#some real rhombuses
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Cassandra Cain! Batgirl 🤝 Kon! Superboy
Not Knowing that the Hero they're literally Named After has a civilian life
Cassandra Cain! Batgirl 🤝 Kon! Superboy
Modelling themselves to fill the myth of a hero. Thinking they never will because something is wrong with them, even though the real reason they'll never fulfill it is that the myth is nothing without the flesh and blood
#writing Kon while feeling the angst of his namelessness#I don't even ship them but like#there's some parallelograms here#some real rhombuses#cassandra cain#kon el kent#talky talky
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Bat-Hunter | Rook Hunt & Lilia Vanrouge
Synopsis: In which Rook and Lilia found themselves at the start of a legendary battle for the Prefect of Ramshackle's heart. The world of love triangles is awfully quiet after this exchange. Dedicated to @pandoa. You wish and you shall receive <3
Lilia Vanrouge, Rook Hunt x gender neutral reader / small scenario / fluff but mostly crack / reference to a specific Phillipines dish / 1525 words / use of “you” pronouns / Masterlist
Bat-Hunter: The Magnificent Showdown!
Few people throughout history — between humans and faes — could say that they had the audacity to directly antagonize the Great General Vanrouge in any sort of battle. And getting out of this sort of risk alive was a bit of luck granted to very few people, almost to none.
“But a coward hunter is not worthy to receive the title, nor to wear a hat.”
That was the Hunt family motto that Rook was so proud to carry in his heart. Such was his respect for his family tradition that this phrase was embroidered on the inside of all his hats so as to never forget his origins.
Well, maybe I’m starting a little too fast and you’re still worrying — from the comfort of Ramshackle’s upstairs window — what the hell the two guys you liked were doing on the ground floor balcony, dressed like that.
Despite everything, you suddenly shrugged to yourself and headed to the kitchen where a more urgent task needed to be fulfilled. When everything was ready, hopefully you could invite the guys in. That is, if you found one or the other intact in the end.
Because that was the feeling that their exchange of glances passed.
Lilia was dressed in his Light Music club “uniform,” as punk rock as your father had been in the eighties when he was young and phones were wired. He held his guitar close to him, as if it were the weapon of his days in the Army of Thorns. He was “total rad” — as the youngsters would say.
His friendly smile only masked the irritation of finding Rook in that place, decked out from head to toe. Usually, his presence was easy to ignore and his curiosity could be quite amusing from time to time.
But he knew the real situation they were in: they were equals in rivalry for the heart of Ramshackle’s Prefect.
Knights in a duel for love!
Rook, in his own instance, wore a pair of belted trousers and a loose white blouse — located in the common vocabulary as a “pirate blouse” — with the strange addition of a large pink coat over his shoulders, sewn by hand and with some patterns of blue rhombuses. With his hat in hand, he looked like a book character.
His expression was equally gentle but it carried a certain pang of defiance, like a hunter who meets another while hunting.
“You look very beauté this afternoon, Monsieur Curiosité!,” Rook praised.
“How did you actually say that time? That my beauty is ‘mysterious’?,” Lilia chuckled, squinting his eyes.
“Oui, oui! But do not fret, Monsieur, today my attention is on someone else.”
“Another one? You can’t get enough of it, can you, Hunt?”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, yes. I’m tired. Tired because I’m wandering for days and nights thinking about the smile of that kind person and how I would like to cheer them up in these times of crisis!”
Crisis? Lilia didn’t quite understand. You seemed to be doing very well during all the times you met. Had he let any detail slip through the cracks?
“What kind of crisis? That is,” he bit his tongue, embarrassed that he had to ask for help from his literal rival. “If I may intrude.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. These are ear crisis! Dear Trickster has been hearing a lot of guitars being scratched lately,” the young huntsman replied, boldly.
Lilia barely broke his guitar cable — or the entire instrument at once in Rook’s head.
It was a mere provocation, no big deal. And Pomefiore’s vice, the way he was, probably appreciated each style of music in its own artistic way. But they were dealing with a battle of epic proportions and every blow counted.
Even if he were to call Lilia’s love-hard-heavy-metal demo “instrument-scratching”. But it was worth it and it showed in the way Rook’s eyes squinted in amusement.
Dealing with Diasomnia’s vice has always been an adventure in itself. That was the best part about being Lilia’s romantic rival.
Regardless of the ending, moments like this would always have a special place in Rook’s heart and he would remember it all with emotion when he went to tell your children — “the Hunt Jrs.” — the trajectory of your love.
“Why are you crying?,” suddenly Lilia inquired, confused.
“You will not be forgotten, Monsieur Curiosité! Forever and ever!,” Rook declared, wiping a tear with the sleeve of his coat. “Your memory will be carried forever in our family!”
At this the fae pulled the hunter by the collar of his shirt, staring directly into his green eyes. It was not necessary to float to come face to face with Rook, Lilia had enough dignity to impose himself the way he wanted.
And, let’s face it, making the boy — a “child” in his eyes — literally reach his level was more convenient too.
“Your particular persona has not yet turned gray to be Malleus’ breakfast because I dare, to the best of my mental faculties, find your audacity mildly amusing,” Lilia said with a grim smile cutting across his face.
“I thank you, monsieur. And I, if I may say so, find the bloody-pink in your eyes extremely beautiful,” Rook retorted, torn between fascination and a certain fear instinct that only made him feel more confident in his goals.
“Who do you think you are, hunter?”
“And who do you think I am, bat?”
That said, the two of them started laughing. Maniacally. They walked away but kept laughing, releasing all the anger and tension that could be felt in the form of simple fun between two colleagues.
Oh, they wanted to duel until death ripped them from each others hands.
Fortunately, you opened the door in time to prevent a bloodbath in your yard — after all, it would be difficult to clean it up.
“Hey, boys!,” you greeted, happy. “Wanna come in? I made pancit canton!”
Then you showed them a plate of fresh noodles, straight out of the pan, in a colorful combination of sliced pork, sausage and shrimp along with chopped carrots, cabbage, peas, onions and garlic. It smelled wonderfully good and matched your good mood. No wonder, it was your favorite food from the Philippines.
The sun was setting and it was close to dinner time. In fact, you were so excited about the process of cooking everything — from blanching vegetables to cutting meats — that the serving size tripled. Maybe being busy tidying the house didn’t help your distraction.
But with Lilia and Rook there — and Grim would be happy with extra food — you felt that little slip was worth doing it.
The smile that opened on your face descended on them like a ray of light in the midst of darkness, poetic as a fairy tale.
The animosity in the air was still palpable, however you were simply happy to have the company of your two crushes at the same time and there are times you need to take advantage of some situations.
“Prefect! I composed a song and I would like you to hear it,” Lilia stepped forward, putting the guitar in position and pulling a bombastic sound from the strings.
Your eyes widened and you couldn’t stop an admiring smile from appearing. Outside that your heart was racing just like the Light Music club speakers after a performance by Lilia. He was so cool!
“And I brought the best collection of poems on my bookshelf to recite, sweet Trickster!,” Rook didn’t lag behind and with one movement of his arm, the coat danced beautifully under his shoulders.
Another shot to the heart! As if that were not enough, the shades of the afternoon horizon harmonized perfectly with Rook’s clothes and made him an otherworldly vision, having escaped from a bedside book just to meet with you.
“You two are going to drive me crazy like this…,” you grumbled to yourself. But you did your best to stay intact.
“I just want you to bear with me 'cause I am only one,” you said. “Let’s have dinner first, okay?”
“All for you, sweet Trickster!,” Rook declared, taking your free hand and kissing it.
“A-ah! Okay?”
“What matters is your wish, Prefect,” Lilia skillfully took the plate of pancit from your other hand and also kissed it.
“B-but your guitar...!” He literally had put the instrument between his legs.
“There’s no time for questioning, magnefique apple of my eyes. Forward, my brave rival!”
“Said and done, hunter!”
You were still confused when they managed to find a way to literally drag you into the house, each holding your arms as if your weight was negligible and the situation completely normal.
It was obvious how Rook and Lilia, even if in different ways, could make you go “head over heels.”
Well, you avoided reaching that angle when they deposited you on the couch and sat each by your sides. At least the animosity was gone and Lilia’s guitar was more securely propped up on the coffee table.
“Dinner, mes ami?,” Rook suggested. “Then a lyrical duel to the death?”
“A what...?”
“That’s fine for me,” Lilia accepted.
And so they lived happily ever after. At least until after dinner.
🦇🆚️🏹
Special Notes: It’s funny or maybe not how I can get drowned in my own work and never make any progress in months but the moment the inspiration for something strikes me as a lighting, suddenly I can pull off an entire 1525 thing in two nights straight. It’s quite simple and it goes more into comedy territory but it’s a homage for your underrated comedy skills, Pando! I still tried my best to make sure both Rook and Lilia could have their times to shine. I based most of the exchange in Lilia’s R Sports Card personal story with Rook (and just got off from that feeling). Have to say, I love a good unilateral passive-aggressive convo and they delivered <3
Now… any similarities of scenes from certain movies are completely my fault. I’m currently having a Die Hard and Kung Fu Panda brainrot, which is weird but it happened.
#twisted wonderland#lilia vanrouge#lilia vanrouge x reader#rook hunt#rook hunt x reader#a little gift for a friend#cherry's writing#twst x reader#twst scenarios#twst crack#love triangle but a tiny bit unhinged#cherry's mumbling about twst
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Biological essentialism treats tapirs and rabbits, pangolins and dromedaries, as though they were triangles, rhombuses, parabolas or dodecahedrons. The rabbits that we see are wan shadows of the perfect 'idea' of rabbit, the ideal, essential, Platonic rabbit, hanging somewhere out in conceptual space along with all the perfect forms of geometry. Flesh-and-blood rabbits may vary, but their variations are always to be seen as flawed deviations from the ideal essence of rabbit.
How desperately unevolutionary that picture is! The Platonist regards any change in rabbits as a messy departure from the essential rabbit, and there will always be resistance to change - as if all real rabbits were tethered by an invisible elastic cord to the Essential Rabbit in the Sky. The evolutionary view of life is radically opposite. Descendants can depart indefinitely from the ancestral form, and each departure becomes a potential ancestor to future variants. [...]
On the 'population-thinking' evolutionary view, every animal is linked to every other animal, say rabbit to leopard, by a chain of intermediates, each so similar to the next that every link could in principle mate with its neighbours in the chain and produce fertile offspring. You can't violate the essentialist taboo more comprehensively than that. And it is not some vague thought-experiment confined to the imagination. On the evolutionary view, there really is a series of intermediate animals connecting a rabbit to a leopard, every one of whom lived and breathed, every one of whom would have been placed in exactly the same species as its immediate neighbours on either side in the long, sliding continuum. Indeed, every one of the series was the child of its neighbour on one side and the parent of its neighbour on the other. Yet the whole series constitutes a continuous bridge from rabbit to leopard - although, as we shall see later, there never was a 'rabbipard'. There are similar bridges from rabbit to wombat, from leopard to lobster, from every animal or plant to every other.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth (2009), chapter 2
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Last First Monday of the Week Year 2023-01-02
it's that time again
Listening: Bought an Apple USB-C DAC so relistening to songs I know well for reference. One being Bad Religion's Let Them Eat War.
youtube
Bad Religion's bit gets me every time. Yeah he's. A PhD evolutionary biologist who does the militant atheist meme irl. Perfect band no notes.
Reading: In search of an entirety different blog post I did not find, The Alexandrian's GM Don't List. It's a good list, not really groundbreaking advice but good things to rein in some bad habits you may have developed at other people's tables and sensible reasons why you should avoid them.
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/37571/roleplaying-games/gm-dont-list-1-morphing-reality
A lot of these are just urgings to be consistent and predictable but that's so important at a table, nothing is worse for players than having a plan go awry even though the rules say it should work.
Watching: Knives Out: Glass Onion, which was great. It's really cool that it is actually basically the same overall setup in the abstract as Knives Out: Donut Hole but still a totally novel and interesting story.
Playing: Started and finished the Titanfall 2 Campaign over the new year. I like first person shooters in theory but many, many of them do not do it for me, I still haven't finished Spec Ops: The Line. Titanfall is fast paced and has the right level of "You're in a bad situation, what do you do, now quickly think!" that I like from first person shooters in particular and more generally from video games.
Frantic snap decisions are usually a terrible idea in real life but they're a lot of fun, and you feel good when they work out. Ping-ponging off walls and firing shots off only to land in the middle of a cluster of enemies, dropping a grenade and activating your invisibility power to escape is great. Movement is super good, albeit a little unpredictable as to when you're going to stick to a wall rather than swing past it to your death.
Making: I have done nothing but sew quilt patches for three days. Cut what will hopefully be the last batch of patches from the roll, it looks like I'm probably going to contribute about ⅓ of this quilt with my mother making up the other ⅔.
Tools and Equipment: The templates for cutting and marking seams on the quilt patches were originally printed, and they're worn down to the point of uselessness. Rather than running around to a printshop, I made the new ones by just drawing it by hand, so here's to a robust set of geometric tools. With a couple set squares, a protractor, a compass, and a good ruler you can do an awful lot of constructions very accurately. In particular constructing parallel lines with two set squares came in handy here for drawing the rhombuses.
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Resentment Dump
Haven't been able to write anything in a while at this point. It's beyond being frustrating.
I need to keep myself keep *trying* things though. I WANT to make something. I NEED to.
Everything I do just makes me want to put my arms in a blender though. For lack of anything else to do (or better to do...) I'm just gonna fully post chapter one of what I was writing
My outline for the story looking back was just... awful. Nothing actually interesting happens in any individual chapter. It was meant to add up to being more overwhelming as a whole as opposed to any individual "straw breaking the camel's back" moment. Between that and not understanding how people *interact,* chapter two became a swamp that couldn't let people grow, promoted strict inaction. Chapter three had the same issue. Really only the last 3 chapters do I have any drive to want to write. I guess I could make them into short stories, might be an easier angle to approach from.
Whatever. Below is my unedited first draft for my 2nd attempt at writing a book.
Since before I was born, the mayor’s house had been growing. Every month, when my village received our shipment of rations, the mayor kept the building materials. Every month, he used more materials than we ever thought he had, growing from all points across the desert. From the village in the center, the house nearly stretched around to meet itself, choking out any sight of the horizon. Even the dirty sun glued permanently to the desert floor has been erased from daily life. In a few years, I wouldn’t be able to do what I’m doing tonight, leave.
