#so i think johannes would be in the same boat and i do wonder if he was considered against marianne and they went with the latter

[hecksupremechips]

I love me some homoerotic torture 🥰

[hectabdr]

Dragon Raja IV - Chapters 3 & 4 (Abridged)

Hi everyone, continuing with today's chapters, these are centered around Nono and Caesar and their lives after he returned from Japan.

Previous chapters

Chapter 3

Mediterranean Sea, Republic of Malta.

The Island of Frefra is mostly an ecological reserve, there is a white building on top of a natural harbor with luxury yachts and sailing boats. Tourists and locals have always been interested in knowing more about its residents, but the government is very secretive about it. It is well protected against binoculars and often, music can be heard coming from the inside. Girls in white dresses walk around it and they're known as the "Iris girls".

At 5:45 am, a rotating alarm clock started playing a terrible heavy metal song, making its way through fashion magazines and snacks, it ran around the bedroom of Chen Motong, who finally trapped it and took its batteries out.

She slept for another 20 minutes and woke up in a hurry. She had classes to attend. Cooking lessons, Japanese tea ceremonies, British literature and music appreciation, amongst other things. This was the Golden Iris Shuyuan Academy. It was meant to educate Nono on how to live among nobility.

She arrived late at the breakfast table only to realize the other girls were betting on her punctuality. After she accepted Caesar's proposal, he took her to Rome to meet his relatives, some of which were more than 300 years old, they left their cryogenic beds and unexpectedly blessed their marriage (after evaluating her from head to toes). Nono's own family was rich and powerful, known as the Black Prince Group. After both families signed the marriage contract, they agreed to make Nono drop out of Cassell to take a years-long bridal training in the Shuyuan Academy.

During her dancing lessons, a yawning Nono was the only one who couldn't keep up with the rhythm, prompting her teacher to whip her foot.

At her cooking class, she kept eating bits off her dish, leaving almost nothing for the teacher to evaluate.

She managed to succeed on her tea ceremony while her boredom made her toes fight each other behind her back. She was distracted during literature and used her profiling skill to cheat on her analysis of classical music.

She unwillingly started regretting the moment she accepted the marriage proposal, but not because of Caesar, it was all about the life that awaited her. The lessons were relentless and the academy was isolated from the outside world. She didn't sleep enough because she used her Cassell training to sneak out at 10:00 pm to swim by the beach, that was the only time in her day when she felt truly free.

She toyed frequently with her obnoxious alarm clock, it was a gift from her old classmate, Luminous. On her last birthday, he casually carried a backpack with him all day, it was pretty obvious that he was preparing to give her a gift, which he nervously did, and he was the only person who dared to do so, as everyone else felt intimidated by Caesar.

She knew about Luminous's feelings for her. All of the male classmates who liked her could easily fill the whole cafeteria. Luminous was just one of them. She considered herself a passer-by in his life, thinking some girls of his age (like Zero) would be a better match for him. One day he'd mention it as a thing of the past and they would both laugh about it.

She hoped to finish the bridal course in months, but it had already been a year. She brought mostly books but she quickly ran out of things to read.

Suddenly, she realized someone was hiding in her bedroom, right after the cleaning lady left. The intruder took one of her books and a bag from her secret stash of potato chips. She turned off the lights and grabbed a knife, more excited than scared, she searched for the thief.

After finding nothing, she remembered her bathtub, and there he was, asleep with the missing book on his face and a bag of chips in his belly. She punched him in the stomach. A patrolling Nun showed up, concerned, Nono hid the intruder in the tub and pretended to take a bath. If someone found Luminous in her room, they would accuse Nono of having an affair.

The nun searched the whole place with a revolver but couldn't find anyone, before leaving, she had a conversation with Nono about her situation in the academy, specifically her wish to leave. In the lady's words, "Her soul seemed to lag behind her body". Luminous finally understood that she was there to become the perfect bride. When the nun left, Nono scolded him for his presence, she realized he looked different, he was clearly taking care of himself, better dressed, he definitely had a better haircut. He also thought she looked somehow different, more elegant, but exhausted.

His stomach roared, breaking a long awkward silence and she took him out to steal some food for him. They took wine from the cellar, along with some ham and cheese.

-Sister, do you know Johann Chu? -Maybe, was he your boyfriend or did he just owe you money?

Luminous explained his situation to her: he decided to go with the school's psychologist, professor Toyama, who diagnosed him as schizophrenic. Toyama attempted to erase Johann off his memory, but Luminous responded by making a scene and drawing out his desert eagles. He tried to track Johann in everyone else's memories but his missing classmate didn't have many friends.

Anjou couldn't remember him either. Back during Luminous's second year, there was no trial against a Blood Rage user, Frost Gattuso only accused the principal for his terrible administration. The rollercoaster incident happened way after they finished their ride with Shavee. Anjou gave Luminous the location of Chen Motong, telling him to use her profiling ability to find some clues.

However, Nono also believed Luminous had schizophrenia and convinced him to stop his search and look for treatment instead. Luminous lamented his condition and how he couldn't trust the world he lived in anymore, however, despite how enticing it was to forget Johann and go back to the real world, he felt his brother was still out there, waiting to be saved, but everyone forgot about him. Nono couldn't do much for him in his situation.

-Years ago, you were not the president of the Student Union, but a scared boy that I rescued from a theater. Now that you don't trust the world anymore, you came back to me. How many more times do you think I'll be here to save you?

Suddenly, a security guard noticed the candle they lit in the cellar. Nono didn't know how to react, but someone broke a bottle of wine on the guard's head and knocked him down. It was Finger, who informed Luminous that now he was wanted by Cassell, as they thought he was an undercover agent sent by the Dragon Raja.

Apparently, on the same night that Luminous left the college, someone entered the Ice cellar and stole Constantine's skeleton, severely injuring principal Anjou in the process. The only student with such clearance and power was the S-Rank himself.

Agents of the Execution Bureau went looking for Finger in Cuba, so he buried them in a tobacco field, with their heads out, of course.

Nono urged them to understand the seriousness of what it meant to be hunted by the secret party, which essentially made them targets of the whole world. They could leave no traces for Norma to track down. She considered there were three possibilities:

1- Luminous was insane.

2- He was an undercover agent sent by the dragon raja all along.

3- He was the only person in the world who was't hypnotized.

The only being who could be responsible for the third option is the white dragon king. Its skeleton was never recovered. Their only option was to travel with Luminous in secret to track down any trace that Johann might have left in the world before he disappeared.

-I really hope my brother is alive... -True Love! Said Finger and Nono in unison.

Finger then urged them both to leave and "go save the world" but Nono refused to leave. She had a responsibility with her family and with Caesar. As Luminous turned around and started walking, Finger stunned her, urging Luminous to help him carry her outside.

Chapter 4

Caesar Gattuso was sitting down in a church. This was the anniversary of his mother's death, so he wore a suit, drove a Harley Davidson motorcycle on his way there and brought her a bouquet of white flowers.

When he was younger, she bought him a miniature bike, she also loved to see him wearing little suits. Most of Caesar's style was based on her taste, he thought that would please her while she watched him from heaven.

The first time he had been on the Milan cathedral, he was attending her funeral. The ceremony was presided by the pope himself. Knowing of his family's involvement in her death, he poured kerosene on the coffin and lit a fire on the church. The authorities managed to save the historical building and despite of it all, Caesar was still allowed inside every year to mourn Gulweig, (as long as he wasn't carrying any dangerous chemicals).

Parsi Gattuso arrived in a car to give him some urgent news, his wife Chen Motong had gone missing. He brought with himself a letter that she wrote for her fiancé, it expressed Chen's dissatisfaction with her new life, asking him to give her some time.

Caesar immediately realized the poetic letter was fake, since Nono wouldn't bother to express herself in such a way. According to him, Nono would just write "Caesar, I'm leaving" In a napkin and leave it on top of her bed. The letter was probably written by a narcissistic person like Finger.

However, this left him reflecting on Nono's true feelings towards her future, wondering if all he did was capturing a bird (that he initially admired for its freedom) just to lock it in a cage.

Far away in Cassell College, the elders of the Secret Party reunited for an emergency meeting, the first one since 1961. Many famous individuals that once shaped the course of history were in it, still alive after faking their deaths to cover up their slow aging. In the principal's chair, Leonardo Flammel, the vice-principal and a direct descendant of Nicholas Flammel sat down and started the meeting.

He welcomed EVA, Norma's war personality with 140,000 times her processing power, and asked her to project a life-like hologram of Anjou's assassination attempt.

According to the recording, the previous night, the principal intended to access the ice cellar, but he stopped meters before reaching the entrance. He looked behind and said:

-Is that you?

In a fraction of a second, his access card had left his pocket after something cut through it. His entire body started bleeding from multiple cuts to his skin. He had no time to react and tried to use the card as his weapon, since the attacker didn't give him enough time (even using Time Zero) to draw his dragon slaying knife. It was guessed that his opponent could use Time Zero as well, but was more skilled in combat than the principal himself.

The security system identified the situation in time and called the police and medical assistance, otherwise, Anjou would have died. The conversation quickly turned to Luminous's possible involvement in the situation, Flammel had a conversation about it with "Mr. Beowulf", who was also present.

The legendary Beowulf was not an individual but a family of dragon slayers. They had a strong attraction to dragon blood, for them it was almost like drugs to an addict.

They were the most fierce dragon hunters in history, pouring the blood of their prey and drinking it after every successful kill. Their newborns were poisoned with dragon blood and only those who survived the process were considered worthy of living. Their latest descendants were almost dragon-like in appearance, but they were unlikely to turn into death servitors. Whenever that happened, the family killed them immediately.

Considering there's an imminent crisis ahead, the leader of the family showed himself in the table for the first time in a hundred years. That's because he strongly opposed the establishment of Cassell College, since "a true dragon slayer can only be born in the battlefield".

Back in the day, he led the "Action team" of the secret party, which eventually became the Execution Bureau. Initially he was expected to lead it, before he expressed his dissatisfaction with the college. Compared to the Action Team of the old days, the cruel Bureau is almost a charity.

Beowulf immediately started discussing Luminous's background. His parents were apparently in the records of the Execution Bureau, but their achievements are not registered. They never reported themselves and their location is currently unknown.

Caesar Gattuso was responsible for the defeat of Norton, Abdullah for Fenrir and the Gattuso's orbital weapon for the White King. Luminous was present during all of these events, but his actions are not registered either. He theorizes that Luminous is in fact a dragon, taking advantage of the war to slay his fellow kings. Since his use of Yanling was unknown and Time Zero belonged to the King of Sky and wind, the most mysterious of the dragon kings, the elders came to the conclusion that this dragon was none other than Luminous himself.

As soon as Beowulf questioned the absence of Frost Gattuso, Pompeii himself made an entrance by making EVA project his hologram on an empty chair. The man was semi-naked as multiple women applied sunscreen on him, annoying everyone on the room, specially Beowulf. Pompeii focused on the importance of Constantine's skeleton, since everyone else seemed more focused on Anjou's assassination attempt. Those bones contained the power of the king of bronze and fire, who was conformed by twins, so the college kept Constantine's skeleton, while the Gattuso family kept Norton's. In that very moment, Frost was transporting their half of the dragon king to an underground vault in the bank of Rome.

Pompeii linked Frost to the call, who was now 120 meters underground and descending. The vault was heavily protected against Time Zero users.

Just as they were discussing the security measures, the loud sound of an alarm silenced everyone in the room, when the members of the meeting asked about its purpose, they quickly realized that it wasn't coming from Cassell, it came from the elevator in Rome. The intruder was in the vault.

Frost was instructed to forget the original plan and leave with the bones of Norton. His bodyguards quickly mutated into dragon-like creatures to protect him. Corrosive acid and bombs were released as the elevator rose back to the surface, but there was something heating up the place and it was greater than any bomb they detonated.

Every guard stayed behind to guard the doors, hoping to witness the intruder. Finally, one of the doors was blown away. In the fire, there seemed to be dragons and snakes dancing. The mummy-like figure in white robes slowly walked towards Frost, as he exclaimed:

-It that... you? Is it really you? It is you!

EVA instructed him to step back, as he had no chance of winning against this "reaper", Frost took out his phone and transferred control of the vault to EVA before the strange creature reached him. Suddenly, the camera was broken and the visuals lost. The sound of the doors being blown up one by one was heard. Beowulf commanded EVA to close the sole entrance of the vault, which could easily resist ten-million-ton nuclear weapons, (Not enough to contain certain dragons).

