#so i must whittle it down piece by piece

[phoenix-before-the-flame]

I have exactly one joke regardin Jellal and i'm never going to let it rest

[novelmonger]

Top five David Hodges songs

kljfg;asdkfjas;dklgjsd;fklj HOW DO I PICK ad;lkfja;sdkfjsd;kfljds;fklj

Shattered (Beauty and the Tragedy version)

Desert Lands (Beauty and the Tragedy version)

Jet Black Heart (Arrows to Athens version)

Time Machine

Ashes

[almostfoxglove]

HOLD STILL

written for @punkshort's AU August Challenge

RATING: Explicit (18+) PAIRING: Bodyguard!Dave York x f!Reader WORD COUNT: 3.4k CW: Dave's filthy mouth, pwp, smut (cockwarming, unprotected piv, creampie, sorta soft-dom!dave but really he's just bossy, sorta praise kink, a couple pussy pronouns don’t look at me), and one nonsense tense switch just for the hell of it I guess.

SUMMARY: On your last night together, Dave agrees to compromise.

read on ao3 | almostfoxglove masterlist

You want him, but he won’t fuck you. Not once, not even quickly, not even with just his hands. Dave York—ever stoic, unflinching—insists on doing his job and his job alone. And you, as he so enjoys reiterating, are not his job. Protecting you is. 

For three weeks you’ve smothered the calendar hung on the kitchen wall with another red X each morning, whittling the days until you give your polished testimony and say goodbye to him for good. Now the court date looms heavy on the horizon—it’ll rise tomorrow with the sun. 

In the meantime—these last, dwindling hours—you roam the grand rooms of an apartment rented for your protection, your anonymity, at the very skirt of the city where you’d surely have lost your mind if not for him. Stationed diligently at your side, hand never more than a twitch from the grip of his gun. So many hours spent alone you've memorized his form: how he looks scanning the curtained windows for any whisper of danger. How he's never complained when you choose cheesy reality shows from the TV guide. Teaching you how to play Spades with a deck of cards soft and worn—from his home, maybe, though you never ask—and letting you win the first hand, lips quirked when you call him out on it, then unapologetically wiping the floor with you for the rest of your isolation. 

Yes, you know him, though only in image. Broad and sturdy, shirts each neatly ironed and squarely tucked. The hard line of his jaw and the fullness of his bottom lip. His hair always swept neatly from his face, even when you know he’s recently woken up. Never scruffy, never stubbled. Clean shaven and the smell of nice hotel shampoo.

It’s wrong, how you try to prod him to no avail. No matter your efforts, he says nothing of the way you adorn your body: lacy slips and satin sets at night, hugging silhouettes during the day, hair always done, lipstick never out of place even though you can’t leave the apartment or stand too near the windows. Dave is the only one who sees you, save for the days or hours when he leaves you his clumsy understudy to step down from his post.

He must know you do it for him.

It’s wrong, but you asked once, early on. Tonight? 

And Dave’s mouth pinched into a flat, polite line. Unreadable, his face drained of its emotion. His declination drawled deep and heady, a voice that curled your toes and more than once kept you panting alone in your bed that’s not yours at all, just two doors away from his, fingers needy and swirling. No, honey. Not tonight.

Repeated in your mind until it warped like an overplayed tape.

No, honey.

Honey.

Honey.

Not tonight.

Tonight.

Tonight, he is gone—your last together before the trial—leaving you in the hollow apartment with his proxy, stung. Same dark clothes, same holstered gun, same little piece nestled in his ear, but not half of what you want. You want Dave: a man as solid as he is driven, immutable as he is tempting. Assigned to protect you until you deliver the account that’ll send a monster away.

Perhaps you’ve liked the game—how he watches you, but never gives in—but now it’s lost its shimmer.

Lights dimmed for the evening, all black curtains drawn, the vaulted ceilings of the kitchen feel miles high as you perch on a barstool at the breakfast counter to stare at the calendar taunting you across the quiet room. Beyond the pristine halls you’ve lapped all day like an anxious dog, the city serenades you. Traffic squealing through streets, sirens singing in the distance, the occasional shout of someone walking by outside, eight floors below. 

You are not, at night, permitted to part the curtains, lest someone get a glimpse of your illuminated face, but you long to open one now, see if Dave is out there, returning to your little castle turret one final time. Because it’s possible he won’t come back at all—that his coworker will escort you between lobby and truck, between truck and courthouse, between courthouse and whatever comes next. Maybe home. That you’ll never see Dave again, let alone throw caution to the wind and ask once more, tonight?

And then, just then, as your stomach begins to sink with disappointment, you hear the sudden crack of the front door unlocking and the creak of its surrender. You’ve conjured him, somehow, past the stroke of midnight. Then low, rumbled whispers, the unmistakable tone of Dave’s voice mumbling to his understudy. Your heart speeds as the door closes again and his stand-in retreats into the hall. How dizzying, the sound of locks settling into their rightful places, turned by Dave’s unerring hands. 

When he appears in the dining room behind you, bomber jacket hanging from one arm, he tucks a tiny apology into the twitch of his lips—or maybe it’s meant to be a smile. “It’s late,” he says, as your eyes drink him in. Polished as ever, despite the hour, not a stitch out of place. “Should be in bed.”

You shrug, hoping you might appear indifferent. “Couldn’t sleep,” you say, aware of how the satin of your robe slopes off your shoulder with no intention of righting it.

Does something darken in his face then, or do you imagine it? You can’t be sure, not in this umbra, at this time of night. Jaw ticking, Dave strides cautiously toward the dining table, drapes his jacket over the back of one glossy chair, and sinks into the seat at the head of the sleek table, same as usual. A quiet kind of reign, his claiming this position, always, for every meal. He scratches his cheek, slips the gun from the holster at his belt to rest on the table, and as he leans back you indulge yourself—how can you not—in the slight buck of his hips as he shifts to stretch out his legs. 

“Need your rest,” Dave chides softly. No edge to his tone.

Sighing before you can stop yourself, disappointed all over again as his gaze draws off you to the windows and drapes. On duty, still. On duty, always. Not you. Not tonight. “S’the last night,” you reply, staring at the calendar again. One little red X to go. “You weren’t here.”

Behind you, his deep and measured breath. The shiver of that unflappable restraint, you hope, but you don’t yet dare to look back. He might spook.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

You don’t budge. Don’t move.

“You hear me?” Voice a little harder now, solidifying. When he speaks to you, you always look him in the eye—or you always have before.

Electric, your heart. Revving just a breath faster, just a hair harder, at the sound of him huffing in frustration. Your lips tick up in one corner, hidden, a secret meant only for you. When Dave says your name, your whole body purrs and you at last turn your head enough to let him glimpse your profile, still withholding your gaze.

“Pouting,” he scolds, this time meaning it. “That what this is?”

“Avoiding me,” you counter. “That where you were?”

Dave hmphs, darkness fading and softness returning to his tone. “Course not, honey.”

You look at him now, properly. Barstool spinning as you push off the counter to face him. Under the dusk of dimmed pendant lights over the dining table, Dave glows. In the time you’ve looked away, he’s unbuttoned his shirt one button lower than it’d been when he walked in.

One button lower than you’ve ever seen him wear before.

“Said I’m sorry,” he says again, head tilted. His foot comes out to nudge the leg of the chair beside his, angling it in your direction. “Come here.”

He means for you to sit, maybe play a hand of Spades, but as you slink off the barstool you have no intention of taking the seat. Warmth flushing in your chest, cool, conditioned air greeting your bare legs and collarbones, all the skin not covered by your sleekest sleep set. You swear he drinks the sight of you, for once, as you cross the kitchen toward him. Eyes dark not only from shadows, from the time. Or else you hope, as you come to a stop between Dave’s knees, that the way he’s not yet blinked means what you want it to.

Lips parting, a breath from speaking when you beat him to the punch and ask, “Tonight?” Your chin lowered and eyes searching his. It’s the last night. Might as well show your hand while you still can, before he slinks back into the underbelly of a city where you know he’s lived for years but you’ve never once glimpsed him, and not just because it’s busy.

Because invisible is what he’s paid to be, what he’s good at. Unseen until the fist of him is needed, the gun.

Pink striping his bottom lip, a swipe of his tongue, eyes boring into you. The slightest shake of his head, clean-shaven cheeks sharked in the shadow and golden light. “Honey.” Not a no, honey. Not a not tonight. Just honey, like you’ve imagined.

Emboldened, you caress of your fingertips across his shoulder, tracing the seam of his crisp, pale blue dress shirt. So handsome, always so handsome. A man who takes care of himself, who tidies and cleans without your needing to ask. Spotless, always. Reserved, always. Killing you, always, with every brush of his gaze. 

You draw your fingers towards his shirt collar.

“Can’t,” says Dave, softer still. Breathy, almost. You pet the knife-cut of his pressed collar, the button just below it, and his Adam’s apple bobs slowly in his throat. Again, he shakes his head so slightly it looks more like a twitch. A reflex to say no. Not a desire to. “Can’t fuck you, honey. Wouldn’t be right.”

You bite your lip, brows drawing together, not lifting your hand from the button placket of his shirt. “Just tonight,” you breathe, and bat your eyes a little.

At last Dave’s dark eyes drop from yours, scanning the length of you above him with searing precision. Consideration. You slant your head to one side as his gaze slides back up, hesitating on your silk-draped chest, and you suck a sharper breath before it returns to meet yours. He cuffs your wrist with his hand to halt your teasing as he shakes his head once more, licking his bottom lip again with greater meaning. A glint in his eyes, lust finally flaring. 

Pride swirls in your stomach, honeyed and wanting. Then he tugs you by the hips with such reflexes you hardly register the movement of his hands before you’re on him, straddling him in the chair, your thighs framing his hips. Held. Your robe fanning behind you, over his knees. Heart pounding dangerously close to a cardiac event.

Dave tsks softly, smirking when you whimper, trying to roll your hips over the heat of his crotch. Those careful, deadly hands lock them in a vice as he clicks his tongue. “Not gonna fuck you,” he murmurs, and you lean in to kiss him but he pulls his head away. “Not gonna kiss you either. Not right.”