I’m not looking forward to leaving, but I can’t quite tell why. Living with your parents isn’t an enviable lifestyle. There’s no real work in the village, most people just kill time waiting for the next shipment of rations. Maybe it’s the romanticism in an open-ended life, where any choice made from the wealth of options would confidently display who I am. Maybe there’s just some security in the entombment, as the years go by, in the hot sands, the sky would slowly get darker and darker, the house cocooning the village entirely. I could just lay down in my house one day, blankets of desert heat tucking me in for a long sleep. I’d wait to be discovered by the first person to break through the barrier, a relic of an ancient life devoid of my personality and mistakes.
The first thing I need to do today is visit the maiden. The maiden of purity wasn’t a belief instilled in me from my parents or the village, but a saint I know to guide me well. The shrine I built lies inside a small room inside the mayor’s house. Her purifying aura prevents any of the mayor’s corrupting hands from rebuilding her room, or even attempting any reconstruction on that wing of the house. I’d like to imagine that she’s the entire reason the house hasn’t snaked back through the town it surrounds, but maybe the mayor remembers his life before construction.
From the corner of the town center, I walk in a line that crosses in front of Suzie’s door, and across the town I keep walking in a straight line. Even if I turn slightly, I’m on the path, I simply walk until I reach the wall of the mayor’s house. The wall is littered with windows, the only one that leads me deeper into the house is the only window that features right angles. Every other crevice into the house is made of misaligned rhombuses, trapezoids, and frustratingly, the occasional pentagon when the mayor misjudges his craft. The maiden wouldn’t appreciate me entering through any other window besides, simply out of respect for the square window’s purity in form. Lifting myself up, I bring my legs to rest on the windowsill. A quick glance inside the house didn’t reveal any inhabitants, so I threw myself into the house proper.
The rug I always land on moved again. The mayor constantly adjusts my corrections if he notices. The semi-circle rug would meet perfectly with the trident fanning of hallways that stretch forward from the window if he backed the edge of the rug against the window. Instead, the rug constantly gets moved halfway between the left and center hallways, the corner between the two cutting into and lifting the rug uncomfortably in the air. After I corrected the rug, I moved down the rightmost hallway, only a short walk until I reached my shrine.
The inside of the house, through the planning of its scatterbrained creator, is in a word: uneven. Smooth floors get bumpy, corners of ceilings rise and fall in complete disregard for their twin side. The most distressing change, however, is the temperature of the house. There is always noise in the house, a constant whirring of unseen air-conditioners pumping out stale air. Even this close to the window to the desert, the heat couldn’t pierce the settled cold air. The cold bit me and with it, I felt more confident in my last visit. Of the few I was brave enough to explore, this wing featured the most acceptable temperature. With its stillness, the maiden favored the cold, so long as it didn’t enforce brittleness.
The hallway straightened out into a square as I neared the door to the room, which was itself, nearly a perfect square. I put my hand o the freezing doorknob, and I felt my tongue swell, choking me. I’ve been worrying about my tongue, for months I’ve questioned my ability to control it. I’ve been talking, wishing for silence, laughing at jokes that aren’t funny, and holding myself when I have things to say. The reaction is unquestionable, a corruption growing in my tongue trying to fight against the maiden’s purity. Corruption is a constant worry, but others fail to notice the perversion in the world around them. The house simply is, simply builds. They don’t notice anything wrong with its construction, anything wrong with me. For weeks, rings have formed around the edge of my vision. The deformative signs that I’ve started to lose myself to corruption.
I open the door and enter the room, it remained exactly as I left it. The likeness of the maiden painted on the wall, bright teal against the wall’s orange brick. Her angelic presence brightened what was very nearly a broom closet. The maiden eternally held arms aloft, wide enough to stretch onto the adjoining walls, enveloping me in her distant embrace. Underneath her chest was a table featuring small objects, what I came to collect before I left. Two effigies of the maiden stood on either end of the table. One effigy was carved out of simple wax, in the cold she would not melt, would not deform. The other effigy was carved in wood wrapped tightly in razor wire soaked in my dried blood. Between the two maidens was a moderately sized knife with a white handle and grey blade, a gift from my father years ago, it had a single edge, expertly sharpened. To honor the maiden was to have a relationship with pain. Purity was the goal with such worship, corruption and mistakes only being washed away with acts of penance and cleansing. I grabbed the knife and put it in my pocket. I only needed one effigy, the other would best serve protecting what it can of the village. The wax would quickly melt, so with a heavy breath, I took a tight hold of the maiden wrapped in wire. The cold air kept me alert as the metal dug through the top layers of my skin. I put the maiden into my baggy pants pocket, just large enough to hold her for the moment.
Beneath the mural’s arms was the only mirror I had regular access to. Positioning myself infront of the mirror, I looked close at my reflection. Starting at the extremities, everything looked normal. My feet and legs seemed as I remembered when I put my sandals on in the morning. While still lumpy and bulging in all the wrong places, my body didn’t seem unnaturally contorted underneath my clothes. My knees still peeked under my baggy pants, my chest and shoulders still the only unique bulges beneath my poncho. My hands I looked at both with the mirror and without, still small blocks at the end of even smaller arms. Stumpy fingers attached to crooked joints still moved properly, as pure as they’ve ever been. My face was still square and ugly, wide mouth, stumpy nose. My eyes seemed different, however. I moved closer to the mirror, inches away my nose touching its reflection. Around my eyes, the brow, the cheeks, the root of my nose, they all seemed puffy. I tried to furrow my brow in concentration but my reflection refused follow. My eyelids narrowed, I can feel the muscles tensing, but the expression remains the same in the reflection, clear evidence of impurity. I opened my mouth, peeled my lips away from my teeth. My tongue looked purple, veins bulging along the sides seemed to writhe on their own accord, evidence enough. I pulled the knife out from my pocket and looked back at myself in the mirror. My hand was shaking. I know what I had to do to keep pure. Maybe I was worried about moving? It would be hard to move to a new town without the ability to speak, eyes in bandages. I put the knife back in my pocket. When I was settled in the city, I’d cleanse myself from them and any other growths that grow in the meantime.
I had everything I needed from my shrine, when I was gone, if anyone found the maiden and my shrine, they had the start of what they needed to get started. The foreign tongue seemed to sulk between my teeth. I don’t know if the growths have thoughts or agendas, but after my quick examination it seemed to recede further back in my mouth. I took one last look at the room around me. With a heavy exhalation, I knew I had to go. I grabbed the doorhandle again, beginning to open the door.
A heavy breath echoed into my shrine. The mayor must be nearby, and he must have grown. I held the doorknob firmly as I pressed my ear against the door. A loud shuffling was present, but I couldn’t tell if it was coming or going, nor its direction from me. I eeked the door open and thrust the top of my head out. Nothing on the path to the window. I turned my body and head to the right, and saw a large hand gripping the wall from an unseen corner. My knees buckled in an attempt to reel be back into the shrine. The great arm dug its fingertips into the wall then flexed, dragging the rest of the great mass forward. More arms sprang out into the hallway, doing the same. Then one of his large, fragile legs kicked out, bringing forward an oversized shin, then knee, then thigh. Then the rest of the mayor shambled forward, draped largely in a patchwork black sheet, I couldn’t tell what innumerable other growths plagued him. He turned his frame towards me, the large bronze mask, depicting a disfigured man with a long beard, swept its gaze across the hallway. If the mayor saw me, he didn’t act like cared, instead continuing to drag himself down the hallway, many of his shorter hands carrying tools and building supplies. He struggled to move his great form down the hallway. Luckily, I managed to pull myself together, safe inside my shrine, I closed the door.
I pulled the effigy out from my pocket, clasped tightly between my hands. With blood running down my arms, I began to pray to the maiden. I prayed that the mayor would not sully this room with his corruption in my absence, that my village would remain pure, that my trip from the village would pass effortlessly, that I could live up to the purity that she promised. I moved to my knees and bowed my head. I closed my eyes, brow furrowed in concentration on appeasing the effigy I clutched. Soon, the pounding of the mayor’s movement penetrated the room. He was close, his breathing came next arrhythmically with the pounding. As he neared the door, the last two sounds came, the clattering of his tools banging together and the low groan that accompanied every breath he took. This close, the pounding shook the room, while his breathing merely vibrated anything not fastened down. The noises moved past the door, then slowly quieted themselves as he continued further along down the hallway. The mayor was always absent minded, so he frequently moved without the threat of turning back around. After the noise subsided further, I eeked the door open again, he was far enough down the hallway that I could safely follow. His backside was covered in the same sheet, long enough that it stretched as coat tales draped across the floor behind him. I walked towards the door, my legs were still shaking. The penetrating feeling that he would turn around at any time and chase me down still held me. Logic knew that I was safe however, so I forced my legs forward step by step.
While I loathe the monster he’s become, I pity the man he used to be. Older than my parents, the same man has traveled and expanded the walls of his house. I can’t tell if he’s in a constant pain with his many growths or simply can’t feel pain anymore. Then I thought about his actions, how could a being like him still possess human thoughts? He moved with a singular, obsessive purpose down the halls of his house, always adding, expanding. Some structures within couldn’t safely shelter life, the former leader of our village couldn’t even speak with his people anymore, or wouldn’t. It didn’t matter, he couldn’t be delivered to purity. Cutting off his cancer, he’s been alive for longer than any person could naturally live. Maybe, like my tongue has been, his body runs without his mind, and he’s left only to hope for death, the only blessing he could hope for.
The mayor turned down another of the trident-hallways, allowing me access back to the window. He moved the rug out of position again. I put the effigy of the maiden back into my pocket. Through the callouses and scars, my hands have been harder to get to bleed, so I didn’t even feel light-headed after my walk. I positioned the rug correctly one last time, hoping that the mayor would never turn back down these halls. Grabbing onto the frame of the window, I hoisted myself back onto the windowsill and threw myself back over into the sands. The grains freely entered the wounds in my hands as I caught myself. I needed to wash myself quickly as to prevent infection. I quickly wiped what I could on the poncho before dashing back to my home. Securing my valuables in my pockets with my hands as I ran, I quickly made it back home. Near the concrete building, the door was already open, I ran to the bathroom and began vigorously washing my hands. Clumps of bloody sand dripped off my hand alongside the steady trickle of my diluted blood. A thorough use of soap left my hands sand and grime-free. With the rinse over, I grabbed the last of the towels I left out for this very day. Drying my hands quickly turned into wrapping my palms with the clean towels. I made a fist with my hands, I could still feel everything down to my fingers and the towels were secure for the rest of the day.
I walked out of the bathroom, greeted by my still open suitcase. I was nearly done packing up, I just needed to secure what I took from the shrine. As they sat on my bed alongside the suitcase, I looked across the variety of sand-colored clothes that made up my wardrobe. I didn’t have room for everything, but with the variety of plain single-colored clothes, I wasn’t losing much. Grabbing the knife out of my pocket, I made a small opening down the side of my suitcase, before forcing my knife to sink deep in the clothes. The effigy already had a special spot in the suitcase, right on top. Layered over a clothes-less divot was a thick rag stained to a dark brown from years of soaking up blood. I placed the effigy in the center of the divot before swaddling it with the loose ends of the towel. Packed neatly, the suitcase closed neatly, the zipper unfettered.
I didn’t know what time everyone was supposed to leave, but I figured people were probably waiting on me. I still wanted to take one last look around town before I left. I grabbed the suitcase and put its wheels on the floor. I turned around and remembered the open door, winds hardly blew sand in, but I shouldn’t leave it open. I paced towards the door and grabbed the handle. Then I let go of the handle and paced back. Back and forth I walked before I caught myself almost running. Grabbing the handle, I closed the door.
I can’t remember the last time I was in my room without the wind’s rustling companionship. Something felt wrong, but I couldn’t place it. I looked at my hand, it looked and felt like a glove, I focused on trying to will my hand into a fist, slowly. Uncorrupted, my hand followed my orders. Moving my hand to my chest, I felt a fierce pounding, I was afraid of the corruption; but my hand was fine, I had no reason to suspect it. I moved towards my bad while my eyes darted around, each step stretched into a leg inspection, with every move of my arm, I looked for any abnormalities. Finally at my bed, I laid into it. I closed my eyes and furrowed felt my brow naturally furrowing. I sat with myself for a moment as a mild headache crept across my forehead.
My mind was racing faster than the headache crept. Without moving, I focused on each part of my body, the senses seemed to respond reliably: arm, arm, leg leg, hand, hand, foot, foot. The headache started to stretch back towards the temples. I tucked my arms into my torso, legs up to my chest, ending on my side. I checked earlier, and I couldn’t see anything, there was no reason for me to feel this sickening sense of betrayal. I thought of the effigy in the bag, back to the shrine, the mirror. My tongue felt engorged, pressing hard into the top of my mouth. My eyes… felt normal. My brow relaxed, the headache began to subside. My eyes lied to me, made me paranoid. I fed it. I gathered myself and stood back up. I looked at myself again, all seemed normal, just a momentary lens of corruption. Insidious, but it won’t creep on me again.
I grabbed my suitcase and walked to the far side of the room. I opened my door, and walked down the hallway of bedrooms and bathrooms. With a heavy sigh masked by the rolling wheels of my suitcase, I walked into the front end of my house. While we did little hosing, the front of the house was a singular spacious room meant to host guests. A small block to my immediate left held a kitchen, to my right, a dining table surrounded by eight stools. Ahead of me was a large central fireplace, beyond that ten or so feet of open flooring with the occasional rug, chair, or pillow, all backed by a large wall. Just as I feared, what were my parents still lingered in this open area.
The corruption is inherently insidious, a cancer that mutates by making you guess if it’s even there until everything becomes unrecognizable. At some point, the corruption makes a person realize that they don’t know what’s in front of them, not anymore. Maybe they’ve been watching it for years, subtle signs of change get erased until you’re looking at a monster.
I noticed my parents changing far too late for me to do anything. The first time I couldn’t ignore it was when they first heard of the people leaving, they didn’t even know I was interested. My dad’s face shaped itself beyond his typical anger, the wrinkles around his mouth folded harshly, the back of his mouth receded into a black void, his teeth removed from all visibility. His brow arched downward into a harsh V while his nose up to fight the downward pressure. The end result was a haunting mask of a grimace. I remember looking at my mother, she seemed fine at the time, but I don’t think I’ll forget how he changed.