Believing this to somehow signal the end of the world, the council awaited quietly. Investors in Rome were ecstatic when the value of gold suddenly increased (Since one third of the monetary gold in the world was just destroyed). EVA used the surrounding cameras to confirm the worst, Frost Gattuso was dead, crystallized by the extreme heat. Their diamond-like statues were left behind and soon collapsed, turning to dust.

The possibility of the resurrection of the black King soon reached their heads, its return would signal the end of humanity.

Caesar soon appeared in the room. He was named the new representative of the Gattuso family, so he ordered EVA to kick his father Pompeii out of the meeting. He defended his education in Cassell in front of Beowulf, saying it made him prouder than his last name ever would. He explained that this dragon was more dangerous than the others due to its ability to understand humans, their organizations and its capability to hide among them. It was more similar to humans than it was to dragons, which was its more terrifying feature.

He impressed Beowulf, specially when he ordered to investigate anyone who had come into contact with his uncle, since he recognized his killer. He then brought up Luminous. EVA explained that his unprecedented progress in combat skills was due to his participation in the Nibelungen project. It allows Luminous to surpass the dragon blood limit without turning into a death servitor. He was an artificial emperor, like Chisei Gen from Japan. Beowulf was enraged, since he considered it was a waste of resources to use Nibelungen on such a weak student instead of picking one of their A-Rank fighters and ordered EVA to put all of her computing power in finding Luminous and Finger. However, EVA found no records of Finger in her database. Everyone concluded that he deleted himself.

Since Luminous already worked for the Executive Department and therefore knew how to hide from them, Caesar proposed to employ a different type of hunter, specifically the ancient creatures that the college kept under the ice cellar, originally intended to be used against the black king. The elders voted in favor, but even Beowulf was frightened by the idea of employing them. Flammel suddenly stood up and contacted Finger, warning him of the impeding threat. Moments later, a veteran knocked him down.

Parsi had noticed a change in Caesar. In years prior, he'd make childish requests, like asking him to empty a restaurant because he wanted to drink tea in peace. It looked like he was never going to grow up. Ever since he came back from Japan, he was far more mature, taking bigger responsibilities and doing most of the work by himself. He asked Caesar about his friendship with Luminous, specifically if he wasn't worried about the beasts hurting him.

-I don't want to harm Luminous, but he made a mistake, he shouldn't have involved Nono.

He seemed extremely silent, stopping in his way out to stare at a decorative kimono, one that he brought from Japan as a souvenir, he was wearing it the day he arrived. He wondered about the weaknesses of the dragons, if Constantine was Norton's, who was Shavee's?

He felt like he was forgetting something.

[imjustthemechanic]

The Price of a Soul

Part 1/? - Agent Russel Part 2/? - The Letter Part 3/? - Miss Lake Part 4/? - The Stewardess Part 5/? - An Assassination

Peggy finally catches up with Miss Lake, but not quite where she expected to.

-

As the sun went down, Peggy found herself with two men, standing outside the cell containing Johann Fenhoff.

He looked very different from the harmless and put-upon little man they’d pulled out of Russia years ago… part of it was that he was now rather better-nourished, but the way he carried himself had also changed.  Peggy had been taught how to read people, and ‘Victor Ivchenko’ had the body language of somebody who was resigned to whatever life decided to throw at him next.

Events since had made her very much less secure in the ability to tell what people were thinking based on how they held their heads, but it was still a very different man who was sitting there in that cell. Even with a muzzle on so he couldn’t try to sweet-talk his keepers, he sat rigidly upright with his chin held high, glaring at her through eyelids half-closed, like a cat biding its time.

“I don’t suppose anybody’s told you why we’re here,” said Peggy.

He could have nodded, shrugged, or shaken his head. His hands were free to gesture. But he chose to give no sign he’d heard her at all.

“We are here, Dr. Fenhoff, to save your life,” she told him.  “Apparently the Soviets have decided you’re enough of a liability to eliminate.”  She held up the drawing of Miss Lake.  “Do you know this woman?”

Fenhoff continued to sit there, just watching her.

She lowered it again.  “Your unhelpfulness will not earn kind treatment from your jailers,” Peggy pointed out.

He evidently did not care.

Peggy turned away from him.  If she could read body language, she could also write it – and she wanted to let him know that if he weren’t willing to help, he mattered not at all.

“You really thought he was going to tell you something?” one of the men asked.

“One never knows,” said Peggy.  “He might have thought he could get something out of it… but I see he agrees with me, that he deserves no better than this.”

And with that, the watch began.

There was one small window in Fenhoff’s cell, through which Peggy could see the sky darken to indigo.  Shortly after, the floodlights outside came on, pouring in to fill the edges of the room with coal-black shadows.  The prisoners were supposed to be asleep now, but Fenhoff stayed sitting up in bed, facing his guardians.  With his face in shadow, Peggy couldn’t tell if his eyes were open… she knew from experience that anyone who’d been through a war could sleep sitting up.

One of the men watching with Peggy dealt a hand of Spades, and they sat down to play by the shaft of light through Fenhoff’s little window.  Time began crawling by.

The prison was a surprisingly loud place at night. There was the sound of the patrolling guards with their heavy boots and their dogs, and boats chugging by on the river outside.  Prisoners would make noise and be shushed by officers banging on the bars of their cells. An owl hooted.  Somewhere a cat screamed in heat.  By day the sounds would not have bothered Peggy at all.  In the darkness, expecting an assassin, they set her on edge.  If her ears could have swiveled like a deer’s to take in the direction each one came from, they would have – she felt as if they were trying.

Her attention was repeatedly drawn to the window. It was too high off the ground to show when the guards and dogs walked by, but with the light shining directly in like that, anyone who tried to use it as an access point would cast a shadow directly across their game of Spades.  It was thick glass on the outside and bars on the inside, too close together for any human being to slip through… but it was still an access point directly from the outside.  If not for the glass, the muzzle of a gun could fit through easily.

One of the dogs barked not far away.  Peggy heard footsteps, but nothing seemed to happen, so she returned to the game.  Fenhoff was still sitting up in his bed, and Peggy suddenly wondered if he were already dead.  She swallowed.

“Dr. Fenhoff!” she called.

He started and turned his head to look at her.

“Sorry,” she said.  “I just wanted to be sure you were still alive.”

He sullenly resumed his former position.

That was when Peggy heard a small noise… a sort of pop, like a piston firing, followed by a soft groan… and then the heavy sound of something soft falling to the concrete floor.  Electricity seemed to run up her spine.  She jumped to her feet, scattering the cards.  “Dr. Fenhoff!”

Fenhoff stood up and looked around, very much alive. For the first time, he looked directly at Peggy, and she could see that his eyes were wide, frightened.  He pointed at the cell on the right.

Peggy dashed over to look.  In the next cell there was a shape on the floor, a mass of limbs and bedclothes where they’d rolled off the cot.  In the light from the widow, a dark stain was seeping into the blanket. For a moment Peggy almost wanted to laugh.  Had Fenhoff really been saved because their Soviet assassin got the wrong room?

But a man had still been injured.  “Get a doctor in here at once,” Peggy told the men, “and sound the alarm!”  Then she ran for the nearest exit.  They were on the river side.  The assassin must have come in by boat, and was planning to leave the same way. Maybe there was time to stop her.

Outside, the lawns were awash with the brilliant white of the metal halide lamps.  Beyond Westerley Road was the gravel bank that ran down to the river.  No boat was visible there, and as Peggy stepped out onto the lawn, she heard the alarms go off.  Guards who’d been having a smoke suddenly leaped to attention.  Dogs began to bark right and left, and the buildings lit up.  Whoever had been here now knew they were caught.  How were they planning to get away if not by the river?  Or was Miss Lake hoping to swim?

You think like them, Thompson had said.  What would Peggy do in this situation, with people alerted to her presence so that she couldn’t make the getaway she’d originally planned?

She would steal a car.

She made a mental note to be annoyed with Thompson later for being right, and ran towards the car park.  There were an unusual number of vehicles there for this time of the night, since there were dozens of SSR men there in addition to the usual guards and employees.  Sure enough, a set of headlights flickered to life, and an engine roared.

With no better ideas for the moment, Peggy threw herself onto the hood as the burgundy Ford sedan backed out of its parking space.

The driver immediately stamped on the brake, but had not been going fast enough for this to dislodge Peggy.  She held on and turned herself to see who was in the driver’s seat. The figure was small enough to be a woman, with her hair tucked under a black knitted cap and her face smeared with charcoal so that her fair skin wouldn’t stand out against the darkness. She looked astonished to find Peggy on her hood.

Peggy was not astonished at all.  Her emotions were, frankly, triumphant.

“Katherine Lake, you are under arrest,” she declared.

Lake then did exactly what Peggy would have done, and hit the gas to try to throw her off.  The car backed up sharply and collided with the one across the aisle. Peggy grabbed the sideview mirror and braced a foot against the hood ornament – the latter snapped off and jingled on the asphalt.  Lake made a hard left, drove right over the grass and onto the little bridge that crossed the train tracks.

Peggy got one arm through the window and a foot onto the running board.  She knew very well that Lake was going to go right through the prison gate and if Peggy were still on the front of the car when it happened she would be crushed. She made it with seconds to spare. Bullets pinged on the metal and shattered the back window as they passed the watchtower, and then splinters sprayed as the gate gave way.  Another right turn took them onto Hudson street, and the fugitive sped up as police sirens sounded behind them.

Peggy climbed through the open window onto the seat next to the driver.  “Stop this car!” she ordered.

The woman glanced at her, then put up a hand. Peggy moved to defend herself, but Lake – it had to be Lake – effortlessly twisted Peggy’s arm back and reached into her jacket as if to pull out her gun.  Peggy caught her wrist, and for a few moments the two women arm-wrestled over the weapon.  The car veered wildly left and right across the road, until Peggy finally got the gun out of her jacket and threw it into the back seat, where neither of them could get at it.  Lake couldn’t use it against Peggy, and Peggy couldn’t get carried away and kill the driver of a moving car.

“I said stop the car!” she repeated.

“Or you’ll do what?” Lake demanded, eyes on the road again.

They were coming to the end of Hudson Street. Peggy grabbed the wheel and forced it to the right.  The car ploughed into the bushes of Sparta Park.  Again, the two of them fought for control of a machine, until the car went right down the incline and into the Hudson River.

Lake kicked her door open and climbed out.  Peggy scrambled after her and jumped on her as she tried to crawl up the stony slope.  Together they rolled back into the water.  Peggy ripped Lake’s hat off and yanked on her hair.  Lake responded by driving her elbow into Peggy’s gut and then wrapping an arm around her neck.  Peggy reached back and yanked Lake’s legs out from under her.  Lake grabbed Peggy’s jacket with one arm to stop herself falling, and with the other pulled a small object out of her pocket.

For a moment Peggy thought this was a grenade.  Then the moonlight caught it, and she saw that it was… a perfume bottle? A fine mist from it sprayed in Peggy’s face.

She just barely had time to wonder what that was for, and then it was as if everything caught fire.  Her eyes, nose, mouth, throat, ears… everything was burning.  Tears poured down her face.  She couldn’t see.

Something hit her in the jaw, hard, and she fell forwards into the river. Peggy wouldn’t have thought it was possible that the pain she was feeling could get any worse, but it did, as if rather than putting a fire out the water just made it hotter.  She clawed her way out onto the shore and scrubbed at her eyes with her knuckles, but that made it worse, too.

She heard a startled cry and a honking horn.  Voices shouted.  What was going on?

“Carter!”  That was Thompson.  “Carter, where are you?”

“Down here!”  Peggy raised a hand and waved it, hoping she was facing the right direction.

The sound of shoes on stones approached her, and she flinched at the feeling of a hand on her back.  “Carter?” asked Thompson’s voice, right beside her now.  His other hand went to her waist, which she would have normally objected to, but if she were going to get anywhere she needed the help. “What did she do to you?”

“I have no idea.  What does it look like?” Peggy asked.

A flashlight light shone in her eyes, which was insanely painful but also somewhat reassuring – it meant she hadn’t been totally blinded.  “You’re bright red,” said Thompson.  “And swollen. We’ll get a medic in here.”

He helped her up the hill and back to the road, where the lights from two or three police cars illuminated a shifting mass of colours and shapes that refused to come into focus.  People were shouting and dogs were barking, and every light and sound seemed to drill into Peggy’s skull.