You don’t care about right. Now you pout for real, forehead wrinkling, staring at his upturned lips. You feel the unmistakable twitch of him growing hard against you and your cunt throbs in reply, needy and slick. You try to wiggle again but Dave pinches your hips in warning. “Look at me,” he repeats, that edge to his voice that curls your toes, and your eyes snap to his.

“Good girl.”

You moan quietly, made liquid by the tender swipe of his thumb over the satin of your sleep shorts. Your eyes fluttering at such a tiny stroke, not even the meeting of skin. 

“You can’t move, okay? Only allowed to sit.” When you don’t answer, too lost to the throb of his cock against your begging core, Dave pinches you again, voice gravelly in a way you’ve not heard before. “You hear me?”

Nodding, you hum. Can’t quite get out the word. 

“Need to hear you, honey. Gonna hold still for me?”

“Mhm,” you whine, fighting your every instinct to grind down against him as you meet his lust-blown eyes. “Yes. Only allowed to sit.”

Dave puffs a hot breath out that sends a wake of goosebumps across your chest. “Good girl,” he coos, and your brows pinch at the praise. “Soaking me already, honey. Can’t sleep like this, can you? Just need to turn your brain off, hm?” The movement of his hips below yours is so slight you might imagine it, that tiny grind as his cock grows. You nod, whine softly, and both his thumbs stroke your hips gently before stilling again.

“Show me, honey.” So quiet. So little air between you, and yet too much.

You scan his face until he offers a small nod. Those brown eyes hooded by dark lashes, devouring you without need for the press of his mouth. It’d be soft, you’re certain. The caress of his lips. Maybe the rest of him is hard and deadly, but those would be tender, careful—they’d take you apart, breath by breath. With the same precision with which he darts between shadows and cleans his gun and beats you at cards and tucks your hair behind your ear when you’re falling asleep on the couch, he’d dissolve you kiss by kiss with a kind of grace.

It’s his lips on which you pin your gaze as you let one hand drift between your legs, dipping easily between silk and skin—your body made jelly so quickly and by so little contact, already wet. You pray you don’t imagine the sharpness of his breath when your knuckles accidentally graze against his slacks as you slip your fingers between dewy folds. Then: your hand rising in the dim light, shining, honeyed. Dave watching them, the corner of his mouth cracking just a little. Tensing into his cheek.

He grunts, good girl, and then he’s lifting you just enough to peel down the zip of his slacks, flick open the button, but when your eyes fall hopeful for a glimpse of him he tsks, hooks one finger beneath your chin to tilt your face up, whispers a soft eyes on me, honey as he pulls himself out where you can’t see.

As his knuckles brush against the wet gusset of your shorts, nudging them to the side. Finding no panties to move.

As the head of his cock—plush, warm, weeping—nudges against the ache of you, the thrum of your longing.

He grins, wicked.

Then pressure, a moan lost to the air you’re hardly conscious of and the stretch of him, the slow press in and the ache of your cunt swallowing his girth inch by inch. You whimper, eyelids shuddering like old film, catching only still frames of Dave’s expression as he lowers you gently, burying himself in your drooling heat until you come to rest at his base, flush and full.

So full. Light-headed, sparkling. Your hips must rock because he squeezes your waist. “Hold still, honey,” he coos. “Remember?”

The terms of his touch sounded alright just a breath ago, but now you can’t imagine how you ever agreed. How you’re supposed to stay still with him throbbing inside you like this, heavy and sweet, exactly what you need. A flicker in his eyes like he knows exactly what he’s doing to you, how he’s scrubbing out every thought in your head. Cocky, yes. But earning it.

“Dave,” you sigh, breathy and desperate. Your cunt clenching and squeezing and pushing out slick, probably ruining his slacks but he won’t let you look down, just tilts your head up gently every time it hangs slack. “Please.”

His breathing catches for a beat, then it’s steady again. “I know, I know,” he murmurs, keeping his finger under your chin to keep your eyes on him—but he hardly needs to. You’d swear the whole world drained away the second he slid into you. There’s nothing else past your bodies, past this one dining room chair. Everything else disappears like magic. The trial, the dread, the drone of city noise. The slow leak of your heart knowing this is goodbye—all of it. Gone.

You’d have sworn it impossible to come like this, with no movement at all, but you will. You do. And months from now—safe in the swaddle of your actual apartment that for weeks has stood hollow and dusty, plants withering sadly on their windowsills—you’ll lie in bed longing, missing, remembering. Trying to recreate the swipe of his thick thumb on your clit as you replay this moment in your head. How you whined, wanna take care of you when Dave still wouldn’t let you move, even when you were close, just swiped and swiped his thumb until you were something more than alive, transcending.

How his pupils had set ablaze with your whispered plea. How you’d realized that was the point, for him. The begging and the not giving in.

How he’d growled, “Taking care of you is taking care of me. You don’t think I’m gonna come the second this pussy strangles my cock? ‘Cause I am. S’all I need, honey, just give it to me—”

His voice the thunder to your body’s crackle and lightning.

“Let her take care of me, that’a girl, that’s it, just like that honey, she’s so tight—fuck—so fuckin’ tight around me, just squeezin’ me, gonna come when you do, pretty girl, let me have it.”

How it hit you like a white bolt of heat and light, every cell in you tense and flaming, then melting, boneless on his lap as he murmured sweetly, grunted, tried to lift you off him just in time and you’d finally, finally touched him—lucid in an instant, hands slammed down on the muscle of his shoulders. Mumbling amidst your aftershocks, inside, inside, inside. Eyelids stuttering again, back to picture frames as your cunt seized and begged in tandem.

The snarl of his upper lip.

His knotted jaw.

Tongue sucked against his front teeth, resolve crumbling.

The allowance granted to your hands to stay right there, fisting his shirt collar as his locked your waist in a bruising vice. His hips bucking only once, grinding the head of his cock deeper, deliciously, almost too good to take. 

“Fuck, fuckfuck—yeah, that what she needs, honey? Needs me to fill her up?”

You’ll remember your own reply as you near a second-rate heaven in the nest of your duvet at home, all frantic hands and thrusting digits and eyes slammed shut, repainting him in your head. Golden in that gloomy light, hair straying out of position across his misted forehead for the first time. Yes. Please. Dave. Yes. Inside. Please—and his grunt, dark and sweet as caramel, as burnt brown sugar. That tiny grin dragging at his soft lips, pleased. You’d pleased him, surprised him maybe. 

That can make you sparkle now, to remember.

“Okay, honey. Okay—shit—gonna give it to you, hm? Gonna give you all of it, baby—she’s squeezing me so goddamn tight, fuck, wanna stay here all night—”

Then the granting of a wish, the heat of him spilling into your cunt, the unmistakable slide of slick leaking between your thighs and onto his; you didn’t have to look to know. You could feel it, that wholeness overflowing. You can almost feel it now; three fingers might be a poor attempt at recreation, but you fall off the cliff all the same, his name on your tongue, a cry in the night, all the curtains dark and drawn as you come down breathless and drowsy, your whole body limp and spent as it’d been that night with him—when he’d tucked himself away and petted your hair back from your face, so gentle with you, cooing that you did so good, honey. Such a good girl. Gonna get you into bed now, hm? Need your sleep, honey. Come on. 

Carrying you into your not-real bedroom, tucking you in so tenderly, like he hadn’t just taken you apart at the molecules. And Dave’s lips were just as plush as you’d imagined when they grazed your forehead, his big hand petting your cheek once more, then turning out the lights. That deep timbre whispering from the doorway, goodnight. The door clicking shut. All of it perfect. How you’d known you mattered more than a job for just one moment in time.

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@noisynightmarepoetry @clawdee

[therealslimshakespeare]

Dear John | Apologies II

Summary: Julie Jean responds to Major Egan’s letter of apology, summer 1943

Previous Lettter 💌

18+ for adult language, suggestive content

Almost entirely authored by my talented baby @stylespresleyhearted

Dear John,

It pains me that your letter reads both as an apology and like a goodbye. I sit here writing to you trying to figure out where in my response to you I went wrong. Perhaps the alcohol wore off and you woke up to find you had written to many other actresses and I wasn’t anything special. Maybe I was the only Hollywood starlet desperate enough to reply because your letter sparked a light in me, switched on something in my heart and in between my legs but to you it was just drunken ramblings because no girl at the bars snook off with you. It was a lonely night for you and I was a girl chosen and the night is over now and you’ve got a picture of me that I have entrusted to you and now you’re ready to move on.

“No one wants an eager girl, Julie Jean” that’s what my mother always says and I think the lesson has finally been learned. Do not feel you must apologize and regret any of your words, Major, I chose to snap and send the photo and I chose to respond to your letter. Like I said, it was different than the others and I thought (and hoped) you were different from the men Mother warned me against. And in many ways you are, I suppose, always will be to me. You’re honest to the point of no shame and I’ve told you how you make me feel fizzy all over from your words alone. But you’re also not so different from those other men because now you have a piece of me you are leaving me.

You told me you fought for our country but that you also fought to keep me safe. Did you mean that, Major Egan? I had never felt safer.

If it was the photo that has caused you to alter how you are with me then I am the one who must apologize. You spoke of giving me babies and of thinking of me in your bunk and taking my straw on missions with you because my lips had been on it and it seems I let all that get to my head and I got ahead of myself. As I signed my last letter Major, I am a vain little thing and so I have questions if my photo is the culprit: Did they not live up to your expectations? Were they perhaps not as perky as you hoped they would be without the artifice of support? Did you find my nipples too large? I have to know what it was Johnny, it’s cruel to keep me wondering like this. I stood in front of the mirror this morning and looked at them, trying to pinpoint where they let you down.

In a single letter your opinion came to be of the upmost importance to me.

In this line of business, everyone wants one thing or another and it was nice to speak to someone who wanted and requested nothing and found me beautiful for when I was the most myself. I had a blast on the war bond tour John, I kissed so many boys my lips bruised and my mother was livid and the studios said it was ruining my image but I was so happy. And then to come in contact with you, it felt like everything from that lovely tour had whittled down to you. Just all of it for you.

Only for us to come to this. It is my fault for placing any expectation on you, you placed none on me. If that first letter was you, truly you, then I needed nothing different.