Over the passing months, as people signed onto the trip, my dad changed more and more, and so did my mother. They both shared the same exaggerated expressions. I was always good enough at interpreting their emotions, but now it was worryingly easy. Anger, confusion, and disgust were the most common expressions I noticed from my dad. My mom on the other hand frequented sorrow, a number of pensive expressions, and a singular, truly blank expression that I had trouble discerning, there just didn’t seem to be anyone there. Their bodies, at first, seemed to degrade, becoming baggier and looser. Their height, both normally taller than me, began to slouch before fully degrading, my eyeline either matching, or rising slightly above theirs. The most horrible thing about these changes wasn’t how hollow they seemed, but precisely the opposite. There was a core humanoid figure inside all the excess skin, walking around like a kid in large pajamas. Sometimes while walking, their footsteps would get caught on the skin-suits instead each step rolling the orientation around while the figure on the inside didn’t seem to mind. They made noises like my parents, sometimes, but it always sounded more like catchphrases. The longer a conversation would go on, the more one would hear repeated words. I don’t think my parents can be saved anymore, any cleansing would be purposeless. I’ve found its best to hide from the corruption, treating it as normal – so life went on.
When I moved with my suitcase into the open room, I found that the figure meant to represent my mother was standing in the kitchen while “father” sat nearby with a chair pulled from the dining table. Both craned their necks over to look at me as I entered the room, but the rest of their bodies remained motionless. I kept walking through the room, keeping steady eye contact with “father.” When I passed halfway through the room, “father” groaned over the rumbling wheels.
Leaving?
Yeah.
He kept following with his eyes. I turned to “mother,” who followed my movements as closely as the other.
Goodbye…
Mm, yep.
Neither of their bodies moved to intercept me. They weren’t looking for to hug me goodbye or even get close. The spirits of my parents hung their words in the air. Corrupted or not, it would be the last time I would see my parents. As callous as a part of me feels, I’ve long since mourned them at this point. The only reason I’ve slowed my pace was another excuse to stop me from leaving. Nothing real keeps me here. My parents were gone, replaced. My shrine grows ever more ineffectual against the ever-growing house. Before too long, I’d be trapped by the house, forced to navigate its labyrinth if I ever wanted to leave. There was no work, and most everyone I knew was leaving.
The thinking stopped me in my tracks. My eyes wandered to some aimless corner of the kitchen. I refocused on “mother” then “father,” neither moved amid my lapse in concentration. I began moving again, keeping my eyes locking with “father.” Neither creature made any more noise as I left my home, the rumble of the wheels breaking an otherwise eerie silence. I grabbed the handle of the door and took one last look at each of them. A pit of guilt formed my stomach as I opened the door, a subtle wind blowing particles of sand past my feet. I took a step outside and quickly closed the door behind me.
Whatever stopped my tracks before still held me, still slowing my footsteps. I don’t know why I walked through the house, I’ve made my peace, I’ve had months to do it. I’m condemning my parents to their eventual tomb. Yet, I know they can’t be saved; they’re too far gone. It’s a sad situation, but I need to keep moving. Maybe the corruption has gone farther into my mind than I thought, can’t say. I just need to keep moving. People are waiting for me.
Feeling freed from whatever held my feet, I found my eyes lazily scanning the rest of the village. A few similar, large buildings erected in a large circle around a wide raised platform featuring a fountain. Between the houses were calm gardens of sand. Most of the wind avoided the village, breaking on a few tall buildings across the fountain from my facing. Regardless of calm winds, the many cracks in the buildings constantly trickled sand like blood from cracking, dry skin.
I began to walk across the sands towards the fountain. Around the other side I would find the sled that would carry me away from the village. I had to carry my suitcase at this point, the lack of proper walkways preventing me from simply rolling it with its wheels. As I passed the other houses, I realized I didn’t have the same connection to the rest of the village as I did my shrine or home. I knew that a few of these houses stood empty, their residences now vacant. The village wasn’t a particularly close-knit community. I knew my neighbors, and they knew me, but neither of us got involved in the others’ business. I assume everyone saw the dire situation of the village, but most chose to remain.
In total there were only six people leaving the village. Two couples, another woman, and myself. I was surprised that Dominic and Julie were leaving. I was much more surprised that Dominic first started talking about leaving. Dominic constantly walked around town, talking to people, moving things. Julie, I don’t know much about, she mainly kept to herself inside their home. Robin and Terry were hardly seen apart from one another. In my own natural reclusiveness, I also don’t know much about apart from seeing them by the fountain regularly. Aside from myself, the only person leaving by themselves was Asa. I’ve seen Asa around a lot more than the others, but I still didn’t know what she did with her time. Unlike the others, I’ve spoken to Asa on a few occasions; she’s nice to me, but I always prefer my own company.
Rounding side of the fountain, I saw the sled that was going to take us away from the village. Sleds are essentially a modestly sized platform atop the bottom half of an edged dome that cuts through the sand. Sleds were generally rare to see, hardly anyone ever moved long distances to or from the village. This sled had a fixed ramp up the back, and railings across the front and sides. In the middle of the platform was a small hut that provided cover from the sun on longer journeys.
Most everyone was standing on the platform, but Dominic stood away from the sled, waiting for me. He quickly spotted me after I passed the edge. Dominic was the tallest out of everyone, but the distance made him look stocky. His well-maintained body didn’t seem as weathered as a life spent trudging through sands would bring. His shaved head, from the distance, only held a black visor casting a shadow downward on his face; in reality, I knew that his sunken eyes allowed his brow to shade the rest of his perpetually impassive face. Instead of moving towards me, he stood there with his hands on his hips as I continued to move towards the sled, carrying my suitcase. After a few minutes of waddling, I was within shouting distance, but he just kept staring at me. Only when I got close enough to see the sweat run down his furrowed brow did he talk to me.
Alright, you’re the last one, just give your bag to Terry, he’ll fasten it down.
Sorry abo…
It’s fine. I’m sure you wanted to say your goodbyes.
Yeah…
Without another word, Dominic turned to the sled and started walking. Finally, having noticed me approach, Terry half-heartedly rushed down to grab my suitcase. With his thin frame, Terry moved like he was twice as heavy. With his oversized pants and shirt, it was hard to tell where his long limbs ended, and his torso began. His face was rather angular, with a prominent nose walling two small eyes from each other. As he reached me, Terry forced an unconvincing smile onto his face before thrusting his arms out towards my bag. My arms were already weak from carrying it this far across the sands, so I merely placed it on the ground where Terry could best grab it.
Sorry.
Yeah, no problem.
Terry’s tone kept the bright aspect he wanted to show, but his smile was gone as soon as my bag was back off the ground. Without another word, he began trudging back to the sled. The people back on the sled had their attentions fixed on us. Wanting to avoid their gaze, I shadowed behind Terry, largely blocked by his larger figure.
As I reached the sled, a light humming could already be heard, the engine of the great machine standing by. Terry stepped up to the ramp with a singular exaggerated movement before continuing forward. I approached the ramp behind Terry, I would need to pull myself up. I looked up at the two people on the platform that were talking to Terry earlier, Robin and Asa, they were looking back at me. My cheeks got warm, and I pretended to drop something underneath the ramp. I ducked underneath ramp and waved my hand across the sand to burn the time before I could socially re-emerge. My hand felt a bump, and I reflexively grabbed and pulled. It didn’t take much force, but I suddenly found myself holding onto a short section of pipe, broken at both ends, slightly longer than my forearm. With a prize in my hand, I popped my head back over, seeing the two talking to one another again.
Supporting myself with my arms, I put my left knee on top of the ramp before pulling the rest of my body onboard. I’m sure the clatter of the pipe hitting the metal ramp drew looks from the two women, but I forced myself not to look over at them. I walked forward until I found myself on the platform, the hut blocking the two women from seeing me. I placed the pipe on the floor next to the hut. Terry was getting finished with tying my bag alongside the guard-rails around the platform, finishing the row of people’s strapped-down luggage. From where I stood, I could see through a plate of glass into the hut. Inside, a woman sat across a table from Dominic, assuredly Julie. In contrast with her heavy dress, Julie was rather petite in most regards. Small shallow eyes hovered above a small button of a nose that rested above a small nearly lipless mouth. Her fine hair was pulled back into a ponytail that exaggerated her weak movements. She noticed me glance at her and offered a weak smile in my direction before turning back to Dominic.
I looked at the desert around the sled, it seemed so small. The cavernous house that encompassed us and the village blocked any real sight into the world beyond aside from a still-wide opening to the front of the sled whose distance was difficult to judge. Behind, the village didn’t seem real, houses that dotted the land pointlessly. Nobody stood by to see us off, aside from the haunting feeling that there used to be people here. The low hum of the sled grew to a large rumble before returning to a hum, albeit louder and deeper than the first. The sled took off, after a brief jerk backwards, it felt like I was standing on a stationary platform again.
Terry, Robin, and Asa were approaching me. Asa wore a handmade cloak, essentially a poncho like mine, but given a hood and lengthened to reach her feet. A custom seam down the middle provided an opening for her hands to gesture when she talked. Asa’s did its best to fight an inherent sorrow; her eyes carried heavy bags, and her mouth strained against its disposition towards frowning. Robin was hanging off Terry like her own short poncho, the bottom edge of which failed to reach her navel. A short pair of pants the only other coverage for her otherwise thin body. Robin seemed intoxicated on Terry’s shoulders, a wide grin supported a heavy nose and two eyes that seemed ready to close at any time.
I hate this, they’re kind, or pretend to be. They won’t talk to me for long, walk back to their spot from before, maybe go inside. It doesn’t matter, I’ll forget what they’ll say, what I’ll ask. I don’t get to ask, really. The tongue in my mouth feels engorged again, forcing lips to smile and jaw to open. I feel air rush out my throat, I’m making noise. None of the three react to what I’m saying, it’s comprehensible, as always, but not me. I try to use my eyes to signal to someone, to break the trance, Terry and Robin are too focused on each other to notice. Asa seems to be avoiding eye contact entirely, her eyes moving from fixture to fixture around her. There’s nothing left to do, I just stand here and wait.
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had a dream where we played some kind of mobile game where youre a red rectangle with a sword and run on a 2d surface to fight these anthropomorphic shapes like there were rhombuses and hexagons that also had humanoid bodies. when you reach a certain point the game throws an uncompletable level at you and after you die a couple times you get thrown into the Real Game. the whole game goes 3d and you get this unnecessarily long cutscene where it verrrryyy slowly pans/zooms {long enough for dream me to go "what the fuck this sucks} to this big tower where the leader of the shapes {giant hexagon} challenges you to fight amd you collect materials and better swords and are introduced to other npcs the most remarkable of which is not a shape at all but knuckles the echidna in all his glory, who asks you a single question. if you answer yes he makes you fill out a 56 page thing to diagnose you with adhd {????}
woke up soon after, didnt even fight the hexagon
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"Do you know what they do with the corpses?" Trinimac had asked, at the end of their sparring session. And Boethiah hadn't even known who he was talking about, because they never spoke of Lorkhan to each other, not until that day. But Trinimac's voice was hollow and grim in a way he'd never heard it before. "Follow them, some time,” said Trinimac, “See what they do with the corpses." And this was an intriguing prospect, in a time when only one spirit had the power to kill.
So here Boethiah is once more, liquid smoke among the tall grass, slinking small and cowardly in the wake of another.
Tracking Kyne is not hard, for wherever she passes, she leaves howling wind and churned soil in her wake. This hunt has taken her through a vast field of wheat, once neatly-cultivated but long abandoned by a perpetually distracted Mara, so the stalks stand woody and over-tall, bent to breaking where Kyne had charged through. The destruction she’s wrought has left an abundance of hiding-places, which Boethiah takes advantage of as he winds through the dusty-smelling carnage.
He's larger than he was the first time he followed her, and it's harder to be nothing more than smoke; here and there he's clumsy, and when his feet accidentally land on the trail of destruction, his toes become sticky with dirt and blood.
Trinimac's challenge has interested him for one reason: Boethiah actually has no idea why Kyne has invented the concept of death. He has been at the edge of her claws, yes, he has felt the sharpness sinking into his essence and has known what it is like to be on the brink of being destroyed, but he has never understood this thing she would have inflicted upon him, had Lorkhan not seen him crushed into the ground below her wrath. Death is an unpopular concept, considered vulgar because it’s inexplicably frightening, so it's not often talked about, and even Bal shudders away from the topic when brought up; it's understood by all that Kyne and her husband are doing something with it, that it’s connected to that elusive notion which is called Lorkhan’s endeavor, but if anyone knows the real purpose for the act, they haven't shared.
Following Kyne now, Boethiah wonders if it's intentionally kept secret, and how Kyne might react to being spied on-- there's a reason he tries to be as unseen and fickle while he pursues her through the grass. Kyne is a mighty and terrible spirit, and Boethiah, for all his strength and all his tenacity, knows that if she decided to end him, she could. He thinks he knows better than to assume Trinimac is trying to get him killed, but as the wind grows fiercer and the bloody puddles underfoot turn steaming-fresh, he starts to wonder...
Then there's the sound of crashing, a repetitive meaty thud accompanied by the dry crackle of snapping reeds. Fluid as a snake, Boethiah slips to the top of a strand of wheat and watches.
Kyne’s prey is a spirit with a distinctive essence about it. It's the concept of something that sets out on a transformative journey of the self but is forced to return to its initial state before reaching its destination-- an Anuic that wants to be Padomaic, grey through and through. It's large, very large, reminiscent of a hairless mammoth with cobbled skin and a thick trunk that hangs limply on the ground, bulky enough that even Kyne is struggling to lift it. She perches atop it in the form of a giant hawk, hunched over and indistinct for her concentration on her task, so that to Boethiah she seems a shapeless mass of feathers and storm-clouds, save for the single fearsome leg outstretched with claws grasping its neck. But as he watches she extends two vast wings, and gives a mighty flap-- she succeeds in lifting her prey into the air slightly, only for the weight of it to slam back into the ground with that same meaty thump, sending a slurry of blood and leaf-litter spraying into the air.
Boethiah's ears are keen enough that he hears Kyne mutter a curse. Then Kyne shifts her grip, becoming something a little less bestial, and, using the same futile gesture of flapping wings and awkward hops, she begins to heave the spirit through the grass.
It is not truly dead, Boethiah realizes, when he starts to follow them again. The spirit Kyne’s dragging is bleeding, its essence ripped into tatters, but he can still see it, its substance still exists; it cannot be dead, because death, Boethiah realizes at once, is little more than a clever piece of propaganda that Kyne's put out there to stop her prey from resisting once she's got her claws into them. The prey’s skin has been shredded, and the foggy rain-like anima sublimates the moment it leaks from its openings, but the trough left by Kyne is filled with pools of gory mud, as if it's taken inspiration from the tales of so many hunts that have come before.