“We’ve got another for the ambulance!” he said.

“Another?” asked Peggy.  “What happened?”

“The blonde,” Thompson said.  “One of the cops ran into her.”

“See if you can find the perfume bottle.  That’s what she sprayed me with,” said Peggy.

She could tell that Thompson was enjoying the chance to swoop in and rescue her from something, but she was hardly in any shape to protest as he and another man helped her into the back of the ambulance. Somebody offered her cold water for her face, but Peggy refused emphatically.  “I think I need soap,” she said.  “Whatever it is, water alone does nothing for it.”

She could still see only lights and shadows, but sounds told her they were loading Miss Lake into the ambulance next to her. “How badly hurt is she?” Peggy asked.

“She’s unconscious,” a male voice replied, “but she doesn’t seem to have broken any limbs.”

“That’s good,” said Peggy.  “We need her alive to question her.”

The ambulance doors closed, and Peggy sat back, shutting her eyes.  She wasn’t sure if that helped or not, but at least it didn’t seem to make it any worse. It was only as they pulled away that she realized she had no idea who Miss Lake had shot, or whether the victim had survived.  She would have to ask Thompson when he came to see her.

[revolutionary-demosthenes]

So to start off, here are some mini-bios of people who I’ll be talking about! This is going to be a long post, but it will make it easier to understand my future posts if you don’t know some of these people. I’m covering: Alexander Hamilton, John Laurens, Francis Kinloch, Lois Manoël de Vègobre, Johannes Von Müller, Charles Victor de Bonstetten, Alleyne Fitzherbert 1st Baron, St. Helens, and Thomas Gray.

John Laurens: You might’ve heard of him if you listen to Hamilton. John Laurens was born in Charleston, South Carolina. His father was Henry Laurens, a prominent South Carolinian who co-owned the largest slave trading house in North America, “Austin and Laurens.” Yeah. He pretty much was a terrible father and a terrible person. He would later become president of the congressional congress. His mother was named Eleanor Laurens. Her death when John was 16 marked a significantly traumatic event in his life, however in general, John Laurens was very well acquainted with death. He was the fourth child born in his family, but he was the oldest by the time he was four years old, his older siblings all dying at young ages. One can only speculate how these early losses affected young John, or Jack, as his family called him.

John was most likely tutored at a young age. He grew up in very privileged circumstances certainly, as his father was one of the most well-known and rich South Carolinians of the time. 

As John grew up, he became very studious and serious. His father viewed him as the most promising child of the Laurens children, and prayed he would not fall prey to gambling or women. At nearly thirteen, we find our first piece of evidence suggesting John Laurens might be gay. His father Henry Laurens writes, “Master Jack is too closely wedded to his studies to think about any of the Miss Nannies I would not have such a sound in his Ear for a Crown…” In other words, Henry Laurens noticed his son’s unusual lack of interest in girls. Of course, one could read it as a passing comment on how studious his son was, or just thankfulness that Henry’s ‘best’ son didn’t seem to be ‘tempted’ in any way, but this does still confirm that as a young teenager, (and some point out that this is the time when many boys go through puberty, and therefore discover their sexual interests,) John was NOT interested in ladies. 

As John grew even older, his father decided the time was ripe for some education in Europe. Some speculation has occurred that right before John left for Europe he painted a collection known as Pope Brown Collection of South Carolina Natural History. It contains 32 paintings of natural organisms, including many types of birds and plants. This is not confirmed, but it is of interest to many that John Laurens was a very good artist, and probably quite interested in art. Many have heard of the (in)famous turtle drawings John did. In truth, though John did draw the soft-shelled turtle for naturalist Alexander Garden, he most likely did not have an uncommon affection for that particular animal.

So, John soon found himself on a boat to Europe with his younger brothers, Henry jr. and James, known as Jemmy. They eventually settled in Geneva, staying with a family friend. 

But before we even get to Geneva, it is worth noting a passage from a letter by Henry Laurens. This was written while John was briefly enrolled in a school in London. While complaining about the many crimes and indulgences of the city, he mentions “…and every black and execrable Crime had gain’d in the City is equally astonishing and shocking.” Now this simply could be another thrown in crime in the long list that precedes this, but in those those days ‘black crime’ was sometimes a code for homosexuality. So was John exposed to homosexuality in London the way Hamilton was at Nevis? This could provide some context for his later relationship with Francis Kinloch.

In 1772, the Laurens boys arrived in Geneva. John studied a multitude of subjects, and polished up his French. While he fretted about finding his brothers proper schools, his Uncle James Laurens was concerned about a different aspect of his time. Geneva, which had been a theocracy at one point, was now very open to new, more secular ways of thinking. John assured his Uncle that he was not influenced by any of his teachers not being ‘classically’ Christian. But it may not be a coincidence that the place where John most likely had his first homosexual relationship was a place more open to new types of thinking and concepts, especially in terms of religion.

What exactly was this first relationship? To establish some context, we must return briefly to Charlestown, South Carolina. The Kinloch family lived there and did know the Laurens’s. The name ‘Kinloch’ appears in some of Henry Laurens’s papers, and apparently Francis Kinloch’s sister made John ruffles for his travels to Europe. But in 1774, as John was dutifully studying in Geneva, his father wrote to him “From a hint which Waag dropped at Bath tis expected by the freinds of the young Eatonian that he will find a freind in you at Genevé, tho none of ‘em have Said a word to me on the Subject.” This “freind” is in fact Francis Kinloch, so it may be that he and John had met before. 

John and Francis became very good friends along with one of Laurens’s tutors, Luis de Manoel de Vegobre. There is little documentation of the Kinloch-Laurens relationship whilst the latter was in Geneva, but once they were separated many letters were exchanged, several quite romantic sounding. What is quite possibly the most passionate line Laurens ever wrote to a lover is contained at the end of a letter to Francis. “We may differ in our political sentiments my dear Kinloch but I shall always love you for the knowledge I have of your Heart.” Kinloch was a loyalist, influenced by his guardian Thomas Boone, while John Laurens was obviously a patriot and the two debated hotly via letters. 

Another aspect that must be looked at when considering the Laurens-Kinloch relationship is the amount of trust in the relationship. The level of trust is apparent when we see John first express his abolitionist views in a letter to Kinloch,  “I could talk much with you my Dear Friend upon this Subject,” says John, referring to slavery. “and I know your generous Soul would despise and sacrifice Interest to establish the Happiness of so large a Part of the inhabitants of our Soil_  if as some pretend, but I am persuaded more thro’ interest, than from Conviction, the Culture of the Ground with us cannot be carried on without African Slaves, Let us fly it as a hateful Country_ and say ubi Libertas ibi Patria…” Kinloch responded that he supported the ideas, but did not see how fellow Southerners would adopt them. This only illustrates more clearly that though there were serious conflicts, theirs was a loving and trusting relationship. 

When John was forced to leave Geneva, (and he did want to stay… one wonders if Kinloch had something to do with this. It may have been other reasons, like that John felt freer from his father or enjoyed his rich social life.) he wrote a plaintive letter to Kinloch, telling him, “If my Letter is a little confused, dont be surprised at it, for I am quite like a creature in [a] new world…” 

  However, as if John hadn’t lost enough family in his mere nineteen years, his brother Jemmy lost his life that summer. The boy had apparently tried to jump to John’s window and had fractured his skull. John was with his brother through the horrible night. He wrote to his uncle James, “At some Intervals he had his Senses, so far as to be able to answer singe Questions, to beckon me, to form his Lips to kiss me, but for the most part he was delirious and frequently unable to articulate. Puking, Convulsions near very violent, and latterly so gentle as to be scarcely perceived, or deserve the Name, ensued, and Nature yielded.” It is notable that soon after this, John Laurens sent a letter to Francis Kinloch, whom he hadn’t corresponded with since late the year before, 1774. This again illustrates that though the relationship was not flawless or without conflict, Laurens trusted and confided in his friend/lover.

Now studying law at Middle Temple, John received an extremely upsetting letter from Francis Kinloch. Apparently Kinloch was ready to move on from their romance. He starts the letter with an almost deceptively affectionate opening, “Whatever may be your idea of my manner of thinking in political affairs, don’t let that hinder you from telling me yours, and I promise to be as free with you: we hold too fast by one anothers hearts, my dear Laurens, to be afraid of exposing our several opinions to each other.” But Kinloch signs the letter “be certain I shall never forget you.” Apparently John  saw this as Kinloch being done with him, and as a result did something that would change his life forever.

One of Henry Laurens’s business partners, William Manning, was in London the same time as John, and apparently young Laurens came to call occasionally and enjoyed the company of Manning’s children. This is where he met Martha Manning. There is one piece of evidence to suggest that they were courting for a time, however all we know for sure is that Martha became pregnant around the time the last Kinloch letter reached John, and John Laurens was forced to marry the woman, certainly not because he loved her. “Pity has obliged me to marry.” John  wrote to his uncle. It could be that if they were courting prior to the pregnancy, the relationship was one-sided, or was an attempt for John be seen as straight. 

Though John was now married, he was yearning to leave his unhappy marriage and fight for America. An ardent patriot and abolitionist, he longed to go overseas and join the army. Henry Laurens tried his best to hinder his son’s want, but found that John was no longer a child he could bend to his will. So, John boarded a ship to America, not knowing, and possibly not caring, that he was leaving his wife behind. 

Henry Laurens, being a very prominent Carolinian and future president of the Continental Congress, managed to get his son an excellent position as Aide-de-Camp to general George Washington, though John was not officially appointed the position until October 6th or 7th. He joined the staff in August 1777, and met Alexander Hamilton, a man who would change his life forever.

Alexander Hamilton:

In quite a contrast to John Laurens’s privileged, if morbid childhood, future Founding Father Alexander Hamilton was born out of wedlock on the tiny island of St Croix to Rachel Facuette and James Hamilton in either the year 1755 or 1757. (There is great debate over his birth year. Hamilton himself used 1757, but a large amount of evidence from his childhood points to 1755. For time’s sake, we will use 1755.) Hamilton adored books and writing, but was hindered in his intellectual dreams by the grim circumstances he was brought up in. 

Hamilton had a single brother, James, also born out of wedlock. When Hamilton was 12 his mother died of smallpox, quite common at the time. Alexander was also sick, however he recovered, albeit he always had health problems most likely connected to the early brush with mortality.

Where Alexander grew up, blacks outnumbered whites by a ratio of nearly 8:1, so there was existential tension in the air, a constant fear of sugar plantation owners that the slaves would revolt. Indeed, the slave owners were so cruel to their slaves that things Hamilton witnessed as a child appear to have given him a permanent pessimism about human nature. In addition to the rich white landowners and enslaved blacks, there was a population of poor whites and criminals. St. Croix was a place where outcasts in society at the time were sent as well. This included people accused of sodomy (homosexuality). Ron Chernow writes in his biography of Alexander Hamilton, “Hamilton had certainly been exposed to homosexuality as a boy, since many ‘sodomites’ were transported to the Caribbean along with thieves, pickpockets, and others deemed undesirable.” This may explain why Hamilton seemed more at ease with his sexuality than Laurens, who grew up in a more strict, to say the least, household.

After his mother’s untimely death, Alexander and his brother lived with their cousin Peter Lytton. Unfortunately, very soon after the arrangement began, Peter took his own life, leaving the boys with practically no place to go. 

Alexander managed to get a job clerking for a prominent businessman. It is no stretch to assume that this is where Hamilton began his economic studies. While Alexander managed to get a good job, his brother was stuck being a carpenter and competing with others for work. Ron Chernow points out that this is again an example of Hamilton’s superior intellect pulling him out of ditches.

When Alexander was seventeen, a horrible storm shook the island of St. Croix. Hamilton wrote a beautiful and moving account of the hurricane, and this led to people raising enough money for him to enroll in King’s College in New York City. 

Louis Manoël de Vegobre:

A Swiss lawyer who met Francis Kinloch and John Laurens while in Geneva. His early life is pretty elusive, as he does not even have a wikipedia page. He was a math teacher, and John Laurens’s math tutor. John Laurens taught him English, and both Kinloch and Laurens seem to have taught Vegobre to love America, as he grew despairing when he heard about the challenges of the war in America. The book, Evolution of a Federalist: William Loughton Smith of Charleston (1758-1812) says of Vegobre, “When the first rumblings reached Europe, de Vegobre wrote Laurens: ‘Poor America!—you cannot believe how much me heart is moved on its account; you, and after you Kinloch have raised in my mind such a concern for your native country! I am as much affected for what happens to it, as if I were an American…. English friends, I will, I will see you in your country, before I die!’”

