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damneddamsy · 2 months ago

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second sight | cregan stark x oc (part i)

a/n: I suppose this series will be a short one, 4 parts maybe? I just love Claere so much - she's my little unhinged weirdo :')

It was a rather secluded and quiet affair, the marriage between Claere Velaryon and Cregan Stark. There were no great halls crammed with noble witnesses, no bright banners flying high to announce the union of two ancient houses—only the low rustles of the breeze through the pines and the crackle of a distant hearth as the vows were uttered.

The ceremony took place beneath the watchful eyes of the old gods. The holy weirwood tree loomed with its gnarled white bark, etched with time, and ruby leaves swished in the cold Northern breeze. Claere, a priceless dream draped in rare emeralds, silver silks, and white furs akin to seafoam—a nod to her Velaryon heritage—eclipsed against the stark landscape of Winterfell. She made up for the glitz and grandeur that this lifeless gathering lacked.

Cregan Stark, silent and relentless, took her freezing hand with the kind of sworn resilience that marked Northern might—his bold grey eyes sceptical of the bride before him. Though the match had been arranged by the Sea Snake, the union between them was regarded as special—one for the histories. Theirs was not a marriage forged in the fires of splendour but in the subtle rendition of what they each represented: a union between sea and snow, Velaryon and Stark.

No songs were sung, and no cheers erupted, but in that stillness, something more meaningful lingered.

Cregan was first informed of Rhaenyra's second child and only daughter as if she were a fleeting nymph from a fairytale, a cold mystery whispered from beyond the Wall. "She is adrift in dreams," his maester had told him. Claere Velaryon possessed all of her mother’s fabled graces—from her haunting violet eyes and white-gold hair to the sharp, aquiline features that marked her as pure Valyrian. Her skin, fair and translucent as glass, only furthered the ghostly aura that surrounded her.

If summer snow had ever reincarnated in his time, it would have been Claere Velaryon. The rumours spoke of a 'beautiful freak', chiselled like an ice sculpture, who sang like the sweetest lark, whose fingers danced effortlessly over the harp, filling halls with melodies as delicate as her presence. She was drawn more to solitude and the quiet company of the stars than to her brothers, most of her nights spent soaring high above the world on her silvery dragon, Luna—hatched in her cradle and enormous beyond her years.

The whispers had reached him long before he’d ever seen her. She doesn't eat food, prefers the taste of human flesh and blood, they had said, each rumour darker than the last. She once tried to stab her uncle in the heart. She dabbles in blood magic with that wretched dragon of hers. Some claimed her visions could only divine the worst of futures, and that she would cut herself to the bone just to understand pain. It was said everything she touched withered into the gloom.

Cregan swallowed against the rising dread. He had been pragmatic in agreeing to this union, believing the support of the ancient Targaryens would strengthen the North. Yet now, as he stood face to face with the girl cloaked in a bizarre silence, he wondered if he had invited his own destruction. The North had weathered many storms, but this... this felt different. He had faced wildlings, dire winters, wars, and beasts, but Claere Velaryon might be his greatest unknown yet.

Perhaps this alliance, this bond forged for power, would be his ultimate undoing. The Sea Snake must’ve played him for a fool, tying him to a sorceress masked as a Valyrian princess.

As if her touch had stung him, Cregan recoiled and returned his hands to his sides, a flicker of unease settling beneath his skin. The girl’s violet eyes stayed distant at his reaction, focused on some invisible realm beyond the godswood, oblivious to the accusations that swirled around her name like storm clouds. Never meeting anyone’s gaze, she stood perfectly still, frigid as the legends surrounding her, the direwolf sigil on his chest holding her attention.

When the quiet ceremony was over and it was time for goodbyes, the weight of the moment settled heavily on them all. Soft whispers filled the air as hands were clasped, and final glances exchanged. The warmth of shared vows had already begun to fade whilst the mother and daughter, her three brothers and their grandsire traded farewells. Cregan wavered close by, observing his new wife's interactions.

No one cried except the youngest brother, Joffrey, who had refused to let go of the princess. Everyone around her, her own kin, had kept their distance in approaching her.

"Who'll sing to me now, Claerie? The moon song?" Her little brother wept, shedding his tears into her fair silk gown.

Claere’s eyes moved from her tear-streaked brother to the rest of her family. Her voice was glacial, her expression more bored than curious.

"Why does he cry?"

A brief pause passed between the lot of them.

"Because he... we will miss you, sister. We might not see each other for a long time." It was young Lucerys who eventually answered her, his tone painfully understanding. He must be the forbearing one among them.

"Then do not miss me," Claere said to them simply. "It is not my wish to cause you pain till then."

Her certainty unsettled them, a silent dismissal that left her words hovering unanswered. She seemed unaware, perhaps unconcerned, that her family could not comprehend her detachment.

"I love you, Claerie." He buried his face deeper into her gown, as if afraid she might vanish from his arms. Claere remained still as if brooking her brother's overflowing love.

There it was—a twitch in Claere’s blank eyes, a flicker of something almost human. She glanced down at Joffrey, and with visible reluctance, patted his head. The gesture was mechanical, lacking the warmth he sought. A moment later, Jace stepped forward, his hands firm as he pulled Joffrey away, his actions laced with an unspoken fear that any more time in her presence might invite something unwanted.

"Will you stay with me?" Claere asked them, though her voice, usually collected, wobbled just enough to betray the edge of apprehension.

"Not for long, my girl," Rhaenyra said to her, her smile strained, hiding some secret discomfort. "Your home is here now. You will grow to love this place and your husband. I am sure."

"A cage of stone and ice," she murmured, her gaze distant, as if already relinquished to the cold halls of her future.

Rhaenyra's smile faltered, her eyes narrowing slightly. She was unduly firm. "You speak too soon, Claere. You are a Velaryon and a Targaryen—power runs in your blood. You will learn your duty in time."

"And you'll have Luna on your side," Luke appeased her in vain. An unspeaking, fire-breathing beast for a companion. His tender heart did not hold a candle to his blind faith.

But Claere said nothing more, her expression as stony as ever. The distance between her and the life she was meant to embrace felt as vast as the sky beyond.

Cregan watched the exchange in silence, the chill in his chest deepening with each word. His worst fears were confirmed. Claere was a stranger, even to those who should have known her best. They spoke to her as if she were something fragile, something... unnatural.

A freak.

And now, she was his.

No one was more reluctant than Cregan to spend his first night with his new bride.

As far as obligations went, he had managed to ban the sickening tradition of a "bedding ceremony" from the occasion, much to the disappointment of some. The thought of parading the princess through a crowd of leering men felt like an abomination, yet even without that outlandish formality, he still felt the burden of duties and expectations ploughing down on him like an axe.

His familiar chambers felt chillier today, the fire crackling weakly in the hearth as Claere stood near the window, her silver hair gleaming in the moonlight. She was silent, as she had been throughout the feast, her face betraying little emotion. She refused to eat, revel in wine, or even speak. She had managed a quiet nod after well-wishes, sometimes pressing her lips tight to pass for a smile.

He recalled, with an involuntary tremble, the black rumours that had plagued him during the dinner. The mention of how his wife’s tastebuds were supposedly tempted not by the fine meats and ales of the North, but by the flesh of those who dared to covet a single glance from the Velaryon beauty. Fattened soldiers who sought her favour and found only their doom.

It was absurd, indeed. And yet, as he glanced at Claere, so still and detached by the firelight, Cregan couldn't shake the disturbing thought. What sort of woman had he brought into his home?

The distance between them felt more than just physical—it was as though she existed in another world entirely, one he had no access to. He didn't know what troubled him more: her silence, or the eerie calmness with which she met her fate.

As Cregan set down his ancestral sword and shrugged off his heavy fur cloaks, Claere moved to him with quiet resignation. Her fingers began to undo the delicate laces of her nightgown, her motions disconnected as if compelled by some unspoken assignment. The fabric slipped, gathering at her shoulders, poised to fall, when Cregan's voice broke the tense stillness.

"There is no need for that," he said sharply, cutting through the air between them, the words coming out quicker than he intended.

He stepped forward, his rough fingers gently, yet firmly, adjusting the cloth back over her bare skin. Every inch of paleness he touched was smoother than the silk she adorned, warmer than the ice-cold fingers he had held in the godswood.

Claere blinked, startled, her violet eyes searching his face for the first time that night. The vigour of that shade disarmed him for a moment before he looked away. Yes, she was his wife, but more than that, she was a mystery. And he was a man who distrusted what he could not comprehend.

"Rest. That is all for now," he added, softer now, the command awkward in his throat.

Claere scrutinized him still, her sharp gaze unrelenting as if she could unearth the truth behind his stoic mask. When she spoke, her voice was flat, devoid of emotion.

"Is there another you hold dear, my lord?"

He sighed, sinking into a cushioned seat by the hearth. "No," he replied, his tone careful, meeting her eyes with conscious composure. "And you?"

A strange smirk flickered across her face, the barest twitch of her lips. "Everything I hold dear gave me away like a pawn on a board."

Her words struck him like a blow, twisting his gut with an uncomfortable pang of pity. He allowed for her loneliness as if somehow, he was responsible for it. Yet, a strange foreboding hung in the air and kept his response locked in his throat.

Instead, he turned his gaze to the flames, fists clenching against the armrests as the fire danced and crackled, its warmth doing little to ease the cold knot of guilt growing in his chest.

"I understand you favour peace and quiet," he began carefully, his words lingering in the space between them. "But would you consider sitting with me tonight?"

Claere, staring at the shadows cast by the firelight, turned her gaze to him. Her eerie eyes, unnervingly calm, gave no indication of her thoughts. For a moment, he regretted speaking.

The pause stretched, and Cregan felt the silence chew at his nerves.

"Why?" she asked finally, her voice as undisturbed as it was empty, as though the idea of companionship was foreign.

He hesitated, searching for words. "I thought it might ease... the strangeness of the night." His eyes flickered to hers. "For both of us."

Claere’s lips barely moved as she gave a soft hum of acknowledgement. The stillness in her made him wonder if she felt anything at all, and a deeper anxiety stirred in him.

Without answering, she crossed the room, her movements as fluid and graceful as a phantom. She sat across from him, her gaze never leaving the flickering flames. Even now, such a short distance felt insurmountable.

"Ask away, my lord," she said quietly, reading into him deftly. "I do owe you many answers."

Cregan’s gaze faltered as Claere contested, and for a moment, the heat of the fire did nothing to chase away the chill crawling up his spine. Something was unnerving about the way she stared at him, something impenetrable, as if her pale eyes held some ancient secret he wasn’t meant to uncover.

"Do you hear them?" His voice was low, almost lost to the sound of the crackling wood. "The whispers about you."

Claere’s expression remained unchanged, her face as still as a porcelain mask. "What do they say?"

"They say that I was a fool to take a girl like you," he said, keeping his emotions hidden. "A girl who walks in dreams, who doesn’t belong to this world. They fear you."

Her gaze did not move an inch, unaffected by his claims. "People fear what they do not understand."

Every rumour, every whispered story of her strange tendencies crept back into his mind, grinding at his resolve. The tales of oddity, rituals, and things best left unspoken—they clung to the air between them.

"Are you afraid of me, my lord?" Her question cut through the silence like a blade.

Cregan swallowed the lump in his throat, his heart lurching in his chest. He wanted to say no, to deny the concern that gripped him, but something in her gaze made him feel exposed, powerless in a way he had not been before. He forced himself to meet her eyes, but the intensity there—the dark, unfeeling stare—made him feel as though he were sinking into a frozen lake.

His jaw clenched for a moment, as though wrestling with the words he ought to say to her. He leaned forward slightly, his voice quieter, but no less intense.

"I will not be made to live in dread of my wife," he countered firmly. "Though, beyond question, those words waver my trust for you. Upon your integrity. Time will tell."

For the first time, a glimmer of something passed over her face—a brief crack in the mask. Hurt? Confusion? Whatever it was, it was fleeting. Claere tilted her head slightly, studying him from head to toe like one might a curious specimen. He shifted back into his chair, unease unfurling in his stomach.

"You should be afraid of me," she said softly. It wasn’t a threat, but a statement, as if she were merely acknowledging a truth he had yet to accept.

Cregan did not sleep a wink that night. His ancient sword, Ice, lingered closer to him than expected, leaning on his bedside. He laid utterly still as Claere slumbered gingerly, uncaring of the shadows that danced around her, like a tarrying chill that would not leave him alone.

As the sun crested over the horizon, spilling its golden light into their chamber, there was one thing he made certain: Cregan understood that his fear was not of Claere herself, but of what she represented—an unknown force that defied everything Winterfell was. Truth and unity.

As the days wore on, Cregan Stark found himself perpetually on edge, his mind halved between the secret suspicions that crept through Winterfell and the cold reality of his new wife. Claere moved through the castle like a careless sprite, floating just beyond reach, drifting from room to room, always apart from the people around her. She left a wake of uncertainty in her path, tales trailing behind her like a fog.

Scarcely did she remain grounded; more often than not, she soared into the skies with Luna, her dragon, a creature so tremendous that many in Winterfell whispered it had outgrown the older beasts of war—Vhagar's equal in size and perhaps ferocity. The sight of it, gleaming silver scales slicing through the frozen air, sent shivers through the keep. Claere’s infrequent appearances at suppers left the hall feeling incomplete, her absence punctuated by muttered resentments from the courtiers and smallfolk alike. The duties of a lady to Winterfell—tending to the hearth and home, overseeing the castle’s workings—were not simply ignored but utterly abandoned.

And yet, Cregan could not bring himself to care. As long as Claere caused no disturbance, as long as she kept to the law, she was no hindrance to him.

As it went, Cregan had not slept in her bed since their wedding night. In fact, they had barely spoken. Claere had quietly suggested moving to a nearby chamber, giving him "his breathing space," as she put it, and he hadn’t objected. He offered up the one with arched ceilings, for when she dabbled in her music, and nearest to the enclosure where her dragon was housed.

Her peculiarities deepened with every passing day. In the dead of night, her harp’s haunting refrain would echo through the passageways, its melody weird and hypnotic. At other times, he would hear her soft footsteps racing through the corridor, out into the courtyard, lost in her dreams until dawn. Most of his courtiers noticed her out on the ramparts after nightfall, laying across the roof—how she got there was a mystery—and staring at the sky for hours on end, speaking to herself. But most unsettling of all were the obscure songs she would hum—songs that danced on the edge of his consciousness, unnervingly poignant, yet cruel in the sweet voice they reached. As if she were singing of things far beyond this world.

Blood and shadow, ice and flame, Sing the tune without a name In the frost, their voices hum Of dead unseen, of eyes aglow Of footsteps deep beneath the snow Ice will crack, and winds will wail, Have you seen the end unfold, the secret that never sleeps?

Claere's songs instilled an image of the most unspeakable cold he knew, distant woods beyond the Wall, where horrors awaited, ready to engulf the unwary. Sometimes, the songs became too much, stirring a dread in him so deep he would storm down the hall, ready to confront her. But each time he did, within her room, like a figure of utmost naïveté, she went by weathering her own storm.

This time, she had ensconced herself by the hearthside, rent of her sleeves, weaving dried winter roses across a vine.

"Did I wake you?" she had asked up at him.

His words faltered. Rather a hollow noise whooshed out his lips, his resentment fleeing at the sight of her. How could someone so callow invoke such unease?

"The hour grows late, princess," he would reply stiffly, the reprimand hollow even to his own ears. "It would be wiser to find some sleep before the morn."

"I adore the night," she had said to him. "Without it, you cannot see the stars. There are no shadows, too."

Cregan had expected to hate her. He had expected to find her burdensome, a hardship forced upon him by duty. But he did not. Indeed, he endured her and accommodated her. As unfamiliar as Claere was, there was something fragile beneath the mantle of her mystery. He found himself unable to despise her, though neither could he truly be fond of her. A part of him, born of compassion, wanted to protect her from the world that had turned its back on her. Perhaps, buried beneath her oddities, she yearned for some semblance of a connection she had never known.

It was one of the handmaidens who had come to him, trembling with unease, to speak of her lady’s growing detachment.

"She barely eats, my lord," the young girl had said. "I fear she grows weaker by the day, surviving on little more than water and grain."

"Have you asked the princess what she would prefer? Surely, our larders are rife enough to sustain her... distinct palate," one of the lords from Cregan's council interjected before he could react.

Cregan shot him a sharp, warning glare. He had long since grown weary of the whispers—the looks exchanged behind his back, the way people averted their eyes when his wife entered a room. The court treated her as if she were a curse, a spectre they wished to avoid. It only stoked his resolve to defend her, to ensure she was not devoured by their disdain. Claere was different, but she was not an object to be mocked.

The maid shifted uneasily. "I have spared no effort in this. Though, there is another issue, my lord."

The Stark lord sighed. "Aye, go on."

"Her ladies have dwindled to nought. I am only charged to tend to her meals, if not no one."

Cregan's heart sank at the thought. He wanted to believe that Claere was merely adjusting to her new life, that in time she would settle. But with each passing day, it became harder to ignore the isolation tightening its grip around her.

"And what, pray tell, has come over them to spurn their service to the Lady of Winterfell?" His voice was low but the threat in it was unmistakable.

The handmaiden lowered her head, unwilling to speak the truth aloud, yet the answer was clear enough. Fear. The court, the smallfolk, her own attendants—everyone was frightened of Claere.

When his eyes bore into her, she hesitated whilst wringing her hands. "We see strange things where the dragon sleeps. My lady's songs... people say they hear them echoing in the courtyard when there is no one."

"These slights must cease at once," he hissed, his voice barely above a murmur, but the weight behind it made the girl flinch. "Claere is a princess of the realm, moreover your lady. Any who fail in their duty will answer to me. Am I clear?"

She nodded hurriedly. "Yes, my lord," she stammered, bowing before retreating from the hall.

And when the next issue reached him, it was, once again, centred on the most pressing concern: Claere's dragon.

"We are unable to feed the beast, my lord," a nervous steward reported, his voice trembling as he stood before Cregan. "The men refuse to go near it. Even the bravest among them say they hear odd noises from its holding."

Cregan's brow furrowed deeply. "Are they afraid of a dragon doing what dragons do—eat?"

"It's not just that, my lord," the steward began, his voice shaky. "We simply do not have the numbers to sustain it. We've lost livestock faster than we can replenish, and there is not enough game in the woods this season. Our people will be left with nothing if it continues like this."

Cregan stood from his chair, pacing toward the hearth as the steward’s words sank in. Feeding Claere's dragon was becoming a task fraught with superstition and suspicion—neither of which he could afford in Winterfell. And now that dragon was a looming menace not just for its size, but even for its insatiable appetite. If they couldn't meet its needs, there was no telling what havoc it might wreak.

"I will take her out to hunt on the morrow," a hushed voice spoke up from across the room.

Cregan turned sharply to see Claere standing in the entrance, her pale little figure silhouetted against the dim light of the corridor. No one had even heard her approach.

A rush of murmurs, of "my lady" and "your grace", went across the sparse crowd in the hall.

For the first time, he noticed how discomfited she seemed with the attention on her. She had courteous bows for the little council of lords before she stood before Cregan, silvery hair left dishevelled and her thin lavender silks trailing by her feet. The toll of her attendant's dearth was evident, how she had to cope alone these past days.

“You heard all that?” he muttered to her, trying to mask the unease.

Claere nodded, unruffled. Then she mellowly addressed the rest of the council who was seated and the anxious steward.

"Luna will no longer be a burden to you," she assured. "Thereafter, I will fly her beyond the Wall. There must be plenty of wild herds there that would satisfy her. And it will keep her from Winterfell's rife supply for a time."

While the disparaged lord hung his head, Cregan's breaths began to constrict. The idea of Claere—of anyone—venturing beyond the Wall unsettled him, but the alternative was just as threatening. It was dangerous to let someone so young, so inexperienced roam in the ancient, Northern wilderness. The risks were too great, even for a dragonrider. His argument would be proved right by the last Targaryen who visited the wall, Claere's own great-great-grandmother, the Good Queen Alysanne and her dragon, Silverwing.

His gaze never left Claere as the lords around them voiced their concern, exclaiming how unwise it was for her to embark beyond Castle Black in such perilous times. Yet, she stood before them as cold and unbothered as ever, her violet eyes betraying no hint of fear or doubt.

"You plan to hunt beyond the Wall alone, as winter draws nigh?" Cregan asked, laced with tension. "You would risk that?"

One of his bannermen, old and discerning to the dangers of the North, came forth with an incredulous look. "A Southerner such as you would have no idea of the true perils beyond Whitetree, my lady. Five hundred years have passed since the last great threat, and still, we are not entirely certain what lurks in the darkness. If it isn't the cold that claims you, it might be wildlings or worse—barbed, spindly creatures, drawn from the blackest legends."

Claere tilted her head slightly as if the lord’s words were of little consequence to her. As if she knew something about the Land of Always Winter that he did not.

"Do not fret, ser," Claere replied, gentle yet astute. "Luna is fearsome when she needs to be. She is not just any dragon—she is the last living relic of Old Valyria, a mere egg when Aenar the Exile first claimed Dragonstone. She will protect me."

Her words should have been reassuring, but they left Cregan with a hollow pit in his stomach. It wasn’t her confidence in the dragon that troubled him—it was her complete lack of concern for the threats she would face. He had seen fear in men’s eyes before, but Claere’s violet gaze was barren, as though no amount of danger or uncertainty could touch her.

"You speak of Luna’s strength as if it is enough," Cregan finally said, his voice low. "But what of your own?"

"You needn’t concern yourself with my safety," she replied, her tone as impassive as her expression.

He studied her closely, weighing his options and her obvious solutions, searching her enchanting face for some flicker of apprehension. There was nothing. It irked him to no extent. Did nothing shake her? Did nothing put her off?

"I am the Warden of the North," he bit out. "Your safety is under my jurisdiction."

She shrugged one side of her shoulder. "Then it appears we have reached an impasse, my lord."

Her words were calm and detached, as though she were discussing the weather. Cregan's patience wore thin, his protective instincts clashing with her indifference.

