. "No, she ordered you here. Most commendable."

"Do you know something, Ervine? I woke impatient this morning." She folds her arms. "Are you unwilling or unable?"

"You are a keeper of confidences, Mistress Faralda. I think you might keep this one."

"I might not."

Ervine crooks a finger, still smiling; of all things Faralda sits at the side of her bed, and feels the heat of her bulky calf and thigh. "He is dead a fortnight now. A week for the letter to sail to Skyrim-- half a week to Daggerfall, half from Solitude to our little holding. I cannot fathom why it was written. But he is dead."

Faralda eyes her. She cannot tell, from the wretched stillness in her face, or the trembling in her hand, who or what or whether to commiserate. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"I myself am dead in those lands."

"Then the world has ended."

Ervine wrings the blanket in her fist. "I don't know that it has."

"It ought to."

"Yes," she says, eventually. "Yes, it ought. I don't know that it has."

"If the world hasn't ended," Faralda says, "and you aren't abed with pain or disease-- you can take a turn with me about the courtyard."

Ervine, smiling, shakes her head.

"Don't go to seed here, woman. Won't sort your mind any faster."

"What did you call it... licking my wounds?"

"Lick them outside in the fresh air."

"You may leave."

She turns to watch the unmoving sunlight. Her eyes glint in the shadows; the tip of her long, thick nose, the curves of her chins and soft jaw. Neither overly stern nor discernibly friendly. She ought to have been the sort of woman that Faralda liked, very much.

"Who was he to you?"

Ervine's face stills, save her mouth; the mouth trembles. She covers it with a hand.

"He was good to you, I hope."

"Not to anyone. Not to himself. Now he is dead."

"That much," says Faralda, "ought to be celebrated. Come down with me, master wizard. I'll buy you a drink at the Hearth."

Her dark eye is turned to the light, and glassy.

"Come down with me."

She wheels on Faralda, implacable as the polar night. "Why should you ask such things? Why should I give them to you?"

"You shouldn't," Faralda agrees. "I was born with my foot in my mouth, and I'm a scoundrel besides. But come down. Come down with me and have a little air." She offers a hand.

Ervine shuts her eyes and composes herself, with some trouble. Her throat pulses. "Very well," she says, in a thin voice. "Very well." 

The hallway is chilly and quiet. Mirabelle Ervine, now dressed in her robes, carrying pen and paperwork, trails Faralda out through the back entrance, along the shortcut to the crumbling stargazers' walk. She stops stunned when the door opens to clear sunlight, and the breeze blusters noisily in, lifting her hair from her cheek.

"What day is it?"

"The tenth of Rain's Hand."

"Sun," she puzzles, and pushes past. Noonday strikes bronze and a few shining greys from her hair. She winces at the light, raising a hand to her eyes. "What beautiful weather."

It is startlingly beautiful. The starkness of the bay; glittering snow and rock, foam and current, the city of the dead beneath the falling tide. Mirabelle Ervine's hair sparkling in the stiff breeze.

"Show me your shield," she says, to clear her head. This, too, she dislikes about their new master wizard; the woman has a remarkable talent for snarling up thoughts. Ervine raises an eyebrow, searches Faralda's face.

"Here?"

"Here and now."

Ervine studies her another moment, then twitches a fragment of a smile and stands wide-legged, just as she addresses the assembled collegium. She claps her hands together and slowly pulls the palms apart, fanning a thread of magic between them, up and out into a ward, full and fuller, warping like hot air as it goes.

Faralda tosses four spiraling mageflames, sharp as darts. Ervine swears viciously under her breath, but the ward holds against them.

"A little much, this early in the day," she comments. She looks less like a solemn corpse, Faralda decides. "Another."

Popular among mages of her persuasion to toss a few icicles, but Faralda has always favored claws of frost. The shield sputters.

"Passable work," Faralda allows. Ervine lets the ward drop, shaking her fingers as the spell dissolves wetly into thin air, and regards her with a bit of resigned amusement.

"Satisfied?"

"Not in the least."

Ervine laughs. It is unlike the rest-- deep and pleased. Faralda grits her back teeth.

"You should cast in a radial instead of a flat axis, master wizard."

"Should I." She comes up, smiling, to squeeze past Faralda's side. "I suppose a scholar of destruction would know."

Down in the courtyard, a gaggle of prentices are lunging about in the fine weather, chasing each other with wisps, turning cartwheels. The rest sun themselves under a few of the leafless trees, passing what look like scraps of paper back and forth, conferring in low, urgent voices. Young Brelyna paces at the gate, declaiming to herself. The wind carries most of her speech away.

Colette's eyes are huge and happy when Faralda leads the master wizard into the infirmary. "Mirabelle! How good to see you today. Let me make you a tisane. Put some color in those cheeks."

"I'm perfectly well, dear Colette."

"It'll only take a minute." She vanishes into the stockroom, rolling up her sleeves. "Tincture of..."

Ervine catches Faralda by the cuff before she can duck out and flee to the bridge. In the dim ring of blue magelight, her temper is unreadable. "We have our differences. I trust this will not be one of them."

"Peace, Mirabelle Master-Wizard," Faralda sneers. "I would not betray a colleague."

Ervine's fingers dig hard in her arm a moment; then she steps away, light calving over her face. "Very well."

The day is clear and crisp on the broken bridge; down in the Winterhold square, people come and go. She can feel where Ervine gripped her, even through her coat and robes. Absently, she rubs a thumb along the skin.

[sleekervae]

Wicked Games ❅ 1

Masterlist

Pairing: Coriolanus Snow x socialite!fem!reader

Summary: At 22, Coriolanus Snow is rising in Panem’s authoritarian regime, using his fame and cunning to navigate Capitol politics. Sable Hanover, known for her strategic charm, sees potential in an alliance with him. Despite their different backgrounds, they share a hunger for power, and their partnership becomes a complex mix of ambition, deception, and desire as they maneuver through Capitol society, spinning manipulative narratives to strengthen their influence.

Warnings: politicians being politicians

Word Count: 3,912

The lights of the Capitol's grand debate hall glared down on the stage, reflecting off the pristine marble floors. The audience, a sea of expectant faces, watched with bated breath. Coriolanus Snow, at 22, stood tall and poised at his podium, his platinum hair slicked back, his eyes sharp and calculating. The applause from the crowd was polite but measured, a testament to his controversial rise.

Across from him, his opponents stood ready, their expressions a mix of determination and disdain. Lucky Flickerman, ever the showman, flashed a grin as wide as the gaudy tie looped around his neck, and his voice bounced with the familiar, dramatic flair the Capitol loved.

"Well, well, well! Good evening, beloved citizens of Panem! Oh, what a treat we have for you tonight! Our candidates, oh-so-brilliant and ambitious, will lay out their grand visions for this wonderful nation of ours!" He paused, eyes gleaming under the bright studio lights, before continuing, "And you, my dear friends, will be the ones to decide who’s fit to lead us into a dazzling future. Exciting, isn’t it?"

Lucky turned, his gesture theatrical, to Coriolanus, the glitter of his jacket reflecting in the camera lights. "Now, Mr. Snow, darling of the Capitol! You've got your critics—and your admirers—but some say your policies have a rather... shall we say... Capitol-centric lean. How would you respond to those who feel you're leaving our friends in the districts in the dust?"

He leaned in slightly, his trademark grin still plastered across his face, as if the whole spectacle was nothing more than a delightful game. "Let’s hear it, Coriolanus! Don’t leave us waiting too long—this is live!"

Coriolanus leaned forward, a confident smile playing on his lips. "Thank you for the question. Our nation thrives on unity and strength. My policies aim to create opportunities for all citizens, ensuring that we move forward together. The districts are the backbone of Panem, and their prosperity is our prosperity."

One of his opponents, Eldridge Barbery, a seasoned politician with a stern demeanor, countered. "Mr. Snow, your actions during the Hunger Games and your subsequent rise to the senatorship have left many questioning your integrity. Can you assure us that you are committed to the welfare of all citizens, not just your own advancement?"

Coriolanus's smile didn't falter. "My past has shaped me, yes, but it has also taught me the value of resilience and dedication. I am committed to serving Panem with integrity and transparency. My vision is for a unified nation, where every citizen has the chance to thrive."

A murmur of approval rippled through the crowd. Coriolanus could feel the energy shift slightly in his favor. What he wasn't aware of was a group of young women, society socialites crowded around a table, nearly all of them with dull, unimpressed expressions on their faces. All except for one, a slim, mousy woman with shiny doe eyes and a choppy pixie cut framing her pronounced cheekbones. She was adorned in a silk, long sleeve phtalo blue dress, her eyes fixed to the debate with a mixture of intrigue and appraisal. She found the whole world of politics absolutely fascinating.

"God, this is so boring," one of the girls, Poppy, murmured, her hand propping up her chin as her eyes drooped.

"Do you even know what they're talking about?" another girl, Lucretia, asked.

"Something that has no effect on us, I'm sure," Gamma replied as she pulled a nail file from her clutch, "Why my father insists on forcing me to these things, I'll never understand,"

"To find us husbands, of course," the last girl, Sable, finally spoke, her eyes never left the podiums.

Poppy scoffed in dismay, "Here? Please, the only thing we're liable to find here is tinned crab in the hors d'oeuvres," she picked glumly at the food on her plate.

"Such talk from a woman who's hailed from the fishing district," Lucretia said.

"My great grandfather did, so?" Poppy shrugged back, "I have good taste in seafood,"

Gamma rolled her eyes, "You wouldn't know a salmon from a flounder, and you know it,"

"Sh!" Sable hushed their bickering in a fell swoop, her focus continued to be fixed on the debate.

As the debate continued, Coriolanus deftly fielded questions and criticisms, his responses measured and eloquent. He felt a surge of adrenaline, the thrill of the challenge coursing through him. He could see his opponents' resolve wavering, their arguments losing momentum. They were much older, had fielded their time in office. Coriolanus was young, ambitious, and well-spoken. Being a handsome, now rich young man certainly helped his public image.

"At least this election will give us something nice to look at," Gamma sighed, watching Coriolanus more than she was listening to what he had to say.

Lucretia simpered, "Perhaps that's why Sable is so starry-eyed? Are you in love, dear?"

"Oh, please. There's no point in being in love with politicians," Sable replied, turning to her friends with a sympathetic smile, "They all lie, who's to say they don't lie to their wives and children as well?"

"Why would you ever want to marry anyone in government? I couldn't imagine," Poppy huffed.

Sable gave her a level stare. "For security, of course," she replied simply. "Do you think our current positions in society will protect us forever?"

Lucretia scoffed, "Sable, we're young and beautiful. We'll snag ourselves husbands by the time we're twenty-five," she said.

"Mothers by thirty," Gamma nodded.

Sable turned her sharp, piercing gaze to her ginger friend. "Gamma, your family came from District Six, did they not?" she asked.

"Yes," Gamma replied.

"And wasn't last year's tribute from District Six also young and beautiful?" Sable's gaze flitted over her other two friends. "I believe she was blown up by a land mine."

Gamma rolled her eyes. "What's your point, Sable?"

"We're not secure. No amount of money or status can protect us forever," she explained.

"Are you kidding me?" Poppy laughed with ridicule. "We're in the Capitol, we're safe from the games!"

Sable leaned in, her voice low and urgent, "The games aren't the only threat. Power shifts, alliances change. Marrying into the government isn't just about prestige—it's about ensuring we have the protection and influence we need to survive in an ever volatile world," she then pointed to the podiums on the stage, "That's what this is all about,"

Lucretia's face fell as she pondered Sable's words, the reality of their status settling in. Poppy meanwhile continued to laugh, both in disbelief and whatever audacious delusion Sable was put under.

"Sable, you've been reading too many books," Poppy decided.

Sable simply shrugged back. "And what's wrong with that?"

"Why don't you get up on those podiums and make a speech?" Poppy suggested, her tone dripping with sarcasm.

Sable smiled faintly, "Maybe I will, one day?"

Lucretia sighed dramatically, "You always have to be so serious, Sable. Can't we just head on to the gala?"