But I wanted you. And maybe I needed the man who wrote to me the first night. There I got again. Need. Expectations. All the trust I put in your words from one letter. You must think me a looney and so desperate.

If this is to be goodbye, Major, I wish you only the best of things and for you to continue returning safely until you are able to come home. The girl who will receive your letters and your calls and gets to have you in her arms upon your return is one I envy but I wish nothing less than love and happiness and safety for you. And I must thank you for everything you helped me to feel with your letter. It was a first for me, and I don’t think I’d be wrong to assume I’ll never feel it again. Not in this life.

Sincerely,

Lana Tierney

p.s if the photograph has disappointed you so, feel free to return it.

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[astarionsilverbough]

astarion catches halsin whittling a bust of his head out of a palm-sized block of birchwood :} he doesn't recognize it :}

yo hey whoa WHOA

okay yeah let’s go

It happens about three days after they leave the Grove for the Creche.

They’re camping on the Risen Road near the river. Astarion and Gale disappear for their usual bath together - they stay in the pairs they’ve previously selected mostly out of ease, though Karlach joins Lae’zel and Halsin’s group - and Halsin, having already bathed, produces a block of wood from his pack.

It fits neatly in the frame of his hand. Three-fourths of the block have been carefully carved and coaxed away by the gentle sweeps of Halsin’s knife. He works in silence for a few minutes, losing himself so utterly in his task he hardly notices he’s not alone until Wyll is speaking.

“Good gods man,” the fighter says, peering over Halsin’s shoulder at the small piece, “you’ve captured Astarion perfectly. Karlach, look at this.”

“Oh, whoa! Halsin, that’s amazin’,”Karlach says wonderingly as she peers over Wyll’s shoulder while he peers over Halsin’s shoulder. “You’ve even captured his little, little smile lines! Oh!”

“What’s all this, then, why are we cooing over the druid?”

As it always does, Astarion's voice makes Halsin's heavy heart feel about two hundred times lighter and younger. Wyll and Karlach both step back and Halsin looks up at Astarion nears, his damp hair falling over his curiously furrowed brow.

"Oh," the vampire hums, sounding a bit... befuddled. Almost... apprehensive? "Well who's this... handsome young thing, then?"

He's being entirely genuine. He doesn't recognize himself - but Wyll and Karlach, who barely know the man, did. It does look like him, then. Halsin knows it does - he's carved Astarion's face a thousand times over the last two hundred years, after all. He could carve it in the dark.

Karlach rolls her eyes. "Oh, come off it," she says with a laugh, gently smacking the back of Astarion's shoulder. "You don't have to play coy. You're bloody gorgeous, Astarion."

Astarion's eyebrows shoot up as it occurs to Halsin that vampires... Vampires can't see their reflection. Not even in water. His chest grows almost immeasurably tight. It must show on his face, because Wyll clears his throat then and says, "we ought to get the fire going, aye? It's getting chilly out here for those of us not running on infernal engines!"

"Wh -?" Karlach manages, but then Wyll is all but frog-marching her away and Halsin's world shrinks down to Astarion and only Astarion.

A relief.

If he could keep the world this small, he would.

"Is this... Is this really me, darling?"

Astarion sounds... His voice is more vulnerable than Halsin's heard it yet. Oh, but there were no words in any language to describe what was happening within the great former archdruid as he takes in Astarion's expression; it's one of an almost awestruck grief, of curious hope and something approaching the innocence he once embodied when he was younger and unafraid.

"Yes," Halsin utters on a breath. "Yes, little star, it is."

The vampire's eyes are swelling with tears. His bottom lip quivers even as his mouth curves into a soft, wondering smile.

"Me... now?"

"That is the only you I see," Halsin says quietly. "The Astarion you have always been and will always be."

"Oh," Astarion whimpers. When Halsin offers up the carving for Astarion to hold, to memorize with fingertips and thumbs, Astarion falters for a moment before he takes it so carefully Halsin almost shatters then and there.

"Huh," the vampire breathes, gazing down at his own carefully crafted visage with tears streaming down the real article, "well. I... I look more like him, don't I? Like father."

"You look like Astraea when you smile," Halsin murmurs, clambering to his feet. He sweeps a curled finger under Astarion's chin to catch the tears beading there and thumbs over the taper of it.

"And you have her eyes," the druid says. Astarion lifts those sunset eyes to meet his and before he can protest, Halsin bows to kiss the argument off his tongue. Astarion grips the carving in one hand and slides his arms around Halsin's neck; the bigger elf catches him in the crook of his elbow and draws him close, as close as he possibly can.

It's never close enough.

"But when I look at you," Halsin says in elvish, taking a step back towards his tent, "I see Astarion. I see the way your hair curls around your ears and the way your eyes wrinkle when you laugh. The way your lips part right before you're about to be kissed."

Astarion's ears go pink. "Oh - stop," he protests weakly against Halsin's lips, squirming as Halsin lifts him effortlessly from the ground. "Enough poetry, just tell me I'm beautiful so we can move onto the exciting part."

Stepping back through the flaps of his own tent, Halsin catches Astarion in another gasping kiss and turns on his heel. Astarion doesn't flail or cry out when Halsin moves to get him down on the cot; he trusts Halsin with the same ease he always has, fingers carding nimbly through the druid's hair as he kisses over Halsin's jaw and noses at his ear.

"Beautiful," Halsin says, leaning up on his palms to look down at the vampire. Soft dusk light filters through the canvas of Halsin's tent, lighting Astarion up in shades of burnished gold. The breath punches gently out of Halsin and he shakes his head. Catching Astarion gently by the jaw, the druid bows and kisses him in the way that makes the blood run hot enough to tempt the change.

"I would invent a new word for you if I only knew how," Halsin says against Astarion's lips. "You are solar storms and hurricanes, Astarion Ancunin - you are the sea beneath a fractured sky and the first winter freeze."

Astarion trembles. "I distinctly remember telling you no more poetry" he manages, "only moments ago, even. You can't have forgotten already. I hope you haven't, or we have bigger problems than - mmhmm..."

He licks the words off Astarion's tongue. The vampire melts beneath him, tears dripping down his temples and into the snowfall of his hair.

"Astarion," Halsin breathes achingly. "Astarion."

"There it is," Astarion whispers, "your new word. Every time you say my name - every time you say my name, I know how beautiful you think I am."

A pause.

"But the carving certainly helps. Feel free to make more. Of any part of me, in fact."

Halsin grins against Astarion's teeth and gathers him close, finally skin to skin.

It's almost close enough.

"Oh, I will," the druid burrs as Astarion scrapes a heavy, needy gaze over his face, lips parted against Halsin's like he's a snake poised to swallow a mouse. Halsin slides a hand between his thighs and the elf whines.

"Good," Astarion groans.

And he does. Only once he's done some thorough research, of course.

Astarion insists.

[sideprince]

What are your thoughts on Snape's parents/childhood/upbringing ?

Sorry it's taken me ages to get to this ask! I wrote a meta post about Eileen Prince recently ("recently." It sat in my drafts for about a month as I whittled away at it) but I can go off a bit on Tobias and the kind of home a young Severus might have lived in, though it'll be a bit of a messier convergence of meta and headcannon, probably.

The tl;dr of the Eileen meta post is that I think she may have come from a family with reasonable wealth and reputation, and ended up stuck with Tobias as the result of an accidental out of wedlock pregnancy that led her family to disown her. @vulnus-sanare left one of my favorite comments on that post, which I'm just going to quote in full:

"It is hard to not think that Severus may have been the outcome of an unwanted pregnancy. It is harder to believe that "love" was ever in the foundation of the Snape family. My theory is that Eileen and Tobias had a fling, it had consequences, the Princes disowned Eileen for getting impregnated by a Muggle, and Tobias was forced to marry her out ... Patriarchal honor. However, the first time Eileen and Tobias had a violent argument, Eileen threatened him with her wand for defense. He didn't sleep at home that night. The next morning, Eileen found her wand split into two unsalvageable pieces on her bedside table. Tobias was home. And there would be no more magic."

My personal take is that we see clear statements in the books that depression can sap a witch/wizard of their powers (Merope Gaunt), and also that existing powers can't be suppressed, they'll find a way to come out and with terrible consequences if bottled up for too long (Ariana Dumbledore, and basically every underage wizard). Because of this, my own interpretation is that Eileen probably lost much of her powers due to despair. We see Severus in a memory shooting down flies with his wand alone in his room as a teen, and that casual use of magic makes me think that the Ministry still had magical activity registered at that residence on Eileen's account, otherwise Severus would have had to deal with the repercussions of violating the Statute of Secrecy and, if that was the case, he certainly wouldn't have used his wand and done magic so nonchalantly. Eileen's magic would have been too weak to stand up to Tobias, but still enough to warrant the Ministry thinking there was an active witch at their house.

Nevertheless, I love the idea that Tobias split her wand! It's a striking and complex statement on what that relationship might have looked like. Tobias must have been insecure (secure people don't tend to abuse their loved ones). Eileen had power over him that he would never be able to match. Even so, every person with power has a vulnerability - for any wizard it would be that their power must be channeled through a wand to be effective. A wand which, despite the power of the witch or wizards who wields it, can easily be snapped in two. What might its core have been? Would Tobias have been surprised to find it wasn't merely a stick carved on a lathe, that there was something running through its center that he couldn't identify? I love the irony of such a mundane, muggle act stopping the power of magic in its tracks. And, after all, if Eileen had no money of her own and she and Tobias had little to live on, she wouldn't have been able to buy a new wand. Or perhaps she eventually did, but her powers remained weak (or perhaps she bought a cheaper wand she could afford, maybe even secondhand, and it never worked as well as her own had). As for her magic struggling to get out without a proper way to channel it, perhaps her wand's destruction may have been the final straw for her spirit, which broke as a result of her isolation from her family and her world, and her being tethered to such a man.

