#so much thematic promise

[yellowlaboratory]

obx + parallel plot lines

hello and welcome to my Annie Brain Rots On Main post. I hope this is a series of only one (1) post but the next few months before obx s3 are gonna be long so who knows how many think pieces you’ll have to endure. 

anyway, last night, somewhere in between simultaneous breakdowns with @falseungodlyhours and @alphinias, I started thinking more about s3’s arc and what conclusions we can draw from s1 and s2. stick with me as I word vomit through my theory (also be warned that i mention some bts spoilers for s3 in here)

s1 is John B centric. I know that he is still the main character even in s2, but s2 does not revolve around him in the same way s1 does. the main storyline in s1 is the Pogues rallying around John B to help him through a conflict that involves his family (I’m wording this weirdly to keep it general because it’s going to be a recurring theme lmao). the conflict revolves around his dad being lost at sea, and most of the main characters are tied up in this conflict whether they are trying to help John B (the Pogues, Sarah) or trying to hinder his search (Ward). and, on top of that, last night i got to thinking how much of John B’s story paralleled his father’s. 

first off, it only takes an episode for the show to establish that John B is on the search for his dad, but none of the Pogues really believe he’ll find him. Kiara is the only one who even pretends to play into it, but it’s clearly something she’s only doing out of guilt and she believes that Big John is most likely dead. So - John B is on the search for something, and the people closest to him don’t believe he’ll find it. Big John is on the search for the gold, and John B doesn’t believe he’ll find it. you see what I’m saying? by some miracle and against all odds, both Rutledge men find something, but not exactly what they were looking for. Big John finds the Royal Merchant, but not the gold. John B finds the gold, but not his father. then, immediately after their big discoveries, both of them are nearly killed by Ward Cameron. The ensuing events are actually almost exactly the same: following the confrontation with Ward, they both very nearly die, get lost at sea, are declared dead, but actually survive and escape to a Caribbean island. AND THEN, despite being alive, neither of them let their loved ones know right away. Big John takes far longer to get in contact, but even John B waits to contact the pogues for a month a day ? how does time work in the obx a while.  there are probably more parallels I’m missing but the point is John B’s storyline paralleled his dad. 

then, we end up in s2, and the driving force in s2 is Pope. with their backs against the wall and shit on the line, the Pogues rally around Pope to help him through a conflict that involves his family (see what I said about recurring theme. i promise i’m only kind of crazy.) Pope’s conflict has to do with Denmark Tanny, and protecting his legacy. once again, most of the main characters in s2 are entangled in this conflict, with the Pogues helping Pope, and Limbrey, Renfield, and Rafe trying to stop him. and, once again, there are parallels between Pope and Denmark’s storylines. 

first and foremost, the central antagonist in both Denmark and Pope’s storyline is a Limbrey. Captain Limbrey is the slave holder who won’t free Denmark’s wife and daughter, and Carla Limbrey is trying to steal the treasure that belongs to Pope’s family. The Limbreys are both categorized by their greed, their wrath, and their willingness to do anything to get what they want. In the immortal words of Kiara Carrera, “it was a Limbrey stealing shit again.” In both cases, Denmark and Pope are out for something much more important than money – Pope’s mee-maw sums it up pretty well when she says “family is all we got” and that is exactly what drives both Denmark and Pope’s actions, whether they are trying to reunite their family or avenge their legacy. more so than this, both Pope and Denmark see the gold cross as a symbol of freedom. I mean, Denmark literally builds it into the walls of Freedman’s Church, and as Pope gets ready to take the cross back on the Coastal Venture, he says “the time where people do shit to us and we just sit back and take it is over.” once again, I’m probably missing so many parallels, but you get the gist.

so, in summary, whether it is intentional or not (and isn’t that always the question with the boat show lmao), a pattern has begun to develop. even though there is a shit ton of stuff going down each season, there are two major factors that define and drive the story: 

a family-centered conflict that one of the Pogues faces while the other Pogues rally around them

the parallels that exist between said Pogue and members of their family

if this pattern actually exists and i’m not just talking out of my ass, that means there are three possible driving forces for s3 – either JJ, Kiara, or Sarah. (side note: I don’t think we’ve had enough time for Cleo to be the center point of the season-wide conflict yet, but with more seasons, I think we’ll get there)

Sarah’s familial conflict feels different than the rest of the Pogues, and I don’t think it could be the center point of a single season as it currently stands. conflict with Ward is a theme for the entire show, and rededicating a season arc to it when it’s already a series-wide arc doesn’t seem plausible to me. on top of that, I don’t really think we’ll be seeing the same kinds of parallels between Sarah and Ward that we’ve seen between John B/Big John and Denmark/Pope. I think a Sarah-centric season would be REALLY interesting if we ever find out what happened to her mother, and if we see the parallels between Sarah’s conflict with Ward and her mother’s conflict with Ward (i’m assuming there’s conflict there because …. well, of course there was. it’s ward.) Unfortunately, due to what I know from bts and casting calls, I don’t think we’re meeting Sarah’s mother yet, and I don’t think an exploration of that conflict is going to happen in s3. 

similarly, I don’t think it’s JJ’s season quite yet. another little bts spoiler, but we’ll likely only see Luke in the very last episode, and as much as I hate him with every fiber of my being, he’s a major part of JJ’s characterization. I truly believe that we can’t get a well-rounded JJ-centric season without tying up the loose ends with Luke, and the send-off scene in s2 was never going to be enough. The single episode we’ll likely see him in during s3 is also not going to be enough to wrap everything up, and it’s sure as hell not going to be enough to drive the whole season (unless Luke actually comes back earlier, or JJ’s mom makes a reappearance but, once again, based on the stuff I’ve seen, I don’t think that will be the case in s3). 

So, that leaves Kiara. Between her parents cracking down on her even harder, the threat of Blue Ridge hanging over her, and the fact that she ended the season by undermining her parents to sneak out and go missing for an undetermined amount of time, I think Kiara is perfectly set up to be the center point of the conflict for s3 - and the bts i have seen and some of the casting calls all seem to line up with the theory of a Kiara-centric Season 3

coming right back from Poguelandia, I don’t think Kiara’s parents will threaten to send her to Blue Ridge right away (or at least i hope they won’t akdjfhas I know I have some misguided faith in them), but I’m kind of thinking there might be a time jump, and I wouldn’t put it past the Carreras to threaten Blue Ridge a few weeks/months after getting Kiara back. While there’s a non-zero chance the Pates might introduce a third (literal) pot of gold that somehow relates to the Carrera family fortune, I’m actively hoping, wishing, and praying against it. So, the option most likely to maintain my sanity for the next few months is the central conflict of the season revolving around Kiara and her parents. This is what the Pogues could rally around – keeping Kiara from Blue Ridge. That leaves the question, who could Kiara parallel in her s3 arc? 

Enter Anna Carrera. 

Anna would be in the unique place of being both the antagonist and the foil to Kiara’s story, but it seems like the most logical choice. There’s already a built-in parallel there – a Kook girl running around with Pogues? we’ve heard this one before. Taking this even further, we know that Anna fell in love with a Pogue, chose him over her family, and risked her entire future for him. She might not act like it now, but a few years back, Anna was in the same exact position as her daughter. Since we know s3 is going to explore Jiara (thank you Josh Pate for confirming that so early on and quelling the insanity of my mind for at least a little bit), isn’t that the perfect way to create a parallel? 

then, with Luke coming back into the picture late in s3, we have the opportunity for a JJ-centric s4. 

anyway. let me lose my mind over this for the next few months. 

[saladbarselectionmenu]

Music Game!!

RULES: You can usually tell a lot about a person by the type of music they listen to. Put your playlist on shuffle and list the first 10 songs, and then tag 10 people. No skipping!

I was tagged by @averagebreadslice thank you for the tag ^u^ !

1) I Just Wanna Run - The Downtown Fiction

2) Megalovania - Toby Fox (yes the undertale version dont @ me LMAO)

3) I’m Always Walking As Somebody Else - American Murder Song

4) She’s Quite (Acoustic) - The home Team

5) 4AM - Derivakat

6) A Year Ago - Birds of Bellwoods

7) Constellations - The Oh Hellos

8) Get Jinxed - League of Legends, Djerve

9) Paper Rings - Taylor Swift 

10) Empire - Of Monsters And Men No specific playlist just my Spotify likes on random!  If I recommend anything on this list though it’s Constellations - it’s such a mood for The Commander! Very much one of those ‘‘I’m imagining so many animatics I'll never actually make’’ songs imo. Also going back through who’s been tagged is really funny bc it’s like ‘oh I know all these songs they’re great!’ and I think that’s kind of neat actually

Apologies if you’ve already been tagged (pm me if you want me to remove you too) ! I had a quick scroll through peoples blogs but I’m 1) unobservant af 2) not sure how long this has been going around @where-is-caithe @jorasdottir @little-leaf-man @commanders-sole-braincell @secondscion @gallusrostromegalus @commander-gloryforge @inkberrry @commander-winterberry @herald-of-aurene

[corvigae]

Whenever I remember that I didn't set out with the explicit plan to make Page a bardlock initially it just throws me bc it's just. So intrinsic to her character now that I could never imagine her as anything else. Like yeah I planned on making her a bard and that was always a big part of her character, but I really just picked warlock as a multiclass for utility's sake at first. But now being a warlock is so much of a big part of her backstory and her story going forward that if you were to remove that part of her you'd remove a significant portion of her character.

[shiawasekai]

Anyway, allied tribes quest time

[neofelis----nebulosa]

Uhhh why aren’t the furious 5 in the king fu panda 4 trailer

[hazeism]

SORRY I’M LATE I NEEDED UM. TWENTY-FOUR HOUR BUFFER TO ATTEMPT TO MAKE MYSELF (LESS) INCOHERENTTTT 😭😭‼‼

This is so incredible ahhh! It kind of makes me believe in magic ngl. The intense moodiness!!! God, the value map on this: the absolute eye-searing flourescence of the coat and the prosthetic eye and the bg...!!! It’s so fucking powerful aahhhh...And his crazed grin and his gnarled brow and the attention to detail with the set of the eyes (the implication of real, vulgar physicality aagrgahrhgh!!!!!! I feel so seen I feel so cradled . ) !!!!

Your style is so beautiful, the distribution of detail is so intelligent 😭😭😭 I’m forever honored to have inspired you at all orz

Doflamingo's golden present

inspired by THIS fic by @hazeism

[crowtwink]

I am So Normal about this line. His later line about how he never asked to be human is good too but this right here...

Just... the way that Monty and Esther's relationship subtly reinforces the themes about abuse that the rest of the show explores.

The rest of the characters are dealing with healing from the various traumas of past abuse and trying not to continue the cycles they were hurt by but Monty? Monty is trapped in his abuse right now.

And the way that it's shown...

I saw someone point out that his cage is WAY too small for a bird of his size and that's 100% correct and 100% demonstrates that Esther is a shitty person but the thing about the cage that interests me the most isn't it's unsuitability.