"If you all care to go ahead, then please do," Sable replied, her expression calm and confident, "I'd like to see this play out,"

Gamma chuckled along, "Let's face it, girls -- if anyone here can trick a president into marrying her, it would be Sable,"

Sable's smile widened, a hint of mischief in her eyes, "Well, someone has to think ahead. And who knows? Maybe one day you'll be thanking me for it,"

Coriolanus adjusted his cufflinks for the third time, the heavy velvet curtains of the grand ballroom swishing softly as the entrance to the gala beckoned. His reflection in the polished marble columns showed a man dressed impeccably in a dark red suit, but the slight furrow in his brow betrayed his inner turmoil. Tonight had to go perfectly.

Garrison Romulus, his seasoned political advisor, walked beside him, a look of mild irritation creasing his weathered face, “Coriolanus, I can’t stress this enough. You’re lagging in the polls --"

"Really? I thought the debate was quite successful," he replied.

"You can debate all you like. But you'll forgive the public of being skeptical of a twenty-two-year-old running for president,” Garrison continued, "Be that and your -- scandal with the Hunger Games of 10 ATT--"

Coriolanus sighed, cutting him off with a swift glare, “I know, Garrison. I’ve heard it all before,”

“Yes, but have you absorbed it?” Garrison’s tone was sharp, “You talk like your father, but you are still seen as a liability to the public. You need to prove your maturity and stability tonight,”

Coriolanus nodded, forcing his features into a mask of confidence, “And what better opportunity than making an appearance at the Reed's Aid Ball? I trust your assistant sent my contribution ahead?”

Garrison’s eyes softened slightly, but his voice remained firm, “Of course, sir,”

"Than tonight should be a success," he assured the older man, "I'll shake a few hands, take some pictures, look like the hero Panem needs,"

Garrison continued to ramble on, however, the words barely registered as Coriolanus’s gaze drifted past the advisor’s shoulder, drawn by a dazzling shimmer. There, across the room, stood a woman who seemed to command the very air around her. Her gown, a shimmering cascade of icy blue fabric, clung to her form with an elegance that was both arresting and subtle. Her hair, a slicked back pixie cut, framed a face that was contrastingly sharp angles and soft allure.

“Coriolanus, are you even listening to me?” Garrison’s voice broke through his reverie, but it was distant, an echo in the periphery of his mind.

He blinked, trying to pull his thoughts back to the conversation. “Yes, of course. Make connections. Show them stability,”

Garrison frowned, following Coriolanus’s line of sight, “Are you seriously gawking at women at a time like this? This is serious!”

“Your chirping is irritating,” Coriolanus murmured, "I know that woman, I've seen her in the papers,"

"Yes, yes, that is Sable Hanover. Of the district three Hanovers," Garrison huffed.

"Hanover?" the name rolled off his tongue with a strange sense of familiarity.

"They made their money in pharmaceuticals, I believe. Their daughter is on the front cover of every rag mag in the city," Garrison muttered with little interest. Coriolanus watched as she conversed with her group with the grace of a dancer, her laughter like the delicate chime of crystal. She was a vision, a shimmery beacon in a sea of monotonous suits.

“Coriolanus!” Garrison’s tone was more urgent now, but Coriolanus couldn’t tear his eyes away from Sable, “Focus. Remember what we discussed,”

“I am focused. Why don't you fetch yourself some champagne?” he replied, though his mind was already drifting, lost in the magnetic pull of the woman across the room. Every step she took seemed to draw him in further, making it impossible to concentrate on anything else. Garrison scoffed with dismay and went off to find the refreshments.

The music swirled around the room, creating a backdrop of elegance and sophistication. Coriolanus stood rooted to the spot, his eyes still locked on Sable Hanover as she moved gracefully through the crowd. The way she commanded attention with every step, the subtle tilt of her head as she listened intently to those around her—everything about her was magnetic.

“Mr. Snow!” a voice interrupted his thoughts, pulling him back to the present.

Coriolanus turned to find himself face-to-face with Senator Allister Reed, one of the most influential figures in Panem's political landscape. The senator was a tall, imposing man with a silver mane of hair and piercing blue eyes that seemed to see right through him.

“Senator Reed,” Coriolanus greeted, extending his hand with a practiced smile. “It’s an honor to see you here tonight. Lovely party,”

“The honor is mine,” Senator Reed replied, his grip firm and confident. “I’ve been hearing a lot about you lately, Mr. Snow. Your campaign has certainly made waves.”

Coriolanus nodded, the smile never leaving his face. “I’m doing my best to bring about positive change for Panem.”

Reed chuckled, a deep, resonant sound. “Ambitious words, young man. But ambition without action is merely a dream. Tell me, what makes you think you’re the right person to lead us?”

Garrison’s words echoed in his mind: Prove your maturity and stability. Coriolanus straightened, meeting the senator’s gaze with unwavering determination. “I understand the challenges our society faces, Senator. My experiences have shaped me, taught me resilience and strategic thinking. I’m committed to leveraging those experiences to build a stronger, more unified Panem,”

The senator studied him for a moment, his expression unreadable. “Interesting. You speak with conviction, but actions speak louder than words. How do you plan to address the concerns of the people?”

Before Coriolanus could respond, a cacophony of laughter caught his attention. His eyes flickered back to Sable, who was now engaged in a lively conversation with a group of high-ranking officials and her female cohorts.

“Mr. Snow?” Senator Reed’s voice sharpened, pulling Coriolanus back.

“Apologies, Senator,” Coriolanus said, forcing his attention back to the conversation. “I plan to implement policies that promote economic stability and social reform. We need to rebuild trust in our government and ensure that every citizen feels heard and valued.”

Reed nodded slowly, a hint of approval in his eyes. “A noble goal. But remember, the path to power is fraught with obstacles. Stay vigilant and true to your ideals.”

“I will, Senator. Thank you for the advice.” he grinned, "I trust I can count on your vote in the election?"

Reed tutted, "Slow down, there. You have six more months of campaigning to do, and it's not just me you have to impress,"

"Of course," Coriolanus nodded, "I'm hoping to touch base with many of your colleagues tonight,"

Reed's expression lifted, a withered but warm smile pulling at his lips, "Why don't I save you some steps? Come!" he motioned for the boy to follow him, and Coriolanus did without question.

They weaved through the crowd of Panem's who's-who, finally coming to the group that had been drawing Coriolanus's attention since he'd arrived. Reed was the first to speak, his booming voice cutting through the hum of conversation.

"Gentlemen! And ladies, of course," he smiled briefly at one of the women, "I'd like to introduce you to Coriolanus Snow: our potential new president!"

The cluster of senators turned as one, their expressions ranging from curious to skeptical. Coriolanus felt the weight of their scrutiny but maintained his confident smile.

Senator Agnes Caldwell, a formidable woman with strawberry blonde hair styled in an elegant hive, was the first to approach. Her eyes were sharp, assessing. "Mr. Snow," she said, extending a hand. "I've heard much about you. Tell me, what is your stance on economic reform for the districts?"

Coriolanus took her hand firmly, looking her directly in the eyes. "Senator Caldwell, I believe economic stability is the foundation of a strong Panem. My plan includes investing in infrastructure and creating jobs within the districts to ensure a more balanced distribution of wealth and resources."

Her eyes flickered with interest as she nodded thoughtfully. "Ambitious. We need leaders who think beyond the Capitol."

Before he could respond, Senator Julius Park stepped forward. His demeanor was less severe, a twinkle of curiosity in his eyes. "And what measures will you take to strengthen our military and ensure our security?"

Coriolanus shifted smoothly, adapting his tone to match the senator's lighter approach. "Senator Park, I myself spent some time as a peace keeper, I've picked out our weaknesses during my service. I propose increasing our military training programs and investing in advanced technology to ensure our security while also maintaining peace within our borders,"

Park's smile widened. "A practical approach. Your experience will surely come in handy, I trust,"

As Coriolanus navigated the questions, he felt the eyes of the room on him. He answered with precision and poise, each response calculated to impress and persuade. But as he turned to face the next senator, his gaze was irresistibly drawn to a figure standing just outside the circle—Sable Hanover.

She stepped forward, her eyes gleaming with a mix of mischief and curiosity. The soft, knowing smile on her lips hinted at a challenge. "Mr. Snow," she began, her voice smooth and captivating, "I'm curious. Given your... unique experiences, do you truly believe the Hunger Games are necessary for maintaining control over the districts?"

The question hung in the air, catching Coriolanus off guard; he hadn't expected such a loaded question to come from a socialite. He felt a slight tightening in his chest, his practiced composure momentarily faltering. He knew the room was watching, waiting for his response.

He took a breath, his mind racing, "Ms. Hanover," he began, meeting her gaze, "the Hunger Games have long been a tool for maintaining order and reminding the districts of the Capitol's authority. However, I believe we must also explore other means of fostering unity and understanding. The Games serve a purpose, but they should not be our only method of governance. Letting the districts believe in their own worth will be the key to Panem's thriving,"

Sable's smile deepened, and she tilted her head slightly, her eyes never leaving his as another senator cut in, "An interesting perspective, Mr. Snow. It seems you aim to balance strength with perceivable empathy,"

"Well, what more can we offer the people of Panem if not empathy?" he replied.

Senator Reed clapped a hand on his shoulder, the booming voice breaking the tension. "Well said, Coriolanus! Well said!"

The group murmured their agreement, some nodding thoughtfully. Coriolanus felt a rush of relief mingled with the lingering impact of Sable's stare. He was intrigued by her perfection, an expertly poised and packaged doll here for mere entertainment. Or perhaps, something even more worth his time?

"I wouldn't have expected to see a woman like you here tonight, Ms. Hanover," he commented.

Sable's giggle was melodic, like the jingle of Christmas bells tinkling sweetly, "A woman like me? Tell me, what does that mean?" she asked.

"He means because you're tabloid fodder," Senator Park cut in, taking a sip from his champagne glass.

Senator Reed gaped at him, "Julius! Is that any way to speak to my guest?"

"Oh, calm yourself Allister, it's alright," Sable assured him, her smile never faltering as she turned back to Coriolanus, "Every girl needs a hobby, mine just happens to be... national affairs,"

Her speaking voice was a captivating blend of soft allure and confident assertion. It was breathy, with a melodic lilt that seemed to wrap around each word, drawing listeners in with a hypnotic charm. Her tone was sultry, yet delicate, with an undercurrent of playful mischief that hinted at deeper complexities. Each sentence flowed effortlessly, her voice caressing the air with a warm, velvety smoothness that left an indelible impression on everyone who heard her speak.

Coriolanus wondered for how long she worked on that voice.

"A complex, but exciting topic, Ms. Hanover," he nodded.

"I find life would be boring without complexities, Mr. Snow," she agreed, "Twenty-two and running for president must be quite complex,"

"Very. But all exciting, never the less," he grinned back at her.

The gala’s lights dimmed slightly as the music changed, signalling the beginning of the evening’s events. Several couples made their way to the dance floor as a waltz began to play, a beautiful and luscious tune that shifted the mood from business to something more inviting.

Some of the senators dispersed from the group, seeking out either their partners or another drink. Nevertheless, Coriolanus suddenly found himself standing side-by-side with Sable, the opportunity presenting itself to him on fine china, practically. Despite her position in the tabloids, Sable Hanover was here for a reason. Certainly, she could win him some societal points.

"Would you care to dance, Ms. Hanover?" Coriolanus asked, his voice steady but laced with an undertone of intrigue.

Sable's eyes sparkled with a hint of amusement as she regarded him, "Certainly,"

She placed her hand in his, her touch light but firm. As they made their way to the center of the ballroom, the music shifted to a slow, elegant waltz. Coriolanus felt the weight of countless eyes on them, the collective gaze of the Capitol's elite assessing their every move.

They began to dance, moving in perfect synchrony. Sable's gown swirled around her like liquid silk, the icy blue fabric catching the light and contrasting beautifully with his dark red suit. Her presence was magnetic, drawing him in with every step.

"I watched your debate earlier tonight," she started off.

"Oh?" Coriolanus raised a brow, "And what did you think?"