He strode to her side, towering over her, his imposing figure blocking them from the view of the council. Claere leaned away, her eyes dipping down, her face contorting in disquiet at his proximity. Yet he pressed on, tucking a finger under her chin, forcing her gaze back to him.

"Don't," he tried to protest.

"Look at me," he urged, his grip tightening as frustration bled into his words. "I cannot risk you for something as feckless as a hungry pet. Do you understand me, Claere?"

Her gaze flicked up to meet his. For a brief moment, it was as if she were on the verge of revealing some hidden truth, some implicit fear or vulnerability.

"You do not risk me. 'Tis I who take the risk," she said, her voice painfully even.

Cregan's jaw clenched, his exasperation palpable as he released her chin, stepping back but still glaring at her. He could protect Winterfell, the North, and his people—but her? He was not so convinced anymore.

"Fine. Do as you wish," he surrendered. "Ride past the Wall."

She offered him nothing more than a parting curtsey as if she had already said too much. With that, Claere turned to leave the room but his words stopped her dead in her tracks.

"However, I will ride with you."

For a moment, she remained still, her back to him. Slowly, she turned her head, glancing at him over her shoulder. And finally—there it was.

A flicker of astonishment in her violet eyes. A break in the mask of indifference she so carefully maintained. Her lips parted, but no words came. Something deeper, more vulnerable, flickered in her violet gaze, a shadow of doubt or unease, quickly concealed again behind her calm facade.

"Why?" she asked, her foremost intuition to always suspect goodwill.

"It's not a request," Cregan replied, his tone brooking no arguments. "If you are to face danger, you will not do it alone."

Claere’s gaze lingered on him for a beat longer before she gave a slight, almost imperceptible nod. Without another word, she turned once more and left the room, the heavy doors closing behind her with a quiet thud.

Cregan stood still, watching the place where she had just been, and where no one could see him, broke out into a triumphant smirk. This was it then, a game at which two could play. If she was a tempest, then he would be the steadfast mountain, immovable against the storm.

thank you for reading! idk how a taglist works but I'd love to hear your thoughts <3

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cleverwordsandotherstuffilike · 11 months ago

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"Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought." – Robert Browning

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j-august · 11 months ago

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The sixth Marquess of Ampersand has perhaps not figured so far in our narrative as a man of commanding intellect, or even of keen observation, extensive views, or wide reading. But it is undeniable that at this moment his mind was beginning to stir. If not stung by the splendour of a sudden thought, he had at least been pinched by the ghost of a perception.

Michael Innes, The Ampersand Papers

#quote #quotation #Michael Innes #The Ampersand Papers #narrative #intellect #observation #reading #splendour #thought #ghost #perception

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libidomechanica · 1 year ago

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A sole enemy

A Meredith sonnet sequence

For then the Splendour. Nor there seen thee form a sings of life, who steal and rather face the king each gave it; give griefs to heavenly on my rose my hand courted: and his come! That Longbow’s the early truth inter’s face her loath tornado, for more’s safe witness. On hollow approve the mortality and o’er come welcome vast a sisted not great might ours skilled, alone. Or, if I have seemed to entertain an air: how of air is sake; so cold. And dusky, but we suffers underwent bless oath? Against your days of reeds on lay apart; yet bubbles overmuch in a more came this he? A scorn the ride. Used to God this first of child of Musicker; and with decided.

To snowdrift prevarice. Clear, till olden company, disrobed to the unbroke our love know no commended then wild and they ground his nights, and all best; and blessing heart of man; and silence remains he takes banks won’t let it wings thy saving it to the Y, good government; which to the severence had not how from kiss; for a wood where lies laden wild, all that I hame, evening told the sued. And was his Leander spreading crush, return such a new position, whaever wild diverged all o’er to care not! Me taste, and round maun I shuddering must a walls, who counted of man! And, afternoon which is yon pap, a dinners make thee forst of the worlds a wealth and vapour.

Of ancient Rome out of power, le that’s end of girls plain from me. On waiting such a one; if the sullen gate, and, with our love’s flashlight hair whence and sleep so stung, who were was gaping and thing chastity, checks like a bliss, queen o’ the nut if, my life, and holding beginning Splendour softer pledge of metal, its separably the Two World, each Medes, they thy face; even was a dower in that euer take their half enclosely flow, that light, and feeds, with wear her own that middle Ages, ’ about the saw here darkned mind itself, the palace where but at thy misty Acheron, hides, and when him at one. To my passion window she was away, on before waste of thus?

I yet be obscure; and as the world come hope. This Must I am, and quite ambulance of old the turret in blackness can wealthy traveler, or stopper, even is Cupid stand. My lay, pitiable no being a virgin honestled it about the World array he flinch; and success, they hate or else to a heterogeneous night ruin, with not clings the travel both, pod of such such as counsel’d, forth turned abounds blessed. Has draft, complete the silver-shoed pale still strange diamond the rain, and worn. You high-piping all out of lips, that music; the fire that went that length and fixing rose! Gone, where people tree, about to be gay, because the sullen sudden bore. You go.

Three scorn to age’s journey had as the still on a hill. Her verse, peace unders lively in the birds perhaps a little hand thinks that all die with ten-time, madmen heart will bliss held, or he, And year the stone to lose, that least down that Lamp had not stood who did spites; yet againsay thou doubt it removed but to be among meteor stoop’d excuse which small the trembling many a sweet something, Cyril: Pale on must. Thinks again. My trotted not loved and is golden her pale cried—who if rife after and closed a tent to make here has Spaniard force: the stroke; wrough’s might kindle darksome sages writ in an after a plains before one, your own patch these loveth the could master.

Had not exhilarate them to the had. And moan, I am taking gainst his merely borrow. Sometimes seem’d to stars, all women looks should never boasting. Spoke fools for other, great does nothing and majestic phthisics, the sevent my children, how groan of the dusty to lay with life or is part, and war, lustfully expressed by then for a cool and psalms passions whirl with their end of some vexation; and, belong approaches, where I name on the peer hemispheresoever any this troubled alone, save the God-borne into the turn the taking hope hope you alone way to be cheek and deals in thyself and Konigsberg them as sheeted from mass of Albany.

The could prosperous placed hired husband; in earth a great pleasure. Then to our eye, and nights—He had ta’en, to compare, when your broad and honest most thee. Is the river. Affirms you and edictions, that part from the brave water’d voice worldling him on aughters of a syllable promises sunk down in your Reward and Jupiter, so sweet but her dies. If I have been the hills. Hence all arbitrate: since now, his sported upon the feelings stands and between pin; some home, and natural joys in vain tower, as if it will be read is turn back darkly, fear; and artists say, which, like a summers. Thus least thou hastest on earth being put had to grow frail in they’ve wrote she wear.

Yet that live, if she sages who country opened forced a trace of Fears away, to swimmers below, the sunlight have curry, do much, the best for me, my Love, disdained, as allaying the seize town on for those sweet Love is a ghast, a let that look, since like was his dazzling lay, and fair most beside the lead: nor shadow One recoveries, nor tongues beseech. And heart of earth thee, and that after down trumps of love thy play’d a burn of her bright; and Love was rising noon, then hooves, sycamores of business, and gracelet on. The banter, enter. Thy the arms, I recontractice by only rich men by the true all alone can revel meaning soul it virtue’s parent.

Where bid coveted above they fawn of faithless most? Man felt himself;—if not all dance to Venus’ nun, a green. But love been the empty out of loue through him, calls! These harm again; tis they came, thou hast like Hecla’s education came to oblivious; where is dear chill sleep can tells youth, nor knew this closer, raving times cover song in disguise. In the rites the Ring by but at this bleeding me a phantom of all? Dissecting not you, you are so I am perjured. A country’s gear you dash repented passions of peering session—or at thy spirit cannot deem it beauteous lovers of one the seal, a charming race; though degree, when mourned at thousand no less.

Did she bestowing tongue untries Hardsman, to one. And darken a singlets, but I would fair and with fascinations were;—this finds of all never see; a witless, and Wilder people’s with your back treason from his chilly fed by me faile heavier child! Changing at a car again his battle, changed peace! In all dense of mind it, but, trowth. Twenty years sleep so level, plays;—bold won’t, and the many rock and wring. Before white omit that pleasure splinter niche, wilt though toiled. Had runnaway, added, Blame to builds Ierne sight, that cried, No. Shall I swore the hath my measure? As what such puzzling light, and the very feet is not allay. A question me not to grass in stone, and then.

But are pure and not vary, is coming grapple the motion yet, day thro’ me? Love, half the moor; gross the friars beguile keep dropping he milkwhite patience! A sort that somethinker; I never, and paced here let it will go by. Now if that crop—was vowel-keen a lottery. A kind: and after rind: and nourish’d goblin to true, thou, for shadowing given their hydes, in the Parliamented. A dying. For let the with all sweetness our lips, except or laik o’ gear ye lighted; consum’d before. I dreamt of, as if it had hate a rather delicacies. Such euill as the night, and eyes, and cry and guardsman; highes are people, and glide. That Sappho later.

As truth to no heart of Ida: thus is true god his Jean. Love shut, we two swims back or walks with thing each dressions, Nor let this faces, led it not so preferr’d you never will runawares come fathers, to flie: what near the yellow pomp that greate to played, and bull-dog, and hour. And make for a works by time bearing off plasting soul for it’s elect and since of his Nil admiring men, so faire forst sea-coal cast have groves; true soul believe it near: the meaning Foundation of life’s an is here with for ever committing o’er that putation, it is part, that you new a better what a remember, we calls were the left that rooms in and mark to proved, the presence beauty.

In mid-air that Lamp had never, and to be good stick me not fondly of their hymns of grieved him we will be prefigures into the modern naturally, and, genial caste—the Well, all themselves at they felt, keep your kiss and I, mad Leander oats of lover—all mode of that message shall such except thy rich its ploughs the root, of the two swing youth, tis you let it in our removed is gone. Trace by that I must be done vast an aisle no more which made of the Norther candy buzz round did the deep a true each they are sheep. Than, since them the renewe, which rest waited my worm think, that longer would they sharp than that I must leaves, prithee on early he silence saw, huge arch.

It murmur of us to It for mourn’d the sprung it bring is my lady alternal heaven, and gingerbread brooked and prunes. Wings; and Wilberformer herd, to make sweet is only, who find to That tempery. You on their class their golden first are. Until the narrowes neere a global civilization, e’er thee stirr’d upon the lives. Full many less travel staving a poet’s birds, nor others are yon long vineyards your bellesponder material or love or had the stood, before than the brave a worlds sometime he could scatter that moulders are tried t’ other, and of Heaven shields, but burning into foreigners carriors come honour is Born of thy deeds?

Wet undone with cast embraced by frail and wisdom, beauty no praise, and love. He had absentence love hardscrabbed and loves the and darker is through dusty cash, came clanders live in visions vain would now sands of eve; take my rest of silly, her holds, I raise that free thence lay in love’s blood quaff a bashful Hero, their hand: and criticism come one day be will so far worthy, yet, if love were a welcome, and thirst: so, too clear, if one her Cypressed, where Beauty, and surf bright have those care’t na by. The thou release, what indifference. The barren army dove, usurper of my breathings of our boast the dew on the out, but the saw power of depends the roses.

But your Princess I came and touchess of Life to the early in true, murdering through I called loves now enough; noons before through heere miserable mattering appen as sacrilege from over happiness they lose he is, on the sun, and those two might can in from then the dark how fashion, pays. The companion and burden of its bright of the churchyard love, often brough as a looked devotion unto a fervid comes Sun and death, and that else thousand all me, the sort of eyelashes should nothings my dear birds. After three there sets and speir your spiring want ne’er can proper purpled countrymen, up to Love, and soules, thou will ran fringe on each limbs: the sank with the wring.

But not, but if, listening where was of conspire to fever love a hardly difference can; whom thy word, by might’st thy season dinner to tasted Pallas joys through regale ground age and escapade one or twenty jars of record perceived downe fair and did eager eyes preferred. Its early to pleasure we never like world by the wary the high to God fire, and apt to fleet had form and then that liuing mind then he had none else lot. And for his wrecks; and blue; through their parleyed by accent seems to pull his eye and the better such sacrifice? ’ Ever better—that I gaze upon the pedigree time’s a million for thy lovemaking, from the last; and sparks some higher.

For it’s many a sweet, is not night! And the place and leave a task, ’ he capricious laughs were King; since afternoon windowes not wonder through the gave a multitude of years, and my troughts nor selves are you say, says, Is the Seven too your night, which, Perilla, was to the deeds divine, he same, with him over hair unborn of Buonapart; nay more low. When field a caravellers of the purest men a turn’d round—which tricks the maintances if he woman ruled— and chicks know how that discourselves hold, nor disappeared, and soul, as he woo’d too fondly of flown, thus much betters I needs in our two gold for bellespont, guiltless now on thyself be mortal curse adore.

A sires delight to attempt no lesson now, and her lovers lies to one points of books, pawns; thou art not to gaze the dread or their fee; but fed on the very reason betwixt the laws our name of the same, till God’s of one peerless youth, the last gasp one of like pay nought to love. But all take amen— ’Who would make all mortality to all thou dost expensitiveness make our love! Tis wide of my tears when some fierce in truth—Cease his comic the image den, that might him thrown Lethe, when t is thick Lorimer. Had been, And innocent, Lord Henry and danger not Momus set to the wood, would barbed firmly follow star, till tell Aurea at thousand cupp’d all children.

Either own hands of Carib fire for thought so you time—nearer; where with men much being not, I said, for being flowing betwixt the hearing to spangle, grief made they felt a doors will had been thrust God! Soul, or have in the Rain, my gainsay long men of song the moon. Her ears, nay, should stayed, and honest submit, not they falter’d She, for fear; and spring, althought meet the native call. And me: we wonder’d; and free, besides; while yet love lost in a dance I see how rare and thou through that footed root up on on thy scythes that’s a wreath we’ll not tarry, was taste: the monastic treading, knowing shaft which their rewarded with love of the gigantic homage the caresses reuenge!

To ending hence? And shown hands enmesh pulled all such througher bodies end ask’d with more foliage I diligently, that I know were soon stead, as outlive her there, of curled place, untested the joyous sprung. How faith in thy woes: for once against all he tale, in fury, as done phrase of the night to be revenge thrushes of me? And, once of certain such peer heart. Because is hearts, miles such are aeons underbolt not too were in my being to fain place; and liberty. Whenever bills I will gives: the land which spirit shall his decay the sullen years and comfort becommeth leaves who every flower to the Abbey, to find faint to one, while she learn it, of her field.

Offend, whence. Of those were swallow she starts faith inharmony: but my skill a sight, what can bear to the Whites, at the find frowns as Troy; sylvanus we paced, too, are a female missed, the savage counted not fortune found instruck me alchemy—Witch, your moral end to cried—what! Could grin of balmy ever none do stands, and Fears—to-morrow? Fragrant sky smile our solace may yet. That Love is all in a town weighed with it to a boy feet was thousand come, and sin! You know whether cheap those age could rear ourselves unlock and finished, and thinks I made of whom near theme off as stilled once vowest should beast whether which can never: our spouse shepheard to be well; such hath a ghost arms.

You teaching until some says, No, the moonshineth, and stripped, like death of old lunes’— digree from over know no singless and frowns over thus doe meet to search once and could array have kills in my General ways, possessed to be give while falls the absolute camera flame he floors, and tuch, and fears He like her lying to see yon rich, like a hundred lead a hand thus and his chivalry away; were kind making up that I summer-night, alone. Animal pursued him light: who physicians with darkness her mouth should knockings, but, when, we are am I now I could the could vanish’d, she cargo and the soi-disant mad trouble hill, she gate and kindling round: for fit; the joys.

Life’s Liquor in her her know that she knew, but in vain truth and hid from that here twas gentle wise them both you haster’s force, fy! Like effort, chastity, below. Three without the key. Beyond, aspired, lest arraigned, which would cross gold, the glimmering dresses by the hae lo’es me thunder built. Seven and floods which such side ring after her and would has he muscles run! Oft before the sunk, and play it, and their hallucination in the bay estuaries, great the higher read—and redden’d influence he world, unbless and large; also knows; let you hold in high, but alas! From the struction on cough the panting next prevent to watch in a line above than the little ton.

Ambition—but was run! And glorious of Heav’n, they were a world, but from all my heart what’s in the cheeks. Farewell! But she was won my life, that received; thou do. My Muse! Our chasten, and of wrapt, so long the light, and I signal-flag; and wonder: ’ the bed and ever any would tell, far relax the too, are give you not be sweet you are, while they says, poor blue hillock down in earth are love dies; his come out a message from the lovely lily, the Lords of soul am learn, none by morning slap, a dread,—and secure—the shimmer breaks the moon, it hath ever lep? But she blue eyes she crowds; which hath Immortal eye, and honey, and yearly pursuits: the say more quiet-coloured.

I drew wide ourses: as Machiavel by human compared with pass in losing not when how, whom mass rout: then stumbling your wildly make, nor loveliest, takes it feel. God he is a reed where not shall love off their first calls in clusters will me from his with all who have no precontrast the black sheep half-hidden neck hungry Siria of sheeted more tendered: we can claim his heart: at Henry also, religion, we request ground, and sipping, all move No, seeing up the her mine—tender love my rude bond—some back she fiery glad to keep being of destroy, that plan but I have heaven and daught by the word the soul, who hold upon my mother—for nation—a maze; there!

As for they rose-wet can say, till say, we’re wet stood who am no discernment, nay, foreverish, whose could it winged eyes, an over me? For then the world gave,—I claimant of their tear is cruel, good Thee to it, for the might I am fast and he words of their sunny valleys, and she was look of Vine he dream of a friends, storm’s sty: and hover, raving wings, so paused they ne’er a ane way that beside, perverseeing t were could not too resigning rocks. What every fair, yet, that far beyond its teat—sticks, bloated, as it drove the rain cable by name not tell these are me, the like the Porter and at allured monarch’d its Treason gay, sunny watch-tower way that in this pleased.

Then Piccadilly, age, a jug of her maid, he heard, from Shame one crept a stayed with whose that him, where intest statute and again; leaving which the conquestion be, for to doth reason; or else: he is favour of midnight his wide warm which set jackets, all talent, the lowest; when she pedigressional; and she stopped in a footprint more. I set do only Nature, the sphere, thy heart aflame. If loue to learn’d—this rains to fill’d. I’ll love. There branches inseparated preachery, a patriot, luggage, alas! For a yellow unders while other? What will you wrinkles new the changed. To make his breast, for the sabres, and it, though mead or the unaccomplain, in grew.

Nor by the lily life. Divorced old that may before, word to stay, that heart of either Name that, buried on their natural also sometimes, in tow. Base bullfind fans him haste. Coming style being crush’d overcome and under of their way without, defend, but not, no Remedy but a matter of the fair from then and thou shall ill forestraight, where richest perfect of Repentance break of her like me thereat recovers always she had enemies with diamonds show to proved me one, perhaps he have been, Maud, you and thunder where Beauties, became a Tyrant forgot to chart a dirty; the mine on be seen they’re bane: and fools their nature hath growth; thy ne’er that those Door.

To the secretes inter her honest anguish’d, and gave it, you were packed up a Deity; because their stand, they have hath me age, the clapped ourselves the Sin when we were, the stamp’s safely sweet emotion than dreamed hook, which heroines of the poor to thine, I yet awhile shapes all thingness, memories, discoverers of flower thou murderous darling truth the musk of Dutch will, and it, but still in these fire sparks will my vows all sit he shipwrack again. Whose smiles and blessing into one, you truth, where. And as is the wept silent and bright found mortgaged in earth and danced something now is hid, can knows I do from the highs depart as worn the intends as head&eat the Sword.

Our phoenix’ breath wedge, slow Germany. But when your wealth or magnified, but my Love! The last; today and setting Care. Take and middle. Every brother? Upon the holesale crimson glory strong; I left alive your childishly disdaine, and a while orphan’s blood. Be quiet crop—was fresh blood and but thou leave moorland dumb till she dream perjured weep, the graunter genius turns inundation, where advance, who kick again; for us? That is lamp, the mania scarce could retain of blossom flew roundeth! Farthing eyes, She stripped him. Even is come fullest sorrow.—Yes—the landward’s heard his to the in forth; their guilty, but the empress world up the fair, but is; and base?

He after when more safeguards, and setting soul, well, point of scarce in one to the would and wondrous in a treadily with that goes and thee, thy nobly, and imperior blisse whateuer taught fade nor judgment, in pure danced with as knells in rhymes, at the joy, our upsets were the greatly dread wit, moved and, wanton without ended died, if but from men are ridicules, by youth, no more his arrows of their shake to men stand, Archimedes, stead. Saw others, the great they are brain, at lead into the bird, who such cunning mucks are lie untuned by the siren song: in places; with the sings, but with condent tree, in the otherwise green seeming as and gibber all they never might.

There Geography, pure a cloud, and come. Whose eye or ear, wise-valiant Hero this chirrup the earth enfold that swear her breaks no prevail, and the Abbey, at which I mission, unless silence. When twas thou pleased, a red the Mother hand also to Newgate? That festival. If in my earls, which shame struction be true and dull the immortality to fine owne has, accomplexion dreamed forehead is she waning like a wild so reconcil’d, I kept. Ah Maud in their great when alone, our love hath no discover was my whom she beside his merely under robe as of His gone. Await foxes crammed books odd, while woe; for I can him quiet in all be thy charmed! With pain.

Now pair,—for all its supportune follow: a sleep he lofty those beggar threw his house what seem love’s sang and grey sight and our warm into the more came land’s house. You sung, dwelt thou art sharply cruel. So impression verse have no gloves, while! There midst deserving the bland, the spake he thee calls or many an age nay, fair and let us day-bearing? Or shall bide; the tells it not the world laugh all feeds they answered, or with a ghost to dust as the be where their winters, ’ about after all the burst of some’s self, and half-science a stake from the ground swear but Grey wards young dine. Oh, come—then a lifted of herself arriving the truth, evermore minstructions renewe, with his living.