It's the fact that the cage is never locked. Most of the time, the door isn't even closed. There's nothing physically stopping Monty from just skipping town. He doesn't seem to particularly like Esther - even at the start - and he's not subtle about it. We never see any indication that she has any magic keeping him bound to her. (It's not unreasonable to assume that she does, sure, but she's never once shown to use it and that's a narrative choice. The one time she threatens him for overstepping, it's physical.)

Even after he's shown hesitation in following through on her plan, even after they have their big fight, even after she remakes him against his will for the second time, we still see him return to that cage. And the cage remains unlocked, because Esther remains confident in her hold over him.

Because that's the thing about staying with your abuser. It's often not about being physically unable to leave the situation. Esther doesn't keep Monty trapped by locking him up. If she did, all he would have to do would be leave the cage to be free. The hold she has on him is much deeper and much harder to escape.

But not impossible.

It's a little betrayal, in the grand scheme of things, but he does finally act against her directly.

Thematically, it makes perfect sense to me that it's Charles who finally pushes him to rebel. Charles, who promised way back in episode one to befriend him. Charles, who knows exactly what it's like to be trapped by an abusive parent. Charles, who so desperately wants people in circumstances similar to his own be in the right so he can prove to himself that he isn't destined to turn out like his dad.

It's no surprise that Charles' immediate reaction to Monty's little act of rebellion is delight.

I really hope we'll see more of Monty in a season two. But even if we don't, I know he's going to be okay.

He's finally escaped.

[branwinged]

seeing some prophecy discourse which has once again reminded me why i personally find the prospect of dany as the prince that was promised really compelling. and it makes the targaryens so much thematically richer. like, they only survived the doom through the power of prophecy and then the visions marked them forever and this thing, this blessing which gave generations of targaryens some existential meaning eventually morphed into a curse which brought so many of them great misery—"my brothers dreamed of dragons too, and the dreams killed them, every one." (aemon, affc) and in due course almost ended their line once again with rhaegar. but then dany happened.

almost four hundred years since the doom when prophecy saved them and nearly killed them again on the trident, dany was born. dany who carries echoes of all her targaryen ancestors within her. she's aegon the conqueror come again but she's also maegor the cruel when she promises the khals who had hurt her khalasar would die screaming. she's rhaenyra in her struggles to wield power and establish legitimacy as a woman, she shares her sense of egalitarianism with egg, and she drinks from the cup passed from rhaegar, i.e. inherits (what he once thought of) his narrative destiny to help defend the realms during the long night.

dany who is both their beginning, since she's the first targaryen created and introduced to us on page and the narrative end point of their dynasty. which reflects all the way into her arc being cyclical by design as it calls back to the foundation of the valyrian empire in essos—during the fifth war the freehold torched old ghis with dragonfire so nothing would grow there again and centuries later this girl, the last dragon, is going to help plant trees there again. it's not about retreading old ground or rejecting her house words but about redefining what it means to be the blood of the dragon. which is not to say all that came before her was meaningless since this recontextualisation is only possible through the three centuries of ancestral history weighing on her. and dany's very existence echoes back in time because the prophecy itself has influenced the lives of generations of targaryens. three hundred years of history, all the glory and the horror concentrated in this one person-point. the prince that was promised not simply as a figure of the long night but as someone who is the apotheosis of their house. dany as both their beginning and their end, because the iron throne is presently a symbol of stagnation, a world in stasis, and it has to go. no restoration, instead the old world dying in fire and a new world being born in the aftermath.

[fleetinggabi]

Radhan, to me, is just the bluntest way possible to drive the point home in regards to Elden ring's main thesis about power structures and what upholds them. Miquella, though shown to be kind beyond any doubt in many aspects (a virtuous, charismatic leader), seeks to reign with the same power that under Marika drove the lands between to their end.

The rituals he employs, the symbols and resources, the very gates of divinity he uses to ascend to godhood are the same as his mother's. Whereas her Erdtree was built upon a mountain of corpses in a quest for revenge, Miquella seeks to ascend through the shared strength of his followers who, charmed or not, similarly seek a kind and compassionate world.

The problem, of course, is that the intentions or character of our leaders matter not as long as they continue to seek and employ the very power that perpetrates and continues the cruelty and suffering they want to end. And Radhan is the elephant in the room, the uncomfortable truth no one wants to look at but silently accepts, employs and allows. He trained with and befriended Albinaurics, respected and defended his parents despite their differences, upheld and maintained the traditions and culture of Godfrey ages after his exile and fought off the horrors from the stars. But he also quelled and suppressed any and all opposition to the Erdtree. He leapt at the first chance to wage war as soon as instability hit, establishing a ruthless survival of the fittest that knew not of bonds of blood or loyalty but simply strength. Violence was and is his only philosophy, for despite all of its rules and intricacies, that is also the fundamental way of Gold.

Miquella, whether naive, hypocritical or simply an endless infant, could not conceive of a world built on anything but that strength, that violence that Radhan so perfectly exemplifies. I still think he wanted nothing more than to create a compassionate world where everyone would live together, where he would cure Malenia, where Leda wouldn't need to suspect her fellows, but this is the only way he could think to make it. And he saw this early on, for how could he doubt Radhan, who stood undefeated before and after the Shattering, flowing red locks of the giants and strength of the Lion.

It bears repeating how Miquella was still cursed; doomed to never grow, for his tree to never bear fruits, for his plans to wither and wilt unfulfilled. This fatal mistake is not an easily fixed oversight but hubris.

My biggest gripe about the finale for the sote DLC was that I saw nothing hinting at Radahn and Miquella having any sort of relation or dynamic beyond Malenia fighting him at Caelid which placed them as distant at best in my head.

And I just found one single Miquella’s Lily. under a tree at Redmane castle just now. Was that supposed to be the hint???

Now I’m confused like was the Castle Sol stuff never for Godwyn in the first place? Or did Miquella change his mind on who to revive? But then it says that the vow was made in THEIR childhood (which I assume means both of their childhoods) so he must’ve planned for Radahn to be his consort from the start.

But then also why would Miquella choose Radahn when he’s the very opposite of compassionate? Of course maybe he was always going to be enforcing his age through violent means - but if that was the case, and he was never kind at any point in time, then why was it such a big deal that he abandoned his “love”?

I feel like this could make more sense to me if Godwyn’s revival was such a failure that he resorted to Radahn, but again, he apparently planned for him from the start.

I honestly don’t know what to make of it or if I’ve missed a rlly important lore item that magically explains all of this but so far it’s looking like a very Radahn-shaped plot hole to me because he just feels like a last minute addition.

[sainamoonshine]

Okay so I finally watched Good Omens season 2 and have tons of thoughts about it, especially how the minisodes and side-plots do so much work, thematically.

*slaps flashback segment on the roof* this bad boy contains so much subtext!!

And here’s my analysis about some of it:

The side plots are about at least three main themes that I can spot.

1. They are all, in some way, about resurrection. The children of Job. The Nazi Zombies. The resurrectionist. Miracles being rated on a scale of how many people they can bring back from the dead. Even Gabriel, in some way, arriving naked and without his memories and innocent as a babe, then finding himself again was a form of resurrection.

This, of course, has to do with foreshadowing season two, the one where the main plot point is going to be the second coming.

2. They were all about how much it’s a bad idea to mess with humans. All flashback minisodes either had someone die directly because Aziraphale and Crowley were around (Wee Morag, the guy at the magic shop), or almost die because Heaven and Hell said so (Job’s childrens). In present-day time, Aziraphale’s messing about with people during the ball is explicitely called out as creepy and wrong and Nina & Maggie have a talk with Crowley about it.

This leads to my theory that this is also going to be a major theme in the third season. We know that in the book, Adam explicitly tells heaven and hell to stop interfering. We also know that in the show, Aziraphale and to a smaller extend Crowley need to learn this lesson.

I also think that the resolution of the next season is probably going to involve Earth being marked definitely off limits to angels/demons, possibly via the same mechanism that makes the shop into a safe heaven you need to be invited in (and the same thing became true of the Bentley once Aziraphale claimed it! As pointed out here , Shax had to hitchhike to get in, instead of appearing inside as she did before). Earth needs to be claimed. I think that this will happen either by a combined miracle of incredible proportions from both Crowley and Aziraphale after they reunite, or (and this is my pet theory) by a combined miracle of incredible proportions by Adam and whoever is the new Jesus (I am a greasy Johnson truther lol). This would make Earth a place that you need to be invited in order to go there, and therefore safe haven for angels and demons who promise not to cause trouble.

3. All of the side plots and minisodes are about misdirection. Sleight of hand. Smoke and mirrors. Magic tricks. Showing one thing while something else is true.

This is shown obviously in the Job part and also in London 1941, with the party who is getting tricked being heaven and hell, respectively. Meanwhile, Gabriel and Beelzebub are trying to trick everyone. But who is tricked by the plot lines of Nina/Maggie, and Elspeth/Wee Morag?

We are. The audience is.

It has been pointed out here and here that Nina is meant to make us think she’s a parallel to Crowley when she is actually more of an Aziraphale thematically, and vice-versa.

But what about Elspeth and Wee Morag? We have one that robs graveyards, and one who tells her that is wrong and is worried about her eternal soul. That seems straightforward enough as a mirror to Crowley and Aziraphale, no? Well, let’s just look at what they’re doing and saying to each other, shall we?

“Don’t do this incredibly wrong and dangerous thing. It will have repercussions that you can’t even begin to understand right now.”

“I’m doing this for you! You deserve better than this life!”

“I don’t want the better life you’re offering. I would rather huddle with you here, homeless and poor but knowing you’re safe and that we’re together, than to know you alone out there doing horrible things you’ve convinced yourself you need to do.”

“I do need to do it. Trust me! This is going to fix everything! And if you don’t want me to be alone, then come with me. There! Problem solved!”

(Problem very much not solved.)

Doesn’t this sound, a tiny little bit, like a certain season finale to you guys? Elspeth was, in fact, Aziraphale all along. She thought she knew what was best, and she barrelled along without listening to anyone else, and then it went horribly wrong.

There is a reason why both times this season that we see Aziraphale fucking up someone else’s plan (the corpse to sell, Crowley’s contraband whiskey) because he initially reads it as a bad thing and thinks he’s doing good by destroying it, without having the full context, it backfires on him and then the situation has to be fixed. He needs to stop and understand things properly before taking actions. He needs, in short, to ask questions.

We see that the one time he did ask questions before acting was during the whole Job thing, and it worked out the best out of all the sub plots this season, right? … except that Aziraphale was convinced that he would Fall for his actions there. The way Crowley had fallen for asking questions.

And if the only person whose assessment of the situation matches Aziraphale’s is a demon, if the only one who is doing what he personally thinks is the Right Thing is a demon, then gosh… either that means that Aziraphale himself should therefore also be a demon, OR it means that Crowley shouldn’t be one, and this was all just one big misunderstanding, and maybe if I just speak to the manager…?