"You navigate your affairs quite well, Mr. Snow," Sable said, her voice a soft, alluring murmur. "But I'm curious—how do you handle the more personal challenges of leadership?"

Coriolanus looked into her eyes, finding himself momentarily captivated by their depth. "Leadership, like dancing, requires a delicate balance. One must be firm yet adaptable, always anticipating the next move while staying grounded in the present."

Sable tilted her head slightly, her smile both knowing and enigmatic. "And do you find it difficult to maintain that balance?"

"At times," he admitted, surprised by his own honesty. "But it's a challenge I welcome."

They continued to dance, the world around them fading into the background. For a moment, it felt as if they were the only two people in the room. The music, the chatter, the political machinations—all of it seemed distant and inconsequential.

Sable's voice broke through his thoughts, soft and intimate. "You've captured the attention of many tonight, Coriolanus. But attention can be fleeting. What do you truly seek?"

He hesitated, the weight of her question settling over him. "I seek to build a legacy, of course. A society where the Games are not the only means of control."

Her eyes searched his, and he felt a connection forming, a subtle but undeniable bond, "You're quite ambitious, Mr. Snow. And very well spoken. But even you must admit: being willing to face the truth, even when it is uncomfortable, is the ultimate skill of leadership,"

"You speak as though you have experience with such things," he noted.

"Well, you know who my father is, do you not?" she asked.

"Phillip Hanover, the commanding officer and owner of Panem Pharmaceuticals. Your family supplies the districts with all the medications they need," he replied matter-of-factly.

"Yes," she nodded, "And being heir to such an empire places... expectations on a person that they may not find fair..."

"Expectations? Like what?"

Before she could answer, the dance ended, though Sable did not immediately step away. They stood close, their hands still intertwined, the electric tension between them palpable. Coriolanus felt a surge of determination, a resolve to prove himself not just to the Capitol, but to this enigmatic woman who had challenged him in ways he hadn't anticipated.

"Thank you for the dance, Mr. Snow," she said, her eyes sparkling with a mix of amusement and something deeper, "I look forward to our next conversation,"

Coriolanus' smile was enigmatic, his voice low, "As do I, Ms. Hanover,"

As she walked away, Coriolanus watched her go, a newfound sense of purpose coursing through him. He knew that the road ahead would be fraught with challenges, but he felt ready to face them. And in the back of his mind, he couldn't help but wonder what other secrets and insights Sable Hanover held, and how their paths would continue to intertwine.

[citrinae]

gingerbread kisses.

or: christmassy things you do with them. there are some more holiday-themed drabbles/headcanons in the works so hopefully i'll get around to posting some of them anytime soon!

ft. the monster trio

☆*。luffy

• hot cocoa, ornaments dangling from his ears, snowman-building contests, him pushing you into a pile of snow and joining soon after, snow fights turning into snow angel-making contests, crumbles of the gingerbread he stole from sanji’s kitchen, once he exposed a fake santa in front of a bunch of kids at the christmas market. 

• he’d make it his life’s mission to make sure you’re laughing, always, especially around this time, when his restlessness and impersonation skills increase tenfold. luffy on christmas eve is like mixing coffee with an energy drink. and even though he vehemently claimed he’d help you decorate the tree, he cannot help throwing everything on him instead, tinsel and ornaments and lights, turning himself into a walking greeting card. 

• after one, two, three more attempts at placing decorations on the actual tree, a defeated sigh leaves you eventually as you hang a glass bauble around your nose. luffy’s eyes are glowing brighter than the lights blinking around his neck and he leans forward to press a kiss upon your lips, long and sweet, bauble slipping off and unfurling into constellations on the floor as he does. do remember to brush those under a carpet before someone witnesses the mess you’ve made in here.  

• “what’s that for?” you laugh, a pinker shade crossing your cheeks, only for you to be met with a shrug and a smile reaching luffy’s ears. “felt happy, was all,” he says, and it’s completely genuine, even more so when he adds, “you’re awesome.” you smile back. and just as spontaneously you pull luffy in for a hug, wiggling the rest of the ornaments off him, encircling you both in a sea of colour and glitter. the moment doesn’t last for long and it’s the silver star lingering at the bottom of your decorations box that catches his attention now. “who makes the coolest half gets to place the star on the top.”

☆*。zoro

• mulled wine, hesitant pecks under the mistletoe, a freshly cut conifer carried on one shoulder and chopper cheering merrily on the other, damp wood and pine filling your nose when you rest your chin over his head, pinkies touching, his hands wrapping themselves around you after you’d both have fallen asleep at the fireplace. 

• it’s common knowledge that zoro isn’t good with dates. neither is he someone to put as much importance on a holiday, “i guess people needed an excuse to drink without feeling bad for it,” and at first you are more than sure he’d spend christmas morning training. therefore not finding him in his usual spot, barbells and swords and towels untouched and forgotten, should come as a total shocker to you. 

• but you’d have found what he’d been up to way sooner if he hadn’t gotten himself lost on the way to the town and back to the ship. sunset victoriously colouring his outline and a hand at his nape, he blames his absence on an old lady mistaking a sword shop for a tavern. for all you know, it was probably him mistaking a tavern for a sword shop. there’s a rectangular object in his fist you cannot take your eyes off—a knife case. “found nothing to grab my attention, dunno. still i thought this might come in handy to you,” he lies. better throw yourself into his arms because getting presents from roronoa zoro is like seeing him rip himself open for you. of course the quiet sigh coming with his reaction isn’t always that reassuring, but deep down he’s happy to know his efforts brought a smile to your face. 

• you two spend a good part of that night in the storage room, clinking bottles and letting yourselves get carried away with stories from your homelands. before you get to open yourself another one, he gestures with his knee towards your pocket knife. “let’s see what this devil can do, shall we?” you know exactly what he means by this. with a swift hand, you slide the knife under the bottle cap. when it pops, there’s a smirk climbing on zoro’s face, “that’s my babe.”

• apple and cinnamon tea, matching sweaters, him spinning you around the kitchen while humming some carol he picked from the north blue, scented candles, sugar melting in a frying pan and your lips touching the tip of a wooden spoon after he asks if this syrup is sweet enough for you. "at least half as sweet as you are, mon cœur."

☆*。sanji

• food shopping is the default. he’s got everything planned out, lists and schedules of the best providers on the island, and he wants to make sure everything goes immaculately at dinner on this special occasion with you. you’re not surprised when you notice that a good part of his basket is made of either foods you like or stuff you’ve asked of him before. mans does his homework all right. 

• be watchful of zoning out because if you keep your eyes on something for more than thirty seconds he’ll get it for you. no questions asked. he might also make some other additions on the spot if you happen to stumble upon any trinkets that remind him of you in one way or another. does someone sell heart-shaped ornaments at the stall on your left? he’ll get one for you. snowflake ornaments? he’ll get one for you, “because, darling, you landed on my heart the way snow graces a withered tree.”

• shopping bags at your feet and your cheeks rosy after shouldering past animated gushes of people at the market, your retreat is an isolated bench near the docks and the clicking sound of sanji’s lighter. he folds an arm around you. “cold,” you try to reason for huddling yourself into him. snowflakes begin to dot the sky a whiter canvas, floating on your head and nose. sanji doesn’t say it out loud, but a selfish part of him wishes you were feeling cold more often. 

[arcadia-of-pluto]

Twist of Fate; Twenty-Two

Pairings; LADS OT4 x reader

Word count; 2,055

Themes; isekai, slowburn (eventual smut), canon divergence

Rating; swearing and mature themes

Notes; Hey guys! A little late on the update, but I finally got around to finishing 22! I'd say half of 23 is gonna be Foreseer Zayne and then we're onto Lightseeker Xavier (I know the Zayne chapters have went on for a long while, but I haven't written much for Zayne so...This is for the Zayne Biased <3). I'm sorry I can't rush and have them back to the current timeline just yet, but I'll try to keep it short and sweet.

I'm also working on a few things for Divisa! So I'll probably be up late tonight, unfortunately for me.

prev || next

☆ Masterlist ☆

The moon masks the sun, and only a golden ring remains. A beam of light strikes the Creatio protocore. Light reflects off of it, forming chaos and patterns of disorder, which is brought into the hands of the Foreseer.

Ancient symbols gradually appear as he pieces together a puzzle. Astra’s will has presented itself, and the Foreseer’s indifferent facade reveals a hint of indignation as he too is imprisoned by the prophecy. Astra has spoken.

Those who defy fate are sinners and shall be punished by Him.

When you finally open your eyes, you find yourself lying on the floor of your room. Moonlight cascades onto the empty bed. You only recall being overwhelmed by a strange feeling at dawn…Were you unconscious for the whole day?

You look in the mirror and realize…the marks have already reached your neck. Your clothes will no longer be able to hide them now.

If you take the Creatio protocore…will the Foreseer still be Zayne? And if he isn’t the Foreseer, he’s doomed to be trapped in the Tower forever. Doesn’t that make him a prisoner? You don’t want to hurt Zayne, but…You can’t die like this.

What if you told Zayne the true extent of your illness..?

You enter the library and ice appears in front of you, forming an arc. “Good morning, Jas…Is the Foreseer here?”

The phantasm sways from left to right.

“So he isn’t… You and the Foreseer dislike lies. Would he ever forgive someone who has lied to him?”

Jas sways in an agitated manner.

“Of course..” You say with a sigh, “He won’t forgive me then.”

Jas hears sorrow in your voice, and a platform of ice appears under your feet, lifting you up. More ice appears, shimmering and glittering.

It’s trying to comfort you.

You can’t help the sad smile that ghosts across your lips nor the tears that mist your eyes. “Thank you, Jas.”

You sit on the ice, traveling between the endless rows of shelves. Has Zayne read all of the books here?

“I wonder what the Foreseer does when he’s upset. Then again, he might just scowl regardless of his mood.”

As you mumble to yourself, it suddenly begins to snow. You’re in awe, watching snow descend like flower petals dancing in the wind. A few snowflakes fall onto your hand. They sparkle like crystals and do not melt.

“What are they?” You murmur, running your thumb across the snow in your palm.

“Were you not the one asking about what I do when I’m upset?” You hear a calm voice from below. You sit on the floating platform as Zayne stands at the door, looking up at you. 

“So it is possible. Was the prophecy not to your liking?”

“It matters not. Only a true envoy of the king can deliver it.” You stay silent at that, pursing your lips.

It seems he still hasn’t let that go…

”You are mocking me again. You aren’t upset then.” Zayne lifts a finger and the ice carries you down to him. He looks you in the eye.

“And you? What do you do?”

“I…” You think of the flowers you planted in the past as they sway in the breeze. “I dance.”

“I thought humans only dance when they are happy.” 

“Not all of them. The more upset I am, the more I try to move around.” 

You hear Zayne audibly sigh before he glances at you, then holds out his hand. “May I?”

 “...Are you requesting a dance? Here?” A small laugh of disbelief slips from your lips, a smile tugging at the corners of your mouth.

“We will both feel better if we dance under the snow.”

You hesitantly look at Zayne. His expression is reminiscent of a merciless blizzard as per usual.

“Would you prefer we do something else?” 

“We can dance.” The warmth of Zayne’s hand spreads from your fingers to the rest of your body. In the Tower’s library, you waltz. Snowflakes gently flutter about, and you step on the jasmine-shaped ice. 

Everything has led to this precious moment. You gaze into each other’s eyes, your hands touching, your steps synchronized.

“You’ve lived here by yourself since the beginning so…who taught you how to dance? This can’t be your first time.” You question and Zayne looks away for a moment, “Perhaps my body still remembers the motions from the past.”

“...Are you referring to your other lives?” Your tone was softer than usual, almost matching the slight change in tone that the Foreseer also carried.

 “The Foreseer cannot truly die, so your description isn’t right.” Zayne looks at you, but it feels like he’s gazing into a time long gone.

“What is it like to remember things from another era?” This was a question you could get behind.

Especially since you were currently remembering things from a time forgotten. 

“It is no different than being in a never-ending snowstorm.” You watch Zayne, the lonesome air surrounding him. Though you are in the same room, moving to the same rhythm, he is a dreamer whose dream may soon come to an end.