As for Tobias, I think that while he may have had a proclivity towards abuse, it didn't truly come out until sometime after Severus' birth. I think he was always working class, and possibly fought in WWII like every man of his generation, but that the crippling poverty of the family was brought on by some kind of workplace accident that left him unable to work and dependent on welfare. Eileen wouldn't have worked, having few skills and weak magic, but back in the 60s many working class families only had one breadwinner. There are signs that Severus was both poor and also neglected, particularly his ill fitting, mismatched, hand-me-down clothes that no one even attempted to sew to size for him (let alone use magic to do so). Eileen would have made sure Severus was out of the house as much as possible, if Tobias was home most of of the time, and tried to take the brunt of Tobias' anger when possible. Severus wouldn't have understood this for a long time, and would have felt rejected and isolated as a result.

As Severus grew older, got a wand, and expanded his knowledge of magic, he would have stood up to Tobias more in the weeks he was home from school. He wouldn't have trusted his father, and would have eventually realized that their power balance had shifted. I think there may be a parallel with Voldemort there, too: as Dumbledore says, all tyrants fear that one day someone will rise up against them. I think perhaps Severus felt more able to be that person and undermine Voldemort, because he had already done so with his own father. He had learnt, firsthand, that terrifying people, people who intimidate with violence and brutality, are not infallible. It makes sense for his character: throughout his school years we see Severus reject his bullies and fight back against them, even though they attack him four against one.

As for his own experience of growing up in that small house on Spinner's End, I think Severus must have been a lonely child. We see the way he feels the need to pick his moment when first meeting Lily; he doesn't have the confidence of a child who's been able to spend much time playing with others. His parents fought a lot, and if his mother tried to protect him, he would have spent a lot of time alone in his room listening to them do so. We see him as a teen shooting down flies with his wand, in a dark room, alone. I think his world at home was small and often painful. Like many children of abuse, he wouldn't even have been aware how much pain he was in, or how constant it was, it was just a part of his internal wallpaper. I don't imagine he had much of a relationship with his dad, though the need for approval from him would have been buried in him somewhere. Perhaps, as he grew older, his relationship with his mother grew more complex and there was a bond.

My own headcanon is that Tobias, a middle aged, disabled, working class man on the dole, wouldn't have survived austerity under Thatcher. I like to think that Severus, living on a teacher's salary in a prestigious school and not needing much beyond the room and board that his job provides, would have used his savings to take care of a widowed Eileen. Perhaps he visited her once or twice a year. They were never sentimental, and talked very little. They would have a cup of tea and a game of chess, or maybe even Gobstones. When Voldemort returned, Severus would have made sure that, if he should die, Eileen would be taken care of. He would not have been able to leave her a letter or any kind of explanation, for fear of it being found. She would have been proud to learn he had been appointed Headmaster of Hogwarts, though he would not have taken pride in it, knowing it was a tactical appointment, and not an earned one. She would have been prouder still, maybe, to learn of his heroism after his death.

[philistiniphagottini]

Hello hello!! Newbie follower Anon is here again with a request for Domestic Bliss (if that's still going on)

Can I request 🎮 playing a video game together with a Female Reader and Ryuji from Persona 5 please?

Hi newbie Anon, thanks for dropping by and participating in the event! I haven't written for Ryuji before and this was a fun little piece to write. Hope you enjoy.

cw. fluff, female reader

Domestic Bliss

There was only one thing you wanted to do on such a rainy, miserable day such as this. And that was to become a couch potato in your favourite bean bag whilst you played video games with your boyfriend. You and Ryuji must have been at it for at least an hour now, swapping between characters in a fighting game and duking it out in head to head combat. So far, you were both evenly matched and neither of you was keeping track of the score anymore. As you were scrolling through the selection screen of characters, Ryuji decided to speak up, tapping your thigh with his foot to gain your attention.

“Hey, how about next round we make a bet?” Ryuji offered. 

He immediately piqued your interest as your curious eyes flickered in his direction, head cocked to the side. 

“Yeah, what do you wanna bet?” you replied. 

A smile stretched his lips as he leaned closer to you, almost falling directly into your lap as his shoulder bumped into yours. You could hear the rain pelting against the windows as the wind howled, but the noise was barely audible over the sound of your pulse pounding in your ears at Ryuji’s close proximity. 

“How about if I win, you give me a kiss.”

You looked thoughtful for a moment as you pondered. You purse your lips together as you rolled the idea around your head. You hummed softly as you started to nod, a playful smile tilting your lips as you responded. 

“Okay. But if I win, then you have to give me a kiss.”

A warm chuckle breezed past Ryuji’s lips as his eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.

“Deal!”

He eagerly fell back into position on the bean bag and started scrolling through the list of characters, immediately picking his favourite as you got ready for a match. You took a bit longer to decide, eyes scanning the TV screen as the light it reflected danced over your screen. 

“Come on” Ryuji goaded. “We don’t got all day. What, scared you’ll lose?”

You playful rolled your eyes as a grunt rumbled in the back of your throat. “Yeah right. I am so winning this bet.”

You picked your character and the match immediately began. The room was filled with the sounds of your characters throwing punches and violent button mashing as you both tried to gain the upper hand. You threw a punch. Ryuji threw a kick. You used a special beam attack. Ryuji grappled you and threw you to the ground. Slowly but surely your health bars started to whittle down and neither of you could help it as you started to shout and exclaim with boisterous laughter. 

“I’m winning!” Ryuji exclaimed with a gentle tease. 

“The match ain’t over yet!”

You leaned forward in your bean bag, the beans stuffed into the bag crunching under your movements as you sat on the edge. Your tongue poked between the seam of your lips, completely focused as your fingers moved faster than your head could keep up. You moved on pure instinct and you knew you could just edge out a victory by the skin of your teeth. You screamed in triumph when the victory banner appeared on your side of the screen, throwing your arms up as you almost, accidentally, threw the controller to the other side of the room in excitement. 

“Aww damn!” Ryuji sighed with defeat. 

His body sank further into his bean bag, sagging as he dropped his controller in his lap. You giggled as you happily crawled your way over to Ryuji, gently nudging his knee as you draped yourself over his legs. 

“I win” you chimed. “Now where’s my kiss?~”

Ryuji smiled as he leaned forward, trying to contain the shiver of excitement that raced along the curve of his spine. You leaned up as Ryuji planted a soft but firm kiss on your lips, the contact brief before you broke apart and savoured the taste of him lingering on the shape of your mouth. Ryuji’s cheeks were warm as he sat back and he awkwardly cleared his throat, hands fumbling as he reached for his controller once more. 

“One more round?” he asked in a hopeful voice.

You hummed as you nodded your head eagerly. “Of course. I don’t plan to lose though~”

“I’ll make you eat those words” Ryuji promised. “Then, I’ll get that kiss for sure!”

A soft snort blew past your lips as you readied yourself for another round. Not such a bad way to spend a rainy day, you mused to yourself. 

[cacaobeans]

(not so) short story i did about my ocs :3c (lawrence and margaret) - to be completely honest. i feel as if it's sorta cringe. but we gotta get in our 500 words a day somehow.

Lawrence drags a heavy hand across his forehead, disturbing the dark strands that had fallen in his eyes. The last rays of summer light fell onto his page, along with his ink-stained wrist - a result of his carelessness while drafting up a proposal to King's College. Lawrence moves to light another candle from the one by the window, yellowy-white stem becoming dangerously short, its flickering flame growing closer to the pool of wax under it.

As his signs his name with a flourish, a weight simultaneously lifts and grows heavier, the stresses of the week clogging up his every movement as he reads over his letter and folds it in preparation for mailing. He's halfway through the process of heating up some sealing wax when he hears the telltale creaking of the staircase, each step too light to be the excited footfalls of Theodore, too easy to be the quiet, gentle padding of Phoebe. Smiling, Lawrence puts down the stick of red wax, making sure it does not melt onto the finely polished wood of his desk and puts aside his writing utensils and tucks away his letter.

He turns to see his lovely Margaret leaning against the door frame, pale yellow locks falling around her face and onto her shoulders.

He crosses the room, leaning down to kiss her tenderly on a blissfully makeup-free cheek.

"You really must be more careful when writing, Lawrence." She reaches up, rubbing her soft, tan thumb against a point on his forehead with a small smirk.

He leans into her touch, cool against warm skin, a comfort during warm summer days, an easy excuse for intimacy in the harsh winter nights. Their bodies slip easily together as Margaret unties the queue in Lawrence's hair, his arms looping around her waist, undoing her tightly bound stay and hearing a sigh as she is released from the vise-like grip. Lawrence will never understand why women must subject themselves to such strict clothing every day.

"You've been working at your office for the majority of the afternoon," Margaret says, untangling Lawrence's hair that had been more ensnared in his queue than she previously thought. "Bear has been missing you."

Lawrence hums, separating himself momentarily from his wife's busy, caring hands for a moment to put away the now cooled wax while shifting over and unfolding his letter.

He shows it to Margaret, eyes scanning slowly over the document with a rueful smile playing at her lips.

"Are you sure you want to send our Bear to an unfamiliar, frightful place?" Lawrence knows that Margaret is only teasing, but her words carry a hint of the fears that lingered on both of their minds when they whispered about it during a sermon or shared a glance watching Lawrence whittle at a piece of wood, dissipating when the child presented a roughly hewn wooden bird that now sat on a chest at the foot of Lawrence and Margaret's bed.

Tutors only served to prepare their son for college and could only get him so far. Theodore deserved a taste of the real world outside of the life that had been constructed for him.

"He's nearly fifteen," Lawrence starts, as Margaret takes the letter from his hands and places it on his desk.

"Nearly? You say that as if fifteen is such an advanced age."

Lawrence sighs. "I know this. I fear, perhaps more than anyone, what he might endure when he is no longer solely under our care."

Margaret gazes at him contemplatively, soft brown eyes never leaving Lawrence's face as if searching for something. Individual strands of her hair illuminated by the warm tones of candle-light, gold streaking through the loose curls. After a long pause, she seems to find herself again.

"We both worry for Bear so much, fussing over this matter and that. But remember how strong we were?"

Appreciation and warmth blooms in Lawrence's chest, melting away the cold fear that had followed him throughout the week.

Margaret picks up the carved bird - imperfect and dimpled - joining their hands together, the wood pressing into both of their palms.

"Perhaps it is time for our little bird to leave the nest."

-------------------

tags! lmk if you want to be included/removed from the list.