Vegobre was likely in a romantic relationship with Kinloch. He wrote to John Laurens in December 1774: “Let me tell you what are these pleasures whose you are the first cause.  I began to understand speaken; I read Spectator, Clarissa, Milton and Shakespear, besides some philophical books.  Never, never in my life I have been so well entertained as I am when I read Milton; and why?  First, for Poet’s excellency, and secondly and chiefly because I read it with Kinloch.  My beloved, my dearest friend is Kinloch; how happy am I, when I teach him some part of natural Philosophy, when I read with him both English and French Poets, when I talk with him about various matters plainly and heartily as with a friend!  Let me say again: Kinloch is my beloved, my dearest friend.”

Charles Victor de Bonstetten (Karl Victor von Bonstetten in German):

A writer from Switzerland, he was educated partly in Geneva, where he would develop the liberal beliefs that alarmed his father enough to make him return to Bern, where Bonstetten was born. He introduced the people of the Ticino Valley to potatoes.

He appears to have had a romance with Johannes Von Müller and Thomas Gray (I will be posting about the Gray- Bonstetten relationship very soon)

Johannes Von Müller:

A historian who’s life goal was to compile a giant master history book on Switzerland. He was a teacher of Greek, and later appointed office by Napoleon himself. He wrote many history books, and traveled throughout Europe throughout his life. 

Letter from Müller to Bonstetten: “Any mistakes I may make in the future will be your fault; that is only if you neglect your letter-writing – your friendship can never grow cold – might I let myself be surprised by a passion. Tell me why I love you more as time passes. You are now incessantly in me and around me. My dearest friend, how much better it is to think of you than to live with the others! How is it possible to desecrate a heart that is consecrated to you? I need you more than ever; over and above these immutable, laudable plans for a useful life and an immortal name I have forsworn everything that is considered to be pleasant and delightful – not only pleasure but love, not only revels, but good living, not only greed, but ambition. B. is everything to me, you make all my battles easy and all abstinence sweet. Thus you live in my mind and especially in my heart. You write to me often, but it does not seem enough to me; you often address only the historian, and do not embrace your friend often enough.” 

Thomas Gray:

I stumbled upon this man while researching Bonstetten and Müller. I came upon the book My Dear Boy: Gay Love Letters Through the Centuries. I saw that one of the essays in the book was entitled Thomas Gray & Charles- Victor de Bonstetten. Intrigued, I clicked on the essay, and then from there I somehow managed to find the archive of a full biography of Gray. Thomas Gray was an English poet. He was/is pretty famous, but not super well-known, partially because he did not publish much in his lifetime. Thomas Gray’s childhood was marred with sadness. He had nearly a dozen siblings, but none except him lived past babyhood. He stayed with his mother once he had left his father, who was abusive. He was born in 1716 and died in 1771.

Francis Kinloch: 

John Laurens’s first boyfriend. He was also born in Charleston (then Charles Town) and educated at Eton College. After this he went to Geneva, where he met John Laurens. He later hosted what I call Kinloch’s Gay Retreat, in which he had Johannes Von Müller, Charles Victor de Bonstetten, and Alleyne Fitzherbert, 1st Baron, St. Helens stay with him.

Alleyne Fitzherbert, 1st Baron, St. Helens:

I haven’t been able to find anything gay about him except he was apparently lord of the bedchamber for George III, and find words.info says this about lord of the bedchamber: “A Lord of the Bedchamber's duties consisted of assisting the King with his dressing, waiting on him when he ate in private, guarding access to him in his bedchamber and closet and providing companionship.” So… possible? Maybe, but King George III also had like 20 other Lords of the Bedchamber. Also fun fact: Mt. St. Helens is named after him!

Hope this was informative!

[prairiesongserial]

12.11

Val didn’t speak for the rest of the boat ride. He just lay there in the bottom of the boat, occasionally groaning. The way his eyes fluttered open and shut was the only real indication that he was still conscious. That was probably for the best. Johannes hadn’t understood what the hell Val had been trying to say before, about not actually being a priest, and he certainly didn’t feel up to deciphering it. Not at the same time as rowing, anyway.

“I don’t suppose you know what kind of drug they gave you,” Johannes said aloud, and was unsurprised to get no reply. He paused his hands on the oars, waited for the muscles in his arms to stop burning just a little bit, then continued. “Well, I doubt it will kill you, if it hasn’t yet. And you only had a sip. One time in Manhattan, I drank -”

The boat interrupted him by suddenly and abruptly lurching forward and stopping. The oars stopped as well. Johannes pushed at them, then realized they were trying to work their way through sand. The boat had run aground on the beach of the mainland.

“Finally,” Johannes said, and let go of the oars. His hands hurt from gripping the wood, maybe more than his arms hurt from rowing, and he thought he wouldn’t be surprised to find them blistered tomorrow. He’d have to wrap them for the next few days, and that was going to be a mess when it came to knife-throwing and picking pockets.

Johannes got to his feet, and was pleased when the boat barely wobbled. He bent down, then, and thrust his arms underneath Val's, lifting Val’s limp body like he might drag a corpse. To be fair, Val was basically no more than a corpse at this point, even if he was dubiously conscious. The dead weight was hard to move - Val was so big - and Johannes struggled, nearly falling on his ass as he tried to get out of the boat. He sunk his feet into the sand and readjusted his grip, lacing his fingers together on Val’s sternum.

“I don’t feel good,” Val said, his voice very small.

“I bet you don’t,” Johannes grunted. He braced himself, and finally hauled Val out of the boat, Val’s ankles and shoes catching the lip of the boat for just a moment before Johannes hoisted him the rest of the way over.

Val squirmed away from Johannes the moment his feet were touching the sand. He was even more of a mess than he had been in the boat. The hair on half of Val’s head was singed, and his clothes were literally falling apart at the seams. The priest collar Johannes had given him was long gone, and his shirt was now a rag that barely clung to his skin, the last of it scraped almost completely away by Johannes’s efforts to drag Val out of the boat. The bandages that Johannes had glimpsed around Val’s stomach earlier now hung open, dirty layers peeled away to reveal tender, bruised flesh.

Johannes stepped closer, reaching out a hand instinctively to try and touch Val. He wondered if the bruises were from something the cult had done, or from the ropes that had been tying Val to the stake - but then he saw the two small arms stretching and squirming their way out of the bandages, and understood.

“You’re hiding your mutation like that?” Johannes asked, still reaching out, now trying to pull the bandages away. Part of him felt numb with realization.

Val’s eyes narrowed, like he was about to say something in response. Instead, he took a step backwards, then promptly turned and vomited into the ocean.

Johannes stared. His mouth had already been half-open in anticipation of an argument, but he had begun to think better of arguing with someone who was in the middle of throwing up. He stopped thinking better of it when Val immediately rounded on him again.

“It’s none of your business,” Val said, stepping out of the water and back towards Johannes. There was more clarity in his expression than there had been a moment ago, and his eyes were a searing sort of purple, like a broken-open gemstone. “I -”

He doubled over, and threw up again. It was mostly liquid. It stained the sand a deep red, and Johannes felt his own stomach clench for a moment before he realized that the color came from the poisoned wine.

“You know,” Johannes said, while Val was still vomiting, “you never thanked me for saving your life.”

Val looked up, hair hanging in his eyes, his hands braced on his knees. He was drenched with sweat and sea water, and the intensity in his gaze hadn’t banked, not even while he was being sick.

“You,” he said, drops of spit flying from his lips, becoming red flecks in the sand, “are the most infuriating person I know.”

Johannes grinned. He couldn’t help it. This was not the first time he had heard such a sentiment. It seemed very likely to him that it wouldn’t be the last, either.

“I did save your life, though,” he said.

“You should have left me there,” Val spat back at him, finally straightening back up to his full height. He was taller than Johannes, even more so now that Johannes didn’t have shoes on. Johannes tried to make eye contact, but his gaze kept dropping lower, drawn by the movement of the arms on Val’s stomach.

“You think I would do that?” Johannes asked, turning his back on the ocean to start heading for the truck. Hopefully Val would follow him without being prompted, because he doubted he could drag Val down the beach now that he was conscious and angry. “Just wash my hands of it and let those schmucks burn you at the stake? I told you and your friends that you were under my protection. Be pretty shitty of me to let you die, preacher.”

“Don’t call me that again,” Val snapped. He had caught up to Johannes and was now walking alongside of him, his face furrowed into a sour look. He was holding his bandages together over his stomach, though they fell apart in his hands the more he tried to adjust them.

“Because you’re not a preacher?” Johannes asked, watching Val out of the corner of his eye.

Val glared back at him. “Because I told you not to call me that.”

“Well, you should’ve told me you weren’t really a preacher before we got here,” Johannes said, a little smugly.

Val sputtered. Johannes wondered if the argument was going to end there, but the longer the pause stretched on, the more dangerous it felt. They walked side by side in silence for seconds that felt like hours, until Val finally exploded, throwing his hands out to his sides.

“You should’ve told me we were going to see a Catholic-hating horse cult!”

“I didn’t know!” Johannes threw his hands up to match. He was feeling about as sweaty as Val looked, and his headband had ceased being any help at all when it came to holding his hair back from falling in his face. His arms hurt from rowing, his legs hurt from running, and he was pretty sure he’d inhaled more smoke than was strictly healthy. “How was I supposed to know that the Catholics or Methodists or whoever I thought was here got, what, murdered by a cult? How could I have possibly drawn that conclusion?”

“You could learn to recognize a fucking Christian! Any Christian!” Val shouted back at him - and they were shouting now, though Johannes couldn’t say who had started it. Both were winded from struggling to walk across the hot sand at a pace any quicker than a slow amble, and both were gesticulating wildly to make up for the time they spent catching their breath between sentences.

“I thought they were Christian! They were very excited about the - what do you call it, the Eucharist.”

“They were also very excited about burning me to death!”

“Well, excuse me for not noticing the island where they burn people to death any sooner,” Johannes said, making a conscious effort to lower his voice back to a normal speaking volume. He stole another look at Val. “You really shouldn’t bind your stomach like that.”

“I told you to leave it alone,” Val said. The way his voice sharpened every time the argument circled back around to his bandages spoke volumes on how little he wanted to talk about it.

“I don’t see why you bind it at all,” Johannes said. He couldn’t help it. He hadn’t known Val was a mutant, and he didn’t understand why Val had bothered hiding it, why he went to such painful lengths to look normal. “Nobody in the circus would care.”

“I would care.” Val’s voice was strained, and a little petulant.

“Why?”

“Because I would,” Val said. “Because what I...have isn’t like your hair, or an extra eye, or a tail. It’s something I’m able to hide, and it’s not something people enjoy looking at, so it’s better if I hide it.”

“I don’t like to look at it because it looks like it hurts,” Johannes said, pointedly. The starbursts of color on Val’s stomach were gruesome, he thought, especially the places where the small, soft arms had fresh, bruised purple laid over older yellow.

Val was quiet for a long moment, still holding the bandages together near his stomach. They spilled out from the gaps between his fingers, discolored by smoke and ash, twisting where the wind caught them. Johannes watched him carefully, but Val didn’t speak until they had wound their way all the way back to the truck.

“It does hurt,” Val said, finally. He dropped his hands to his sides, bandages trailing against the ground. He leaned against the door to the truck, wincing as the hot metal touched his bare back. “Can you take me home, please?”