However, you felt the same way. This dream of yours was bound to end soon and you’d find yourself in yet another one soon after.

You squeeze his hand. “If the snowfall is eternal, find someone to dance with you. At the very least, the two of you will be happy.” Zayne’s gaze sweeps across you like a feather brushing across your cheek.

“You don’t seem to be upset anymore.” His voice was barely above a whisper and you cheekily reply, “Our dance would be better with some music.”

Following the rhythm of your steps, you start to hum. Your voice echoes within the library.

“You…always hum this melody when watering the jasmine.” He notes, avoiding your gaze. “So you’ve noticed…”

“Will you sing for me?”

“To the afterglow cries cosmic demise. Our world in deceptive amber paradise.

In these sands of time. My frozen bouquet awaits.

With your gaze so full of wonder, I hold four jasmines asunder. His secrets revealed.

Hark the bard, ‘O legends unfold. This distant tale they sing to you. Unspoken desires, sincere and true.

A jasmine in time’s embrace. A fragrant aria, a moment’s grace.”

○o。.

.。o○

Zayne…couldn’t recall the first time the jasmine appeared. Ever since he took upon the mantle of Foreseer, the Tower of Thorns had always been home to the jasmine that never bloomed.

It is like a riddle waiting to be solved, or maybe it’s a metaphor for his fragmented memories. The jasmine’s existence is an unremovable thorn— a reminder of his past, or his failure to remember who he is.

Zayne dreams the same dream. It is one he has dreamt of many, many times. He kisses the jasmine bud, and then his entire being sinks into darkness.

“Zayne. Zayne.”

Yet he hears her, her voice cutting through the shadows.

Why does her voice sound as if it’s from the jasmine itself and from the distant past?

Zayne waits for the darkness to swallow him once more, yet when he opens his eyes, the jasmine he kissed in his dreams has turned into the face of a girl. 

A girl he knows all too well.

○o。.

.。o○

“Zayne…Zayne?”

You frantically knock on Zayne’s door, time passing by ever so slowly before he finally opens it. He appears to have just woken up, his eyes hazy with sleep.

“I thought you were normally awake at this hour?” You question, one hand on your hip.

Though, Zayne doesn’t respond. Instead, he only looks at you…as if you were a stranger.

“Ah…Nevermind. Follow me!” Brimming with excitement, you grab his sleeve and you’re surprised he lets himself be dragged out of his bedchamber.

You’re trying to keep your pace slow since Zayne had just woken up, but you were too excited. You bring him to the top of the Tower.

In the joyous glow of the sun, the jasmine’s trembling petals unfurl one after another.

“Zayne, look! The jasmine has bloomed!” You quickly turn to face him, wanting to see his expression﹘curious about his reaction. His eyes hold a burning spark as he looks at you.

“I…What?” You let out a nervous laugh as you rub the back of your neck. “Haven’t you been looking forward to this?”

However, Zayne is still silent. He lowers his gaze, suppressing the light in his eyes. It seems he’s looking at the jasmine and…you.

“...At last.”

“So? Am I not a skilled gardener?” 

“You were late.”

“Huh?” You shake your head with a small smile on your lips. “When not a single blade of grass grows here but a strange jasmine, you don’t need a gardener.”

“Hence why it only bloomed in your presence.” 

Zayne was…being strangely nice today. He also appeared to be much happier than before. You wonder what he dreamt about that would make him feel less cold than before.

“...Don’t shower me with praise. Now you’re making it sound like this was bound to happen.” You clear your throat and step closer to the jasmine, fingertips brushing against the soft, fragile petals.

Deep in thought, Zayne continued to stare at you. “Have…I offended you again?” You tilt your head to the side. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

His gaze shifts to your hand still holding his sleeve.

Huh…You must’ve forgotten to let go.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I was too excited.” As you let go, Zayne grabs your hand.

“This is not a mere coincidence.”

“...What?” You’re not exactly sure what to make of Zayne’s words. You gaze drifting down to your hand encased in Zayne’s much larger one.

“You are not the first to step foot in the Tower of Thorns. No one has been able to make the jasmine bloom. Only you have succeeded.”

Something…about his voice makes your heart beat more quickly. An unfamiliar emotion spreads through your chest.

“What is it? You’re not acting like your usual self…” He’s acting slightly like Doctor Zayne– your Zayne.

“You’re right.” Zayne hesitates to continue, an indescribable emotion flooding his eyes.

“Allow me to take you to another place.”

“To where? You said I could leave once the jasmine blooms, did you not?”

Ouch, it feels a bit rude to bring up leaving right as an unemotional man starts acting emotional but…Sure, let’s go with that.

“Do you want to leave now?”

No.

“I…”

Do you?

Do you want to steal the Creatio Protocore, make Zayne lose his power, and leave him imprisoned in the Tower forevermore?

No…You don’t want him to be “perpetually frozen” anymore. But…you’ll die, won’t you? Without the Creatio Protocore…

���ミ

You never expected Zayne to take you to the field of jasmines in Philos: Floral Inquiry. Under the warm sunlight, you walk amongst the seemingly never-ending sea of flowers.

“Zayne?” You question as you walk side by side and he turns to face you. The expression on his face is familiar yet unfamiliar. It’s unfamiliar because of how different the Foreseer and you are— the distance between you a chasm.

But…The current him reminds you of that wraith and of your Zayne.

You don’t understand…Is the person in front of you real or an illusion?

“Why did you bring me here, Zayne?” You were at a loss. You weren’t sure how this dream was going to end, feeling like it’s been going on for forever at this point.

You really thought it would be wrapped up by now…but surely all of the angst and sadness is done, right?

Zayne’s eyes shimmer like a lake on a midsummer’s day. “I wish to confirm something.”

His words give you little to interpret so, instead, you repeat to him, “...What is there to confirm?”

He suddenly cups your cheek, seemingly losing himself in your eyes. His gaze shines bright. Your heart begins racing, violently thundering in your chest.

What…is he doing?

“That…I won’t lose you again.”

…Huh?

…Again?

Then, a suffocating indigo is all you see. The blinding light consumes your vision while your heart feels like it’s being crushed. Your hand clutches at your chest and you catch a glimpse of Zayne’s panicked expression before you faint.

The Cryoriais.

That damned icy disease. 

I barely did any proofreading so if there's any misspellings or skipped words, I apologize 😭 i just wanted to get this chapter out bc i felt bad for missing Friday. Anyways! I'm leaving to go type up a few more chapters. <3

Taglist; @orphicmeliora , @yoongi-tunes , @mitzkooni , @hiqhkey, @tanspostsblog , @shypotatoes013-blog

[thedarkivist]

Trick or treat!!🧡🖤✨

@knitted-pigeons, let's do a fairy tale AU one from the vault, shall we?

When Ferdinand bursts into their bedroom, he lets the door swing closed and lingers only long enough to give the handle a light pat before he crosses the room, shaking down the snowflakes glittering in his hair and melting on his cloak.

"You are not going to believe what-" Belatedly, he notices Hubert's expression and deflates somewhat. "You seem rather… displeased with me," he ventures carefully.

"Do I?" The dancer makes a show of crossing his arms over his chest. "What an astute observation."

Ferdinand shuffles his feet and offers him a shaky, sheepish smile. "I may have… lost the track of time out there." Then he adds quickly: "In a perfectly regular way."

Hubert doesn't answer and turns his face towards the window, his lips drawn into a tight line. Their suite in the castle is bathed in warm, indulgent candlelight, and fire crackles away in the fireplace. Within - safety. Without - only darkness, undisturbed by the snow that blankets the land, swallowing down footsteps of reckless travellers with every fresh layer.

Shame prickles at the back of his neck and it takes everything he has in him not to squirm. Hubert's point, even if wordless, is clear. He should've waited for someone else to wake up and at least tell them where he was headed. Only, once the first ray of anaemic winter sun stirred him awake, all he could think of was the road winding around the castle and all the paths branching off from it no matter which direction he'd choose.

Still, he tries: "The snow let up for the first time in days, I had to take advantage-"

"Sometimes I wonder if you have a death wish," Hubert says. He walks away from the window, and sits down on the edge of the bed, twisting the fabric of his uniform between his fingers. There's no trace of irony in his voice, and Ferdinand's stomach sinks when he realises he's telling the truth.

He drops to the floor at Hubert’s feet, and rests his chin on his knee, looking up through his eyelashes. “On my honour, I do not.” Hubert doesn’t take the cue to stroke his hair as he normally might, but he stops fidgeting at least.

“I have something to show you,” Ferdinand continues, already reaching into the folds of his cloak, “before it melts.”

What he produces is a piece of ice. Hubert reminds himself of that, not quite ready to abandon the argument. It’s a piece of ice, such as could be obtained by reaching out of the window. A piece of ice, only remarkable because of its shape.

Ferdinand takes his hand and sets the piece of ice into the palm of his lover’s hand. “Strange and beautiful, is it not?” A little smile appears on his face, a tender, hopeful thing. Then he whispers: “Like you.”

By some quirk of magic, the piece of ice is shaped like a rose, down to the finest curve of every individual petal.

For a split second, Hubert’s expression softens with wonder. He raises the flower up, marvelling at the light fragmented in its geometry. Already, the edges are damp, and a single icy drop rolls down his forearm, making him shudder.

Ferdinand gets up, takes the flower from him, opens the window, and carefully sets the rose in the snow that piled up on the windowsill.

He closes the window again, turns around, and offers Hubert a smile. “Now you can be cross with me, if it pleases you.”

A huff in response. “It’s not about whether or not it pleases me, it’s about how you throw yourself into unnecessary danger without even telling m- anyone first.”

Ferdinand returns to his spot at Hubert’s feet, and rests his head on his lap, the curve of his neck on display. “I did not want to wake you when you slept so peacefully. And I was not far, only as far as that pond we came across in autumn. Do you remember?”

Bright pink spots appear on Hubert’s face and neck. He does remember. “How am I to know that though? I don’t mind if you wake me for this. An hour later, and we would’ve sent a search party for you.” “I will keep it in mind,” Ferdinand promises, so earnest Hubert doesn’t quite know how to react.

He averts his face and, finally, runs his fingers through Ferdinand’s hair.

[evilasiangenius]

They reclined together on the same plump pillow, Aziraphale leaning back into Crowley’s arms, Crowley draped languorous over Aziraphale’s shoulder.

“Angel?” Crowley spoke in a very quiet voice, after a servant had refilled the cups and left.

“Hmm?”

“Do you forgive me?” Crowley asked, hesitant, just loud enough for Aziraphale to hear and no one else. “For what I did.”

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale said primly. “I don’t know what you want me to forgive you for. What did you do? If it was that business with not meeting me for these last few weeks, I will say what I said before; I understand that you needed some time-”

“No, not that. Erm. Keeping it from you, not telling you. That whole...horrible business in the forest. The last...erm, few years, when you first came to Pella.”

“It was more than a few-”

“Yeah, all right, good point. All those years. Still,” Crowley sighed, pausing for a long breath. “I wanted to know if you forgive me.”

“No,” Aziraphale sighed, but before Crowley could respond, he turned and gave the demon a little squeeze, catching Crowley unawares and drawing down into his arms. “No, it’s not like that, love. I don’t forgive you because there’s nothing to forgive. I couldn’t hold onto it if I wanted to, my dear, and believe me I tried. I even tried being responsible, I really did. Trying to stay fully professional, keeping you at arm’s length...but you saw how well that worked. You did what you had to do to survive – after all, we are all meant to be obedient to their wills. For that I might as well ask you to forgive me for thwarting you, or beg your forgiveness for being an agent of Upstairs.”

“Oh,” Crowley’s voice was soft and surprised. “Oh. Wait, did you-”

“And of course you know that I would not hold it against you to have loved someone else first, that is not something any one of us could have chosen, least of all-”

Crowley untangled himself, straightening himself out so that he was once more sitting properly behind Aziraphale. “Wait, Aziraphale, did you just call me-”

“Yes, I did.” Aziraphale said with a little smile. “I did.”

“Oh.”

“Shall I say it again, love? In case you didn’t hear me clearly the first time.”