@ruemzip @snacho-to-ur-nacho @lil-gae-disaster @marsfingershurt @knowledge-paradox

@harmonikauvegajto @almaprincess66 @hiidkwhatimdoing7525 @culpeppercheckers721 @sopaprimordialy

[starswornoaths]

2. Horizon

Myrina never fully learned how to make connections with the people closest to her. Never quite learned how to open up the door to her heart all the way without them having to let themselves in.

It is well that those that love her knock anyway. Would that she could let them know her. When her daughter stumbles upon a piece of Myrina's past, she will have to settle for a half truth as an end result.

word count: 3,628

-

Myrina had lived in the Shroud long enough to know that thunderstorms posed a particular threat here—with the tree canopy so dense as to blot out the sun in most places, even the scent of rain on the wind was enough for most villages to begin to prepare for the worst case scenario. 

Local volunteer firefighters and town watchtowers would remain on high alert, ready with countermeasures should lightning strike the treeline. As ever, she would be among them, covering the older trees and thatching rooves even as the storm so often caught them in the middle of their preparations.

On one such afternoon, a particularly brutal storm swept through their little Elmvale. The trees offered little and less protection from the rain pratically pelting the firefighters in horizontal sheets as they wrestled with the howling wind. Visibility was shot: even in the shade of the canopy, the tumultuous clouds overhead made it almost dark as night.

But the day was relatively kind, for all their efforts: but a single lightning bolt struck through the canopy and burned a hole large enough to fit a chocobo through before they had managed to smother the flames but beyond that, the village suffered no lasting damage.

That hole in the canopy line became something of a fascination for Myrina’s children even into the next day, after the smoke had thinned and the skies had begun to clear.

“Bet Rhalgr sent it,” her son, Uthengentle chirped as he hopped from one puddle to the next.

They were making a game of it; from what Myrina could parse, they were avoiding anywhere that wasn’t a puddle.

“The lightning?” asked her daughter, Serella, as she jumped after him.

“Yeah! That’s like his whole thing!” Uthengentle said with a pump of his fist in the air on his next leap. “He sends stuff like that down all the time! That’s what my Pops used to say! I bet it was a message!”

At that, Serella stood still in the next puddle she landed on and turned her head toward the newly formed gap in the treeline. Gray, overcast sky peered in on the village with its cosmic indifference from through the lingering smoke trails.

“Whoa,” she whispered, eyes wide in awe.

Even later that evening, with supper sorted and everyone settled in, Myrina still caught her daughter peering out of the window in the upstairs hallway, staring out toward the burned away boughs. It took little and less to shoo her gently to bed. Thus, Myrina slept soundly, certain that her daughter’s curiosity would be sated ere long.

She didn’t see much of Serella the next morning after breakfast, though the overcast day meant the family settled inside, content in their own spaces with only the sounds of fiddling hands to fill the gentle quiet. 

Eventually, though, she heard the telltale march of little feet down the steps sometime in the late afternoon. She couldn’t help but smile at the sound: she knew it was her daughter in the way she jumped with both feet off the last step. It gave her away every time.

But there was a rustle of paper with each step, something Myrina hadn’t anticipated. Serella must have busy making something up in her room.

Sure enough, her daughter’s beautiful head of hair bounced in just above the kitchen table with her expression the very picture of seriousness and a loose sheet of paper fluttering in her grip.

“Have you seen Da?” she asked.

Myrina had in fact seen Hanvesh. He was in the den, likely reading or whittling if the lack of plucking strings was any indicator. But a small part of her felt hurt that she wasn’t asked regarding whatever little mystery their daughter got into this time.

Setting down her screwdriver and the clock she had been repairing, she said, “He might be in the den. Is there something I can help with?”

Alright, maybe a little more than a little hurt.

Her daughter demured at that, staring down at her own feet and shuffling her weight between them. 

“Pro’bly not.” she mumbled at her own socks.

A far larger part of Myrina hurt at that. She fought a wince.

“I might be, you never know!” she tried again with a shaky smile, even as the words felt awkward and too loud.

But she hadn’t known how to connect with her daughter just yet; poor Uthengentle had been easy to bond with because something horrid and unjust had happened to him, too. Serella had no such loss to grapple with, sweet and earnest and untouched by the world as she was. Myrina felt shame that that was what it took for her to connect with either of her children. She felt shame that it was all she had to connect with anyone.

But her daughter’s eyes had never clouded over in haunted memories. In fighting so hard to shelter her daughter, she had made herself a stranger. She knew not how to engage with the unmarred and the innocent, even when they were her blood.

“...Nah, it’s okay. Got to do with stars and stuff, so, uhh...I’ll go check with him. Thanks, Ma!” Serella chirped, ignorant of her mother’s struggle as she skipped out of the kitchen in search of her father.

But it was a small house, just big enough for their little family. It was impossible not to hear them in the next room as she resumed her fiddling.

“I found a new constellation!” Serella told her father.

“A new constellation? You’re certain?” she heard her husband say with the right amount of awe in his voice for a child with a new discovery.

Because he knew how to connect with their children. With anyone. With everyone. Because that was the sort of person he was. He knew all about all kinds of things because he knew just how to ask. 

Myrina didn’t know how to do that. She knew all the same things of people by silent observation, but never learned how to say things softly.

“I checked all the books in the library and all the star charts you gave me, and I didn’t see anything like this!” Serella declared with the sound of paper being smacked onto a table. “I can see it at night through that hole in the trees! Uthen thinks Rhalgr wanted us to see it!”

Myrina could picture her daughter’s face perfectly: she always got this bright gleam in her mismatched eyes when she had a mystery to solve, with a big smile that showed all her little baby teeth in an expression that dared the gods themselves to tell her she couldn’t find the answer.

Serella was her father’s daughter, after all.

The screwdriver Myrina had in her hand was far too large for the next step in repairs. She busied herself with finding one of her smaller tools in her bag.

“That’s quite the effort—well, now.” Hanvesh mused with the sound of shuffling paper.

In her mind’s eye, Myrina was sat across from her husband in the den, watching the way his brow would quirk the way it always did when something caught his attention. His head would always angle toward the opposite side as the eyebrow that arched, without fail, and she could see the way it tilted in that moment he picked up the paper and examined it.

“I don’t think I’ve seen this star pattern ‘afore in all my life, Little Acorn!” he said, though Myrina had known him long enough to tell when he was hiding something. “Say, do you mind if I keep this to take a look for myself later?”

“‘Kay!” she chirped.

That had been the end of it, apparently. Serella ran off to play, and Hanvesh followed not long after, ambling out with his cane thumping in time with him.

A bad pain day, then. Myrina set the pot on the stove and began to brew his medicinal tea for when he came in.

Except she hadn’t even finished steeping it before she heard him head straight for the kitchen.

She turned just in time to see Hanvesh join her, still holding that paper in his free hand. His expression was a queer one; it hovered somewhere between serious and playful, in that strange liminal space he occupied when he intended to butter her up for something important.

As if he needed to.

“You’ll never guess what our daughter has discovered,” Hanvesh said conversationally. 

“A new constellation, by all accounts.” Myrina answered plainly.

At that, he snorted a laugh and said, “Aye, that’s what she believes. But would you believe me if I told you you’d recognize it better than I?”

As he asked this, he revealed the drawing on the paper: less a sketch and more a series of scribbled stars, one for each light she saw through the treeline.

Far too many to be a constellation; easily over a dozen dots, all arranged in a strange pyramid.

“Says she saw these after that storm the other day. Funny, the angle from the village points north, too far out to be the Shroud—”

Ah. Myrina might have known. Little wonder why she would need “buttering up,” then.

“Not a constellation, then.” she sighed and handed the paper back.

Hanvesh did not take it from her. “It’d be good to hear it from you, you know. What it really is.”

Who you really are, he did not add.

Of course it would be. If she knew how to do that. If she knew how to be a mother and a partner and a person—

“I don’t know, meri jaan,” she said around a heavy sigh.

She hadn’t even finished the exhale before he reached for her hands, gentle and sweet, as he leaned on his good leg to press close.

“Would it be so horrible if she knew her mother, mon cœur?” he asked, not unkindly and half into her cheek before he planted a kiss there.

If anyone would understand why Myrina might insist that yes, it would be so horrible, it would be her husband. That he would ask regardless meant he didn’t intend to let this go.

That it was important enough not to. That it mattered.

“I shan’t say a word,” he promised her, and when he squeezed her hands it became clear she had hidden her panic poorly. “Ultimately, it is your story to tell, mon cher.”

There was never a time he left her side without a kiss to her forehead, and this time was no exception. Cane in hand, he began to make his way back to the study.

Hovering near the window in the den on his way, he said aloud and certainly to no one in particular, “Methinks the sky’ll clear ‘round sunset, give or take a bell or two.”

He left it at that. She hated that he had, just a little, even as she knew he had the right of it.

Hanvesh had made rabbit stew out of her catch that night for dinner, and their little ones had been eager to help her make bread. 

The conversation at the dinner table never veered toward Serella’s “constellation,” lively as ever though it was. It was nice, always, to sit and watch her family happily chatter about their day. To bask in the warmth they exuded, the warmth they folded her into. 

But her thoughts were malms away from the table in that moment. Despite not having set foot there in almost a decade, a massive gate of wrought iron and stone cast a looming shadow over her thoughts. 

Realistically, she knew she could not keep her children from knowing forever—even if she did not tell them, their school would doubtless be covering broader Eorzean maps and history any day now. Though her name would not be there, the shape of the place would be unmistakable, and then the questions would follow; chief among them, the question of the household’s secrecy surrounding it. 

Nay, better to at least try.

There was about a two-bell span in the evening, after the house had gone to sleep, that Myrina knew her daughter would often shove pillows under her blankets and sneak down to the study, where all those star charts and fairytales were within her grasp, with time uninterrupted and free. Doubtless, Serella was eager to be nose-deep in some map or other, still dedicated to her new discovery.

Myrina knew a better mother might try to reign that in, to stamp down a bad habit the moment it was found. But she had been one such child once, scurrying in the shadows of her own home, delighting in the thrill of sneaking without true fear of harm. She could find no good in denying her daughter the chance to befriend the dark.

Tonight, though, she could give her daughter something better: an answer.