12.10 || 12.12 

[ohsweetflips]

Oh FUCK what kind of choice?????? Kravitz is like. The Most Intriguing to me like??? Ok id so b down for a spin off of taako & lup pre-IPRE and pre-starblaster!!!! But!!!!! Who Was Kravitz? Thanks

!!!

okay so for kravitz, i always pictured him as a musician (and occasionally a composer) who aspired to be a conductor, you know? basically already 50% canonical, just griffin never said anything about what kravitz was before being a conductor. and, with that, my headcanon was always, “okay, kravitz fell ill and died and just managed to charm his way into the raven queen’s court (and heart as her honorary son essentially askdklfkj)”

but, also, i’m quite fond of the headcanons i’ve seen that were either like, “kravitz died in a necromantic ritual which is why the raven queen gave him a second shot at life” or, “kravitz was actually a necromancer in his life and did the bounty hunting as a type of punishment but ended up digging it”

and then i was like, “okay but what if there’s a middle ground”

and thus, i thought of, “kravitz tried to pursue eternal life but never actually committed any necromantic crimes”

which i will embellish more here:

(disclaimer: as always, i am not trying to force my headcanons onto anyone, i’m just here having fun and being a bit self indulgent)

so, as stated, my headcanon for kravitz is that, while he wanted to be a conductor, he was also an incredibly skilled musician and was working on composing some pieces

and, my dudes? he was fucking great. i personally see him basically having expertise at the cello, and also dabbling in the bass and viola, and he was on his way to becoming incredibly renowned.

and so, partially based on some of my own fears/thoughts and partially to mirror johann, kravitz starts getting a bit... nervous about the overall fatality of life. i personally headcanon that he was more of a sickly child that grew into a somewhat-healthier-but-still-sorta-sickly adult who, besides having a general fear of dying, was also nervous about the fact that, one day, all that will be left of him is what people remember of his talents, and maybe the pieces he composed if they ever get that far. and he- he wants to be... if not remembered, then at least alive.

and- i think kravitz knows that necromancy is some shady stuff. i think he knows that a lot of people can get hurt when necromancy is in play, and i don’t think he would ever want to hurt anyone. at the end of the day, he’s a really nice, charming, talented guy who just... doesn’t want to be gone one day.

and i also think, as a bard, even if he can do some magic, he’s not like a wizard or a sorcerer. if he even considered liches, i think he would know that he wouldn’t be able to maintain himself.

so, he tries something different: the elixir of life (which, ironically, is sometimes known as the philosopher’s stone)

(also, little sidebar here, the reason i chose this route is bc people trying to find eternal life through psuedo-magic and possibly dangerous means is, like, my favorite thing ever)

so kravitz does extensive research. he reads articles, books, tomes, all for days, weeks, and even some months. he reads everything he can about the elixir, even if it’s just a vague recording of someone having it in their possession.

and he never finds an exact location of a vial but, in a tome that is at least a century older than him, he finds it: a recipe.

and kravitz is a smart guy. he knows that recipes in general need to be exact, and magical recipes even more so. but he’s nervous, and he’s thinking too much about life, and perhaps he can feel himself coming down with something that wracks his lungs with dry coughs all throughout the night, so he tries his hand at it. he goes miles, hours, out of his way to find apothecaries that carry all the ingredients. he spends days and nights brewing and constantly restarting, doing his best to make sure that every measurement is perfect and that everything is boiling just at the right temperature.

and then, finally, a day comes where he’s confident. the elixir looks just like how the recipe said it would, and it’s glowing, and it looks perfect.

so, kravitz drinks.

and, immediately, he can tell something is wrong.

see, my personal headcanon with the fabled elixir of life is that, if even one thing is slightly off, the potion crumbles and, instead of being something potent and powerful and eternal, it just becomes a vial full of some of the most dangerous magical ingredients all put together.

and kravitz doesn’t have time to think about what went wrong- his last thought is that this was all a mistake, and then-

and then he wakes up. and, for just a moment, he thinks that perhaps it was all a bad dream, or perhaps he actually survived, and then he notices the bleak, grey hall around him. the only splashes of color are the deep red, velvet curtains framing the windows, and the same colored cushions on the occasional chair or bench.

and then he looks up.

and, on the throne down that hall, he sees a beautiful woman. i personally see the raven queen as very live action morticia addams-esque, but you picture whatever floats your boat.

anyway, he sees this woman sitting there, and her features are sharp and, if kravitz squints, it looks like her hands are even more... clawed? taloned?

and she just says, “well, isn’t this interesting.”

and so, this woman, who kravitz quickly learns is the raven queen (aka the goddess of life and death, which, like, oh shit), explains to him the situation: he is dead, but cannot enter the sea of souls due to something blocking him from entering, but yet there is no record saying that he needs to be locked up in the eternal stockade because... technically he didn’t commit a death crime. the elixir didn’t work. if it did, and in seventy years, kravitz was still thirty-two and young and handsome, then there would be an issue. but, at worst, the most kravitz could be tried for was conspiring to defy the natural laws of life and death.

“i honestly should just put you in the eternal stockade for conspiring to never come to the astral plane,” the raven queen says. “souls who conspire to leave the astral plane get thrown in there, after all.”

“wait-” and kravitz swallows the panic bubbling in his gut “-what if i can help you?”

and kravitz doesn’t even know what he’s saying. he’s been a bard his whole life, he’s not a fighter. perhaps he could patrol the stockade and stay on this goddess’s good side, but-

but the raven queen gives him an option. either he stays in the stockade for a little while until he’s proven that he can behave, and then he goes to the sea of souls-

or he becomes her bounty hunter. for millenia, she’s been the one handling all the death crimes... but the thought of kravitz helping her out is quite tempting.

and, for a second, kravitz is torn. either way, he’s dead. if he returns to the sea of souls, then that’s it. if he’s a bounty hunter, then he can still visit the mortal realm and still be kravitz, he just can’t... do what he used to.

but, essentially, it’s a second chance.

so, he takes it. and then the raven queen gives him a skeletal form, and reveals her true form (it’s terrifying and bird-like and yet kravitz can’t help but be fascinated). and then she arms him with a scythe and sends him to the stockade- not as a prisoner, but as a tenant.

and, surprisingly quickly, kravitz grows to... love his job. he thinks the raven queen is wonderful, he was able to bring his instruments to the astral plane, and, even though things occasionally get very rough and the idea of being actually dead really catches up to him, being an overseer of the natural orders of life and death is, at the very least, interesting.

(and then this also leads into my favorite personal headcanon that kravitz is, like, a demi-god and essentially the heir to the raven queen)

so, yeah!!! that’s my how-kravitz-came-to-be-the-grim-reaper headcanon!!!

[queertazsecretsanta]

A Gift for @shin-the-loser, created by @readerofmuch!

Title: A Captain Goes Down With His Ship

Davenport was, in his bones, a captain. Stillness had never been one of his talents. It was no wonder he had left his warren, no wonder he had taken to the stars. He was the best the IPRE had to offer to the universe, and he did it well.

Now, he sailed. He knew the stars in this world.

When he was Davenport, only Davenport, nothing but his name and a sense that there was something wrong, he had spent hours staring up and feeling at home in a way the moon never had. Sometimes, people would sit with him. Johann liked to compose outside, under the stars. He’d kept Davenport company often. Avi too, although Davenport half suspected that Lucretia had asked him to keep an eye on her wayward ward. The one that Davenport remembered the most though was Merle. He hadn’t spoken much, only stared at the stars with Davenport. There was something familiar in the comfort of his presence, even if Davenport couldn’t remember it. Merle felt like a campfire: warmth and comfort blazing too hot to touch.

The ship was cold, and creaky. It was never dry. He tried to think of himself as an adventurer. He fought ghost pirates, for gods’ sake! He was supposed to be strong. He was Captain Davenport of the flagship of the Institute of Planar Research. He was Davenport who had survived years with only his name. He was Davenport. The waves washed over the hull as the words washed over him. It was not easy to leave behind years of wordless existence. The ship was easy beneath his hands, and he steered through the static. The waves nearly drowned out the sound of static in his ears.

The others called, when they could, when they were not embroiled in their own lives. They were moving on. Davenport knew he should do the same. He couldn’t even think about Lucretia though, and it was so hard to move on when he woke up each morning with his own name on his lips. He had nightmares, often. He would arrive back in Bottlenose cove, happy to be home again (and when had he started thinking of it as home? He had only been there a few times). Merle would come to greet him on the beach with Mavis and Mookie, and ask what he had been doing. Davenport would open his mouth, and nothing would come out. He would be well and truly wordless. That thought scared him more than almost anything.

As the year wore on and the world rebuilt, Davenport sailed. He watched the second moon in the sky, tracked the stars across the sky. The sea grew colder, and he knew he could not stay out much longer. A few more weeks, perhaps. Candlenights decorations had begin to appear along the coast, and he knew he had to return.

The morning he woke up in the storm, he discovered exactly how wrong he had been. The waves that had once been so comforting whipped at his small boat, roaring with static. The ship creaked and rolled in the waves. Davenport was frozen. He knew what he needed to do but his mind was full of static. He woke up like this, sometimes, but never to this degree.

Davenport. His name was Davenport.

Davenport stood in the middle of his cabin until the boat rocked so fiercely it flung him into the wall. The boat was sized for him, so he wasn’t as disoriented as he was in the spaces designed for the Big People, but he still hit the ground with the same thud as always.

The Starblaster had been sized for the others, but he had never felt uncomfortable. Every stool and chair had a step for him and for Merle. Merle!

Davenport pulled himself up off the floor and ran above decks. He had to haul the anchor up before it tore the bottom out of the boat. The next few minutes- hours, maybe? - were a riot of movement. The waves fought to drag Davenport beneath the surface. Davenport fought just as hard to keep his head above water and his boat moving forwards. It was a clash between gnome and nature, and by the end, Davenport wasn’t sure who was winning. Finally, though, the waves began to calm. The rain pattered, rather than lashing, against the deck, and the boat’s rocking became soothing rather than terrifying. Davenport had made it through the storm, but he knew it would not be the last bad weather he had to face. It couldn’t stay out here. HE couldn’t stay alone for any longer.

Merle had always been a good friend after that first cycle. The cycles without him were always the hardest. The Starblaster was empty, it seemed. Cold. Jokes never to land, and everyone was just that much more on edge. Merle was the peacemaker to his bones, and he was a big part of what made the Starblaster home.

“I think,” said Captain Davenport, formerly of The Starblaster currently of this ship which he had not even bothered to name, “It’s time to go home.”

Dav sailed his little boat in the direction he had already been going, heading back to his home at Bottlenose cove. Maybe he really would open that bait shop. At the very least, those kids would need a sailing instructor.

When he finally made it back, a few days had passed. The air had been getting colder each day, and Dav was a little afraid the cove might freeze over. On the day he came in sight of the cove, he woke up shivering in his cabin. He made his way above deck and unanchored the ship. The ship was on a steady course when his stone of farspeech buzzed in his pocket.

“Hello, Davenport speaking.”

“Hello? Is this thing on right? How does this even-”

“Merle?”

Another voice at the end of the line chimed in.

“Dad you need to- here, just let me…”

Something clicked on the other end of the line.

“Merle! It’s been too long.”

“I left the damn thing on silent, apparently. Twenty missed calls if you can believe it!”

Davenport tacked, turning his ship towards the cove. He could see the main house merrily pumping out smoke from the chimney. The camp seemed to have been shut down for the winter.

“Listen, Dav,” said Merle, after a beat. “You still out on the water? Things are starting to get colder- I think the cove’s gonna freeze soon.”

“Hey Merle, where are you right now?”

“I’m in the kitchen, just cleaning up after breakfast. I think Mavis was planning a hike later to keep Mookie from fist fighting a tree. Why?”

“No reason,” said Davenport, smiling. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Okay?” said Merle. “Bye, Dav.”

He hung up the stone and smiled. Home. He was going home.

Davenport couldn’t keep up the facade forever. Mookie spotted him first, coming back from their hike. Dav was three hours closer to the dock, close enough to start making out details. Mookie was jumping up and down, and even Mavis was grinning. Merle, though… Merle was practically glowing with unadulterated joy.

Mookie ran forward as soon as he had docked, slamming into Davenport as he got off the ship and nearly sending the both of them careening into the water. Dav managed to free himself in time to tie the boat off and then Mavis was hugging him too. She was taller than he was now, which wasn’t a surprise, and her beard was starting to come in.

“Mavis, Mookie, let him go,” said Merle. “The poor guy just got on dry land!”

The two released him reluctantly. Mookie was almost hanging around his neck before Davenport managed to put him down.

“I’m  fine, Merle,” said Dav. He took a step towards his old friend and stumbled, neatly proving himself wrong. Merle darted forward and caught Dav before he could hit the dock. The flowers in his beard, Dav noticed, were still green. They stood there for a brief eternity, holding each other up.

“Welcome home, Dav,” Merle whispered.

Eventually Mookie groaned and Maivs laughed and everyone headed back in, ready to celebrate Candlenights as a family.

[hail-kattegat]

The Frankish Princess. (Part I)

“I can see that you mostly write about Ivar and it’s amazing ! But I was wondering if you can write a Hvitserk x reader imagine ? He deserves his princess too.”