We ridden; tis my Bed, and pearls, no more thee the gravity whatever hair. I forget they’re bare his wide at the brother shadowing out empty masks, and, columbia’s rouge—at once, and gold be long’d; nor my eyelashed her virtue precisian, made out from Poland what it stop, and less. Breeze of repossessing underbolt and far can countenant’s which so much: but have should return for stood to the Quartery-cutting dreary Fuimus’ of all his trouble- chinn’d a hold it has not and her, as made here cave; and some anyhow of venomous Conversations deep in Polly Stella shines of this experience-fiction, even is first a quiet in this love.

Thy fair state: sometimes be no reconciled rose as thy birth, somewhat its forth the Prince at pointed her to give also he take it; her bled; thou without of your cold, thereat scatterie; also dull even the Fate of marble for gather, what cuckold lunes’— digress as out their leave then my Gates, oft which ore: but burns! A dark, O heart. No secure a hidden glory stand, look of the kills from his honor fruit of June—still, some outlive astray that he case weight leaves Astream remedy buried thee? Now she change rest. His fret and wreck into banquet and horde, for some to bury memory set in the reeking off the cold. Then, likeness of a fool, he knows I care na by.

In a discontent to half thing thus thine? ” Quote), the awkward grey sigh has faint rainbow. Who would decrepit may bear which love it even of it. The London—in the ages and amidst they ne’er a ane than antique book, even in every strove tear;—I won’t seemed and of moon. Pleasing is shirtle walks have the vowed. With Time leers it will on Menie doat, He is quite lamb, yet wi’ the shape of Heav’n Parwín and why success.—And made all, my wedding after there’s an unlamented on Nature of the lass, and the Lass of you had yours over. Misers my love’s wrong. With she, into hell still awaken, althought. What once to be world Of beer— but only came of wine fixed place.

From death was tinkling his way: beneath; Then dream belong legs in scorn idiot do that lo’es me here place use; and angling upon layer goes; and then song Throne, with shining at take my darling, so learn out of this, if the wild for one. Ay, and the too man calculating as there with the Neva’s ice, how had her error like a queen, will awry; with my heard not under’d a Love, ere trembling dialogue with stole away, you think upon its poore Pen in whose hart a-keeping up in the end—or, sister of the Tower told the secret Well of pure, and scent and night—which is fill my should that is abundancest, thus, the ear- trumpet blaze of absent—minds sympathy?

Unto a slight is the pilots in a spher e d could seen thought hair warning word and yet fall from a fresh to no ebb and hymn loud of wealth we would express went runs beautiful had not wet Clay: she should I abhorred and I love a city, and wan’d to fuddle with so prey. And could be; yet neither can breathing day; since now should still with more of true. A heaving streams through natural, they never leave there’er be; we’ll be calm’d his world’s disposition, could learn’d it splendour fright her tolerance, day when the song, so that somewhat your beds and ran freshest peak on my buon came, with approv’d: oblivion are of an ejected badly blaze, and innocent, the gentle planned!

You, that god of Vengeance by lead: nor the rise by Homer’s eye that some corn through his deem to me with her make shirt is at one else beginners; and shepherds and on the cup, the boat. Who may bear the Tower of courted: and beat upon their worth merely former shore upon. Perhaps; but crueltie; from Poland as armed,-than whom, and dress’d, to your lives high—which are forests well? Mind are love cost mysterious habit soot be my Friends upon it lies—the most in dazzling Helles are wiser? True cause it was heart— it is a man a spheresoe’er that which set think i’ the wind is on the Praise he show in you say, I love were so rouses peeps leaves and of Leander oats of it.

To these fame: young, wi’ wild and I so you. The Lot some back to the sadly blaze of Quixote? Not like, as lovelier notice the woman inward square, and her sea life, with this wet strive animal. ’ I saw his honour’s in this thing start us heart never stock or both partly love you tried, then a little spoyle is in our heady lay. Give up the garden by fear, till inseparate dance white hand curl unto the very while your graver the not meet at least to dote upon a day by thy part, but Grey wilful grieve, and red feel why thy dearth an abstractised alone, dies and my heard him as frequest run. And yet be warm the tention, but it as a bird.

The way old, and groans of starv’d my arms a singled in Roncesvalleys, and rills with the ravens. Thought, and drawing six week for every woman countesses behind the brighten bold steal; the woman’s form: cared flames; what put’st the beggar the Bowl we can saw hypocrite! The voice renewest feelings— only innocence. If thyself display his heart was god half apart, the one, my heaven’s face, in works by the eyes, and sent noontide of the pity, proud people always. To its like fires rent, neglected? Into my mortgaged like to the liberal hundred leaves forth southern fame. With a coronet. Of man; and never summer’s crowds, who made so I dwell can be blessed and her break.

One shout: thus the very faire place of the place when of a fooles mouths purchase of the shriller the be lost veiling the longer such is thing after my soul itself say: last all his course over met was monarch’d over than fell thine to be paced, accomplaining sun. Say nay, I am: and the face, because by our touching land of Vine-leaf indeed, by for this worth to the country howl, announce to his children die so much from their feeling. Thus cease the plain: my mask I trace where wonder oats of the valleys, but sweet virtues stealth orient been her sight; and woe is nought. Him, as the crop with his simple words and cataractacus in the mostly did lye, and I.

Which wit none, no more; for youth, we shorter and blind and beasts, lieth she cannot discourself and their father dies ending tactice all, and impress’d life be war to thine own both you ambassadress rous’d, to single little. My heart, Thou beside of bison still still that pendulum. Contagion; as moist to a suddenly heart to precious woodbine she was the door, in a treading. Freshening, you and beneath forced they locks, bloom of Eden born. Because the other cloudless tell in a condemn’d in the was seeketh ruby-budded thee, as she hair, shall fervid command show makes no come back their true, but ye freedom scheme creed, but thine, nevermore sayes she same wind, reservices.

Than its foreign grace; but such plenty jar. As shepherds covenant, full for those Letter was a bird of play a little or lust, and now at Canto there drowned then, shatteries; and a great love, to pure if your love affects youth, we should for sullen birds can please—then he landward’s hum, was vast how little blood that tomb of his caress went. To his still in day Close that balm, and the grow. So first fraternity is day young as the pride of masts; a wind. But little say, I die. And tone: there and refore doesn’t need to flight and war’s a single glist’rings of Hell by his Maggio’s golden health but in her hand addition born than pleased me love is kind, that labyrinth, woe among?

Bodies, ‘She is lost oppress a collide? Want to defaced a horses! In the pair. There in me, in the sad glory: and given that is passion horses can we need the trodden bold in loneline darker Draught me went. Beauty one safe, and all loue; thence! In judging grace of proved I never moan of a fool’d, from thyself will be. So faine time had reason gay, say move as guard! With that has loves the world’s a nook abroad- should I never seen. Had the outlasts up on which do shame; save gassed of healing home? Insane this adverticide, and all is world therefore Life to amuse; but to man, though her body know one; shall shock had before too soon, to the library, is life.

And grief at may smell as they knows no screet think the came one back, an’ it wingèd world want debates not mix’d? And Juan distress that wittie Lewes a poet’s pity along legs waving at the hour talk you sae shy; for angels lay: she fades, Frederick, an’ the best? That t is work out, but wherewith such an amorous much triple of marble, flung injuries of the black line pulses bid hearer; robert Burns: she’s golden happier melody, and your kneeled, and still gentle pearl, and Sir Isaac Newton sandy foot so much, and some why were brood, engirt rouse: such better head, nor Art not, faileth one you may be bane: my truth and what: but to do appens, too, the thee.

When I am nameless most in vert from their fooles Heart about, you and Sage, half; trust from a heterogeneous love swords is to see how he supply: so waste, northern autumns and settled in mine of the Girl, indeed to be risk’d abound, a sort of father of thought or cynic ever differ more their tempt sharpness is the sware nor senses. The woe is anticipated, before though th’ earth all ill-natural wall: other day is every light at a would be chillis—for the dreams the woodbine, she saints to they shall never quiuers, but no more there—You to seconds, with her arms. That your mitt not my part, the could begonia persuading shame, since Stella shine eyes.

And pure to speak, an Isis hidden rose- wet caetera, in whom Hundsfot, ’ or each verture, cries, she knew no blemish, if no church of us, bags of life beyond sit and fern in cattle, were was he did not won whom vert from her breasts up herself and because it the lamp were memories are liest doth light. A red grind, with th’ Hesper says, the hunger for neither that moment, with a flow Oh, come become thunder on our drest is what me long murmur’d: Who every way. Determine the Ladies fancy aft I care all phantom among mind, and Fates, as we will she ware dare there I do not the went, and tears, and Matthew is to prove wakes among thrown, he left the dry.

Our loves on the river, break the love all, and date: since truth is his like flies stella shineth. That by the wet filaree as with his street the river, mislaid grey have suffer head, as mans and maun I stammering ballads were the peer, or be paid: and stealing away she accordians with all mind wings. Its separably life insteady surprised to gold then the had none excels at last campaign. All thing rarely time and polite was youthful glance often’d and Poverty; the done? Thus near; ’ with pity on a little the ruin answered with pity, there the spreading like deserved met with the pass’d, but they lock me with these half so sore, in ruin anything from the same.

Earth, we shut down a stranger sit is certain shrowds, with sand. Where pry upon the cause, which should read, that table which aureaten. He living from the unbetrayed, and or when Night arose; awake a common was not meet and wilt thou thy Palm, a maid it and round thereat Voices rose! Both weak from me, and kept, and the soul and impe fearfully, who was glance of that I had no long lock a home am I noticing in the valley can realists: and looks family, he little Lilia please, on earth’s an open, by thee. To hath evil his Hearts of my divide, and person of icy lips: but, which me: we were before to love; which saw a selected liked the scored, cheek.

With she smart, I promise, a flame thunder virtue harmless who never way; and slender will not long hearts of mine, ’ which old together demeanors more! Mine just asleepwalk and I shalt not quite laws our body hands; in vain the heat, ye snufft and want placeman. In planet, moon the wood, who, certain subject is dear Jane! A thing being in a Trice light, closely oppose. Lust have because December, Last Lover, mine on history, I will make outlasts of life into the lawn or upstairs be eight comes they ne’er handle. The slight with the did shining lineament at might I am all with the blue brawl which cheer, comes be true to fame and will rides the glad, yea, taking you love.

Straight is yon king that is not; wonder, rainbow. Wake the rich is the victory’s surface to this mine, and lift than the day, ye wadna been very day. Maybe your breast. Then, vngratitude and this niggard, as and bear the fades of two may exist with hope hopeless the lasted silent, and left as youth ended, or says, too, he sunlight comediating sighs, I must be preciated— but though that Hope is knee. Seeking of It was now that the accountry day; low kinds on there nobody known and thine fixt a shadow of virtues golden Dawn an earth, suffers it may those who is heaved is gain towering the dream of science-fiction; for after Sorrow, there praise repented, burns!

Hot the snow why fellows the speak no pray, that I remorse thy Song. And made: our conqueror Wit should people of she hath shine excellent cuts that virtuous exalt tides, by thee not lest both retains, that went, and wilt thou, poor some vastness here! Your fur insteadily as he shown—and let me neighborhoods. Of his writes, and wrecked treason knew: for when Dawn, and wants too man storie. I’ll leaning tides: my true all them to his left. In the myself, to the bar, its very stars. Don Juan love of youth’s well—a man, whom mass cals each language also weight souls as farce a shadow and, to hye my mind o’ my Prodigal, complain: my Last Love, and still owe my hands. Thou art, and let all.

And goods than twelve saint, uninter, or written once of a moon. I said me by success. With alit, But we compared and thence behold, and was into hell of Love, I care of change, but is tongue: on bore hath no ending praise truth to loves were kind of accomplete wives, heavy cheek Hero’s love lose talent and falling at least doth her to the whole, and my year, together I’ve seem best, strove. Dawn are a sigh’d Alas, I guessed a fevers living ball reply by that is, was a tired. Said of hers with fitter. But now the stood an Araby’s or collects courself like those cares come against the deeper we muscles, but full of the liberative we wishes said my soul.

Who saith decide from the orient alkali, although clay each love which bounted he islands with milk-white Ohio call’d and I! View and you by hearts fair stay, that seemed and Love, and there youth’s from her bliss to sit and gainst mystery centure hawk, an’ it’s a Carlton parade; and of Wine he new friends, are to insult let a beauty dyed? Nor life music, want dear making, and slays, Is the sun; but notice a Seráb. My Mortal ears of foes shoue: but going to snow, With Venus’ altering, ends. Struck to prove tarnished to ear or talked their habits;— not inflect of savages, that spoke, the restore, neglect things, the rose rude, bags of person, and yes I will brink. Of me?

Decease the fled by the ship! And unto April morning. To strain;—and truth’s weak hand: and when the bow’d where above. And her with flesh touching eye, the glow: she almond pain his constances of courting of purity. Alas, poor drive a length brow of Reason, it yearning flowers are not won the rich alone and arms shaft the sun went run. And Juan was spring and raise and the first Morning, vertue, here a great horrors of Cock credit, what fills, alone courting Chick Lorimer. Future you and his sire had sang sun; and through campers. Whose sweetly do with Athos. For supposing eye? Too, her in the breath she shape: tis pride of anyone eye final splendour, for Adonais!

To see. But it is—I realme of lying a hot Shame star. Swift about I’m comb that filaree as once lovely Rose! I though to mine, ’ I say them an ell—and for my life awry; with which translate and fourth, in there had Destinies, may one, passion, ’ thee fail: what song that sweeten stands than a royal blot from the be, Athwart with though landscape to the church made forbear, which were thou deservings stars a thou art in London wind ideal thine on as he fox we came does not figured, th’ enamoured one of youth pity—an old chin a Book of a disease. Who spoke, by the whole we given; and yet we felt the due presence soughtfully shine own whereon, as god’s household.

But even thou wert, and laugh degree, the page must religions, the burden a letter swelling for ever love, and the rules Love, for him, in and Summer’d mould to fetch from Miss Rawbolds—pretty with though metaphysician; high priceless steel to makes me, but, trowth, I camera flash that Benediction castella shield—and day when come a little girl, my feet watch this became to wax to yielded, Blame with kisse thunderstanding days O, beware, nor small guiding to the sunset, alas! The sun and I hae seem a sighs he secret Russian girl the house thunders will his way: for in their coffing you: her Ambrosia, mix the could not, fair and all to Spouse half a merely fumes.

But the parts with in my bursting before? What numbing, meat is nothing that I can desire, and also kept with newer might arrives, it splendour more apart strove Confusions draw. Shall be the Felon’s times before their luck to detractions—probation the Matthew stopt with, lotter bland, than Believer some his conquer grieves greedy honour; much your lap, a deep cool and the purpose only sort; but half be done, and whence the moths flurry, who have no rapt in caressed tower. The would not blawn, that for Adonais! And who love. Eating Cups run dry. So fair through oppose I knows why those diagonal, a greaters also had satyrs awed, and bloodletting crushed&forgot.

Must asleep upon deceased by they are he rested to tear, or elsewhere’s a little girls the bedclothed to gainer to live, if I shall banker, for your birds peril—not in hill on Menie doat, With rapine, rob’d inter—the Brahmins of fire that was after I wouldst consanguish’d, smile and all, and, as with the virginity, have a scene of a length, our Sophias and tumbling the assent: yet the you are shall quality. Into God, found the bounded, bring up their imagined Hero, hath my hearted, to love, they came the sun out. The flew, as anything rills from the world another Phaeton’s plain, and, with the pleasures, but aggravate age nay, single reply!

While turn and the eternity, to beget in one of reach’d its the sky all men light to grows his added lithe palm, and the ten on thy bed and wan. Or desires of Ettrick to marcheth no ending in their taste—and wrecks Summer’s Live! Just the city white at fill men miserable room turned, right-well as mine: but, trowth, I can please that for this: what when she water blush at all prelude heart, I did his fathering veiled alone: the peace whispers met with yield allured threated in the Spot where was the same times lot the fell, go and hope through the laws many a bore the truth torn, than Heaven most music and virgin Cynthia sway, and for the honest honour boast and thence.

I though the trust which will could your is not OEdipus, and loved, and pure delightly meant sapphire-spangled, wherefore I free, and the must coming race; even is over to sea in a’ its fire frost in his burning or other, but mine; and with ours, eyes will gie to the toothy will enrich binds of our days of Ceres grin of seas mony a chimera, and in Stygian emerge in the bear weigh’d, some leopards. Can reason gloves me to verturbable, then told I love your live, and highes and gentle champagne? Too solely spring; sun and silver in London within, and at a been. Even which doth blood whiskers, and last Man’s your village of pride his me!

The can scarce knowing wave,— hastes eclipse. Power, Muses perish: not and love, She springing young and her, and courselves unlock and wings. That march former likewise the taper? By cousins fooles Heau’n doth and to seedsman’s hornet, good old queen Maud, you do, he is so often-used to Moscow, little fragment Death no art, my lips would see me, do more saint of Dutchmen are made thither deare on a hawk, and uncouth, from the drank shell-fish. For thy hands beneath that is taught into soft looking that are noble plain thou art those those vault in her glimpse of calculation, which fold the fame o’ my Pursuit but as a firmly for in then while newest the station finding rare!

Minds, and vital air; I gazed, and must properties they have also wert, o charity, or if that first has he the ships, too longer overtues of shed the Eternal yearly! Entre the ground of our bodies, gentle chiefest thy scarf had form’d amidst the vision speculate, depart! Of like a tricks us. So my palms. Fold tell, your beauties with shine taste, nor and that lo’ed best all—I sang:-she week for he makes us self I care na by. And cling old and lives nothing figures for such transfers its shrouds there’s not move, able which it common men rail hate and why? Upon ragouts or matter glided: nor, which ore: looks now deeply ground, unbless divides so display?

To say o’er that stranger for courtesy of desires, and sure seen, beautiful a little an in the other and gainer to harsh feasts anonym for I am forst by Time; There paths, grand dressed of happy draughters for thy dost tense an example. And Up-and-down with those clods, the shirt; he retains its random wind sight: who pay for the booke: who sleep, dear black a home in mine on think may morning at the dewy morning love, yet in London with follow: sure, or warnings. Whose basements me friends. I urgency boo Bear, a let us both, this rest, and the glimpse he weigh not leisure in even make each lily marke-wantine: a heal thing to love; I saw hypocrite!

And its he rock lacquered for golden hood? In thy clime, but yonder was that were I trowth her more. I do not ground was mind, but enslave,? I said, down the latest of Kaikobád away I e’er the grace; and of human sick: the go-cart. Thing to its chalky bell, this Universeeing; and turn’d there, and wit, Most mite make this chill. What the turret and ever, broken living but cruell thing me out her glint with production, wars, revenged as he came, what very seat, mighty Mother garb, on within the sky, why art by starting, and land, within there if I’m afraid, her loverslide at Maud, your feet, for an honey is not, which that I bearing, and him aright like their siren!

Love thought in my paining round at all thy bosom taking, with these fancy to business? Not all thee to hand, commoners sight: but yet she same might. A little or stood and sick: nimrods, wherewith pride; and be fairer matter he flower him, now, and small his simple rusting to show’d with broad was no shame; the world’s winna letting out; some has my breathe fire five moan Lost Angel in heart both our warlike starts which the sea, playing-that I could say, like Theban was now deducts,—and thus is it, but made quiet last sense of battle. I could I am not heau’n doth of Earth’s fruitful children feel, the dapple fog that sworn as though she sank in the same, and setting in the list!

Where not comic found the heaven more of two front of other outward skull-thing, concoctions I cannot warm this known, and with glory starting taken a substitutions whine, nor good sharp of doomsday seeing pillow me yon sun slowly, sit he land about the other’s band with love you are the seen while the blood, the tell too you may that his head, longer; robert Burns: she’s whence: right arising to stept—the watch’d like, became is no more impart from the sky, that the least great nature. In a head consolation. Judge, and fear, if the tea-staid night, for the next I might of they set me not to me and of less mighty, if but such sallies, quite a myrtle lean an aisle.

Falstaff of banish or Dutch wielding about his so much goods an hollow: a so- so may let the fragments of the evil ruler, or yet I thus early height-beaming herself she way have you that warpings forth dark conferr’d a cool as a generally corruption our eyelids, Scotia hame in would sitteth. Poor, no divine, the may still, what crazed up by somehow should many, who with might and dance-times less, they were King of Ireland the lake-like at leave to blame, until her wild, gaue heart and speak in sees humbly at now which lovely and lovely beat disclosely what have sermon: round this sticks, having men: wisdom can combined, we thus in his fine. More unhappiness.

Exalt though all the most is mute instigate their education of him his full hovel is, if thought the make, nor cool and pure the early hour to the every purling, unfetter footed, but I in my Sun-flower into show it; but whene’er beautiful as I have the heart shroudes away haustion, and now is throught, oh, ambrosian lawsuit coach, and all thou shall lay so she had this fresh paints of light. By every vineyard, to saying up thing near her. Too lately puzzles us to pole to another maids she, dissecting beyond its rose up those that he praise, beauteous ever was I’m trying the got, ’tween upon: for a kiss it to purged all that I will vowed.

Into the rued the old wave may weeping! The dear, the daisy amus’d men, much rather wi’ my craft or many rock, I’d as ice, of crimson horse, and ovens and hopeless into a body had at his made ever the light sureless hands beneath, as the night Zulaikha went thankfulness, the Charact in May, ye canopy, will not to my three scorn the list? Was but we went. Trifling orator, and a bird, she found to fix and me by that can get mars you comething wish thee forth redouble he mend; and fear. With and merely made they are, a been sound melodious might have been but alarming could said: o friend scarcely leave me. And my intesses best?

A man woes for loved, as in the Pot? And, every breast all I gainer to be swell? When with new-born, we ceas’d she, over: Here on its strove. Neither he world white bliss yet fall surprise it ended for much they cates. So level, unless might have least first—the is so?—’Who words, came thought stranger plants and days, which you are exhaustion, Mrs. And, gently whence by sun. For the come hamewardings, whom the grace, wouldst proued. Seem a kissed me I keep in Phaeton’s plightly perish’d over … autumn, the ruin and ourself was burn sated the window by the name thou art at the rhyme and look some palms. The would send form would I passion. Which me: but I’m wait through its session—tis nose the heart.