Kyne's progress is slow, given the awkward hopping shuffle she's been forced to use, and she's so preoccupied with the unwieldy task that Boethiah feels quite sure she won't see him. He follows as close as he dares, letting himself be little more than a streak of imagined gore among the ruin left in their wake.
Thus, slowly and unsightly, Kyne leads him right to that secret she and Lorkhan have been keeping.
-
The secret Lorkhan has been keeping turns out to be an arena.
The secret kept by Lorkhan turns out to be a cavernous and terrible pit into which thoughts slip like debris sliding down the walls of a cliff.
The field falls away into a confused distortion of itself; a steeply-sloping arc of wheat turns into a jumble of thick milled stalks, like hay, which slide over each other as they depart the plain, only to break apart against each other in ways that no wheat should break. Here they become glass, there they snap into bones, in other places they sublimate into broken color and fractured shades of grey, being reduced to a hell of rhombuses and squares as they tumble down and come to rest in a slowly-churning heap of soupy geometry at the base of an arena wherein existence has been reduced to a profane intellectual game.
This miasma-- a poor description for it, for it could not be described by one coherent notion so much as several contradicting ones reducing each other to fluid-- seems to flow in a sluggish current around a raised platform in the center of the chasm, upon which a sort of workshop has been set up. At this workshop is racks upon which are hung sheets of dripping grey matter; tables smeared with rendered bloody notions; a warping-table like that Mephala uses for her secrets; cauldrons; hammers; machetes; blades; and the centre reserved for the most dangerous of instruments.
Still dragging the spirit behind her, Kyne limps to the very edge of this-- this unconventional arena, such as it is. Here at the edge she fans out her massive wings and beats them two, three, four times-- with the advantage of the steep slopes, she takes off and, sluggish for the weight she's still bearing, goes half-flying, half-falling over the cascading fractals being sucked into the pool below. Her massive form plummets towards the central island, ballasted down by her prey, and when she goes crashing onto a round flat platform the sound of her impact is audible throughout creation itself.
"Husband," Kyne cries, struggling to set herself upright, "A successful hunt."
In the middle of his many instruments, Lorkhan turns to the side and gives his wife a radiant grin. "Well done, my hawk," he says, striding over to her.
His hand meets her face, and at once Kyne is a woman of some sort-- the thunderstorms of her hair waft around her beautiful face, her feather-cloak crackles with electricity, but Boethiah sees that she is panting hard, and at Lorkhan's touch she sags against him.
Lorkhan moves forwards, and disappears in the chaos of her as they kiss. Seething with envy and sickened by curiosity, Boethiah watches, winding himself around a wheat-stalk so tightly it begins to smolder.
Moments later they separate, Lorkhan's expression tender with affection. While Kyne moves away and slumps down to the ground nearby, Lorkhan turns to the prey she's bought him. It’s still inert, believing itself dead, but when Lorkhan kneels and touches its ruined flank Boethiah sees its eyes open, and its long trunk stirs.
"Who are you?" asks Lorkhan, so sweetly.
The spirit is scared enough that even from this distance Boethiah can see the whites of its eyes. Lorkhan's word is law, however, so it answers:
"I am that which falls and is always falling. I set out on journeys but only end up at home."
"Yes, I know you. What is your name?"
"Virga."
Lorkhan's hands, ink-black, spread across Virga's grey flank. With a religious reverence he bows his head, probing with his fingers the many punctures rent into its skin.
"Is it enough?" Kyne calls. She's crouching some distance from him, with her feather-cloak wrapped tightly around herself, so that she’s once more shapeless, ragged and panting.
Lorkhan does not answer her. "What is it that you want?" he asks Virga.
"I set out on journeys but only end up at home," Virga replies.
"I understand. You want to be transformed, but you can never quite manage it."
"Yes."
"Have you ever felt the rain, Virga?"
"Yes."
"Did you like it?"
"I should like to feel it again."
"It is enough," Lorkhan declares, looking back at Kyne.
Kyne rises to her feet.
Lorkhan remains kneeling by Virga's side. "You want to be transformed," he observes, with brilliant warmth, "So we aren’t so different, you and I. You see, I wish to transform things. Actually, I wish for a lot of things. I am full of desire. I desire much, and I desire it very keenly.
"You did not wish to become my prey," Lorkhan continues, as Kyne approaches him with an adamantium knife. "So, how is it that you are now my prey? Because I wanted you to become my prey. I am stronger than you. This is why I get what I want and you don’t. Do you know why I am stronger than you, dear Virga?
"Because I am want," says Lorkhan, taking the knife from Kyne. "My desire is keener than yours, so I am stronger than you. You are my prey because I've willed it so. My desire is strongest, so my being is strongest.
"I want to fulfill my wanting," says Lorkhan, laying the flat of the knife against Virga's heaving fear-sweaty flank, "And I have the power to do so. And so I exist.
“And so I will do as I want.
“And so you shall die for me."
And Boethiah cannot make himself look away, he cannot bring himself to recoil even when the wheat he’s clinging to bursts into flame, and it's only when the smoke catch Kyne's attention does he even realize he ought to flee, but he's captivated, captivated despite his horror, and he thinks that he sees Lorkhan raise his head-- Boethiah thinks that their eyes meet, in the moment before Lorkhan makes the first cut.
-
"So you saw it," Trinimac says when Boethiah returns to him changed.
Compared to the miasma of Lorkhan's creation, Auri-el's abode is sterile and static, all straight lines and shining clean surfaces draped in inert gaudy gold. Boethiah is not meant to be in Trinimac's chambers but those rules have not stopped him; ever since Lorkhan began his endeavor the palace is less populated than it ever has been, and sneaking in is far too easy. Among Auri-el’s elite Trinimac is one of the few who’s deigned to abstain from the serpent’s schemes, and now it is clear why that incarnate of perfection always seemed to find such distaste for Lorkhan's plans: creation, it seems, is a very messy thing.
Boethiah is still smoke-shaped and silent as he drifts into the centre of Trinimac's chambers. "I saw it," he agrees in a voice that is very quiet.
And then he says nothing more, hanging suspended like a wisp of cinders in the centre of the room.
The air is perfectly still, so still that nothing moves him, so still that even Trinimac's small sigh slightly stirs his form.
"Perhaps you weren't strong enough to see it," Trinimac admits, with obvious concern in his usually stoic voice.
Boethiah does not respond to the insult.
"You knew, didn't you?" Trinimac asks tentatively. "About the endeavor?"
"I knew he was...creating. Something."
"But not what he was making it out of?"
Trinimac moves closer to Boethiah, creating eddies of breeze that pluck at his edges. "I know," he says in a voice that's trying to be soothing, "It's--"
"Glorious," Boethiah whispers.
This single word pauses Trinimac in his path. Boethiah stands still, staring into nothing, but his edges bleed into the stagnant air.
"No," says Trinimac. "It's horrific. It's profane. Glorious is defeating your enemies in combat, not--"
"It's glorious!" Boethiah repeats forcefully, jerking his gaze up to meet Trinimac's, and perhaps the wheat from the field snagged on his borders before it was immolated because his eyes are blazing in a way they never have before. "To want, to will, with such force, that others are vanquished and remade in your image-- what could be more glorious than that?"
Trinimac, stalwart warrior, so undaunted by everything in the world, recoils.
"Lorkhan is brilliant," Boethiah continues breathlessly, and he now fees very solid against the cold golden room. "If you cannot see that then Auri-el has blinded you. What he was doing back there-- he's discovered the point of it all. Becoming-- existing in spite of all else! What else can possibly matter in the face of that?"
"He's ruined you," Trinimac whispers.
"So let him ruin me, if that is his will, if I'm not strong enough to stop him! Trinimac!" And Boethiah lunges forwards, pressing his burning palm against the icy coldness of Trinimac’s breastplate. "Now everything is strife, our very existences depend on being strong enough to resist each other! Isn't this what you've been looking for, too? How long have we fought with one another, trying to impose our wills on each other? Isn't this what you've wanted? What has Lorkhan done but recognize who we are?"
But Trinimac knocks his hand away, and a smoldering black handprint remains seared into the gleaming armor. Trinimac is expressionless in his helmet, so Boethiah cannot discern his reaction, and this too is something new, because his gilding has never stopped Boethiah from reading him before.
"I did not expect..." Trinimac begins, moving slowly across the room. "I thought you would hate it.”
“Then you did not know me,” spits Boethiah. “Then I did not make you know me.”
“You were a fraction of myself when I met you! What was there to know?”
“Then you do not know yourself.”
“But you told me that you denied him!”
“Yes, because I knew he meant to tear me to shreds.”
“And you call that glorious?”
“It is glorious!”
Trinimac has arrived at his weapons-stand and he’s reaching for Vosh Rakh, which hangs inert and gleaming with violent light upon the wall; Boethiah, in shadows, is nonetheless burning with a violent light of his own.
“No, I won’t let him tear me to shreds,” Boethiah proclaims, voice raw with passion, “I respect him far too much for that. No, instead I will emulate him. If he is desire, I shall be--”
Trinimac has taken Vosh Rakh in hand. “What can you-- you, a small weak thing-- what can you possibly be to him?”
“To him I will be Boet-hi-ah! Not as meat to be used, not as a tool to be wielded, but as Boet-hi-ah, as myself, as the one who won’t be butchered!” Boethiah raises his chin boldly as Trinimac approaches him with the killing blade. “Can you say the same for Auri-el?”
“Lord, forgive me!” .
But Vosh Rakh does not meet its target when it descends in an arc of cold light, for Boethiah is a little faster, or a little stronger, or a little more mutable from the flames. He’s gone before Trinimac can land a second blow, slipping through the window and dissipating like a memory of smoke, leaving only in his wake cinders and char, and the burned-black handprint over Trinimac’s heart.
#fic#must a fanfiction be 'good'. is it not enough to write boethiah. deranged.#the pacing on this is all janked i know im just tired of working on it however
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some good genders:
cowboy, but in a girl way
I am just sitting on this rock
the weird uncle that you eventually discover isn't actually related to the family at all he's just somebody's friend who got absorbed at some point
a little yellow bug. perhaps with funny looking eyes
a weasel of some sort, a marten maybe. wearing a hoodie lovingly stitched together out of leaves
the friend you had in kindergarten who ate a worm once and is a furry now
fabric store
liked by science teachers
old scifi novel missing both covers. smells good?
kindly older man with an interest in geology
sid meyer's pirates! the video game
bat cave but not the batman one just a real cave where bats are
that ds9 quark ladies man shirt
the smell of wet clay in a slightly chilly art studio
the dragonology book
really old and worn nalgene plastic water bottle. has probably fallen off a mountain at some point. smells like trees still
basket full of pipe cleaners and pompoms
a pencil drawing of a flowering vine
ugly mug you bought at goodwill for $1.29
cute teapot you also bought at goodwill for $1.29 on the same day
blurry old disposable camera photos
driftwood on a beach on a rainy day. shades of gray and blue
ice cream with a caramel swirl
an oil painting of some pomegranates
coffee with cream in a clear glass mug
a room where the only lighting is a lava lamp. there's a fun rug also
when there's rain but it's still sunny
old dock on a lake that you've never seen anyone use
light up playstation 2 controller
poorly painted toys
the "no snakes allowed" sign I saw at a flea market in auburndale florida
that pattern you see on waistcoats and vests like with the rhombuses? whatever that's called
the biggest fucking honeysuckle bush you've ever seen in your life
a tshirt that says "lesbian" in bright green comic sans. letters very small
elder scrolls oblivion mace swing animation
the fae who got kicked out of the faewild for being annoying
"if you give a mouse a cookie" book
sidewalk with animal footprints in the concrete
jello brand instant pudding. chocolate flavor
crazy new cryptid invented by a little kid
lavender in baked goods
gamer but ironically
barbie princess and the pauper movie villain preminger
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Lost in Space Part 7: Ch 4
Previous
Summary: After finding Syco, the duo finds an unsettling, new reality.
Lost in Space on Tumblr
Lost in Space on ao3
I don’t do anything. I look into their eyes, watching them morph into someone I once knew. I- No. She looks at me with wonder in her eyes. She’s who I was before everything led to this. She’s wearing the same outfit with white and thick, black lines, but hers is a lot newer than mine. Hers isn’t faded. Hers hasn’t seen what I’ve had to go through. It’s innocent, naive, something I wish I still had. It’s as the saying goes ignorance is bliss.
The two of us have talked about this. It felt good doing so, but it wasn’t enough. I still need to accept it. I still need to let these emotions go.
I hadn’t noticed I was crying until I felt a warm hand rest itself on my cheek. Their thumb wiped away my tears. Raising my head, I see my younger self fading. Through my blurry vision, I see everyone I’ve come in contact with throughout this journey, everyone that I’ve lost. Ashely’s sitting upright, taking the place of my previous self. When she leans in, connecting our foreheads, I hiccup and can feel my face heat up. “I’m-”
“Okay. It’s okay,” Saamuki told me.
A big, blue star beat down on the three of us as we headed towards the cathedral, the tallest, winding building poking up from the city resting on the other side of this massive brick wall. Its shadow would’ve covered Syco’s entire growing army easily. A handful of guards watched us from above as Syco conversed with the two standing in front of the entrance that was encased by a small, green forcefield. As he was showing them his screen, I took note of the wall. It’s stained with gunk, which attracted a swarm of flies. One of which departed from the others and buzzed towards the forcefield. Upon touching it, it was vaporized. I make a sound, which gets the attention of one of the guards above. Well, my brain tells me it does. I know it’s just a coincidence, but I’m still worried. Through his helmet, I imagine his eyes. I imagine him glaring down at me, looking past this disguise. I am a Talten now. I got my crown to do so twelve minutes ago, but my brain rationalized that he could see I was human and he was reaching for his blaster rather than his companion to tell a joke. I imagined him aiming it at me. He shoots. I flinch.
We’re inside. I breathe out. The cobble roads surround hundreds of medieval-style homes. A few citizens walk past us. Three held candles. One of which whips his groaning horse, to pull his carriage full of whatever could’ve been in those barrels faster. A thick, grey cloud puffed out of them with each bumpy step. The unwilling creature isn’t what horses look like on Earth. It has two stubby legs and a fat, round body. It’s as big as a horse, though. So, I just label it as one.
