#so once I get some papers for school written I should be able to devote some time to shorter fic stuff like this

[koasinag]

Strengthen Your Prayer Life with an Assist from Past Pray-ers

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Strengthen Your Prayer Life with an Assist from Past Pray-ers

Strengthen Your Prayer Life with an Assist from Past Pray-ers

March 24, 2024

by:

Zachariah M. Carter

Desire May Not Be Enough

Have you ever sat in front of a blank sheet of paper and wished you could paint?

US President Dwight Eisenhower desired to but could not paint, so he made use of templates designed for children called paint-by-number kits to learn how to paint. Many of his paintings—along with those of his administration such as Nelson Rockefeller, J. Edgar Hoover, and General Andrew Goodpaster—hang in Eisenhower’s Presidential Museum. None of these men were born artists; they simply followed the examples of artists to paint.

Ordinarily, desire is not enough. We usually have to be shown how to do something, with plenty of examples, before we can feel capable.

One thing I’ve learned over my years in ministry is that most Christians have a desire but struggle to have a consistent prayer life. I’ve found that a lack of prayerfulness usually comes from a lack of examples someone could follow to learn how to pray.

A century ago, most Christians would have heard someone else pray publicly at least once a day—a prayer thanking God for breakfast, a request for a productive school day, an invocation at a civic event, or dozens of other places. Then, of course, that Christian would hear dozens of prayers which would help them see the many different types of prayers which one might pray.

Draw from Examples

Christians can grow their prayer life through the use of examples or written prayers. For example, the great hymn-writer Issac Watts wrote a prayer book to help model prayer for Christians. Even though Jesus’s disciples saw him teach publicly in many different places, they still asked him to teach them how to pray (Luke 11:1).

It might feel weird to read a written prayer. You might even feel like it lacks authenticity. Can I suggest that reading a written prayer as your own prayer is a bit like painting one of those paint-by-number kits? You are the one doing the work, and even though someone else has already drawn the lines for you, you are the one who gets the pleasure and joy from the painting. In other words, you can make a prayer as much your own (or, I suppose, as little your own) as you care to do. A written prayer allows you to sit down with an open Bible and prayer book and talk to God in substantive ways you might not have ever seen done before.

Christians can grow their prayer life through the use of examples or written prayers.

For example, you might feel stagnant in your Christian walk but cannot even begin to know how to pray to ask God for help. First, know that a simple “Help!” is quite sufficient for him. If, however, you’d like to expand upon that, you could read a prayer from Anslem of Canterbury who, in a moment of real humanity, confessed that his heart and desires fell far short of where they should. He resolved to give God what he could muster, and he asked God to supply what was lacking:

Lord Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, my mercy, my salvation: I praise you and give you thanks, though even these gifts of thanks fail to live up to your goodness, which deserves far greater devotion. They are much too lean for the full beauty of your affection. Yet I will give some sort of praise, some sort of thanks. Though my thanks will not be what they should, I will give as much as my soul is able. Hope of my heart, strength of my soul, helper of my weakness: Let your powerful kindness complete what I am trying to accomplish despite my tepid weakness. Oh my life, the end for which I aim even though I have not yet loved you as I should, please let my longing for you match what my love should be.1

Let’s talk about how you might approach a moment of similar weakness with Anselm’s prayer right in front of you.

First, you might read through the whole prayer once to get a sense of the entire course of thought. Pay special attention to any shifts in the author’s direction of thought. For example, Anselm admits he’s falling short but resolves to “give some sort of praise.” If those shifts resonate with you, don’t wait to say the same things to the Lord!

Once you have the general course of the prayer, make it your own by either copying or adapting concepts from the author as you see fit to express to God your heart, mind, soul, and strength.

Continue the moment of prayerful study by using the concordance in your Bible to look up relevant Bible verses to address the matters on your heart.

One of the benefits of written prayers is the opportunity to expand your vision of what prayer can be. Some prayers are deeply theological and can help you ponder the depths of God’s self-revelation. Other prayers are immanent and bring the Lover of Your Soul into moments of trial or testing you are experiencing. Like a paint-by-number kit can model a scene for an unpracticed painter, written prayers can model a prayer life beyond mealtimes and bedtimes.

Again, I think most Christians genuinely desire a more vibrant prayer life. I think they suffer a poverty of examples from which they can see how they could pray. A book of written prayers helps you see the various ways other faithful saints have walked with the Lord.

Notes:

Jonathan W. Arnold & Zachariah M. Carter, eds. Cloud of Witnesses: A Treasury of Prayers and Petitions through the Ages (Crossway, 2024), 49.

Zachariah M. Carter is coauthor with Jonathan W. Arnold of Cloud of Witnesses: A Treasury of Prayers and Petitions through the Ages.

Zachariah M. Carter (PhD, Southern Seminary) serves as the senior pastor of Redeemer Church in Huntsville, Alabama. He and his wife, Morgan, have three children.

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Go to Source Author: Zachariah M. Carter

[moonbeambucky]

Hey Neighbor (Part 5)

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Reader Word Count: 2276 Warnings: mentions of physical/verbal child abuse

Summary: You had a plan and then life came along with one of its own. With your future almost derailed you worked hard to get yourself back on track and finally everything seemed to be going right… that is, until your new neighbor moved in.

A/N: A huge thank you to my wonderful beta Sam @buckyofthemyscira​​​ Feedback is always appreciated!

PART 4 | HEY NEIGHBOR MASTERLIST

The subway doors opened letting people spill out before the anxious crowd pushed their way in. Some people rush to find the best spot, leaning against the railing of the wall or beside the door that leads to the other cars, others look for a seat or grab a pole to hold on to.

Everyone kept to themselves though there’s a knowing look between a few, in search of the source of the terrible odor that fills the car. Summer may almost be over but the use of deodorant should never, ever stop.

You couldn’t wait to be home, not only to save your nose from further inhaling the awful stench but because you needed to prepare your outfit for the following day. You put in to leave work a few hours early and unbeknownst to Maria it was so you could interview at Metro-General with Ms. Rodriguez.

You needed to make a good impression. The deadline for submitting your internship paperwork was quickly approaching and you really wanted to have everything settled.

When you were finally home you kicked off your shoes and swapped your blouse and skirt for a more comfortable pair of leggings and a loose tank top. Your closet was full of options and you pulled down a few hangers but you couldn’t think straight. Your stomach rumbled with hunger so you decided to make something to eat.

Opening the cabinet you found a value sized box of macaroni and cheese, something you had bought on those few occasions you made something at home for when Steve would come over and knowing his appetite, family sized meals were the most appropriate.

Water began to boil on the stove as you went back to the items hanging off the closet door knob. With food on the horizon you were able to decide on a white striped button down with slim navy trousers and beige heels. Some basic jewelry was set aside, nothing too flashy.

As you poured the macaroni into the boiling water you realized just how much food there was going to be but at least you would have leftovers. Chalky orange powder floated in the air as you mixed the “cheese” in with the cooked pasta, stirring around to ensure everything was properly coated.

Setting the food aside you opened your fridge to grab a drink, debating what would go best with mac and cheese before you heard a knock at your door. Steve was at the gym and even though you were overdue to see Wanda you didn’t think she would just drop in without notice.

Looking through the peephole your heart raced. Bucky.

Unlocking the door you pulled it open and smiled at your unexpected visitor. “Hey neighbor.”

He smiled, quickly taking in your casual appearance. Bucky didn’t know you very well but he did know that you were a busy woman and any chance you took to relax should be thoroughly enjoyed.

“Hey Y/N. Sorry to bother you but…” He brought his hand up with a snap, presenting the match to your missing sock. “I think this belongs to you. I hope it does at least, otherwise it would be weird that I stole a random sock,” he laughed.

You reached forward for the sock, immediately recognizing it as yours. Your face questioned how he found it and Bucky explained it must have been left in the washing machine.

“Aww thanks!”

“You’re welcome. Uhh, well, I’ll let you get back to your evening.”

Bucky took a step to walk towards his door before you called out to stop him. He turned around with surprise written on his face.

“So, I kinda made enough mac and cheese to feed a small army and if I’m being honest with myself I know I’ll wind up heating some up in the middle of the night and definitely regretting it.”

Bucky laughed at your admission which made you smile even wider.

“So what I’m trying to get at here is, are you hungry?”

Bucky hadn’t expected to hear that from you and upon further clarification he certainly didn’t expect you to be inviting him inside your apartment, but he happily did so, following behind you.

He stared at your apartment thinking somehow you had so much more space than he did even though the units were identical. He smiled at the delicate decor around your bedding, the feminine curtain framing your bed with soft lights shining through it. It made your bed seem inviting, like a soft cloud floating amongst the starry night sky.

You lead Bucky to your table, pushing books aside and piling stacks of paper on top of them.

“Your place is cute,” Bucky commented as his head continued to look around and observe things.

Two bowls were brought down as you scooped heaping amounts of the mac and cheese into them, placing one in front of Bucky and the other at the empty spot beside him.

“Uh, I’m not actually sure what drinks go with this,” you admitted, chuckling as you turned back to Bucky.

Opening the refrigerator again you called out what you had and Bucky accepted a beer and you snapped open a White Claw and took a sip. He eyed you suspiciously and smirked.

“Don’t look at me like that,” you joked.

Bucky ran his fork through the food, biting his lips to hold back an even bigger smile. “Like what?” he not-so-innocently asked.

“It’s the same look Steve gives me. I know they’re trendy but they’re actually really good!” you defended, taking a forkful of the still steaming macaroni.

“Is that your boyfriend?”

“Steve?! No, he’s just a really good friend.”

“Oh I just assumed since I know he’s here a lot.”

Your face twisted in confusion, worrying for a moment about the person you let into your apartment until Bucky eased your mind with the words you once told him, “thin walls.”

“Right.” You were partially relieved that your neighbor was not a creepy stalker, but you hoped you hadn’t heard all the times you were venting about him.

“Steve comes over to hang out and watch movies and stuff.”

“Oh, Netflix and chill? Do people still say that?” he wondered out loud.

“I don’t think they do,” you laughed. “Why, you jealous?”

You didn’t believe the words spoken had come out of your mouth. Where that brazen flirtation came from you don’t think you’ll ever know.

Bucky was just as caught off guard, swallowing his food at the same time unexpected nerves bubbled to the surface. “No…” he began.

“I’m just kidding. You don’t seem like the jealous type, especially with your, uh, frequent visitors.” Somehow things didn’t seem as awkward as the last time you brought the subject up.

“Yeah I’m not really a relationship guy,” he said confidently.

You found yourself explaining Steve’s situation with Lillian and how he needed a friend to take his mind off the pain. “I can’t blame him, having your trust broken like that is awful. He’s not ready to get back out there yet.”

Visible dark hair was speckled under his chin as Bucky tipped his head back to take a swig of the bottle. The bobbing of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed mesmerized your eyes, as did the single swipe of his tongue across his plump lips to lick away the excess liquid.

“What about you?” he asked.

“Me? I couldn’t tell you what a relationship was if it hit me in the face.”

Lazily you swirled the fork around your food. “I’ve been so busy with school the last few years and working full time on top of it. It’s rare that I meet someone new, let alone devote any time to them.”

You explained the history of your living situation to Bucky and the reason behind all those nights you’ve spent studying at The Grind House.

“That’s definitely stressful,” he let out a sigh. “So why social work?”

Sometimes people know what they want to be from a young age. If they really like animals they might become veterinarians or zoologists. Some people have a knack for science, some for teaching, others for law. Bucky has clearly loved music even before he realized he could make a career of it.

Things were always different for you. There was never a clear choice. You had hobbies but nothing ever stood out and even as you grew older and your interests changed there was still never a distinct path of where you wanted to take your life, not until everything you thought you knew about your best friend had been a lie.

You took a moment to collect yourself before opening up. Throughout your first year of middle school you were seated next to Pietro Maximoff, a friendly, quick witted class clown that made each day brighter.

Pietro’s twin Wanda was separated into a different class but you all shared the same lunch period and became friends. You were never allowed to go to the Maximoff’s house and you didn’t question it too much. You didn’t mind when Wanda hung out in your room after school but she was always in a rush to get home before dinner, before her father got home from work.

It wasn’t until high school that you learned about Django Maximoff and the violence he inflicted on his children. His drinking had always been out of control but he managed it until one day when he was driving and he nearly hit another car. Pietro was worried and questioned if his father was alright, his concerns were answered with a rough fist.

As his drinking increased so did the physical abuse which he enforced over anything. If Pietro ate too quickly Django smacked his head and told him to slow down. If Wanda ate too slow he would kick her shins with heavy boots under the table and tell her to not chew her food like a cow.

Their mother Marya sported bruises that matched her children as Django didn’t hold back with her either. He blamed her and the kids for all the problems they were having. If bills were too high it was because the kids watched too much TV. That problem was solved quickly one night when he threw Pietro into it.

He got the worst of the abuse, often protecting Wanda when he could, telling her to hide in a closet or under the bed as he took each whip of the belt and every spiteful word that spewed from Django’s evil tongue.

Marya wanted to leave Django but he threatened to kill the children in front of her if she tried, he told Wanda and Pietro the same thing and so the family were hostages in their own home, left to keep their painful truth a secret for as long as they could.

You hated the days of Pietro’s absence, selfishly missing the way your friend could always make you laugh when unbeknownst to you he was at home recovering from an injury that was too great to hide at school.

A drunken crash finally removed Django from their lives but the damage was done. Left with large debts and little money Marya struggled to keep a roof over their heads.

Sometimes people do the wrong thing for the right reasons. By the time you were in high school Pietro dropped out and got involved with some bad people. The gang he was with gave him the opportunity to help provide for his mother and Wanda but they protested. Marya was looking into moving somewhere else, declare bankruptcy and start over, start fresh but it was too late.

“Pietro died.” Your voice cracked as the pain of bringing up the memories flooded your heart. “There was a shooting with a rival gang. Piet didn’t even have a gun but he ran out in the middle of everything to protect some kid from the crossfire.”

Bucky noticed the tears that brimmed over your eyes. You took another sip from the can, hoping that as you tipped your head back the tears would retreat. You really didn’t want to cry and make things awkward.

With another deep inhale you continued, “Pietro was robbed of his childhood and nobody did anything to protect him. It always stuck with me, I think about the signs looking back. There should have been someone there to help them, to intervene when they were growing up maybe, just maybe this wouldn’t have happened.”

A tear managed to slip out but you wiped it away quickly. You didn’t have to say anymore, Bucky understood why. Every long day at work followed by a longer night of school, every minute you spent devoted to your studies, all of it was worth it to bring you closer to the promise you made yourself, helping the Pietro’s of the world that needed a hand to pull them from the darkness.

Dinner was finished shortly after and Bucky offered to help clean up but you declined. Bringing up the past made you long for a good, deep cry, one you didn’t really want to do in front of your new neighbor.

Bucky lingered at the door before leaving, acting on the thoughts he quickly processed in his mind. He leaned in to hug you, quickly because he wasn’t quite sure if you would be okay with that but firm enough to offer emotional support after you opened up to him. You nearly cried again as you felt his strong hold against you but thankfully you held out, letting the tears slip out after the door shut behind him. Bucky wasn’t so bad after all. 

PART 6

[dogcircle-scans]

Natsume Yuujinchou: “Cookies to the Forest’s Entrance” Summary (Chapter 105)

Our cuties are back with more adventures!

I was trying to get this out within a week of the chapter’s release, but life happened so it took a while. ;w; Anyways, this is our first chapter after the 4 month hiatus! Perhaps to serve as a breather after the super intense Homura arc, we have a relatively short chapter (only 24 pages compared to the usual 30-40 pages) about Natsume, Tanuma and Nyanko-sensei stumbling into an old house in the middle of the forest. In some ways, this chapter felt more like a special chapter rather than a main one (don’t expect any plot or character development for this one, especially not information on the grandpa), but surprisingly, it also helps wrap up some stuff in the Homura arc (firstly, DID NYANKO GET HIS COOKIES, secondly, our poor cinnamon roll pure boi needs a hug ;w;). It still gives me the usual NatsuYuu feels, so no complaints from me! Also (I’m sorry for plugging), but if you enjoy what we do, and don’t mind giving a couple of dollars,

please buy me a coffee or two. At the moment I’m using my Kofi funds to buy raws of the manga for our scan uses, but after losing my Tumblr account, I haven’t had any new donations, so my tank is running empty (especially after buying the raws for Volume 25). ;w; If you have some spare cash and would like to help support our scan work, please help donate. You have my eternal gratitude. TwT As always, special thanks to Jessica for proofreading this for me on a Sunday!

- Niji

Chapter 105: “Cookies to the Forest’s Entrance”

While walking home from school, Tanuma accidentally steps onto a cookie, hearing it crack under his foot. He spots another cookie in the distance, and begins finding more and more of them the further he looks.

Tanuma: (It leads into the forest.) // This is just like Hansel and Gretel. / I wonder who dropped these…

Tanuma: ! // Natsume? Natsume: Huh… // Tanuma!? / Why are you in a place like this? Tanuma: You too, Natsume, what are you doing here…

Tanuma asks if Natsume might have been the one to drop the cookies, but it turns out Natsume didn’t notice the cookies at all. After recognising the cookies, he runs off, following its trail. Tanuma runs after him as well. At the end of the trail, they find a little house.

Natsume: Ah. // In a place like this… / Is it a vacant house? Tanuma: Hey, Natsume… / Do you know what these cookies are? / You looked like you were looking for something.