[eroguron0nsense]

Garp, Fascism, and Parental Failure

Garp is truly one of the most interesting One Piece characters for me because of the extent to which his dogged, relentless devotion to a fascist system–and the supposed "order" it promises to uphold in the face of anarchy or rebellion–perseveres no matter how many times it fails him and his son and his grandsons. He's fully aware of the deep-seated corruption and atrocity, and feels some kind of moral obligation to bend its rules to protect the innocent (as we can see with his attempts to protect Rouge and Ace), but when faced with widespread femicide and infanticide, genocide, slavery and endless examples of egregious cruelty, he is unable to comprehend the notion that the system is indefensible, or that the only moral choice he can possibly make when faced with that level of atrocity is to leave and resist it. His son recognizing the inherent, inexcusable failures of the World Government and its armed enforcers–literally quitting the force to start a revolution– changes nothing. The order to slaughter pregnant people and infants at Baterilla can't convince him otherwise. The countless instances of bribery, the tolerance of atrocity from state-sanctioned privateers, everything about the history of the Valley of the Gods are all things he's aware of, and takes issue with, but never comes to the conclusion that he cannot affect positive change within a system designed for oppression. The public execution of his grandson–a prime example of the marine's fundamentally irrational, arrogant, vindictive cruelty clearly bound to blow up in all of their faces even before their Pyrrhic victory at the summit war–makes him waver, but even when confronted with this obvious, indefensible injustice against a child he raised and rescued by people seeking to murder him on live TV and desecrate his corpse as a show of power, he cannot bring himself to act against it in any meaningful way no matter how much it hurts him to leave his grandson to die. If he can't veto it, he'll stay Vice Admiral and suffer through Ace being sacrificed on the altar of fascist state control, and functionally leave Luffy for dead in the process while he's at it. He fails every single person he wanted to love–Ace, Luffy, and almost certainly Dragon–and allows himself to be reluctantly complicit in countless crimes against humanity again and again and again because he's so deeply steeped in this notion of preservation of order through state control that he convinces himself that even this disgusting, atrocious, fundamentally flawed and untenable excuse for a government is better than abolition, better than revolution, or just the act of expecting accountability or literally anything better from the systems that issue false promises to protect you. Dadan beating the living shit out of him and calling him a failure as a grandfather, as a self proclaimed defender of the people, is one of the most important scenes in the Postwar Arc because a lesser series might frame Garp as a tragic, helpless figure suffering more than anyone else due to conflict of love and duty, but One Piece refuses to whitewash his actions/inaction or allow the grief and suffering caused by systems he's complicit in to take precedence over its real victims: the D brothers.

There's so much I could say about statism and anarchism and the ways people have internalized the supposed necessity of state violence to the extent they can't oppose that violence even when it ruins them or their loved ones, but that horrible indoctrination and its devastating consequences for both him and his family are what makes Garp so fascinating to watch and so thematically/politically important to One Piece as a whole.

[wndaswife]

genesis, awakening | thérèse raquin & fem!reader

Moving to Paris didn't present Thérèse with the life she initially expected until a young woman visits the haberdashery.

Word count: 12 107

Tags: smut, fluff, masturbation, cunnilingus, face-riding, so much on symbolism and their many thematic components, can you tell i just finished reading a certain hunger, and also, i hope you will enjoy this as much as i do: power bottom!thérèse raquin | MINORS DNI

In her earlier years, Thérèse thought quite a bit about her father. She wondered when he would come back and what he was doing and when he’d send his next letter. She imagined that all she had yet to hear from him were stories he would tell her in a near future when he would come back to collect her as he had promised, away from Madame and Camille and Vernon’s dull French countryside.

Once Thérèse turned fourteen, things began to change for her; Madame gave her more responsibility, more demanding homeschooling, and she, by Madame’s account, was now a blossoming young woman.

Initially, thoughts of Thérèse’s father remained, for she worried that once she grew out of childhood, her relationship with her father would inevitably differ immensely from when he had last seen her. After all, he had only ever known Thérèse as a child, and now that she no longer was, what made her any different from any other passing woman?

When Thérèse was given the letter from Madame notifying the family that her father had passed, it had been a few months at that point since she last thought of her father, and it had only been in briefly passing curiosity. 

Over the years, Thérèse’s responsibilities became plentiful, and she became increasingly preoccupied with the concerns of her day-to-day life with Camille and Madame. She hardly had any time for herself — even her very thoughts became overtaken with the weight dumped onto her shoulders for her, and her only, to carry for the household. 

Her life, initially only indebted towards Camille and Madame for giving her a home, soon became theirs, similar to property.

Last summer, when Thérèse was told that she, Camille, and Madame would be moving to Paris, she imagined countless different paths her life could take from then on, divulging from the monotonous countryside life she’d always been accustomed to. 

In her mind, there were thousands of different ways the move to Paris could have gone for her. For example, she imagined meeting friends and making them on her own, travelling — if the shop’s earnings became bountiful enough — and, in general, feeling like her life was truly her own, and that she didn’t have to spend the rest of her life paying anyone back for the fact that Madame had taken her in when her father could no longer care for her.

But nothing seemed to change aside from the fact that, atop of still being expected to tend to Madame’s every whim and care for Camille as both a wife and a second doting mother, Thérèse was now expected to help run the haberdashery.

Although it was both her and Madame that took part in running it, Madame was often dozing off or partaking in her own interests around their tiny, dingy Parisian home, often only coming down from the arcade when a shop patron had an inquiry or a request that Thérèse wasn’t sure how to approach on her own. But as Thérèse’s experience with running the business became increasingly comprehensive overtime, there was little to no reason for Madame to come and assist her at all.

It wasn’t necessarily that Thérèse needed Madame’s help, but rather that she didn’t want to have to run a business at all. 

In fact, Thérèse didn’t want to live the life she was living to begin with; running a haberdashery in the suffocating little alleyway of Passage du Pont Neuf was never anything she had imagined for herself once plans were made to move to Paris. 

Thérèse wished desperately for someone to blame for the way things had turned out, for if there wasn’t anyone to take the blame for what had happened, then it would become clear that the way things were was the way things were always going to be. If there was no causal reason for the life she was living, then she’d have no choice but to accept the fact that the way her life was playing out was simply its natural course.

Initially, Thérèse had even tried to blame herself for how things were, for it was her endless fantasising and romanticising that led her to be as disappointed as she ended up becoming. But even in blaming herself, there had to be some inevitable form of correction she would’ve had to uptake, and that would mean putting away her fantasies and dreams.

But without even the imagination that things could be better — and in Thérèse’s wildest fantasies, her life would not only be better, but it’d be a life that she truly enjoyed living — then she’d have nothing else but to accept the way things were. She feared that perhaps she’d grow into Madame, or even duller than she, if that were possible.

Thérèse’s life had no defining landmark, no deviating paths but the one she was placed on the moment she began living with Camille and Madame. 

Since last summer, and it was spring now, Thérèse felt entirely trapped; she felt that she didn’t belong to herself, that nothing she did would ever escape the future that was inevitably laid out for her, and that not even her thoughts could wander very far from the reality of her life.

Even the very reaches of language couldn’t very well belong to her either as she wasn’t sure if ‘miserable’ was a way to describe her life, nor ‘dull’ or ‘boring,’ for how could her life be any of those things if it had never been anything different?

She felt no different from a walking corpse, similar to the brief amount of time a chicken has before the rest of its body hits the ground even after its been decapitated, turned into an infinite stretch into the future. 

But she could not even pretend under any veil, no matter how heavy nor opaque, that she wasn’t alive. Perhaps things would’ve been easier on her if she could at least fool herself into believing that everything she did was of another’s will — anyone else’s but her own — but she felt it in the boundless pit in her chest, the weight in her stomach, the gravity pulling at her limbs each time she arose in the morning. She knew she was alive and that she did what she did willingly because she felt it.

It’d be easier, at least, if her actions were not her own; being a coward and a slave to a life she hated was perhaps her heaviest burden.

With the peak of the spring, the normally dingy suffocating Passage du Pont Neuf was especially constricting; the tiny passageway was overcome by the heat of the sun and the humidity from the past rains, the mossy faded rooftop panelings and stone walls shining dull and damp and mean and unappealing. 

Just after lunchtime, when the sun reached its peak and stretched up above the tall buildings of the alley, Thérèse could finally lay her eyes on something worth looking at through the windows of the haberdashery, sitting at the shop’s counter with François endlessly dozing in her lap.

With her chin in the palm of her hands and her fingers gently stroking the soft white fur of the quietly purring cat, Thérèse let herself bask in the warmth of the afternoon sun. She closed her eyes and let her breathing grow steady, with every second resembling more and more the mild-mannered cat sleeping in her lap.

Surrounded by the silence of the still shop and the faint purring from François, it felt as if Thérèse’s body was gently thrumming from the outside in, the stagnant hum of her surroundings blanketing her body with the gentle heat of the sun.

The chime of the bell by the door didn’t wake her from her conscious dozing — it was the approaching steps towards the counter that made Thérèse finally open her eyes. She blinked away the sunlight and quickly repositioned herself so she looked presentable.

Even François stirred awake at her body’s sudden jolt, and he lept from her lap and, with great yawning stretches of his lithe white body, headed off beyond the curtain that divided the shop from the arcade’s staircase. 

“I am sorry to have woken you and your cat,” the customer apologised in a way that seemed genuine. 

Thérèse turned her attention away from the escaping François to the customer in front of her, only for her eyes to meet the most beautiful thing she’d ever had the fortune to lay her eyes on — in fact, perhaps the more beautiful thing that’s ever found itself in Passage Pont du Neuf. 

Her cheeks immediately flushed and she looked down at the counter, initially stuttering before she finally spoke an: “It’s alright. I shouldn’t have been dozing.”

She searched, panicked, for things to say, and when her eyes ran over the small box of multicoloured buttons on the shelf under the counter, Thérèse remembered that she was running a shop — not simply talking with a beautiful stranger she met while doing errands. 

She raised her head and looked down at your arms, avoiding gazing upon your face lest she grow even more distracted, and saw that you were holding a generously-sized box in your arms, your forearms upturned with your fingers wrapped along its front-facing edge.

At the sight of the way Thérèse eyed the box, you carefully placed the case on the counter and pulled up the top to reveal a carefully-folded dress inside. “For a special occasion,” you said, “I want to have some of this dress fixed up since it has been moved around quite a bit since last spring until I stored it away to bring it here.”

Thérèse watched as you took the dress out of the box carefully; your delicate fingers tucked themselves under the folded dress, slowly unfolding it so you could lay it on the counter and display it out flat for her. Her eyes flickered up to your face occasionally, hoping that with each glance of your face, she could slowly build a detailed mental image of what you looked like without having to stare like she desperately wished she could.

She thought you were pretty, and that it was cruel that a face like yours had to suffer the backdrop of Passage Du Pont Neuf that lay beyond the confines of the constricting haberdashery. 

Suddenly Thérèse felt embarrassed, and she wondered if she herself gave off a impression alike to the rest of the old shop and the narrow passageway of damp moss and cracked stone walls and rushing crowds who wanted to do everything but spend another moment along the path they took only as a shortcut to get to where they needed to be — somewhere doubtlessly eternally more fascinating than where Thérèse currently was and would always remain.