So, like the anonymous said, I mostly write Imagine for Ivar. That’s why I wanted to do something different for our lovely Hvitty. I hope you will like it!

This Imagine will be in two parts. And it is inspired by episode 4x13.

Let me know if you want to be tagged! xx.

Gif credit: My gif.

Requested by: Anonymous.

Warning: None.

You remembered the fear on your people’s eyes and their screams when Ragnar jumped out of his coffin. You remembered your family doing everything in their power to protect Paris. But above all, you remembered the day Gisla married Rollo. You may have been just a kid at that time, but you were smart enough to understand that she didn’t love him nor the rest of your family. He was just a way to protect the city. But for you it was different. You had the mind of a child, so you decided to become his friend. You’ve never been afraid of Rollo. You taught him your language and your religion, and he did the same. You became like a daughter to him. And you grown up fascinated by his journeys. His country. His culture. For you, it appeared to be the freedom you will never have as a Frankish Princess.

When you heard that the Norsemen had return to Paris you left your room in a hurry. Running through the castle to finally meet them. But when you arrived in the corridor, what you saw was guards escorting them brutally out of the throne room. You were watching the group of Vikings being guiding with force through the stairs until it was one of them, who was watching you. A tall young man with braided medium-length hair. His blue eyes were locked on you, and something about him kept you from looking away. “What is going on, Rollo? They are your people too.” You asked when you felt the presence of Gisla’s husband next to you. “They are my nephews.” He responded which immediately made you turned your face towards him, Rollo’s words took you completely off guard.

“Who are the Sons of Ragnar?” You asked in Old Norse, a jug of water and glasses in your hands. All of them seemed to be surprise, not only by your presence, but by the fact that you could speak their language. “I am. And this is my brother, Bjorn.” The young man from earlier said while stood up and waiving his hand through the tallest of the group. “Hvitserk!” Floki hissed before you ordered the guard to open the door of the cell. You walked towards him and filled up a glass of water before giving it to him. “Drink.” You whispered to him before taking a few steps towards Bjorn. But before you could reach him, Floki jumped in front of you with anger in his eyes, which immediately prompted Hvitserk to stand between the two of you. “Who are you? You don’t look like a slave to me.” He said, looking at your dress and jewelleries. “I am not a slave. I am a Princess. My name is Y/N. Rollo’s wife is my cousin.” You responded to him, impressed by this man who seemed to truly hate you without even knowing you. “I read books about the Mediterranean Sea. I can help you.” You added, hoping that it would help Floki’s dark look disappear. “So it exists?” Bjorn asked you, suddenly interested by your presence. You nodded, but before you could say anything, Bjorn grabbed your shoulders in order to holding you still in front of him. “You have to get us out of here!” But his contact with you and his voice raising seemed to have alarm everyone, including the guards. Hvitserk immediately pushed his older brother away from you while two of the men who escorted you walked into the cell with their spear pointed towards the group of Vikings. “Princess!” One of them said before you ordered them to step back. “I will come back.” You promised to Hvitserk who nodded and lowered his head to whisper something in your ear. “Can you come back with food?” He asked which made you laugh a little, it was the last thing you were excepting. “I will.” You said to him before leaving his cell.

And you kept your promise. One hour later you came back with some slaves who were holding enough plates for everyone, but you personally gave his to Hvitserk. There was something about him that kept you from staying away. He was kind, and every single one of his little smirk made your heart skipped a beat. “I spoke with Rollo. I think he will cooperate. You will be able to leave Frankia soon.” You said to him, even if the idea of him leaving already and probably forever didn’t please you at all. “Well then, stay with me until I leave.” He responded after he took the plate from your hands. His request left you speechless, just like it left a sweet tone of pink on your cheeks. You turned your head towards the slaves who were waiting for you before Hvitserk spoke again. “Please, Y/N.” And how could you say no to the handsome young man who was standing in front of you? You finally dismissed the slaves before sitting with him on the dirty and cold floor. You watched him eat. And you talked for an hour. He captivated you as much as you captivated him. Hvitserk hated the Christians but they were something about you who had him questions his own beliefs. “Look at that, Helga, a pretty face and he forgot why we are here. And about the Gods.” Floki muttered to his wife before throwing a chicken bone at Hvitserk. At the same time several guards were entering into the cell to take Bjorn’s handcuffs off. “What is going on?” You asked in your own language. “Rollo wants to talk to him. And you have to come with us too, Princess. Now.” The man responded before Hvitserk addressed you a questioning glance. “I have to go. I am sorry.” You said to the young Viking who was about to take your hand before the guards escorted you out of the cell.

When you and Bjorn entered in Rollo’s private salon, you saw Johannes Scotus Erivgena, a famous librarian from Paris. And you knew it could only mean one thing, Rollo will assure a save passage to his nephews. But at what cost? From what you heard during your time with the group of Vikings, you couldn’t believe that the eldest of the Ragnarssons had actually agreed that Rollo sailed with him. Nevertheless, here he was, in the court of the castle with those who were once his people, walking towards the gates. “Hvitserk!” You shouted while running in his direction. When he heard your voice, he immediately stopped and turned to face you. “Y/N, I asked to say goodbye to you. But they refused.” Hvitserk said to you. The fact that he asked for you before leaving made you smiled, and before he could say anything else, you gave him the neckless you were wearing. “Just so you don’t forget me.” You whispered to him before Floki called his name. “I won’t.” He promised to you before heading through his friends, your gift in one of his hand. But before he could reach them, Hvitserk stopped. Stepping down to you. You barely had time to realize what was going on, that his lips were against yours. Your heart was pounding crazily against your chest. It was the very first time that a man kissed you, but it didn’t stop you from kissing him back with the same devotion. “Just so you don’t forget me”. He repeated against your soft lips, making you blushed even more, before leaving. You will definitely never forget him. And nether did he. “You know what you and your Father have in common, Hvitserk?” Floki asked him, one of his arm around Hvitserk’ shoulders. “We are both great Vikings?” Hvitserk answered with a proud smiled on his face. “No.” The boat builder said bitterly. “You both getting attached to Christians too easily.”

Tags: @bellagreenleaflotr @ivartheblessed @vikingdrabbles @mblaqgi @he-has-a-name @the-witch-from-the-forest

[viscomamelia]

Editing my TED Talk Transcript

My transcript from my chosen TED talk was over 2000 words, and the brief specifies it has to be 1300-1800, so I had to edit it, by cutting out jargon, extra unnecessary words and uninteresting text.

I managed to get it down to 1784 words, still keeping the feel, personality and uniqueness of the talk.

Edited transcript:

I would like to begin with a little experiment. I'm going to ask if you would close your eyes and see if you can work out what emotions you're feeling right now. You're not going to tell anyone anything. The idea is to see how easy or hard you find it to pinpoint exactly what you're feeling. OK? Right, go.

How did it go? You were probably feeling a little bit under pressure, maybe suspicious whether people actually do this experiment. Perhaps you felt a distant worry about that email you sent this morning, or excitement about something you've got planned for this evening. Maybe you felt that exhilaration that comes when we get together in big groups of people; the Welsh called it "hwyl," from the word for boat sails. Or maybe you felt all of these things. There are some emotions which wash the world in a single colour, like the terror felt as a car skids. But more often, our emotions crowd together until it is quite hard to tell them apart. Some slide past so quickly you'd hardly even notice them, like the nostalgia that will make you reach out to grab a familiar brand in the supermarket.

Then there are others that we hurry away from, fearing that they'll burst on us, like the jealousy that causes you to search a loved one's pockets. There are some emotions which are so peculiar, you might not even know what to call them. Perhaps you had a little tingle of a desire for an emotion one eminent French sociologist called "ilinx," the delirium that comes with minor acts of chaos. For example, if you stood up right now and emptied the contents of your bag all over the floor. Perhaps you experienced one of those odd, untranslatable emotions for which there's no obvious English equivalent. You might have felt the feeling the Dutch called "gezelligheid," being cozy inside with friends when it's cold outside. Maybe if you were lucky, you felt this: "basorexia," a sudden urge to kiss someone.

We live in an age when knowledge of emotions is an extremely important commodity, where emotions are used to explain many things, exploited by our politicians, manipulated by algorithms. Emotional intelligence -- the skill of being able to recognize and name your own emotions and those of other people -- is considered so important, that this is taught in schools and businesses and encouraged by our health services. But despite all of this, I sometimes wonder if the way we think about emotions is becoming impoverished. Sometimes, we're not even clear what an emotion is.

There is a theory that our entire emotional lives can be boiled down to a handful of basic emotions. This idea is about 2,000 years old, but some evolutionary psychologists have suggested that these six emotions -- happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, surprise -- are expressed by everyone across the globe in exactly the same way, and therefore represent the building blocks of our entire emotional lives. If you look at an emotion like this, then it looks like a simple reflex: it's triggered by an external predicament, it's hardwired, it's there to protect us from harm. You see a bear, your heart rate quickens, your pupils dilate, you feel frightened, you run very fast.

The problem with this picture is, it doesn't entirely capture what an emotion is. Of course, the physiology is extremely important, but it's not the only reason we feel the way we do at any given moment. What if I was to tell you that in the 12th century, some troubadours didn't see yawning as caused by tiredness or boredom like we do today, but thought it a symbol of the deepest love? Or that in that same period, brave knights commonly fainted out of dismay? Or that boredom, as we know and love it today, was first only felt by the Victorians, in response to new ideas about leisure time and self-improvement? What if we were to think again about those odd, untranslatable words for emotions and wonder whether some cultures might feel an emotion more intensely just because they've bothered to name and talk about it?

The most recent developments in cognitive science show that emotions are not simple reflexes, but immensely complex, elastic systems that respond both to the biology’s that we've inherited and to the cultures that we live in now. They're shaped not just by our bodies, but by our thoughts, our concepts, and our language. The neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett has become very interested in this dynamic relationship between words and emotions. She argues that when we learn a new word for an emotion, new feelings are sure to follow. When we look to the past, it's easy to see that emotions have changed, sometimes very dramatically, in response to new cultural expectations and religious beliefs, new ideas about gender, ethnicity and age, even in response to new political and economic ideologies. There is a historicity to emotions that we are only recently starting to understand. I think to be truly emotionally intelligent, we need to understand where those words have come from, and what ideas about how we ought to live and behave they are smuggling along with them.

In the late 17th century, in the Swiss university town of Basel, there's a dedicated student living some 60 miles away from home. He stops turning up to his lectures, and his friends come to visit, and they find him dejected and feverish, having heart palpitations, and strange sores breaking out on his body. Doctors are called, and they think it's so serious that prayers are said for him in the local church. It's only when they're preparing to return this young man home so he can die, that they realise what's going on. Once they lift him onto the stretcher, his breathing becomes less laboured. By the time he's got to the gates of his hometown, he's almost entirely recovered. That's when they realise that he's been suffering from a very powerful form of homesickness. It's so powerful, that it might have killed him.

In 1688, a young doctor, Johannes Hofer, heard of this case and others like it and christened the illness "nostalgia." The diagnosis quickly caught on in medical circles around Europe. The English thought they were immune because of all the travel they did in the empire but soon there were cases cropping up in Britain, too. The last person to die from nostalgia was an American soldier fighting during the First World War in France. How is it possible that you could die from nostalgia less than a hundred years ago?

Today, not only does the word mean something different -- a sickening for a lost time rather than a lost place -- but homesickness itself is seen as less serious, sort of downgraded from something you could die from to something you're mainly worried your kid might be suffering from at a sleepover. This change seems to have happened in the early 20th century. But why? Was it the invention of telephones or the expansion of the railways? Was it perhaps the coming of modernity, with its celebration of restlessness and travel and progress that made sickening for the familiar seem rather unambitious? You and I inherit that massive transformation in values, and it's one reason why we might not feel homesickness today as acutely as we used to. It's important to understand that these large historical changes influence our emotions partly because they affect how we feel about how we feel.

Today, we celebrate happiness. Happiness is supposed to make us better workers and parents and partners; it's supposed to make us live longer. In the 16th century, sadness was thought to do most of those things. It's even possible to read self-help books from that period which try to encourage sadness in readers by giving them lists of reasons to be disappointed. These self-help authors thought you could cultivate sadness as a skill, since being expert in it would make you more resilient when something bad did happen to you, as invariably it would. I think we could learn from this today. Feel sad today, and you might feel impatient, even a little ashamed. Feel sad in the 16th century, and you might feel a little bit smug.