Natsume: …It’s nothing big. / I guess you can say I was just curious… Tanuma: Curious? Natsume: ——These cookies are…

Natsume recounts what happened shortly after he and Nyanko-sensei returned from Homura. Touko and Shigeru were extremely glad that he was able to find Nyanko-sensei, and gave Nyanko-sensei the cookies that they had kept aside for him (if you remember at the start of the arc, Nyanko-sensei wanted some pretty cookies but ran off before Natsume went to buy them). Nyanko-sensei was super happy about them too. However, when Natsume returned home from school that day, Nyanko-sensei was nowhere to be found in his room. Thinking that Nyanko-sensei might have ran off to play as usual, and that he might be going beyond Yatsuhara…

Natsume: I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and I figured it would be interesting to try following Sensei at least once… Tanuma: … I see… Natsume: ...Don’t laugh. Tanuma: Haha, I’m sorry. / So, at the end of these cookies will be…

Yes, it is Nyanko-sensei.

Natsume: Found him! Tanuma: Fufu. / There’s a hole in his bag. / So that’s how the cookies fell out.

Tanuma: *sigh…* ……Natsume? Natsume: ——As I thought, I’m still a little worried about Sensei. Tanuma: Ah… / That’s right, at the White Mist Pottery* Village, he caught the eye of a strange Collector……

[*I’m gonna translate “Hakka Pottery” to “White Mist Pottery”, since I can pretty much confirm that ‘Hakka’ is not a family name lol. So, for localization sake, I am translating the whole term.]

Natsume: …There was someone who reassured me, saying, “I’ll take care of this incident, so you don’t have to worry.” // He isn’t someone who would say things without thinking, so I did think that things would be alright now. / But when I didn’t see Sensei around like this, I can’t help but feel anxious. // ...But I’m glad.

Natsume looks around.

Natsume: I guess he found this vacant house and has been idling around in it. / …Seriously, he even brought his favourite sake and sake bottle with him. Tanuma: Wow… // It doesn’t look like anyone is here, and it’s quite wide. Rather than a residence, this is more like… an arbor?

Tanuma: It’s old, / but it’s pretty. // It’s perfect as a hideaway / or as a secret base.

Natsume: A secret base… / Then we’ve done something bad, haven’t we? Since Sensei has been secretly having fun here… Nyanko: *open!* Hm hm. / Natsume and… the Tanuma brat. Natsume: Ah! Nyanko-sensei! // I’m sor- Nyanko: You came here with perfect timing. Help me out. Natsume: Huh!?

Nyanko-sensei explains that he discovered this place while chasing butterflies during his patrol. He figured that it would be the perfect place for him to take his afternoon naps, and was just in the midst of checking it out. The only issue is that the place is rather dusty, and Nyanko-sensei doesn’t have the spare time to clean the place up as he likes.

Nyanko: I’ve brought some dust cloths with me. / Just wet them in the river over there. Natsume: What— Nyanko: If we don’t at least clean this veranda, you two won’t be able to idle around either, right?

And just like that, the boys got to work.

Natsume: Geez~~~ *wipe wipe wipe wipe* // This house may be vacant, but it might have an owner, so don’t just do whatever you like, Sensei. Nyanko: Come on! / Put your backs into your wiping! Boys: Phew~~ // We’re finally doneee—

Completely exhausted, they plopped down onto the veranda, and had their rest. And as they closed their eyes—

Natsume: (What is this?) / (There’s some sort of sweet fragrance coming from somewhere.) // (Is it Sensei’s cookies?) / (No…) // (Maybe it’s flowers.) / (——It’s very) // (kind and sweet——)

Soon enough, Natsume notices that evening has already arrived, so they prepare to leave.

Nyanko: By the way, how did you two learn of this place? Natsume: How? Because your cookies had fallen out, Sensei. Nyanko: WHAT!? // *stunned* There’s a huge hole… Natsume: Shall we pick them up on our way home, Sensei?

Nyanko: …… / No, just leave them as they are. // We still have lots of maintenance to do. / Tomorrow, you two will follow this trail back to my afternoon napping spot. We will gather there.

[Did Nyanko just… sacrifice his cookies!? Omg!]

Natsume: “Maintenance”……? Tanuma: Haha, I’m sure birds would have eaten them by tomorrow, Sensei.

The following day, the two boys find the trail of cookies and arrive at the empty house.

Natsume: We’re here. Nyanko: You two are so slow! / You’re gonna be devoting yourselves to the maintenance of my drinking party spot! Natsume: Wasn’t this your afternoon napping spot? Tanuma: ——Huh? Natsume. / There’s something on the pillar there…

Indeed, on the pillar was a hand-written note, saying,

“Thank you for wiping the place. Please enjoy yourselves here.”

Natsume: Uwah! / It’s probably from the owner. (S- So embarrassing…) Tanuma: I wonder if it’s okay to just take advantage of their offer like that. / Even though we entered as we liked… Nyanko: Stop complaining! Today, we are wiping the sliding doors! / I want the moonlight and the evening sun to shine on it beautifully.

Natsume: …As an apology for Sensei coming in as he liked, we should at least clean the frame of the sliding doors. Tanume: Let’s do that. Natsume: You help too, Sensei. Nyanko: Hmph. / Just this should be enough, right?

Or so they thought.

Nyanko: *rip…*

Stunned by the tear, the two boys inspect the damage. Natsume asks if it can be fixed, and Tanuma figures that, if they bring some sliding door paper and glue tomorrow, it should do the trick. Natsume returns to the note on the pillar, and quickly jots down an apology.

“Sorry, we tore the sliding door. We will fix it tomorrow.”

Back at home, Natsume asks Shigeru for some sliding door paper.

Shigeru: ...Hm? Sliding door? Natsume: Yes… // Can I have enough for one grid? / We were staying at a place and we kind of… tore it. Shigeru: Oh. / Were you at the Tanuma’s? Natsume: Ah, no. Shigeru: It’s okay to be mischievous, but you have to keep it in moderation.

Shigeru: If it’s at home, you can break as many as you like, // but always make sure to apologize, alright, Takashi? Natsume: …… Yes.

[Shigeru is such a good papa ;w;]

As Natsume leaves the next day, Touko stops him, handing him some strawberries.

Touko: Here, give them these strawberries as an apology. // *rustle!* Do your best! Natsume: ——… // Thank you so much. Nyanko: Oh~~~ These strawberries look tasty~~~ Natsume: They are not for you, Sensei.

[And now we have our sweet mama TwT]

They continue to follow the trail of cookies (how have they not been eaten by animals yet??), during which Natsume asks if the owner might be there. Nyanko-sensei promptly answers that he doesn’t need to care so much about an uninhabited empty house.

Natsume: Don’t you start, Sensei. Tanuma: Oi, Natsume—

The three of them head to the house, and find that a new note has been attached to the pillar.

“Thank you for cleaning the sliding doors. I have a request. Could you help me plant these seeds in the garden?”

Natsume: Huh? // By ‘seeds’, do they mean this? // …They don’t sound angry. Tanuma: You fix the sliding door, Natsume. / I’ll clear the weeds over there and plant this. Natsume: Thank you, Tanuma.

Natsume: …… // (The owner of this house sure is strange…) // (Rather, it feels like…) // Hey… Nyanko-sensei…

Nyanko: HEY! / ENOUGH OF THAT! HURRY UP AND BRING OUT THE PAPER! // Let’s paste it down right away. It’s time to repair my afternoon napping spot! Natsume: ——… Yeah. // You’re right.

The three of them set down to work, and finally finished everything. Once again, exhausted, they plop onto the veranda and napped.

Natsume: (Nevertheless…) // (This is such a comfortable place——)

In his dreams, Natsume hears a man speak, and the thoughts of someone else…

Man: “——Hey there. Sorry to keep you waiting.” ??: ——It’s alright. // Always, / forever, // I will be here, waiting for you.

Natsume wakes up.

Note: As an apology, we have left some strawberries here. Tanuma: It’s quite a mysterious arbor. // It’s like we are exchanging letters with the house owner. Natsume: That’s true. Tanuma: ——Hey, Natsume. Natsume: Hm?

Tanuma: ...Nah. / See you tomorrow. Natsume: Yeah. // See you tomorrow.

And that night, Natsume had a dream.

Natsume: (There was a gentle-looking man sitting alone on top of the veranda.) / (And around him, perhaps it was the flowering season… There were so many colors as though it was overflowing with it.) Man: Ah, my beloved arbor. // I can only visit you once every year. / I can’t even maintain or take care of you. Please forgive this useless owner of yours. // This year, I’ve been busy with my family business as well. / The days where I come here provide emotional support, so I always look forward to it. // Ah, / the view here is so beautiful. // I built this here hoping that someday, / I could bring my wife, my children, and my family here to view this scenery. // But after so long, it has always just been me.

Man: I’m sorry. Even though I built you, // I’m always here alone. // I’m sorry I couldn’t make it lively. // ——Someday, // should // guests arrive here——

Natsume wakes up. The following day, he meets up with Tanuma again, and they follow the trail of cookies into the forest. Natsume wonders about all the strange things involving this situation, about the forest that was so close to his house and yet he doesn’t know much about it, about these cookies that still look great even after so long, and about the mysterious owner who never shows his face. And when they arrive at the arbor—

Flowers had bloomed across the garden.

Tanuma: What!? / Flowers!? // …This can’t all be / the seeds I planted yesterday…? // Just how did… Natsume: ——I’m guessing // this arbor made all of them bloom.

Tanuma: Huh… SFX: *rustle*

The one who wrote notes to thank them for cleaning the floor and the sliding doors might have been the arbor itself. With its memories of bygone days, it’s always been here inside the forest, waiting.

Natsume: You finally have guests coming here. / But I’m sorry that it was us.

This was such an old, old little arbor, and it felt as though it was mustering the last of its power to show them this scenery.

Nyanko: Ooh, there are strawberry flowers here too. Natsume: Tanuma. / Why don’t we take a seat at the veranda and look at this scenery for a bit? Tanuma: Huh? Natsume: Somehow, / I feel like we won’t be able to come here again tomorrow.

Tanuma: ———……… // I see——… Natsume: (——I wonder if there are buildings that can become ayakashi too.)

That was the mysterious arbor that Nyanko-sensei found. It was only a short while, but it was where two people, one beast, and another certain someone, had spent their time together. As they take a seat on the veranda, Natsume recalls the words that the owner had said in his dream.

Man: ——Someday, // should guests arrive here…

Man: Make sure to welcome them with lots of flowers, alright?

It was a beautiful and lovely, secret arbor.

“Cookies to the Forest’s Entrance” END

[candlelight27]

Chapter 5: This Moment Lost in Time

Summary: Sylvain has been ignoring you since you met him. You had been in love with him since you met him. College is about to offer you a fresh start. New academic year, new life. You were ready to forget him. But fate seems to have other plans… (COLLEGE AU)

Series: Seeking Your Warmth If Only For A Day

Warnings: BLOOD, game spoilers and felony (don’t steal, kids)

Pairings: Sylvain Jose Gautier x Female Reader

Word Count: 5143

AO3: This Moment Lost in Time

A/N:  Thanks to @galamixx and their help!!! If you like this chapter, please consider commenting. My inbox is always open too, for suggestiong or just to chat! :)

You put a hesitant foot in Sylvain’s room, walking right behind him as he guided you. It was an ample space and it had a window that let the sunshine inside in the morning. The decoration was quite simple. The bed, placed under the window, was covered in white linen, and the walls were bare, without any pictures or posters. Its appearance broke your every expectation of what you had thought his room would be like.

You were surprised you couldn’t find anything that screamed ‘Sylvain lives here’, or any hint at all of his renowned affairs. You chastised yourself for thinking he’d have a box filled with panties he had stolen, or obscene magazines thrown around. He was now a close friend – perhaps something more, but your brain was trying to avoid that subject at the moment – so you’d have to stop assuming things about him. Especially regarding the high number of misconceptions you’ve had about him. Yet the truth was that you would have never suspected that he lived in such an austere manner. You began to understand how he got along with Dimitri so well.

Despite the absence of luxuries, there was something that caught your eye: the quantity of books he owned. His desk and shelves were crammed, and there were even a few piles over the floor. You identified in a glance some history titles, as well as fiction and philosophical essays. It was quite the collection for someone most people considered an airhead – a thought that made you slightly angry at those people.

“Sit wherever you want,” Sylvain commented. You sat on the bed, while he moved to take a seat on the chair in front of his desk. He carefully placed on the floor a board of chess, trying not to move any pieces. It was incomplete, with only a handful of blacks and whites. You wondered if Sylvain was trying to solve one of those problems that he used to do with Claude back in high school. Afterwards, Sylvain placed his hands behind his head and leant back. You looked around nervous, absentmindedly caressing the bed dressing with your fingertips, avoiding by all means ogling him.

“You have a nice room,” you said. This was awkward, and you didn’t know what to say. You felt once again you were invading his privacy by simply being there. And you were on his bed, where he slept. It felt very personal, and you were not sure if it was your place to be there.

“Not what you expected for someone like me, right?”, he hummed. You feared that he actually was able to read your mind after that line.

“How is Glenn?”, you changed the subject, hoping Sylvain wouldn’t notice.

“Oh, he’s fine! He’s conscious and recovering. Apparently, when he was going to work, a dog crossed the road and he crashed the car avoiding it.” Sylvain drew out a breath. “Honestly, I’m so relieved he’s alive.”

“That gives us time to proceed with our plan. But then again, Flayn is onto whatever is happening. It’s not just paranoia, there must be a clue somewhere,” you reflected.

You had a few days to come to terms with Sylvain’s crazy theories after that encounter with Flayn at the hospital. As if fate had been mocking you, you had even more visions of your classmates in times of war, which only reinforced Sylvain’s words. You started writing down the smallest details you could recall, hoping they’d be of help to clarify something. Anything. And you realised some names kept appearing time after time.

“I wanted to show you a few things,” Sylvain said. He turned around to look at the books opened on his desk. He moved a couple of volumes and used papers around until he chose one. The sound of papers being flipped frantically came from behind you. “Here it is!”

He stood up and gave it to you, waiting a minute for you to inspect it thoroughly.

“So?” He insisted. Sylvain was eager to know your opinion. “What do you think?”

“It’s…” you opened your mouth.

“Awfully familiar?”, he offered.

“Yes”, you nodded.

It was an ancient copy of Seiros’ precepts. There you could see a coloured engraving that displayed Saint Seiros, who had an eerie resemblance to Rhea, officially in charge of Garreg Mach High School and the cathedral annexed to it. Her light green hair, her bright and big eyes, her figure. Everything was exactly the same. She had a serene countenance, and she was surrounded by dragons. Once, you were taught that they represented the strength of Seiros and the four saints, but they had so many details, they looked real.

“And that’s not the only thing!” Sylvain added before you could finish examining it. He passed you another book. “This one is Linhardt’s, but he lent it to me indefinitely. He knows a lot about Saint Cethleann, he’s investigating her figure and plans to do a PhD.”

“What am I looking for?”, you asked, tracing the index with your finger.

“Look at the pictures first. There are a couple of engravings and drawings. Just look at any.”

You did as he told you. A chill ran down your spine. 

“This is Flayn,” you babbled, totally astonished. “But, like, it’s clearly Flayn.”

“Yes!” Sylvain was thrilled.

“They have the same face,” you repeated. You looked at the bottom of the page, where a footnote was written, and read it out loud. “‘Saint Cethleann was said to possess a kind heart and devoted her life to helping others in need. That’s why she developed an interest in medicine, and she is the patron saint of those who practice the art of healing. She healed countless wounded in her life, sparking the faith in those who met her.’ Is this real?” He nodded, an amused expression decorating his face. He seemed entertained by your reaction. “It looks like a set up.”

“It’s weird that all the pieces fit together as we go, right?”, Sylvain agreed.  

“If everything is so evident, why hasn’t anyone found out anything yet?”, you exclaimed exasperated.

“We’ve gone over that before,” he sat next to you on the bed. He crossed one of his legs and was careful not to touch you with any part of his body. After all, you were not the only one self-conscious about this meeting. He had been feeling vulnerable ever since he went all in with you – it was easy to recognise.

You wanted to tell him that it was okay to have physical contact and get close to you. And that you had similar feelings for him. But neither of you had said anything after his speech, and your conversations hadn’t got that way any other time. And now it seemed that you had lost your opportunity to give him an answer; it seemed forgotten and entombed.

“Yeah, yeah. Everyone has bigger problems. Except us, apparently”, you said ironically.

“I have plenty of problems”, he said with fake seriousness.

“Oh?”, you mocked him. “I’ve never noticed.”

“One of them is no one takes me seriously”, he smirked. You felt a pang of guilt on your stomach and averted your gaze towards the book. It was shameful to admit, but you had done it several times in the past. You didn’t know he resented it.

“I wanted to try something,” Sylvain said out loud, demanding your attention. He looked flushed, but you dismissed the thought.

That’s when you remembered his cryptic messages earlier.

Sylvain (13:25): I might have come up with a thing that can be useful 😊.

Sylvain (13:25): Come home whenever you want, I’ll be here.

He hadn’t texted you as regularly as he did during the previous days, thus when his icon popped up on the screen of your phone, your heart fluttered in your chest. Should you go right away? Should you wait? There were things unsaid between you, but you had been dying to spend time with your favourite redhead. You convinced yourself that curiosity was playing a big part in your decision, and not your own emotions, so immediately answered affirmatively to his proposition.

“Yes, you mentioned that before.” You looked at him in the eye. He was blushing, you had no doubts now. And it seemed that he was out of character, because who would have thought Sylvain would be ashamed at all flirting? “What’s wrong?”

“You might not like my methods,” he shrugged.

“Sylvain!” you sighed, annoyed. “We’re way past your mysterious phase! Just tell me!”