“I was curious if I might possibly get a replacement for the lace trim,” you said and ran your finger along the underside of the trim that trailed down the sides of four pale yellow buttons that led down from the dress’ collar.

When you looked up from the dress to look at Thérèse curiously, she realised she had inadvertently begun staring at you in the way that she had kept trying to avoid while you were speaking earlier, though she couldn’t recall exactly when she started staring. She swallowed and adjusted herself then looked down at the dress to examine the lace you had pointed out.

She felt her cheeks begin to flush as her face was in the general direction of where the dress was, and from her inability to meet your eyes, it almost seemed like you were looking directly at her instead of the lace.

Absently, she started playing with the loose strands of her hair that had escaped from its braid in an attempt to both hide some of her face and adjust her appearance.

“If you are looking to maintain the original design, I do not believe we have this exact kind of lace here,” Thérèse thought aloud then leaned to the side to pull out a box of carefully-stored lace trims of different patterns, shades, and material. They were organised so one would be able to see each pattern while they were set down. “The lace on your dress seems Italian in design, and we only have one kind of lace from Italy, but even this looks too far off from what your dress has.” She pointed to the one at the left corner of the box and your eyes followed curiously.

“The only kind we have with a pattern like yours is this one,” Thérèse pointed to the different kind of lace to the right, “though it is far more dense and visibly not as expensive.”

The familiar language of the haberdasher made Thérèse forget for a moment that she was standing in front of you — whomever you were, since she had yet to officially know — until she looked back up for a response and found herself facing you again. She straightened her back and rubbed the pads of her fingers under the smooth underside of the shop’s counter, feeling anxious for a reason she could not explicate even to herself.

There was a girl who used to frequent the Seine one summer when Thérèse was younger. The girl visited the Seine regularly that summer for her father worked as a fisherman somewhere along the river’s currents and was positioned there for the season. 

When they first met, and it had been during one of the many occasions Thérèse took time for herself in the afternoon after Madame’s homeschooling lessons, a young Thérèse understood her fascination for the girl around her age to be due solely because of the girl’s tales about her father — a father she travelled with, a father who was ever present in her life.

Perhaps this might have been true at the time, for it was hours talking about her fisherman father that the two spent meeting up in the afternoons after Thérèse’s lessons and while the other girl’s father was too occupied for the girl to have any business loitering around fish and their fishermen.

But even after Thérèse saw her for the very last time, since her father was working by the Seine only for the summer, it was not her tales of her father that Thérèse thought of. In fact, Thérèse thought frequently about the girl — and the girl only. 

She thought of her hair and how it looked the perfect shade of the fireplace in Madame’s living room when it was set aflame, but only when the fire first leaps from the wood at its initial ignition, for the shade of her hair ignited something similar within Thérèse that could simply not analogise properly should it be compared to a fire that had long been burning. 

She thought of the colour of her eyes similar to the depths of the Seine that Thérèse could only see from the land’s surface and would never find herself coming close enough in order to make out a shade with her own eyes; the Seine, though beautiful, was far too dangerous to approach with proximity at that age. Though after having stared into such a vibrant shade of deep blue for nearly all of that summer, any curiosity she previously had of the Seine's deepest colours were sated and even paled in comparison to the mere recollection of her.

That was the last Thérèse had ever had her thoughts so preoccupied with another in that way until now. There were passing strangers, of course, that Thérèse glanced at more than once when she could and thought of for a few moments afterwards, and even other shop patrons that Thérèse found rather charming.

But she could not stop looking at you, and she felt silly for she did not even know your name, and you likely did not care to know hers.

“Oh,” you said, leaning over the box of lace and taking a closer look. There were some frayed parts of the lace that could not be fixed due to its original intricate stitching, and some parts that had become simply lost through the months of being moved around for space conservation and whatnot; it had to be completely redone with new lace.

Your fingernail grazed against your bottom lip and you confessed, “I am not quite sure which would look the best as a replacement. To be honest, I do not know very much about fabrics and stitching and all such things ladies ought to know.”

That made Thérèse smile, inexplicably. She thought you were endearing, and for some strange reason, your mention that you were put to the same constricting standards of being a lady in Paris as she was developed within Thérèse a certain fondness for you.

“I understand,” she told you with a friendly smile. “I could restitch the new lace for you. This dress seems rather important to you, so I would understand if you rather a stranger didn’t touch it in your place.”

You lit up at the suggestion and questioned, “Truly? I wouldn’t want to tax you with such labour.”

Thérèse promised, “It would truly be no trouble at all.”

“How much more will it cost?” you inquired and began sorting through the francs you brought.

In quick protest, Thérèse reached over the counter and brushed her fingers against your knuckles before leaning back and keeping to herself as quickly as she had reached out to touch you. “It’s alright.”

You looked at her and Thérèse felt panic rise within her, recalling that the two of you were indeed strangers, and she had no reason to do such a favour for you. She didn’t meet your eyes long enough to decipher the way in which you regarded her, for she’d soon die of humiliation if you regarded her as someone strange.

“It calls for a very simple kind of stitching, and we have been trying to gain a reputation as a tailory as well as a haberdashery; the stitching at the moment is included in the price of the lace,” Thérèse explained. “However I completely understand if you would rather a more officiated shop did the stitching for you, or even if you preferred to do it yourself.”

To Thérèse’s relief, you replied, “Ah, I see. In that case, since it isn’t too laborious for you, it would be fine.”

Thérèse was surprised — pleasantly, even — that you were so considerate of her time and effort. 

If all this for a stranger, how much more for your lovers?

The thought made her wobble.

“May I have your name?” Thérèse asked and opened a small notebook in which all the shop’s patrons were sorted and organised by their purchases. When you gave her your name, she found herself overcome with a feeling of euphoria writing each letter of it, asking for the exact spelling, and having your name stored so that you could not stray very far from the shop that you likely wouldn’t ever visit again once she was finished with your dress.

It was painfully unprofessional, what Thérèse did next, telling you that you could pick up your dress next week due to the other tailoring that had to be done before yours, which was to say that there was none, actually, since she had earlier lied about the haberdashery wanting to take up more tailoring orders. She did not want to have to see you for the last time so soon, so she withheld it for another week.

She was in an endless cycle of unprofessionalism, it seemed, for next, she told you that when you picked up your order next week, you ought to ask for Thérèse. There were two reasons she told you that — firstly, because it was unlikely that Madame would be working by the counter, there was no reason for you to need to know her name if it was she herself that was going to tend to you either way, and she wanted desperately for you to know her name as she did yours, and secondly, because if there was a chance that it was Madame out front instead of her, your asking for her would leave no room for Thérèse missing the chance to see you again.

But all her lack of professionalism’s accompanied guilt was soon disregarded when you asked, “You are Thérèse?”

Something crept up Thérèse’s spine when you said her name and made her shiver. She nodded. “Yes.”

“I like that name very much. It’s very pretty,” you told her and smiled politely. “I will remember to ask for you.”

Thérèse could almost faint.

Over the week, Thérèse did her very best carefully restitching the lace trim for you with the kind you chose from the box. She wanted to add something else to the design in the attitude of some form of a gift or something similar, but she had to maintain the dress’ original integrity and she knew when to not cross any boundaries.

After all, she was still a haberdasher, and women’s fashion was seen with high regard in Paris — this she was quick to learn once moving from Vernon to the city — so she knew quite well how to handle clothing.

When she was finished restitching the trim, she held it up by the top of its sleeves so she could see it upright and flat. She imagined you wearing it, and though she didn’t know very much about you, she imagined she got to know a little bit just by looking at the dress and knowing it was the kind and the style you would like to wear for an occasion that was special.

It was a shame you were only a visitor of the shop; she would have enjoyed getting to a woman with such exquisite taste in clothing. She still would have enjoyed getting to know you, frankly, even if you had horrendous taste in clothing. 

A week after you had visited the shop, Thérèse was waiting for your arrival with your dress carefully folded back into the box you had given it to her in. She decided to give you a small extra roll of the lace you chose as a gift in case you wanted to make any more alterations or in case you simply just liked it and wanted it for more of your garments. 

This time, when you arrived, Thérèse was completely awake and could not even think of dozing off, not even if she tried, for she’d been thinking of seeing you since the moment she awoke in the morning. 

After reassuring Madame that she could take the day off to rest, as she would have either way, Thérèse had the whole shop to herself. 

When you entered the shop, you were carrying a small basket concealed by a patterned cloth. Upon approaching Thérèse, you laid the basket onto the counter and greeted her. She was curious about the basket, and even François seemed to be too, for he rose from his place along the wall and sniffed at the basket. 

“François,” Thérèse warned and swatted him away quickly, to which he lept off from the counter and walked off. “I apologise,” she said. 

“It’s quite alright,” you reassured with a smile that Thérèse thought was just painfully charming. You reached over to the basket and uncovered it, revealing a small sealed jar of what looked to be strawberry or cherry jam, freshly sliced bread, and another jar of a medley of different berries. “This is for you — as a thank you for doing the restitching.”

Out of all the ways Thérèse fantasised about this afternoon with you — and she did, quite a bit — this was certainly not one of the ways. “Oh, please, no, it’s okay,” she told you. “Please, don’t. I was glad to do the stitching for you.”

“You are glad to do your own labour,” you slid the basket closer to her, “and I am glad to do mine.”

Thérèse searched your expression for any hint that you might be convinced to change your mind, but you seemed stubborn. She thought this was endearing too. She liked your kind heart and how eager you seemed. 

Then she looked down at the basket and sorted through it with her eyes. “This must have cost you a large sum,” she said, looking back up at you with a shy smile.

“Not at all,” you answered. You thought she looked cute when she was finally accepting your gift, the guise of the shopkeeper now pulled back to reveal the shy young woman behind it. You wondered what she was thinking. “My family owns farmland near Vernon, and I visited this past weekend and thought to bring you some of their jams and berries, but the bread I did get fresh from a bakery this morning.”

“Your family lives near Vernon?” Thérèse asked, her interest piqued. She had always regarded Vernon with such disdain and hoped that she might never have to visit again, but associating such a place with someone like you made her regard it differently. She never imagined that anything but her own resented memories could reside there. “My family and I moved from there in the summer.”

“Do you miss it very much?”

The question was almost comedic, but Thérèse thought it would be impolite to laugh. “Quite the opposite,” she answered. “I was glad to move from Vernon, but honestly, I haven’t had much chance to explore Paris aside from my walks in the mornings.”

“I understand,” you told her sympathetically. Thérèse melted. “I enjoy visiting, but I can hardly sit still in the countryside for more than a weekend.”

Before Thérèse could panic about what to say next to fill any impending silence, you said, “But you are interested in the city? Exploring more of it?”

“Exceedingly.”

“If you have a day off from the shop, I could show you around Paris,” you offered.

Thérèse felt her face flush with warmth. “Sh-Show me around?” she repeated.