Our emotions don't just change across time, they also change from place to place. The Baining people of Papua New Guinea speak of "awumbuk," a feeling of lethargy that descends when a houseguest finally leaves. You or I might feel relief, but in Baining culture, departing guests are thought to shed a sort of heaviness so they can travel more easily, and this heaviness infects the air and causes this awumbuk. So they would leave a bowl of water out overnight to absorb this air, then very early the next morning, they would have a ceremony and throw the water away. 

One of my favourite emotions is a Japanese word, "amae."; a very common word in Japan, but it is difficult to translate. It means the pleasure felt when you're able to temporarily hand over responsibility for your life to someone else. Anthropologists suggest that one reason why this word might have been named and celebrated in Japan is because of that country's traditionally collectivist culture, whereas the feeling of dependency may be more fraught amongst English speakers, who have learned to value self-sufficiency and individualism. What might our emotional languages tell us not just about what we feel, but about what we value most?

Most people who tell us to pay attention to our well-being talk of the importance of naming our emotions, but these names aren't neutral labels. They are freighted with our culture's values and expectations, and they transmit ideas about who we think we are. Learning new and unusual words for emotions will help attune us to the more finely grained aspects of our inner lives. I think these words are worth caring about, because they remind us how powerful the connection is between what we think and how we end up feeling. True emotional intelligence requires that we understand the social, the political, the cultural forces that have shaped what we've come to believe about our emotions and understand how happiness or hatred or love or anger might still be changing now. Because if we want to measure our emotions and teach them in our schools and listen as our politicians tell us how important they are, then it is a good idea that we understand where the assumptions we have about them have come from, and whether they still truly speak to us now.

[prairiesongserial]

epilogue 11

Ezra stayed on the steps of the caravan long after John had left, not bothering to stoke the small fire and instead watching it burn itself down to a pile of ashes. As silly as it was, he was preoccupied with the idea that John didn’t like him. Of course John didn’t like him. Ezra wouldn’t have been surprised if Cody, Val, and Friday didn’t, either - the circus had kidnapped them, for God’s sake, to drag them from town to town along the entire East Coast. It was a miracle none of them had tried to escape yet. Though maybe they would, now that the false indenture papers were burned.

The last remnants of the logs in the small fire pit had turned black, the embers inside of them glowing where the wood had cracked or crumbled away. Ezra watched them deteriorate without any real interest. He tried to put aside the instinct to be liked, and focus instead on the money the circus would get from Hemisphere when they delivered on the deal he and Johannes had made with Lady. Four strangers for enough silver to put the circus in the black, maybe permanently. No more stealing. No more broken instruments they couldn’t afford to replace. The idea was comforting, but there was still a pit in his stomach, the kind that tended to portend disaster.

“I left it unlocked, you know,” Johannes said from nearby.

Ezra startled badly, his heart leaping up into his throat as he rose to his feet. He’d been too lost in thought to even hear Johannes’s footsteps approaching, and there was no way to play it off now. He thought he could hear Johannes having a laugh at his expense, somewhere under the sound of his own pulze hammering in his ears.

“Sorry,” he said, shoving his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t fidget with them. “I was going to come in. I got distracted.”

“Staring into space?” Johannes asked, grinning toothily in the way that he did when he was teasing - or being mean, and calling it teasing. He had already stripped out of his costume from the show, and wore an undershirt and slacks that Ezra supposed he intended to sleep in.

“Talking to John, actually. He left a little while ago,” Ezra said, declining to comment on how long he had stayed out here after John had gone. “I gave him the indenture papers.”

“And?”

“He burned them.” Ezra looked pointedly towards the remains of the fire.

Johannes whistled, following his line of sight. “And you let him do it?”

Ezra looked around, belatedly, to make sure that neither John nor Cody were still in earshot, and found that he and Johannes were alone in the little pocket of space around Johannes’s trailer. Several members of the circus were still awake, either eating late dinners or bustling around here and there to get the trucks packed so there would be less to do in the morning, calling across the camp to each other, laughing and joking. No one was paying attention to this conversation. If they had noticed it, they probably figured it was just business.

“I told him the papers were fake,” Ezra said finally, because he wasn’t about to lie to Johannes’s face. Johannes was much better at lying than he was, and Ezra knew he couldn’t get away with it.

“Did you,” Johannes said. There was strain in his voice that hadn’t been there before. “Because I could swear that we decided we wouldn’t - ”

“He used to be an indenture,” Ezra cut him off, careful to keep his voice low so Johannes wouldn’t try to match his volume and inevitably start talking so loud the whole camp could hear him. “John did, I mean. I could tell it was...important to him, to not be one again. I thought maybe it would make him feel better. To know it wasn’t real. And...I don’t know, maybe it would keep him from running away.”

“Do you care if they run away?” Johannes said, meeting his eyes.

Ezra felt a sudden, strange tension in the air, like the tangible crackle of electricity that heralded a lightning strike. It was like they were each daring the other to back away from the deal with Lady, or to double down. They had never worked with Hemisphere before, never taken prisoners for a bounty before, and Ezra couldn’t help but think that every one of those steps was taking them closer to a precipice they couldn’t return from. He wondered if Johannes felt the same way. Judging from the look in Johannes’s eyes right now, he probably did.

“Of course I do,” he made himself say, though the anxious pit in his stomach was still there. “We don’t get the money for the circus if they run away, right?”

Johannes grinned, and reached out to clap him on the shoulder. “That’s what I like to hear. Walk with me, will you? I’ve got to get the report from Enis on everything that needs fixed before the next show, and I’d rather hear it now than hear it on the road tomorrow.”

“Sure,” Ezra agreed, descending the steps so that Johannes could lead the way. He started off with purpose towards the other side of the camp, and Ezra followed, half a step behind.

“You know, it really was a close call with John,” Johannes said over his shoulder. He had slipped fluidly into Yiddish now that they were walk-and-talking. Ezra was sometimes jealous of how easy it was for him to move between languages like that, as though he could simply flip a switch in his mind. “I know you weren’t there, but he had it in his hands. The contract Lady sent us. It’s a good thing he can’t read, or I’d have had to let Rhea set him up for an unfortunate boating accident.”

He laughed. Ezra made a face.

“I don’t see how you can say that about the Bellamys,” Ezra said, choosing his words carefully. Yiddish was by no means his first language, not like it had been for Johannes, and he liked to make sure he was understood without having to repeat himself. He kept up the walking pace, but stayed just a half-step behind, allowing Johannes to take the lead.

“I was kidding,” Johannes said. His tone very clearly conveyed the fact that he was rolling his eyes, even if Ezra couldn’t see it in the dark. “You know, I’m not exactly a good person, but I like to think I haven’t quite stooped down to the level of feeding my inconveniences to alligators.”

“So why joke about it?”

“Nu?” Johannes asked, looking to Ezra, eyebrows arched in mock-surprise. “You want I should march back onto that steamboat and tell them to stop dropping people in the swamp?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Ezra protested - but it was too late, and Johannes was already on a roll.

“I should head to the mansion and tell Rhea Bellamy how to deal with criminals, that’s what you want?” he asked, holding out his arms in a broad gesture that Ezra thought might have signified some kind of martyrdom. “I’m sure that’d go over well, probably get Mame a whole stack of new letters -”

“Jo,” Ezra said softly. “I get it.”

Johannes blinked at him for a moment as though briefly recalibrating, or perhaps realizing that he’d been on the verge of letting the rest of the circus overhear Bellamy secrets they shouldn’t have been privy to. The two of them weren’t the only ones who spoke Yiddish. Then, Johannes grinned, and slung an arm around Ezra’s shoulders, pulling him into a lockstep rather than allowing him to remain a half-step behind.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” he said, in the tone of voice that meant he really had been thinking, and that most of those thoughts had gone towards how to pitch a very bad idea to Ezra.

Ezra frowned. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

“We made good time to Everglades City,” Johannes continued, regardless of Ezra’s feelings on the matter. “If we leave first thing tomorrow, we might even be ahead of schedule. And we’re not supposed to do another show until we get to Virginia.”

“I know,” Ezra said, wondering where Johannes was going with this, exactly. Everglades City was a fairly large detour from the rest of their route, but the circus sometimes took it as a favor to Rhea, even though they didn’t make much money on it. There was at least a solid day of driving between them and the next show - two days, if they split it up the way Johannes preferred to.

“And I was thinking,” Johannes went on, “that if we’re ahead of schedule, we might as well stop and put on an extra show, don’t you think?”

“Are you out of your mind?” The question slipped out in English instead of Yiddish before Ezra could help himself. They were caravaning up to Maine, on a strict deadline, with hostages, and Johannes wanted to play an extra show?

“I think it could be good for us,” Johannes said, still in Yiddish, his tone as casual as if he were discussing the weather. “We’d make some extra money for gas, repairs, that kind of thing.”

“Where would we even play?” Ezra asked, making a conscious effort to return to Yiddish. No doubt this was still not the sort of conversation Johannes wanted anyone else overhearing. “Don’t tell me you’re planning on dropping in on every town we pass and seeing if anyone wants to go to the circus.”

Johannes grinned, flashing teeth in a way that made Ezra feel as though he’d walked straight into a trap that had been laid for him.

“I was thinking...Kill Devil Hills,” he said.

“Oh, no,” Ezra said, already shaking his head. The circus hadn’t visited Kill Devil Hills in years, but he certainly remembered it, and not favorably. “No, you - you know how they are -”

“Ah, but we’ve got a priest with us again, for the first time since Mame retired,” Johannes said, still with that same smile. “A goy priest. We could set up a revival tent, have him wear the old preacher getup - they’d go nuts for it, you know they would. And while the preacher is preaching…”

“We pick their pockets.” Ezra sighed, all too familiar with this part of the pitch. Doing an extra show felt risky, especially with so many new variables. They had to be in Maine when they’d told Lady they would be at the end of the summer, for the hostage hand-off, and there was no telling how long this detour would set them back. Plus, they had no way of knowing if their new priest would even cooperate or not. He seemed moody.

But Johannes, apparently, had already made up his mind. And there was very little one could do to persuade him otherwise, once he’d thought up what he assumed was a terrific scheme.

“Exactly,” he said, clapping Ezra’s shoulder. “Look, it’ll be one show, barely anything set up except the preacher’s tent, and then we’re out of there in the morning. How hard can it be?”

Ezra winced. He wished that Johannes would stop throwing around that question. Past a certain point, it stopped feeling inspiring, and started feeling like he was daring God to make something happen.

11.18 || 12.1

[prairiesongserial]

11.3

The second night at the circus had been a little less rough than the first, even if Cody still wasn’t happy to be there. He’d anticipated the trumpet this time and risen slightly before it sounded, wandering a little ways away from the camp to piss in some underbrush, and splash his face with water from a nearby stream. The air in Florida was thick and muggy, nothing like the dry heat Cody was used to from the West. It made it feel hard to breathe, like it was clogging his windpipe.

The trumpet sounded, finally, in the distance. Cody glanced over his shoulder, and was startled to find John in the process of ambling towards him. John stopped just at the tree line, head cocked ever so slightly in curiosity, and Cody stood from where he’d been kneeling next to the stream.

“Hey,” he said, using the edge of his shirt to wipe away the beads of water still dripping from his face. He started making his way over towards John, tugging his shirt back down as he went.

“Good morning,” John said. His hair was pulled into a haphazard bun, and he was leaning on his cane, but not heavily. “Breakfast?”

“Yeah,” Cody agreed, even though the idea of making their way into the throng of carnies that gathered for breakfast exhausted him enough to make him think about crawling back into the tent. Being with the circus made him feel tired in a way that traveling only with John hadn’t, maybe because there were so many strangers to keep track of, and someone else’s schedule to stick to.

“What do you think?” he asked John, taking advantage of the time they had out of anyone else’s earshot. “About all this?” He swept an arm out broadly, indicating the now-bustling circus camp. “I mean, we could probably use the protection, but -”

“I don’t like it,” John said, bluntly. Cody had suspected as much from the way he’d been acting since the circus had first picked them up, but it was good to hear him say it out loud.

“Because of the indentures?” Cody asked.

John made a humming noise of agreement, and turned to begin walking back towards the campsite. Cody was surprised at how well he walked with the cane now - his gait was far from confident, but it was steady, even on grass instead of stone or pavement. Apparently all the practice with the sisters had done him good.

“I don’t trust him,” John said, when they were halfway to the breakfast area.