“No need to get mad, darling,” he laughed. Then, Sylvain coughed and recomposed himself. “I thought that maybe we could trigger memories so we can investigate them. Find a common pattern.”

“Okay.”

“What was the last thing you dreamt?” He inquired carefully. Sylvain knew that some dreams were… Unfavorable.

“That horrible nightmare where I bury an axe in your chest”, you said. It made you want to cry, just the mere mention of it. Such a brutal act, why would it have happened?

“Ah, yes. That one”, he made a disgusted gesture. “You could’ve picked a nicer one.”

“How are we going to trigger the memories?”, you questioned him.

“By touching,” Sylvain answered. You raised your eyebrows. “W-Wait, not in that way!”, he stuttered while waving his arms around, as if to clear the atmosphere. Hewas trying his best to correct his accidental innuendo. “We can hold our hands, or just bump our shoulders together? We don’t have to, of course, but–”

“Sylvain, relax. I don’t mind”, you took his hand in yours to downplay the issue. That warmth that had become familiar spread throughout your skin. “Besides, it’s a good idea. It’s worked before.”

“But it’s not working now,” Sylvain complained.

“What did you think that was going to happen? Fireworks and a narrated episode of the battle of Garreg Mach?” You mocked, while he simply smirked.

The situation made your heart fly. The light outside was fading, dying the room of orange and gold. Everything surrounding you belonged to Sylvain, and you were on his bed, holding his hand in yours. It was special. A great fluttery feeling was forming in your stomach, one that made you light in the head and giggly. You shifted your body around awkwardly, without changing your position, and his grip tightened.

You noticed the muscles in his arm flexing, and his palm becoming sweaty.

“It’s not working…”, Sylvain lamented again.

“Close your eyes. Let’s focus on that memory together,” you instructed, half hoping it would work, half hoping it would prevent him from releasing your hand.

You let your eyes close. Every sensation became sharper. His touch, his presence, his smell. Everything had a distinct scent, the detergent of his clothes, his cologne, his books. - ‘Put yourself together!’ you scolded yourself and tried to envision your memory instead of focusing on Sylvain.

The large field of Gronder; the confusion of bodies, some dead, some alive; the  fresh blood; Sylvain’s horrid expression.

And, as if it was magic, it worked. You could vividly see it. The world surrounding you disappeared, and you were immersed in that moment lost in time.

The heat was suffocating, and so was the odour of burnt bodies and death. The podium where the archers had been trying to knock down the wyverns and pegasi had suddenly burned when the infantry had reached it. Many had died from all three parties: Dimitri’s, Edelgard’s and Claude’s. The flames were consuming everything on your left. Your arms stung out of tiredness, for you couldn’t even remember how long you had been there, fighting enemies.

Suddenly, you saw Sylvain. His horse was nowhere to be seen, and it saddened you. It was probably dead, too. A bad omen. You thought of the times he had insisted you rode with him, and the few times you accepted. Or when he stayed overtime to take care of the mount. You shook your head: he was now your enemy, and you had to kill him. Tears filled your eyes, and you voiced all the curses you could think of. How had everything turned into this? Where did it go wrong?

Sylvain was not aware that you were there. You traced his direction with your eyes. Was he escaping the fire? You hoped he was fleeing, but you knew him like the back of your hand. He had sworn loyalty to Dimitri and he wouldn’t leave him behind. Never. You looked far beyond.

When the realisation hit you, you started running.

He was heading towards Claude, who wasn’t riding his wyvern. Instead, he was supporting the infantry on the right flank with a sword and his bow. It was being effective in providing a much needed morale boost, but it wasn’t his brightest move. Damn him for not knowing how to keep himself safe.

Your gaze fell upon Byleth, who in this world had long hair, cuter clothes and was Jeralt’s daughter instead of his son. She had advanced more, leading the knights fighting the Adrestian forces, so she wasn’t going to save Claude, as she always did. Not this time, when she was risking her neck. You panicked, thinking about what disaster would happen if the heir to the Alliance, the only nation fighting actively against the Adrestian invasion, fell in battle.

You were almost there, axe in hand.

“Claude!”, you shouted. The Golden Deer leader realised Sylvain was about to stab him in the back, but dodged the hit just in time. Claude rolled on his side, while Sylvain’s lance got stuck in the ground.

You took advantage of this chance, arriving just a few seconds later, and with a swing of your weapon you broke the handle of his weapon in two. Moving with the momentum, your propelled the edge of the axe to Sylvain’s body. You contained your breath, wishing he would move away, that he’d escape. That you’d see him alive in the next battle, even if it meant going through another hell. Maybe you’d both survive, overcome your differences. But he didn’t move away. He stayed in place.

A lost arrow pierced your thigh. Even if you didn’t feel it at all thanks to the adrenaline pumping through your blood, it made you face reality.

Sylvain, disarmed, was on the other side of your weapon. You let go of the handle. It had cracked his armour, and his hot blood was flowing down. Sylvain fell to his knees, his face completely white.

“I’m sorry, Sylvain...” you said, as you fell backwards, unable to use your right leg due to the deep wound. He smiled but stayed completely still. Life was slowly escaping his body. You threw up on your side.

“Ignatz! Cover me!”, you heard Claude shouting. It seemed distant, while in reality he was too close. He was shouting your name, too, but your gaze was fixed on Sylvain. You couldn’t speak or move. Claude lifted you and placed you in his arms, carrying you somewhere safe. Sylvain was still alive, yet immobile. You couldn’t help thinking about him. Why was no one helping him? Is he going to die alone on the battlefield? Claude’s voice, assuring you that you were going to be alright, started to fade and his face was getting blurry…

 “Are you okay!?” Sylvain was shaking your shoulder. You were laid down on his bed and he was above you.

“Yes”, you answered, eyes open wide. You got up, and you returned to the position you had been in before on Sylvain’s bed. “What happened?”

“You’ve been gone for 5 minutes. As in, eyes opened, not responding to anything. I was about to call an ambulance.” Sylvain inspected you closely, quite worried. You could sense his breath on your skin.

“I’m fine”, you whispered, still a bit disoriented and dizzy.

“Are you sure?”

You nodded.

“Sylvain,” you called his name, his hand still on your shoulder. “What happened after you killed me? Did you see that?” Why did you want to know?

“Ah, yes. Ferdinand killed me afterwards”, he groaned. “He was avenging your death…”

“Typical of him. I’ll make sure to thank him, though. It was very thoughtful,” you joked. “What about Claude? And Dimitri?”

“They were dead too. Fallen in combat,” he said with an unsure voice. “Edelgard was the one reigning after that, or so I’ve thought. It makes sense.”

“I recall professor Byleth there, behind me. He was fighting side by side with Edelgard. They must have won.” You agreed with a gesture. “What about when we married? Was Byleth there?”

“Yes. Next to Dimitri. I think they got married too. That time, the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus got the victory.” He crossed his arms, but his leg was touching yours. “What are you implying?”

“I killed you to protect Claude”, you started. The redhead knitted his brows.

“We already know that,” Sylvain commented, annoyed.

“Why are you so irritated?” You got confused why he was hasty upon mentioning Claude, until a certain thought crossed your mind. 

“No reason, just that the last thing I got to see was you in the arms of Claude.” He sighed. A smile found its way on your lips, an eyebrow raising.

“Are you jealous?” You teased him.

“Then, you got together with Claude after that. He commented something once about it,” Sylvain continued, ignoring your question. “Okay, keep going. What are you trying to say?”

“The war is between the three countries of the continent of Fódlan. And the respective leaders of each are, coincidentally, the leaders of each House at Garreg Mach – former monastery, currently a high school.” He nodded, prompting you to carry on. “When I killed you, Claude was the winner. The other countries fell and the Alliance took over. And Byleth was at his side. The same happened with Edelgard and Dimitri respectively, right? So that might indicate that Byleth is the deciding piece of the board. Depending on what side he-”, you remembered how Byleth had different appearances, “-He, she, or they pick, the events change and makes their side win the war and, ultimately, take control of Fódlan.”

“And how did that occur to you?”, he looked concerned. “It’s plausible. I’m not questioning you, but it’s quite twisted.”

“Because they are the only thing that actually changes in the war. Everything seems the same until Byleth arrives.”

“Well, you changed from Houses all the time,” Sylvain pointed out.

“Every time, to join Byleth’s class. Don’t you see it?” You tried to convince him.

“It seems logical to think that Byleth has something to do with it but we can’t be sure…”

“It’s a hunch, Sylvain,” you explained. “I’m sure we have to talk to Byleth. We will find something. This time, when I saw Byleth fighting, something clicked.”

Sylvain hugged you without a warning. He buried his head on the crook of your neck and enclosed you in his arms. Your hands rested against his chest, you trapped and unable to make a single move. The warmth surrounding you felt so warm, so comforting. Everything was going to be okay, Sylvain was there, and he won’t be gone this time.

“I’m scared that this will lead to a dead-end street. But… at last we’ve found a clue. I’ve been waiting for this forever…” He said with a strained tone. Sylvain’s voice was quiet. He didn’t want to let you go.

“It’s thanks to all your work, Sylvain. Everything you wrote was very useful…” You smiled, leaning into his embrace, almost melting. “You had noticed too Byleth was an important factor–”

“I’m just really happy you’re here with me. That you haven’t chosen Claude or Edelgard over me this time.” He chuckled, trying to shoo away the remainders of sadness. “Not gonna lie here, I’m extremely happy you didn’t choose Claude. That bastard.”

“Hey,” you reprimanded him. “Claude is nice. It’s not his fault we’re in this mess.”

“Well, he took you away from me once”, Sylvain said as he hugged you closer. “Have I told you that you married him?”

“What did you want me to do? You were dead!” You chuckled. It was weird to talk so lightly about it, but Sylvain became more comfortable the less relevant it felt. “This feels nice…”, you muttered, turning your face to kiss the top of his head. His red hair was soft, and it smelt of citrus. “So now we’re on hugging terms?”

“Yes”, Sylvain affirmed. “I might never let you go now that we crossed that line.”

“I wouldn’t mind…”

But a loud gasp resounded behind you. The tender moment that you wished would last forever was suddenly replaced with surprise.

“I’m so sorry Sylvain!” A voice shouted, someone that you identified as Dimitri. He closed the door with a slam.

Sylvain moved away, averting his eyes. His cheeks were blushing, and your own were warm too.

“I’m going to explain to Dimitri that we weren’t doing anything weird, okay?”, he scratched his head, again, and you recognised it as a gesture he made when he felt awkward. Little by little, you had been learning his non-verbal language. “I don’t want him traumatized for all his life.” You giggled.

“Does it make you nervous that Dimitri thinks we’re banging? He only saw us hugging,” You questioned daringly.

“Shut up”, he flashed his handsome smile. Flirting was an art he had mastered, and he felt confident with it. “And say that you’re staying for dinner, instead.”

“Not if you’re cooking instant noodles, Sylvain”, you narrowed your eyes. “That’s not a real dinner. You won’t trick me – I’ve seen all the packages in the cupboards.”

“First, we’re in college, and everything’s valid.” He stood up with a flourish. “Second, Dimitri had gone to the supermarket, so he’s the one cooking. It relaxes him.”

“Okay, he cooks real food. I’m staying then.”

“Perfect.” Sylvain winked, as he ran out of the room. His voice could be heard all over the apartment, and Dimitri was still stuttering. You smiled to yourself and took out your phone and opened the app to write an email.

[From: YOU - To: beisner@gmuniversity.fe]

Dear Professor Eisner,

I hope everything is fine.

Sylvain Jose Gautier and I are having a few questions regarding the bibliography of our project. We’d like to meet you next week to settle the matter and discuss some work.

Thank you very much.

“I’ve never skipped classes legally before”, commented Sylvain casually.

You two were navigating the corridors of the building where teachers had their offices. Everything was dull and generic, except for the occasional cabinets that displayed trophies and nameplates that students and professors had earned long ago.

“That’s why you were in detention all the time”, you reminded him.

“It was intentional. I wanted to strengthen my relationship with Seteth”, he said, laughing. You had to give in and laugh too, not only because he was actually funny, but because his humour was contagious. You couldn’t help but mirror it.

You eyed him from head to toe. Your companion was wearing a pair of black jeans and a white t-shirt. He had a dark-grey, almost black blazer with rolled up sleeves on due to the chilliness in the air. His attire rang a bell.

“Why are you dressing like we did in the Monastery?” You wondered out loud to him.

“Because I’m pretty hot in black and white”, Sylvain chuckled in delight with a deep and sexy tone. He was right. You could outline with a glance his body, which was pretty well built. Of course, you did everything you could to deny it, so you put on your best deadpan face. “Okay, okay. I think it might make Byleth nervous.”

“Now that’s a joke,” you remarked. “Byleth barely showed any emotion during a war. Do you think it takes so little to irk him?”

“You might be right,” he conceded.

“Here!” You grabbed Sylvain’s sleeve, bringing him back after he walked past the correct door.

“The nameplate says Dr. Gloucester. Do you need your eyes checked?” Sylvain emphasized.

“Dr. Gloucester retired, and they gave his office to Byleth. He told us the first day! What were you doing?”

“Okay, okay,” he rolled his light brown eyes. “You knock.”

“What are you? Five?” You said while hitting the door with your knuckles.

“Come in,” Byleth’s voice came from the interior of the office.

You opened the door to see your professor encircled by lots of papers. No one can escape bureaucracy.

You stopped in the middle of the room. Right then, you felt an extraordinary sense of existence. As if all the years that had passed before your adventures with Sylvain were but a mere dream and your consciousness had come back to you a few weeks ago. You were sure that Byleth’s presence was having its own influence on you, now that you had regained a good number of your forgotten memories. There was a strange energy in the atmosphere.

Now that you considered it, this was just like that sweet time you spent at Garreg Mach Monastery. Wandering around to avoid boredom with Sylvain and finding much more than just entertainment, following Byleth around to ask all kinds of questions, spending the big seasonal events with your friends… That was what happiness looked like to you.

“You can take a seat,” Byleth said.

“Ah, yes, thank you.” You muttered. Sylvain was next to you in those uncomfortable iron chairs your university loved buying.

“What can I help you with?” He asked, ever so willing to help, yet enigmatic.

“Ah, we have a basic bibliography for the Crescent Moon War, but we’re lacking a few good articles in Loog’s biography”, Sylvain started, replaying the topics you had agreed on. “We don’t know if the authors are reliable.”

“I can take a look at those names”, Byleth smiled. “And I have a few books you could use.”

“That’d be great!”, you cheered with a fake façade. You had to admit, it was quite fun to play spies.

“They’re on that bookcase”, your professor pointed at the one right on your side. You stood up and started looking around.

“I had a question on Klaus I, that king of Faerghus, as well. What was the role he played in…”, Sylvain asked, so serious and well versed in the matter.

You disconnected from the conversation, turning to read the titles on the wall. You took a thick, blue book filled with dust, pretending it caught your interest. Then another black volume, with leather covers and golden letters. You kept investigating, about the Almyran invasion; the formation of the Academy of Garreg Mach, the base of your own high school; history of the Adrestian Empire… Nothing past the year 1000. It was quite suspicious.

You turned around, and Byleth was drawing a diagram for a focused Sylvain, who was all nods and questions. They couldn’t see you anymore, or at least it seemed so. Out of the corner of your eye, on the closest end of the professor’s large mahogany desk, you saw a bunch of letters. Discreetly, you looked up the sender. Curly letters with the address of Rhea were written there, right from the Cathedral.

You made sure Byleth’s vision was blocked by a stack of folders. With decision and a steady hand, you took the most recent one and hid it under your clothes. Desperate situations call for desperate measures, right? Besides, it wasn’t exactly stealing, and you had already made an excuse. ‘It got misplaced when I took the books you lent me, professor,’ you heard yourself say in your head. 

“Is there anything else you need?” Byleth said, when his discussion with Sylvain was done. He clearly intended for you to leave, as it was getting late.

“No, we were going away now,” Sylvain confirmed, walking towards the door. You followed him. Yet you grew bold.

“Can I ask just one more thing?” You said to the professor right before exiting.

“Of course.” The man with the dark blue hair.

“I can’t seem to find how the Crescent Moon War influenced the later war of 1180,” you stated.

Byleth remained silent for a moment. His jaw tensed. Your heart pounded. Did you catch him?

“That’s because there wasn’t any war that year,” Byleth responded. His demeanour was calm and serious as ever. Had he been practicing?

“Oh, really?” You tried to sound candid, feigning surprise. “I’m really bad with dates! That must be it!”

“You might have confused a couple of battles with a war. The battle took place around that year, but there wasn’t any declaration of war made” Byleth declared with a tense smile.

“Sorry for the trouble!” You exclaimed at last, urging Sylvain to go out with your elbow.

You closed the door behind you, and walked fast to distance yourself from any of the offices.

“What was that?” Sylvain was shocked.

“Wait until we get out of here,” You begged.

 Once you were on the common grounds of the student buildings, you stopped Sylvain. There was nobody around, as they were still in class. The ginger plopped himself on a bench.

“That was a good shot, but you were right”, he shrugged. “Byleth’s cold blood won’t make it easy. You were right, he’s special, I could feel a kind of connection… But we got nothing out of this…”

“I might have something”, you looked at him intently.

“On the books he gave you?”, he tilted his head. “Because I have revised all the library and –”

You took the opened letter out of your blouse. The silver details shone under the light.

“What the hell!”, Sylvain shouted. You shushed him, making desperate gestures with your arms to keep him from attracting any attention. You were paranoid, even though you were alone. Instead of any logical reaction, he had a fit of laughter.

“What?” You asked, irked.

“I thought you were physically incapable of anything remotely wrong in a moral sense!” He kept laughing, despite your attempts to quiet him down. “Why did you take it? Another hunch?”