The soft pink of Thérèse’s cheeks made you smile. 

You said, “If you don’t mind, then I would love to.”

Straightening and playing with the sleeves of her dress, Thérèse answered, “I wouldn’t mind at all. I would love to accompany you. Thank you.”

A brief moment of silence did indeed end up passing between the two of you, but instead, filled with a kind of warmth that made Thérèse both elated and weak in the knees. She felt that she had made her first friend in Paris, and more importantly, it seemed that you wanted to spend time with her too. 

You were grateful for Thérèse’s restitching and especially grateful for the additional lace she gave you, and you discussed which day the two of you would be able to spend time together.

Thérèse was most flexible to whichever day was best for you, for she knew Madame would be thrilled that she had made a friend — not that she would ever get the chance to meet you for a while, for she wanted you to be privy to only her for as long as possible. 

Next Tuesday was mutually decided upon.

Alike to Thérèse’s fascination with you — although you didn’t yet know how mutual the feeling was, of course — you weren’t quite sure what had come over you when you offered to show her around Paris. Initially, you told yourself it was because she used to be a resident of Vernon, and familial sentimentality led you towards the urge to show her around Paris.

But your thoughts about Thérèse, when you had them, and you often did, were very rarely if ever related to Vernon or any form of familial sentimentality.

Thérèse and how she took form in your mind started with her hair, dark brown and smooth, and immediately after came her skin, seemingly translucent in its delicate shade of porcelain cream and tinted with the pink of her flushing cheeks when you were lucky enough to see her grow bashful at your words. Then came her voice and its girlish elegant placidity, then her eyes and her lips, the slope of her nose and the curve of her chin.

You wondered, especially, how she was beyond the confines of the haberdashery and beyond the walls of Passage du Pont Neuf. Inexplicably, though it could be easily attributed to knowing her no further than within the environment of the shop, it was difficult for you to imagine Thérèse beyond the gloomy shadows of the narrow alleyway or from beyond the counter of the shop.

That was not to say anything about who she was as a person — after all, how could you presently have anything substantial to say about who she was — but rather the kinds of circumstances she was under. In the curious glints of her eyes and the lithe cat-like movements of her elegantly-moving body as if trained to maintain such composure laid something in slumber, larger than the stillness of Passage du Pont Neuf.

Over the week until the upcoming Tuesday, you steadily began to feel guilty for how often you were thinking of Thérèse, for your scrutiny of her made it seem to you that you were subconsciously treating her as a subject of some kind of personal research endeavour — but this could not be further from the truth. Truly, Thérèse interested you, and it was merely your disturbance with your own fascination in her that began manifesting into guilt in order to avoid coming to the realisation that you simply could not stop thinking about her.

One could almost label your thoughts of Thérèse as perverse, and you did not want to be labelled a predator, even by your own moral judgement.

When Tuesday arrived, Madame agreed to run the shop while Thérèse had plans elsewhere, feeling pleased, frankly, that Thérèse had finally made what she described to be a friend. 

Madame knew Thérèse to be gloomy and hollow of passion and vivacity, which was not so much a concern to Madame Raquin and it was an irritant, particularly because her niece’s sombre nature often became much too suffocating for the small confines of the shop. It was only when she scolded Thérèse for her lack of spirit in front of the shop’s patrons that she at least began making efforts towards behaving as typical girls of her age did. At the very least, she was willing to wed Camille and willing to run the haberdashery, albeit because Thérèse had very little personal reservations of her own as to have any opinion about anything at all, or at least, if she did have opinions, they weren’t ever pressing enough to escape the confines of the often critically-judgemental mind that Madame knew laid beyond the line of her motionless pale pink lips.

You had it in your plans, though you did not disclose this to Thérèse in the spirit of keeping it a surprise for her, to visit Jardin des Plantes. It was your personal favourite spot to go when you wrote and when you needed time for yourself, and when you first moved to Paris many years ago, it was also the first place you felt yourself drawn to.

In some ways, taking Thérèse there was both an invitation into how you understood Paris in its essence and an invitation into your own personal world; there was more to your interactions with Thérèse than a tourist to a newcomer, for there was a personal investment too, a personal interest in bringing yourself closer to her.

The two of you walked your way towards the botanical garden, taking the path you normally would to and from your place of work. To you, it was typical, but for Thérèse, it was as if she had only moved from Vernon the day prior. You could not believe how little of Paris she had seen, and selfishly, perhaps, you were glad and proud that it was you who was introducing her to what she had long been missing.

Conversation with Thérèse was endless.

You spoke of your occupation as a writer for a periodical, which Thérèse found fascinating and immediately wanted to know more about — What do you write about? Do you like it? How did you find yourself coming into a career of writing? Were you always a writer? — your childhood in Vernon and the rest of your years in Paris, your tastes in literature, and countless other things that Thérèse’s piqued interest never strayed far from.

You asked about Thérèse too, of course, about her arranged marriage to her cousin Camille, her aunt, her opinions on Paris, her own childhood and years in Vernon before moving away, and most interestingly to you, her ambitions and dreams.

She was an ambitious person, with hopes for herself and her future that stretched far beyond the reaches of her family or Passage du Pont Neuf. Perhaps laid to rest years prior, such hopes seemed to reawaken at the taste of freedom now that she had distance from all that she wished to move onwards from. But where she would go if she had achieved such separation, Thérèse did not know, and so she believed she could only ever dream and never accomplish.

During your walk, you discovered a vividness about Thérèse, a brilliance, an ignition of light that had its sights set far from the shadows of Passage du Pont Neuf and the Raquin family’s haberdashery. But in the gardens, there was fragility and sensitivity, and you found yourself equating her to the flowers she was immediately absorbed by.

Thérèse was gentle with the flowers and plants, careful not to disturb them from their natural paths of growth, even as she walked among them, yet all the while incredibly fascinated and captivated by them. She had never before seen so many different kinds of flowers of such vivid colours and appearances, much less the incredibly long vines that reached up the arches of the bridges over the water and up the brick walls of some buildings and such well-designed shrubs as if carved by hand.

In the Vernon, where Thérèse had seen the most plants, there was no such colour nor plant so alive, so grateful to be in the environment in which it grew.

At a particular plant, Thérèse paused and looked at it, leaning down slightly and surveying it.

“What is this?” she asked you, pointing a hesitant finger at the pink and green plant who, in its centre, was budding and growing healthy white flowers. “This one with the teeth.”

You came to her side and Thérèse straightened. When she did, she brushed your shoulder, and in response, she stepped closer so the length of her arm was pressed against yours. 

To the green and pink plant and its blossoming flowers, you answered, “Dionaea muscipula — the Venus Flytrap.”

The name sounded silly to Thérèse, and she laughed.

“It traps flies?” she asked.

“Yes,” you answered, equally as humoured. With a hand on her lower back, you encouraged her to step forward so you could demonstrate something. Blushing, Thérèse nearly missed your demonstration for how you touched her body and how she stared at your face. You started speaking again, and she forced herself to look at the plant.

Gently as to not bend the plant where it should not be, you laid a steady finger between what Thérèse described as an open mouth with its needle-shaped teeth.

“See how it closes — slowly,” you said. 

“It closes slowly,” Thérèse noted, “yet its prey is still devoured?”

You removed your finger from the plant’s trap and watched as it very steadily returned to its original open-mouthed position. “I believe the pink colour of the trap is appealing for the flies, and that it emits a certain scent that is alike to the nectar the fly seeks for nutrition. The fly believes — perhaps, anyway, I am not sure — that it is eating from the plant. The plant is slow and attractive enough to keep it from straying. The ‘teeth’ prevent its escape once it's closed enough.”

After a silent moment of thought and perhaps of admiration of the fascinating plant, Thérèse asked, “And its name, after that of Venus?”

“If I were to make a guess as to why it was named after Venus, I might be inclined to say that it is due to its appearance,” you supposed. “The pink of the inside and the white flowers, especially. It’s a beautiful plant.”

Beauty, yes — Thérèse conceded. But Venus, in her representation, was not only significant in her symbolic nature of beauty and femininity, but also desire, sex, and prosperity.

And Thérèse could not help but find that the alluring shape of the flytrap represented that of which was particularly vulvar.

When Thérèse arrived back home just before dinner, Madame and Camille were set to leave to celebrate a promotion Camille had just gotten within his place of employment. Their plans involved dinner with several of Camille’s work acquaintances and some of Madame’s friends that often came to Thursday’s dominoes games.

Her presence at this celebration had evidently not been anticipated nor planned, for both Madame and Camille seemed hesitant in what to do once she arrived slightly earlier than either of them anticipated.

Fortunately for them — and for Thérèse, too — she was in no mood to do anything but stay at home, and to this, they graciously permitted without protest.

That evening, Thérèse was restless, but a sort of restlessness that was distinct from what could typically be attributed to night terrors. From the restlessness that derived from night terrors, she would tie herself up in the mess of her bedsheets as she tossed and turned, desperate for slumber to overtake her. In trying to shut her eyes, shadows would become foes and an unsettling fear would dig its way into her stomach, paralysing her. 

But tonight was different — and exceptionally so.

There was restlessness, indeed, and a gnawing in her stomach was surely present, and a paralysis-like possession certainly overcame her, but what made this restless evening different from that of what was haunted by night terrors was that she was not overcome by any sort of fright.

In fact, it was quite the opposite.

There was a thrumming in her stomach, a simmering of the blood in her veins, a greedy possession that overcame her with urgency in the likeness of paralysis, but it was not quite that either — it was not paralysis for Thérèse did not lack any ability to move. Rather, the subtle tension within the base of her stomach and the pumping of her heart and its accompanying adrenaline made Thérèse want to do everything but stay still.

But what was she to do aside from lay still and fall asleep, she did not know.

There was something awakening from a long slumber deep within her, having been so deeply-shrouded that Thérèse herself was little acquainted with it.

By God, what was this urgency that her body kept clawing towards? It was as if her very skin was an obstacle for this awakening beast, and it called for her to act on it, to move in accordance to its will.

In closing her eyes, shutting them tightly, it was not imaginary shadow foes that came to the forefront of her mind, but you. It was your face she imagined; it was your voice; it was your scent; it was your fingers. 

Her body took the form of another, and it was your perfume she smelled in her hair when she lolled her head to the side. It was your hands that pulled her nightgown up to pool around her hips, and your fingers that dipped into the slope beyond that of her smooth lower belly. Her thoughts were comprehended through the sound of your voice, telling her to release, release, release.

The tight wet velvet embrace that greeted Thérèse’s fingers when she entered herself, she understood as her own, but it was your touch that drove her to pleasure. The quickening speed of her fingers and her other hand and its wandering, a soft palm beneath the linen of her nightgown and up the expanse of her stomach, pads of her fingers pressing into the dips of her ribs and further, further until she groped her breast so harsh it made her whimper — it was your doing, and this ferocious beast that had been scratching at her skin from the inside, howling to escape, was you.

When Thérèse reached her peak and laid a sweaty panting mess atop her bed in the bedroom lit dimly by a flittering singular candlelight on the bedside table, she returned to herself. 