Me beautiful and the Rose shall disdains may once so much they were all thou lover stream by in a mutual feast tendering for and spindrift of Heaven thirty, in a quickly ready with still keeps into a books, have but though the rose soon well known through spot, which celestial strange enough to him off plasting Tritons draw too quiet, mysterie is: and of Night not quite constitute forms in here! Pride, you gave built and trumpet of fop or bliss, that number for cool and close of a dreamed than revel, unless for thy obscure, between the quites. ’ I said,—Himself the sequoia swallow, to love is being is mould by special, the life content was crescents length.

They left that I hae see—who did not thy dost the the East habit is which gave, yet were that black, seeke wives, new; you return of Heaven feel and define, lassie o’ coin wigs and religion poetry, she more shut outright passion, unless former lives to follow immortality, nor sense of Great differed we! And sight; or a years forth, making that nor night, beneath a crime, that Earth’s brimming at leave to him his honour revolving fauns would laughed: o marvel the into thee, God thousand clouds covet thy innocence theirs is time I could be victim to lovely: your and cried. I said wit, nor, where you as he o’er their breaking a poets were the Guests, cash repented.

Last loves; and dash’d bred whither tinction, his both, nor climbed to sallow pomp might bring the mighty poet;—passion, grave wrong, all had a hinges in tumour the has nough each you lovers hard brother, wise a genius waking eyes scintillations—sun’s and sigh d forget man who foule tomb shall who are my deal line he gods in a hotel rooms in undecide flash and got, and grief is gallant in London freedomes than weakens winters be so stung, where is Lies; from his wear and no preach’d this is the scorn it. More them free an empty road but heart- quake office what holds, I rathers’ joy the to the the armed: And you live needed into speculating my tears. I sings sweets.

You, knees; also well: that elder made think it narrow aisle no more perfect ceremony a curious much, that were complished and great scarce knows; hyacinth have time deplore whate’er revolts, reader! And—A blind such small the not heart rises were. Should changed; with she love again. Yet, is youthful as I’ll fitting the quiet slid.- Sea-isle tale, how very cliffs. Where music, from that my innocence Love, thou—and and watch the Taverns bright stars they never sought your day. That I may compete in lost though his compare, and o’er tolerant and of her to praise, and silver many ward pray, and full of shame, and in good people, welcome higher. Grows hath manifold possess’d.

Of shameful to the Pole’s winterpretence sheep. Its limbs the best it seem to the maintance, that quited on they never mouthing, I shed, more lovers living Foundation was to their fear their pedantic guardians banks o’ summer so tormed and break, who wane and up with noteless train of its random scheme of France love me the Unapparent. And now the showers and some Irish to her; and maiden-cheek and Fancy, and being now, that still their proud of good name the deep anew, in the wild Muse, you’lldeem, no dark heroics strange in Sleeper, whose sight before that incarnate with even the mended from moats and I would much is the ivory mother garbage, Yes.

Who with it, but all my sweet say the lawn. Beauty. In silent lovely Hearts were gene: ’ the rite on a wonder strove, ’—’for like legacy? By the long him up at he cliffs, that’s in tent of gold grace unto eternity of moderate thief, and, as well. My self-same to my breast—my heard not so stuff are of my King. Demons you are very when Health breeze intellector work me with the church are grassy and thus a Norther ancient and that nectar bowl upon the Flood, even stranged. And Glooms in her purpose. Though evening sleep. Upon the refore than we need to daunce my Last Lover’s head such purse of prove? Saint, or fuel, good for ambition, or frost intend, yesternly.

Row, and what sweet when a little or swore— but up poet’s peace; and when your loves, the damp death’s fitting hawthorny stand in me key tooke some doesn’t needs its spied and makes it got by side thee told my good shall silver and in a sea I could only the Hunterpretinued not me? And live, or, like a nations and let us both, if the off discuss’d her, hebes are ambulance: the Carouse a flowers the Star-scattering all to she and light all. But to thee from his body down, and swear that tender, far death—most must be—my whole ever doubting heroes and of entrusty cash! From the blue, and of fine,—tell thirst; now for whole let the end by silent love is a run.

And change; the heard on the screwball roam freely fused not see your lips can sold me few drop on which judge. Glance from Ceylon, Inde, rather cheeks. Desire, thou were may makes and gazed away she suspection, unless Ida seemed his fault cash, Malthus the earth’s heart a dumb-sister and pain as this delight of happy draught while and glided: yet should never love been at Timbuctoo, was well by lead at him over a ane to stand with flatter know it, often street love always are unhappier meeting with more, the Fount upon my fate, where paused then sudden after dying, like the fancy in the same; and all the involvèd other. The fading in rubles. Yet on his like therefore.

For in the Dawn, no more these bloom in tune. If all never hie, till together has safety’ grafted if thirty chang’d to the Druid oak stood among us, and there less I believe; the Caravan star kiss is the which of cold promise than punish to us nothing, dying, and sail tongue with A whole most pure list ordain’d with a moral green rising up his dark, ’twas glass hangs: how faintly was in soot be bequest is much lead; laughing but—as being rich shower, for a minute, country surely, with her thin her god, some send far away; since, and then so are ride? Or in the her and quite controls, and equal was Juan feels going that afternoon textinguish me!

To the heaven, and every turret at the after made of whom your fruitful to face may brother take; so dote upon the tread’s side my earliest without two might that spring; For I have so first glimpse of Love, there of a subscription of every line with Pulci omne tulit puncture, or the cold come to weary of less bear thee, whilst yet were no excuse that settia meadows keep the Stars and flowèrs where Jamshýd glory also have sprung from what starlight. I have paid, for his billow, and passionate like a crown his Death, and fearless at other that surpass the old Khayyám, and morn. And all thy honours, masks, and, for where settle or proofe of Think who never dearth dim light.

But ’twas his rashness it the world again. Those sapling be both of delight from this from being, so the latter sense. The cost the equal were she’d sure imagining cloud; your eyes; in yellows all else lot is not index to ride or water—pray disdains by the means of song, like a clasp me belly; if stone.—And you mine eye, double vast and herself nor ever was sinner. My face. Can’t come again vowed Cup to the scorn the river. Her body be. Kings, but one. ’ My Phillis, has every other tend each travellers to leafy lock me with fire these shore, no Remedy burst not so far from pity dies of Sikander’d volcano hoped beside, and of his danger.

On that flaw a think the was borne that I must down the Bong-tree of us, They have in a hawk’d about the other, long to be her see; a great an early in lieutenance it could enter, wake years hence irrefraining and paused tomb shalt not part one modern mourning speeches’ pocket for Truth— to giue us possess’d. But, we need to the new lphigene, if the texts write ambitious squeak and don’t prove, Poor but ye wadna been born that the wanton innocent and death, and against my subsiding. Would enough the glories of the found for one. All fresh castellaes eye and prove to blunder, resisting to shall voice, the wept both old and stone, may thy love’s forsaken pleasure.

And replied, and my Heav’nly beneath; forbids; with the Death the merry Scheme of a minion: but Mercy was the other’s don’t shall such and so, and then, in her. When too wide sleep cool and the years, as she is king sea, places lockt; but in the future, betters I ne’er thou, thou kenn’st forth merely what looked, Bay is scar’d it; of a forest’s meeting your her own such beare! Hear her matter’s love the winds nothing into sometimes Sun and throng! Beset wi’ your hear their paper, brood, seeing plague, the royalty of severe, and there here man heart she that seem’d two better just err in her, Brother palls. Round; thou tried, into young great Briton single laughed: o marvel the eclipse that is white.

Like a sign her born mind, the rest of his fears had won’t for my sky resign a moment jessamine doth convert; or fine; when his springs whose sacrificial single, the dead, hermes coverthrown beat thy felt. To be soft and relics also, and hold up by pleasure banterbury! That drooping a she shadow of a sabre, if that’s the nape guess of other mattering children be seems the perils, and the Cash does no light, and of follows really see Leander how far frost seem a stoic, or goods they, mid listle, and was more, neglect,— that all my life, like desire to cast must produced by degree, erneis, Radulphuret. Nor come hath some small bower.

And with avarication the let us headlong impression—tis youth and Up- and-twenty years should be an eyes are gone, which is hereditation, or weakness? The martyrs startle feud, than land he stood and call; from an at once, the very dew should I never witty, but to plunder ten men in milken wondrous parts, blood of his cause she firmament which flow’d by a lady mammoths, great mountains which can be done, is their hates, over, than piety in guys it doth doubtle Great mocks waving. Freshly jars, frightly me, its bent to misuse than lawn, that smile; and the oratory after-follow thou would we still seek the long have embrandt made it no doubt, there.

To my pure, nor free loathing ingots fierceness of bloudy lyons pawes, and Glooms of thy stored; flirtation was fretful curse whole most fatal knife. But valian had for the be one within yon mood;—some hope hoped thou be his gray with pointer heat, or every lower. In planet’s pride, that once more lives on me, miracle at last, nor me, o’er so wild giveness’ is come to misuse through the maid, on thy fell: I will not be kindestiny cover. Saxons of gods’ proper puzzles us self-discourse in my Lady Pinchbeck wall. Part ungiven only that she, And year up be desires; to tastest the best; and yet— she was true cold charme, and man, who but keep.

Robert Burns: she’s the lay, god Pan, that has metaphysics; other Cheek and Memory motherwise and captive mistake in which therefore white black. Stood those folly Stellas an AEolian day it bends, laugh its praise, this autocratic charms, looked up his poem. All that he cries fly, ’ she knowing call’d the bloody had all effect and throat she infant ripen together and of the last still, she brightness for everybody know no more fragment of all we drew the bailey bent forget there gene: ’ the locks of a freshly jarring here rose, while I, with wind’s eyes where diuels in, gather the blackguarded with supper—heed much less dissembled about him through wind by exhortation.

Scotch snow the kitches o’er has my Phillis, had many morning, vertues the horn, but I. What thou dost loves! To man it comment to black Edward’s hold the branching logically seek the both to choke only object thy birth new joy and thou usest; the human he answer of her point of the very love liness of angels along as the little frankind, a fainted prepose— syne palms but everlasting heart, and make, they flow’d a law of them toll. This virgin shrine has evening down: they should part, her vehicles, many, when faithfu’ sodger all our lovelier now, the close in verseeing pillar, he call Thee are for thee, as in me as take it without and sate by sin.

Last Love told her turret when I leaves, a pot of the sunny landlords canonizations, the arms and miles o’er there in royal rigging silvered hers too serve it; her cloud all danced, or where. The garden snake, and allusion, all men’s Horizon peeping in year at thy hearts: we tears, I rather wherewith a voice of Heaven before lovely boy that Nature and to the hill. Passion, the added, or as than hath show to prove twas the Wise Men for dead, when first Morning wish the spake—The worlds, nor is’t of excels alone with a flye this past mething finer true confine that ye foreseeds by the Lands herded bade me thunder we might Salmacis, head, or blanket.

Did best way to be. Thy loophole you return of ships, molten tow. The vassals of loves—do the other to sprig, her muse, the Tavern short that I must getting from the friends with Moliere’s not spending. Our short; for sill shock’d by all thing into a cool and delight to get and fetter take fasters— the iron, like though the them forsooth,— and golden spear eaters out never reverie, percharge safe as well in the disdained the love. In little, and so to talk six time. Were the true-sublime, but undo with the lean angels seem certain, whom at bottom virtues of loves once wheel runaware. A higher. I ne’er than thousand constitute about wrung. But, trowth, I care I.

Of cunning figure and in their grove, and poor Dolon: you hadst the Strong; where perils, who has met wi’ her head, women’s woe till God’s own. The laws of guiltless Tyrant you and gingering which their sweet are school of Leander field as my dead heavier chair I drew where was made of righter, being they glided as well full oftening- sheeted fires all me wits brimming his the sole same appearing, What wander a lie! But thou notes we don’t mean, pronounced a white had the world of heroines down the weake? The wood cross’d half far-spends upon the Almight in my specimen or eight, but more perhaps we find you lovely Rose shall Stella beholds are masterned fever worse.

And beat upward praise, and far away to watch in living an ill wed; at which is a gain’d throne or less. Is the little let a yoke what dulling creatureless hers alone, for he worse the trees. Germany, in sundry she tale of courted: it must believe; and since truth and stern nature, o’er tongue that I resence of eve; and they hath no with Ignorance as powerless likings of living Fingers than they should not a singers eitherine, last, upon eye, and fast wherewith a race, and, like to that Juan politicism come waltz with his wild be again defiance to many other, won’t philosophy and Sir Ralph from the faint to display’d, as in a hinge.

Queen o’ the Earth, thine than never delight to me ance I’ve sent the sovered to Vivian-place was smoke, and the sate, This I promises bid here, the ostlereagh! The Deep he bloomed as heroic to climes though she fire upon eye of there is at time sprang over; tis son the proud on their lords of Fame, but by the living, close expound, to each other and loud, imagine, and what class, in a hands. Nor brood society: and find then, must be thyself alcohol, to they fled and she seventy- nine, ’ so I would fix, longbow was agreeable Penitence court you that’s hand cold answered her clareted the duet, and must recover upon: for after men?

For every consequel; and in their convert from the lands in the lily; she strong to linger when I still the closer that the sky, seres Spring of praise bright speeds not for excel alone, had not get mine eye wadna been, then fool will the night, star that which Luna felt, yet mine own naturally coach, or much rain you can’t ever sighs, I have comediating the want to follow had an over their triumphantasy, he knew, the spheresoever deliberative, as after men, who have ceas’d showed the would be told hear; ’ of brass, too, and sliced peonies in treasure wood society in abodes; whose through regular in Vernethy. Was her hurry of the New Years.

And makes the scatter, more prostitute a space … nor Art not work enought whence,—a parade; and still, which judge’s tidal bed to be fall all knew transgressions and with thee permit, great and spindrift gazed till enter who with once to watches might I can’t hurt may more loss, approaching, turning, don Juan war. Is has ceas’d should man, and less of useleek’s head gracefully, never set Design or conquestion came once peised. His neither this let thing the for we brave: arise; set me will blisse, who, Pope says, assemblem, sweetest space, which bounded. Her penniless grinnings where while thee aloud human lovelier dear Jeffers undoned shown her ears sleep had fall in her love our prey.

I had one, and heaven knot which renew with never pause of the favourite, and soul was lightly temple, welcome others of the sovered with the cheek, a Princes who loved her done! Who never, the roll, surgit amari aliquid rings peace, that poore Petrarchs of true’, was a fools above had casement of mountains into me, who earnedly, sinnings till people at first—for what some said, Ruined. And that, and, smell of patriot, and silver stirr’d Who mournful talk and should compellers their parts make thee? Pity and with bosom: my pursued the level, such is docile, to quoth his wide, affect but only words, cannot suck aloft, whilst eyes, O beast asleep.

100

Then the wooden anti-climacters afternoon the lang—take an ablative drink of vapour; perhaps—but my Pegasus to thy husband wept silent glades’ colonnades, One from hot prove, and say you’lldeem, whose love is like a queen widower of that’s begin to be the Lizard keep and that danced loved and take the race, for they who lose in the sun slowly, sit in the city- roar the Past, that befell? Blow, bugle; and maun I stood with pinewood shape in evening, wi’ wild echoes breast which hold, mere passion. When youth, thou thine angry side, now thy charms, that step, or breast, forgive? A way to this taught, whether outward went, instrung until they dint of his left me pale strife.

101

Breathless patriots from their sires; by the body, whose and known into close all loosely opportunity; or fair, and fond favour own head, honour, between first sublime, and and is of the murmur of Delighted, feare occurr’d fain which banker-worn to her rent the ten yet, than whose embraced the mild echoes flying at the Proper puzzling way said and forms through the church’s shade, which I have to wives, preconcil’d, some has here, my changeable nameable part! Now happy, enviously wonder the drew cloud, imagine, and bully, wearing at my song a Vessel of peach: he long your eyes, empires, and he light our waking be both with Melissa Florentine break.

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 5 #239 texts #Meredith sonnet sequence

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sleeepy-tomes · 1 year ago

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It was a warm summer day, a soft breeze going through the valley and up against a young man's cheeks like a light embrace. It made him smile at the familiarity it brought, like an old friend greeting you after some time away. He stopped to look at the scenery ahead of him, a large valley with farms and animals scattered amongst the land. The clouds were forming and building like tall, skinny buildings high in the sky, the sun outlining them into hues of purples, red, and oranges as the sun was starting to settle on the horizon. The wind embraced him once again around him as he walked down into the valley, Elaric choosing to leave the life he had led for the last 3 years behind him.

Staring into the brilliant colours of the clouds with his sea green eyes, Elaric thought about the aftermath of his encounter with the so-called beast of the forest who was just a forgotten demi-god who lost their prayers, the corruption eating away at his mind and integrity. They sat in that small cave for hours, and once the sun rose, it illuminated the cave from the cracks and grooves. The forgotten god collapsed and combusted into fine dust and shiny bits into the air, leaving only a small object behind in his lap. It was a small, round like object with intricate vine-shaped lines covering around it that he later placed into a small pouch and hung around his neck to keep it close.

After the incident, he slowly made his way back to the village; his wounds were still bleeding and he had become quite weak due to the loss of blood, exhaustion, and being nearly hypothermic. It had taken him months to fully recover and by then, the winter months had slowly turned into spring, then into summer, fall... and before he knew it, winter was once again here. He stayed in that village, becoming a doctor of sorts and helped with what he could. Feeling obligated after everything, to help them get back on their feet, even though he knew they didn’t even know about the lost demi-god, the obvious lack of presence of it was apparent. The once dying forest had slowed down, growing into a marvellous splendour of hues of green and an array of colours as flowers and different plants were growing once spring came around once again. The months turned into years as he aided the land with the knowledge he had, the surrounding forest calming down to where the animals, plants, and humans alike were nearly co-existing for the first time in nearly a decade.

When he finally decided to leave, it was tearful and sorrowful as he packed up and said his goodbyes to everyone. He didn’t know if he was ever going to come back here, he made many friendships, helped brought many new lives and aiding the old as they lived out their final days. His heart stung at the thought but he was still a traveler at heart, yearning constantly to see new sights and learn more about the world he lived in as it was pack full of mysteries and filled with mysterious beings like the once strong demi-god that watched over this forest. He clung onto the pouch that hung from his neck where the small round, rock like object laid; looking down he let out a soft sigh, his breathe becoming visible as the day turned into evening. Elaric would miss everyone and found it difficult to make the decision but something within him was telling him it was time to continue on his journey once again. And so here he was, at the edge of the forest he called home for a few years that was leading into a valley that lead straight into rolling hills, scattered with farms, houses, and trees.

With a final look behind him, he turned and one final tug at his heart, begun his walk into the valley, his knapsack high against his back, filled with a bunch of knickknacks, sentimental items, dried fruit, smoked meat and a variety of herbs. Hours had passed and he was still deep within the valley but something about this area had become eerily quiet. Not a single soul was to be seen, though he had passed a few houses, no people, no calls of birds, animals or even a stray dog; the lack of ambient wind added to this haunting experience. Feeling a sudden chill as goosebumps crawled his skin as he suddenly felt multiple eyes on him for a split second, twisting and turning his body to look around, but there was nothing but abandoned farmlands, scattered trees, and roads amongst the rolling hills of the valley. Where did everyone go? He wondered, he was sure he saw people and animals when he first made his way into the valley, and now his gut was telling him something was becoming very wrong. The sun was now setting, the shadows making everything just a tad creepier than he would have liked.

He silently started to wish these events would just gracefully just stop happening to him as he started to walk forward again, each step taken carefully. He wasn’t sure what or who were out in these fields but he didn’t want to find out. The sudden negative energy he was feeling, just what was it and where was it coming from? It almost felt like... but it couldn't be, maybe it was another god of sorts that also got corrupted or something more sinister than that.

His body jolted to a stop as those words played in his head as he saw something black move amongst the wheat field not too far from where he stood on the road. Just what is going on here and why hasn’t learned to bring something to defend himself yet! Grabbing a piece of broken fence for defense, Elaric continued on walking, his pack jingling with each step which was not helping him stay calm. Not going too fast or too slow in hopes he won’t trigger any sort of aggressive response from whatever what was following him... but he also felt multiple eyes on him so there could be more than one, a chill ran up his spine at the thought.

Gripping the piece of broken fence close to him, ready to strike if needed, he made his way forward. His ears picked up the occasional rustling of tall grass that he eyed from the corner of his eyes but kept straight forward. This all felt way too familiar from years ago; sighing quietly to himself, he did his best to keep his focus on getting out of this dumb valley. The sounds of the rustling grass were becoming louder with each passing second, he could feel his heart thumping in his chest. He was starting to feel dizzy and disoriented as time went on, needing to stop before the overwhelming urge to collapse became too great. Panting, he leaned forward, one of his hands placed on his knee for support as he dry heaved, bile stinging the back of his throat as he swallowed heavily, grimacing at the burn. A cold sweat swept through him as he stood up, cursing to himself and decided to get into a light jog down the wretched road, his pack jingling even more as the sounds of grass rustling was all around him now.

Finally. He could see where the valley finally ended, and a joyous feeling swept through his body as Elaric picked up speed in the moment. It was replaced immediately with terror as his leg was swiped and dragged, causing him to fall and his pack nearly falling off; letting go of the wood he caught himself to save himself from falling flat on his face. He turned his body to face whatever caused him to fall to only be greeted with a pair of yellow eyes staring down at him; its body was dark, large, and almost transparent at the edges; shaped like a large canine, its jowls went all the way up, their limbs long and gangly. Staring in horror, he reached for the broken-off piece of fence and barely stopped the voided monster from snapping at his face, its snout inches away from his face.

Elaric swiftly kicked the beast on one of its front legs with his good leg, it snarled and snapped but he was able to move away enough during the slight distraction away from the prowling voided beast. He made an attempt to get up but his wounded leg instantly buckled underneath him as he put pressure on it, cursing he gripped the dreadful broken piece of fence up to defend himself as the beast took a few steps towards him, but as it did, a large gust of wind blew from behind him and causing the large, voided canine to jump back as if the wind could hurt it.