“Aziraphale…” Crowley blushed, hiding his face against the back of Aziraphale’s shoulder.

“Shall we go for a walk after dinner, love?” Aziraphale took Crowley’s hand, pressing the elegant length to his lips, kissing the tip of each finger one at a time. “Just you and me. I think it will snow tonight, just a little bit, in flurries of tiny snowflakes. Not enough to lay thick upon the ground, my dear, but just enough to light up the whole evening as the waxing moon peeks through the clouds, the sky full of glittering stars just beyond. Do you think that by moonlight, the snowflakes will shine like the stars? Let’s go and shake off the past, shake off everything terrible and replace it with the winter wind and the falling snow and your hand in mine. Love, let’s go together.”

x

[maglor-my-beloved]

Winter Day

Relationship: Erestor/Glorfindel

Rating: M

Words: 473

My @whiteoliphaunt gift for @between-thepages

Read on Ao3

Imladris was quiet and peaceful in the winter. Snow covered the valley like a blanket, icicles glittered in the trees and outside the windows like countless gems, and the rushing of water from the Bruinen and its fall was replaced by silence.

Glorfindel and Erestor had spent the afternoon outside, skating on the icy surface of the river, hand in hand, dancing and kissing with cold lips, and Glorfindel had lifted Erestor by the waist and spun until they were both dizzy and laughing.

It was dark when they returned to the Last Homely House, snow in their hair, their cheeks flushed from the cold.

“Shall we visit the baths before dinner, my love?” Glorfindel whispered, pressing an icy kiss to the corner of Erestor’s mouth. Imladris’ baths were fed by underground hot springs, and were thus pleasantly warm even in winter.

“A bath sounds heavenly,” Erestor sighed. “But we must take care not to fall asleep and miss dinner.”

Glorfindel grinned. “Oh, I can think of a few ways to keep you awake, my heart.”

Erestor scowled at him, but a glint in his eyes told Glorfindel that his beloved found the prospect of a tryst in the baths far more agreeable than he let on.

The public baths would be crowded at this time, so they chose to visit Lord Elrond’s private bath instead – the perks of being not only high-ranking officials of Imladris, but close friends with its Lord. However, when they arrived, they found Elrond already there, comfortably lounging in the water, steam rising from the surface.

“Ah, there you are,” Elrond greeted with a smile as they entered. “I had wondered if you would come. Join me, my friends, the water is lovely.”

The water was indeed lovely as they sank into the pool and settled beside Elrond on the stone bench, feeling the warmth seeping into them, chasing away any lingering cold.

“I hope you enjoyed your day off?” Elrond asked warmly, reaching for a comb and a vial of hair oil.

“Very much,” Erestor sighed contentedly. “You must join us next time, the snow and ice are beautiful and the river is perfect for skating.”

“Perhaps I shall. There is little to do this winter, with no visitors arriving and our borders well protected, and I think we all need some rest.”

Elrond had finished brushing and oiling his hair, and now rose from the water, wrapping himself in a bathrobe and gathering his belongings.

“I shall leave you two lovebirds alone then,” he said with a knowing smile, making Glorfindel grin and Erestor blush. “Do try to finish in time for dinner.”

And with that he left, leaving Erestor and Glorfindel alone in the bath.

“Let us make good use of our time then,” Glorfindel whispered and drew Erestor into his lap, kissing him eagerly.

[zombeikid]

She lifted her head, twisting to look around herself. Did she exist before this moment? Did anyone? Or anything? She rose higher, towering over the trees ringing the glade she found herself in. She flexed her many wings and with an innate power, lifted herself to the skies. She swam through the clouds like a fish through the seas. Mountains and forests raced by as she wound her way towards her new destination. She had never been before but she knew that she must go this way. She did not know *why* or *how*, just that she must.

Occasionally she dipped down to skim across the water, enjoying the way it felt against her belly scales. Warm and cool all at once. She longed to dive into it but did not, lest her wings become too heavy with the brine. She was dozing on a wind current when a strange scent caught her attention.

The beast before her hung in the air, mismatched wings beating just enough to keep it aloft. She stopped, twisting too orient her long body. The beast's three heads all tilted at once, then to the other side, *I'm sorry*. It's voice was a howl and a rumble and a shriek all at once. But she did not *hear* it so much as feel it.

*Why? What have you to be sorry for?* She replied, suddenly aware she could speak. It had never occurred to her to try in her few hours of living. How strange, this world. She did not think she had lived long enough to need an apology.

*I killed you.* The beast said, talons and claws flexing. *I did not mean to but you swallowed me and I could not find another way out.*She had died? She had lived? The winged snake tilted her head, her entire body twisting ever so slightly.

*I do not remember being alive so I do not remember dying. You do not need to be sorry.* She paused, *But why am I alive? Should I still be dead?* She was pretty sure one usually stayed dead after being alive.

The beast chuffed, *Our masters still live. So long as they do, we shall.* He turned, nodding all of his heads towards the massive mountain in the distance. *I can take you to her, your master. She loved you so. I am sure she'd be delighted to see you again.*

She hummed softly, a glittering sound like snow falling, *She calls me. I do not think I could ignore her if I wanted. I love her though. Do you know what she is like?*

*I only know that my master was in awe of her so she must be a powerful creature. I am the strongest of all so my master must be as well.* He preened, clearly proud of himself and his master.

[writer-tennis-ball]

Every so often, I’m reminded of a dream I once had. At least, I believe it to be a dream.

I wandered through the forest for some time, floating over the glittering floor and weaving slowly through the trees. String trailed behind, the only mark of where I’ve been or where I’m going.

A spark of heat seemed to catch the string, tangling it around the snow and branches. Crystal and glass dug into my skin, drawing a piercing crimson flow. My feet fell upon the ground as I attempted to escape, only succeeding in hanging me from a web of fire and blood. The flames charred my skin and boiled my flesh, smoke choking out my screams.

I awoke in a frozen sweat, my ink vial scattered upon the oaken floor. The flame of my candle gently extinguished, smoke dispersing from the bottom of the candlestick as I fumbled for a match.

That tapping at the window had returned, as I cleaned the blot of darkness that spilled. I think I shall stay awake, tonight.

[thequeendomhq]

"Then, the One God said: To you, My second-born, I grant this gift: In your heart shall burn An unquenchable flame All-consuming, and never satisfied.”

Our Road Ahead

Into Hrimthur’s Wastelands the refugees went. For a month they would travel the mountain passes made of ancient stone and twisted like serpents while ice froze the world around them. Mist hung in the frigid air as they traveled up the treacherous cliffsides; the injured carried as they collectively traveled through the snow together. Peaks towered around them from all sides, fjords carved by the Gods themselves sliced the landscape as the traveler navigated narrow passages at the edge of the mountainsides. 

Overhead pregnant dark clouds kept them in perpetual shadows, promising more snow would come. The reprieve of the sun’s light was distant even as they ascended through the banks higher and higher. Thin, rasping air kept them weary and their depleted rations kept them focused on putting one foot in front of the other. The Blight was beneath them now, in the valleys beyond the mountains and those with the taint had not lived long after the Nornwatch Pyre. 

Like glittering stars dotting the landscape, the witchers in their mithril armor scouted to secure the road ahead. Others lingered at the rear and secured those that began to fall behind were hoisted to their feet before they were set forward again. To lag was to risk almost certain death in the coldest, most unforgiving, region of Taravell. 

Into the distance, the peaks soared into the raw sky above, blotted by darkness, their summits were lost in a veil of frosted, swirling mist. In this dark, desolate landscape, there was a raw beauty that spoke of ages past, of battles fought and won, and ofsecrets buried beneath the ice. Stones that glimmered within shone at night, cascading the air with an azure hue that illuminated the snow in places. At night, Hrimthur’s mountains seemed to come alive. Breathing their sigh of auroran air into the sky once the sun set below the horizon; ribbons of these frozen lights shifted and turned about themselves. So close that they writhed atop the Iskarans’s makeshift tents, a companion in the night, but gone by morning’s faded light. 

Every step forward was a struggle against the biting cold, the crunch of snow beneath their boots echoing through the silent valleys. Yet, with each passing mile, the troupe drew closer to their destination, driven by a sense of heroic purpose, or stark defiance against the shadow of death. Iskaldrik was lost behind them, Nornwatch Keep burned in the past, but the promise of Lysara hung like the north star ahead. 

Nornwatch Keep was behind them now. The refugees freeing Iskaldrik were fewer, but still many. Knowledgeable of the terrain and the region, the Legion of the Dead took point. Field Commander Deidameia had died in the assault, without clear leadership the living legionnaires counciled alongside the Iskarans. Witchers, jarls, advisers, and the legionnaires had been plotting their course for weeks, all that remained was to survive. 

The hysteria of Nornwatch had not ended with the executed traitors. The darkspawn’s attack was a nightmare that plagued the minds of everyone, among the troupe some hadn’t spoken since. Children wandered without parents - mothers and fathers ripped underground as the assault made orphans, and widows, out of proudly stubborn Iskarans. They had been caught completely unaware, legionnaires killed from within, and the gate left unlocked. 

Our Trials We’ll Face

Those who could hunt were sent out to do so. These hunters coordinated with the witchers, legion, jarls, and advisors of the crown to mark the maps of the region with potential hunting grounds. Regions with dense forest coverage, and access to fresh water and other resources would be ideal for small and large prey. Rally points were stapled along the way so the hunters could find the troupe when they were successful, checkpoints marked along their paths through the mountains. 

Alone or in small groups, hunters could travel more freely without the cumbersome nature of those who couldn’t navigate the terrain. The horses, the oxen, and the weight of the tents and other necessities for encampment. Among the hunters were legionnaires, witchers, shieldmaidens, jarls, and any able-bodied volunteer willing to risk the dangers of the mountain for assurance that the troupe would survive the travel ahead. Famine and starvation would kill them as surely as the Blight had tried. 

Small, nimble predators like arctic foxes dotted the landscape - watching from a distance with useful, thick fur coats. Hares were a staple of the region, in burrows and more susceptible to snares than arrows. Both blended easily into the landscape, white like the snow and quicker than most of the creatures in the troupe, they’d be spied on in one instance, and then gone in the next. Silent hunters of the night, snow owls patrolled the skies, preying on small rodents and other birds. Moving in herds and seeking patches of vegetation beneath the snow, reindeer roam the valleys and can be tracked more easily than any other. Followed and hunted by other predators, the troupe are not the only hunters after the reindeer, but dire wolves as well. Far larger than their cousins, if those navigating the wilderness aren’t careful, they’ll become the hunted. 

At night, the clouds rumbled in the distance over the greatest peaks in the valley. Groaning in anguish as dramatic clashes of rock and ice shook loose shafts of snow and ice from the sheer faces about them. Witchers spoke of Hrimthursa, towering behemoths of living mountains, battling for dominion over ancient territory. Obscured by swirling blizzards and frozen mists, the closer the troupe would come the more dangerous their journey would be. The ground trampled beneath them, and those who watched the immutable darkness of the valleys below would see the shapes of these ancient behemoths wandering through the valleys below. Felled and fallen from the summit, their footsteps echoed like thunder from the ground below. 

These mountains of Ymir’s most northern Spine are home to other things beyond giants and wolves. Frost Trolls dwell in the deep, labyrinthine caverns that honeycomb through the mountains and the fields below. Cropping up through the ancient mines of an age long forgotten to the annals of time; protected from the glaring light of the sun by the thick clouds of mist, they roam in solitude or small groups hunting and gathering. Their weapons are primitive, their skin hard as stone, and their teeth are hard like daggers do not discriminate between man and beast. 

Beneath the ice are the petrified children of the dark, the draugr. Wights of harrowed flesh and withered bones; soldiers from wars that predate this age of man, they are the undead minions of Lusacan’s prodigies. The draugr are vampiric in nature, however, it’s not blood they crave, but to spread their blight to those they can sink their teeth into. Like ghosts with a physical body, only powerful magic can exorcise them for good, or its antithesis can purge their forms of entropic possession. For those with the ability to do neither, beheading them and torching their bodies is an acceptable alternative. Anyone bitten by these monsters is fated to join the legions of draugr trapped within the ice. 