In this small, tight square the homes are withering. Some of the roofs and doors are molding. A few have cracked windows. One of which has completely shattered. If I had a nose right now it would’ve withered away too, vaporized like that poor fly. This area is completely unsanitary. Between two houses, in the corner of my eye, are flies circling what I hope is just a sleeping, single toothed old man with a mouth full of murky water and a single, torn, and stained page of a newspaper covering his crotch. Without it he’s naked.
Syco seemingly ignores the scenery around us, walking with confidence, and especially without concern. The two of us follow without question, but I can’t ignore the contrast between our previous and new settings. Underneath one of the many bridges connecting the impoverished to the affluent portions of the city, is a clear, blue river. Riding through it from within a bright, red Gondola is a man proudly singing, letting the universe know of his lovely voice, as he steers his boat. Before I’m able to fall behind from the others I turn around, making sure what I saw previously was real. There it is. A line separated these two completely different worlds, one side somber and the other is the cleaner, brighter, and happier one I am suddenly engulfed by. It made my heart drop, but I didn't get to settle on the feeling for long before I needed to catch up to the others.
Walking past a bridge that stretched above us, we entered another square. In this square, paper lanterns pointed down on us. Lined above them are flags, which had a white circle and a black dot in their centers. Two children, laughing, ran past us with a belt in their hands. Running towards them not too far behind is a guard trying to hold up his pants and shouting for the two little, young thieves to slow down. Once both parties turn a corner the ruckus dies and the onlookers besides us return to whatever they were doing. Although, the moment is forever written into everyone's mornings. Two women chuckle at each other about it. An elderly man sweeping his shop’s doorway now smiles. Another man, but this one is leaning against one of the nearby buildings, shakes his head from side to side in amusement as he plays with the golden coin between his gloved hand.
Looking at Saamuki, I see she too is jovial, She smiles. I imagine her feeling nostalgic. Now looking at Syco, his face remains stiff, but for some reason, I feel like he’s just as nostalgic as her.
Cold as ever, he continues towards the cathedral. Sunlight shoots through the stained glass in the center of its highest steeple, causing a familiar depiction to reflect onto us. A white, geometric figure, floating above a burning city looks down at the people below. They bow to the figure with tears in their eyes. They’re being forced to submit, and after everything that I’ve learned, I have a strong guess on who the white figure could be.
Syco swings open its doors. The sound when they close lets out a deafening echo. Rows upon rows of pews are empty but one. The one at the very end has a hunched figure whispering to himself, praying I presume. The cathedral somehow managed to be even bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. It’s dark. Candles are clasped between the statues of elderly women dressed in long, hooded robes. They are evenly spaced across either side of the cathedral. The flickering glow from their small torches makes it look as if their lips are moving. With each flicker, their frowns deepen. If they hadn’t been sculpted with hoods their eyes would’ve looked judgingly at us, right into our souls. At the front, the very end of this red rug we’re awkwardly standing on, are four statues bowing in front of a genderless, youthful, and cloaked figure with the same symbol as the flags outside etched into the center of their chest.
The leader of this mission strides forward solemnly towards the only other person here. We continued to follow him without question, but it’s here that I realize he never told us why we’re here. One of the few men he had on his ship came into our room, in the middle of our mourning, to alert us we landed on this planet and that Syco wanted the two of us to tag along. The two of us didn’t even look at each other. We just accepted it.
Although, maybe it's because the two of us shared distrust for Syco, so we wanted to remain on his good side. He was our enemy for so long. He was my enemy for so long. I was angry at him for so long, yet just barely two hours ago he wants to befriend rather than be a foe. No, more like coworkers, but is it right for me to feel this way about him? There’s a reason why Mikrovos acted the way he did when Syco and my paths crossed for the first time. Now he and everyone else is in his control, being enslaved by him. Everyone says he’s mad. At one point there wasn’t any way for me to argue, no reason as well, but a mad person doesn’t cry like that. He’s troubled just like- I shake off that thought, stopping myself before I start agreeing that we’re equals.
We’re heading towards the hunched figure, the reason why we came all the way here. Before we’re in front of them they have already started speaking, “Finally we get to meet.” When we’re in front of him, he continues, “I’ve heard a lot of things about you, but it’s only now I see your face.”
At this distance, I can see the figure is wearing the same armor as the guards outside, but it’s worn. Parts of the metal are scraped, the same insignia I’ve seen all around this place has just about faded from his torn shirt. The figure is a fungus-like alien species. His eyes are two yellow, rhombuses that look as if they’re glowing because of his dull, brown, and warty skin.
“Same to you, Shiitakee.”
This gets a smirk out of Shiitakee, but unlike the late Cala’s smirk, this one is friendly rather than depreciating. He leans forward and places his arms on the back of the chair in front of his pew. “Congratulations on your promotion.”
“A little late for that, but you’ve already congratulated me the day after it happened.”
“Yes, I did.” He rummages into his shirt and pulls out a cigarette. Shiitakee slides it between his cracked lips and slides a finger across the chair. A flame swallows the edge of the finger. This new character brings the finger to his cigarette and lights it. Blowing out the finger and blowing smoke into Syco’s face, causes Syco to step back, cough, and try to blow the smell away. “Always the straight man, Syco,” Shiitakee continued with a snicker and a cough.
“And that’s what you get.” He coughs again, but Shiitakee continues to smoke. Syco continues to act unconcerned, but he’s clearly amused. Until a few moments ago they were strangers, but now they’re acting like they are childhood friends. Shiitakee blows a few more times, which gets a few more reactions out of Syco. Their back and forth, which turns into laughter, has Saamuki and I turn to look at each other. I shrug at her.
Eventually, they stopped. I knew right then and there it became serious again. Shiitakee moves his head back to look at the dome that is the ceiling. “It’s been years since this place has heard voices other than my prayers. The last mass was about the time I got into contact with you, Sy.”
“I was wondering why you wanted us to meet here, the center of your city.”
“Ironically, it’s the safest place to meet.”
“I could see that now, so what was so important that we had to meet in person?”
Shiitakee lowers his head. His focus is back on Syco. “Until recently I would’ve scheduled this meeting to be like the others, but I knew this deserved for you to see in person.” Again, he goes into his shirt, but when he pulls out his hand this time he motions for Syco to move his hands towards him. Syco raises his eyebrow, but Shiitakee’s expression remains serious. So, Syco compiles without any more hesitation. Shiitakee then hands him something. Carefully, unwrapping his hands, he sees Shiitakee handed him a compass. Of course, it’s unlike any compass found on Earth. Alien symbols circle its edges and instead of a needle, there’s a purple crystal at its center. As I try to look over Syco’s shoulder, wanting to inspect it more, I can also see underneath the crystal is the same motif I’ve seen over and over again.
There couldn’t have been anyone in here besides us, but Syco questions in a hushed voice, “Is this?”
His friend nods.
“How did you get it?”
“I,” he coughs, but this time blood comes out, “A Watcher.”
The two of us standing behind him were hit with a shock. Saamuki’s eyes are wide and if I had mine they would be too.
“Are you insane, Shiitakee?” Syco’s voice is still quieter than usual, but he’s clearly mad. Maybe a bit disappointed too.
“Hah. Just like you I am.” The figure that was moments ago teasing Syco, which just winked at him, is one I finally realize is dying.
With a grunt, and after putting the compass into his pocket, steps over the chair to get to Shiitakee who I’m also now noticing has his feet stepping on a huge pile of long-dead cigarette buds. Shiitakee tries fighting Syco’s attempt at grabbing and slinging him onto his shoulder.
“What do you think you’re doing,” Shiitakee asked as his cigarette rested in one of the corners of his lips.
After bringing his dying companion to his shoulder, Syco takes a moment to reply with, “I’m not going to let you die like this, Shii.”
“Are you insane?”
“You already know the answer to that.”
Syco continues towards the doors and ignores Shiitakee’s continued thrashing. The two of us, who have been third-wheeling together, follow right behind them. Right, when Syco is about to push open the doors and Shiitakee has stopped fighting, all of the candles go out in unison. I get a bad feeling. We’re not in the dark because of my crown’s fire and Saamuki’s recently lit hands. The latter of which should be brighter than the now blown out candles, but the room is much darker now. It’s as if we were suddenly transported in the middle of a black hole.
“You have something that belongs to me,” a voice with a mix of other, varying voices growled from where we just walked away from.
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Shaping emotions in interiors—homapal laminates
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SHAPING EMOTIONS IN INTERIORS—HOMAPAL LAMINATES
Believe taking walks right into a room and feeling at peace. That’s the feeling that you may get when you see a room with exquisite laminates. Homapal laminates are made of a wide range of ornamental metallic laminates. Real metallic decors stand out due to their distinct colorations, distinct surfaces, and amazing haptics—a hard-to-imitate combination that outcomes in recognisable traits in domestic layout. Aluminium, copper, and stainless steel foils are used in homapal laminates. Embossing is used to produce textures. There are approximately one hundred thirty designs in the collection, ranging from conventional to modern to commercial elegant. New and recognisable decorations were created during the manner. Homapal laminates integrate metallic texture and colour with hard, flexible laminates. The textures of metal surfaces inspire indoors designers. Steel gives hobby and beauty. Silver, gold, brass, and copper offer extraordinarily resourceful designs with a subtle lustre. Formica distributes decometal, homapal, and different german-made materials in india. Decided on textures and brushed textures the expressiveness of pure metallic is captured via factors. Colourful and energised. Despite being cool, it can still be heated. The dynamic interaction of mild and reflection is what gives it its exclusive look. For noticeably liveable indoor areas. Those truthful colorings—bronze, copper, metallic, silver, and gold—with their brushed finishes concentrate on the necessities and stand in for the four factors of fire, water, air, and earth. A total of five carefully selected shades that seize quality information and create lively range are added to them. They've characteristic metallic textures. Homapal laminates metallic—gestures surfaces, acting to be from any other global; resourceful, energetic, and thrilling. Always with that positive allure that captivates and demands to be touched. Perspectives, whether fashioned by using nature, or business needs, permit you to find out about the range of the sector and to look and revel in it from many, even unexplored, points of view. Regular traces may be blended to form rhombuses or plaits. The outlines grow stronger or weaker relying at the angle of prevalence. Manufacturing flooring’ hidden gems function inspiration for the industry. Inspect sheet metal textures that have been embellished with varied grinding and storage markings, holes, and grid patterns. Homapal laminates are putting new standards. With this floor era, homapal laminates are growing new norms. This technology charts the direction for the destiny through capitalising on the brand’s historical strengths in germany as well as the visual and tactile features of metallic as a fabric. Metallic is a incredible fabric for indoors design because it can be used in such a lot of distinctive approaches and has new visual and tactile effects. This is because of the fashion toward commercial chic and the look for intrinsic cost. Metals have continually fascinated humans seeing that they behave so in another way than other substances. All homapal laminates are provided with a defensive film to save you damage in the course of transportation. Whereas homapal metal laminates and homapal magnetic boards are most effective recommended for vertical use in ornamental programs, chrome steel laminates can, in some cases, also be used horizontally.
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wow at first glance I thought that was real bubble wrap collaged onto the surface! I’m curious, what was the original? Did it have the image of the girl and the cut surface or did you add that too?
I think this is SO interesting. I can imagine a whole series expanding from this. What I’m drawn to is the method of peeling off the surface of the support to reveal the corrugations - it creates a formal element of lines that are part of the painting support itself. Depending on the light and shadow, variations of tone are created. I like how this also interplays with the illusion of bubble wrap, and how the corrugated lines and the dots are repeat patterns - ones that we see everyday. I could see play of crisp geometric shapes (eg the rhombuses), and organic forms (the wrap, like drapery).
And intervention of the cardboard itself could be an area for further investigation, eg you could ‘dent’ the corrugations at various intervals or create patterns (emphasised by light and shadow), or you could bleach the cardboard by exposing sections to UV light. Australian artist Sean Rafferty did this. He made a stencil, placed it over the cardboard with a sheet of clear glass over the top and put it in the sun for some time (maybe weeks). It’s a way of USING the non-archival quality of cardboard, rather than it being a hindrance.
This is a cutout cardboard I found in the trash that was thrown away! I found it a couple of years ago and I grew fond of it ever since. I've had it put away but I decided to add onto it for this week with white gel pen and a mechanical pencil. I drew the bubble plastic along the bottom and the white dots along the top box. My reason for this is because I feel that the person was probably trying to upcycle this in both the drawing and surface used. It's interesting the more I look at it, as if the dolls are staring right at me. It's eerie and wonderous!
I'm glad I picked up from the trash and decided to add onto it. I still leaves me with mystery and questions...
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Hoshidan Festival: Corrin and Ophelia Regular Conversation
Hello, I’m TheSteveEngine, and this is my first post on this blog. I was introduced to this blog by a friend to help with translations to meet the year-end goal. Fire Emblem Fates is one of my favorite 3DS games, and as someone who’s played the game in both English and Japanese, I feel like this is a great opportunity to be able to give back to a game that means a lot to me.
Because of how Ophelia (and her father) speak, writing and translating their advanced diction proved to be a challenge. It didn’t help that her conversations seem to be some of the lengthier ones in the DLC pack. Although my first translation was quite a bit challenging, I had a fun time working on it, and hope that you enjoy reading.
(Part 1)
Ophelia: Hey, Corrin! What could that be?
Corrin: You mean that fish decoration?
Ophelia: Yes. The silver scales that fly the sky…they’re so elegant. Also, the colorful rhombuses over by the enemy leader also catches my eye.
Corrin: Yes, indeed… I’ve never seen anything like this either. Today is a day that celebrates the growth of children, so perhaps they’re decorations associated with that?
Ophelia: Oh, do you really think so?
Corrin: Eh?
Ophelia: Festival decorations are disguises that deceive the human eye…There must be some sort of deep, deep meaning behind the silver scales and the rhombus.
Corrin: I, I see… Like what?
Ophelia: Hm… the lively fish is probably a legendary holy fish. In exchange for possessing the power to decimate stars, its freedom and its home were taken away. It’s bound by the aether as it waits for a chance to be freed. It just so happens that the other fish it’s bundled with are its rivals. The moment they’ve been freed, they’re fated to fight amongst each other.
Corrin: Then what about the rhombus?
Ophelia: That’s a sanctuary! The Holy Emplacement bestowed by the gods! The pink represents the rose showered by stardust, the white represents the flawless nobility of the moonlight, while the green… Hm, the green… I know! It represents the earth we’re on! It’s a boundary that subliminally expresses the nobility of the sanctuary. That’s why the enemy is positioned over there.
Corrin: Wow… That’s amazing, Ophelia. I didn’t think you could bring out such a deep meaning behind decorations.