As expected, her ears perked at the sound of little feet trying to cling to the sides of the stair steps to reduce their creaking. In an effort to startle her daughter the least, Myrina waited until the footsteps hit the bottom before slipping out .

And, as expected, Serella spun around with such shock that she nearly sent herself to the floor when she met her mother’s eyes from the top of the stairs.

“You’re not in trouble,” she promised her daughter around the lump in her throat, holding up her hands as if to show she was unarmed. “There’s something I wanted to show you.”

Her daughter regarded her with wide eyes, watching her as she closed the distance.

“What do you mean?” Serella asked hesitantly, her whole body already bent in the shape of cornered prey.

Hard not to wince at that, but Myrina managed.

“I heard,” she said, and produced her daughter’s crude star map, “that you found yourself a constellation?”

Serella looked at her own drawing like she was somehow in trouble.

“Well…yeah. I mean,” she said in a halting voice that snagged on her own nerves. “I can’t find it in any of the books or maps I’ve been able to check. It’s up in the sky. What else could it be?”

Before she could talk herself out of it again, Myrina asked, “Would you like to know?”

That got a look of surprise on her daughter’s face, her spine unfurling as the fear left her. 

Then, as though the two of them were conspiring, she leaned in an whispered, “Do you know, Ma?”

At that, Myrina couldn’t help but crack a smile as she motioned with her head toward the front door and said, “Something like that. C’mon— get your shoes, and I’ll show you.”

With that, she led her curious daughter out through the front door and toward the treeline.

When she stopped in front of the tree that had been struck, she peered up through the burned branches.

Had she not known what those little twinkling lights were, she might also have thought they were stars; even with this hole, the trees above hadn’t thinned so much that the sky was in unobscured view.

“This one, right?” she asked, pointing at the gap.

When Serella nodded, Myrina mirrored the gesture, knelt before her daughter, and offered an open arm.

“Here, hang on to me.” Myrina instructed.

When Serella tilted her head in clear confusion, Myrina’s smile returned as she said, “We’re going to fly for just a moment. So hang on tight.”

Gasping and gawking, her daughter scrambled, her little arms wrapping around her shoulders and squeezing. 

For as unfamiliar as she was with laying her heart bare with her children, she knew without conscious thought how to swing her daughter onto her hip, arm wrapped around her like she was a toddler all over again.

It had been a while since Myrina had properly ridden the wind…but dragons never forget how to spread their wings. They who have supped on that selfsame aether were no exception.

Just as well. Short though the trip might have been, it still required a few hops around the dense canopy branches so as to hit the bigger ones, though just before breaking through the treeline, she made sure to wind up her leap as far and as high as she possibly could.

Might as well give her daughter a good view—nay, the best view she could.

Bursting through the treeline felt almost like breaking through the surface of water—for as much as she had come to love Gridania, its dense treeline made it easy to forget the world beyond and above it. It was easy to drown in the leaves. 

Now, though, the whole world stretched out in every direction further than the eye could see. Shaded treetops stretching out as far as they eye could see.

And above that, all, the glittering canopy hung higher than any tree. The stars welcomed her and her daughter into the rest of the world in that moment. The moon fair set the world alight that they might see its splendor.

Dragoons were ever taught to land lightly and hover on the barest of points, and much like their penchant for moments of flight, it was a muscle that never truly fell out of practice.

So it was nothing for her to perch on the natural “net” of the treetops, so dense as to support their weight on one of the highest branches as she settled in and set her daughter on her lap.

For so long as she drew breath, Myrina would never forget the look on Serella’s face, staring straight up at the sky—nowhere near where her newfound “constellation” was, mind, but just staring, unblinking, at the expanse of the universe with tears rolling down her cheeks as she took in the width and breadth of the night sky for the first time in her life.

“Wow…” Serella whispered. “I’ve seen it in pictures, but…”

Her words trailed off in a sniffle, even as she did nothing to wipe her tears away.

Myrina let her process this new discovery, her head on a swivel as if she would never see the sky again and had to commit it to memory. 

With a little lean toward her daughter, she murmured, “Just ahead of us. There’s your constellation—but look closer.”

Following Myrina’s outstretched hand, Serella at last scrubbed her face of tears and looked out, out, out beyond the treeline, on the far edge of the horizon. Dozens of lights twinkled back, all concentrated in the shape of a spire.

Or more accurately, several spires.

“It’s…a building…?” Serella trailed off, squinting at the outline that encased her newly discovered stars and leaning in as though it will help her see.

Eyes widening as she straightened again, she squeaked,  “...No, it’s a castle!”

Oh, how far and near to the truth she was. The truth might well break her heart. 

Despite everything, Myrina couldn’t help but smile as she said, “Something like that. It’s where I’m from.”

Serella’s head had never whipped toward her so fast.

“You came from over there?!” she exclaimed.

“Of a certainty. It’s—”

In her mind, Ishgard was as constant as the Twelveswood itself. Two homes, alike in cruelty, tumultuous as a roiling tide; made of the same waters and always destined to crash together but never unite. 

Myrina could not tell that to her child. Not when she looked up at her with such wide, inquisitive eyes. She could not be the first one to take that away from her.

“The…castle, you called it? It sits on a mountaintop with the surrounding town. It’s called Ishgard.”

Serella repeated the name slowly, as if she were testing its authenticity.

“What’s it like, Ma?” she asked.

Just as Myrina had feared. 

Slowly, she found the words to skirt around the horrid nature of the Theocracy. Staring out at the myriad lights that flickered so far away, her tone almost carried her voice to those windowsills she had so often pressed her nose against.

“The people there—they’re warm and kind. For the most part, that is,” Myrina started slowly, because that was true enough. “But they’re…it’s…”

Swallowing, she tried again, “No one is allowed to be their truest selves, unless they are inherently cruel. No one is able to truly be friends—with one another or with those not from there. It is a place cursed with loneliness and strife.”

As she expected, Serella’s tear-glossed eyes widened in shock and hurt at this revelation. Of course her tender little heart couldn’t bear the thought of such a place.

Rather than a fresh wave of tears, she shifted in her mother’s lap to face her fully as she asked, “Then we can make friends with everyone! Then they won’t be lonely anymore! Oh, can’t we go mom? Please?”

Myrina knew that look on her daughter’s face. That bright gleam in her mismatched eyes with a big smile that showed all her little baby teeth in an expression that dared the gods themselves to tell her she couldn’t fix an entire town with love.

Her sweet, innocent little girl. May she never know the harsh truths of the world—or may she defy them upon discovery.

With that little prayer in the back of her mind, she kissed the crown on her daughter’s head and promised her, “When you’re old enough to hold a sword and draw a bow, sweetheart, we’ll go together.”

Time had a funny way of half-breaking most promises and poorly keeping the rest. Twenty and two summers later, Serella would cross the Arc of the Worthy, driven there by the harshest truths and the cruelest lies of the world and trying not to wonder what her mother might make of it all.

[yakool-foolio]

During pre-release, Seth was shaped up to be quite the antagonist. Since chapter 1 was heavily advertised through trailers and other promotional videos, Seth ended up getting even more spotlight than Yomi! There were interesting bits and pieces that caught the Twitter Rain Code community's attention, prompting several theories. I was one of those theorists, believing Seth to potentially be a redeemable antagonist who overly relied on Amaterasu's production of medication for what was presumed to be his illness, subservient to the corporation in order to get the medicine he needed.

However, no one's theories really turned out to have much merit. What was once a highly anticipated antagonist was actually to a 'villain of the day' that was hardly even the main focus of the chapter he appeared in. It's a shame, really. Same can be said for a lot of the other peacekeepers, but I want to focus on Seth for now. There is a good foundation to build off of for a way to improve on Seth as a character (and antagonist by extension). It all starts by subverting expectations.

In chapter 0 and throughout most of chapter 1, there's a clear pattern set that there will be a select group of suspects that will whittle down with gathered evidence until it concludes with a final deduction for the true perpetrator(s). For chapter 0, it's the detectives on the train, and for chapter 1, it's the members of the church. However, what if that pattern was already broken by making Seth the Nail Man? The player assumes that since the church members have been the main focus, that must mean one of them is the culprit. But once more evidence is used to inch closer to the truth, it turns out that the player has been aiming at the wrong target!

Seth could also have a unique motive if he were to be the real Nail Man. It could fit into his family motto of 'silence is golden,' because as the Nail Man, he'd be (eternally) silencing those who've wronged others, which could hint at his own backstory of how he was forced to keep quiet while something horrible in his family happened, so now he's 'providing justice' to those who may not be able to speak up for themselves like himself. And yet, he still falls back into the motif of silence by keeping his 'justful' murders a secret. He bribes the church to keep his own murders under lock and key, without them even knowing it was him that committed them. Seth abuses his power to do what he believes is the right thing, standing up for helpless citizens who remind him of himself. He's got good intentions, but the absolutely wrong way to carry them out.

I'm thinking about incorporating this idea into my Death Knight AU, since it's something I'd love to include and wouldn't intrude with the main plot. Spice things up a bit more, y'know?

[sierrawitch]

Manifestation of the Spoken Word

by autumn sierra

Manifestations aren’t always the product of ritual, or even a spell. Many times witches and people outside the community akin manifestations to actions bringing about the desired outcome, whether magickal or mundane. In my case, I did nothing but use the spoken word.

We as a people vastly underestimate the power of language. Whether we see it as inherently magickal or as an amazing evolution of ancient communication, language has a very important role in each life and in many ways. For someone living in the mundanity of our world, language is a means of communication and an outlet for creativity, an escape from the outside and a retreat into the vividness of the imagination. It’s also used to further education and community.

In witchcraft, we understand that language is all these things and more. We understand that in order to speak, we need to first think about what we’re going to say, and in order to do that we must conjure thought from a void within ourselves. In conjure or manifestation work, something is created from nothing, or at least by using limited tools to achieve the desired outcome. Some use tools like herbs and crystals, coins and fire. In my case (and in the case of others I’m sure) the tools were whittled down simply to the spoken word.