“If you don’t get caught, you don’t get punished”, you said in a sarcastic tone.

“I knew it! You’re just as bad as me!” Sylvain was delighted.

“I might be,” You admitted because, well, he was right. Stealing the mail was a serious crime. But you took a small comfort in the pride and surprise Sylvain made you feel. You were no longer your dull, old self, that went on with the flow of events. No, you had a goal – multiple goals, in fact – and you were going to be an active participant in your life.

In that moment you wanted to kiss Sylvain again. But you had other priorities.

 “Are we going to read this or not?” You dared him.

“Don’t ask me twice.”

[dukethomas]

Summary: In a world where Batman never returned and his family scattered, the We Are Robin movement has grown and become the city’s new protectors. Now older, they have a conversation around a kitchen counter.

Written for @duketectivecomics​’ Duke Week, Day Three, We Are Robin! This was actually the first fic finished because I love them so much.

(note: someone please stop me from making a whole au series set here. i’m really about to do it. (i’m lying i already made the series.) also, i realize i’m shit at describing what people look like, so the picture below is the cast of characters, barring the huge, absolutely massive blonde guy. that’s troy.)

(left to right: isabella “izzy” ortiz, troy walker, duke thomas, andre “dre” cipriani, daxton “dax” chill, riko sheridan)

-

When you lead a movement of maybe a hundred-fifty kids, you learn to never get used to silence. 

Tap, tap, tap. 

Duke walks into the kitchen, seeing Riko fiddling with a pencil, tapping it on the marble counter, and staring out through the window above the sink. The sun lowers in the sky, amber light washing over everyone.

The silence is eerie, what with everyone waiting to make the first move. He remembers his first night as a Robin, his first night wearing the red jacket when they seemed to be constantly bickering. 

Years of this changes people. 

He raises his eyebrows and plops down in a chair. “How are y’all doing?” he asks, not quietly, but only just loud enough to cut through the tension. 

Izzy grunts softly, her eyes drooping after a late night. Stakeout, probably. Duke tries to keep track of everything that the Robins do, but it covers a much wider scope than it did when he was sixteen. 

He notes her bloodshot eyes and jokingly wonders to himself if the red in them could be counted as Robin colors. The police have taken people in for less.

“The new recruits are learning fast,” Riko tells him, still tapping the pencil, dark eyes wandering. “There’s one—Carrie Kelley—I think she can be promoted to one of the squads in a few weeks. The others will take time.”

“That’s good,” Duke replies, “but you know that’s not what I meant. How are you guys? Answer me honestly.”

Dre snorts. “Since when have you?” He cocks his head towards the stack of textbooks on the counter, a gleaming Robin pin placed on top. A lock of brown hair falls in his face, the rest loosely pulled into a ponytail not unlike Duke’s own (whereas Izzy and Riko cut theirs short for convenience and personal style, which Duke always finds amusing).

Duke shrugs. “Fair enough. But I feel like we haven’t been talking enough recently. We should go out, have some fun. Relax,” he adds as an afterthought. “We can leave Gotham to someone else for one day. I know Terry can handle my business.”

“We’re running low on grapplers,” interjects Dax, covering a yawn with his hand. “I was planning to stay at the workshop tomorrow and fix the broken ones.”

“Harper can handle it,” Izzy says, glancing over to Duke. He lets a smile creep onto his face as he thinks of Harper and her azure-haired brilliance. She never became a Robin, but she’s somehow always there when they need her. She packs a mean punch underneath her friendly mechanic persona. 

He always got the impression she lost something, when they talk about Robin business in front of her and she gets this wistful look in her eye. But they all lost something, hadn’t they? Years ago, when Batman and his allies skipped town. 

Bruce Wayne died a little after that, in what the papers called a noble sacrifice. Duke remembers Wayne trying to talk to Mister Bloom, talk him out of attacking the whole city. He supposes Wayne was trying to prove something to himself, and obviously, it didn’t work.

Duke kept his mouth shut when his fellow Robins suspected if the events were connected, and they figured it out themselves in due time. 

The city only grew worse after that. And maybe, if they had a Nightwing, a Red Robin, maybe even the tiny newest iteration of Robin, a Black Bat, a Spoiler, a Batman, maybe they could have survived. Maybe they could have thrived.

But they didn’t. So they all had to make do. 

It almost seemed like a blessing when his foster parents were killed in Mister Bloom’s siege on the city—not that any deaths of innocents, no matter how unlikeable, are acceptable, but because Duke got lost in the system, with Leslie Thompkins busy mourning the death of the man who used to be her ward, and he could devote all of his attention to the Robin movement.

“Okay!” Duke says with a grin. “Let’s do it. We need something like this.”

He’s about to start listing off ideas for something they could do tomorrow, when Dax interrupts, quiet and steely. “Do you ever regret doing this?” he asks with a graveness unlike him. “All of this. Because it was one thing when we were in high school and we took on odd jobs, but now we’re—” He swallows uncomfortably. “This is our responsibility. We haven’t been children since we joined. And I wouldn’t trade you guys for the world, and I’m not unhappy with the situation, I just wonder, sometimes. If our lives were different.”

“No,” Riko responds immediately, coals burning in her voice. “We have a purpose. And it’s this. And even if we didn’t, I will never regret helping.”

Duke couldn’t have said it better himself, but he continues it anyways. “We all made a choice to be in this line of work. We chose to help people instead of standing by, and we chose to try to save this hellhole instead of abandoning it. And I think,” he says, “that even though it’s rough sometimes, we get rewarded. Rainbows after the rain. I mean, look at how many Robins are with us. We inspire that kind of hope. So no, I don’t regret it.”

Dax’s face freezes in tightly knit anxiety, and he swallows hard. “Thought you’d say that. That’s who you are, Duke. You and Riko and Dre. You don’t hesitate, you just jump right into it.”

Duke opens his mouth to fire back, that he hesitated once and it cost him his parents, he hesitated again and it cost them Troy Walker, and by the third time he hesitated, there were countless people Mister Bloom killed that could have survived instead, but Izzy beats him to it.

“And what am I?” she teases, her tired eyes twinkling. “Chopped liver?”

And with that, one Izzy Ortiz sparks movement where everyone had stilled. 

“You and I,” Dax declares, after a moment of hesitation, with a weary levity, “are the most important part of this team. Impulse control.”

Izzy hides her laugh in a fist, a habit created in the first year they’d been friends. Duke doesn’t flinch at laughter as much anymore, only certain intonations, but the habits remain. “I’ll show you impulse control,” she mutters. “I’m going to launch myself into the harbor.”

(Despite this, there’s a truth to Dax’s statement. Duke can’t count how many times Izzy has stopped him from walking into a wall after a few all-nighters. Metaphorically and literally.)

“Please don’t,” Duke pleads, his eyes crinkling with mirth. “Because then I’m going to be compelled to do it with you. To save you if you drown, of course.

Dre slams his hands down on the table. “Bet!” he announces. “Bet neither of you are willing to do it from sixty feet up.” 

Duke scrambles to his feet as Izzy jolts up in her seat. “Bet!” they both chime at the same time, mock-glaring at each other.

“I’ll be the referee!” Riko blows on a whistle she wears on her nearly all the time now, which is mostly used for training purposes. Sometimes used for nefarious purposes, like being able to declare herself referee. 

Dax stares at them and a fond grin pulls at the side of his face. He sighs. “Okay, you guys have sold me. I’m in. Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow,” Duke agrees, nodding. 

He catches Dax’s gaze, then Izzy’s, then Riko’s, then Dre’s. They may be in charge of protecting the city, it may be their purpose and their responsibility, but a thread connects them beyond that. It’s their easy banter and tense shoulders dropping in each other’s presence, in the apartment they share even if they barely see each other, the way they can fight side by side and never have to say a word.

(Years of this changes people, but some things, Duke knows in his bones, will never change.)

((And as it turns out, he and Riko didn’t say everything they didn’t regret about this gig. He still stands by that speech, though, it’s a damn good one.))

-

Read and comment on AO3!

[ineffablelabpartners]

Forgive me, brother, for I have committed a fanfic.

Title: Reconciliations

Summary: During S3E1 (The Price of Power), Hordak makes amends with Entrapta after his outburst, and the two of them decide what to do about Catra. Some of Hordak's leadership choices are slightly called into question.

Warnings: Brief, humorous references to methods of execution?

“You know…there are more efficient ways to execute someone than banishing them to a hostile location.”

Saw. Tweezers. Pliers. Multimeter. Entrapta was in her room, mask down, working with every tool she could get her hair on at once. Her workbench was starting to wobble again, but this time she was pointedly ignoring it. The door opened behind her, and from the ominous shadow that fell across she didn’t have to look to see who it was. He had brought Imp with him.

“Ahem.”

“...” Entrapta’s soldering iron soldered on.

Imp chirruped.

“...After reviewing your research on First Ones tech in the Crimson Waste, I have decided that I am willing to discuss it further.” He was calmer now than she’d last seen him, with something different from his usual demeanor that she couldn't define. “I believe I have come up with a compromise to our disagreement.”

She shut off her tools, but didn’t reply. Imp chirped louder.

Hordak continued, strained. “I may have... overreacted to your request. You approached me at an — inopportune — moment.” He swallowed. “And I...”

Entrapta set down her gadgetry and lifted her mask. She turned to look at him, still not having finished his sentence.

“...had already written my speech for the assembly.” He was holding the datapad she’d left behind with the crinkled map of the Crimson Waste folded neatly on top. A lock of blue hair had escaped his slicked back style and fallen across his forehead. His armor twinkled in the glow of the soft purple lighting she’d recently installed. She bit her lip.

With a screech, Imp jumped off Hordak’s shoulder into Entrapta’s arms, thwapping him in the face with his tail as he did so. “Entrapta,” he said, softer than she’d ever heard that voice say her name before. She giggled.

“Imp, that is hardly dignified.” Hordak stared at the two of them, his eyes a little bigger, as Entrapta embraced Imp and kissed his cheek. His skin was peculiarly smoother than a human’s but still baby soft.

“Have a seat, Hordak.” She gestured toward her purple couch. “Let’s talk.”

“Emily!” Imp said, with Entrapta’s voice.

“She’s helping Scorpia with something before the mandatory assembly - I wasn’t planning on going!”

Using her hair, Entrapta retrieved two fizzy drinks with straws from her personal cooler. Fizzy rations were one of the changes she'd been able to implement to the Horde menu, though her old chefs had refused her offer to come work at the Fright Zone. (She'd even tracked them down with the Sanctum communicator and everything.) The Horde drinks were green without much flavor, but still: fizzy.

Hordak looked at the beverage she placed in his hand the way Scorpia looked at small buttons. He hesitated to sit down, as if he’d never touched anything soft before in his life. Had she ever seen him sit in a chair other than a throne? It was times like these that Entrapta felt better about her own social shortcomings.

“So.” She sat cross-legged next to the caped warlord, whose winged toddler leapt off her lap to perch himself at the highest point on the back of the couch. Hordak’s cybernetics were right there, close enough to touch, but she couldn’t let herself get distracted. First Ones tech (and Catra’s life?) was on the line. “What’s your solution to our tech problem?”

“Since the Crimson Waste has a reputation almost as foreboding as Beast Island...” Hordak handed his own bottle to Imp, who seemed to have a better idea of what to do with it. “I will allow you to send Catra there on a mission to retrieve First Ones tech.”

Entrapta smiled. “Thank you.” Her pigtail draped itself over the back of the couch, curling around Imp, inches from Hordak’s shoulder.

He didn’t smile back. “It must be alone, no other lives at risk,” he grunted. “If against all odds, Catra returns with what we need - she will be pardoned for proving her worth. If she does not return after an allotted period of time, she will be presumed dead and a failure. You will have to come up with a contingency plan should that happen.”

She took a sip from her fizzy drink. “Why do you think she won’t return?”

His ears wiggled, just slightly. “I lost a whole faction to that wasteland 20 years ago, including my most fearsome and competent warrior.” He bowed his head angstily, somewhat undercut by the soda sipping toddler next to it.

“Huntara. I have her file right here.” As difficult as it was to find anything in that archaic filing system. She hair-grabbed a stack of Horde folders from nearby, which Commander Cobalt had assisted her in locating. “However, I’ve noticed more than a few discrepancies between Shadow Weaver’s reports and my own research. Are you sure that her version of events can be trusted?”

“As long as the others believe what she told them, it will serve the purpose that I need.” He furrowed his brow and looked away from the photograph clipped to the inside of the folder. “But your skepticism is not unwarranted; Shadow Weaver did have something of a duplicitous side.”

Despite her difficulty with social signals, Entrapta had picked up on that fairly quickly. “Yet you kept her around for 25 years?”

“The sorceress proved her worth to me with the role she played ending the first Rebellion, but I let her ride off that goodwill for far too long. If Scorpia had shown any connection to the Black Garnet, I would have rid myself of that treacherous witch long ago.” He narrowed his eyes at the tall stack of manilla folders. “For her insistence on paper recordkeeping alone.”

It was almost a joke, but not. “So what are you going to do about her escape?”

“It is too late to do anything.” First Adora, now Shadow Weaver - apparently walking out of this place had less consequences than staying. “The only thing to be done is punish the person responsible, as a message to the others that such failures will not be tolerated.”

Entrapta took another sip. “By sending her away?”

“It is harsh, I know.” He gestured with his big metal arms, the ones she was forever yearning to go to town on with a hex-driver. “I am not a charismatic leader, Entrapta. I cannot inspire love and devotion the way others can. Fear and pragmatism are all I have.”

“And robots.”

“Yes.” His scowl fleetingly turned to a smile. “Had Catra been truthful to me, it would have allowed me to be lenient, as I have been with her before.” Hordak seemed to believe what he was saying, in that moment. He was easier to read than most people. “But I cannot abide both a failure and a liar. It would be repeating the same mistakes made with Shadow Weaver.”

“You know…” she said, after another sip. “There are more efficient ways to execute someone than banishing them to a hostile location.”

He blinked. “What do you mean?”

“Firing squad, lethal injection, hanging, electrocution, decapitation.” Entrapta mimed each of these with her hair. “A few more minutes in your atmospheric variable remover would have done it.”

He was making that face again, where his eyes were bigger than his little red mouth. “I thought you wanted me to spare Catra. Are you suggesting that I… cut off her head?”

“I’m just curious, why not? It would be easier. More cost effective. And I’m no social scientist, but I would think it might inspire more… fear?”

“No—” he scoffed, raising a finger. Was that a hint of red on his cheeks? She would have to log this. “—Beast Island is a fate worse than death. Those condemned there have only their own failures to blame for their… failures! It is a much MORE terrifying punishment than… than...”

“Heads on spikes? I’m not sure that’s coming across to your soldiers, though.” She downed the rest of her drink and pulled up the datapad. “78% of cadets over the age of 13 believe Beast Island is a fabrication told to keep them in line.”

“...where did you get that number?”

“Commander Cobalt gave me the statistics from his semi-annual survey.” The Horde school teacher asked a lot of good questions. “He said Shadow Weaver refused to take any of it into account for the cadet curriculum.”

“Beast Island is real,” he growled. His hand grazed her hair as he pushed the datapad away. “I have been there. I will say nothing more.” He folded his technologically advanced arms and looked away.

Entrapta had seen that file as well. The record of the only Horde expedition to Beast Island wasn’t very detailed, but it mentioned Huntara as one of the soldiers who had accompanied Hordak there. She was given the highest of accolades for her service there, only to perish on a mission to the Crimson Waste two weeks later, along with ten other soldiers. Cobalt had some soft science theories about the psychological effects of the trip, but that was far out of Entrapta’s field of expertise.

She inched closer to him. “But we’re sending Catra to the Crimson Waste.”

“We are,” he sighed, giving her a wry smile. “Though I do not expect her to return.”

“I disagree.” She strummed her fingers on the datapad. “My research gives her a good chance of survival.”

“Yes, she may survive. She is more capable than most...” He tilted his head, squinting. “But it doesn’t mean she’ll be back.”

This stung in a way she wasn’t prepared for. “You mean — you think— she’ll abandon us?” Entrapta flipped down her mask. Imp squeaked and bopped Hordak on the head with his tail.

“It is what I suspect others have done.” His ears drooped. “That is why I didn’t want to send her there in the first place. It would be a waste of resources to hunt defectors down in a deadly wasteland!”

Her breath fogged up the inside of the mask. “But then we won’t get the First Ones tech!”

“Entrapta...” he said softly, holding up his hands. “I had rather thought saving your friend from a fate worse than death would be your top priority. I thought that is why you were upset with me.”

“...” A more charitable reading than most people would have given her, but not wrong. She flipped up her mask. “It was. But I wanted the tech too.”

His ears didn’t know which direction to go. “Is there something else you would have me do?”

She thought it over. It was touching that he was willing to let an untrustworthy prisoner go for her, though not entirely surprising given past trends. “No. Catra will come back, if you give her the chance. She’s my friend.”

Hordak pursed his lips skeptically, then nodded. “I will give her the chance, but I will not be kind about it.” He stood, adjusting his cape, then looked at her with a tiny smile. “Will you come back to the lab with me?”

“Yes.” She grinned back. “But first you have to go to your assembly.”

He looked at the time, scowling, and smoothed back his hair. “Let’s get it over with then.”

“Heads on spikes?” Imp said, with a belch.

“No.” Hordak pointed a talon, then offered his arm. As Imp jumped on him, the fizzy drink slipped from his tiny hands. Entrapta’s hair caught it before it could spill all over his cybernetics (somewhere in an alternate universe, the war came to a swift end.)