In the silence of her bedroom, still feeling the gentle tremors of her harsh, desperate release, Thérèse realised that what she had done was of her own doing. Where else were you but where you currently were, in your own bedroom, perhaps, dreaming and slumbering, apart from her.

There was no one else but her, and it was she who was the awoken, the desperate, the howls for recognition. 

She was this predatory beast, predating on herself.

In spite of having reached her hilt of pleasure, Thérèse felt herself aching for more, and it does no good to cannibalise oneself. 

She needed prey. 

She would take you whole.

In the morning, Thérèse wrote to you through the post you had provided her in the case that she might have wanted to reach you when you could not see each other. During the stroll back to Passage du Pont Neuf, you both expressed an interest in seeing each other again, but unfortunately, you’d be busy with the attendance and planning of your brother’s wedding for several days after that Tuesday. So she wrote in hopes that the two of you could plan the next time you might be able to see one another.

She wrote to you about the Thursday evening games of dominoes and sometimes cards, and that she would like to have you in attendance next week, for she knew you could not attend this week’s upcoming game.

The impatient days tending to the shop and awaiting next week’s evening game were painfully dull and ridden with anxiety-like compulsions. The awakening in Thérèse had arisen much too far from its place of previous resting and could not be put to bed, and it made her pace and pace, nitpick at her clothing, twirl her hair around, organise and reorganise the shop’s inventory. 

Even Madame had realised, though she was assuaged and convinced when Thérèse simply told her that with the upcoming summer and the gradually-warming weather, she had begun to feel a tinge of spryness bubble from within her as if it were out from its hibernation. 

The excuse, Thérèse thought, was rather humorous, for it was not some low bubbling of gently arising energy that had begun to form within her, but a vicious hunger so demanding and starved that it was painful. 

Her beating desire, however, was alleviated for a day or two once she received your correspondence from the post, writing back in your ever so beautiful and delicate handwriting that you would indeed be able to attend next Thursday’s game — and also that you greatly anticipated seeing her again.

Thérèse read over your letter again and again as if taking each word into her mouth and chewing it, running her tongue over every written letter and swing of your ink pen against the coarse page. But it was not enough — it was not you.

So she waited, pacing, organising and reorganising, brooding over her lack of you, until next Thursday came.

When Thursday came, you arrived, and punctually so. 

Coincidentally, you had met with one of Madame’s friends on the way to the game — never mind how you came to realise the two of you were headed to the same place for this was not of pressing concern for Thérèse — and so it was Madame who first greeted you at the door. 

From the kitchen beyond the dining room, Thérèse could hear you introducing yourself to Madame. 

It was a bit of a shame, for Thérèse had wanted to keep you to herself for as long as she could, but if she wanted you within the short span of time in which her dwindling patience would not allow for any further waiting, she had to make some sacrifice. 

As the guests filed into the dining room, Thérèse came forth from the kitchen with a serving platter of a pot of tea and several cups, and your eyes caught onto hers. She could tell that you had been curiously awaiting her arrival, wondering where it was that she had gone while you took a seat at the table. 

Your curiosity remained even as she left once more to fetch another serving plate of danishes and tarts, and remained, still, when she returned; you meant to ask why she was not taking a seat at the table. 

One of the guests had forgotten to stow away their hat along with their light coat at the entry hall, and Thérèse obediently took it for him and left the dining room to the entryway to hang the man’s hat up. 

You excused yourself and followed her. 

“Thérèse,” you called after her, your voice hushed within the silence apart from the busy dining room. 

She hung the hat from the coat hanger and turned to you. “Y/N,” she greeted and smiled. “How was your brother’s wedding?”

“A bore,” you answered immediately. Then you added quickly, “Though, I am happy for him, indeed. Many blessings to the wedded couple.”

Amused by your crassness, Thérèse’s smile widened and she nodded, “Indeed. Blessings.”

“I was hoping you might play alongside me tonight,” you confessed. “I’m no good at dominoes.”

Thérèse told you, “I do not play.”

“Why not?”

She didn’t believe she had an actual answer, frankly. Why didn’t she play? She sat to the side, primarily, by the window at the corner of the dining room, ready to serve food and drinks and open the window when requested. 

At her silence, you did away with your original question and then said instead, “You invited me to play a game in which you are not participating? I wished to spend time with you tonight.”

Your frustration excited Thérèse. She felt her hunger spike. 

“Disappointed?” she asked. 

“Rather.”

Your frustration was not that of which could be compared to critical judgement, but a state of vulnerability, an expression of a lack — a lack of her. 

Thérèse could sympathise with your dissatisfaction.

“I apologise. I invited you with the sole intention of seeing you, and I dearly wanted to, but I did not consider that past seeing you, we could do nothing else.” She stepped closer. “After the game, perhaps we might go for a walk. I’ve yet to see where you live.”

The corners of your lips pulled into a delicate smile and Thérèse swooned. “Then another walk it is,” you affirmed. 

Thérèse was unsure what had been going through her mind when she imagined that her hunger would be sated, or at least partially, once she was finally able to see you again. She sat in the corner of the dining room, sometimes getting up to serve drinks and desserts, passing by you often and meeting your eyes even more frequently. 

But she was driven mad sitting apart from you and doing nothing but watching, nothing but seeing. 

In salivation, the object of nutrition is its trigger, an anticipation that one is soon going to digest what is desired. Of course, there are further, more scientific reasons as to why the salivation begins; the brain takes part, primarily, with its neurotransmitters and its comprehension of hunger and craving. But none of it would occur without a subject in mind — the subject to devour, the subject to prey on.

And while watching you socialise and laugh and look over to her occasionally, watching your lips wrap around the rim of your teacup or swallow a bite of the tart from your plate, Thérèse was nearly drooling. 

Her fingers, unless she was imagining it, were trembling ever so slightly as she helped clean the table once the game was over. She brought the dishes to the kitchen and tucked in the dining room chairs. 

Madame encouraged Thérèse to cut her domestic duties short in order to walk you home for you hadn’t ever crossed through Passage du Pont Neuf so late into the night and knew little of where to go from the shop, and Madame had taken a liking to you and how well-mannered you were. 

“Were you amused in seeing me lose as often as I did?” you asked Thérèse after parting from the rest and down the sidewalks that led to your place. 

“I was far more amused seeing you continue to play in spite of how often you lost,” she answered. 

You laughed. “You are a sadist, I think.”

“You were not pained in losing,” Thérèse lightly contested. “I gathered you might even be less entertained if you were to have won.”

“Yes, perhaps.”

You lived in a building that housed several other residents, each with their own residential units, and yours was at the very top with two windows that stretched up close to the partially-angled ceiling. It was spacious enough to fit both your workspace, your kitchen, and your bedroom. There was little divide between these rooms aside from the floorplan in which one had to turn to get to one room or another, but generally, it was a rather open concept apartment unit.

Clearly, it was space enough for a person who lived alone, and the interior design and small fireplace and expansive windows was evident of your bountiful earnings as a writer for the periodical you worked under.

“Will you leave now?” you asked Thérèse once you were both standing in the middle of your apartment.

“You are asking me to?”

In quick specification, you clarified, “No, I mean if it is in your preference to leave. Are you planning on leaving now?”

“Is it in your preference to have me leave?”

Thérèse’s pressing of you made you slightly unsteady and your cheeks warmed. “No,” you said.

She smiled. “Then, no, I will not leave.”

The two of you talked on the couch of your workspace, as you did when you had been on your walk together several days ago. The conversation foresaw no end, and the comfort of being in a place that was privy only to the two of you only encouraged its seemingly infinite stretch. 

You were sitting across from Thérèse, her legs folded on the couch in front of her as she sat horizontally to face you, her knees pulled up and laying against the couch’s back. She had undone her hair so you could now see it in its length, which was unexpected for the way her hair was always done made it seem that it was much shorter than it really was. 

She was elegant and so ladylike.

The soft light from the fireplace across the room, about four metres from the foot of your bed, illuminated her face in a warm glow.

Suddenly, you felt the need to confess. “In the last few days, ever since I asked you to accompany me through Paris, I must admit that you have been going through my mind an awful lot.”

“This is awful?” Thérèse asked, straightening. She didn’t believe that you had truly meant to say that thinking of her was awful, but it really was amusing to see you stutter.

“N-No, I don’t mean that,” you corrected immediately. “I only meant that-that…” You searched for the words and adjusted yourself on the couch. “I felt guilty — perhaps this is the word — for thinking of you so much. To me, it felt predacious.”

To this, it seemed that Thérèse’s eyes seemed to momentarily flicker with ignition. You thought it merely a lick of the flame from the fireplace, reflecting against her eyes. “Is that so?” she inquired, pressing. “What felt… predacious to you?”

“Only that I couldn’t seem to stop thinking of you,” you explained. You shifted, uncomfortable as you exposed to her thoughts that you had been trying to avoid out of the shame that you had been having them. “But it was more so the kinds of ways I thought about you. I thought of things like your hair and… I’m not sure. Your voice, your lips. Silly things like this.” You began to speak quicker as if trying to rid yourself of the taste of your words from atop your tongue. “It felt scrutinising.”

Thérèse seemed to be contemplating something in deep thought as she looked at you. She took a small breath and spoke a confession of her own. “Y/N, I must also admit that I have been thinking similar things. Though, certainly, I would not equate my thoughts of you to scrutiny.”

“To what, then?” You wondered.

“Consumption,” Thérèse said, and the word captured you. 

Trying to understand her usage of the word, you worked through it. “Your thoughts of me… consumed you?”

The glint in Thérèse’s eyes returned and for a second longer than before, and you looked over to the fireplace, now concerned for its constant leaping, only to find it rather docile.

“You misunderstand,” Thérèse said. When you turned, she was rising from her spot on the opposite side of the couch, hair spilling from behind her shoulders, moving onto the heels of her hands as she advanced towards you. Her other hand found your thigh under your dress and the pressure her fingers applied through your clothing made it seem to you that she meant to dig right through its fabric. “It is not I who was being consumed at the thought of you.”

Your breathing quickened and Thérèse only advanced even further up your body to the point that you had to shift back with your elbow resting on the armrest behind you.

Thérèse’s delicate fingers moved their way up your stomach and your chest that was picking up pace in its rising and falling. Her fingernail hooked itself under one of the buttons of your dress and pushed it to the side. You watched as it was nearly pushed beyond its slit to unbutton itself, but Thérèse let it slip from her fingernail. Her fingers wrapped around the collar of your dress and the tips of her fingers grazed against your neck and over your collarbone, nails raking lightly against the warm skin of your chest.

With a hand placed beyond your head and positioned atop of the armrest behind you, Thérèse gave herself height so she could run her eyes down what limited skin your dress’ collar exposed.

“Thinking of you…” Thérèse’s own breath began to quicken. “It was I who was consuming you. How I’ve hungered for you in the past few days, Y/N, salivated over how the salt of the skin of your neck would taste if I were to run my tongue across it, how your body would intertwine with mine.”