Ophelia: Hehe, don’t mind it. This is only the basic logic of the chosen one. But… I do wonder what the real meaning is. Maybe there’s something even greater hidden behind it!
Corrin: How about you ask the citizens here? They’ve all evacuated… But we can see some of them are looking over here. They’re probably worried about their stalls. While you’re talking to them, can you escort them to a safe place?
Ophelia: Got it! I’ll go right now! Thanks for the advice, Corrin!
(Part 2)
Corrin: How was it, Ophelia? Did you find the meaning of the decorations?
Ophelia: Yes…
Corrin: You don’t look too happy. Did nobody know?
Ophelia: No, that’s not it. When I asked them, they happily told me. It turns out that you were right. They’re both important decorations that celebrate the growth of children. And, the fish that are bundled together aren’t rivals… but family.
Corrin: I see.
Ophelia: Corrin… I’m sorry to put you through that. I feel embarrassed, making fun of important decorations like that by giving them weird meanings. Even if they’re not legendary fish, or amazing sanctuaries… they were splendid decorations that held an important meaning all along.
Corrin: Don’t feel bad, Ophelia. You learned from this mistake, so it’s alright. I think searching for the truth even when you think you know the answer is honorable. I didn’t even think to look at the decorations until you talked to me. Honestly, I’m the one that should be embarrassed.
Ophelia: There’s no helping that, since we’re in the middle of a battle. Thank you for having my back, Corrin. You’re a true warrior that stands equal to my father.
Corrin: You’re welcome. Now, I’d like to give you this pink flower.
Ophelia: Wow… it’s beautiful! Thank you! But, why, all of a sudden?
Corrin: I thought to ask the wagon owners what the decorations were about too, actually. It turns out that it’s a tradition to decorate with pink flowers to celebrate the maturity of a young girl. When I first saw you, you were only so small… You’ve come so far. Congratulations, Ophelia.
Ophelia: Ehehe… When you put it that way, that makes me happy. This legendary blushing blossom that’s been blessed by the celestial… I mean, I’ll take good care of this regular pink flower.
Corrin: Alright… let’s go back to the battle. The citizens here deem this festival with much importance. We can’t allow them to destroy that. Will you lend me a hand, Ophelia?
Ophelia: Of course! As the mistress of twilight, I, Ophelia, will show you what’s come of my years of experience!
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- Studio Task 2 -
Page Layout Create three (3) page layouts incorporating headings, body text and images. This weeks Design Task™ was to produce a portrait, landscape and square page layout with one of them being filled out with ‘real’ text and images.
My first page I kept the layout pretty standard and went with a more newspapery feel with the single overhead image and scrolling columns with headings.
My second page was a bit more experimental with the way a heading is circled or I guess squared in this case by two images and body text. This may work if used with proper images/text but ultimately I wasn’t too sure about it.
Page number three was probably the most fun to mess around with as I had an idea but but not really the best way to execute it. I tried to make a sort of box using three images in the shape of rhombuses with some text that fits around said shape. In hindsight I should of removed the black box around the text and used a proper title such as ‘Cherry Blossoms’ instead of the place holder.
All in all this was great practice for learning page layout and what is usually tried and tested works for a reason. But that still wont stop me from having a bit of fun experimenting ^^.
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Hostium munera, munera est
Words count: 8,587
Summary: A gift from the enemies is a gift nonetheless.
A.K.A I wanted to write something for Gong Yoo once again, and you were already graced with Gong Yoo in suits, so I wanted to have Gong Yoo in uniform. But at the same time I really wanted Prosecutor!Gong Yoo, so I asked myself: why not both?
It was based on The Good Wife's s02e02 episode: Double Jeopardy. I seriously love this series, and I have to say that episode is my favourite.
There is a lot of Latin quotes.
“Thank you, ma’am. Have a good day.”
You’ve never thought that you’d be called “ma’am” daily before reaching thirty, but there you are, and you are not complaining.
You smile to the security guard, taking your briefcase from his hand. Your fingers brush, and your smile grows a notch bigger. It’s not exactly forced, but you know that it’s not exactly real either. Just a little gesture to the guard, who is not bad to look at.
Making his day, makes your day a little better. And makes your ego swell.
So you take your Aznom Carbon Fiber Briefcase (bought with your first bonus, and treasured like a firstborn ever since), throw perfectly styled hair over your shoulder, knowing that it would spread your perfume (personal favorite, not that luxurious, Hugo Boss Orange Sunset, refreshing, but fierce), you glance the guard in the eyes, one last time, and you are off, heels clicking on the marble.
Your pencil skirt is sliding against nylon pleasantly, and it gives you a certain rush of adrenaline, thought of power, to name it.
There is a chatter in the halls, but more quiet than the chatter outside. In the end, this place deserves respect.
You need to stop yourself from dancing around the group of people barging your way, even if you want to. You feel light, but you don’t want to show it to people around.
You stop for a second under black boards, to check what is awaiting you today, and then you go to find your doors.
Not really find, of course, you know the way by heart. You reach the monumental, double winged doors, ones that should creak loudly and ominously when opened, but in government run building that shouldn’t happen. That can’t happen, and so the janitors in the building have a storage filled with WD-40.
The handle is cold and doors are perfectly silent, when you open them. There is a few people inside, and you walk past them, giving off confident vibe, but you don’t want to be overbearing. You walk past the benches, and you reach your table. You sit down, on the first chair, you take out your files and Montegrappa fountain pen (a present from a happy, happy client) and set them on the table. Then you put your briefcase under the table, next to front leg of the table, to make sure it has support.
And then, you are ready, but you have to busy yourself with something. Appearances. You open the first file, and you start reading it or at least it looks like that. In the reality, you make a conscious effort to slide your eyes over letters, one line after another.
You know you look elegant, intelligent, and very much engrossed. But your job is to be present, awake, and very much aware of your surroundings. And you are good at your job.
Doors open and you focus on the sounds coming from the corridor between benches, wanting to discern who is coming, without actually turning around. You can hear two different clicking sounds: one is hurried, frequency higher than the latter. The latter is sure in his steps, and heavier, clicking sounds deeper.
There is woman wearing high heels strutting behind man in elegant shoes, who thinks he owns the place.
You smile under your nose – your adversary came, with his second chair, and judging from woman’s hurried strut they know they will lose.
So you stand up, making sure not to drag your chair across the floor – you wouldn’t want the horrible sound to disrupt the scene you were reading yourself for. You straighten your skirt, and when you hear that steps falter, you turn around with pleasant smile to greet prosecutor.
Except you don’t see Mr. Lee. Nor you see his second chair, Mrs. Go.
And man shoes weren’t elegant – they were military shoes.
You are faced with tall, broad shouldered man, wearing military uniform. There are two rhombuses adoring his collar, and something in the back of your mind tells you that he is Lieutenant. Woman with him looks nearly apologetic as she looks at you from behind this man.
You look up at the handsome, but somehow disfigured face.
“Ma’am, I am Lieutenant Gong-Ji-Cheol.”He says, his voice is steady and deep as he stresses syllables in his name, as a military officer is taught to do.” I came to inform you that your client was arrested, and charged with first degree murder.”
Which is ridiculous.
Your client, was indeed arrested and charged with first degree murder – but it happened some five months ago! You spend last months fighting for his freedom – maybe you didn’t get to release him on bond, but you killed in pretrial motions, and you managed to knock out half of the evidence prosecution gathered against your client, not even allowing jury to hear it. The other half you destroyed during the trial, and you knew that you won. You were as sure as one can be faced with jury of their peers. And they can be as unforeseeable as weather and as capricious as 4 years old.
But nevertheless prosecutor felt that he was losing his ground, he even presented you with a plea of 8 years and second degree. You declined the offer (after conferring with your client and telling him that it’s his choice, but you are sure that you are going to win it) and today was supposed to be your big day!
And yet instead of anger of prosecutor and heartfelt tears of defendant, you see… This.
You school yourself, in the end it’s not your first rodeo, and unexpected things do happen. A lot. And the last thing you want to show is confusion.
“Sir, I am well aware of this fact, I have been defending Mr. Kwon for the last five months against this exact charge.” You say, as your mind starts to connect the dots, and you start to grow restless. Your client is not there, prosecutor is not there, judge is not there, but man wearing military uniform is standing in front of your repeating the charges of your client.
Fucking hell, it’s a court-martial.
There is only one court that could take precedence over district’s criminal court, and that is indeed military court.
You can feel blood drowning from your limbs, as you grow cold. It’s not that you are the one that is going to suffer, but your sure win in criminal court was just blown away, by the mere thought of court-martial. You nearly won your case by knocking out, one by one, pieces of evidence that prosecutor gathered against your client. You knew that, and Mr. Lee knew that, so he decided to forsake his own trial and he sold this case to court-martial. Because in the military trial getting evidence out of the question is not going to be easy.
“Yes, Ma’am, but at the time of the murder your client was a mobilized reservist on Title 10 orders. And as such, the crime falls concurrently under military jurisdiction.”
“That is a joke.” You say with a precisely controlled dose of spite in your words. Man in uniform furrows his eyebrows.
“Ma’am, as a commissioned officer in ROK Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps, I do not joke.”
That could sound playful or pleasant, like a joke in the group of friends, if it wasn’t spoken with such deliberation.
There is nothing you can say to him, so you keep quiet, gathering your thoughts. After a second of hesitation lieutenant speaks up.
“Staff Sergeant Kwon was appointed court lawyer, but he wishes to retain his civil counsel. He has right to do so, so I came to inform you that court comes in session at sixteen hundred hours.” You look up at him, and you try not to scramble, as your mind tries to count what time it will be in civil time. You miss the moment Lieutentant’s face changes a little, but when he starts speaking again, and you look up at him he looks less formal and more confidential and apologetic.”District court does not have capital punishment, but military does. And we don’t refrain from using it. We offer you eight years. And it would be wise to take it.”
You stare at him, straining your neck to be able to look him in the face, as he is way taller than you are.
You don’t laugh, but you very much want to. He offered you the same exact bargain prosecutor did. It is a blatant answer to the question whether Mr. Lee sold his case.
You look away and gather your things. You bow to retrieve your Aznom briefcase, and you stuff all your belongings inside, taking care not to look hurried. If you counted correctly, you have less than five hours to prepare for military court.
“Thank you for this generous offer.” You finally say, handle of your briefcase fitting comfortably in your hand. “But we will have to decline.”
And you walk past him, heels clicking on the marble.
“Ma’am, you are obliged by law to present the offer to your client!”
You don’t turn back as you walk out of the courtroom.
*
“You told me that we won it!”
You don’t sigh. You wish you could do so, but that never brings anything good. It doesn’t look professional, it doesn’t resolve any of your problems, and it could aggravate your client even more than he already is.
He doesn’t need your answer. He goes on with his ramble, so you look around the room you are in. There is a flag on the wall, with coat of arms under it, and military coat of arms next to it. Your client is pacing under the window, and his court-appointed counsel is sitting stiffly at the sturdy, oval table. The one you are also seated at. It could be any conference room back in at the district court if it wasn’t for a guard wearing uniform with bulletproof vest and the fact that both Staff Sergeant Kwon and Lieutenant Shin wore formal uniforms. You are the only one wearing civil clothes and it doesn’t put you at ease.
“I did. Because in district court we did. It’s military court.” You answer the earlier accusation, and you see how Lieutenant Shin glances at you. When he introduced himself to you he looked steady and trust inducing. A man you know that you could get along with. “I am not sure whether I will be able to do the same here.”
“You have to! You have to! I won’t take the plea, I didn’t kill her!”
You nod.
“Of course you didn’t.” You answer simply and stand up. Lieutenant seems to be surprised, but he follows your suit. “We will see each other in the courtroom. Keep strong.”
After that you leave the room, and other counsel follows you out. As soon as the doors close behind you, you lean against the wall, looking at the ceiling. You finally allow yourself to sigh.
“Ma’am.” Prompts your colleague, quite shyly. You grunt something in answer, aware that you don’t have to protect your reputation here. You can already feel migraine coming, and you have yet to start your trial. You’ve heard horror stories about military court, and strangely you have yet to met somebody that actually took part in the proceedings to debunk or confirm the stories. “Do you believe that staff sergeant is innocent?”
You look at the lanky man, surprised. It’s such a naïve question.
“Does it matter, lieutenant?” You ask, lifting one of your legs to rotate your ankle.
“You seemed to strongly believe him.” It’s not a precise answer, but you’ve heard this line of thoughts many times before, especially back at the university.
“I’ll ask again, does it matter whether I believe him or not? I am his lawyer, I defend him, and I reassure him. And that is precisely what I did.” You are standing there, in the dimmed corridor, refusing to divulge into ‘right and wrong’ dispute, when you should be preparing for your the defense. Good thing that you had good enough practice during those last five months.
Lieutenant doesn’t answer, but you are quite sure that you didn’t hear the last from him. And just as you hear him inhale, pair wearing formal uniforms clears the corner.
You straighten yourself, recognizing Lieutenant Gong, but it’s your first time seeing woman next to him. But it’s easy enough to gather that she is his co-counsel.
“That’s Lieutenant Gong and Captain Seo, for the prosecution.” Says Shin, and you nod, not allowing yourself to look annoyed at his accolade. He is doing his job, and it’s better to be informed about the thing you already know, than not be informed about the things other party believes you know.
The pair reaches you, and you expect them to pass you, but captain stops to salute, and Lieutenant Shin immediately answers. She ignores you, and keeps going, but Lieutenant Gong, after exchanging greetings with Lieutenant Shin, turns to you.
“Ma’am.” He says as a greeting, nodding politely. You smile and nod in answer. Captain stops abruptly in her tracks, and looks back at her co-counsel expectantly, but he ignores her. So you answer his greeting.
“Lieutenant.”
“I am pleased to see that you’ve found military court without problems.” Is it a way to put you down? It’s hard to decipher, because man seems to be having a very good poker face.
“Thank you, Lieutenant.” You say simply, and that seems to do the work, because man looks surprised. He opens his mouth to say something, and decides against it, once more bowing politely and turns to join his co-counsel that stares at you with her eyes squinted.
“Oh, Lieutenant!” You say, loud enough for him to hear, but quiet enough not to be calling after him. Both of them stop, and turn around to look at you. You can see Lieutenant Shin doing the same. ”I am pleased to convey that my client declined your offer, and we will be facing each other in court.”
His face doesn’t fall nor he changes his stance. He doesn’t even react, just turning around and walking away, forcing captain to trout to catch up with him.