When they got to the door, Hordak suddenly stopped, turned, and held out his other (Impless) arm to her. Entrapta was halfway to cracking it open to analyze his circuitry before she realized he was offering to… escort her? He seemed just as surprised about it as she was. His ears drooped again, with a hint of pink across his cheeks.

Beaming, she wrapped her hair around his armored forearm, mentally noting every bit of feedback.

“I still need to choose a new second-in-command,” he said stiffly, as they entered the hall.

“Ooh, how about Commander Cobalt? He’s served you faithfully for 25 years and has a degree in military science.”

“I was thinking of Force Captain Scorpia. Someone who would never betray me...”

* * *

Notes:

Presumably, Emily was helping Scorpia hide the body of the prison guard she threw into the abyss (with no consequences.)

Commander Cobalt is the blue fuzzy guy who trains the Horde cadets and also the secret mastermind behind everything.

I'm surely headcanoning against authorial intent with Hordak acknowledging Catra has a chance of surviving the Crimson Waste, but I feel like this whole storyline was a bit of a mess in canon ... so here's me trying to clean it up.

[offrankies]

A Sky Full of Stars || Rio & Frankie

Timing: Before all the finale nonsense Parties: @3starsquinn & @offrankies Summary: After watching a tired Orion study for hours, Frankie decides to give him some company and some free fries. 

Working at Al’s had proven to be easier than she’d expected. Sure, she still had trouble carrying trays that were filled with drinks since they weighed more than she was able to carry normally, and, sure, she still sometimes got an order mixed up and brought a salad to someone who asked for a monster burger; which meant that Frankie had to be on night shifts most of the time since there were less customers at 2am than 2pm. The night population of White Crest had turned out to be more interesting than she had expected. People with the strangest auras had walked in, and more than once she had been sure they had dropped bugs in her hair to annoy her. But, in all honesty, she didn’t mind one bit since everything was potential knowledge for her supernatural guide. 

That one particular night had been exceptionally slow. There was a small group of drunken, middle aged friends that had very loudly told her they had reunited for their twenty years anniversary of finishing college who kept asking for beer after beer and the occasional plate of chicken wings. And then, on the opposite side and in a completely opposite mood, a young guy that looked around her age. He’d been there for over an hour, his food basically untouched. With a smile, she went behind the counter to grab an empty glass, filling it with lemonade, before walking towards him, setting the lemonade in front of him, but being careful of his books. “Sooo, your fries are probably cold by now. Want me to bring you more? On the house, of course.”

The Scribe Headquarters was starting to become less feasible for a night’s stay. Not that he had discounted it completely, but with roommates like Winston and Ricky, who actually made him feel welcome in their home, he didn’t really need to resort to old mattresses inside of an abandoned building tucked away magically in the woods. More and more he found himself less thrilled at the idea of staying there overnight during a big research night. Tonight, he took a detour for food before he headed back to his house. He had grabbed whatever he could from the Scribe headquarters, any journals from Scribes that talked about demons. He needed to find something soon before the cursed eye found a permanent home on Rio’s palm. He kept a wrap around the scar on his hand where that terrifying eye may open back up at any time. For now, Darwin had it. But Rio had no idea how long that may last. 

Usually, Rio would have devoured the food from Al’s. When the waitress had brought him the food, he had taken a few bites from the fries before finding an especially intriguing entry from a former Scribe who had travelled all over Maine performing exorcisms. It didn’t end up turning into anything useful, but it was still an interesting read. He wasn’t sure how long he sat at the booth, his legs tucked up under his legs and books and stray pieces of paper scattered across the table. The only empty space was occupied by the plate of forgotten food. By the time the waitress came back around again, speaking and breaking him free from his focus. He jerked his head up, somehow missing that the girl had even come up next to him. He pulled the headphones from his ear, not so much using them for music as he did to try to drown out the noises coming from the other end of the restaurant. “Oh thank you so much! I’d love that.” He took a long drink from his lemonade, downing half the glass in one go. He had been surviving mostly on Monster’s and candy at the Scribe headquarters and could feel himself crashing. He either needed more sugar to get the rush going again or the waitress would come back soon to find him passed out on the table. “Do you serve energy drinks here?” Rio questioned, before snapping his fingers and changing his mind, “No! Wait a milkshake. Can I get a chocolate milkshake?” He tapped his fingers against the table in a rapid motion and closed the book he was currently reading and set it away. “Sorry- I know it probably looks like I’m a crazy person right now. But uh- I’ve just been up for like 20 hours or something. So more sleep deprived than anything else.” 

Being nosy wasn’t exactly on Frankie’s personality traits list, but it would be a lie if she didn’t try to peek at what the guy was reading, curiosity getting the best of her. At first she had just assumed it was some college boy drowning before finals, but if that had been the case there would’ve been many other late night owls trying to do last minute cramming too. But whatever it was he was reading, it didn’t look like textbooks but rather just some old books. It looked pretty cool, and if her own experience with waitresses had taught her anything, is that they loved some good gossip. As he drank from his fresh lemonade - which, by the way, she’d had to refill once more - she carefully took the fries so none would fall on the open pages in front of him. “No problem. I need to keep the cook awake somehow.” A quick wink, before she listened once more, and she couldn’t contain the soft laugh that bubbled after his sudden change of mind. “Chocolate Milkshake it is. And, for future reference, we do not have energy drinks, but we have hella good coffee.” 

The smile decorating her face widened, her cheeks pushing her eyes and slightly narrowing them as she listened him talk at full speed. He reminded her of herself when she started ranting about whatever was on her mind with total strangers, except Frankie never knew when to stop. “Not at all. If anything, those guys are the only crazy I’ve had to deal with tonight,” Her thumb pointed over her shoulder to the only other costumers, who seemed to be banging the table now as one of the crew chugged his beer. It also helped that his aura was super dim in comparison, the soft red mixed with turquoise a nice break from the bright, glowing yellow coming from the other side of the diner. “I didn’t want to interrupt you but you seemed like you needed a refill,” Since you’ve been sitting there practically not moving for a while, she almost added, but lip her lip to stop herself. With her chin, she motioned to his books and papers. “Watcha’ reading?”

The waitress was friendly, and much nicer to talk to than some of the people Orion ran into at restaurants late at night around town. He didn’t necessarily blame them. Most people that were out in the middle of the night tended to be drunk or shifty in their eyes. Rio just so happened to fall into that crowd. He noted the lack of energy drinks which was a bummer. He thanked her, deciding that it wasn’t worth it to let her know that he didn’t drink coffee. When there was a frustratingly loud noise, Rio glanced around the waitress and found the group loudly demanding another to chug by slamming their fists against the table. It was probably loud enough to normal people in the restaurant. For Rio, it was deafening. He cringed, rubbing his fingers against his ears in an attempt to drown out some of the noise. If he was less tired, he may be able to focus it out, but right now he didn’t have much energy left to expend. 

At her question, Rio glanced around at the table, a conglomerated mess scattering all corners made Rio look like some crazed lunatic. Maybe that wasn’t too far off at this point. He had wasted some many hours of his day, avoided so much sleep completely devoted to researching these demons and visions. It was tiring. “You’re not interrupting at all, I really appreciate the refill,” Rio began, trying to figure out exactly how to explain the information sprawled out across the table. Any prolonged glance would show that not everything written in the texts was English. While some was Latin, a language Rio had been fluent in since middle school, most of it was some kind of ancient language, assumed to be demonic. He had not made much progress in translating those yet. “Summer classes.” Rio finally settled on, giving a troubled grin to the waitress and shrugging, “Occult studies class. Super interesting stuff but… a little creepy if I’m being honest. Right now I’m actually trying to learn some information about a cult that apparently operated right here in White Crest.”

Noticing that the group of men were annoying him, an apologetic smile replaced Frankie’s curious one, and she raised one finger in the guy’s direction as if asking for one second, before turning around back to the counter that served as a bar. From experience, she knew that the only way to calm down drunk men was to either give them more alcohol or give them something to canalize their energy into, like a football match on tv for the to scream to, but sadly, there were nothing on tv that late at night that could please them, so more drinks it was. Frankie’s eyes kept flying from the beers she was serving to the boy sitting alone and his books. Occult studies. That was interesting, and seemingly very on-brand with the theme this town had. After a few minutes and after bringing the beers with the check to the men who started howling and tried to convince her to talk to them, Frankie walked back to the other side of the diner, standing next to the table once again.

“Sorry, they’ll probably get louder but they should leave soon.” The last few words were spoken louder as she looked over her shoulder, and despite making it sound like she was annoyed with them, Frankie was actually laughing softly. She needed people like them to stay awake and not get bored during her shift, after all. “So, summer classes, huh. You go to college here?” Looking back at the kitchen once more to make sure the cook wasn’t watching, she slid on the seat in front of him. “Do you, uhm, mind if I take a look?” Her hand hovered on top of a book, and though she didn’t understand a word of what it said, it still looked very interesting. Cults. The mere idea of a cult being in town made her want to laugh again, Layla’s voice telling her that she should be careful in this town resonating in her head. “Hey, creepy is the best kind of interesting. Like, have you seen the X Files?” Looking at another book, she tried to read the title out loud, very slowly to try to get the pronunciation right but completely failing. “I think I just butchered that. What language is this? I know a little bit of french and this is definitely not french.”

The waitress disappeared for a moment and Rio glanced over a few moments later to see her taking more drinks over to the group. He smirked to himself, wondering if he had been obvious that the noise had bothered him. “Oh no worries at all, I appreciate the attempt. I don’t have claim over the restaurant or anything.” He shrugged, acting unbothered by the noise. It really wouldn’t bother him if he could get the hearing under control. Instead, certain instances or specific noises would catch him off guard. “I do! Majoring in history and computer science.” The waitress slid into the seat across from Rio and showed an increased interest in what he had been studying. He tried to take a quick assessment of her, to try to figure out exactly why she seemed so fascinated by the topics that Rio was reading. A fellow avid learner, maybe? Someone interested in the supernatural? Or someone that already knew about the supernatural and was trying to gauge how much Rio knew. Rio couldn’t be sure, not yet at least. 

When she asked to take a look, Rio just nodded. “The X-Files terrified me. I was always fascinated by the stuff I read about it online but whenever I tried watching it I’d have nightmares for a week.” She read a piece aloud from a text, the pronunciation being off but the words not completely unintelligible. Some of the text that Rio found seemed to be some older type of demonic language translated by humans. It wasn’t easy to explain considering Rio wasn’t able to translate it himself and there was no easy way to explain that it was a completely unknown language. Rio laughed softly, “Definitely not French.” Rio spoke in French, a simple translation. He leaned over to take a look at the book that the waitress was looking at. “Hard to tell honestly.” He tapped his finger against his chin, trying to figure out exactly how to explain it to her without sounding completely insane. “I can see some hints of Latin in it. But most of it is just… nothing. If I had to guess, it was the attempt by some cult at creating their own mix of language to communicate with demons or spirits.” That was not Rio’s guess at all, but it certainly seemed more likely than being the actual language of a demon. “I’m uh- I’m Orion by the way. Or Rio. I go by whichever. It’s nice to meet you!”

Frankie’s hand made a vague gesture, as if telling him it was nothing. “It’s cool, serving drinks and food is only part of the job, I need to make sure all the clients are comfortable.” It had been, probably, the only thing she had been good at so far. Her eyes tried to pick up anything from all the words spread in front of her, but failed miserably. “Wow, double majoring? You must be a huge nerd.” As soon as the words left her mouth, Frankie had a hand flying to cover her mouth, eyes wide and her cheeks quickly flushing into a bright red. “I’m--- Sorry I didn’t mean that as an--- That was a compliment, actually---” Her words stumbled with each other, and she couldn’t find a way to apologize fast enough. The floor of the diner needed to hurry and swallow her already before she started blurting anymore embarrassing stuff to a guy she had just met. His aura didn’t seem to flicker at all, though, which could only mean he hadn’t been bothered by it. It helped her relax a little, and she took another piece of paper between her hands, trying to make some sense of it. 

“That’s, uhm, so wild. When I moved in the last thing I expected to run into was a demonic cult. There was this girl back in Nashville that disappeared for like, a couple of weeks, everyone thought she had been kidnapped or had run away but turns out she had joined a satanic cult or something like that. I never understood it, honestly.” Eventually, she let go of the piece of paper, a silent acceptance that no matter how hard she tried, she wouldn’t spontaneously learn neither Latin or… whatever nonsense the cultists had invented. “Oh, right. I’m, uh--” And like a kid proud of a toy, she looked down to her name tag, and then looked back at him, a grin on her face as she pointed at it. “Frankie. Nice to meet you too, Rio.” And because she didn’t know when to shut up, she added. “Have you tried searching for the Orion constellation?”

Orion paused at being called a nerd. Not because the word had offended him, but because her response had stunned him. She had been so embarrassed that Rio had just stared at her for a long moment while she stumbled through explaining herself. Finally, Rio burst into laughter. It was louder than his usual laughter was, a sort of uncontrolled and hysteric chuckling that Rio did not usually allow himself. He could only blame it on the lack of sleep. “You don’t have to apologize for anything,” Rio finally spoke, wiping the tears from his eyes that had escaped during the laughter. “I do take that as a compliment. Plus, I’ve heard enough people say stuff like that intending for it to be taken as an insult that eventually you start figuring out when someone means something in a good or bad way.” That was too much information that this girl, Frankie, did not need to know. “Oh. Yikes. That’s scary, I hope she uh- got out of that cult.” Sounded dangerous. Rio had read enough about cults to know how they recruited people, but he couldn’t imagine himself ever being trusting enough to ever join one. Especially one like that. “So you’re not from around here, apparently? New to town?” It begged the question, why? Why are you here? Why anyone would come to this town would always baffle Rio. “Oh yeah. It’s usually pretty easy to pick out. And I’ve studied a lot of Greek Mythology so it’s cool to tie that in with the name of the constellations.”

Rio’s laugh made Frankie’s embarrassment even worse, her face lowkey burning. Well, at least he took the joke well, and the teen definitely could relate. She was lucky not to get bullied back in school partly because of the cheer squad and because of Layla, but most of her friends were absolutely trashed, and nerd was definitely on the list of worst things someone could be called. “Well, you’re the coolest nerd I’ve met so far, so those who tried to insult you can go suck on a lemon. And she was fine after a while. I mean, she had to do her freshman year again but that was better than the… possibility, I guess.” Whatever that was. All she knew about cults was the little glimpses she had gotten from the very occasional and rare case she could see in the news, and stuff she had seen in tv shows. Not that she wanted to know more, really, her life had already turned confusing enough and adding cults would just make things worse. Leaning forward in the table, the teen rested her elbows and used one hand to support her face, eyes still looking at the scattered paper and open books. “Yeah, I moved in from Nashville a few weeks ago to, uh, be with my girlfriend.” Understatement of the year, but there was no other way to say she had tracked down her werewolf girlfriend after she vanished for a whole year without sounding like a complete lunatic. A humm left her lips, hazel eyes now fixated on the guy. “I always thoughts most constellations were related to the zodiac, you know, since many of them are… well, zodiac signs. I don’t really know much about them. I just liked stargazing when I was a kid and my grandma showed me a few.” 

“You need to meet more nerds than.” Orion laughed again. In what alternate hell dimension would Rio ever be considered a cool nerd? There were others that deserved that title way more than himself. Winston, Blanche, Skylar. All three were way cool humans that also happened to be super smart. Rio was still trying to wrap his head around the idea that someone around Rio’s age would willingly move to White Crest when she mentioned the girlfriend. It made his face begin blushing and an awkward smile broke out across his face. “Sounds romantic.” Rio said, unsure if that was the right thing to say or not. Rio wasn’t exactly a guru on relationships. He had never even been in one before. “So you came here with no one else? Just your girlfriend?” Rio asked, before letting out a low whistle, “Woah. That’s… crazy brave.” Rio couldn't imagine how much courage that must take. “There’s this guy I know. I grew up with him sort of. I never really knew what having a crush meant growing up but looking back I… well it checked all the boxes. I still avoid him. On the college campus.” Rio facepalmed himself in embarrassment. He couldn’t believe he just said that. To a stranger. “Are you uh- Adjusting to town well?”

Astronomy had never been Rio’s passion or his forte, neither was stargazing. But he knew enough about greek mythology to have dipped his toes in astronomy. “You're right! A lot of them are related to the zodiac. The zodiac signs actually come from Greek mythology. In fact, zodiac comes from the Greek word zōdiacus which roughly means the cycle of animals.” Frankie had unknowingly opened a can of worms that Rio wasn’t sure he could close back up. “All of the zodiac signs correspond to living creatures. Well except Libra, which is ironically my sign. But anyways, each of the constellations usually relate back to some story from Greek or Roman mythology. Like Leo is tied to Hercules and his labor’s. Hercules skinned a lion and wore it’s pelt, making him practically invincible. Or ScorpioScorpio, who actually has ties to Orion. There’s been a lot of different stories about Orion the hunter. Some say he was put up into the sky by the Goddess Artemis who loved him, others say that he was put up there as punishment for being too boastful. With scorpio eternalized for killing him.” Once Rio finally shut up he realized how dry his mouth had become. This wasn’t an uncommon problem when Rio got on one of his soap boxes. He took a drink from the lemonade that Frankie had brought him and scratched at his neck nervously, “Sorry I uh- get passionate.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong. Frankie definitely needed to meet more friends, whether they were nerds or not. Letting out a soft humm, she tapped her lips for a moment as she thought out loud. “I wouldn’t say we came together? I came to this town because she was here.” Brave was definitely one way to describe it. Frankie would always believe it had been her only choice and the right thing to do, whilst her mom kept repeating on the phone that it had been the dumbest and childish idea she ever had. Shrugging, she rested her cheek on her palm once more, listening to his story, letting out a laugh when he covered his face. “That sounds too far from how I realized I liked liked Layla- that’s my girlfriend. We were best friends for ages, and one day we were watching Buffy and she said something that made me look, I don’t remember what honestly, but I just, I kept looking at her instead of the tv and just… kinda knew, yanno?” There were few things Frankie could go on about for hours: math, the meaning behind colors, and how she would follow Layla to hell if she asked her to. Though from recent events maybe she had done that already. 