For the past few weeks, among my numerous hobbies I began practicing sewing and tailoring for my own growth and benefit. My younger sister realized I was doing this, and asked me to tailor her clothes, which then turned into paid commissions completely transforming old clothing into new pieces for her wardrobe. Doing all of this by hand, I often exasperatedly cried out “if only I had a sewing machine!” or “just wait until I get a sewing machine”. I said things like this over and over, usually in frustration and with fatigue, but also in excitement of the possibility of what I could achieve without needing to stitch everything by hand.

Was it my pure intention to manifest a sewing machine? Absolutely not. I did no fancy ritual work or spell casting. Nothing was set in motion physically for me to obtain one. I even recognized that I needed to put that want on hold for lack of space! And yet, my words became the catalyst of my desire. My frustration, hope, and pride in my own work fueled those words and suddenly, I found myself waking up to a text from my aunt. She had found a sewing machine at a yard sale. It was selling for $10, when it originally retailed for $130-250. She offered to give it to me free of charge. Flabbergasted, I accepted, and within the afternoon it was in my hands.

Have I found a place for my new sewing machine? No. But I have realized the immense power of the spoken word. Not only were thoughts conjured from a void within me, but my purest desires fueled with emotion were put out into the world. They were spoken of over and over again, until they came to fruition 2 weeks later.

The power of the spoken word is not limited to your native tongue. Magick is attached to languages of ancient times, like Latin, Gaeilge, Gàidhlig, Egyptian, Greek, Chinese, Ainu, Inuktut, and many more through tradition, culture, and generations of ancestral knowledge. By incorporating ancient language into witchcraft practices, we connect with those who came before and call upon the wisdom of the living word in whichever circumstance we find ourselves in. They can be used in prayer, ritual, offering, spell work, ancestor work, deity work, and manifestation. Simply using the language imbued with history and memory to commune with the world around us is magick.

So even if you’re not trying to manifest a sewing machine, consider how the words you speak so passionately could affect your life. They say “be careful what you say” and “be careful what you wish for”. Little do they know just what can be spoken into being.

[canonically47]

The funeral is short and small and tragic.

Fang quietly sobs in Frenchie’s arms, whose tears have painted his face in sorrow, and Roach stands next to Frenchie with pain in his eyes that were joyful mere hours ago. Jim looks down in respect, their eyes still and dead, unmoving from the grave, and Archie is next to them, trying to stay tough and unbothered but her eyes still water. Lucius and Pete bury each other in one another’s arms, hoping physical warmth will cure their aching hearts. Zheng is awkwardly standing on the side, having not known Izzy for long, but she’s holding Oluwande, who is quiet in mourning. Ed is the one who makes the grave, each move shaky and unsure. And Stede stands by him, his head lowered in respect and love for the man who finally learned to love.

“I guess that’s it, then.”

Ed’s words break the sobbing silence after much uncounted time. Some look up and some don’t. Ed just shoves the shovel away with a sigh and walks away, unable to look at the grave for any other second.

“Ed.”

Ed looks at Stede, who of course has followed him like the puppy he is. Not even his understanding glance can make this better. Not even his soft touch can comfort Ed. Not even his words-

“He didn’t die for nothing. He died for us. He died because he loved us.” There’s that smile. “Don’t you think that’s beautiful?”

Ed smiles back at him, but his eyes don’t crinkle like they should for a true smile.

“I think it’d be more beautiful if he lived for us.”

Not even his unknowledgeable words can make this better.

When they get on the ship again, it’s quiet. They don’t mind their steps and they trip and they break and they cry and they mourn and they don’t know what to do.

Lucius and Pete want to hold the wedding; but they wanted Izzy to be there. The shark Izzy whittled and gave Lucius - which he still doesn’t know if it was for him or just given to him because he had nobody else to give it to - stays in his room, staring at him like a ghost of grief.

Zheng wants to comfort Olu, Olu wants to comfort Jim; but the ultimate comfort was Izzy. Those insults and those shouts and yet that care that he gave had become the ordinary before that no-nosed bastard fired. Before Izzy trembled. Before Izzy met his unfair end.

Frenchie wants to talk to Izzy; but Izzy is dead. There was a lot went unsaid between them. A lot more Frenchie wanted to say and do. A lot of things Lucius and Pete, and Stede and Ed, did that he wanted to do. But Izzy is dead. Izzy has met his unfair end.

Fang and Roach suffer; they suffer because Izzy is dead. Fang misses him because he’s known him for so long, his absence is hard to believe. Roach hears him call Izzy’s name, and hears him sigh and then yell in frustration and anger and grief when he realizes. And Fang sees Roach frantically search for Izzy when he messes something up in the kitchen, then stops dead in his steps when he realizes.

“Izzy, can you-... Fuck.”

Ed suffers too.

“Izzy, would you come here-... Oh, God.”

Stede suffers too.

“Stede-”

“I know.”

“I never- I never got to-”

“I know, Ed.”

“Why the fuck did he apologize? Why the fuck was he such an idiot to- to let himself bleed out, to- to leave me? To-”

Ed breaks down in frantic sobs.

He is surrounded by loving family.

He must be happy and fulfilled.

He must find himself a purpose.

But when was that established?

But how can happiness come to him now?

But what is Ed without Izzy?

There is the crew and there is himself and there is Stede.

But a piece of him is missing. It died at land and not at sea, which is so fucking ironic. Which is so fitting for the broken mess he is.

He will learn how to be happy because “not moving on is worse”.

But today, he is mourning.

Today, he doesn’t know himself.

[keeperofquestions]

Royal Steward Dudephelon Noctua on the topic of the arranged marriage practices of the Ars Goetia.

"I think what many have missed about this is that it is a necessary evil. The purpose of the Ars Goetia is to serve the Morningstar by monitoring the mortal world and see to the arranging of souls through deals with mortals in exchange for fulfilling their desires. Have they not noticed that when mankind speaks of summoning demons to fulfill their wishes and sell their souls, we are those demons?

"The marriages are not just about power or politics or tradition. They are about safeguarding the grimoires and ensuring a unified body loyal to the crown maintains and regulates their use. Most other hellborn do not possess the magical talent and the sinners cannot be trusted with such things. To that end our strata must be maintained strictly.

"This is why the Kings of the Ars Goetia and their associated heirarchies exist at all. Without the grimoires we are purposeless. With them, we are vital to Hell's well being and we have a duty to ensure their continued proper use and safekeeping. Proper heirs are needed for this and thus we cannot wait for the whims of love to give us these by chance.

"However, it comes to little surprise the practice is... unpopular, even among our own. Matches do not always consider compatibility. Our numbers are vast but the limited number of kings and their descendants means our options are limited. Once the necessary heirs are produced there is little incentive to do aught else but devolve into dynasticism and politics to whittle away eternity and we forget our purpose. Those of us, well... like me, who do genuinely dream of love and marrying one day are overlooked or used as leftover spare pieces for the games of politics. Most recent scandals have shown the disastrous effects of such lack of foresight.

"I admit I have personally grown to detest the practice on a personal level due to what it has become, but I can offer no alternative nor do I have the authority to speak of it; perhaps I am simply embittered. I have no choice but to stand with tradition due to understanding its purpose. Sometimes I feel I am one of the few who does- or cares.

"What will become of the Ars Goetia at this rate of change in attitudes? Will we remain relevant? Will the disgruntled masses be allowed their satisfaction against their betters if we are deemed to be expendable? What of the grimoires and their holders? There are so many questions to be answered. I hope the answers do not spell our doom."

Duedephelon set the quill down and hovered the candle over the long parchment while he waited for it to dry. He only hoped getting his thoughts out wouldn't be discovered.

[catchyhuh]

breakfast facts

WARNING!!!! DO NOT EMULATE THE MADE UP EATING PATTERNS I JUST MADE UP FOR THESE MADE UP PEOPLE IT WOULD PROBABLY BE BAD FOR YOU. ESPECIALLY ZENIGATA REALLY REALLY DO NOT EMULATE ANY OF TH

lupin:

must eat as soon as he wakes up or he’s fucked. not even like fully a physical stomach thing its just mentally he Must start his day with food

kellogs commercial table. the cereal, two slices of toast, one butter, one jam, apple, like bacon and eggs n shit

scarfs it down in two seconds. as a result no one else will make his breakfast for him becuase its kind of annoying spending 2 hours cooking at 7am so the princess can inhale his perfectly crisp bacon like the poltergust 3000 

yes he complains when he has to do it himself. so every day yes. it just wasn't practical to do the whole shebang every day so he whittled it down to his toast and eggs. but you know if he could,

the king must feast. he gives himself a stomach ache damn near every day he gets his food the way he actually wants it

jigen:

eats what’s provided honestly. you could say that about every meal but he just doesn’t care too much esp with his breakfast

he’ll complain (he’s particular about waffles and pancakes needing to be a certain amount of savory to justify them existing in a MEAL meal and not just as a dessert) but not too a huge extent. honestly he’ll eat whatever

doesn't have a huge appetite early in the morning, usually balances it out with a big lunch and even BIGGER dinner. he's gotta ease into those heavy hitters man he's delicate bro

cawfee. cuppa joe. He hates it. jigen doesn’t like it despite dressing like a keurig machine gijinka and having the symphonic cadence of a coffee grinder. it just doesn’t taste good to him (it's that deceptive scent dude) that said {sleep hcs incoming soon} sometimes he needs some to jumpstart him like an old car. again, complains, but goes through with it

fujiko:

special k commercial table. the cereal. the side bowl with random dollops of peanut butter and mixed other nuts and oats (?) i guess it’s oats, the GRAPEFRUIT oh i know she’s a grapefruit bitch!! pb honey spread on an English Muffin too. like some. idk there’s a cinnamon stick involved YOU GET THE VISUAL

funny thing is she doesn’t even eat half of it. she just goes with the muffin, bowl of mini wheats, maybe two pieces of grapefruit ingested as she leaves the table. whoever passes the table next is expected to handle leftovers. breakfast leftovers. that's an insane concept now that i type it out

cawfee. she either drinks it with a thousand disgusting artificially flavored creams or she chews the beans raw. presentation vs functionality is a key aspect of ms mine's internal struggle

complex relationship with fast food coffee shop chains as a result

goemon:

another guy who loves the Big Breakfast by tom cardy but unlike lupin (who loves his beauty sleep too much to wake up early) and fujiko (who usually gets her non-lupin boytoy of the month to make it for her) goemon actually gets up asscrack of dawn early to prepare a meal fit for a king

perfectly fluffy rice. hand squeezed juice. absolutely decadent vegetables. impossibly picturesque omelette. but just normal ass sara lee bread though he doesn’t have THAT much time on his hands

funny thing is he's definitely the most normal about it. goemon just. eats his breakfast. he might raise his eyebrows in slight surprise at how good the eggs taste today or something but really its just. food. all these other weirdos either take 10 years to eat a piece of toast or just inhale their food but the guy who dresses and talks like its the 18th century wins the normal award here

has emphasized the importance of eating breakfast to others before despite easily functioning without it. wake him up at 4 say “no time for brekkie dude we gotta go steal the fire hydrant of the louvre” and he’ll be like Done no problems

zenigata: i know i mentioned it before but NOT HEALTHY BEHAVIOR DO NOT FUCKING EMULATE

haha.