Lieutenant Shin looks after them, before speaking up.
“That wasn’t smart.”
You shrug, choosing not to ask what exactly was “not-smart”.
“But it was fun.”
*
The courtroom is smaller and darker than the one you are used to. There is no gallery for on-lookers and everything looks more Spartan.
Definitely lesser stage for a person like you.
Lieutenant Shin shows you table away from the jury bench, and you look at him surprised, but when you see him sitting down you realize that this is indeed your table. You are used to being seated closer to jury, it’s obvious since you have to appeal to their conscience and remind them about presumption of innocence.
Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat.
The burden of proof is on the one who declares, not on one who denies.
Opposite counsels enter, and your client is lead into the room. When staff sergeant sits next to you, you move to reassure him once more.
“All rise!” The order is barked loudly and with a strong presumption that everyone will listen. You hear it every time judge enters the courtroom back in the district court, but the speed of all people around standing up at attention baffles you – but you are smart enough to follow their suit in the split of second.
The worst thing you can do is annoy the sitting judge.
The judge enters quickly, walking in a businesslike manner, but nobody dares to move, until she sits down and orders to sit.
You start to slide down to sit on your chair, feeling adrenaline in your veins, when judge’s stare stops you in your tracks. You straighten again, and it turns out you correctly guessed judge’s next order.
“Not you.” You shift on your heels, not wanting to look fidgety, but not being able to contain yourself. That was rude.
“Yes, Your Honor?”
“Are you familiar with Uniform Code of Military Justice?”
“Yes, Your Honor. And Lieutenant Shin will help me, if I ever find myself at loss.” You answer with a polite smile – just how you’ve learned to do.
Judge’s eye twitches, and you realize that you’ve made mistake. You don’t know what kind of mistake, but you’ve somehow annoyed the judge.
“Very well. Sit down.” She orders you coldly, and you obediently sit down, sending a surprised look to your co-counsel. He checks whether judge is looking and bends down to talk to you over your client.
“It’s better not to say more than you have to. It’s best to just answer yes or no.”
Oh, dear lord.
*
There are only 7 souls in the jury. Uniform Code of Military Justice says that there should be between 5 to 12 on the jury bench, unless the punishment for the committed crime is death – then there must be 12 in the jury.
Knowing that is one thing, but facing jury smaller than what you usually see, will be weird. But you are not going to lose your ground because of that.
Man is seated, you are standing in front of him, and even if the stage is smaller, you are still the best performer out there.
“And what do you mean by that, corporal?” You ask in your best courtroom voice, it’s clear and trust inducing, and soothing.
“My sister was a victim of domestic violence.” He answers you with a hint of annoyance in his voice. You can see in man’s eyes that he knows what you are going to say next, but he can’t stop you.
“Which means you cannot be objective faced with the case we have at hand.” You say slowly, wanting everyone around to understand your line of thought. That’s how you prepare your stage to say the next line. “Your Honor, I move to exclude juror number 7 from the proceedings, on the grounds that he may not be unbiased.”
Nobody moves, but judge eyes you carefully before turning to the jury member.
“Corporal, if I order you to be unbiased, will you be?” She asks, and you nearly sputter.
“Yes, ma’am!” He answers immediately, and you feel like you’ve been thrown into some kinky nightmare.
“Juror is seated. Pretrial motions in my office.” Gavel announces the break in the proceedings. You turn around to send astonished glance at Lieutenant Shin and he shrugs apologetically.
You are surprised, but nonetheless, you walk to your table to gather documents.
You lost this battle, but you are going to win the war.
*
Judge’s office looks exactly like the conference room your client was held in. So like if it was taken straight from military movie. Lieutenant Gong is standing at attendance next to you, looking taller and somehow bigger than you’ve remembered him.
You are standing straight, but you are not in the military and you gather that they could take offence if you tried to copy their ways. You are an outsider.
Judge is reading documents in the total silence, and you know better. You know better, but it’s not how it’s done in district court and you just slip, when you see her looking at the photos taken at the crime scene. There is your client with his clothes stained with his wife’s blood, among others.
“Photos are clearly prejudicial, Your Honor. “ Those are exact same words you said to Judge Ryo back in the district court. Those are the words that thrown this evidence out of the window.
“Denied.”
“Excuse me, what?” You sputter surprised. Judge’s eyes squint and she focuses on you. You can feel Lieutenant Gong inhaling deeply, but you don’t hear him exhale.
“Did the police take the photos?”
“Yes, but…”
“Is that your client on those photos?”
“Yes, Your Honor, but…”
“Then they come in. Jurors can differentiate between prejudicial and probative photos.”
You are once again lost for words.
“What’s more?” Judge asks, and this time Lieutenant Gong jumps to answer. You know that it’s not going to be good.
“Staff sergeant made a statement during the time of his first arrest, ma’am.” He says, and you feel yourself cooling down.
“Yes, but he was highly intoxicated at the time, law says that one cannot be held responsible for the words spoken at that time.”
“Not military law.”
“Excuse me, Your Honor?” You can feel lieutenant shifting next to you.
“This rule doesn’t apply in the military law, the statement is in.”
You can feel yourself losing ground – the things you did last time doesn’t work here, and you know that you are not ready for trial – you need a new strategy.
“In that case, I have to ask for the continuance, Your Honor.” You say, gathering your thoughts, to motivate your query.
“Denied. I have 7 active duty soldiers on that bench, I won’t allow you to waste their time any longer than it’s needed.” She says sternly, and shifts in her chair. She checks the hours and then continues. “I will allow a quick break for the meal, and we will resume our proceedings in… One hour, at eighteen hundred sharp.”
Six o’clock. She wants to start proceedings at six o’clock.
You are not sure how you leave the judge chamber, but you wake up from your stupor only, when you hear someone coughing next to you.
It’s Lieutenant Gong.
Of course it’s Lieutenant Gong.
“Yes?”
“Ma’am, would you like me to show you the way to the canteen?” He asks. “Lieutenant Shin is probably already there.”
Canteen. Does he really expect you to eat at the canteen?
“Thank you, lieutenant, that won’t be necessary.”
*
“And did the defendant make a statement at that time?” Lieutenant Gong’s voice reverberates nicely in the room, but you have to say that he is a little bit overbearing in this courtroom. A notch too high, a notch too broad in his shoulders, a notch too… Everything.
The testimony should be interesting, since you didn’t get to hear it during the first trial, since you managed to cross it out, but then again, it’s not easy to focus when it’s dark outside, and it’s after normal court hours.
“Yes, he did.”
Oh, good, a proper answer. You try not to yawn, but it’s hard not to, really.
“Detective, please read the highlighted part of that statement.” That might be a highlight of this testimony – not the words you are about to hear, but lieutenant walking to the witness to hand him a piece of paper. Until this moment he was standing at attendance at his seat, and that was quite boring.
But nothing about him moving in his uniform is boring.
“Detective: “she was cheating on you?” “She was sleeping with somebody, I know she was.” Detecite: “did you kill her?” “I– I don’t know.” “
Staff Sergeant jerks slightly next to you, and you put an arm on his shoulder to soothe him. It’s mechanic, but it seems to do the trick.
“Thank you.” Says lieutenant and you focus back on him. “One more thing. In the course of your investigation that night, did you search the suspect’s car?”
That alarms you, and immediately you jump to your feet.
“Objection, Your Honor.” You don’t even get to explain on what grounds, judge is speaking.
“Counsel approach.”
You glance quickly at Lieutenant Shin, but he offers no reassurance, so you approach the judge, once again standing side by side with much bigger Lieutenant Gong.
“Your Honor, “you start, putting all your strength to sound reasonable,” the police had no warrant to search the car.”
“They asked the defendant if they could search his property.” Counters Lieutenant immediately. You once heard prosecutor state the same exact thing. “He said yes. Is his car not his property?”
“It was parked two blocks away, Your Honor. It’s the reasonable man doctrine. Judge, he assumed they meant his home.” You believe in your words, civil judge believed in your words. So why you suspect that military one will not see the problem this way?
“Strictly construed, his car is his property.” You don’t even blink. “Overruled.”
You hold yourself straight as you go back to your seat, and lieutenant resumes his questioning. You don’t have to look at your client to feel his fear.
“Answer the question, detective.”
“We did search his car, and we found a backpack containing the defendant’s passport, a wig, and an envelope containing 2 million won in cash.”
Ei incumbit probatio non qui dicit, atqui negat.
The burden of proof is not on the one who declares, but on one who denies.
*
“What did he have that?”
“Excuse me?” You are back in the conference room, looking through the files trying to find something to help you win this case.
“Why did he have the backpack with all this stuff ready if he wasn’t going to fly after the crime?” Lieutenant Shin asks, while sitting down.
“Oh, that… His unit was getting deployed, so he was preparing to go AWOL.” You say shrugging. You discussed that during the first trial, and you thought nothing more than that. The silence that follows surprises you, because you thought that lieutenant would say something.
When you look up at him, he looks cold, disgusted, angry even. He locks his eyes with you, and says slowly.
“Whatever you decide to do, you can never tell that to military jury.” He throws a folder file on the table.” Look at that. I thought that might help.”
And after those words he just leaves the room.
Right. No one would look friendly at man that was getting ready to become deserter.
You reach for the folder. You realize that this is a copy of crime scene investigation done by the army. As you scan through it you notice one discrepancy. It states that they ran the prints from the house against military records, but they came back with only one match, your client – but you remember him saying that people from his unit visited his home on more than one occasion.
There is one person that could help you see through it, and he just left the room in rightful spite of anger.
*
“By rule, Criminal Investigation Command has to turn over every piece of evidence that’s relevant.”
It’s recited with such precision, one might thing that speaker is reading from the bylaws. Lieutenant Gong looks pained to say that, but you were quite sure that he won’t be the one to lie to your face.
You’ve been practicing law long enough to catch the loophole in his words. Every relevant piece of evidence.
“And what is being done with the evidence deemed not relevant?” You ask with a polite smile, and Lieutenant Gong looks like you’ve been pulling his nails and not asking questions.
Audentes fortuna iuvat.
Fortune favors the bold – and is it not bold to ask your opponent for the advice?
*
“I am entitled to see those files!” Once again you are faced with a wall that you can’t jump over. Why is everything so hard in the military?
“Yes, ma’am, but I cannot release that file to you without orders from Major Song.” Military officer on the other side of the windows seems to be having fun denying you the files.
“So where is Major Song?” You ask, trying and not succeeding to keep the sarcasm out of your voice.
“He is gone for the day. He will be back Monday, oh-eight hundred.”
That whole thing is getting ridiculous.
“But we are due back in court tomorrow, I can’t wait till Monday!” You argue, knowing that it won’t be enough. It’s never enough with people like this one.
“Ma’am, unless the major authorizes this, I cannot release the files.” You swear you can see a beginning of the smile on man’s face, and you can feel fury awakening in your gut.
“Is there a problem, corporal?” There is a sudden voice next to you, and you turn around to be faced with formal military uniform, with Gong Ji Cheol on the tag. And the tag on his chest is exactly at your eyes’ level.
“No, sir, Lieutenant Gong.” Answers corporal jumping to salute. Lieutenant doesn’t spare a glance at you.
“At ease then, and get the files.”
“Yes, sir!” Suddenly corporal is going out of his way to get the files to his superior as quickly as possible.
You don’t look after him, you focus on the opposing counsel. He is still looking straight ahead, but he probably feels you staring, because he flinches, and still not looking at you, he says with a shrug:
“Auctorias, non veritas, facit legem.” Authority, not truth, makes law. Never more true than in the army.
You smile, but corporal is back with the files before you can say something.
“Sorry, Lieutenant Gong.” He says placing the box on the counter. “Congratulations on your commendation.”
You somehow know that lieutenant is uncomfortable with that statement, and you realize that he doesn’t think that he deserves his commendation.
“Are you going back, sir?”
“No, I’ve been redeployed stateside.” He says stiffly, taking the box, clearly wanting to escape.
“I’ve heard it was pretty hairy, back there.” Corporal continues, and you know that this is not a plain gossip, he is truly awed with his senior officer. And you can tell that lieutenant is not happy with that. He grunts.
“As you were, Corporal.”
After that he walks away, and you follow him, your heels clicking hurriedly. He doesn’t say a single word as he leads you back to your conference room, and you don’t dare to speak up either, but there are milliard questions in your mind.
You finally reach the room, and you open doors for him, and he walks in, instinctively checking the surroundings, his broad shoulders seemingly filling the room. He puts the box on the table, and turns around to nod to you. After that he steers himself to the doors.
“Why are you doing that?” It’s the question that escaped you.
He stops, and hesitates before saying:
“Ubi dubium ibi libertas.” Where is a doubt, there is a freedom.
He leaves you alone after that, having probably said more than he intended to.
But you understood.
*
There were three, not one, pairs of finger prints, and you found matches for all of them in the military database. One of them was killed, the other two were deployed.
It wasn’t good, but it was something. You knew that you could teleconference the deployed soldiers, but you knew as well that the judge would deny your request unless you brought evidence.
But the best part was: among the discovery you got from the prosecution there where documents prepared by Lieutenant Gong, documents that had his writing on it, and on the witness list there was a cross next to the initials, you identified as initials of late soldier’s wife.
Which meant that Lieutenant has already interviewed her, and he knew that it would hurt his case. And that was probably the root of his doubt.
So it’s the only thing you have, the only chance to grab.
So you will hold on for your dear life.
*
“Ms. Lim, did the victim ever confide in you that she was sleeping with someone other than her husband?” You ask, knowing that she will deny it.
You are back in the courtroom, facing wife of the late soldier. Your investigator already confirmed your beliefs, that you were standing in front of the one person that could break or make your case.
As you expected, woman does deny.
“No, she did not.” She doesn’t flinch, she doesn’t look hesitant, she doesn’t even look smug. If you didn’t know better, you could have been fooled.
You smile pleasantly.
“Nothing further.” No one says anything, but you can feel the tension in the room. And you are so happy that you are the one that will drop a bomb here. “Your Honor, the Defense calls Lieutenant Gong Jicheol.”
There is consternation, and you can see a hint of surprise in judge’s eyes, but you can also hear the scratch of the chair on the panels, and woman’s voice. Lieutenant’s co-counsel.
“Objection, Your Honor. Lieutenant is not on the defense witness list.”
It’s so nice that finally, you know you will win the battle.
“Rule 6.0.7 of the Rules for Court-Martial, Your Honor.” You say, and judge focuses on you, her eyebrows slightly raised. “He doesn’t have to be, if I’m calling him as an impeachment witness.”