Pursing her lips, she looked at the ceiling as if thinking, before looking back at him with a shrug. “Town’s alright. Definitely not Nashville, but I never was a big city girl anyways.” Meaning, she liked the quietness and the considerable lower number of people on the streets that potentially gave her anxiety attacks. The human listened in silence as Rio rambled, a wide smile creeping in the longer he spoke. In another life where she weren’t a raging lesbian, and in different circumstances that involved not noticing the flaming aura that got more intense as he spoke, she would’ve even found him cute. “Don’t you dare apologize, Orion, trapped by Artemis.” Though she hated feeling like she was taking up his study time, he also looked like he desperately needed a break. After winking at him, she stretched slightly and moved out of the booth, standing in front of him once more. “I will go get you that chocolate milkshake, and maybe you can tell me Sagittarius’ story in return?”

Orion listened intently to the story, fascinated by how this girl had the courage to just pick up her life and move somewhere completely new all to be with her girlfriend. Rio wasn’t sure he would have the courage to do that if he was married to the person moving. But Frankie was fearless, clearly. And Rio could learn a thing or two about taking chances, if his own personal life was any indication. Plus- Wait did she just say Layla? “Hold on- Layla? This may be too much of a coincidence… but like Layla, redhead, born to play Cherry Valance in a remake of The Outsiders, Layla? I know her. Really well actually she’s a friend of mine.” Woah. Rio had heard about a girlfriend, but had no idea that the girlfriend had shown up to town. Admittedly the two hadn’t talked a lot recently. Just with how busy things were with the demons stuff, Rio had turned pretty anti-social. 

“Oh good. Well I’m glad you’re not annoyed. I tend to drag on like that a lot so please feel free to cut me off.” He had to admit, it was really nice getting to have a conversation with someone about something other than this demon stuff. He had spent so much time with  Winston lately, which was amazing as always because he thought that Winston was the coolest person in the entire world, but with Frankie they didn’t talk about the demons or bodies of water at all. It was just a normal conversation, with a nice person. It was a nice change of pace. “Right well, Thanks for grabbing me the milkshake! And please feel free to hang out. It looks pretty boring in here right now. I can’t tell if you’re joking or not but I can totally tell you about Sagittarius . Spoiler alert, he’s a Centaur.

Hearing him describe her girlfriend made Frankie perk up, eyebrows raising in surprise. “Yep, that sounds like her alright. They say it’s a small world but damn, this town is smaller than I thought.” Coincidences like these never happened back home; and she guessed it was highly likely that Rio knew every other teen or anyone in their early twenties she had met so far. The thought made her smile, and she shoved both hands inside her uniform’s pockets. “Maybe we can do like a double date thingy if you ever decide to stop avoiding your college mate.” Was it alright to joke with something like that? She had never been too good at social situations despite her extroverted nature thanks to her anxiety.

“Oh God no, I love hearing people. I suck at talking so I love when I can just sit back and listen. Besides that’s super interesting and cool. If anything I’m sorry I’m distracting you from your, uh-” She gestured at the table in general. “-- cult investigation.” Maybe if he didn’t mind, she could even ask him about college, considering this was for a summer class. And maybe, if she was lucky, she could get to know him enough to investigate why his aura didn’t seem to flicker away from the red. He didn’t seem like a bad person in the slightest, which only made her wonder deeper why her grandma had warned her so much about them. “Not joking at all. I’m looking forward to meet this centaur boy.” And before leaving, she pointed at the food and said. “Eat your fries before I do!”

[thewanderingdelusion]

Fictober Day 2

Fictober Day 2

Prompt #2: That’s the easy part

Title: Job Satisfaction

Rating: T

Warnings: Slight reference to blood

Working for a multibillion-dollar corporation was soul crushing at the best of times and that’s when they  weren’t involved in human experimentation. Dylan had stumbled into this job rather by accident. He’d never really been much of a people person, preferring to keep to himself. Couple that with his lack of any real academic drive, and he managed to float through high school, but had no real connections or prospects at the end of it.

Security work had seemed like an easy choice. He was a big guy who kept in decent shape and time hunting meant he knew his way around a firearm. So, he’d managed to land a job guarding a warehouse for a pharmaceutical company. He was one of about a dozen men all recruited in one big batch. On paper, it was nothing special. A warehouse by a pier, filled rows and rows of heavy shelves, all packed to the brim with boxes. All he had to do was roam around at night and make sure no one got in or out.

Dylan had never really bothered to question the “or out” part of the job description, but several of the other guards had. They talked at length at the apparently numerous “weird” aspects of the job, like that they all received heavy weapons training. Dylan didn’t know enough about security jobs to think it was strange, he had just assumed it was normal.

That was far from the only thing abnormal about the job. As a night shift worker, Dylan only rarely interacted with the workers who were there during the day. Again, he hadn’t thought much of it, but the other recruits noted how strange it was that everyone cleared out so fast once their work day was done. Almost like they were scared to be in the warehouse after dark. Dylan just thought they probably wanted to get home fast. He certainly didn’t linger to gossip once his shift ended.

Lights would go out at odd times. Sometimes all at once, sometimes random bulbs would go dark. Only for nothing to be wrong with the bulbs or the circuits when later checked. Dylan just chalked it up to faulty wiring. There were odd sounds, like scratches from within the walls and on the roof, even when no one should have been up there. The sounds reminded Dylan of the family of raccoons that had lived in his bedroom wall in foster care. He’d tried several times to find them by laying out food, but to no avail.

The longer Dylan worked at the job, the more paranoid the others seemed to get. Several guards swore up and down they’d seen a little girl in a white dress roaming between the shelves. Only three specific guards ever saw her and they claimed that she always disappeared before they could reach her. They had initially gotten laughed off by the others, but more and more started to believe them as the occurrences continued. Dylan had actually seen her too, but he just thought she looked lost and was worried she might be scared being in such a big place by herself. He never mentioned her to the others and after a week he stopped seeing her.

On and on things seemed to occur. Items would get rearranged when no one was looking. Doors would lock or open on their own. One very strange incident where another guard had sent screaming into the rows of the warehouse when he’d found a message asking about his son written in on a bathroom wall. While the others had calmed him down, Dylan had inspected the bathroom and noticed that the message was actually just written in ketchup. Figuring it to just some dumb prank, he’d washed it off and returned to his patrol. The scared guard had been furious when he’d tired to show others the message only for it to be gone. Dylan had been to embarrassed to speak up.

After a few months of working at the warehouse, most of the guards were a paranoid mess. Plenty had simply quit, while others had stayed on, determined to “get to the bottom” of the mystery. Dylan thought it was all ridiculous. So, the place was a little weird at times, he was just happy to have a steady job he could count on. The pay wasn’t abysmal, either.

So it came as quite a surprise when he received notice that he was being transferred to another facility. Several guards had put in for a transfer, but Dylan hadn’t been one of them. And every single request had been summarily denied. Those who got denied were usually quick to quit shortly after.

The transfer didn’t specify where his new location would be, but it did say that he would have to relocate and that living facilities would be provided for him by the company. It didn’t specify what job he would be doing, where it was, or even why he had been selected for it. About the only thing it did specify was his new salary. Those zeroes were enough for Dylan to agree.

It wasn’t like he had much keeping him where he was anyway. He didn’t have any family and the small studio apartment he lived in was easily cleaned out and the lease ended. The only real thing keeping him in place was the steady work and that was being promised elsewhere, so he left.

What followed was more bizarre than anything Dylan had seen working at the warehouse. After signing so many NDAs that he was pretty sure he wasn’t legally able to talk to anyone not on company payroll, Dylan got more of the story. The warehouse was a front, used to weed out security guards who couldn’t keep their mouths shut about unusual circumstances or who couldn’t handle a “high-stress work environment” as his interviewer explained. They required personnel with discretion, and Dylan’s performance, along with his lack of family and social media presence, meant he was an ideal candidate.

Dylan was quickly whisked away on a plane to his new facility. An island laboratory that, if his employer were to be believed, did not appear on any map. There, he learned what the true focus of the company was. The answer seemed to be anything and everything. Robotics, genetic engineering, biological weaponry, nanomachines. Just about anything that could be anything that could be shoved into a living creature to make them “better”.

Thus, was the beginning of Dylan’s career as a party to what to be illegal in every sense of the word. His living quarters were wonderful, much nicer than his apartment, and the pay was borderline obscene. He supposed it had to be. What better way to silence someone’s consciousness than to drown it in a seemingly endless flood of revenue?

Still, Dylan would be lying if said he didn’t enjoy his new job. He worked far better hours than before, he got along much better with his coworkers, now that they weren’t all paranoid gossips; and the island could be rather beautiful when the season was right. Still, that was the easy part. Being a laboratory devoted to exploring the limits of what could be done with human biology, there were bound to be numerous and sometimes catastrophic failures. And it was his job to contain such failures. Yet, this was the part of his job Dylan enjoyed the most.

“Bio-engineering to Security. We’ve had another batch turn sour on us. If you could come down and clear out Sector 3, we’d appreciate it. Repeat, outbreak in Sector 3 of Bio-engineering.” Dylan’s radio crackled.

“Copy that, Doctor. I’ll be down in two minutes.” Dylan said into the receiver.

Unholstering his shotgun to double-check that it was loaded, Dylan made his way towards the elevator. He couldn’t quite help the excited thrill that passed through him as he descended to Sector 3. The doors open to reveal a long hallway, filled with several shambling figures. They moved surely, but unsteadily, their movements sluggish and clumsily. Their skin was a washed out grey and their eyes and teeth were a hellish red.

Cocking his shotgun to chamber a slug, Dylan said, “I fucking love killing zombies!”

[hollowedrpg]

CONGRATULATIONS, RO! — You’ve been accepted for the role of Pandora Lovegood. There was something so charming about your application. Pandora felt like so much more than the four paragraphs I wrote for her bio, and that’s because you made the character your own. I was so ecstatic when you ran the idea by me about Pandora being deaf, and you’ve written it in such a beautiful way. Being able to add onto her character in a way that not only makes sense, but further develops her before you’ve even had the chance to write her in-game leaves me so excited to see what you’ll do with her. 

Thank you so much for applying. Please create your account and send in the link, track the right tags, and follow everyone on the follow list. Welcome to Hollowed Souls!

name: Ro age: 29. Literal granny. preferred pronouns: Female. She/Her timezone: AEST (Australia) activity: I work full time and stress full time, but am usually around on my phone for plotting and chatting, and have a few hours a few days a week dedicated to writing. are you applying for more than one character?: (if so, list your preference in order) how do you feel about your character dying?: I am such a sadist, I am honestly all for it. I love crying over my poor dead characters. Provided it is not just a gratuitous death, but something to further the plot. I like to get in some decent character development first, of course! anything else?: (questions, concerns, etc.) Obviously Pandora and Xenophilius’ relationship is v important to her character, I’ve kinda guessed at a few things here but of course nothing pertaining to him is set in stone!! ic details. full name: Pandora Lovegood. Born Pandora Min Jee Park. Nicknames Panda. Dora. Pea. Min

date of birth: April 8 1954. Aries. Born to Joon Woo Park and Hae Yun Fenwick. former hogwarts house: Hufflepuff sexuality: Pansexual. gender/pronouns: Female. She/Her face claim change:

more. how do you interpret this character’s personality? how will you play them? include two weaknesses & two strengths.

+ Compassionate. Unrelenting

- Impatient. Restless.

Silent and strong, it is all easy for others to overlook Pandora. A sweet little witch, her husband’s devoted carer. Always sipping on a steaming potion from a chipped porcelain teacup or blowing her nose on a delicate silk handkerchief. These lingering remnants of childhood illnesses she can never quite shake, ever a reminder that she can’t cure everyone - not even herself. That will never stop resilient Pandora from trying.

But look at her, really look at her and see the depth of the ocean. The brilliant, unrelenting mind constantly searching for answers others dare not seek. When one is found she asks another question, digging deeper until all the truths of the universe are laid bare before her. Pandora’s hunger for knowledge is all consuming, she will often forget to eat or shower for days until reminded by a concerned friend. Ceaseless hours are spent reading obscure books of dark artefacts and curses, diving deeply into long forgotten lore, searching out near extinct plants. No length is too far for a new discovery, Pandora would do anything for her patients. Since her time at Hogwarts Pandora has been no stranger to working herself into exhaustion. Impatient, Pandora will quickly grow frustrated if her research isn’t going her way. She will become tense while she continues to push herself to the point of self destruction, the delicate girl with bones of glass and skin of paper almost shattering. At times she is reckless, believing in her own great mind enough to test an experimental potion with no proof other than her own confidence that it will do good. It is a dangerous line to walk, Pandora has been lucky she has not yet caused any damage to a patient or friend that doesn’t know the true risks of what they are about to imbibe.

The person who faces the greatest risks in Pandora’s experimental healing is also the once that faces the greatest rewards. The one that needs her most. The one that Pandora needs, so desperately, to heal. No one is more important to her than her husband. Though some would call Xenophilius a mad man, they would say he is too far gone from reality. But he grounds Pandora, her shining beacon in a world blanketed in confused darkness. He is the only one to understand her. His words are her gospel, at times impossible to comprehend, she will never stop trying to decipher what he has to say. She wishes she could calm the screaming in his head and share with him the silence in which she finds so much solace. Pandora knows together the pair will find his much sought after cure. In doing so she knows they will be unleashing the full potential of Xenophilius’ mind, the likes of which the Wizarding world has never seen before.

Deaf from the age of five after a near deadly case of meningitis Pandora has never let the loss of one of her senses slow her down. If anything, it pushes her further. She can lip read comfortably and speaks in a soft, unsteady voice, though she prefers to communicate in sign language. Fed up with traditional spell casting Pandora dedicated time at Hogwarts to creating new methods of spell casting using sign rather than speech. A small book was published, Pandora hopes to see more inclusive magic being taught at schools and in the Ministry itself. The ceiling of the small tent she and Xenophilius now call home is strung with soft golden lights so Pandora can always see, and bright charms attached to the knocker on the front door to always alert her to visitors.

Just like many of the other new residents of Godric’s Hollow Pandora could not face living in a cottage that had seen so much death, the metallic scent of blood she knows all too well still heavy in the air. The shadows of the dead were still there, filling the cracks in the wall, whispering in Xenophilius’ ear. Almost every surface is covered in books, books from their own libraries, books filled with the neatly organised handwritten notes of Pandora and Xenophilius’ frenzied scrawl. The kitchen has more cauldrons than cooking pots, there are always several bubbling along, filling the room with coloured smoke and curious, heady aromas. The Lovegood home has become a makeshift clinic for the Order, Pandora has all the healing supplies she needs to treat most illnesses. Her compassionate warmth and open door has also made her kitchen a drop in spot for those who need a cup of tea and the chance to let out all the feelings whenever they need to talk. Pandora knows she is doing a good thing helping the Order, she knows this is what her cousin would have wanted. But the quiet girl that believes in her own greatness knows she has a world to save, not just one broken town.

how has the war affected this character, emotionally and otherwise?

A half blood witch adored and accepted by her muggle family, Pandora truly cannot wrap her head around the reasonings of this war. There are many things wrong in the world, both Wizarding and muggle, there are many things worth fighting about. Blood status is not one of them. At first she found it foolish, more anti-muggle propaganda they had all heard a hundred times or more. But as the injured kept arriving at St Mungo’s in higher numbers, carrying dark curses, as the death count become a number so astronomical Pandora’s heart ached to the point she couldn’t breathe trying to imagine what that much death really meant she realised that this really was a war. It was at that time Benjy approached her, asking her to join, to fight, to heal.

She couldn’t. Pandora’s fight was at her husband’s side. Her fight was in the wings of the hospital with patients that needed her. She did all she could, splitting her time between the wards and the Order, helping where she was needed. She kept her eyes open as she worked her rounds, always seeking out information. She passed on everything she deemed of importance to the Order - names, places, curses. Pandora did her best to help. Though she would never admit it, not even sign it in pitch darkness, a part of Pandora she tried to keep buried deep within was grateful to have so much work to do. Her talents finally were being used to her full potential, she was needed. With so many people to heal the higher ups at St Mungo’s allowed her unauthorized methods to go forward without the usual testings and verification. She was helping more people she had ever dreamed possible.

The presumed death of her cousin shattered her. In a morbid reprise of the news of her father’s death Pandora collapsed in a faint upon hearing the news. Just as with her father Pandora felt his death should have been prevented, she should have been there, she should have done more for him. Pandora finally felt ready to fight, just as the Order decided upon retreat. Pandora knew that she had to follow them to Godric’s Hollow. Without as much work to keep her occupied Pandora’s mind is continuing to crack. Anxiety keeps her awake at night more often than her books, she stares at the posters of the missing hung so morbidly in the graveyard wide eyes shimmering with tears, bitten fingernails digging into the palms of her hands. The weight of all those lives lost is pressing down on her, Pandora isn’t sure how to fight back. She tries her hardest to keep herself occupied helping the Order. But with the fighting at a standstill Pandora has no one to heal.

where does this character currently stand? with those who wish to hide in godric’s hollow until the war ends, with those who wish to rebuild the order and continue fighting the war, or on neither side? why?