In the distance there is a roar from a creature that will chill the bone of even the most hardened warrior. Drakes and wyverns are not foreign to the troupe, the Iskarans know these beasts from the mountains that surround their home. They are the lesser children of a greater beast though, one that has awakened after centuries of slumber, growling from the fjords around them, and threatening what little hope remains. 

Our One Hope

Hrimthur’s Outpost. It wasn’t named in any text, or written down on any map, but the name was assigned by the legion rangers who traveled this region before. Shattered, stone homes that are half buried beneath snow and ice with a broken tower at its center. This evidence is all that remains of a proud city that existed in a time that the people have forgotten. 

Runes dot these stones, druidic in origin but to the Iskarans they’d readily claim them as their own. A waygate once existed here but like so many other things it was broken by what they would call a cataclysm. These cold, frozen walls are the only reprieve that the refugees would find after weeks of traveling through the expanse of the wastelands. The Northern Spine of Iskaldrik that saw them trudge endlessly through snow and over ice, their rations gone, and their hope along with it. 

Fires dot the battered homes and line the walls of the tower. The cold wood gathered from old pines does not burn easily, but those familiar with ironwood are well-versed in casting almost anything ablaze. Miserable nights are made more tolerable as the hunters rally at this juncture, holes cut into ice fields yield fish, and reindeer roasts over open flames with the sweet berries plucked from the cold bushes snaking out from cliffs. 

It lacks the mead of a proper feast, but it’s the first good, warm meal that they’ve had in what feels like a lifetime. As the fire dims and thoughts turn towards those that were taken, the looming dangers that lurk in the dark around them are nothing when compared to what lays ahead. These Spines are too cold for the blight to survive, but Isengrim’s Embrace and the Lostlands following will yield horrors unlike any the Iskarans had yet to see. The Legion says this not to quell the flames of the lifting spirits, but to remind them of the vigilance that peace demands. 

What follows is a voice, one that starts small, but is quickly joined by the crowd of refugees. 

“Shadows fall. And hope has fled. Steel your heart. The dawn will come.”

“The night is long. And the path is dark. Look to the sky. For one day soon. The dawn will come.”

The One’s Taken

( tw: childbirth )

All for Mother. 

It became hard to tell if you were waking or dreaming, the song guided your hands and work. This one was weak so you cleaved them in two, pulled back their skin, and cut free their entrails. Scraps for the wargs to fight over, flabby meat to fatten your pack. Sister they called you with blackened gums and pointed teeth, snapping for more as they hungered for the sweet. Brother you remarked as you beat them down, swine should learn where swine should sleep. The best of the best was for Her, the Mother of the brood for only Mother could birth the horde. 

Your hands slipped between the folds as another came screeching into the world. Hideous and beautiful and yours to rear. Snapping at your ankles as you carved off scraps, the sweet, beautiful heart for Mother, but the bones left for them to suckle. Something to gnaw and carve, sharpen their teeth, and help them grow. You used to be…. You can no longer recall, but you see the fields of fire for what they are, a garden and a home so hot it might just be cold. 

More. Mother screams. She needs more. You do not defy but your body moves of its own accord, enthralled and drawn about as your broken boots drag against wailing stones. In the dark, you hear a whisper, a song that reminds you of the girl who ran carefree through the woods. The one who split logs, who lifted a splintered shield, and who did not survive all this time to die nameless in a cave. Your lips part as you join her in song: 

“The Shepard's lost. And his home is far. Keep to the stars. The dawn will come.”

“The night is long. And the path is dark. Look to the sky. For one day soon. The dawn will come.”

The night takes you, tomorrow you begin again. 

OOC info: 

The next troupe update will be on Friday, May 24th.

The Ones Taken are still captive (big sad I know), they're midwives now. Who knows, maybe someday they'll have a brood of their own <3.

After a long hike through the mountains, the troupe reached what used to be a village. RIP.

The full moon will take place after the happy song, and characters affected by the full moon will be made to shift. Fair warning, if they kill anyone in the village they'll be put down :(

Most of Taravell will now have heard about what happened to Iskaldrik, refugees are washing up on the shores of Caribella and Borderreach.

Any vessels or attempts to enter Iskaldrik have disappeared without a trace.

[blackbutlerfandomnerddomain]

Day 5: Needing Advice

Sebastian works hard cooking up a storm in the kitchen, the birds chirping just outside the kitchen window as he slices some apples and pears.

Late autumn is a pleasant season for him. He greatly enjoys the slightly colder weather as the red and orange leaves dry up and shrivel down as the clouds grow thicker and colder until snow covered the land, he adored the ways hearts swell and beat in one motion as the sounds of crispy winds hit against the now bare dark bark trees, he loved the fun hunting seasons he used to attend alongside his kind before leaving Hell.

But now, he enjoys the hunt just as much.

With a small hum on his lips, the butler made his way upstairs to the young Earl of the house in the grand study of a room, the afternoon a calming affair around him as he walked his way down the hall.

His gloved hand reached out and knocked on the door softly before he entered the room, a habit he’s used to throughout the years. Upon entering the office, he sees the bluette Earl sitting at his desk staring at a letter of sorts in his hands. The butler smiled softly,

“Did Earl Trancy write to you again, Young Master?”

Ciel sputtered and “hid” the letter by shoving it to his chest, his lone blue eye glaring at the demon as he wheels the cart to the side of the desk and pouring some sweet smelling tea. “Today’s afternoon tea is a vanilla tea blend from the town’s market, and as a snack I have prepared some sliced apples drizzled in caramel sauce for you.” Said the man in black with an innocent yet knowing grin as he placed the tea saucer and cup next to the papers in front of the teen, the plate of apple slices coming afterwards.

He took notice of the Earl’s pink cheeks and still glaring eye and chuckled out, “Some friendly advice, My Lord, I say invite him over to a chess game. He’s a person, like you, who enjoys games even if he isn't quite good at them. I can even request Miss Doll to come too if you so order.”

Ciel blushed harder and practically slammed the paper down at the desk. “Oh, shut up!” He growled and took an aggressive bite off an apple slice, earning another soft chuckle from the demon beside him.

—

The afternoon rolled around carefully as Sebastian finally took notice of the rain that’s creeping up beside the human race. A smile comes to his lips as he looks to his Master where he pauses. Has Young Master been this tall before? Indeed, the once little Earl of the manor seems to be marching around proud with his height just easily noticeable and not just mere inches. He grins and shows off his peacock feathers to the butler as if sensing the surprise on the demon’s face. “What is it Sebastian?”

Sebastian blinked and chuckled a bit, “I just did not realize you’re actually becoming an adult now, My Lord. Though surely your legs are hurting, shall I put a kettle on?” The master shook his head, his hair slightly longer than the ears’ ends, swaying softly against pale skin. “I’m fine.” He said, a smile on his lips still as pride is obviously filling his chest. The butler smiles at this expression, “Very well then, My Lord.”

—

Snow falls down from the night sky as Sebastian walks down the halls of the manor, the scent of roasted chestnuts still lingering in the air alongside in perfect harmony of the soft pine that still hangs beautifully around the corners and every inch and bend of the stairway, the soft glow of candle light giving the halls that were once dead and haunted a warm welcoming glow of happy blissful memories in contrast of the once gloomy ones from the past. A cart with a small plate of chocolate cake and a warm iron kettle wheels in front of the butler as he walks past the frosted windows that face the illumination white landscape in front of the dark black canvas of the sky. Finally, he reached to a door and knocked softly, “Young Master, I have brought over your midnight snack.” Said he as he turned the glittering knob and entered the room. Instantly, the sound of a whine catches his attention.

Red eyes watch the scene of a grown adult dressed in pajamas that fit his age now but still have some ribbons and frills of youthful pasts cradling a little human of light brown locks of hair in his no longer small and weak arms, behind him seated in the lounging chair of the bedchamber is a blond fellow who softly sings to a wee infant with soft brown locks barely showing pass the blanket that wrap them up like a gift from God, and just beside the first adult is a woman with shoulder length brown hair who’s not having a so soft image like the two but instead dealing with the fussing dark haired toddler on her lap. Sebastian smiled softly in amusement at the scene and started to pour the sweet brown liquid of hot chocolate in three cups for each. “Is Little Albert fussy Miss Doll?” He asked, a small smirk hidden away showing he knows that boy is a fussy mess. The lady giggled softly at the tease and accepted when the cup of cocoa was handed to her, her golden band of marriage glittering under light. “Thank you Sebastian.” She said, her voice a sweet honey tone, kneeling the cup to the son in her arms who slowly took some careful ships and relaxed into her bosoms. The demon walked to the lounging chair to the blond man and offered the cup, pausing when a hand reached up in a stop motion. “Maybe later Sebastian, little Rachel is finally resting.” Said he, a smile full of love and happiness on the beautiful face as icey blues stared down at the soft skinned face of the sweet little babe in the cotton blanket. Sebastian smiles, “Of course Lord Trancy.” He turned to the final adult, and before he could open his mouth to ask, he spoke out before the butler, “You know I’ll never say no to your hot chocolate Sebastian.”

Sebastian chuckled and gave the cup to his master, smiling at the look of the little boy dozing off against his shoulder. As the three adults enjoyed the finally calm energy of the room, the butler gave Ciel a slice of cake and carefully took hold of baby Rachel from Alois so the man could enjoy a cup of cocoa alongside his partners. The demon stared at the small resting face in his arms and smiled, looking to the three who carefully moved the two boys onto the bed after they both tuckered out with little to no protests at all as they tuck them under the blankets at last. With a soft hum of his lips of a ditty from long ago, he carefully and gently places the littlest one in a lovely wooden carved cradle right by the room window, smiling softly at the view of dark lashes curled against pale eyelids. Carefully lifting the glass barrier, Sebastian snuffed out the candle light that lit the room and left the chambers with the parents with care.

The butler walked alongside the three who now show their tiredness fully as he helps them to their rooms as if something were to happen if he wasn’t along their sides at night. After they snuggled into the large bed that usually is only reserved for the husband and wife but have long since been used and worn by the Earl and his wife and their lover, they drank the remains of the warm cocoa and nibbled on the cake slices. Sebastian watched as his master yawned, smiling softly at the forever image of his small frame bruised and thinner than the icicles outside drinking some warm milk and honey even though now he’s grown and far past the little hurt lamb he was in the past. After accepting their dishes and bidding them a good night, the butler soon left the three be, and back again was he walking down the hall to return the dishes to the clean state they were prior. It’s almost strange to imagine these walls covered in cinder He thought as he walked and admired the manor he grew used to thanks to a certain small child rich in revenge and pain, smiling as he does as red eyes show warmth. Have a good rest, My Lord. May you dream of happy memories and the future.

I had a lot of fun this @dadbastianweek2023 thing! I hope to do this again!

[saintsofwarding]

WE SHALL BE MONSTERS

Header by @trout-scout

Chapter 14: A Mirror

By the time the oncoming blizzard began to swirl over the sun, as if hiding its face in fear from the land below, Rose caught her first sight of the village.

It spread before them, surrounded on all sides by mountains, a protective wall of them cupping the valley like a pair of hands. She saw Castle Dimitrescu first; impossible not to, the structure stabbing itself from the landscape as if to claim the sky itself. In the morning light, the castle's spires glittered like the towers of that long-destroyed crystal city of Heisenberg's bedtime stories.

Rose stared, breathless, from Dimitrescu's back even as clouds skimmed her cheeks, soaking her hair. She and Donna were hunched low over Dimitrescu's pulsating flesh, and still the wind tore tears from her eyes and ripped at her skin like knives.

Before them the castle rose from its nest of mountains, of mist, magnificent and Gothic, something from a dream, or a nightmare.

Rose wasn't yet sure which.

"To hell with this blizzard," Dimitrescu snarled, her wingbeats churning at the clouds as a swirl of snow obscured their first sight of the castle. Rose felt the wind judder at her, so strong it tossed even her around. "I must make a landing."

"Fine by me," Rose called, but wasn't sure if Dimitrescu heard her.