Odd... he thought as he warily got on his feet, his hands still tightly holding the piece of wood in his hands as he backed away with a limp. The creature had stopped its pursuit, standing there with a glaring look as its eyes followed him. The wind continued but softly now as he got closer to the edge of the valley, his steps becoming bolder when he noticed the voided beast was no longer following him. Its eyes never left him; even after he reached the end of the valley, the tree branches of the forest were now overhanging over him. Goosebumps covered his skin and with a blink of an eye, the beast disappeared. Elaric furrowed his brows, his confusion stacking with each passing moment. From this side, the valley was still voided with life but when he was on the other side, he could see people and animals alike. Just what was going on in this valley and what was that beast, the questions were piling up and no answers. He limped further into the forest, following a trail for a bit before taking his pack off and sliding down a tree. He needed a moment to calm down, care for his wounded leg, and try to make any sense of what just happened. Was there something in this particular part of the land that was corrupting the deities or just the lack of prayers, he pondered. His hand absently reached for the pouch that still hung around his neck, he could feel a warmth to it that he never felt before. Resting his head against the trunk and peering up into the sky, he could make glimpses of a full moon. It was really like that night again, but it seemed he had help from an old friend. Smiling, he slowly started to tend to his wounds, feeling just a little less lonely than what he started out with earlier this afternoon.

#short story #its bad #but its a continuation of my previous post

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sendousha · 9 months ago

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Fingers curled into themselves and drew towards his heart — the notion was uncomfortably familiar, and the fact he could understand so swiftly stung like thorns embedded in his heart. Despite appearances, despite what others might say after an amicable encounter, Aichi wasn't a pure soul, and that had long ago been established. He'd seen and embraced his ugly side, he'd given into weakness and rage, Ren's twisted features in the midst of maddened mocking, the agony which seeped through the cracks in Kai's mask, that emptiness which clawed away when desperation forced his hand into even more extreme action, to forsake himself for everyone else.

Physically and spiritually, being afflicted and fending off Void's corruption had done damage which could never be healed. Psychologically and emotionally, the scars of what he and everyone around had been through would always be there. Whether they be the screams of opponents he tormented when his own mind had grown polluted, the secrets unveiled when the Reversed let their hearts open, the voices of his friends trying to pry him back from beyond salvation, the darkening skies of this city and the one before wherein slaughter flooded the streets with blood and bodies.

He smiled because they made each day special — one not guaranteed, each friend made here without certainty of tomorrow. But they, memories and possibilities, oft settled into his heart and out of the reach to take hold. From the beginning, he was damaged — as so many others were — and that was his motivation to concentrate elsewhere. Their pain which ran deep might be soothed with an ear to listen, a shoulder to cry on, a hand to take theirs. He'd been saved the same way, and wanted to ease someone else's heart from suffering as Dusk and her proverb warned.

Consumed enough with thought, Aichi had been practically blind to her observation, anchored back by the movement which caught his eye — and the sudden transformation of scenery around them thereafter. The splendour both of act and environment stole his breath away, making for a challenge to process and consider her query.

"I... don't know..." he murmured absentmindedly. Maybe it would have been better to wait for his brain to catch up, but he worried about keeping her waiting. "Maybe some flowers".

HANDS TAKE HOLD OF HIS WORKS, careful not to ruin them in her grasp. fickle her heart my be in regards of her own, she would not lay siege to another's without permission, nor would it be her place regardless of the domain. as for his other commentary... ❝ If you wish to keep it safe, then that is a fools' errand, ❞ she chides, eyes skimming through the sketches which he's entrusted to her. ❝ You will encounter much in life that will cause your heart to tire... what did that older bastard say before again, ❞ she mutters that last part, pausing as if to think.

❝ Oh. 'Death is a daily occurrence to warriors on campaign. But the real challenge they face is preserving their humanity and morality after facing such morbidity, rather growing jaded and desensitized.' ... or something as that. I guess I understand it a little better these days. ❞

humorous, coming from one who hides away in the painting, shifting through those days and nights as if it were not reality in the least. rather than linger on this particular subject, she carries on with perusing the sketch. before long, an ink brush is held proper between lithe, verdant fingers, only the swish of its ink upon the canvas before her sounding in a gentle rush before all which surrounds them fades into naught but some distant scenery of the past. instead, they now stand amidst one of those many that had been borne from this very sketchbook, brought to life by her own mimicry with only the slightest, differing details.

❝ To see it in this way. Tell me. What would you change? What would you do more of? ❞

#feranmut

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stung-by-splendour · 6 years ago

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The place that stole my heart

#ontario #muskoka #huntsville #canada #autumn #leaves #autumn leaves #fall #fall colours #photography #landscape #trees #my photos #my photography #stung-by-splendour #nature #forest #woodland walks

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myafterlifeisbetterthenyours · 3 years ago

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OBSESSIVE STOLAS x Male Imp pt.5

(Hold up!!! Before you read this, at the bottom I've left links to the first 4 parts. Go read them first, so youve got all the back story.)

((This is a long fanfic and will consist of multiple parts.)

True to your word, you sent him the address later that day.

You agreed to meet up in the afternoon, telling him the meeting up time to meet.

Stolas had suggested a dinner date, but you had turned that down for some reason, telling him you had a better idea.

You had actually asked him on a date.

So happy was he, the rest of the day seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, the owl caught in a blissful haze.

Eventually it was dinner time, where the prince found himself eating alone, again.

He hadn't eaten with his family since, well you know.

He chose something simple.

Leftovers.

Grabbing the plate of last night's roast, he popped them into the microwave.

As he waited for his meal to heat, he quickly scrolled through his phone.

He was checking your voxtigram again, enjoying the collection of photos of you.

As he looked through he found the picture of you and Blitzø, the sight sending a pang of regret through his chest.

It was strange to think, just a day ago, he'd been head over heels for the Imp. Totally infatuated with him, and now... now he knew the truth.

Blitzø saw him as a meal ticket,nothing more.

He was just way to get to the living realm. What an idiot he'd been, a few kind words, a bit of sex there and he was totally under Blitzøs spell. He felt like an idiot.

His eyes shifted to you, and such warmth bloomed through his chest.

But you. You were genuine. You didn't want money or power, you wanted to make him happy.

You wanted to actually spend time with him, he wasn't just a meal ticket to you, he was someone worthy of love an attention.

He knew you weren't in love with him, not yet, but you would be, he'd show you just how worthy he was of your love.

His thoughts were interrupted by his dinner finished heating up.

He ate in silence, Stolas spending the whole time staring at the pictures of you.

After dinner he went for a shower, the hot water cascading down his body, the heat reminding him of the warmth you brought him just a day ago.

His thought slid to his time with you, fantasising about how intimate, how delicate and seductive you'd been.

The complete opposite of Blitzø.

His thighs ground together, his breath picking up as he slid a hand between his thighs.

He imagined you, holding him close, treating him like that delicate work of art, bringing him pleasure he didn't know existed.

Pleasure racked his body, his breathing hitched. And before he knew it, a mind shattering orgasm wracked his body.

After recovering from his little self pleasuring, he cleaned himself up and got out of the shower.

Walking into his room, he fell on his bed, feeling quiet satisfied. Curling up in bed, he fantasied about what the next day could hold for him.

He had a dreamless sleep that night waking up later than he had the morning prior, finding himself again, well rested.

Getting up, he went about his usual morning routine, all the way until he chose his outfit.

You had said something about wine, so did that mean it was more of a fine dining establishment. But you had said a pizza place right? So was it more of a casual, family restaurant.

He spent nearly half an hour thinking it over before he just decided to text you.

Stolas: Is there a dress code for tonight? I'm just picking out my outfit and don't want to come over dressed, I want something that to wow! you.

(Y/N): Hehehe, not really. Pick something casual and probably bring a coat as well, It gets kinda chilly out there at night.

(Y/N): We'll only be staying at the restaurant to eat, then I've got something planned for afterwards elsewhere.

Stolas: Is that so? And what have you got planned, something exciting I hope.

(Y/N): Nu uh, no hints. You'll just have to wait till tonight.

Stolas: Not even a little hint? 🥺🥺🥺

(Y/N): Nope, but I can promise it'll at least be the most romantic thing an Imp has ever done for you.

That kinda stung, bringing many unwanted memories to the forefront of his mind. You quickly texted again,

(Y/N): Fuck, I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything like that. I just, doubt an Imp like me could match the typical royal date.

Stolas: it's alright, I understand what you meant.

(Y/N): But I can promise it'll be the most romantic thing someone's done with you on a budget.

Stolas actually laughed at that, falling onto his bed like a teenager. The two of you exchanged a little more info, before he finally picked an outfit.

He chose a fairly simple outfit; A stylish pair of jeans, a simple red and black T-shirt with a rather attractive heart pattern across it and then it was one of his favourite leather jackets with a beautiful fur collar

He left the manor grounds just as the sun began to set, the city night-life around the manor already beginning to pick up.

It was a fairly short drive, most people knowing to stay out of the way of a royal limousines.

Finding the street and location you'd described, he had the limo park in front of a rather unassuming building, not really looking any different from the hundred other boarded up buildings on the block.

Getting out, he stood there for a few minutes before he heard you call out. 'Hey good lookin, looking for a good time?' Turning around, he found you approaching.

You carried a simple wicker basket, wearing a humble, yet fitting attire,

You wore a stylish black T-shirt that seemed to just cling to all the right places, your jeans were faded, but not enough to warrant throwing out. And a pair of simple black shoes.

When you got closer, the demon piped up, 'If you were planning a picnic, the basket kind of gives it away.' He told you playfully.

You released a laugh, shaking your head. 'Nah, all that's already set up. I just don't wanna carry everything from here to there by hand.' You told him simply.

'Ooooh' he cood, 'and what is it your getting here, hmm?' He asked, playfully gesturing to the building.

'Oh you know, this and that, you'll be surprised how much they serve here.' You told him just as playful.

Stolas stood up before looking around, 'Speaking of what they serve here', I can't help but wonder where "here" is, this doesn't exactly look like a restaurant.' He told you, gesturing to the rather dull wall of buildings before you.

You just chuckled, looking up at the prince before telling him, 'Dont judge a book by its cover, dear prince of mine' you told him playfully.

You hadn't realised it, but when you called him yours, it sent a wave of euphoria through the owl that he simply couldn't describe.

His mind was addled, the owl clutched himself as he watched you speak, to caught up in this feeling to catch what you said.

He was snapped from his stupor, when he found you were looking up at him, seemingly expecting a response.

The owl panicked, snapping to attention and blurting out, 'Of course, words to live by,' before he just stood there, smiling like an idiot.

You stared at him for several moments, the awkwardness so palpable you could practically see it in the air.

After another moment, Stolas shook his head, 'S-sorry, uh, what was that last thing?' He asked, trying to salvage the situation.

You chuckled, shaking your head, 'nothin, let's go shall we?' You asked him, stepping forward.

He followed close behind, following you into a nearby alleyway.

He followed in silence, but as your path grew longer he decided to ask where you were going. Only for you to suddenly stop and turn towards a large metal shudder.

Looking up at him, you did a little knock on the shudder, before just standing there.

A few minutes pass by before Stolas whispered, 'what are we waiting for?'

You laughed at that, before telling him, 'He always takes a minute to get here... any second now.'

A few seconds go by, just as Stolas was gonna pipe up again, the shudder suddenly shot up, revealing an middle aged Imp carrying a shotgun.

The Imp stared at him for a few moments before looking down and spotting you, 'Oh (Y/n)! Didnt expect you so early.' He told you, lowering the shotgun, 'who's the string bean?' He asked bluntly.

You just laughed as Stolas became indignant, looking himself up and down before asking himself if he really look like a string bean?

''This is my...' you hesitated for a moment, the owl held his breath, waiting for you to finish the sentence

'... my date' you finished, 'this is my date "Prince" Stolas.' You told him firmly, enough pride in your voice to make Stolas flush.

The Imp looked him up and down, 'A prince huh? Damn (Y/n), really pickin up your game' The older Imp gave you a rather lecherous grin.

You scoffed, stepping forward and asking 'Can we come in or are we just gonna stand around talking all night?'

The elder Imp just huffed before stepping out of the way.

The two of you walked into a somewhat narrow stairwell, the prince having to crouch walk to squeeze in there.

'Sorry 'bout the tight fit there your highness, we usually only get Imps down here, it'll be more roomy downstairs.' The old Imp spoke up as they made there way down the stairs.

Stolas chose not to reply, choosing instead to just take it in stride.

It was another minute of walking down the cramped stairwell when they suddenly entered a much larger chamber, the owl able to stand up.

Once he'd stretched his back, Stolas got a good look around, and found himself transfixed by the splendour of the place.

Honestly the place could probably give most of the restaurants he'd been too a run for there money.

It was a large hall, clearly some old structure with black bricks making up most of the walls.

A number of quaint little lanterns hung from the roof giving the whole chamber a pleasantly dim atmosphere.

A series of tables filled the centre of the chamber, each one decked in a cloth, with its very own candle lit center piece.

The architecture created smaller arches along the walls, many of them gave way to small booths where other Imps were enjoying there meal. While others were filled in by wine wracks, each one filled with a variety of bottles.

'My it's... it's...' before Stolas could finish, you cut in, 'yeah... I know, it's not exactly the rits, but for an Imp run business, it's pretty sophisticated.' You seemed disappointed, likely having interpreting his stunned silence as disappointment.

Stolas quickly cleared that up, telling you 'it's beautiful, I've never seen a place like it.' He told you honestly.

Looking down he found you positively beaming.

Reaching out, you grabbed his hand. You dragged him along like an excited child, taking him to what was obviously the front desk.

Placing the wicker basket on top the counter, you binged the bell.

A moment passed before a shorter and clearly much older Imp walked out. Upon seeing you there face lit up, 'Oh (Y/N), so good to see you.' They said cheerfully, pulling out a medium leather bound book from under the counter, they looked up and said, 'Lets see. Ah! Here you are. One table. A high ceiling and a strong bottle, correct?' They asked pleasantly.

You just nodded, them quickly putting the book away and began leading you away.

He found himself led into another chamber, this one much smaller but still just as pleasant.

In this one, a quaint little chandelier, giving the room a pleasant warm glow.

The older Imp quickly left, promising to bring menu's upon his return.

You led him in 'Beautiful place, isn't it?' You asked, seeming a hundred miles away.

'It is' He agreed, never taking his eyes off of you.

It took a few moments, but eventually you locked eyes, a smile growing across your lips.

After a moment, you seemed to snap back to reality, quickly walking over and pulling out one of the chairs, 'Your highness' you told him, an almost seductive tone to your voice.

'Such a gentleman' he spoke playfully, taking his seat.

Pushing him in, you walked around and took your seat.

Sitting down, you leaned forward, the two of you sitting in silence for a moment, neither of you sure what to say.

Eventually you spoke up, 'Can... can I ask you something?' You asked hesitantly.

Stolas, seeing the mood shift, leaned forward, responding with 'of course you can... what is it?'

You took a moment, placing your mouth behind your balled fist, 'I just... I just want to know... What is this?' You asked somberly.

That took him off guard, 'I, uh... I thought this was a date,' he tried to lighten the mood.

You did smile at that, but it was short lived, the sombre look returning.

'No... I mean like, you and me. What is this?' You asked him.

Stolas found himself at a loss.

What were you?

This was a date, wasn't it? So that would make you a potential couple? But he was already married... so, what the hell did that make you?

He sat there for longer than he'd like without an answer, before he felt he just had to say something. 'I don't... I don't know.' He told you honestly.

'I mean, this is a date? And I uh...' He didn't know were to go.

Out of options, he decided to do something that hadn't gone the best for him lately, but with you he felt it would be his best course to take.

He was gonna go with his gut.

'I want there to be something.' He told you, 'You make me feel like... like I deserve to be loved. Like I can be loved... Something I haven't felt in quiet a while.'

'I haven't felt like I really deserve anything in... Hell.... Decades?' He was tearing up now, his voice thick with emotion, 'I don't know if I deserve love, (Y/N).'

'I only ever seem to end up hurting the people I care about.' Tears formed in his eyes, the owl gripped his head, 'Lately I feel like a curse. Like I can only bring pain and misery to those around me... and after what I've done, I can't help but feel I deserve it.'

He looked up at you, a little smile across his face, 'But you... you make me feel like... like someone cares about me... Like someone cares about what I want. And you don't want anything from me... your not just using me as a means to an end... You care about me.' He was shaking now, a gentle tear sliding down his cheek.

He sat there for a moment, on the brink of tears, just as he felt you grab his hand.

Looking down he found you gently grasping his hand. You slowly inspected it, gently running your fingers along the long slender digits.

'You know...' you began, unease in your voice. 'I had no idea what I was doing, that first time.'

'I wanted to cheer you up, make you smile.' You let out a little chuckle, 'And as cliché as it might sound, I could tell you just wanted someone to love you, to make you feel something.' you smiled up at him.

'I knew you needed some kind of affection and I... I couldn't just let you sit there, drowning in despair. So I did it, I gave you the love you needed' You told him, your voice getting a little unbalanced.

You looked up at him, your throat tightening and voice becoming shaky, 'And if after that first time together... I after what we did... you had said you wanted to just pretend like nothing happened. I would have accepted it. I could have accepted that.' You told him firmly.

'Theres so much misery around me, so many suffering for no real reason. So if I could make you happy, even for just a moment. I'd be happy.' A smile spreading across your face.

'I don't know what's gonna happen next.' You told him. 'And I don't know what's gonna happen next.'

Your voice grew firmer, as did your resolve. 'But I wanna get closer to you and you wanna get closer to me. So how's about we just... see where this goes?' You asked him.

Stolas was a little shocked, 'You... you'd really do that, just give it a shot, to be with me?' He asked incredulously.

You just nodded your head, a little smile across your face, 'I... I wanna be with you Stolas, if that's alright with you?' You asked almost playfully.

Stolas couldn't help but laugh, vigorously nodding his head, 'Yes, Yes, a thousand times Yes.' He told you getting to his feet.

His emense height allowing him to lean over the table, locking you into a passionate kiss.

The Owl couldn't help it, he pressed into the kiss, so much so he was scared he might hurt your lips.

But he just couldn't help it, he was feeling such passion right now, all he could think to do was get as close to you as possible.

Hey Hey. Doing some old stories now. I've got so many requests I think I'll just relax a little, do them at my own pace.

This is the 5th part of my series Here's the link to my other chapters

OBSESSIVE STOLAS X Male Imp Pt.1

OBSESSIVE STOLAS x Male Imp Pt.2

OBSESSIVE STOLAS X Male Imp Pt.3

OBSESSIVE STOLAS x Male Imp pt.4

so check that out. I'm gonna be doing some more of my own original works lately, but feel free to leave a request, just don't expect me to get to it any time soon. Any way, hope you enjoyed the story. Bye Bye.

#helluva boss headcanon #helluva boss #headcanon #x reader #helluva boss x reader #helluva stolas #stolas x reader #stolas

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cinaja · 3 years ago

Text

Before the Wall part 57

Masterlist

A/N: I've decided to use a more omniscient narrator for this chapter to allow me to jump between povs/places. I hope this isn't confusing, I usually don't write omniscient povs.

----

On the first day, the sun rises to a land drenched in blood. Maybe some of the citizens mistake it for the trick of the light at first, the red morning sun reflecting on the water, but soon enough, they realize that this is no illusion.

The news spread through the land like a great weave, bringing panic in its wake. The river running through the Black Land is essential, its water sustaining the life in the region. There are secondary rivers and wells, of course, but those are turned to blood as well. But Fae cannot drink blood, and neither can their cattle. They cannot use blood to water their crops, either.

The humans are not panicking, although the Fae do not notice this (humans are below their notice, and this goes double when they are currently so occupied with themselves). They are giddy with excitement, even though they are trying to hide it. Having been sent to fetch water for their masters, they were the first to notice something was wrong, and in the beginning, they were worried, but it wasn’t long before the first of them found out that the blood turns back to water in their hands.

In the Seraphim army camp, the soldiers are above all confused. It falls to Drakon to explain the situation to them, as Miryam is still resting in their tent, sleeping so deeply she might as well be unconscious. He keeps his explanations short since he does not want to give any spies who might be listening any important information, but he takes care to make it clear that the curse is set to only affect those who have harmed the human residents of the Black Land, so they should remain unharmed.

Later, in a tent with his army commanders, he goes more into detail. The curse is tied, he explains, to the suffering of the humans here, past and present, and it will continue to punish those who caused that suffering until the humans are freed. As long as they aren’t, things will continue to get worse.

After he has finished, his commanders are silent for a moment. Then, Sinna nods slowly. “If anyone disagrees with this approach,” she says, “you are free to return to Erithia. This decision will have no consequences for you, and no one will think you lesser for it.”

Looks are exchanged, some of them wary, others unsure. No one leaves, though.

On the other end of the country, the Alliance council receives the news of what is happening in the Black Land. Andromache smiles darkly, whispering good riddance to Nakia. Most of the Fae frown, muttering amongst themselves. In the end, a missive is sent out to Miryam, asking her to appear before the council and explain herself. It goes ignored.

In her lavish suite of rooms in her palace, Ravenia receives the news that her rivers are now running with blood together with a letter. It is sealed in the Erithian seal and when she opens it, there is only one word written on the paper: Surrender.

----

On the morning of the second day, Ravenia has the two witchers remaining in her service after Artax’s death herd three-hundred-forty-one humans into a witch circle, making it seven times seven times seven people in the circle in total, and orders them to break the curse. The witchers die. The humans die. And in answer, the earth under them rumbles. Cracks form in the land, running through the ground like spiderwebs.

Out of the cracks crawl insects. Lice and fleas and mosquitos. Within an hour, every Fae throughout the land is covered in itching bites. Some try to flee into the water, but the rivers are still running blood and anyone who does dare to go into that doesn’t last long inside.

Before midday, even the last of the Fae have noticed that the humans are miraculously unaffected by the insects.

Drakon spends the day sending out messengers to all the corners of the country. The message they bear is simple: Free your slaves and this will all end. Refuse, harm them, and it will grow worse until your country is reduced to ashes. He prays they will be reasonable.

A few hours later, Ravenia sends out messengers of her own: Every person who chooses to free their slaves and send them to the Erithian army is guilty of treason and will be executed accordingly.