Cody glanced at him questioningly. He was used to silence from John meaning that a conversation was over, or sometimes that John just couldn’t find the words to talk anymore. John making an effort to be more talkative was still a little jarring. But jarring in a good way, like having a bird unexpectedly land on you, or a skittish cat come to you for affection.

“Who, Johannes?” Cody asked.

John nodded.

“Me neither,” Cody said. Johannes had rubbed him the wrong way immediately, from his personality to his mismatched eyes. It all reminded Cody far too much of Ethan - which he knew wasn’t Johannes’s fault, necessarily, but he also knew better than to trust someone who was so obviously a con artist. The last time he’d done that had been at La Salle Rouge, and it had almost gotten him killed.

He wanted to reassure John, but he couldn’t think of anything positive to say by the time they’d reached the crowd in the breakfast area. Johannes was at the center, as he’d been the other morning, chatting with the other carnies animatedly while everyone ate. Cody looked around for Val and Friday, and spotted them picking at bowls of oatmeal on the fringes of the group.

“Hey,” a voice said from behind him, startling Cody enough to make him jump. He whirled around to see Ezra standing there, looking equally startled, palms raised in a non-threatening gesture.

“Cody, right?” Ezra asked.

“Yeah,” Cody said, a little suspiciously. He glanced off to the side, looking for John, only to find that John had slipped off into the line for food. “Did you need something?”

“Well, I don’t want to keep you from breakfast,” Ezra said, looking sheepish. “But Johannes said you play the guitar, and I wanted to ask you about that. I was wondering if you’d want to do some of the music for the circus with me.”

Cody considered this, remembering what Johannes had said the other day. He’d been annoyed with Johannes, then, for insisting he could still play when he’d pretty clearly said that he couldn’t. But, as much as Cody hated to admit it, maybe Johannes had a point. And he missed playing guitar. He was probably rusty at it, but he figured that it would be like riding a bike, once he started learning again.

“I’d have to learn to play left-handed,” he conceded, to Ezra.

“I might be able to help with that,” Ezra said. He smiled hesitantly, like he was trying not to scare Cody off. “We have a few old guitars kicking around in storage, and I’m pretty sure one of them is a lefty. I’ll have a look around after the show tonight and see what I can find.”

Cody blinked, not expecting the answer. He’d been thinking of the circus as criminals - and he was still pretty sure they were - but the carnies had a sense of camaraderie he hadn’t sensed among large Hemisphere operations like La Salle Rouge or Texas Waters. It reminded Cody of the way the Dead-Eyes had been when he was growing up in Levering, taking him in even though he wasn’t officially one of them. The circus felt like a family, one that he hadn’t been expected to be invited into so soon - or at all.

“Sure,” he said finally, realizing he’d just been standing there staring at Ezra. “Uh, thank you.”

“No worries,” Ezra said, with a shrug. “It’ll take some of the pressure off me for once.” He glanced around, perhaps noticing that Cody didn’t have a bowl or plate in his hands, and grimaced a little. “Anyway, I’m keeping you from breakfast. I’ll get out of your hair.”

He was gone before Cody could say anything else, vanishing into the throng of carnies who were swiftly transitioning from breakfast into packing up the trucks and wagons, in preparation for hitting the road once again.

Even from a distance, Cody had been able to tell that Everglades City was like no city he had ever been to before. For one thing, it didn’t have streets. Most of the buildings were separated by swampy, standing water, and the townsfolk appeared to get around by pushing themselves from place to place in all manner of boats and rafts. The caravan had parked about a mile away from the city proper as a necessity, leaving the trucks and wagons near the dock that appeared to mark the edge of city limits.

There was a boat waiting for them that Cody thought was probably the size of the Texas Waters mansion. It was three stories, with a big, rotating set of wheels on the front that churned water through it. Cody could see people bustling here and there on its different decks, though he didn’t have much time to admire it from afar, as he found himself being swept up in the frenetic activity of unloading crates of the circus’s various props, costumes, and God only knew what else from their wagons.

“Just remember,” Johannes was saying, from the top of the ramp that led from boat to dock, “if you drop anything overboard, you’re the one who has to swim after it. And I wouldn’t take your chances with the gators around here.”

He laughed, and the noise grated on Cody much in the same way that Ethan’s laugh had. He only had a moment to dwell on it, because someone was pressing a heavy, plastic box into his hands. He looked up to see Ezra, still with that same, nervous smile, laden under several boxes of his own.

“He’s just kidding,” Ezra said, flicking his eyes towards Johannes. “We’re short-handed as it is. We’d be fucked if we lost anyone overboard.”

Cody made an effort to smile back, shifting the box in his arms and filing into the line of carnies waiting to head up the ramp. He’d lost track of John, Val, and Friday after they’d gotten out of the truck bed to begin unloading things, but Cody assumed they were similarly being given boxes to hold and tasks to do.

As he shuffled closer to the ramp, Cody studied the top deck of the large boat, squinting against the sun. It was smaller than the other decks, and there appeared to be a small band playing there. Cody wondered if the circus was going to perform on the boat, too, or if there was some kind of indoor stage they’d be using. He didn’t know much about how circuses operated, but setting one up in a city that was mostly flooded seemed firmly out of the ordinary.

“You think Madeline Bellamy’s up there?” one of the carnies just in front of Cody asked, as they began making their way onto and up the ramp. It was made of metal, but still shook and groaned under the weight of the whole circus making their way across it. Cody had to resist the temptation to grab onto the guardrails, and could suddenly see how someone could drop a crate into the water, if they weren’t careful.

“I hope so,” another carnie said wistfully, over the ramp’s complaints. “She better come to the show so we can use her for the magic act. We never get pretty volunteers.”

“She’s not going to want to fuck you just because you can guess her card, Beau,” someone said wryly over Cody’s shoulder, startling a laugh out of Cody that nearly made him drop the box he was holding. He glanced behind him to see a face he recognized from the campfire on his first night with the circus - Johannes and Ezra’s other brother. Enis, he was pretty sure.

In front of Cody, Beau grumbled something under their breath, but apparently lacked a good retort.

“Everyone here loses their minds when we play Everglades City,” Enis said conversationally, following close behind Cody as they ascended the ramp. “It’s like they hear the name Bellamy and forget how to act. Just because they’re in the movies -”

“I still don’t know what those are,” Cody said. He’d fixed his gaze on the deck at the top of the ramp, and was feeling more relieved with every step that brought him closer to it, still unsure that the ramp wasn’t about to just collapse under him.

“Well, they’re not magic, like everyone else thinks they are,” Enis said. “They make them with special cameras that capture a bunch of images in sequence, so when they play them all in order, it becomes a moving picture. The Bellamys just have the resources to mass-produce them and distribute them all around the East Coast.”

“Huh,” Cody said, still fixated on the end of the ramp, but equally interested in what Enis had to say. It was hard to imagine pictures of people moving like that, but he supposed it was the same principle as when Miriam had made little drawings on the bottom edge of a notepad, so when you flipped through the pad, it looked like they moved.

“How come they have all the resources?” he asked, since Enis seemed to know so much else about the Bellamys. “They’re just rich?”

“They’re rich, and they own the whole town,” Enis said. “I think they might have outside help, too. Rich investors and stuff. Nobody knows that much about them - we haven’t played here that much since Judith stepped down.”

They had reached the top of the ramp, at last, and Cody and Enis could finally walk side by side as they spoke, carrying their respective burdens to the front of the boat where the majority of the carnies seemed to be placing their things. Enis was shorter than him, Cody noticed, and bowed under the weight of several duffel bags that produced clanging, metal sounds from within.

“Who’s Judith?” he asked, wondering if he should offer to take one of Enis’s bags from him.

“Johannes’s mom,” Enis said. “Technically my mom, I guess, since Johannes and Ezra adopted me, but I don’t know her as well as they do. She was kind of on her way out when I joined up. Her and the head of the Bellamy family were close, I think.”

Cody mulled over this information as they reached the front of the boat, and he searched for a place to put his crate down. Finally, he just set it by itself on the deck, assuming that some other carnie would know where it went, or what to do with it. He didn’t feel too bad about it, because Enis also seemed inclined to drop his duffel bags on the deck wherever they happened to fit.

Cody had more questions for Enis, but raised voices from nearby caught his attention. A few yards away on the deck, Johannes was arguing with a woman who looked almost bored of the argument, leaning against the side of the boat and smoking a cigarette. She wore heels that made her a few inches taller than Johannes, and had short black hair slicked down in a curl over her ear. Most of those details flew by Cody in an instant, though, because as the woman turned slightly to blow smoke into the air, the sun caught on a pin attached to her pillbox hat. Even from a slight distance, Cody could recognize the curve of a lowercase H.

“Who’s that?” he asked Enis, barely disguising the way the words stuck in his throat.

“Who, her?” Enis asked, following his gaze. “That’s Rhea Bellamy. She’s the head of the Bellamy family.”

Cody opened his mouth to reply, but he found himself suddenly pinned by Rhea Bellamy’s gaze, as she turned away from Johannes to look directly at him. Her eyes were dark and piercing, and to eliminate any doubt, she gestured to him to come and join the conversation.

“You, there,” she said, her voice carrying across the deck. “Come over here. I have a job for you.”

11.2 || 11.4

[ohsweetflips]

I have returned with more skdkdjsk who is Johann's boyfriend??? Since the children are getting older what do sweet flips do to keep themselves busy? (Other than work) Who in the fam is the cook? Is there anyone who can't cook? What is their house like? Built for them? A fixer-upper? Something entirely new? Have they always lived in the same house or moved a lot?

i talked a lot about johann’s boyfriend on this post!! and i swwar this isn’t me copping out of answering, it’s just that a lot of these OCs (bc i guess that’s what they are omfg) have been in just the “okay they’re developed enough in my head” stage so now, since i’m actually putting them out there, i want them all more developed before i start saying shit, you know?

noelle is bi and also dates, i just don’t have a partner in mind for her yet

as the kids get older and carey and killian are approaching their mid-40s (i hc that they had johann when killian was 27 and carey 25, and then they had noelle when killian was 29 and carey was 27), i think they stick with the bureau of benevolence for a little while longer before retiring. bc, while the bureau of benevolence is no where near as high stakes as the bureau of balance was, they think it’s time, you know? they know that the two of them, lucretia, and anyone else who helped out did all the good that they could, and they know that they can finally leave the organization and know that things will be okay.

after that, especially once the kids are both in college and starting their own adult lives, i do think they travel. i think they see killian’s family a lot, i think they take a vacation in neverwinter, they visit merle in bottlenose cove and magnus in raven’s roost, and they visit the taakitz/blupjeans household, too. 

i also think they finally let themselves have time to rest? and not in the sense that they never had a moment of peace before their kids were out of the house, but more so like… they had no worries? the world is safe, their friends happy, and they’ve never been prouder of their kids so, finally, they can sit back in their home and relax and cuddle and read books and know that things are gonna be the same tomorrow and, honestly? that’s a blessing of a thought for them

i think they all cook!! i think killian came from a huge family, so she is the one who cooks all the huge family meals. carey, having grown up more on the streets, is really good at putting together quick and easy yet still super good meals. i def think taako and lup teach johann and noelle little cooking things, like “here’s what you cook when you don’t have a lot of time,” “here’s what you cook when you don’t have a lot of stuff,” and “here’s what you cook when you finally have enough of everything and want to splurge”

i think noelle’s cooking is the one that needed the most work but taako and lup help her find her niche!!

their house is big enough to house four comfortably, and it’s homey, and warm, and very very loving. i think magnus definitely helped to do work on it, especially the nursery and he absolutely built both johann and noelle’s cribs. they have a lot of huge windows and sunroofs because carey loves the heat. they have a huge backyard with a nice garden because it reminds killian of her own home. the kids shared a nursery when they were little but, as they got older, they had their own rooms, and also they had a playroom full of toys and books. they live on a lake and they would all often have family picnics together before taking a boat out. they have a huge willow tree with a swing hanging from it. it’s the house carey and killian lived in ever since a couple months before their wedding, and they’ve lived in it ever since, and they never want to imagine anything different because that house is their home and has so many lovely and wonderful memories attached to it

honestly, if i was to say which parts of the kids’ lives i focused on the most, currently, for my headcanons, it would be 1) infancy/toddlerhood for the both of them, 2) between the ages of 4-10, 3) johann at age 17 and noelle 15, and then 4) johann at age 21 and noelle at age 19

i thought up team sweet flips’ kids and im low key taking questions abt them