Judge smiles. She really smiles, as if she couldn’t help herself, and slowly, oh so slowly, nods and says:
“Overruled.” Is your imagination, or you really hear the satisfaction in her voice?
Lieutenant stands up, and you barely stop yourself from showing thumbs-up to your own co-counsel. Your impeachment witness is being sworn in, but the whole time he looks at you with a poker face.
Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.
I will either find a way, or I will make one.
“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” Prompts bailiff.
“I do.”
You don’t need more than that.
“Lieutenant Gong, you are prosecuting Staff Sergeant Kwon for the murder of his wife in the military court, is that correct?” You ask to set the tune.
“Yes, I am, as everybody around is fully aware.” He says, sounding a little hostile, but you can’t feel it. The hostility. More: you don’t really believe it’s really there.
“Lieutenant, did you personally interview Ms. Lim, just prior to this trial commencing?”
“I did.” There is something in his voice. Something rumbling, something deep, something you cannot really place, but it raises the little hairs on your arms.
“And did she convey to you her suspicions that the victim had been sleeping with someone other than her husband?” You ask focusing on your witness, rest of the room disappearing from your tunneled vision.
“Ms. Lim told me that she believed, the victim had been sleeping with the defendant’s commanding officer.” You can hear a slight murmur raising in the room, so you jump to follow up question.
“And that would be Captain Hyun?”
“That’s right.” Lieutenant is looking at you with such ferocity in his stare, that you find it impossible to keep the eye contact. Thankfully Captain Seo have an objection.
“Your Honor, I have to object here on grounds of relevance.” She sounds so proud and self-assured. You are a tiny bit thankful, because you can safely turn to the judge to fight the objection, but Her Honor is quicker.
“Overruled.” Having this woman overrule prosecution is one of the sweetest moments in your career. “Please continue.”
“Thank you, Your Honor.” You say, once again turning to lieutenant, and you see him exhaling.” And did she believe there were reasons for this sexual activity?”
Lieutenant Gong is silent for the moment, but when he speaks he is slow and sure, his eyes never leaving your face.
“Captain Hyun had told her he could keep the defendant from being deployed, in exchange for sex.”
You can see the seven members of jury moving uncomfortable in their seats. You can understand them, and their movement means that you are closer to wining than you ever have in this courtroom.
It nearly pains you to turn to the judge, and you can see her shifting in her seat as well. Good.
“Your Honor, based on this testimony, we ask that we be allowed to question Captain Hyun overseas via teleconference.”
“Objection.” Captain Seo’s reaction is immediate, but judge is already shaking her head.
“Overruled.”
”Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.” It’s a barest whisper, but you hear the words leave Lieutenant Gong’s mouth. You are probably the only one that hears that, being the one standing the closest.
I will either find a way, or I will make one.
You find yourselfthinking about those words when you return to your table – you know what they mean for you, but what is lieutenant’s goal? What game is he playing?
You smile, when staff sergeant pats your arm.
*
You are staring on the screen where you can see Captain Hyun’s face. It’s your first time questioning the witness via teleconference, half a world away, but that trial has seen a lot of firsts.
“So you were at the bar the night in question with Staff Sergeant Kwon?” You ask, your thumb caressing your other palm.
“Yes, ma’am. I left at twenty-three hundred hours, and drove Corporal Kim and Private Kim back to the base. “
“And then, where did you go, Captain?”
“I went home.” Lie, lie, lie.
“So you didn’t make a stop at the home of the defendant?” It sounds like you are just checking, but you know you are right. He is lying.
“No, I didn’t.” He sounds playful, like a child that did something wrong, but wasn’t caught.
“Because the victim threatened you, didn’t she, Captain? She was going to tell her husband, that you’d extorted sexual favor from her.”
“No.”
“You told her that you could keep her husband from being deployed.” Attack by ambush is your favorite type of attack. It’s only easier when they try to scramble.
“No.” He repeats, trying to put emphasis on this monosyllable. “I don’t have that authority.”
“But she didn’t know that, did she?” It’s a rhetorical question, you don’t allow him to answer.” And when you didn’t make good on your promise, she threatened you, and you went to her home.”
“I…” He tries to say something, but he clearly can’t – and you start to feel the rush of victory. But you know you have to press harder. You have to break him.
“You went to her home, and stabbed her thirty-eight times.” You can see his eyes moving, as if he was looking for a way out. But he says nothing.
Judge speaks up.
“Captain Hyun, this is Colonel Baek Areum.” She is wary, and you believe that she knows who is the guilty party. Her next words only confirm that. “Do you require counsel, Captain?”
“Counsel?” He repeats, stunned. Then something changes and he scoffs. “I want…”
But you don’t hear what he wants, because he disappears from the screen.
“Captain Hyun?” Calls judge furrowing her eyebrows, and you can hear the murmur of the jury behind you. This is not something innocent does. “Captain?”
Qui tacet consentire videtur.
The one who is silent, is seen as consenting.
*
There is a sound of a gavel, the one you wanted to hear so badly three days ago. Three days and it’s already after the trial.
Military justice is swift.
Let’s hope it’s just.
The jury member that you wanted to exclude, but judge overruled you stands up and clears his throat.
“In the matter of Republic of Korea versus Staff Sergeant Kwon-Ji-Tak on the charge of murder under Section 1.18, of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, we the panel find the defendant…” It’s always like that. Up till this point he was reading from a piece of paper, but now, just a moment before uttering words all the room was waiting for, he decided to look up, and face the judge. ”Not guilty.”
Pride, relief, astonishment, it all hits you at once, but as a contrast to your usual after-verdict surroundings, courtroom is quiet. Your client exhales, and he turns around to hug you, and to thank you, and after that he walks to his father, waiting for him. You shake hands with Lieutenant Shin, and as you turn to your things you see judge Baek nodding to you, before standing up.
One more time falls the order: “all rise”, and once again you are surprised to see all of the personnel jump to their feet.
You won.
Against everything, you won.
Maybe that’s why before you get yourself together and you gather your stuff the court is empty. You allow yourself one more appreciative look around the space, trying to commit to memory where you won one of your hardest cases. It may be one of your hardest victories to the date, but because of that success tasted way sweeter.
You take your Anzom Briefcase, you throw your perfectly styled hair over your shoulder, spreading Hugo Boss’s scent around, and you turn on your heel, feeling satisfied.
You won.
That is your job.
Vincit qui patitur.
Who endures, wins.
*
”Veni, vidi, vici.” Those are words that greet you outside courtroom. It’s Lieutenant Gong, of course it’s Lieutenant Gong. You smile, and stop in front of him.
“I came, I saw, I conquered?” You ask, shaking your head. “That might be the most overused phrase in Latin.”
“Might be, but doesn’t make it less right.” You nod, as if to agree.
“Ubi concordia, ibi victoria.” You say instead, because you want to, because you feel it’s right.
“Where is harmony, there is a victory.” He smiles, and that is probably first smile you see on his face. “That’s why I was waiting for you, ma’am. I wanted to thank you.”
“Thank me? I should be thanking you! You basically dragged me along the way to victory.” He nods acknowledging that, and it hurts your ego.
“But you did it beautifully. To admit the truth, I never wanted to prosecute this. And then I questioned Ms. Go, and it became obvious to me that we are prosecuting wrong officer. But I had my orders… And I had to make right by them.”
“Silent enim leges inter arma.” Laws are silent in the midst of arms.
He scoffs.
“I start to think that quoting Latin is the only thing one learns in Law.”
“It’s not the only thing, but it’s the funniest one.” You say as you start walking down the corridor. Lieutenant falls in step with you with practiced ease. You are surprised that now, after the trial you find yourself enjoying his company.
Wrong.
You were enjoying his company even before that. If your feelings from the moment you put him on the stand are something to go by.
“Could I invite you to dinner?” He asks, after a moment, and you stifle your smile – seems like the feeling is mutual.
“As long as it’s not canteen.” He laughs.
“Uxor formosa et vinum sunt dulcia venena.”
Beautiful women and wine are sweet venom.
*
You don’t really remember the dinner. It wasn’t important. Food was good, it wasn’t canteen, atmosphere was good, company even better, Latin remarks mixing with normal speech. But through the meal you could feel the anticipation pooling in your gut, and those feelings from the courtroom, the addicting rumble of his voice, it was all back, knowing that soon enough they will be allowed to resurface.
Hotel room is dark, illuminated only with neons outside, neither of you able to search for the switch. It doesn’t matter.
His lips attach itself to yours and refuse to leave, nor do you want them to. Your heels give you a little more height, but it’s definitely not enough. You are somehow surprised by how hard his body feels – you know he is a lieutenant, but you saw him just as a prosecutor in an foreign uniform – you didn’t think that the uniform would hide steel muscles.
Your back hits the wall, the counter, the wardrobe before it lands on the bed. You are going to feel it later, and you find yourself annoyed that you allowed him to lead you, during this passionate kiss, but your lips are tingling, and he is on top of you, and there are more important things to focus on.
His hurried hand drag your blouse out of your skirt, his calloused fingers caress your naked skin, rough touch rising hair, he seems to be possessing just enough power to break you. And you love the barest notion of that.
You reach for his jacket, knuckles bumping uncomfortably into medal ribbons on his chest, but you preserve and work it open, as his mouth launch on your neck. At his first try to mark you, you lodge your knee into his side.
“I have work tomorrow!” He growls something at that, but he doesn’t try again. You push his jacket off his shoulders, and he sits up, knees on the side of the bed, as he opens his shirt. You kick off your heels and slide up the bed, taking off the blouse and your skirt, but your hands are swapped away, when you try to take off your pantyhose. You are lost for a second, but then you realize that he wants to take it off himself.
Whatever sails his boat.
He has already taken off upper garments, and he is in the process of taking off his shoes, but he keeps eyeing you hungrily, elongating the process.
You whine. It’s a penetrating sound, protesting, urging for justice. That finally makes him speed up, but you can see the smile on his lips, and his head shaking in disbelief – you don’t care. You got what you wanted.
You always get what you want.
He is naked before you and you appreciate his body. Because it’s made to be appreciated if not worshipped. With body this sculpted, his fingers are surprisingly nimble, he opens your bra in no time. He also rolls down your pantyhose, his lips on yours. He takes off your underwear, with his mouth just above your breast. He bites down, and he sucks, and he does everything he couldn’t with your neck.
And you have no problem with that, it’s not like you will be flashing your torso at work. You appreciate the work put into that, your hands scraping the back of his neck, hair too short to comfortably grab onto.
His teeth scrape your stomach as he puts on the condom, and added feelings of his body on top of you, his teeth on your skin and knowledge that in a moment you will be welcoming him inside is making you shiver.
You mewl.
He travels up your body, face never farther than millimeters from your skin, actually he noses his way up, the tip of his nose cooling the fibers on its way. And in this one smooth motion he comes up, hitting his surprisingly narrow hips between your legs, driving into you.
You keen.
It’s been longer since you care to admit, your line of work not allowing stable relationship and not leaving you enough time to go out and find yourself company for the night.
And fucking clients is unethical.
But fucking opposing counsel, and as beautifully sculpted as this one? That was one of hell award for a job well done.
Your fingers slipped on his back, and you didn’t refrain from using your fingernails on your search for purchase. His body was impossibly close, one of his elbows resting just above your shoulder. He was big. He was just big, your nose fitting somewhere under his chin.
He still moves, but he seems to be collapsing into himself, his mouth founding yours and you mewl again, hips trying to come off the mattress, blocked by his body.
You can feel the perspiration pooling on your abdomen, you can feel yourself loosing breath, you can feel his eyes on your face, you can feel his hand creeping into your hair, your perfectly styled her, but who cares.
You dig your fingers into his ass, and his hips stutter, it’s good.
It’s just good. Your head trashes on the bed, and one of his hands fit between your back and bed, raising you up, changing the angle, maybe making it easier for him. You don’t know, but you love it. He is forceful but at the same time so focused. He seems quite mechanic, as if he knew exactly what to do and when, the greatest tactician.
You can feel the drop of sweat trail down your face, it’s hot, but it’s glorious, and your chest heaves fighting for every breath. But there is still one thing you want to do, before he brings you over. And you know he will. In the end, he is a justice officer. Those don’t cease until they reach the goal.
But he seems to be paying no mind to what is happening in your mind, he reaches out for the pillow and stuffs it under your sacrum – it may have stilled his thrusts for the second, but he effectively freed one of his hands. And that hand find its way to your clitoris.
“Age quod agis!” Do what you do.
You can’t believe that it’s Latin that leaves your mouth, but it is what it is.
He laughs, his face hiding in the hollow of your neck, and his calloused thumb presses on your clitoris. Your legs spasm, and you close them on his sides, fighting the pleasure.
“Brevis oratio penetrat coelos.” He murmurs into your skin, and you wish his teeth would roll your skin between them – but he won’t. You forbade him.
It takes you a moment, before you understand – short prayers reach heaven. True, and powerful, but you feel like laughing. Even though your impeding orgasm clouds your mind.
You exhale slowly, trying to calm yourself, which is truly futile effort, between his thrusts and his hands, but you get to say one more thing.
“Acta… Non… Verba…”
He snickers into your skin, but says nothing, his knees shifting on the bed, his hands dragging you higher onto his thighs. After that he just fucks you. Thoroughly. Earnestly. Meticulously. But there is a bit of madness to his moves, a hint of a beast behind the shadows.
And you love it.
You love every second of it, you love how you come apart, you love how he forces thoughts out of your brain, how he takes you down to the most primitive level, freeing you from your usual strictly professional, deeply logical, restricted self.
He fucks the confines out of your bloodstream, and for a brief moment you can feel absolutely liberated. This clear minded state comes with a full body spasm, and a soundless moan.
It ends with heavy body landing on top of you, no longer bothered with the thought of not crushing you.
You give him a moment. He did earn it – but you were growing uncomfortable. It was hard to breath, and your body was desperately asking for oxygen.
And you could feel that he was conscious. He was waiting for something.
“Do you mind?” You finally ask, feeling sticky and growing grumpy.
“Actions, not words.” He says, and you feel lost. But then you remember that is the last thing you said to him during sex. It’s hard to think in this state, your legs tingling, and useless. It’s also not like you can find purchase like that.
“Dum vivimus, vivamus!” You call, as a last resort. He laughs, but rolls over. You inhale abruptly, your chest heaving, and you look at him, breathing just as heavy. You sneer and your head rolls back and you look at the ceiling.
Dum vivimus, vivamus!
While we live, let us live.
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