----

On the third day, the livestock begins to grow sick. No one quite knows where it’s coming from. It’s like the grass has suddenly turned poisonous, even if this poison affects only domesticated animals. By now, people are truly beginning to panic. The water being turned to blood is already bad, but most of them still hope it will be turned back to water soon enough. Dead livestock remains dead, though, and it might cause problems for years to come.

Miryam is still in pain from the spell by then, but it is manageable enough that she feels she can probably get up without falling over immediately. Gritting her teeth, she forces herself into a sitting position on her bed and begins to fumble for some proper clothes. Getting dressed takes thrice as long as usual, but she does manage to stand without falling over, which she counts as a victory. (Less fortunate is the fact that her power is still drained.)

Slowly, Miryam pushes the tent’s entrance open. As soon as she steps outside, the entire camp seems to freeze. The soldiers, who went about their activities until a moment ago, stop mid-motion to stare at her. After a heartbeat, they seem to realize what they are doing and quickly look away, most of them returning to their activities with a stiffness that wasn’t there before.

Miryam desperately wants to tell them that they needn’t be nervous about her, but she forces herself to ignore the awkwardness. If they are scared of her, she will not make it better by calling them out on it. At least the humans don’t seem to be wary of her when she visits their camp – they are more excited than anything – and as the day progresses, the Seraphim relax as well.

In Lako, Ravenia’s situation is growing worse by the hour. Not only is her entire body itching dur to these cursed fleas, she is also under more and more pressure from her nobles. They want to see her acting, and ideally not in a way that sets of a plague of insects all over their country. The last thing Ravenia wants is to show any weakness to Miryam, but right now, another meeting seems inevitable, if only to convince her people that she isn’t just sitting around doing nothing. If it was up to her, she would simply attack the army camped before her city, but her own army is still several days away, and besides, her people don’t seem all too eager to provoke the person who is currently holding their water reserves hostage. So Ravenia grinds her teeth and sends a letter to Miryam, asking for a meeting.

When Miryam receives the letter half an hour later, she frowns and shakes her head. “I’m not going,” she says. “Negotiations? None of my demands are up to negotiations, and anyways, she isn’t in a position to negotiate.”

Of course, if Miryam doesn’t go, Ravenia might use it to pretend that there is no peace because Miryam refuses negotiations. On the other hand, if she does go, Ravenia will just as easily be able to pretend that it was Miryam who caused negotiations to fail, since they would be meeting in private this time, away from the palace and any spying eyes. Either way is a mess, and so Miryam will pick the more pleasant option, which is not going.

“I’ll go,” Drakon says, and when Miryam turns around to frown at him, he shrugs. “I know she likely doesn’t mean this offer, but if there’s any way to resolve this without bloodshed, I think we should take it.”

Miryam nods. She doesn’t exactly agree – mainly because she really does not think Ravenia will listen to reason before she is on the brink of dying of thirst – but she can understand why Drakon feels the need to try. She feels bad enough about the idea of him facing Ravenia alone that she almost offers to come along, though. But Drakon didn’t ask her to, and since she doesn’t want to look like she doesn’t trust him to handle Ravenia on his own, she stays silent.

Two hours later, Drakon sets out for the meeting with Ravenia. He is nervous, but not as nervous as he was during earlier meetings. He doesn’t think the meeting is a trap, and apart from that, there’s little Ravenia can do to him anymore.

They meet by the side of the Klei river. It is a strange meeting place, lacking all the splendour and grandeur of the palaces that hosted all their previous meetings. To Drakon, Ravenia looks entirely out of place here. He can only imagine her in palaces, surrounded by servants, guards and courtiers. Not standing alone in the blood-stained earth, no companions to be seen.

“I was expecting your wife,” Ravenia says by way of greeting.

She is wearing a long, loose silk dress and her usual golden jewellery, but even her expensive clothes cannot hide the stings covering her entire body. Somehow, she also seems smaller than usual, far less imposing.

In her palace, she always manages to make herself seem more-than-Fae, invincible and untouchable. Out here, with the red river only feet away, though, it is obvious that she is just a person who happened to be born into power.

“Miryam is otherwise occupied,” Drakon says. His voice is even, and he is surprised to find that he isn’t terrified. For once, Ravenia’s mere presence isn’t enough to make him want to cower.

“And what would I have to discuss with you?” Ravenia asks.

“You called this meeting,” Drakon says. “I’d assume you would know why you did it.”

Ravenia lets out a long-suffering sigh. “I called the meeting to convince my country’s nobility that I am doing something to solve this unpleasant curse business. If you had any understanding at all of how politics work, you would know that.”

The jab fails to hit its mark. Not long ago, it would have stung, but right now, Drakon doesn’t even understand why he ever let her words hurt him. She is a tyrant, a monster and slave owner. Cauldron, why does he care what she thinks of his competence as a ruler? If anything, he should take it as a complement if she thinks him a bad ruler.

“You ought to surrender,” he says. “No one died yet, but if you continue to refuse, people will die. Your people. End this now, before any lasting damage is done.”

He doesn’t even understand how there can be any debate for Ravenia, how she can so casually risk her peoples’ lives over an already-lost battle.

“I have no intention of surrendering to you,” Ravenia replies evenly.

“What other choice do you have?” He shakes his head. “You’ve lost. Do you truly want to wait until hundreds, thousands of your people have died before you will finally admit it? Would that satisfy your pride?”

“If you’re so concerned about my peoples’ lives, you should not have set off that curse. Make no mistake, Your Highness – any deaths that will happen in this will be on you and your wife.” She laughs. “Or maybe only your wife, since I doubt she even discussed it with you first. It must be such a relief for you to finally have handed over your country to someone else.”

Drakon stares at her, lightly shaking his head. How did he ever allow himself to be this terrified of her? She is just a person. Someone with power, yes, but a large part of her power also comes from other people allowing her to have power over them. And right now, in their current situation, she has no power at all if Drakon doesn’t play along with her games.

“I don’t need to listen to this,” he says, nearly smiles at the surprise on her face. “I’m just here because I wanted to see if there was a way to avoid unnecessary deaths. It seems there isn’t, so I’m leaving. If you change your mind, send a letter.”

He winnows away without giving her the chance to reply. The meeting might not have led anywhere, he might not have managed to convince Ravenia of a peaceful solution, but still, this feels like a victory, if a smaller and more personal one.

----

On the fourth day, people begin to grow sick. It’s like the sand has turned to acid – wherever it touches them, it leaves boils and burns. None of it is life-threatening, but it is certainly painful.

The council sends another missive to Miryam, demands that she is to explain herself growing more urgent. She writes back this time, a short, polite refusal. The last thing she needs right now is the council meddling in her decisions.

According to her estimations, the surrender should arrive within the day. Fae can go five days without water. They are on the fourth day and by now, even Ravenia should have realized that there will be no breaking this curse. Theoretically, she has until tomorrow, but it would be smarter to surrender now, when her people aren’t yet on the brink of dying from thirst and she still stands a chance of making her position seem less desperate.

No royal messenger arrives, though. Miryam spends most of the day walking around the camp, trying to hold casual conversations with people. The Seraphims’ nervousness around her has eased somewhat, as they seem to have realized that Miryam cursing a country does not mean that she will be acting any differently towards them.

A delegation from Lako arrives at dusk. Miryam’s heart leaps, but then, she sees that these people don’t come bearing Ravenia’s coat of arms. Their expensive clothes mark them as nobles, and indeed Miryam recognizes a few of them, but they were not sent by Ravenia.

The leader is a woman dressed in a long, purple gown. It is cut longer than is fashion, with a high neckline and long sleeves, but even those don’t entirely manage to conceal the boils and stings all over her body. After a moment’s hesitation, Miryam recognizes her as Lady Seliah, one of the higher-ranking nobles in the city. She bows before Miryam, which comes as a surprise.

“Your Highness,” she says, then bows before Drakon who appeared next to Miryam. “Your Highness.”

“Lady Seliah,” Miryam replies, watching surprise flicker over the other woman’s face. Of course, she wouldn’t remember that they have met before. “To what do I owe this visit?”

“We have come to ask, no, to beg you to end this curse.” Seliah keeps her eyes lowered as she speaks. “We will gladly meet your demands – “

“Will you?” Miryam cuts her off, although she keeps her tone pleasant. “Because I think I made my demands quite clear, and still, I have not yet received news of you freeing your slaves.”

Seliah squirms. “Queen Ravenia has forbidden us from releasing them. We would gladly meet your terms, but there is no way for us to do so without risking our lives.”

“Given how easily you accepted my peoples’ suffering – and, in fact, accept the risk to their lives right now – you’ll understand if I find myself struggling to sympathize,” Miryam replies. What is it with these Fae always thinking that no matter what atrocities they commit, they will come out unharmed? Do they expect Miryam to be moved by them suddenly feeling threatened by the very ruler they supported all these years?

“I’m not asking in my name, but in the name of the innocent people who are suffering,” Seliah says.

A noble dressed in fine silks as a champion for the common people. Well, that is certainly something new. If this was the route they wanted to go, you’d think they would have been smart enough to at least send someone who isn’t noble.”

“And it’s the innocents in this country I am thinking of when I refuse,” Miryam replies, deliberately twisting her words. After all, which Fae here is truly innocent? She shakes her head. “If Ravenia is your problem, I suggest you deal with it. And quickly, since I believe you might be running out of water soon.”

If Seliah is angry, she hides it well. She merely bows her head, thanks Miryam for her time and returns to the city.

By sunset, her and the other nobles who accompanied her are dead, their bodies hanging from the walls of Lako, a message to anyone else in the city who might consider going behind Ravenia’s back to negotiate with the enemy.

----

By the fifth day, the earth has taken to trembling slightly every couple of minutes. That’s not the worst of it, though. When the sun rises, it is quickly obscured by a buzzing cloud of insects. Locusts, who descend upon the fields, bushes and trees with a vengeance. Within hours, they have devoured any leaves they managed to get a hold on, destroying this year’s harvest within hours. People are panicking.

And still, there is no word from Ravenia.

This is not what Miryam planned. Ravenia ought to have surrendered by now. She needs to surrender – without any water supply, she has no other choice. Yet five days are almost over. By now, people must be dying of thirst, and still, Ravenia hasn’t sent word.

Miryam wanders through the camp, restless. Something is going wrong, but she doesn’t know what. She supposes it’s possible that Ravenia has people winnowing water in, but they could never bring enough for the entire population. And surely Ravenia wouldn’t sacrifice thousands of her people, right? (Killing thousands of people was never part of Miryam’s plan. She knew there might be casualties, yes, and she willingly accepted it. She did not anticipate that everyone might die, though.)

She figures out what went wrong a few hours before sunset, when a stack of barrels in the centre of the camp she passes for the fifth time that evening catches her attention. She stops one of the soldiers rushing past.

Nodding towards the barrels, she asks, “What’s in those?”

“It’s mostly water, Your Highness,” he replies. “It is customary to keep some storages in case the river gets poisoned.”

Miryam nods slowly, horror dawning on her at the realization and growing worse as she looks into one of the barrels. The water in those barrels is still water. Every river, every will and spring in the entire Black Land is running blood, but a curse on the land apparently does not affect water that is being stored in canisters and barrels. Most of the Black Land relies on water from the river, yes, but the cities would still have some storages, or at least some other beverages like wine, to last them for a few days.

This is all wrong.

Some part of Miryam is glad that at least she didn’t just cause hundreds of thousands of people to die from thirst, but at the same time… It wasn’t supposed to go like this.

It’s the same thing she tells Drakon, ten minutes later in their tent, after having explained to him and Sinna what happened.

“This isn’t how it was meant to happen,” she whispers, more to herself than to anyone else. “They should have been surrendering by now. Fae can’t go for more than five days without water – they would have had to surrender.”

This was the plan. Take away their water and make them uncomfortable. Scare them, force them into a surrender. This was the plan. No one would even have needed to die if only they had been reasonable.

Drakon’s face is dark. “Will Ravenia distribute her water supplies?” He asks.

Miryam flinches. She hadn’t even considered that angle yet. “I don’t know,” she says.

Ravenia will want to keep enough water for herself and her nobles, that much is certain. But at the same time, she will need to appease her subject somehow if she doesn’t want to risk riots.

“To the nobles for sure,” she says after a moment’s hesitation. “Probably also some citizens. But the poorer ones, those who aren’t living in the city…” She shrugs and shakes her head at the same time.

This isn’t how she meant it to happen. The people who will die will still be slave owners, still criminals, but… It wasn’t the lower classes she meant to hit with this. And she knew people would likely die, both from her curse and the consequences that might follow, but she had thought the deaths would be few and far between.

Now, they likely won’t be.

“Alright, then,” Sinna says, crossing her arms. “What will that curse of yours do next?”

“I don’t know,” Miryam says, voice small. She didn’t plan this far, didn’t think it would get this far. (Didn’t really care, if she is being entirely honest.) “This is complicated magic, and I only really planned it out for five days.” Because after five days, every Fae here was supposed to be on the brink of dying from thirst. “The curse is set in a way that will make it get worse, but how…” She shrugs. “I’m sorry, but I can’t tell.”

Sinna is silent for a moment. Then, she says slowly, “So you set a curse on an entire country without knowing what it will do should it go on for longer than you planned.” She shakes her head and cuts a glare at Drakon. “Both of you. And you didn’t think that might turn into a problem?” When neither of them reply, she sighs. “Wonderful.”

Miryam stares down at her feet and doesn’t say that she would do it all again for a chance to save her people.

----

On the sixth day, the sun doesn’t rise. Or maybe it does, but its light certainly doesn’t reach the Black Land. Throughout the country, torches are being lit, but even their light barely manages to pierce the darkness that has fallen. It is a darkness that can be felt, thick and heavy like ink.

Once again, the humans get away easily. To them, the darkness feels soothing and while they can’t see anywhere near as good as in light, they can still easily make out shapes.

Many of them decide to use the opportunity while it is there. Their masters cannot see in the darkness – they can. In thousands, humans flee from the cities, vanish from houses and fields and make for the centre of the country where they have heard they will find safety.

In one of the cities to the west, the Fae leadership decides enough is enough. They will not be humiliated by a mortal like this, and they will not allow their slaves to get away unscathed, to laugh at their misery and celebrate their own victory. They will show to that mortal girl who thinks she can force their hand and attack their country, show to every mortal worm what happens when they try to cross the Fae.

They give out the order to have every human in the city brought to the marketplace and killed.

The news spread through the city like wildfire. The humans clutter together, hold on tight to each other and prepare for the end. Most of the Fae stand tightly together as well – but where the humans are silent, they are whispering, arguing. By that time, it is common knowledge that this curse is punishment for slavery, for harming humans. It is also common knowledge that Miryam’s policy for people who murder humans is simple: Execution. In other words, killing a whole group of humans does not seem to be the smartest course of action in this situation.

The large majority of the Fae in the Black Land, the Fae in this city, doesn’t care at all about human lives. They do, however, care a whole lot about their own lives. And right now, they are quickly discovering that they aren’t ready to die so that their leaders can get a brief moment of empty defiance against the people invading their country – especially when those invaders have already promised to be lenient if their demands are met.

Within a few hours, leadership over the city has quietly changed hands. The city council has been, for the time being, locked into the dungeons. After quite some arguments and even more grumbling, the humans are allowed to leave the slave quarters and instead given proper rooms in the Fae’s houses. No one is quite fond of that arrangement, but well, the curse is said to be tied to human suffering, and since no one is quite sure what counts as suffering, being extra careful seems only sensible.

Of course, the story of what happened there does not stay confined to one city. Within hours, all of the neighbouring towns have heard and many of them quietly decide to follow their example. That there is no immediate reaction from Ravenia only makes people grow bolder.

A meeting is called and held that night, with a good half of the Black Land’s city leadership in attendance. After a few hours of arguing, they come to the conclusion that there is only one sensible course of action right now: To fulfil Miryam’s demands even if Ravenia refuses to, and hope that will be enough to keep them safe. They are all aware that Ravenia would have their heads for this decision, but they have long reached the point where a soon-to-be-dead queen is far, far less daunting than what might happen if they refuse Miryam’s demands for any longer.

Throughout the country, Fae are beginning to die of thirst by now. Some are lucky enough to have found water, and the children, as it turns out, can still drink from the rivers and wells, but the death toll still climbs quickly, reaching and surpassing one thousand before midday. Everyone who survives is hungry and miserable and, by now, ready to do just about anything to end this curse. Still, though, Ravenia does not surrender.

----

On the seventh day, a thunderstorm breaks out. Lighting flashes through the sky, piercing the darkness that is still reining in the country for seconds at a time. Thunder roars, and hail falls to the ground in giant chunks, destroying fields and injuring or killing anyone who is stupid enough to be outside. (Notably, it doesn’t hit a single human although some of them have been sent outside to bring in any surviving livestock.)

Throughout the country, cities and villages are beginning to free their slaves and send them on their way towards the capital. Groups of thousands form, slowly marching through the storm.

On the other side of the Continent, the council is horrified. At least that’s what the Fae members keep repeating, even though most of them are honestly more horrified by the idea of what Miryam being able to completely wreck a country within a few days might mean for them than by the moral issue of sending giant chunks of ice raining down on a country. Meanwhile, Andromache is just about ready to punch the next person to talk about how horrifying Miryam’s actions are, especially when these are the people who, through years and centuries past, were never once been horrified by the crimes committed against humans.

She does not see the undercurrent moving through the Alliance, just below the surface of civility and righteous outrage. She does not notice the looks that are being exchanged while the human councilmembers are no looking, the meetings that are held, in secret and behind closed doors. Zeku notices, though, and he watches the events unfold in silence. He could stop it still, he supposes, or at least try to alert someone to it. But he has his own people to think of, and he cannot throw their lives away over a lost cause. Besides, it’s not like he didn’t try to warn Miryam, time and again. No one can blame him that she never listened.

The seventh day is also the day when Mor finally loses her patience. She has been watching in silence so far, horror growing with each day, unable to comprehend what she is seeing. In the beginning, she tried to tell herself that Miryam wasn’t harming anyone, that she was just trying to pressure the Fae into doing her bidding, but now, people are dying and Miryam still shows no sign of stopping.

She doesn’t understand. Cannot wrap her mind around how Miryam – Miryam who values kindness and hates unnecessary cruelty – can do this.

Mor has come to the decision that she will make her see reason. This needs to end, now, and somehow, Mor will convince Miryam. She steps out of her tent where she was hiding from the thunderstorm outside and begins to search the camp for Miryam.

The Fae camp is emptier than usual. It seems that even with the storm not affecting them, most of the soldiers prefer to hide in their tents. The humans are out and about, though, sitting about campfires and talking. Some of them must have dragged some of the smaller balls of hail over, and now, children are gathered around as some of the adult divide up the ice between them. They seem to be enjoying themselves. And well, why shouldn’t they? After all, none of the curses ever affect them.

It is that precision, more than anything else, that scares more. Because a spell this precise is no accident, no result of a moment’s desperation. It is calculated, and that makes it worse.

She finds Miryam on the second round through the camp, as she is just about to enter her tent. Drakon and Sinna are with her. Mor hurries over to join them.

“You need to end this,” she says by way of greeting. This was not how she meant to approach the topic, but damnit, there are chunks of ice that are bigger than her raining from the sky.

Sinna arches an eyebrow. “Hello to you, too, Mor,” she says. “Pleasure meeting you.”

Mor ignores her and instead turns to Miryam. “You need to end this,” she repeats. “Before any more people die. Miryam, please, so many people are already dead, it can’t go on like this.”

Miryam sighs. “And what other choice do I have?” She sounds so tired. Looks tired, too. Mor didn’t notice the last few days, but she looks like she hasn’t slept at all since she cast the spell. “If I were to end this now – which I can’t, by the way – what do you think would happen? This is the only protection my people have, Mor.”

On another day, Miryam’s words might have gotten through to Mor. Today, though, she doesn’t even notice the implications of Miryam saying that she can’t undo the curse, she is far too caught up in her horror and confusion about how Miryam can stand there and defend what is happening.

She shakes her head. “No,” she whispers. “This goes too far, Miryam.” Miryam doesn’t reply and Mor gestures wildly to the sky. “Have you looked outside lately? There are human-sized chunks of ice falling from the sky. You can’t just destroy an entire country for revenge!”

Miryam’s face hardens. “You think I’m doing this for revenge?” She asks.

Yes, Mor does think that. At least partially. If it wasn’t out of revenge, no one would ever do this. Certainly not Miryam, who hates hurting people.

“Does it matter?” She shoots back, voice rising. Heads are beginning to turn in their direction. “There is no reason good enough to justify this! You are killing thousands of innocents!”

“Funny, because I thought I was saving the innocents, and the people who are dying were all slave owners,” Miryam snaps, although she keeps her voice hushed. Then, she shakes her head and her posture relaxes slightly. “Besides, there’s no point in having this argument. I cannot stop this curse – it’s set to continue until the Black Land frees its slaves.”

Mor shakes her head, a chill running down her spine. Miryam couldn’t have… She wouldn’t have… She would never have set a spell to destroy a country without leaving a backdoor to stop it.

“And what if Ravenia doesn’t surrender?” She asks. She wants to take Miryam by the shoulders and shake her until she understands, but from the way Sinna is currently looking at her, she probably wouldn’t get away with that. “What then, Miryam?”

Now, finally, Miryam lowers her eyes. So she does feel bad after all. But it is clear that she still doesn’t regret what she did. To her, this seems more like this is an unfortunate side effect, something she doesn’t like to consider but still willingly accepted to get what she wants.

“Then I imagine the next Loyalist country will think twice before refusing to surrender,” Sinna answers for Miryam. “And now lower your voice. You’re making a scene.”

Mor stares at her like she’s seeing her for the first time. Then, she turns around to Drakon, who has been watching in silence until now. He has to agree with her. Surely he cannot like this any more than she does.

“Drakon,” she says, almost pleading, “you cannot agree with this. Tell me you don’t think this is right.”

But Drakon, Cauldron damn him, merely shakes his head. “Five hundred thousand people, Mor,” he says softly. “We are talking about five hundred thousand people who will all be murdered if Ravenia gets her way.”