Pandora has no desire to stay in Godric’s Hollow. She is there because she believes it is what Benjy would have wished for her, because she thinks that is what is best for Xenophilius’ right now. Her own desires are less important than theirs. She agrees with the people that wish to carry on fighting, though she tremors at the thought of losing yet another person than she has grown close to.

What Pandora really wants is to get out of Godric’s Hollow and return to St Mungo’s. She knows there are still people there that need her. Pandora needs to be needed, she needs to help.

She sits quiet in meetings and conversations, as a mere associate of the Order she has no say anyway. But she pays close attention to what those around her are feeling and saying, she is sure she isn’t the only person that feels hopelessly stuck in this death filled town.

Pandora Lovegood: How does Pandora feel about being forced to stay in Godric’s Hollow, when she could be out helping those who have been wounded by this war?

Pandora feels utterly trapped in Godric’s Hollow. With no real work to keep her occupied she is restless and anxious, fixating on small problems, even creating problems just so she has something to do. The decision to relocate was made in haste and fear. It is a choice she is ever increasingly regrets. The only reason she is content in staying is Xenophilius, without the distraction of a world torn apart by war is that every book she reads, every potion she brews is dedicated to deciphering the voices drowning his mind. Pandora isn’t sure how much longer she can stay, the gnawing guilt in her stomach a constant reminder her skills are going to waste when so many people are suffering without her healing hands. extra.

Pinterest board.

if i were a season, i’d be late spring

if i were a time of day, i’d be sunrise

if i were a place, i’d be a quiet corner of a library

if i were a type of weather, i’d be a sunshower

if i were a scent, i’d be antiseptic cream

if i were a plant, i’d be a aloe vera

if i were an element, i’d be water

if i were a color, i’d be off white

if i were a song, i’d be Here comes the Sun by The Beatles

if i were an item of clothing, it’d be a clean white tshirt

if i were an object, i’d be a fountain pen

if i were one of the seven deadly sins, i’d be pride

if i were one of the seven heavenly virtues, i’d be diligence

if i were a god/goddess, i’d be Epione, Greek goddess of soothing pain

Future plot ideas:

Pandora is ignoring her own mental health in order to look after those around her. She is in a fragile state and edging closer to breaking point. She may start turning to potions to help get through each day. It would also be very nice for someone to realise how much she is struggling and help her for once.

Pandora can take many risks when creating potions or perfecting a cure. She could trial a new potion on someone and end up doing more harm than good.

Pandora feels like a caged bird unable to sing stuck at Godric’s Hollow. She would like to start making occasional trips back to London/St Mungos to gather supplies and intel. She may learn more about missing Order members this way.

Pandora , Xenophilius mystery solving!!

[stevesharrlngtons]

Hey! Can I get number 31. I’ve been in love with you since I was seventeen! w/Steve for the prompt thingy? If that's okay?

i’ve been in love with you since i was seventeen

this was also requested a bunch

steve smiled down at you as he traced your skin with gentle circles as you slept soundly. you were facing away from him, the hotel blankets pooling lazily under your arm and over your breasts. the soft skin of your back was still a little pink from the warmth from the hot bath you both had taken not to long ago, and the hair that wasn’t pulled into your relaxed bun was damp, sticking to the back of your neck in swirled patterns. steve couldn’t help but admire every part of you, even while you were sleeping. you were the epitome of perfect to him. and just by existing, you proved that to be true to him over and over again.

it was why you were both in this beautiful hotel room right now. it was why both of your left hands now adorned gold jewelry and why you both had taken this little trip in the first place.

you were high school sweethearts, so devoted to your future, that you went off to college together, and moved in with each other soon after. you had both finished your degrees, yours in biological science and steve’s in sports psychology. it had been a long road for both of you. it wasn’t easy, moving away from home and having to adjust to being an adult. and it wasn’t easy having to watch someone you loved struggle through the same world you were. there were fights and tears and near break ups through these stressful years, but at the end of the day, you were always wrapped in steve’s arms and he cooed to you and told you just how much he loved you.

you both chose to weather the storm together,  no matter how hard it got. because both of you would rather go through it with your best friend and most trusted and loved companion by your side. and that’s what steve told you seven months ago when he dropped down on one knee when warm march evening. he told you he knew since the second you first kissed him that he would never get over you, and the first time you told him you loved him that he’d never let you go. you barely let his prepared speech out before you were squealing with delight and nodding your head rapidly.

as you fell into each other’s embrace, neither of you could wait to tie the knot. to finally be mrs. harrington and for steve to finally be able to gush over his wife; not girlfriend.

but as time went on and you told family and friends, things got sticky. everyone had an opinion, about where you should marry, what it should look like, who should and shouldn’t be there. both of your mothers were insisting on inviting people neither of you had even heard of, and soon it didn’t feel like your special day anymore. it was feeling more like june harrington and olivia (y/l/n) wedding than your own. you didn’t want a large ballroom or a grand church. you didn’t want five hundred guests and a four course dinner. hell, the only thing they were letting you choose was the choice of a band, and you were later informed they had decided to switch to a dj.

one day after wedding planning with the two most difficult people in the world, you broke down in steve’s arms.

“i justed wanted it to be us! i wanted a small, intimate ceremony. and now its the “wedding of the century” with tacking white pedestals with gold accents and five hundred guests. they even chose my dress! i hate it, all of it! my wedding, the day that is supposed to be the best day of my life, is ruined!” you sobbed heavily into steve’s chest, soaking his shirt with tears.

“how can i make this better, baby? because you know i’ll do or say anything to get our day back on track.” steve soothed, rubbing comforting circles in your back.

“nothing,” you sighed, pulling away and wiping your cheeks, “you can’t do anything. they won’t let us change anything. i tried to tweak a few things and they both threw fits! my mother actually said this wedding isn’t about me. my wedding isn’t about me! imagine that!”

“then fuck them.” steve said seriously.

you looked at him with a fleeting look and shook your head.

“no i’m serious. fuck them. if they want to be controlling and manipulative, and discard everything you want, they don’t get to come. if you want your dream wedding, then i’ll give it to you.”

he spoke with such protective conviction, it made you burst into tears. you loved him so much.

and steve delivered on his word.

steve had told your mothers that there would be no wedding, that you both wanted to put off getting married until both of your jobs were stable. they bought it, thankfully. and from that day, you both planned what you wanted. (y/n) and steve’s dream wedding. which happened to be driving to michigan in late august, to get married by the lake in the afternoon. no one would be in attendance, no guests, no old church, no tacky decor or puffy dress. the dream wedding was just calm. the dream wedding was a memory that only the two of you and the officiant would have forever. the intimate moment where you declared your love for each other would belong only to you forever.

and that was perfect.

you wore an ivory silk dress, that hit above the knees and flattered you in every way. you held wildflowers in your hands and your hair was down in wavy tendrils. steve wore a button up, tie and nice slack. it was nothing too fancy, it was just how you liked it.

you weren’t scared or nervous. neither of you had cold feet or were looking to run. it all seemed like the final piece of the puzzle was being put in, and neither of you wanted to wait another second for it.

the ceremony had been short and sweet, but both of you had written your own vows. steve barley got through his, his voice shaking as much as his hands as he read off the creased paper in his hand. he poured his heart out, saying everything he had a million times, and things he had been saving to tell you. he told you the extent of his love and how you were the only woman for him.

after he folded the paper up and placed it back in his pocket, he looked up at you with adoring eyes as you did your best to hold your composure. you took a deep breath and took your vow paper, written on a piece of soft pink parchment, and unfolded it. another deep breath and you spoke.

“steven allen harrington, i’ve been in love with you since i was seventeen,” you said through a watery smile.

and steve lost it even more after that. you ended up clutching his hand for support as you finished out what you wrote, declaring to him your undying love and devotion to him.

and soon, the i do’s were said and steve heard the sweet old man say the six words he had been dying to hear. and once he did, steve look a stride towards you and smashed his lips to yours, both of your smiling faces making it hard to properly kiss each other.

you had both headed eagerly off to your hotel room after that. then, it had been a blur of slotted lips and tangled limbs. you were his wife, and he was your husband, and literally nothing was sexier than that.

around eleven, after countless rounds, you both needed a break and some time to recover. and a hot bath and room service fit the bill for helping you both wind down for your exciting day.

the entire evening, you couldn’t stop playing with him ring. when steve would say something, you would happily sigh, “i just can’t believe you’re mine.”

and steve didn’t think the flips in his stomach would ever stop by hearing you say that.

[laythornmuse]

To Have Your Heart, Chapter 7

A Small but Sweet Update.  I’ll update all my links and things later.  Sweet dreams everyone <3

Claire’s arms hung heavy at her sides as the wind whipped her curls back. Her face was cold from the sea spray that pelted her skin, and despite having landed on the docks an hour ago, Claire couldn’t will herself to care about Uncle Lamb’s whereabouts, or about the lively entertainers near and around the docks. She was in France, a place she had dreamed of since she was a little girl, and enviously imagined while Jamie was in school. Yet, it didn’t matter. All she loved was on the other side of the channel, as well as the man who had forced her away from it.

Having thought of Black Jack Randall, she came back to herself and stood suddenly as if remembering all she had to do. She needed to ask her Uncle about Mr. Bramish, about the charges that were written, and she should get some writing materials for her letters.

She’d barely made it to the end of the docks when Uncle Lamb waved her down, summoning her over to a man who vaguely reminded her of Brian Fraser. The cousin. Of course.

Time to pull yourself together, Beauchamp, Claire thought. Too much to do to fall apart now.

Lifting her skirts, she made her way over to the storage bay labeled FRASER in dark handsome script. Jared Fraser beamed at her as she approached, and Claire summoning all her courage and strength, forced a convincing smile.

The Paris House was ridiculous. That’s all Claire could think as she strolled through the rooms that were designated as “hers.” Jared spent little time here and was currently planning a trip to Spain to inquire after some Port. At least that’s the part of the dinner conversation that she remembered.

A bell interrupted her thoughts, followed by a servant carrying a tray with steaming teacups and biscuits. Jared followed shortly behind it.

He took a quick survey of the room and seeming pleased, shot Claire a friendly smile.

“Do you need anything, Claire? Have you had time to settle in?” He asked, kindly.

“I barely brought anything to constitute unpacking, but thank you for your hospitality.” Claire paused for a moment, biting her lip before she continued. “Did you know in advance I’d be coming?”

Jared motioned to the settee and took up a cup of tea. “When Brian wrote to me about the circumstances, I expected to see you here, despite his hope that it might not be necessary.” He pressed his lips together. “The English soldiers are not all as ruthless as Jonathan Randall, but he is perverse enough to sully the lot of them. I’m glad you’ve recovered so swiftly. Jamie always spoke so fondly of you.”

“He did?” Claire asked, unable to mask her surprise. Jared let out a chuckle and smiled. “Yes, he had occasional spells of homesickness, and it was then that he’d talk about his adventures with his Jenny and Ian, and you. I knew there was more to it than childhood friendship, even if he did not at the time.”

Claire felt a blush rise to her cheeks before she fidgeted with a spoon. “It hardly matters now. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to return with Randall to face a hearing. It could be months, even years.”

“Try not to think of it, and the time will move faster than you’d imagine. I can make some introductions to get you some acquaintances before I leave town. Your uncle will be maintaining my books while you’re here so please do not hesitate to ask for whatever you need. Hopefully, when I’m back in a few months, you’ll have settled into your life here.” Jared stood, making to excuse himself.

“Wait! There is one thing…” Claire started. “Could you spare a quill and some paper for a letter?”

Jared smiled and motioned to window across the room. Claire’s eyes fell on the thick stack of parchment, numerous inkwells, and quills, sharpened and at the ready. “Oh!”

“I suspected you’d be in need of those,” Jared chuckled. “Goodnight, Claire.”

Dearest Jamie, It’s my first night in Paris, and despite the macaroons and fruit sweets the servants keep trying to ply me with, my thoughts rarely drift from you and what you must be doing at each waking hour. I suspect your days do not differ from too much from your usual routine, but I feel the emptiness of no longer being part of them. Have the roses begun to crawl up the front posts yet? Has there been a first bloom? What of my garden? Has the rosemary turned green yet from the rain you’re surely besieged with? Your cousin Jared has been very kind to Uncle Lamb and I and has even introduced me to the nuns at L'Hôpital des Anges. What a wonder this small event has played in my time here. I find my heart a bit lighter now that I’m able to continue my practice with herbs and medicine, and Mother Hildegard is an ever watchful and patient teacher.

Speaking of teachers, Uncle Lamb had little news to share with me regarding Mr. Bramish, and I fear for his wellbeing. I beg you to tell me of any updates you receive on his behalf. The guilt I feel over his arrest.

Please help him, Jamie.

I must admit I have little practice as signing off love letters, and this one may be disappointing in its lack of platitudes and sonnets. Know I think of you, always, and that I long to see you again.

Yours Faithfully, Claire Beauchamp

My Dearest Claire,

Your letters could never disappoint, and if they are ever filled with sonnets instead of plant matter, I will truly be concerned. I cannot fathom how leaves got into the letter I received, (did you place them intentionally or is your desk already covered in specimens?) but knowing you’ve found some joy to your days settles my heart.

My days here are indeed much as they were when you left, save some planting and tending to your wee herbs. I find most of the house spends time in your garden throughout the day. Jenny and Ian have constructed some trellises for your vine plants, and father decided to start painting your fences just this morning. I believe they are drawn to it when they miss your presence, as the feel of you lingers amongst the buds and twigs.

As for Mr. Bramish, he was released to his home shortly after you left, but his demeanor is much changed. Father has reached out to my Uncle Dougal to see if a healer is needed at Leoch. Mr. Bramish has little desire to stay anywhere near Fort William, as can be expected, and hopes to be away from Broch Tuarach for a time.

Lastly, within this letter, you’ll find the first bloom of the season, pressed with care. I know our engagement celebrations were cut short, but know my every breath is devoted to reuniting with you once this hardship passes.

I’ll be one and twenty by the time you receive this letter. Months ago, I imagined we’d share all our remaining name days together. I pray to God that I’m given several more to share with you and will spend few more apart.

I know we whispered the words in the darkness the morning you left, but I love you, now and always.

Yours,

James Fraser

[starglasszodiac]

SGZ Anniversary - Cassie and the Comic

The big one, the origin story!!!! And honestly one of my favourite memories to look back on. :’D I’ll be talking about both the idea itself and the evolution of Cassie’s character in what is a BEHEMOTH of a text post, so here we go!

While July 19th, 2015 is the official origin day of SGZ, it started a bit prior to that. I have this story already somewhat explained on the blog’s FAQ page, but I might as well reiterate it here:

SGZ started as an idea in the summer of 2015 after my buddy Laura showed me two webcomics: Paranatural by Zack Morrison, and Vibe by Dan Ciurczak (two comics I highly recommend, please go read them!). I loved how vibrant and beautiful their artwork was despite how different their stories were, and how wonderful the writing and humour was. My two biggest creative passions have always been visual art and writing, but ironically this was what really flicked the switch in my head to actually try comics, the literal combination of the two. Why I didn’t start sooner will forever be a mystery to me, but I suppose a lack of exposure to comics as a kid had something to do with it. Better late than never, right?

The specific launch day of July 19th is an homage to not only the creation of the idea but of the main protagonist, Cassie. After thinking “hey, I could do this!” I started wondering what I should make a comic about. While working at my retail job (on the slowest day in existence), I began to make a list of things that I liked or wanted to write a story about, and stars / astrology was one of them. I had always loved that aspect of mythology, and my affection for stars is a mystery to no one.

I worked at what was effectively a Blockbuster clone in my hometown (RIP Cherry Hill Video) and we had scrap pieces of paper that we made from old movie facings, so the first ever notes and doodles for this series exist on these scraps. I’ve still got quite a few of them, but they got a bit scattered when I moved for college. I’m hoping the rest are at my house somewhere.

I got the idea of a girl with a star in her eye, and called it the Starglass. And, well, the idea went from there! I started researching all of the zodiac signs and symbols, and drew the first (digital) drawing of Cassie when I got back home that day. Which, looked like this:

Seeing this again is not only weird and oddly nostalgic but it’s a testament to where my artistic sensibilities were prior to going to animation school. The idea for SGZ happened mere months before I was thrown into that 3-year fray of insanity so the evolution is pretty odd in places, especially how my knowledge of shape language, anatomy, etc. evolved and how my style adapted to that. I had almost NEVER drawn humans prior to going to college, so a lot of the art for this series deals with my inability to do so at the start. ^^’ The awkward phase, if you will. And as such, it is the first story idea I had that primarily focused on humans.

Looking back on it, Cassie’s character in terms of personality was pretty different than what it is now, but from a visual standpoint there’s (surprisingly) a lot that stayed. The basic idea of her hair stayed, right down to the double ponytail and orange clasps. Her freckles, eye colour and general face shape too, even if that ended up modified after solidifying her character later.

Her main colour was always red, in fact after making the headshot I remember having NO IDEA what to do for the rest of her body, so it just ended up being RED. Then I added the blue for the contrast, but I still wasn’t happy with it at the time (a perhaps subconscious origin for her blue pants though, lol). I also find amusement in the fact that my current concept for her mother Nora has her wearing blue flats much like these.