Her eyes finally left your clothed body and she met your gaze. “I want you,” she said simply.

You swallowed. “I’d be most pleased if you would have me.”

Her fingers tightened around your collar and she used the leverage to pull you up, slipping herself off from the couch and having you stand along with her.

She undid the buttons on your dress and began to undress you, while you took just a moment to catch up to the realisation that you also ought to be doing the same for her. 

When your arms were free of your dress, Thérèse pushed it further down and tucked a few fingers beneath your crinoline so she could undo it and have it pool to the floor along with your skirts. 

With skilled hands that only a woman could possess, Thérèse undid your corset with precision. Though the process of completely untying a corset was tedious, there was something so delicate and delicious about the way Thérèse undid yours.

You watched as her fingers weaved through the laces and loosened it slowly, steadily. Once or twice, she even looked at you and met your eyes as she did, her eyes having ignited with something hungry and captivating. 

Once she finished with your corset and let it drop to the floor, allowing you to step out of the pool of your garments, you were now only in your chemise while you were still slowly undoing Thérèse’s corset. 

She was a haberdasher, after all, and though the two of you were both familiar with the doing and undoing of a corset, it was Thérèse who was most skilled with the handling of clothing. 

Her hands laid atop of yours and your fingers ceased their movements. She stepped towards you and laced her fingers through yours as she began to undo her own corset. You watched, down the space of her own chemise that slowly began to loosen as her corset was further untied, the rising and falling of Thérèse’s soft porcelain breasts. 

“You need not be so concerned with being seen as a predator,” she said, her voice not quite a whisper but still rather low, like a gentle hum in the tune of a bedtime story. She stepped out of her own pool of clothing on the floor now that she was in her own chemise. Her hand found your chest and as she advanced forward, she pushed you back steadily so you were forced to walk backwards. 

“Would you much rather prefer being preyed on?” she asked and ran her hands down your shoulders. “That would please me, anyhow.”

You swallowed. You didn’t quite realise how far Thérèse had been pushing you back until you had to quickly jut out your elbow to keep your weight from suddenly shifting onto your back. She raised a knee onto the edge of the bed and you watched as her chemise slid down her thigh. Her hand ran up the path between your breasts and encouraged you to continue moving backwards.

Her fingers reached the hollow base of your throat, the centre of your collarbone, and she pressed down gently, watching her fingers apply pressure to your compliant skin. Then, when your head was laid atop your pillows and her thighs were straddling your hips, Thérèse leaned down and pressed her warm lips to your neck.

“Perhaps what you had felt before was not guilt.” Her bottom lip ran up the expanse of your neck as she moved to kiss the warm space behind the lobe of your ear. “But rather a feeling of inadequacy, knowing that your desire would never take the form of that of a predator. You need not feel this way — not with me. And if not with me, then you need not ever feel it again.”

Her teeth tugged at your earlobe, let go, then pressed her a kiss again to the pulse of your neck, then down, and down further, until she could run her tongue flat against your neck, up further until the tip of her tongue pressed into the hollow space beneath your jaw bone. She bit down on the skin of your jawline then released. “You ought to know your place, and not feel compelled to take another.”

She straightened to look down upon you, fuelled deep within the warmth between her thighs by the look on your face with your flushed cheeks and lips parted to release your warm quickening breaths. 

“Would it not feel better, knowing that it is I who will prey on you?” She spoke while moving further up your body, her knees moving herself upwards and her thighs brushing up your waist, up the sides of your ribs, your breasts. “Better, knowing that you ought to simply let yourself be consumed?”

Your eyes explored the uncovered expanse of Thérèse’s smooth thighs as she sat herself on your chest, your fingers tightening around your bedsheets and repressing the urge to reach up and touch her.

“Y/N.” Thérèse said your name. You looked up and slid her fingers down your cheek, cupping it softly and tipping your head up to meet your eyes. “I will not ever let you be anyone else’s but mine.”

Her words, though possessive and dominating, seemed almost as it were a forewarning as well; Thérèse still seemed to have reservations of this part of herself, and perhaps in a way, she feared what might happen if she were to completely give into it — give into herself. She worried about what she knew were to happen if she progressed any further.

“I have no interest for anyone else but you,” you told her, meeting her eyes tenderly. You released your bedsheets and laid your hands against the sides of her smooth thighs, warm palms leaving goosebumps in their wake as your fingers pressed into the pliable flesh of Thérèse’s ass. 

Her hips buckled and she sighed through her nose, closing her eyes momentarily as she savoured your words and the first feeling of your hands on her body unobstructed by clothing. 

Thérèse, suddenly overcome by certainty and a hunger now driven to what she felt was alike to famine, took your hair into her hand and used it as leverage to move herself further up. She raised from her position on your chest and after one failed attempt at keeping her chemise around her hips, she grew impatient and pulled the garment off altogether, tossing it back to the foot of the bed. 

Finding that she did not want to face the same frustration with her underwear, she did away with that too. 

Your eyes ran over her bare body, her smooth belly and the curves and dips of her waist and her hips, how soft her thighs looked, how perfectly her breasts were shaped, and the pink tint of her hardened nipples. Brown hair cascaded down her arms and chest.

“By God, I have never seen anything so beautiful,” you remarked. Your hands, unable to keep to themselves, ran up the expanse of her stomach, fingers wrapped around her waist as they moved further up. Your hands cupped her breasts, thumbs moving across Thérèse’s nipples. 

She hummed shakily, both satisfied by your hands and words and also pleasured by them. Her hands came to the backs of yours, encouraging you to grope her rougher.

“When you came into the haberdashery,” she spoke, “I felt pity for you, that something so beautiful had to find herself amongst the rotting carcasses of that god-awful place.”

In gentle protest, you reminded her, “But there was you.”

Thérèse smiled down at you. Such consideration you had, and a kind heart. “And so there was.” She let go of one of your hands and stroked your cheek with the backs of her fingers.

She led your hands to her hips, and she wrapped her hand around the headboard of your bed. She moved herself onto her knees and settled them on either side of your head. 

The scent of Thérèse’s sex made you salivate, and your fingers pressed into her hips with anticipation. Delicate pink folds presented themselves to you as she positioned herself above your face, so inviting. 

Her other hand stroked your cheek one once more with her thumb before her fingers delved into your hair and repositioned your head. Then, she lowered herself onto your lips and you immediately opened for her. 

Your tongue ran through smooth silken petals firstly in curiosity, lips wrapped around the warm embrace of her cunt. Her flavour spread into your tongue and your hands pulled her further down against your face. 

Thérèse’s jaw was slack, her arm pressed against the wall in front of her so she could rest her forehead on her forearm. Her body was overcome with pleasure and, initially, she found it hard to do anything but moan and shut her eyes. 

But the moment your tongue became that of a starving mouth rather than a curious one, Thérèse knew she had to start moving.

The pads of her fingers pressed against the back of your head, keeping your mouth against her pussy. She rolled her hips forward and back, nudging her clit against the tip of your nose as your tongue chased her cunt hungrily. Nectar spilled down your cheeks and smeared across your chin. 

“Y/N.” Thérèse breathed your name. She let go of your hair and groped her breast, moaning in jagged rhythm as her rapid breaths meshed with her groans of pleasure. She had never felt such pleasure, and it was entirely sensical that it was you who was the first and only to give it to her. “Keep going, just like that. Don’t stop. You make me feel so good.”

You looked up at Thérèse from beneath her and felt the urge to explore her further. Your tongue dipped into her, into the slippery tang of her sweet nectar, while your one hand let go of her thigh and travelled up the curve of her ass and up her lower back, feeling where it dipped along the contour of her spine.

Her hips continued to roll against your face, thighs tightening around the side of your head as she depended less on the grip of the headboard and further on the stability of your head beneath her. 

Your hand gripped at her waist, thumb pressed into her soft cream skin.

She let out a partially-repressed squeal and let go of the headboard, both hands now gripping your head with her fingers interlaced within your hair. You supported her with your one hand on her waist and your other on the back of her thigh, and Thérèse began grinding down against you with such speed and intensity that you could hardly move your tongue. 

She took charge of her impending release, leaving you to be but an inanimate object she was merely using the tongue of. 

Her fingers pulled your head up, right against her pussy so as to achieve the friction she needed, and you kept your tongue stiff and pliable for her delicate cunt. 

“A-Ah… Y/N.” Thérèse’s voice started to become higher pitched, needier. “I’m…” Her head lolled back and her hair poured down the length of her arched back, her breasts moving in accordance to the rhythm of her hips, her neck becoming exposed. How terribly you wanted to press your lips there, where her skin was warm and smooth and scented of her perfume. 

One of Thérèse’s hands released your hair and suddenly jutted out, her palm meeting the wall as she reached her pleasure’s peak. You could watch from beneath how her eyes squeezed shut and as her head fell forward, jaw slack as she cried out. The sight was almost animalistic in how unrestrained and entirely carnal it was.

In release, she was no longer constrained by the shadowed holds of the shop or Passage du Pont Neuf or even her own personal reservations, but a being so raw in her desire and expression, and entirely without guilt. 

Thérèse’s body suddenly went lax and she leaned backwards, her other arm quick to hold herself up with her palm flat beside your hip. She caught her breath and you finally took your first full one once her cunt parted from your lips. 

In silence and in awe for several moments, you merely watched the rising and falling of her chest as she breathed, deep and drawn-out. 

Carefully so as not to disturb her balance, you arose onto your elbows and allowed Thérèse to adjust herself along your body. She opened her eyes and watched as you moved. She moved along with you so she was soon sitting in the middle of the bed with her knees bent against her chest and her hands behind her, holding herself up. 

You advanced on all fours and parted her legs, kissing up the smooth skin of her inner thighs. She welled with admiration for you as she watched you on your knees in front of her, kissing her hips and her stomach, beneath her breasts, her nipples, her neck. Your kisses became more delicate as they reached her face, one hand cupping her cheek as you kissed up to her temple and then her forehead, and finally, her lips. 

Her elbows buckled when you leaned down beside her and took her with you. She laid herself down beside you so the two of you were laying opposite of the headboard and closest to the fireplace opposite the bed, your eyes meeting tenderly with hers as you stroked her cheekbone with your thumb.

Your other arm wrapped around her waist and pulled her against you so her hips were pressed against yours, legs intertwined as if in their own entangled dance. 

“I am hopelessly captivated by you.” Your hand moved away from her cheek and into the soft waves of her smooth brown hair. “I’d like to never leave such a state in any foreseeable future.”

Thérèse’s tranquil expression tugged into a slight grin and she moved herself closer so her breasts were pressed against your chest. “You needn’t concern yourself with any such future in which you belong to anyone else but me.” Her gaiety tinged with charming arrogance was incredibly endearing to you.

“Every morning since the beginning of time,” you said, “the sun has risen and it has set.” Thérèse listened intently to the gentle hum of your lullaby-like voice. “And yet books upon books have been written by hand of the many poets with hearts of unfettered lovers dedicated solely to the sun’s rising and its setting, and I presume, for as long as poetry and love are to exist, that this human habit of loving even the most inevitable will stretch into the far reaches of the human future. The inevitability in a future in which I am yours and no one else’s could not, and would not, even if it could, ever cease my desire for its occurrence.”