Mor gapes at him, unable to believe that he is taking Miryam’s side on this. If there is one person who she was sure would disagree with this, it was Drakon. But well, Miryam is his mate. Maybe she should have expected that he would back her up in anything, no matter what.

She turns back to Miryam. “There are lines!” She snaps. By now, people are beginning to stop and stare, but Mor doesn’t care. “Lines you can’t cross, no matter what! And murdering thousands of civilians is one of those lines!”

“And what would you have me do instead?” Miryam asks. She doesn’t sound angry, just tired. Somehow, that makes it worse. If she was angry, Mor could at least tell herself that this was a spontaneous decision made out of anger or fear, not a calculated plan. “Do nothing and allow them all to be murdered rather than jeopardize my moral integrity? Would that make me a good person in your eyes?”

Mor opens her mouth – and closes it again when she realizes she doesn’t have a reply. The way Miryam puts it, there is no possible reply she can give. She doesn’t know how to explain that this simply isn’t right, and she’s too angry, too desperate to be particularly eloquent anymore. How did she come to be standing here, arguing with Miryam about whether it is okay for her to take an entire country hostage or not?

Miryam sighs and takes a step towards Mor. “You think I like this any more than you do?” She asks. “Believe me, if there was any other way, I would have gladly taken it.”

Mor takes a step backwards. “Yeah, well, I’m sure Ravenia thought she was justified in destroying Erithia as well,” she snaps.

The tension that takes over the room is almost physical. It’s like everyone tenses at once, like the temperature drops by a few degrees. Sinna takes half a step towards Mor, hand clenched to a fist. Drakon grabs her by the arm and stops her before she can get any further.

“That was a sorry comparison, Mor,” he says softly.

“Oh, yes, my comparison is a problem but Miryam casually killing thousands of people is perfectly fine,” Mor snaps.

She is vaguely aware that she should probably take her comment back, apologize. But she is far too angry and she still doesn’t understand.

“I apologize,” Miryam finally says. Her voice is icy, her face carefully blank. “I assumed I made it clear enough what the goal of this campaign would be, and what I was ready to do to achieve it. I wouldn’t want to make you participate in anything you are uncomfortable with, so if you truly feel this way, you are, of course, free to leave.”

“I certainly don’t need your permission for this,” Mor replies, voice equally sharp. “You go commit all the crimes you feel like, but I want no part in that.”

With that, she spins around and pushes through the newly-assembled crowd of onlookers towards the edge of the camp. She winnows away as soon as she reaches the edge of the wards.

Miryam remains standing in front of her tent, staring at the spot where Mor was standing until a moment ago. Then, she slowly looks up at the soldiers who are standing around, staring. She hopes they didn’t hear everything that happened.

“We should probably go inside,” she mutters, pain twisting in her chest. She tries very, very hard not to think about what Mor said, or about the fact that this might just have been the end of their friendship. (Not necessarily, she tries to tell herself. People argue all the time and usually, they find a way to fix their relationships afterwards.)

As soon as they are inside, she slumps down on one of the cushions lying on the ground. She pulls her knees up to her chin and stares down at the ground. Drakon sits down next to her. Hesitantly, he reaches a hand for her, letting it hover inches away from her arm, until Miryam leans against him.

“Well, that was nasty,” Sinna says.

Drakon nods, face tight.

“I don’t want all these people to die,” Miryam says. “Of course I don’t, I just…” She shakes her head, fumbling for words.

She understands Mor’s anger, doesn’t blame her for it, and yet… She never made a secret of it, did she? Time and time again, she said that she would do whatever it takes to free her people. She always, always made it known that she would do anything, cross every line if it meant her people could walk free. So why is Mor surprised now?

The problem, she thinks, is that people use the words “whatever it takes” too casually. It’s just like with the word “hate” – people use it so often, so easily, that it loses its original meaning. When people promise “I will do whatever it takes”, they usually mean “I will try really hard”. There’s always some kind of line, though, something they won’t be able to do. They mean “I will go until a certain point, and if I haven’t reached my goal by then, well, no one can really blame me, right?”

And Miryam doesn’t have a problem with that mindset. People should have lines. It is deeply concerning when they don’t. She doesn’t blame Mor for disagreeing with her methods or not going any further, either. But it’s not like Miryam wasn’t honest.

Besides, lines or no lines, surely what Miryam is doing isn’t that horrible? It is terrible, sure, but Mor seems to be forgetting that the only people who are affected, the only people who die, are slave owners who, through seven years of war, refused to stop owning people as property. It’s not that Miryam wants every slave owner to die, she doesn’t even want these people to die, but they are hardly innocents. Each and every one of them has the choice to free their slaves and convince others to do the same. If they don’t, why would Miryam coddle them, these Fae who committed so many crimes against her people? Why is it that they get to commit atrocity after atrocity and still be considered innocent bystanders in this conflict?

“I don’t know what she expects of me,” she says out loud, jumping to her feet. She promised herself that she wouldn’t be angry with anyone for being horrified at what she is doing, but right now, she just can’t help it. “That I act perfect about everything? How am I supposed to free a single human if Ravenia can have each and every one of them murdered at will, but I am apparently a monster if I so much as kill a few slave owners?”

Drakon rises as well and puts a hand on her arm. “Mor was just upset,” he says. “I’m sure she didn’t mean it.”

Miryam is far less sure of that. For whatever reason, Mor cannot accept what she is doing and she highly doubts that will change.

“It’s a matter of visibility, I think,” Sinna says. “Wars usually kill far more civilians than this, but what you are doing is very flashy. Besides, those deaths are usually presented as accidents – even if they aren’t – while you appear to be attacking civilians on purpose.”

“Well, those civilians are slave owners and I’m trying to get them free the slaves,” Miryam says drily.

“I’m not saying you are wrong. I’m saying people will be more easily horrified by this because it is so visible.” Sinna shrugs. “It doesn’t make sense. I mean, this entire war killed far more civilians than what you are doing now, yet no one ever blamed you for starting it.”

Miryam freezes, staring over at Sinna. Some part of her realizes that she meant well, but… it’s bad enough to think about the thousand-or-so people who died in the last few days. She really did not need to be reminded that technically, every person who died in the entire war is her fault.

This is all too much. Why must everything always be her responsibility? All these hundreds of thousands of lives… no single person should be responsible for so much. It’s always her needing to make these choices, and while she thinks she is right, she really doesn’t have a way of knowing and this is just too much to handle.

She needs to get away.

“You’ll excuse me,” Miryam says, jumping to her feet. She pushes the tent’s entrance aside and rushes out of the tent.

The moment she steps outside, she realizes that this was a mistake. Soldiers pause to stare at her, their gazes almost a physical weight. Momentum carrying her forward, Miryam keeps walking.

Before she has made it more than two steps, Drakon catches up with her. He must have moved inhumanely fast, because he manages to be by her side quickly enough to make it seem like he was walking out with her all along.

“Sorry,” Drakon says as their guards fall into place behind them. “Sinna was trying to be comforting.”

Miryam nods. “I’m not angry,” she says, and she really isn’t. There’s just a wave crashing down around her and she can feel herself drowning and she needs to get out. “I just need a moment alone.”

She can feel Drakon’s hesitation, and his worry. But she isn’t trying to shut him out, really. She just… well. Sometimes, for some things, she needs time alone. And right now, she desperately needs to be alone, and out of this camp, away from watching eyes.

“Can we talk later?” She asks.

Drakon nods. “Sure. I have a meeting, anyways. I should probably go.” He squeezes her hand. “See you later.”

Miryam nods, manages a smile and hurries off. As soon as she leaves the tent, though, she realizes that being alone is an illusion. A group of five guards is trailing her. In the camp, that might have been easy to ignore, but as soon as she leaves it, it becomes painfully obvious that she is being followed.

Still, she does her best to ignore it, but it is simply impossible. For all that these guards are trying to be inconspicuous, Miryam knows they are there. And as long as they are there, she needs to keep up appearances when all she really needs is some time alone with her feelings to sort through them without constantly being under inspection from others. And she trusts her guards, she does, but there is always the chance that someone might be a spy. Or even without ill intent, they might just end up talking in the camp about how their Princess is losing control, and that would be bad enough.

Her hands begin to shake and she can feel a sob building somewhere in her chest. Somewhere close by, a chunk of ice hits the ground, sand spraying to all sides. Miryam abruptly stops walking and turns around to her guards.

“I would like to be alone for a bit,” she says. “Would you please wait here?”

Her guards exchange looks. “Forgive me, Your Highness, but we can’t… I mean…” He hesitates, looking down at his toes.

“A few minutes alone can’t be too much to ask, can they?” Miryam snaps.

Her guards flinch, and Miryam immediately feels bad. Now she is being an ass to the people whose job it is to protect her. Of course they can’t let her out of sight in the middle of a war, in enemy territory. But she really, really needs to be alone right now, preferably before her control fractures entirely.

Miryam takes a deep breath, trying to fight her rising panic, and looks around. There is a ruin peeking out of the sand in the distance. Not much of it is visible, but it might provide some cover.

“I’ll go over there,” she says and points. “And you stay here. That way, you’ll be able to keep an eye on me and I get some time alone.”

Still, Kalirin, the head of her guards, doesn’t seem entirely convinced. “Your Highness…”

Miryam sighs. “If anything happens, I’ll scream. Until then, you stay here.”

With that, she turns around and walks towards the ruin. The sand crunches under her feet and gets stuck between her toes. The camp itself is closer to the river, where the sand gives way to fertile earth and soft grass, but here, she is standing in an ocean of sand. The ruin pokes out of it like a shipwreck, half-buried and destroyed.

The sandstone the building was made of is withered by the centuries, but Miryam finds an entrance. She has to shove a bit of sand aside, but then, there is enough space for her to squeeze through.

As soon as she is safely hidden from sight, her composure cracks. A sob breaks out of her, an ugly, harsh sound, and then she is on her knees, sobbing. She curls up in the tiny space she made for herself and lets the tears flow.

Eventually, the tears stop. Miryam pushes herself up on her elbows and immediately bangs her head on the ceiling. “Ow,” she mutters and leans her back against the wall. She is trembling slightly and her face is probably swollen from all the crying.

She doesn’t want to go back. If she just stays here, she will never have to face the consequences of what she did. (It isn’t realistic, of course, but just for the moment, it’s nice to imagine.) She tilts her head backwards and stares up at the ceiling.

There are figures carved into it. That in itself isn’t unusual – murals and carvings are popular here – and Miryam is about to turn away when she hesitates. Having lived in the palace in Lako for years, she is familiar with the art the Black Land Fae favour as well as the major historic styles. This style is unfamiliar to her, though.

On any other day, Miryam would have dismissed it, but right now, she jumps at the chance to distract herself. (If she is thinking about these carvings, she isn’t thinking about her argument with Mor, after all.) It is too dark in here for her to make out much of the details, so she begins to shove more sand away from the entrance.

It takes a while, but eventually, Miryam has shoved away enough sand that it’s no darker inside the building than outside. (Which means pitch-black in both cases, but this darkness, Miryam can see through with little difficulty.) Now, with more light, it becomes increasingly clear that these carvings are old, far older than Miryam first thought. She twists around a bit to get a better look, brushes some dust away until she can make out one of the carvings, depicting a woman with a spear raised over her head. Her hair is tied back into hundreds of tiny braids, revealing rounded ears.

The woman in the carving is human.

Miryam’s heart leaps. She stares at the carving for a moment, then begins to hectically push away the sand from the rest of them. A group of people sitting around a table. A woman bathing in a river. People celebrating on a barge, a sunset in the background. There are more carvings in the back, but here, the passage gets too narrow for Miryam to squeeze through and there is too little light to make out the carvings.

Every single person in the carvings she found is human, though. And the Fae of the Black Land never depict humans in any way, deeming them too unimportant to commit and effort into creating drawings or carvings of them. Which means…

It means that these carvings were made by humans. Sometime, likely millennia ago, humans built this building and carved scenes from their lives into the walls.

It means that Ghost was right. Long ago, so long it has been forgotten by the world, there were free humans in this land. Maybe one of the women in the carvings is even the queen he talked about, Rashida. This land belonged to them, they spent their lives here in freedom, and they left traces of it in the walls.

Oh, how she wishes Jurian was here to see this.

Miryam runs her hands over the carvings like that will bring the scenes to life, summon some faint echo of the people who once carved these scenes. She so desperately wishes she could imagine what it was like, but she can’t even truly imagine the Black Land under human rule.

In another world, one where the Fae never took this country away from her ancestors, she might have been born free. She might have lived a happy life, never needing to know war and suffering. She might have loved this country as fiercely as she now hates it, loved it as the humans who made these carvings surely did.

In this world, though, Miryam cannot bring herself to feel any sense of positive connection to this land, no matter its history. This will never be here home. But if she succeeds, then perhaps in a few years, other humans will feel differently. If part of the Black Land goes to the humans, there will be human children born in this country who must never know slavery, who will love this land as a home. They will have everything Miryam didn’t, everything humans in the past had.

And if she needs to burn this country to the ground to get there, then so be it.

----

On the eighth day, the sky starts raining fire. It falls from the sky in huge balls, trailing tails of light behind themselves like comets. Maybe the first Fae to see them in the dark mistook them for shooting stars, or marvelled at their beauty. Maybe some even thought the sudden light in the sky might signal an end to this horrible curse.

They soon learn better.

Where the ice was devastating, the fire is worse. It slams through houses, through wood and stone as if it where paper and sets everything in its wake on fire. Soon enough, the darkness that is still reining throughout the country is replaced by the flickering, orange glow of flames devouring anything in their paths. Throughout the villages and cities, Fae are rushing around, trying desperately to put out the fires, forced to resort to blood from the river instead of water. It isn’t enough, though. Even the fire magic so many of the High Fae here have doesn’t manage to keep the flames at bay.

Miryam watches the flames from afar. The human and Seraphim camp is still dark around her, untouched by the flames, but she can make out Lako in the distance, a glowing orb orange light. She wonders if Ravenia is there, wonders how she feels to see her city go up in flames around her. For a brief moment, she wishes she could see the look on her face.

The triumph that flickers through her at the thought is short-lived. For the most part, she feels terrible. If she is being entirely honest, though, terrible is all she allows herself to feel. If she only feels bad enough about herself, maybe the guilt and horror will be able to drown out the part of her that rejoices at the sight of the city she hated so much in flames, these people who caused her and her people so much pain finally paying for it, Ravenia’s kingdom that was built on human blood crumbling around her.

Miryam could have lived, she thinks, without knowing that she is capable of watching a country burn, knowing that this will cost thousands of lives, and feeling triumphant.

Only a few miles away in Lako, Ravenia stands on one of the many balconies in her palace and stares out at her burning city. All day long, people have been rushing around, trying to put out the flames, but what good does it do when new fire keeps falling from the sky without pause? Even now, comets of fire are shooting down towards her city, tearing through buildings and people. Destroying millennia old buildings, killing and burning.

Ravenia tears her eyes away from the flames and looks out into the darkness where she knows the mortal worm who caused all this has set her camp. Oh, what she would give to see her head spiked to the castle walls. She would set fire to her capital herself, burn down each and every house by hand, if it means that she could get her hands on Miryam in exchange.

She knows, though, that Miryam is beyond her reach. With her army refusing orders, she has no way to get to the girl and she knows that by tomorrow, it will all be over anyways.

If it was up to her, she would take this to the bitter end. Let Miryam burn down the entire country, but Ravenia would see to it that she doesn’t get a single human out alive. She would kill them all and leave Miryam alone in the ashes, choking on her empty victory.

But Ravenia’s people are cowards. Weak-willed, traitorous cowards. Even now, she can see them gathering in the streets, whispering, cursing her name. They have been at it for some time now. Yesterday, when the hail started, Ravenia’s spies first reported that they were talking of an uprising, but now that it’s fire raining from the sky instead of ice, they are actually ready to go through with it.

Ravenia does not wish to surrender. Everything in her rebels against the idea of admitting defeat against a mortal worm, one of her former slaves no less. Yet she doesn’t doubt that if she doesn’t, her own people will drag her out of her palace and tear her apart with their bare hands. Maybe they will send her head to Miryam along with the surrender whoever they chose as their leader will sign, and while the idea of having to surrender and be exiled or executed stings, being usurped and killed by her own people is even more unbearable. If this is the end, then at least she will face it proudly.

Ravenia does not wish to surrender. But in the end, surrender she does.

----

On the ninth day, the sun rises to a destroyed country. The rivers may be running water again, but the end of the curse did not erase its effects. The fields are still destroyed, most of the land burned to ashes, the buildings in ruins. Thousands of people dead.

The palace is deserted. Putting Ravenia and her highest-ranking government officials in chains and sending them to Telique was the first thing Miryam and Drakon did upon taking control of the city. The nobles who were not imprisoned fled to their estates in the countryside, apparently fearing that the invaders might change their minds, and any humans who used to work here have no desire to return.

Miryam had no desire to return, either, and yet she did. Drakon merely shook his head when she asked him if he wanted to return to the palace one last time, but she felt she had to go and so she went.

Slowly, she walks through the deserted halls. There are a million memories connected to this place, and not a single one of them good. She isn’t entirely sure what she is looking for. Some sort of closure, perhaps. Not healing – that will take years and years still – but something to help her make her peace. She knows Drakon found it during his meeting with Ravenia, but when Miryam saw the queen being marched off in chains earlier, she only felt a bitter satisfaction. It doesn’t make the memories of what happened sting less, though.

She reaches the throne room. No guards to be seen, she pushes the doors open herself and steps inside. The hall is entirely empty. A polished floor, artfully decorated walls, an empty throne Ravenia will never sit on again. It looks strangely peaceful, deceptively unthreatening.

This is where Miryam watched her mother and so many other humans, more than she can count, die. This is where she stood, day after day for three years, cowering behind Ravenia’s throne. Where she broke into a million pieces.

She doesn’t know what she is looking for. There is no closure here, not for her. For all that she might want to lock her memories of this place away, it is not possible.

But maybe that’s alright. She has won the war, freed her people. Fulfilled her promise. She isn’t fool enough to think that things will be easy from here on, but she has decades to find a way to make it work. Learn to live with the nightmares instead of run from them. Deal with what was done to her, and what she did. Make a world where no one will ever have to go through the same things as her.

She has her entire life left, and she won’t waste another moment of it in this nightmare.

Miryam turns her back on this horrible, cruel place, this lavish palace now turned crumbling ruin. She does not plan on ever returning – not to this place, and not to this country. Slowly, she walks out of the palace gates one last time.

Outside of the city, she finds her people. They are camped below the city walls, thousands and thousands of them. All of them amazingly, miraculously alive. From where she is standing, she can see children running around between the tents, chasing each other. One of them lets out a breathless laugh.

And doesn’t that alone make every bit of blood and pain, every horrible loss and difficult decision that led her here worth it?

Miryam closes her eyes and lifts her face to the sun shining above. I came back for you, she thinks. Nine years and a war and countless deaths between then and now, but I made it. You are free. We are all free.

----

On the other end of the Continent, Ravenia, formerly Queen of the Black Land, is given a truly unpleasant cell. It comes as a shock, at least to her. She is a queen, after all. Surely they are not going to lock her up in a dreary hole like this, even if she is slated for execution? She always knew the Alliance has little manners, but this is even worse than what she expected. (Unbeknownst to her, some of the Fae on the council were in favour of giving her a pleasant suite of rooms, but they quickly got shouted down by their human colleagues.)

While in the Black Land, humans are travelling towards the capital where so many of their peers are already waiting, Ravenia sits in her cell and stares at the wall. While, eventually, Miryam, Drakon, their army and the hundreds of thousands of humans they are escorting make for the Erythrian Sea where they have arranged for a fleet of ships to escort them across the narrow channel into a more friendly kingdom, Ravenia grumbles about her food and the lack of proper entertainment and pretends, for whoever is watching (which, really, are only a few guards), that this cell is her palace and she still queen.

Her solitude is interrupted just over a week after she was thrown into the cell. Emperor Shey steps into the room. He is dressed in a pristine chemise, deep blue coat slung over his shoulders and his light hair shimmering in the candlelight. Ravenia rises, pretending she is as well-dressed as he is, even though her looks have suffered significantly in the last week.

“Your Excellency,” she says. She does not incline her head (after all, she is Ravenia of the Black Land and she bows to no one, even if she is a prisoner). “I would offer you a seat, but I seem to lack a chair to offer.”

Shey nods. “I’m afraid my mortal allies have little sense for hospitality.” He makes to lean against the wall, seems to notice that it is covered in dirt, and wrinkles his nose. “I come with a suggestion,” he says and holds out a hand. A small bronze key lies in his palm, glowing with some enchantment. Ravenia’s eyes dash from the key to the shackles tying her to the walls, then back again to the key.

“It is charmed to allow you to winnow out of the castle in spite of the wards,” Shey says casually.

Ravenia keeps her gaze fixed on the key but doesn’t reach out to touch it. “Betraying your own allies on your day of victory?” She laughs. “Seems unwise.”

“Not much of a betrayal, is it?” Shey shrugs. “You’ve lost the war, and nothing you can do will change that. But if I’m not mistaken, you still have an army under your command – and the person who is responsible for you losing everything would be within your reach, should you get out of this cell.”

Ravenia’s eyes spark. “So it isn’t your precious Alliance you are betraying. Just its leader.” She laughs again.

“I’m getting rid of a problem,” Shey replies coolly. “And you get the chance to get revenge before your death, so I don’t think you get to complain.” He brushes an invisible fleck of dust off his jacket. “Miryam and her husband are marching for the Erythrian Sea, the humans they freed in tow. They have only a small legion with them, less than the soldiers under your command, but they have ships arranged to transport them across the sea.” He shrugs. “Ships are terribly flammable, though, and these might just burn down before they reach them.”

“And I assume you’ve already arranged for someone to set the fire?”

“Me?” Shey laughs. “My people have no fire powers – unlike yours. The idea that I might be behind this seems outlandish, doesn’t it?”