Based on the notes I have and what I remember, Cassie was older at this point (like 15 or 16 probably) and seemed to be a lot more sarcastic (this is a norm for a lot of my characters, trust me). xD Some of the first character interactions I ever wrote largely involved Cassie being sassy to one of the signs, back when a few of them were being over dramatic (looking at you SCORPIO). I cackled reading those interactions again now that my characters have changed so much. They’re not well written at all but they still let me look back to that time with fondness. :’D

What is also interesting is the progression of her name, or the fact that she didn’t have one right at the start. My earliest notes have simply Starglass or SG whenever I wrote dialogue. I started trying to think of a name, and contrary to popular belief, settling on Cassie actually had nothing to do with Cassiopeia. Though I do really enjoy the irony of that. xD It started with Cass, which could be short for either Cassandra or Cassidy, and I ended up going with Cassidy. I then changed it to Cassie, as I find the -ie suffix makes it a lot cuter. I am biased though, my name ends with it too, aha. There is a note that spells it as Cassi and for the life of me I cannot determine if that was a typo or not, but when I write fast I miss letters sometimes. The nickname of “Star” was one the table for a while too, and now that Star VS exists it’s even funnier. I specifically recall my mother telling me that she was going to suggest Star on the Facebook post I had made for the art at the time, but thought maybe it was too obvious. She was right, though this idea lives on in the nicknames that the signs end up giving Cassie later on, my favourite being “Little Star”.

While development for the story and characters started right away, it got a much welcomed jumpstart at the beginning of my second year at animation school. We were given a character design project that would span the entire year, and would require a story concept to complete all of the assignments. We were told this fact in first year to give us time to prepare over the summer, and I had just pulled an all-nighter to finish an assignment that day, but upon hearing this news I was not tired at all. Character design was already my favourite class, but this put it over the top. That beautiful feeling of inspiration that hits you is the BEST and in that moment nothing else mattered. Not even my fatigue, which I promptly dealt with the next day.

I used this as an opportunity to spend time developing the designs and story progression of all the characters, while getting marks for it at the same time! This is largely the reason I was able to launch the comic a few months after completing that year of school, as it ended up giving me full-sized references, colour schemes, and a much better idea of the story as a whole. Based on when my school years took place, I can actually track the progression of the characters pretty well through the artistic skill upgrade I was getting too.

The progression is pretty wild honestly, especially between 2015 and 2016:

(oh god these are so old help me) 

(these aren’t all of them either but I did my best jdhkfhsjkfhskjf)

From 2016 onwards I had the basic idea of her, so her colours stayed more or less the same once I actually added them. Cassie’s hair was one of the things that required a lot more iterations. I had her general idea down for a while, but when it came to making the character pack of her for my character design class, I remember having to sit down and actually figure out how her hair would work, structurally and otherwise, for that High Quality Refinement™ that was required of the project. Her older drawings had the part in her hair be in the middle, and that posed the problem of covering her eyes too much. If she was a more reserved character in any way this could have worked, but nah. I knew from the beginning she was going to be an outwardly eccentric child, one I wish I could have been when I was growing up.

Now for anyone that knows me as both a huge nerd and an artist, when it comes to fantasy stuff I LOVE armour. Absolutely love it. You see it everywhere in the things I make both inside and outside of SGZ, and I adore making themed costumes based on that (see my Feather Knights series for the most extreme example of this ever, ahahaha). So, it stands to reason that I would do the same for Cassie at some point, and I did! 

There was a particular focus on a helmet for a while too, whole plot points in fact! This helmet was, story wise, a long-standing plot point that proved difficult to change once the focus shifted. The initial idea was that the helmet belonged to Cassie’s science teacher (who is still a minor character in this as of now) and he gave it to her knowing its significance to the Starglass, thus establishing a sort of connection between Cassie’s normal life on Earth and the supernatural shenanigans that happen on the Astral Plane. The night she brings it home, she discovers that this little friend laid dormant inside:

This is Flicker. A character I’ve actually never revealed to anyone prior to now but hey, why not? The idea of Cassie having a spirit companion certainly didn’t come out of left field for me, but I wasn’t entirely sure how this character would appear, or what dynamic they would have with Cassie. I didn’t have pets bigger than a hamster growing up, so the idea of Cassie having a potential dog or cat companion would be new territory based on my own experiences. 

Flicker, as they are right now, acts as a sort of sensor for spirits that are roaming loose on Earth, and alerts Cassie to them... even if she’s not always up for a spirit hunt. They do have a backstory associated with how they appear and what their purpose is in the overall context of the world, but that isn’t revealed until much later in the story. For now Flicker is a cute little friend that cannot say much, but is devoted to protecting things, especially the Starglass. Luckily they still made the cut when it came to the helmet idea, and you should be meeting them officially pretty soon in the comic! :D

While the initial problem was getting any sort of cohesive look to the helmet or any other armour in terms of concept, I found as the story developed along with Cassie’s design, both her hair and her star sweater ended up being her two most “iconic” qualities aside from her eye, and using armour would have covered that up. 

On top of that, Cassie didn’t really end up being the type of character that would use armour, as one might expect from a character that has to fight and defend things a lot. She’s one to do things a little differently, and both her and the signs discover that, well, different works! It wasn’t a matter of her physical strength for the majority of the problems she faces, but rather strength of heart, and that’s a very personal note for me to touch on with this character. As such, nothing about an armour concept ever came out of the sketch phase:

It still makes for really interesting ideas though, so I’m sure I can work these into something else I’m working on. :’D Knowing myself, I’ll find a way. (The wings are VERY Cardcaptors though lol)

What did stay, however, were her swords:

She had at least one sword at the very beginning of this concept, but it eventually evolved into two. I find it interesting that sun, moon and star symbols were always present, regardless of what iteration these swords went through. Their official names are the Sun Star and Moon Star Swords respectively. Aside from the few doodles here and there for the zodiac weapons, this was the first appearance of any kind of fantasy weapon in SGZ. I can confirm that Cassie and the signs were going to have weapons from the get-go though, this IS something I made after all. xD

I think I also need to mention the main influences for this series, as the love for those things is very evident in my work, from the visuals to the storytelling and everything in between. Aside from my general interest in fantasy topics such as mythology and astrology, here’s a list including (but not limited to) the series that inspired the making of SGZ:

Kirby, Steven Universe, Harry Potter, Avatar: The Last Airbender & The Legend of Korra, Cardcaptor Sakura / Cardcaptors, Kim Possible, Danny Phantom, and pretty much any other show I’ve watched about surviving school while going on crazy adventures. That stuff may be cliche now but I’ll be damned if I don’t love it still.

I grew up with some of these and the rest are new, but they’re all near and dear to my heart for many reasons. I’m happy that I can put that love into something I’ve made, and share that story with the world. 

I know I’ve got a lot more ranting about this story to do in general and the comic is still going, but I want to say some special thanks to some of SGZ’s biggest supporters: 

Laura, Eleanor, and my classmates and teachers at Seneca College. This comic wouldn’t exist without you. <3

I’ll be honest, working on this series got me through some of the toughest years of my life so far, and this was one of the first times where something I made actually came to fruition in some way, and had a genuine development period that I can look back on. I’ve grown a lot as both a person and an artist since then, and doing this look back in time really solidified that for me. I have a cast of characters that I love, and now I get to tell their story. So if you’ve stayed till the end in this gigantic post, thank you. I don’t know where this story will lead me, but with any luck it’ll be somewhere in the stars. Thanks for reading, friends. <3

[joshuadunshua]

What to do when you’re afraid to leave, but you’re just as afraid to stay?

I was born in the covenant, to a convert father and a Mormon-since-birth mother. I was baptized at eight, like I was supposed to. I had a spiritual crisis in middle school, then found my way back to the church by high school. But I have never felt at ease with the teachings of the church. It has never sat right with me. I figured it was because I wasn’t like the other girls my age, I was geeky, nerdy, entirely unathletic, and for a long time I didn’t even want to be very feminine like them. They avoided me, and I stood upright and alone trying my best anyway. There were certainly some points where I’d not want to go to church at all, but I always attributed it to being outcasted by others. I graduated from YW with barely anything completed in my Personal Progress booklet because I didn’t believe in doing things just to get them done. I moved on to relief society, the only one left my age in the area as all the other girls moved off to start college.

Relief society has always had a fake feeling veneer over it, no matter what ward I was in. All the sisters seem to have fishhooks in the corners of their mouths whenever we’re all together. And I’m not even anywhere close to Utah. I can’t imagine how it might be out there, where there’s the mental health and opioid addiction epidemics. It’s not a mere correlation, I don’t think.

I had a devoted boyfriend who would go on to serve a mission, and before he left I felt that I should also go on a mission too. I think I felt that way because i would have nothing else to do for two years, so why not?

The only spiritual experience with prayer I can remember clearly having was as a middle school youth, and I cannot remember whether I prayed to know if the Book of Mormon was true or that Christ’s teachings were true, or if it was for a testimony of something else entirely. I don’t trust my memory very well. I’ve never felt spirituality during a prayer since. Which means I never got confirmation from the Lord that I should serve a mission. But hey, I never got confirmation from the Lord for anything since middle school, so maybe it was always as I had heard someone say once, that the Lord knows I already know the answer, so He wouldn’t tell me?

So I weaned off the antidepressants I had just begun taking earlier that year and submitted my mission papers. And I was sent to Phoenix, AZ, Spanish speaking. The most exciting part was being able to get endowed just days before my only sibling’s Sealing to his to-be wife. I had been so afraid I wouldn’t get to be there for it, as he is older than I am and you can’t just get endowed if you’re a female. I don’t remember very much of my own endowment, not specifically. I do remember not feeling prepared, and feeling uncomfortable. I did not know what covenants I would be making exactly, but I knew it was the next step I was supposed to take.

So I packed my bags, said goodbye to my best friend, and left for the MTC. I’ve always struggled with routine (hello depression), so to have such a rigid schedule was good for me. I was desperate to become more in tune with God and Christ and the Holy Spirit. I read, listened, learned, and prayed more fervently than I ever had before. I also got sick in week one of six, lost my voice completely, and due to the nature of having to learn a language, was never allowed to fully recover it. Singing has always been the only thing I am great at in my life, and for the entire six weeks I was there, i could not sing. Not even for a visit from an apostle. I begged my teacher for just one day of vocal rest from practicing Spanish, and it was not permitted. I was heartbroken, and I still am. Singing has always been the one way I would say I could feel connected to my spirituality, and I could not access it.

I prayed desperately in the MTC many times over, begging God to let me feel His love. I prayed at night for ten minutes, once even half an hour. I prayed in the Celestial room on Saturdays when we were permitted to do endowment ordinances for the dead. Every week i would cry deeply in that beautiful room. I cried many many times at night. I just wanted to know for sure that God loved me. To feel something, anything, that i could identify. I can’t say I ever did. I figured there must just be something wrong with me and that I should stop asking. I persisted along.

I left the MTC and headed into the field, to Arizona. To Monte Vista, specifically. I had a decent compañera, she was tough, and steadfast, and strong in her convictions. She could seem a little unempathetic and unsympathetic at times, but she was doing her best. But where things had at least been going okay at the MTC, arriving in the field saw my mental health deteriorate. Rapidly. I have a paralyzing fear of role-play and role-play-like situations, and practice teaching is such a situation. I could not do it; I would freeze, panic, and cry. I quickly became more depressed on my mission than I had ever been at home since the eighth grade. Which is to say I was just shy of suicidal. I wanted to die, and be dead, and stop existing, but I was at least not in danger of acting upon it. I lost all sense of self-worth I had managed to build up. I cried everywhere i could without pestering my compañera. In the bathrooms, in the shower, silently at night after she was asleep. I did cry to her also, often during the morning studies. I still did not have my voice back. I was still not permitted a day of vocal rest. I began speaking with my mission president. I set up a time to visit with a family services therapist.

After a session with me, she told me she couldn’t see that there was anything wrong with me. To her, I was fine, because I was clearly not having an emotional breakdown in her office, and was cognizant of the irrationality I was dealing with. I was fine.

I went on splits with an English Sister, and cried to her, poured my soul out to her. She helped me to feel loved, but gave me the same response as everyone else. Pray about it.

Christmas came quickly. I had had thanksgiving in the MTC, after all. It was without a doubt the best thanksgiving I ever had. Not because I felt the spirit, but because it was not with my extended family. Thanksgivings with my extended family often turned into some kind of argument, then. So doing service and spending time with other missionaries was a nice change. While my compañera was Skyping with her family, I knelt in our bedroom alone and prayed. I prayed so hard. I wanted to stay, and yet I knew I might have to leave. I begged for help, and I received an answer for the first time in almost a decade. That I should go home. I Skyped my family, and told them what to expect. It was a very bittersweet Christmas Day. More bitter than sweet. But I felt I had my answer.

So I told my mission president, the priesthood leader presiding over the whole Phoenix, Arizona mission. God wanted me to go home.

“God wouldn’t tell you that.”

It took me over a week after that to make the final decision to go home. There are two things my mission president told me that i will never forget. One, was that, even if I went home and all my problems went away, that I still needed to get help, because it would come back, and it couldn’t come back when I was a new wife, or a new mother, when I had new and difficult responsibilities. The other, “God wouldn’t tell you that.”

I returned home in January. I was released with honor, a real RM in the eyes of the Church, and I went to the doctor for my depression. For a small while, I tried to stick with the habits of a missionary, praying and reading and studying daily. Maybe not the “up at 6am,” part, but much of the rest. But it soon became too painful to bear. Everything reminded me of my mission. Everything seemed to have the word failure on it in hidden inks that only my heart could read. I had to take a step back for my mental health.

I don’t know if my mission president knew what weight his words carried when he told me that. I don’t know if he thought before he spoke them. He justified his words to me. The only spiritual feeling I had felt from prayer since grade school was written off as a feeling I conjured myself. It’s easy for others to say “he abused his priesthood position,” but he learned that idea from somewhere. He’d thought on that idea before. He was immediate in that response, and he maintained it. He was a leader, and if someone like him is able to so simply destroy faith with a single sentence borne in his mind of God, how can I trust what any leader tells me is of God?

I pushed myself through the rest of the time my then boyfriend was out on his mission. I was faithful to him— it was easy, as I loved him so much and am asexual, so I had no concern that I would find myself in a position where I wouldn’t be able to “control myself.” I felt at that time that we were foreordained to marry, that when he returned home he would save for a ring and we would soon be engaged. That was always our plan.

Then he came home in late December of 2016. I tried to jump back into what we had had, but physically it was difficult as I had physically been isolated for two years. I told him I would need time to warm up to the more serious bits. Instead of trying to communicate boundaries and asking permission to move forward with anything, he grew cold. Any physical contact, I had to initiate. Kissing him felt like kissing a brick wall. He talked to me less— he never opened up more than surface level, an issue we had never had. He began to treat me like a monster, began to grow upset if I knew more than him about anything, and instead of talking to a 21 year old returned missionary, I felt like I was constantly speaking with an immature 17 year old high schooler. He was the perfect mormon boy, if you look at him objectively. He never missed a day of scripture reading or prayer, and he loved his mission, or so he said. He broke a lot of rules near the end, jumping into pop culture and watching anime and music videos on his P-days. He did not come back a man at all. He came back a depressed, worn down boy in denial of his own health.

Eventually I got him on skype with me (he lived an hour away), six months into the new year, four years of dating now behind us, and we broke it all down. I explained everything I felt was wrong, that I wanted to make it work, that I wanted both of us to be better. He explained how he was feeling, and that the feeling was mutual, that he wanted to see us succeed. So we agreed to take a break to focus on other things, our mental health and our next steps in life, and come back in a few months.

And then he told me he cheated on me months before. Kissing the sister who brought him to institute every week. I was heartbroken, devastated, angry. I could never trust him again, how could I? I had been faithful without him for two years, and he returns and is going at someone else after a mere three months.

I stopped talking to him under the premise of taking the aforementioned break. I needed time to think. Eventually I wrote him a breakup letter, too broken and angry to say anything to his face. A mutual friend meant to deliver it to his new address, which I didn’t know, but sent it to the wrong one. Before I could bring myself to write another letter, he texted me for my new address. I discovered he intended to break up with me through our mutual friend. I told him to screw off. The next day he was dating the same girl he had cheated on me with. He got engaged to her the day before what would have been our fifth year anniversary. He recently got sealed to her in the temple. They have been together for less than a year, and he is more committed to her than he had ever been to me. But I am still broken. I am still hurting. I do not miss him, but at one point he said that God had confirmed for him that we were right for each other, that he’d had a vision of our future family. I trusted him when he said that. I believed him. He had the priesthood, after all. He was the perfect member.

It has been around three years since I returned from my mission early— 12 weeks, by the way, was how long I had been out— and I still think about everything every day. I have been struggling with my faith every day. And as I grow, as I learn, as I have tried again and again to jumpstart my faith once more, to read and to pray and attending church like a good girl, the less convinced I am that I’m in the right place. I believe in God, but beyond that, I’m no longer sure. There’s so much dissonance with the concept of the God I feel from reading scripture and the concept of the God the church teaches about.

I can’t conceive of a God who makes some of His children gay, and then condemns them for it. I can’t conceive of a God who makes half of his Children to be Lesser than the other half, and commands them to know their place and covenant to maintain submission to the other Children’s authorities.

I cannot in good faith follow a leadership that ignores the teen suicide epidemic in Utah that disproportionately affects LGBTQ+ LDS youth. I cannot in good faith follow a leadership that in finally addressing mental illness, fails to address rampant spousal abuse.

But I’ve made these covenants, up to and including my endowment. I am filled with doubt of the truth I’ve been raised in, and am filled with fear that I cannot be truly happy if I stay. And I am also filled with fear that if it is true, and i should leave, then I am condemned, and am a disappointment to my parents who love this gospel so much.

I only hope that something somewhere got lost in translation, that God’s truth is still perverted in many aspects due to the folly of men, of patriarchal society, of homophobia and transphobia. I hope that this Church that I have been raised in, that i feel could still be the most correct, will yet change.

It’s a pessimistic hope.

I’m afraid to stay. I’m equally afraid to leave.

I’m unsure what I should do.

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