he’s very bad about it VERY bad about it always getting yelled at by third parties. they go “what’d you have for breakfast” and he shrugs and they go "oh god did you even eat" "ONE BOILED EGG HAS PROTEIN IN IT!!"

its amazing the stature you can get while still being the guy who eats half a protein bar for breakfast and doesn’t actually sit down for a meal again until like 1 am. really i cannot emphasize enough don’t try this at home

HES JUST SO DAMN BUSY! but if he could he’d take anything. unlike jigen, who just doesn't wanna start a fight THAT early in the morning, zeni just loves every breakfast food! muffins eggs potatoes pancakes cereal the random ass fruit he LOVES it 

god help the hotel with a free breakfast when this guy comes in. or that is, if he didn’t sleep until 11 AM because he was up lupin-ing all night.

in conclusion: they would all love a trip to the mcdonalds breakfast menu drivethru. they all get a hashbrown. would you believe me if i said i only remembered the mcdonald’s commercials after typing that

[thlayli-ra]

Which 5 fics you've written are your favorites or most proud of?

Ooh! Thank you Anon for slipping into my askbox with a lovely little question. Must admit, this was hard! I'm proud of most of my fics so whittling it down to just five was tricky but here goes;

1. Flint and Steel - I feel like this is the best writing I've ever done. I wrote it back when I had bags of time to edit and re-read what I'd written previously so it's a better coherent story. I love the world-building, the imagery, the harsh but beautiful love story. This is probably still my best work to date and I really hope to finish the series one day and do it justice!

2. Would You Offer Your Throat To The Wolf - This one just feels... special to me. It's the most brutal, graphic and depressing fic that I've written and my first foray into pure horror but was very liberating to write. It also felt like something of an event at the time - I'd been building up towards it here on Tumblr so when I finally posted it, it kinda had its own little following. It's also a fic that has prompted so many incredible comments and feedback from readers, many of which said it inspired their own writing and that is just so cool to me!

3. When We're Alone - Of all my fics, this is probably my own little personal favourite (and one of my least popular 😂). It's a silly, little Underpunk fluff piece set in the Valetverse AU. I just loved writing a hopelessly un-domesticated Punk trying (and failing miserably) to nurse Taker back to health while he was injured. I usually write Punk as very intense and moody so having him in more of a comedy role was a lot of fun (although he's still very moody!)

4. The Moon Rises Red Tonight - My other unloved little baby! It's a close second for my personal favourite fic. It's utter self-indulgence - I wanted all four of my faves to fuck! That's it! That's the premise! But, because it's me, and I'm god-awful at writing smut, it somehow turned into a porn with plot fic, focusing in on politics, corruption, and trauma, whilst also being rather light-hearted and wholesome. And filthy too! It's a weird bag! I adore the au, I adore all the flawed characters and their self-discovery throughout and I want to draw and write more for it in the future.

5. The Chain - Sometimes, a moment sticks in your head and magic happens. That Smackdown where Drew carried a bloody Punk to the ramp and dumped his carcass for all of his hometown to see was....... [local dogs start barking]. I had to write something for it! Originally it was going to be another headcanon essay talking about a motif I'd used in several fics of Punk and AJ being connected by a chain with hooks embedded in their chests when it dawned on my to actually write a fic about it, resulting in this twisted soulmate au. To me, it's a perfect little fic, a beautiful gemstone in my collection and I'm very proud of it.

[Honourary Mention - Yes, I'm cheating here but I couldn't not mention my most popular fic The Valets of WWE. Despite it easily being my worst in terms of writing prowess, it's a huge personal achievement for me. It had a massive cast and was heavily influenced by reader requests and input so I had to think on my feet for every chapter and change things up on the fly sometimes. I also had to write for characters I didn't know very well during an era that I admittedly didn't really watch (no, I'd never seen any Legacy or Social Outcasts footage until writing this fic!!!) so that was a bit nerve-wracking. But despite the challenges, I managed to create this huge, intricate soap opera, that had so many interlinking storylines and plot threads, that had characters bouncing off each other constantly and even if it reads more like a script than narrative, I'm still very proud of it and I always look forward to returning to the valetverse for more!]

[leahnardo-da-veggie]

Lich-Queen pt 5

When I strode into the throne room, the shifter I had spoken to earlier was there, along with her entourage. “Say, is someone missing? I do recall there being more of you before,” I said, by way of conversation.

A brief look of confusion passed over the lead shifter's features, before she let out a polite laugh. “Ah, you must be thinking of the whelp. The one who ran my messages, yes? You know how children are, it is probably off playing with the horses,” she said, her smile conspiratorial.

“Of course. Now, explain exactly what this alliance of yours entails,” I said. 

The shifter shrugged elegantly, her dress rippling as she did so. “The humans have begun infesting this world, as you may well know. They are driving out our people. It is all fine and good for the elves and their pretty little Syvniko, but us shifters have been forced to retreat into the Barrowlands. Do you know how humiliating it is to be forced to give in to mayflies?” The shifter flicked her hair and mimed spitting on the floor. “It must stop. The vampires have reported being driven out of the desert by mining camps; the forest spirits are huddling in smaller and smaller villages; I have even heard reports of sirens being bombarded by fishing trawlers!”

I listened to her tirade grimly. This was what I had walked into, when I rose to power. This was the fate I was bound to prevent. “I understand,” I told her. “They must be stopped. The question is: How?”

The shifter leaned forward, baring her teeth. “We kill them all. Every last one of the bastards. And the ones that we don't get rid of, we keep as workers. They're mayflies, after all. When we whittle them down, we can use the rest for drudge work.”

Slavery and genocide. On a scale our world had never seen before. For a moment, I was reminded of Ako's warning. Perhaps this was wrong. Perhaps I was taking this too far. I could be content with my castle, could I not? I could look after my people and turn a blind eye to the rest of the lands, riddled with humans as they were.

The shifter saw my expression, and pushed forward. “Listen. You may think it safe to leave them be, to let the Kil-aci mountains separate your people from the living. That is false. Already, the Luxatian provinces have begun gathering troops. They call the Crusaders. On a crusade against what? Against your people, against your nation, against you. We must stop them.”

My blood turned cold. Of course the humans were coming for us. Had they not spent their entire lives killing the ghouls? Had Blood-toil and Death-in-me not brought tales of watching their families be hunted like animals? Yes, they had to be stopped. “I… You are right. If it is between them or us, then I would choose my people a thousand times over. Whence my coronation is complete, we shall spread the word.”

The shifter relaxed. “Good, good. I knew you could be counted on, Lich-Queen. It will be an honour to work with you,” she said, kissing my hand. Then, as one, her people left. 

Alone in the throne room, I felt weariness seep into my bones. My love loved me no more. My sister haunted my path. The gods themselves conspired against me. What was a young queen to do but take her frustrations out on her surroundings?

The former Kings’ portraits littered the halls. I had not had the time to have them removed, so they judged me from their place on the walls. Such beautiful pieces they were, strokes of gossamer paint and sprinklings of magic that made them feel alive. They glared at me with bushy eyebrows and dark eyes. 

I stood beneath the greatest of them, that of my predecessor. My sister's love. He had been a lumbering man, yet sharp of wit. He had not the kindness to spare for his love's supposedly magicless little sister. Monster, the portrait's facade named me. Evil.

“You are correct. I am a monster,” I told the painting, all the paintings in that room. “I am a monster you made, with your little room at the top of the stairs, your giggling behind the fluttering of fans, your silent nights with the faint music of galas I was not invited to. I am a monster, and I am taking what I deserve. When you're a corpse dancing to my strings, I want you to remember that you had a chance to be nice to me. This, all this, is what you deserve." I stretched my claws, and scored them down the paintings. 

Soft canvas ripped beneath my fingers, a poor substitute for flesh. With all the pent up rage of twenty long years, I tore painting after painting down. “I hate you all,” I snarled. “Every. Last. One. Of. You.” Kings and Queens alike fell under my fingers. Busts were slapped off their pedestals, and crushed beneath my feet. Tapestries were ripped clean off the wall. At some point, I began screaming, a wordless sound of pure rage. 

I picked up a table. It displayed priceless porcelain from Losaras, seashells from the Selfie Archipelago, and all other sorts of fragile curios. One leg came off in the cracking of bones. The other soon followed. It went crashing down, chiming dissonantly with the terror of broken glass. Using the table leg, I beat the remnant shards to dust, and stood in the centre of the whirlwind.

My throat ached with the aftermath of my fury, claws sore from scratching and smashing. But my heart was lighter for it. I called a few revenants to me, and changed out of my torn skirts. “I think,” I said to nobody in particular, “It is time for my coronation.”

The pieces had all come together. The dice were falling, the spell taking hold. My coronation would fix this. Whence I became Queen, everything would be better.

It would be just like my childhood dreams.

This time, my entry into the hall was triumphant, complete with fanfare. The highest nobles of Ceredell hauled the doors open like common slaves, and they pressed their once vibrant lips to trumpets. Hundreds of men and women turned at the sight of me, and a wave of clapping descended upon me. I flicked a manic curtsey, then gestured at the table before me, laid out as if for a buffet.

“Let me honour you all with a gift,” I announced. “Come, watch the death of the last nobleman of fallen Ceredell!”

(if you want to read the others, you'll find the entire series linked in my pinned post :))