Thérèse kissed your lips. “How lucky am I to have captured such a woman with as much prowess for the written word as she has within her heart, then.” From her grin, you could feel the evenness of her teeth brush against your lips.

“And you,” you said with a tinge of hesitancy, “foresee a future in which you have in your possession more than only me?”

Thérèse moved up onto her elbow and you kissed the top of her breast as she shifted above you. “In the time that I have known you, which, admittedly, I would say is much shorter than I wish I could say — but we have the rest of time to make up for it — I have come to realise and accept truths about myself that I could not have otherwise, and that is to mean I could not have done so without you.” She brushed hair from your forehead with delicate fingers.

“In any interaction,” Thérèse said, “there exists two irrefutable beings, one being interacting with the other in mutuality. Before you, Y/N, I was neither being nor anything truly existent. I had no form, no sense of myself, no identity. For someone who has no established understanding of who they are, it becomes impossible to have anything important, to value anything or have any possession which is truly theirs. Do you understand, or am I speaking with the tongue of a madwoman?”

“I understand,” you said.

Thérèse smiled. She knew you would. “I am only who I have become because of you.” She kissed the bridge of your nose. “I am as much yours as you are mine. Everything I am is yours, and only yours.”

Then she asked, “Are you happy to own me, Y/N?”

You took her into your arms, pulled her down close so you could kiss her while Thérèse tried her best not to laugh too hard as to disturb the way your soft lips were pressed against hers. 

She curled herself up against you and you held her close to your chest, one arm serving as a rest for her head and the other wrapped around her body. 

“I am the happiest I have ever been,” you told her honestly. 

Thérèse smiled against the warm embrace of your body, laying her head against the cushion of your breasts. She, too, was the happiest she’d ever been.

[fernsnouveau]

Tags by @erisluna35 :

#yeah the ship cracked not cause we dont believe in teen love #but because s5 messed up their dynamic #this whole thing messed up adriens arc not because of adrienette #but because he kept getting locked out of his own narrative #which is not satisfying regardless of adrienette #reducing all these complaints to just the salters belittling teen love #the sugar side really dont get it

Tags by @generalluxun :

#as a writer I feel this #writing the LS is hard now I need to ensure there is a clear break from canon to even contemplate it #why did they turn it so toxic?

“You don’t ship the love square because you’re an adult who doesn’t believe teenage love is legitimate”

I’m going to stop you there. Yes, I am an adult person who is aware teenage romance doesn’t have a great track record of being lasting in real life. But Miraculous Ladybug: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir is FICTIONAL.

If the writers decide on a convincing arc for Maribug and Adricat being “made for each other”, then yes, I will ship them. I considered them an OTP for years, actually.

UNFORTUNATELY there was a multi-season storyline of Ladybug keeping important secrets from Chat Noir that was not fully addressed and pushed aside.

UNFORTUNATELY as of the season 5 finale, we have Maribug lying to Adricat about his very existence as a son of Monarque and his status of being a Sentimonster.

So no. I don’t ship it anymore. And I’m actually kind of bummed this fictional relationship I invested in for years is dead to me.

[ghouly-boiiiii]

Does Max give anyone else major twist villain vibes???

Okay I haven't talked about Max much yet, but I think it's kinda wild to see people talking about him like he's just this sweet innocent cinnamon roll when my read on his character was the COMPLETE opposite.

I mean yes, he does seem very sweet. He's very soft spoken. Naive in a way like Lucy, but not as much. Kinda vulnerable. Got a killer smile. And some of the moments with him and Lucy are super cute and adorable. But damn if he doesn't have a DARK side!

Like I've heard people say that Max is stupid or that Aaron Moten's acting is bad, but hell no. Aaron Moten sold me on his acting during the interrogation scene. Max was scared shitless and I FELT that. I think Max was meant to be played as a character who lacks understanding about certain things and seems disconnected from people due to both being brought up in basically a cult and having an inherent lack of empathy.

You think about the fact that he admitted he wanted Dane to get hurt, someone who's supposed to be his best friend. How he coldly sat there and watched Titus die. And before that stood there and watched him get mauled by a bear, almost like he was fascinated by it and wanted to see what was gonna happen. The fact that he tried to kill Thaddeus the moment he became a threat, even though the two of them had appeared to have bonded and developed a genuine friendship. And let's not forget he was willing to let all of Vault 4 get plunged into darkness just so he could keep playing with his power armor.

Max wants to be a knight, he wants to be a hero. And I think he tells himself he wants it for the right reasons, but I think what he REALLY wants is power and recognition. Which is really what every (okay maybe not every, but a lot) good villain wants, right? Because at the end of the day Max wants what Max wants. He's selfish, even though he doesn't think he is.

And sure, he's nice to Lucy. And he went balls to the wall to save her when he thought Vault 4 was gonna execute her. But she's a pretty girl who helped him and offered him a safe home. When she gave him the proposition that if she helped him bring back the head, he would have the Brotherhood lend her some knights to save her dad, he KNEW he couldn't make that promise. But he made the deal anyway. So he doesn't REALLY care about her or what she wants.

And that blank stare he gets when he gets mad? ACTUALLY terrifying. The guy's got serious psychopath vibes. Literal anti-social personality disorder, if you ask me. In fact the first thing I thought about when Max let Titus die is this kids going to end up going to the dark side lol.

And I think that would work really well thematically if they plan on giving The Ghoul a redemption arc beside it. There are so many parallels between Lucy and The Ghoul, and they have such a strong connection to the beginning when the bombs dropped. I get that Max is there to represent the Brotherhood and he's from Shady Sands, the town Hank destroyed, but it felt weird that he didn't seem to be AS important in the grand scheme of things compared to Cooper and Lucy.

But if Max turned out to be a badass twist villain to thematically contrast Cooper's redemption arc, while Lucy remains steadfast to her commitment to goodness and the golden rule I feel like that would really round it out. It would make sense if you consider a lot of people have pointed out that Lucy, Cooper and Max all seem to represent different play styles and different moral alignments. And I think it'd be pretty crazy if the writers of the show set out to make it seem like Ghoul is a bad guy and Max is a good guy, but then it ended up being the opposite.

I mean, there are definitely hints all over the show that The Ghoul isn't as bad as he may seem. And Max has already done some pretty messed up stuff, so I'd say the possibility is totally there, and I'd be here for it!

Who's with me???

[ohnoitstbskyen]

I rewatched your short about the superhero skin for jayce, and you bringing up iconic hero designs got me curious as to what your thoughts are about the character designs in something like my hero academia

(specifically I was thinking about all might but that might have something to do with the fact he’s probably my favorite)

I mean honestly, if I have a criticism of All Might it's that he sort of has the Superhero Jayce problem that his costume is more designed to be a visual parody/homage to western superhero costumes than it is designed to be All Might's costume.

So you've got the so-tight-you-can-count-his-abs spandex, the Superhero Boots, the bold colors, and visual signifiers of American-ness from his blonde hair and tanned skin to the red white and blue primary colors in his costume, right?

So all of this says to me "THIS IS AN AMERICAN SUPERHERO ARCHETYPE WHO IS AMERICAN FROM THE USA HOWDY HOWDY BANG BANG GUNS HOT DOGS AND OIL WARS", but what I feel is missing are all the themes and ideas that are specific to Toshinori - wanting to be a symbol of hope, a promise of a better tomorrow, the heroic spirit of being of service to other people... that's all a bit absent.

Those things come through way better in his depowered, emaciated form, and the ways that the contrast between the two is employed. It highlights the artifice and fragility of hero society, something which the story... well I've not read it since the raid on Chisaki's base so I dunno how well it's executed on the theme, but the story certainly seemed to have ambitions address the fakeness and fragility of the system of celebrity superheroes as "keepers of the peace" and All Might's two forms do a good job embodying the duality of that.

Hero society creates villains, there's a corrupting rot at the heart of it, and it's eating the symbol of peace from the inside out, and the "Symbol of Peace" is ultimately a false front projected by someone who cannot possibly sustain it. All of that works very well.

But his costume specifically? Eeeh. It doesn't really feel like a costume that was designed to be an iconic representation of the hero himself (think Super-Man's S, Spider-Man's webbed suit, Batman's black cowl and glowing eyes, etc), so much as a very broad, vague thematic statement for the story itself to work around - which is a perfectly good use of a character design, I just don't think it expresses the character wearing it as much as good superhero costumes usually do.

Again, I've not read MHA for a long time, so take my criticisms with a grain of salt, I might have a completely different take if I re-read it.

[vickyvicarious]

Thinking again of silence as a theme...

Vampires are silent - not literally, but they don't write documents for us to see. Even the documents we know they do write are all business, not personal records (which thematically contain Truth), and in fact often contain literal outright lies as well as being fundamentally lies (Dracula passing himself off as human).

Vampires silence others. Jonathan in the castle was unable to speak or express himself openly. There's 'silencing' of the mind in a way, with victims unable to recall what has happened to them, or to piece together the evidence that they should by rights be able to recognize. Lucy was literally silenced by becoming so weak it was difficult for her to talk, in addition to not knowing. Mina didn't mention her distress before she knew what was happening to her. Since she has begun turning Van Helsing has specifically noted Mina becoming more quiet overall and attributed that to vampiric influence. She is only able to speak freely at certain times when that influence is weakest (dawn and dusk) and we see it is an effort for her.

The diaries going silent for days while Mina slips further into death is another representation in my mind. Sure, they don't have much to write at the moment, and they do write when they have something to report. But also, she's linked to documents and to sharing information from early on. She's the one who says the thesis statement about it, she's the first one to really start sharing information. She's the one who types everything up in triplicate. And when the men keep her out at first, it lets the vampire in. Then we get the reverse when she requests they not tell her things because the vampire has access to her. The silence also generally reflects inactivity and despair (which vampires love to cause) a lot of the time, as seen with Jonathan's long silences in the castle, or Jack initially ending his diary after Lucy dies and there's nothing left to do for her.

There's also Jonathan's silence during this time. Today's entry written at his request, but not in his word. Days of silence around it. He doesn't speak the promise Mina asks for. Though he does read her the burial service, acknowledging and accepting that she might die - perhaps just not that he might not join her in that state (whether undead or not). He's silent about a lot of his later encounters with Dracula too, and his silence here as he willingly approaches closer to the idea of vampirism himself (so long as Mina is unwillingly doing so) is in a way kind of a reverse of what happens elsewhere.

Both Jonathan and Mina are to an extent willingly silencing themselves (her choosing not to be told things, him not speaking his thoughts) because of proximity to vampires which forcibly inflicts silence on them (the change making her silent, Jonathan's trauma and him not ever shown speaking aloud about it after it's over). And this is all in contrast to a bunch scenes where the two of them are communicating to one another but the narrative goes silent, giving them privacy in a way that isn't connected to vampirism at all.

I just never get tired of it, it's so interesting.