She veered downward with a thrum of displaced air. Clouds rose around them, and as they broke through the dense layer, the ground burst into view, a dizzying spin of forest and mountain. The trees rose around them, and with a powerful backbeat that scattered snow and ripped pine needles from their boughs, Dimitrescu settled to all fours in a small clearing.

Rose half-fell off her back, legs cramping and frozen; she limped over to a tree to lean and wince. Behind her came the crack and growl of Dimitrescu's transformation, the air full of the powerful reek of blood and mutagen. By the time Rose turned back round, Dimitrescu knelt in the snow, breathing hard, rubbing her muscular arms.

"Is everything okay?" Rose asked her. Donna and Angie were speaking to one another in soft tones. Well- Donna's tone was soft, anyway. Angie seemed to be on par with a chihuahua in terms of lack of inside voice.

"I have been without blood for far too long," Dimitrescu muttered. Her eyes glowed golden beneath her sooty lashes; her face seemed gaunter than it had looked on the mountainside, dark circles cutting under those beautiful eyes. "In my hibernation, my body went into stasis, but now...after my transformation..."

Her eyes flicked up, meeting Rose's. "You smell far too delicious for safety, sweet child."

"Please don't eat me," Rose said.

She smiled. "Fortunately for you," she said, "I can control my urges..."

She lifted a hand and, delicately, drew her finger along Rose's jaw, ending, poised, just above the pulse point of her throat. "...For a time."

She rose to her full height as Donna and Angie approached.

"You hear that racket?" Angie said.

"The rush of water," Dimitrescu said.

She was right. Rose could hear it above the howl of the thickening blizzard, the snowy wind gusting in ripples and waves through the forest, like the sea in storm. Some kind of huge river?

"We're not too far from House Beneviento!" Angie crowed. "Home sweet home! Donna, you remember all the crazy stuff we got up to in there?"

Donna pressed her lips together.

"Anyway, we got all kinds of stuff all stored up in there. Get some better clothes than these nasty BSAA rags we're sporting. What do you say?"

"I've looked a shameful mess for far too long," Dimitrescu said.

"Yeah, we could use a place to rest and plan," Rose said.

Dimitrescu faced downhill, her head lifted. "Not for long," she murmured. "I need to regain my castle. To see what horrors time has wrought upon it. "

She made a scathing sound in her throat. "And to see how the elements have destroyed my beautiful home. If I ever see Redfield again, not even your promises will be enough to stop me from peeling him apart layer by layer."

"Let's..." Rose's teeth began to chatter. "Let's focus on the now, okay?"

"This way!" Angie called from the edge of the clearing, she and Donna already within the reaching shadows of the trees. "Over the river and through the woods...watch out for wolves, heh heh heh..."

Rose picked herself up and limped after them, Dimitrescu just behind her, filling the air with the faint tang of blood, the scent seemingly clinging to her inevitably.

The trees passed by, the wind dying down as they descended into the woods, scaly-barked pines transitioning to deciduous trees, twisted limbs entwined in a dense, frozen canopy overhead. Soon, the only sound was the crunch of their footsteps in the snow, Angie's low muttering, and a distant, thunderous roar, a vibration Rose felt in the soles of her feet.

Shapes swam through the fog, resolving into a collection of dilapidated buildings- sheds, Rose guessed, eyeing the clutter of equipment outside, the ruinous, frozen black rot inside of what appeared to have once been bags of potting soil.

A long string of bones clacked softly from a corner of the roof, stirred each time the breeze whispered through the forest.

She climbed over a collapsed fence after Donna. More shapes, more strange sights in the fog. Tripod trellises overgrown with a tangle of mutant plants, vines grown thick and ropy and strangling, the icy remnants of blue blossoms clinging to life. Wrought-iron fences, more outbuildings, gates standing askew, their bars warped and rusted by more than a decade of exposure to the elements.

A garden, Rose thought. Made sense- if Donna's powers relied on plants, then she'd want to cultivate as many as possible. Looking at the care with which this place had once been tended, though, she suspected it was more than for practicality's sake. There was an arboretum in one of the cities she'd lived in over the years, and this place reminded her of that long-ago garden. She'd gotten herself lost on the class field trip, and instead of getting scared, had wandered for hours through the trees, the paths unfurling before her, meandering and mesmerizing.

She glanced at Donna up ahead, but aside from a certain stiffness to her shoulders, she gave no indication of how she felt about being in this garden again.

A chill crawled through Rose's nerves as she caught sight of the first grave.

It rose from the snow beneath a tree, hung with yet more of those strange bone charms. A cracked, water-stained headstone, its engraving once-ornate, now illegible. Rose sensed a strange consciousness from it, a sleeping, hibernating energy, and stayed the hell away; even with Lady Dimitrescu at her back, she didn't want anything popping out and gnawing off her face.

"Such a tawdry little place," Dimitrescu muttered, looking around at the garden as they headed for a large iron gate on the far side. "Miranda always spoke at length to me about the one-time power and influence of the Family Beneviento. Nothing compared to House Dimitrescu, of course, but..." She tutted her tongue. "I'd expect more from nobility."

"I made do," Donna said simply, quietly.

"Made do," Dimitrescu echoed, as if this went against the foundations of her reality. "Can you imagine."

The gate came open with the squeal of rusted hinges, and they stepped down a short incline and into another clearing. In its center, a massive gravestone rose from a thicket of smaller graves, now so heaped with snow the foundations of the graves were almost completely buried. The big grave was taller than Rose, intricately, lovingly carved, the words on it mostly illegible, like the others. Rose only caught a few. Freed, bonds. Valley, death.

Donna lowered her head and moved right past it, but Rose lingered, climbing carefully between the graves to kneel and clear snow off the dais before the big stone. A cracked slab set into its surface read Claudia Beneviento, with a date of birth and of death.

Claudia.

Her throat stung. Donna's sister. This, she realized, was the girl Heisenberg had spoken of, so many years ago. The dead child, the girl he'd failed to save, in whose death he'd had a heavy hand. The one he'd loved like a daughter, or as close to that as he was capable.

She pressed her hand to the cold stone, but unlike the other grave, there was nothing beneath it. No pulse, no sleeping presence. Claudia was gone. There was no getting her back.

Maybe that was why Donna had hurried past without a second look. To stop here, to linger, was to relive again her failures. She'd had a hand in Claudia's death, too, or at least believed she did. In the end, Miranda was dead, and Donna was alive, and there was no one left to blame than herself.

A shadow fell over her. She looked up to find Dimitrescu standing just beyond the graves, her lashes lowered, her expression unreadable.

"Death is inevitable, child," she said. "Even to us. Whatever you seek to resurrect here...will never be what you most desire. Not truly."

A smile unfurled across her face, bitter and so flush with longing Rose felt its ache deep in her own chest.

"There's always a price for resurrection," Dimitrescu said, and moved on, after Donna.

With a last look at the child's grave, Rose followed them.

Before she joined them in the elevator, visible inside the open doors of the red gatehouse on the far side of the clearing, Rose paused. Something in her mind, Heisenberg's dreams, the memories to which he'd so fiercely clung despite Miranda's efforts to excise them.

The little compass came out of the sword with a clean snap of breaking metal. She returned to the grave and set it down, next to the frost-burnt flowers, the remains of what must have once been dolls, lumps of candle-wax.

It glittered, there, too new for this place, and yet still a promise to herself. A reminder. That even through hatred, and pain, suffering and manipulation, years of servitude and broken identity, once there was something good here. Once there had been love here. And there would be again, in some form, still undying.

***

The house rose from the mist of the great waterfall, a massive cataract flung from some shadowy source higher up the mountainside. A pretty house, with high peaked roofs now chewed with holes, a big wrap-around porch now overgrown with snow and creepers. As they approached, Rose heard the whistle of wind through a broken window.

With a shove and the crackle of breaking ice, Dimitrescu shoved the front doors wide. Darkness yawned within, the smell of damp, a silence, stifling; she ducked inside and strode into the darkness, but Rose lingered on the threshold, Donna by her side. She'd removed Angie from her backpack and cradled her in her arms, her one eye and Angie's three staring ahead into the house entryway.

"Together?" Rose whispered.

Donna gave an almost imperceptible nod.

Together, then. And it was together they entered, and together they moved about the room inside, its mezzanine level and its damp-ruined wood paneling, searching for lamps, closing shutters over the broken windows.

Somehow, Donna coaxed a couple lamps to light; the electricity was still running, the ancient wiring intact. The glow filled the hall with strange, leaping shadows, illuminating the dozens of scattered dolls and upturned chairs, the snow piling in corners, the icicles hanging from the distant ceiling.

A large framed portrait hung by the stairs was almost obscured by black mold, but Rose could still make out the faint shadows of forms on the canvas.

A Beneviento ancestor? Impossible to tell.

"I will make a fire," Donna said quietly. She pushed through a doorway and into a room beyond.

"I'm not staying in here," Dimitrescu said, her eyes sweeping the dilapidated hall. She had to bend almost double to wedge herself through the door, after Donna.

Rose stayed where she was. This place...again, that sting of familiarity, of knowledge. Once, those mold-scabbed wood panels had glowed with syrup light; once, music had echoed from the house's depths, scratchy and old-fashioned.

Take this. Keep it safe. And keep him occupied. Glory to me, child, remember that.

A flutter of yellow petals, as if blown in some phantom wind.

The dolls' eyes glittered from shelves and cabinets, watching her.

Rose stepped forward. A floorboard creaked on the stairs; she looked round, but the staircase was empty, the darkness unbroken.

You came here...

A glow of golden light off pale hands, clutching a rectangular flask to her heart.

Another pair of hands, bloodied and battered, three fingers sprouted from gory bandages, clutching that same flask as if it was the most important thing in the world.

And who are you now?

"Rose?"

The voice echoed from the dark. Rose whirled. The doorway, like the stairs, stood empty, the hallway beyond ordinary save for a smear of dried blood on the walls, black with age and furred with dust.

Pain sheared through her skull, rusty metal screaming in her ears-

She gave a cry, stumbling forward, but the pain was gone in an instant, leaving her ears ringing, her mouth dry. Movement flickered in the dark, the trace of a tan jacket, the glint of fair hair.

"Rose," came the voice again, soft and sing-song, as if calling her to bed.

"Dad?" Rose whispered.

Oh, god, was he alive? Had he regenerated like Dimitrescu, had he been here all these years? She stumbled after him; her heart pounded. She made it down the hallway. Footprints dragged through the dust, leading her on.

"Dad!" Rose cried. "Come back- it's me- I've come to save you-"

She rounded a corner and jerked to a halt. An old-fashioned elevator stood before her, its lights on, a grille stretched over its entrance. As she watched, the elevator itself rose back into position, like it had just gotten done conveying someone down.

She yanked the grille back; it slid aside with the slick whisper of well-oiled joints. The elevator interior was clean, like the lift in a fancy hotel, its wallpaper unmarked by the years, its brass fixtures glowing warmly in the overhead light. Rose climbed in and jabbed the button, her breathing feverish, sweat prickling in her hairline.

"Come on," she said. "Come on."

The elevator began to slide downward. Down, and down, and down; it couldn't be this far, could it? An eternity of brick wall, of flickering lights, of her own pulse, overloud in her ears. At last a line of light grew upwards from her feet, and the elevator shuddered to a halt.

Past a small, cozy entryway room, the hallways stretched, bland and beige, beyond. "Dad!" Rose cried. Her voice rang through the darkness, away and away. "Dad!"

She ran. The world seemed to fuzz and reform around her; dolls' eyes glittered, like crows' eyes, like stones at the bottom of a deep, deep well. She whirled round a corner and the wall before her pulsated, a stretch of translucent jelly-pink throbbing with veins.

The Embryo? No, no, no- she stretched a trembling hand forward to touch the flesh of God itself-

It was gone. Flash. She tottered back. The silence fell around her like a dropped shroud.

Rose stood, raking in deep breaths. Behind her, a soft footfall came on the carpeted floor.

She turned.

Shadows fanned on the walls around her: the shadows of outspread wings. He stood at the far end of the hallway, backlit, his face in shadow.

"Rose," he said, his voice full of relief. "I found you, I finally-"

"You were too late."

The voice tore from her own throat, cold and measured. The shadows stretched, reaching for her father; he backed off, mangled hands raised, but she was striding toward him, breaking into a run, lunging for him with a shriek of laughter; her hand snapped around his neck, and this close she saw how much she looked like him; those were her eyes, too, and there was not fear in them, but relief, still, relief-

She ripped into him with her teeth. He crumbled under her bite, hard and sharp-edged. Crystal fragments rained from her mouth as she tore her head back, taking half his face off. The wound wasn't flesh and blood, but crystal, broken crystal-

"Too late for her," Rose- Miranda- both of them cried. Another bite; another. "Too late for you." He collapsed to his knees, and still he stared at her, watching her with love in his eyes even as she tore him to pieces. "Too late for all of them!" She fastened her teeth around the hard, polished globe of his right eyeball, and with a wrench of her head-

***

Darkness fell. She slammed to her hands and knees. Her mouth tasted bitter, edged with something like flowers, as if she'd been drinking perfume. She coughed; black fluid spattered the faded, damp-spotted carpet. The air smelled of mold, real mold, a place left to mildew for years in the dark and the cold.

Rose lifted her hands; they quivered. "What the..." she said, but she couldn't go on.

"I'm so sorry."

She looked up. Down the grimy, dank little corridor stood Donna, holding Angie like a ventriloquist's doll. She'd changed clothes. Instead of the practical gear Chris had provided her, she now wore severe, old-fashioned black taffeta, a long skirt and bodice with puffed sleeves. Her eye patch was gone, her Cadou scarring exposed.

It writhed a little as Rose watched, Donna's dark eye sorrowful.

"It must have lingered," Donna went on. "From before."

"That was you?" Rose sputtered. She thought of what Chris had said- she's a puppeteer, a manipulator. "That was...all you?"

Donna nodded, then looked down, averting her eyes.

"You made me see that?" Rose cried.

"My power...only makes mirrors," Donna murmured. "Whatever you saw was you."

Rose stared at her, tension welling in her throat. Chris wouldn't trust her. Chris wouldn't take this. Heisenberg...god, she didn't know, she missed him, she wanted him back so bad it hurt. She pressed her hands over her face.

"I don't know if I can do this," she whispered.

This time, it was Donna's turn to comfort her. She heard the rustle of fabric, Donna's strange, detached, cold presence.

A pause-

Then a cool hand settled on her shoulder, so light she barely felt it.

"I'm sorry," Donna whispered. "I see them too."

"Are they always bad?"

Donna said nothing.

"The visions, I mean," Rose pressed. "Are they always...bad? Can't they be...can't they be good things?"

"I...do not know." She paused. "Perhaps."

Rose nodded. She sniffled. "Please don't..."

Donna waited.

"...Please don't tell the big, sexy vampire about this," Rose said.

She sensed Donna's smile, fragile as the frozen flowers in her garden. "That's probably for the best," she agreed.

***

Rose changed out of her wet clothes while Donna made tea, replacing her soaked shirt with a dry one of Donna's, embroidered cotton in a peasant style. A mirror in the washroom showed the cut Dimitrescu had given her on the cheek hadn't properly healed; a livid red slash lingered. Maybe cuts given with her claws always scarred, even on mutants? Her eyes were still dark-ringed, her hair falling in lank waves around her face. She still tasted that bitterness on the back of her tongue, lingering like a nightmare.

You aren't her. You'll never be her.

Chris wouldn't see it that way.

To hell with what Chris thinks. He's been fighting people like you his whole life.

She couldn't back down now. But why did she keep feeling the crunch of her teeth in Ethan Winters' flesh, the feeling of her tearing him apart?

Because in the hallucination, in the mirror, she'd wanted to keep going. Because in the hallucination, she'd liked it.

In the kitchen, a warm, homey central room that had escaped the worst of the elements, Donna stood by the fireplace with a copper tea-kettle and four heavy ceramic mugs, each painted with birds and flowers. Now that the fire was going the air crackled with welcome heat, banishing the gloom and the smell of damp that crept in from the rest of the house. Angie already sat at the table, propped up on cushions, her porcelain fingers tapping at the wood as if with impatience.

Rose's coat, shirt, and boots were hung up by the fire to dry. Donna must have done that, too.

"Thanks," she said, a little awkwardly.

Donna nodded, checking the contents of the kettle.

"Where's Dimitrescu?" Rose asked.

"Nosing around outdoors," Angie said. "Antsy, antsy. You'd think there was glass in her gloves. Big sister doesn't like us very much!"

"She lost her children," Donna said softly.

"Children," Angie sneered. "A matching set! Three dolls in dress-up clothes. Knock 'em down one after the next and these pretty dollies won't get back up again...!"

She cut off as the sound of footsteps echoed through the house. Moments later Dimitrescu ducked into the room, reclining with an exhale onto a green velvet divan, the only piece of furniture large enough to hold her. It groaned, antique wood and moldy velvet straining under the weight of muscle and bone and blood-clotted tissue.

"Tea?" Angie squeaked, like she hadn't just been mocking her dead daughters.

Dimitrescu gave the tea a look that any lesser being would reserve for murder. "Dust and mildew," she muttered. "I need my castle back. I need my home. Do you remember, once I made wines to make angels weep?"

"Yeah, because they tasted so nasty," Angie muttered.

Dimitrescu rounded on her. "Insolent poppet. I'll smash you apart- a little more dust in this hovel of a house could hardly hurt-

"Enough," Rose growled.

Dimitrescu lifted her chin. Angie chattered her teeth in a click-click-click of porcelain against ivory, but shut up. After a long pause, Donna brought the tea over. Rose didn't miss the wicked little smile playing around her lips.

"The only tea that wasn't stale was this sort," she said. "I hope it's all right."

"Probably full of your nauseating little mind-venom," Dimitrescu said with a wave of her hand. "Forgive me, dear sister, if I won't partake."

Rose took a long drink of the tea, the unfamiliar herbs stinging in her nose and warming the back of her throat. Cloves, she thought, and cinnamon, and something a little sweet. It cleared away the last of the brain-fog from the hallucination downstairs.

"...It isn't stale, is it?" Donna asked.

"No. No, it's good. Kind of tastes like Christmas."

Donna, Angie, and Dimitrescu all looked at her.

"Holiday," Rose amended. "Lots of, uh, pie and stuff. I guess you wouldn't know about it, would you?"

"Heisenberg would," Donna murmured. "He got out."

"So will you, after this," Rose said. "If you want."

Donna lowered her gaze, her hands clasped around her own mug. She didn't take a sip.

"You will," Rose pressed. She half-stood. "Look, we just need a plan. Dimitrescu, you were outside. Did you see anything? Any signs of Ouroboros, lycans?"

"No," she said. "But...there is something. Something in the air...in the feeling of the wind. I don't like it."

"Something wrong?"

She tilted her head back, letting the firelight play over the long, pale planes of her throat. "Let us, for all our sakes, hope not."

"We can't screw around for too long." Rose tapped at her mug with her fingertips, a quick restless drumbeat. "Those helicopters weren't far off. Now, the blizzard's gonna make it hard for them to land, but that won't delay them forever."

"What about your...companion? Jailer? Whichever he was. The man-thing." Dimitrescu's lip curled in disgust.

"Chris..." She didn't want to think about him. He'd have to hunt her down now, she knew. He'd have to. She'd crossed a line in a big way, and no amount of shared history, or shared misery, would allow him with all his duties and responsibilities to just...leave her alone. After all, she'd outright agreed to allow Lady Dimitrescu to eat anyone who got in her way.

I had to, Chris-

But wasn't that everyone's argument? She was certain Miranda would have claimed the same, in her place.

"Chris is a problem for later," she said quickly. "Right now, we need to focus on getting into town, scout out what's going on."

"Fifteen years," Dimitrescu murmured. "What degeneracy will greet us, I wonder."

"At a guess? Probably a whole freaking lot of lycans."

Lady Dimitrescu lifted her hand, letting her claws slide from her fingertips, admiring their slick gleam in the light.

"Dear, sweet child," she said, and grinned, showing off her teeth. "Lycans are to be the least of our worries."

[ebaeschnbliah]

Eärendil, the Evening Star, most beloved of the Elves, shone clear above. So bright was it that the figure of the Elven-lady cast a dim shadow on the ground. Its rays glanced upon a ring about her finger; it glittered like polished gold overlaid with silver light, and a white stone in it twinkled as if the Even-star had come down to rest upon her hand. 

Frodo gazed at the ring with awe ...

... for suddenly it seemed to him that he understood.

`Yes,' she said, divining his thought, `it is not permitted to speak of it, and Elrond could not do so. But it cannot be hidden from the Ring-bearer, and one who has seen the Eye. Verily it is in the land of Lórien upon the finger of Galadriel that one of the Three remains. This is Nenya, the Ring of Adamant, and I am its keeper.

`He suspects, but he does not know - not yet. Do you not see now wherefore your coming is to us as the footstep of Doom? For if you fail, then we are laid bare to the Enemy. Yet if you succeed, then our power is diminished, and Lothlórien will fade, and the tides of Time will sweep it away. We must depart into the West, or dwindle to a rustic folk of dell and cave, slowly to forget and to be forgotten.'

Frodo bent his head. `And what do you wish? ' he said at last.

`That what should be shall be,' she answered. `The love of the Elves for their land and their works is deeper than the deeps of the Sea, and their regret is undying and cannot ever wholly be assuaged. Yet they will cast all away rather than submit to Sauron: for they know him now. For the fate of Lothlórien you are not answerable but only for the doing of your own task. Yet I could wish, were it of any avail, that the One Ring had never been wrought, or had remained for ever lost.'

'You are wise and fearless and fair, Lady Galadriel,' said Frodo. `I will give you the One Ring, if you ask for it. It is too great a matter for me.'

Galadriel laughed with a sudden clear laugh. `Wise the Lady Galadriel may be,' she said, `yet here she has met her match in courtesy. Gently are you revenged for my testing of your heart at our first meeting. You begin to see with a keen eye. I do not deny that my heart has greatly desired to ask what you offer. For many long years I had pondered what I might do, should the Great Ring come into my hands, and behold! it was brought within my grasp. The evil that was devised long ago works on in many ways, whether Sauron himself stands or falls. Would not that have been a noble deed to set to the credit of his Ring, if I had taken it by force or fear from my guest?

`And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair! '

She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illuminated her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful. Then she let her hand fall, and the light faded, and suddenly she laughed again, and lo! she was shrunken: a slender elf-woman, clad in simple white, whose gentle voice was soft and sad.

'I pass the test,' she said. `I will diminish, and go into the West and remain Galadriel.'

They stood for a long while in silence. At length the Lady spoke again. `Let us return! ' she said. `In the morning you must depart for now we have chosen, and the tides of fate are flowing.'

`I would ask one thing before we go,' said Frodo, `a thing which I often meant to ask Gandalf in Rivendell. I am permitted to wear the One Ring: why cannot I see all the others and know the thoughts of those that wear them? '

`You have not tried,' she said. `Only thrice have you set the Ring upon your finger since you knew what you possessed. Do not try! It would destroy you. Did not Gandalf tell you that the rings give power according to the measure of each possessor? Before you could use that power you would need to become far stronger, and to train your will to the domination of others. Yet even so, as Ring-bearer and as one that has borne it on finger and seen that which is hidden, your sight is grown keener. You have perceived my thought more clearly than many that are accounted wise. You saw the Eye of him that holds the Seven and the Nine. And did you not see and recognize the ring upon my finger? Did you see my ring? ' she asked turning again to Sam.

'No, Lady,' he answered. `To tell you the truth, I wondered what you were talking about. I saw a star through your finger. But if you'll pardon my speaking out, I think my master was right. I wish you'd take his Ring. You'd put things to rights. You'd stop them digging up the gaffer and turning him adrift. You'd make some folk pay for their dirty work.'

`I would,' she said. `That is how it would begin. But it would not stop with that, alas! We will not speak more of it. Let us go!'

JRR Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Mirror of Galadriel