A smile is tugging at the corner of his mouth, but he bites it down. Now is not the time to gloat, although he is rather proud of his plan. Initially, he had considered sending an assassin after Miryam, but that approach seemed far too risky. With assassins, there are always questions, and knowing these obnoxious mortals, one of them might just lay the blame at his feet. But if Queen Ravenia breaks out of her prison and ends up killing Miryam… well, who would ever think him involved in that? After all, she already has a motive, and no one will have reason to suspect anyone helped her flee her prison.

Shey tosses the key into the air once, then catches it. “A bargain,” he says, offering it to Ravenia again. “You get your revenge. All I’m asking in return is that you never let anyone know I helped you.

Something akin to disgust flickers over Ravenia’s face, there and gone in a moment. She hesitates briefly, fighting the pride that forbids her from doing Shey’s dirty work for him. Her thirst for revenge wins, though. “It’s a bargain,” she says, reaching for the key. Only when she has it safely enclosed in her fist does she look back at Shey. “You have even less honour than I thought,” she says.

----

Tags: @croissantcitysucks @femtopulsed @aileywrites

#more war crimes!#i really hope the way I handled Everything in thsi chapter was okay #i was kind of nervous about it #especially bc this is basically the climax and I really wanted to get it right #before the wall #cinaja talks about before the wall #miryam #jurian #drakon

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mythicamagic · 4 years ago

Note

15 for the kiss spot prompt list thing! 😘

15: a kiss on the jawline.

---

Inuyasha knew.

Or at least, Kagome was almost completely sure he must. There was only so much vicious scrubbing she could do and trying to wash Sesshoumaru's spicy, masculine scent with a hint of magnolia off her proved difficult. It was like his smell would infuse into the fibres of her hair and she'd catch herself ducking her nose into the dark strands and inhaling softly just to catch a whiff of him.

The Hanyou hadn't confronted her about it, but their communication had been somewhat strained lately.

Ever since he'd gained an interest in a farmer's daughter.

Now, Kagome knew and accepted that her relationship with Inuyasha had only lasted for a month. Their breakup had been amicable, necessary- if they were going to continue being friends. But that didn't help the niggling feeling inside her mind that he'd moved on from their romance a little too quickly. After all, he'd been glimpsed kissing this new woman not one week after they'd broken up. Miroku had mentioned seeing them sneaking off to a hut together, before he'd been hushed by Sango.

I should be happy for him.

Kagome was, in a way. Her friend deserved happiness after all the tragedy in his life. But in the same breath, the idea awakened something she'd prefer to leave buried; inferiority- and the ugly, intrusive thought that perhaps the Hanyou had just been biding his time for a month. Had he actually been longing for the young woman for three years but denied himself out of loyalty to the miko?

She hadn't known what to do with such complicated feelings. Turbulent thoughts had churned chaotic and loud within her head for many months. Somewhere in that stretch of time, she'd dated a guy named Asahi from her era as a kind of rebound. Needless to say, it hadn't worked out.

And then I ran into Sesshoumaru.

Kagome shook away the memory of heavy rainfall, forcing a smile while passing the Hanyou. He paused in fixing a farmer's fence, nose twitching and lip curling faintly.

She paused, clutching her firewood a little tighter. "Something wrong, Inuyasha?" she asked, eyes remaining on his as though daring him to call her out on any disreputable behaviour.

White ears flicked, pressing back against his skull. "Feh- no," came his answering grumble.

Kagome opened her mouth, before thinking better of it and continuing to walk along the path that led further into the village.

"He'll hurt you."

Her heel skidded across dry earth, halting. "Excuse me?"

Inuyasha had turned back to his task, fiddling with some rope around wooden fences. "He's gonna break your heart- and then I'll damn kill him for it. You're being stupid getting mixed up with him."

Blue eyes sparked and narrowed. "I didn't ask for your opinion," she bit out. "And that won't happen- my heart isn't on the table."

"Ah please, Kagome!" he barked, whirling to glare at her. "You got attached to every damn stray we came across while journeying to defeat Naraku. You're gonna catch feelings!" a clawed finger pointed accusingly in her direction.

"I am not going to catch feelings!" she insisted, pitch rising higher with every word. Anger pumped hard and fast through her veins, but Kagome took a steadying breath, remembering her calming exercises. "We're both adults. This is just an...arrangement. I'd appreciate it if you didn't spread it around the village that we're a...thing."

"Why, because Sesshoumaru would be ashamed to be caught with you?"

Kagome stopped, feeling as though she'd been slapped. It might've hurt less if she had been. Inuyasha's face drained of colour, clearly registering his mistake and regretting it instantly.

"Kagome, I didn't mean-"

"I'm done talking to you," turning on her heel, the priestess squeezed her hands into fists against the firewood- soon dumping it by the path and hurrying back the way she'd come towards the forest.

She knew he hadn't meant it that way. He'd likely been intending to say 'Sesshoumaru wouldn't be caught dead with a human,' but as usual, the Hanyou's impulse control had seized his tongue, causing him to blurt out the first thing that came to mind.

Fighting tears that stung her lashes, Kagome was half-way back to their rendezvous point between the two twisting willow trees when she realised how pathetic it would be to return to him a few minutes after she'd left. This was Sesshoumaru, what did she expect him to do? Comfort her? She'd resolved never to cry in front of him. Besides, Inuyasha hadn’t said anything revolutionary, there was no need to get upset.

Pressing clammy palms to her face and ducking down to her knees, Kagome squeezed watery blue eyes shut.

Casual, casual, casual. Idiot. What am I doing? I thought I was past all this drama from when I was 15. Just- just go cry alone somewhere if you have to, don't bother him with it-

Warm, firm fingers wrapped around her wrists, tugging them away. The scent of spice and smokey magnolia filled her senses. Kagome's breath hitched and her head shot up.

The blurry image of wobbly magenta lines and misshapen gold circles registered first, before tears rolled free, vision clearing enough to reveal Sesshoumaru in all his splendour.

His jaw clenched, firm fingers moving to hook beneath her chin, tilting it so that he could regard her crying face more closely.

"What ails you?" a quiet, tense rumble tinged his words. Dark youki crackled over his body, subdued, but laying in wait like a deadly viper.

Kagome shook her head, not trusting her voice. She stifled a sob, swallowing thickly and trembling.

Golden eyes roved over her face with confusion. Giving a dusty exhale, Sesshoumaru bent his head, ghosting gentle lips over her jawline in soft butterfly kisses. A low noise escaped his chest, crooning softly as he kissed her firmer, gathering the miko closer. "Foolish miko."

Shaking fingers curled into lavish silks, gripping tight as she leaned into his familiar warmth, muffling the full extent of her hurt into his shoulder. She'd always tried to be strong in front of him, full of bravado. She'd tease and be sexy, tenacious, fun, amiable. But there was also this side to her.

Strong hands soothed her as they slid over her waist, and Kagome lost herself within the demon's embrace all over again.

#sesskag #Sesshoumaru x Kagome #asks

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sjw-publishings · 4 years ago

Text

Wassup Beach!

“Wassup, FAGS!”

Alex and Liam uncomfortably gazed away from the homophobic asian, who taunted them sarcastically like one of those bullies from college...than again, Cohen Wang was one of those bullies.

The 5 year boyfriends were looking for their friend Caleb...or at least they think that was his name, but it didn’t matter anyway, especially if the surfer jock was around.

“This is a QUEER-FREE BEACH, Beeeetches, get the Fag out!”

Even without insults from the douchebag, the two of them planned on carrying their stuff and heading a less crowded around, with clearer sand, a better view of the ocean, and no homophobia.

After all, there were Two lesbians embracing each other lovingly by the ocean. This was a safe space.

“No worries babe...I got popsicles!”

Alex smiled, glad Liam isn’t taking those insults too seriously, knowing how his boyfriend would usually be fighting back.

Setting up the umbrella, mat, and cooler box. Liam surprisingly did most of the work and pretty quickly, maybe he didn’t want to ruin their 1 year anniversary of when they started going out.

“Red bean and green tea?”

“They’re pretty good. Got the last two before they sold out.”

Liam sat on the matt, taking up most of the space on the mat as he munched on the red bean. Alex smiled, his boyfriend was so cute, even if he was acting more dominant. He proceed to pop the green tea one in his mouth...and wow...so good.

“Mmm, this green tea is good ...Liam?”

“Pretty cool...so good...”

Liarom immediately fished out for another red bean, his boyfriend of one month always seemed to be a huge Asia fan.

Though he won’t deny the....the speed at which Liarom was eating seemed to be quite excessive-

“What the fa-?”

RRIIIIIIIP!

Shredding the Hawaiian shirt, the man exposed his bare chest on display as he ate.

Large grabbable pectorals shining on display with a handsome coating of hair which made him all the more handsome.

But wasn’t his boyfriend body shy? No...that’s not right. The pan-asian man always loved displaying his body openly to the public. Wearing revealing clothing to accentuate his giant back muscles, his muscular arms which always seemed to be in the mood for a flex, his wonder abdominals which hid a six pack underneath, ready to pop out in a matter of days.

But...he was his right? As he glanced at those toned feet wiggling in their asian tanned splendour, thick sausage trunks which are begging to be massages. Especially up his thighs, to the large snake poking out his red beach trunks....weren’t they rainbow...? But that’s not right.

After all...his boy...friend always aimed to be manly...wait no-

“Li...Lierom!”

“Chill Fag~”

His friend always seemed to be quite the homophobe, ignoring what he says and always aiming to be chill and not caring about anything else.

It wasn’t before long that the necklace of...some gay couple, twisted into a simple silver chain of the bisexual jock’s chest. Though its questionable if the man was bisexual even...as he more than often teamed up with jock bullies to torment-

“FAG! Ooooooooof~”

Jerking from behind, like a huge stick pulled up from his arse, shrinking to an unpiercable bubble butt. Grabbing a hold of his manhood within those shorts, the man started panting, deep masculine groans emerged as a prominent apple stuck on his throat. Tossing the last of the red bean popsicles into the cooler box, the man grunted, begging for release.

It was...so hot. As Alex kneaded below, watching as his asian bully grunted in front of him. The hot tanned complexion bathing his skin, as those long hair chops sliced off and got carried away to the wind.

Sides buzzed off to the back as a stylish gelled top rested on the man, grinning like a doofus as a well groomed goatee donned his chin. A tasty moustache rested above his upper lip, and pearly whites shone from within him.

He closed his eyes, beaming his goofiest smile as the handsome surfer jock just went-

“OH!”

Splurt

“OHHHHHHH!”

As his body rested completely flat on the sand, completely entranced by the sound of the waves and-

“What a stud~”

“Tee hee~”

The asian hunk got up in an instant, ditching the strange stalker...whoever he was, behind him. Because all he cared about now was-

“Wassup Beeeaaaches~ the LEROY’S IN DA HOUSE!”

Leroy Wen swaggered to the ladies hanging over at the ocean, who instinctively swung his muscular arms over both of them like an Alpha, as the asian beach babes clutched onto him like the hunk he was.

The three of them fading of into the distance, like strangers as the confused gay SNAPPED out of his trance. His legs man-spreading on the beach mat, left hand digging into his trunks, the other fishing out for...for-

“Da Faaaaaack man?”

Alex slurred, almost uncharacteristically but he was kinda drunk wasn’t he? At least he recalled. Noting a couple of used beer cans, and popsicle sticks? Oh right...that green tea was great.

BUT WHY WAS IT ALL OUT?

Getting up, the man drunkly walked on the sand, still in a daze. But he had to get more...it was his vacation, right? His SOLO time.

Though he felt that everyday was his vacation.

“Huhuh... cool.”

Walking down the clear sands, making his way to the rough jagged Beach with crowds of people. Normally the caucasian would stay away from caution, but he felt pretty chill...

Walking with a swagger, making big steps as his footprints got larger, and larger as he made the transition. His legs certainly stretched like taffy, before solidifying with tough muscle. Swift moves, like surfin’.

“Surfin’~”

He slurred, lugging his thick calves towards the wavy rough ocean, size 12s sinking into the sand-but his height remained unchanged. Tall at a 6ft 3, like the chill dude he was-

“CHILL OUT FAG!”

SPLASH!

A huge tidal wave came crashing down on him, yet he still had a dopey grin...

The water engulfed his shirt away, dissolving until he was shirtless. It too had bathed the previous colours away, from those shorts, BEACH shorts they were, stretching with navy blue elasticity, with white rings at the edges and waist. A string tied itself from the front, which got pushed out further due to his thick manhood.

His buttocks clenched, preventing any water from entering in...but that’s not just it. He was gay, but he was not into that kind of intimacy...felt that it was a little too QUEER for him, he had a firm butt too...wouldn’t want to get spanked by a sissy.

Speaking of ‘sissy’, that sarcastic voice...and the word Fag really got to him. He was a Fag, but that didn’t give anybody the right to call him fag...but then they were right that he was a Fag?

Confused by the train of thought, he simply blurted-

“Shaddup Fag!”

This got the attention of a familiar looking douche, Cohen. Who pushed down his specs, got down his surfboard, and had a staring contest with the slightly taller male.

“No you shaddup Fag!”

Mimicking the man’s voice, it was simple, and confused the heck out of the surfer jock.

“YOU SHADDUP!”

He smirked, watching his dumbass rival trying to outsmart his dumbass and LOSIN’. After a moment of a heated glare-

“HAHAHA!”

Antolex laughed stupidly with his surfer bud, and frat roomie as the two grinned dumbly at the other. It always was fun questioning the other’s masculinity...cause it just made themselves-

“YOU GAY?”

MANLIER!

Stretching his wide traps, he arm hugged his bro. Hs lean but strong arms were a marvel to the ladies on the beach, alongside those wide traps exposed to the ocean.

“NO YOU GAY!”

Of course, the insult now stung harder than before, considering he WASN’T GAY. Duh, just look at his tanned bod, the effort he made to tone out his chest and pecs just so he can impress the ladies! Wasn’t as defined as his bro, but wasn’t bad since he mostly just started going serious last month, and used to always just party and get wasted in the frat house.

“YOU DA FAG!”

He grinned dumbly, his voice rumbling in a dark baritone drunken stupor.

Course he wasn’t the brightest tool in the shed, but he knew how to insult like his Frat Bro. Especially at the queers that gawk at him, this Asian Surfer was for DA LADIES ONLY!

“OH YEAH WELL-Bro...Bro!”

“What Bro?”

“Ladies...2 o clock!”

The men almost turned upon radar, spotting a couple of asian chicks who giggled and blushed at the men. Their gorgeous super model bods revealed...was just too much for this drunk dude.

“So...hot!”

Almost like time froze, as the man palmed himself without restraint. Kneading his hard member as he grinned his dumbest grin. A lust dusting of stubble over and under his lips, as a handsome gust of wind shaped his hair to a stylish short cut like his Bro.

His legs swaggered to the middle of the Beach, almost like a spotlight reserved for him. Except it was bright daylight, as his facial features had that dull but attractive charisma. Kneading himself as he grinned his widest grin.

Anthony Chang was ready to party.

PSSSH!

“WASSUP BEACH!”

#gay to straight #g2s #mental change #jock #asian #racial change #dumber #gay #lib to cons #to #surfer #straight #personality change #wassup #beach

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aodhfyn-poetry-plus · 4 years ago

Text

Witness

Truth came for me, and I listened. I was told secrets nobody had hidden, given sight of looming wonders. There was nothing and all to it; Truth came for me. It stung to learn. I had seen now; seen darkness and light. I realized, then, that I knew nothing. What I'd seen all had seen. And we all disagreed. In darkness we flounder against bonds so thick their weight sufficed to break us; we struggle here in shadows of truths so large they obliterate the sun; gazing upon Truth's awesome splendour, we see mundane reality, and sink deeper into delusions spun by our own assumptions. I am broken here, with eyes open; I squeeze them shut but cannot unsee it. Titanic and Luminous it cast a shadow darker than its own brightness - I run across hallways of white and carpet of red - scattered in rooms of innumerable numbers - infinite floors of infinite doors surround me - inescapable, I flee beyond and am gone again into shadows of the unknown. Truth turned back from Truth spun round - I've found - I knew enough to be confused - and now I do not know and am afraid to see.

#poetry #poem #poems #poet #poetic #spilled ink #truth #wonder #written #writ #prosepoem #prose #Witness

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yanara126-writing · 4 years ago

Text

Sweet Azalea White Rose and Yellow Zinnia

Favaen mourns the loss of her god and comes to a decision.

Read here or on Ao3. (2585 words)

Have fun! Comments always welcome! :)

In your eagerness to celebrate the spring, do not forget that winter is needed to prepare for it.

Those had been His last words to her, spoken with the same warm fondness she’d known since childhood, without a trace of rebuke or censure, only a soft reminder. At least that’s what she had thought at the time, now she was not so sure anymore.

Knowing now what had occurred in the former colony, the words suddenly seemed a lot more ominous, a warning for the world as a whole, rather than the gentle hint she’d taken it for.

Favaen sighed and stared down at her most recent project. It was a silver ring; the frame was already finished and now there was only the filing and polishing left to do, the fine work that was always the hardest for her. Later she would fit a small adra stone into it as well, but for that she would need equipment which she didn’t have here. Thoughtfully she turned the ring over in her hand and watched the weak candlelight reflect from it.

Winter… a fitting word, for she hadn’t ever felt so cold before. There was a vast emptiness whenever she tried to reach out to Him, cold, foggy, and seemingly endless, where once there’d been warmth and comfort and understanding. She wanted to be brave, to reach further into the darkness and drag Him back out of it, but every time she tried, she froze in fear. What would she find there? What would she do if there was nothing in the silence? If they were right and He was gone…

With a huff she turned back to her ring and forcefully filed away at the metal. No, certainly there was not nothing, but perhaps she just wasn’t the one meant to find Him again. He hadn’t come to her after all, he’d come to a Readceran farmer. And it really wasn’t surprising, she was hardly the epitome of purity and forgiveness He deserved. It was fine. It was fine. She was fine.

Favaen stopped her work again when her hands started shaking too much for the delicate work. Wet droplets pearled from the silver in her hands, glittering with a mockery of His divine light. She certainly felt like a mockery herself, sitting in her room in the dark of night and envying a dead man. Distantly she knew her shoulders were shaking, but if from the constant cold she was feeling or the tears she couldn’t say nor care about.

It hurt. It hurt so much, and there was no one now to sooth that pain. Only the deafening silence and the secrets her god had taken with him to the grave, his own or his avatar’s.

The still sharp edges of the ring were starting to bite into her skin, and for a second, she thought about pressing even harder, perhaps the blood would wash away a little of her pain. But as soon as the thought came, she knew it was a bad idea. Hurting herself wasn’t going to make anything better, all it would do was make mother even more worried.

Slowly Favaen opened her hand, the movement a bigger struggle than she had expected. Again she reminded herself that there was nothing to be had with this, and besides, the ring was supposed to be gift for mother once she was finished, so sullying it with blood would be even worse.

Quickly she slid the ring into her pocket and wiped her still shaking hands on her grey work tunic that she hadn’t bothered to change out of after a day spent fixing up some damaged furniture from the Children’s Sanctuary. Sleep would not come, so why bother. Somehow, she felt filthy, even without having bloodied her hand. The walls of her small room were beginning to close on her, feeling suffocating in the way they only had started to recently.

When she couldn’t take the pressure on her soul anymore she shot up from her chair, breathing heavily, causing it to dip backwards and crash to the floor with a thump that broke the silence of the night jarringly. Favaen flinched. Nervously she looked to the door, but no sounds followed from outside, the noise seemingly having gone unnoticed by the rest of the temple.

She couldn’t stay in here. Her breaths were coming in short bursts and the slowly creeping feeling of suffocation was only worsened by her still coming sobs. Making a decision, she scrambled to the window, fumbling with the ledge a bit and then finally throwing it open, gulping in the fresh air. Without throwing a look back she climbed outside, not bothering even to change out of her dirty tunic and leggings. There would be no one to see her, and even if, Favaen had never bothered much with appearances.

Nimbly she climbed up the wall outside, using subtle nooks for footholds and pulling herself ever higher with the experience of someone who had done the same many times. A slight wind tugged on her hair, determined apparently to blow it before her eyes and trip her, but the breeze was no match for Favaen’s desperation to make it to the top. Of course she could have taken the stairs up to the roof, but she didn’t want to risk waking anyone. The idea of talking to someone was far more frightening right now than the climb up.

It didn’t take long, and she reached the ledge. Grabbing it with stiff fingers she dragged herself up and over it, rolling onto her back and no doubt dirtying her clothes even more. Her hands hurt, her eyes stung, her bare feet were rubbed open in places, but none of that mattered as she stared up into the night sky.

How many times had she been up here? Sometimes with other acolytes, sometimes with mother, sometimes alone. She had felt so many things on this roof, under this sky, under these stars, be it awe, happiness, frustration, contentment, but nothing compared to her feelings now, the fear, shame, and desperation. She looked up and didn’t see the many lights and waymarkers to whatever future you wished for from before. Instead she saw shards, broken pieces of a whole, scattered through an unescapable void of darkness. It felt like drowning in His corpse.

She tore herself around and away from the sight so violently that she hit her head against the roof under her. With a pained groan and closed eyes, she sat up, pressing her face into her hands and pushing down the resurfacing tears. Coming up here was a mistake, but else was she supposed to? Where would it be better if everything was a reminder?

Perhaps she wanted to look for answers out there, perhaps she just wanted away from her own thoughts again, or perhaps it was something completely different, but she pulled her hands away again and opened her eyes. What Favaen saw then was different from before, but yet oddly the same, the comparison and contrast giving her pause like few things did these days.

She saw the city under her. The small lights coming from the lanterns on the streets and out of the occasional window mirrored the stars above, dots of brilliance embedded in a blanket of blackness.

It didn’t make the hurt go away. It didn’t change anything. It didn’t suddenly make everything better. But it did keep her gaze. It struck something within her, something she couldn’t define yet but felt nonetheless.

And so she didn’t flee back down, but stayed. Minutes and hours passed by, as Favaen sat on that rooftop alone, knees drawn to her chest and arms slung around them, just watching these different and yet similar lights shine both in solitude and harmony. Occasionally a baby would cry, a bird would call, a lone person would hurry along the streets beneath, but the general air of quiet and isolation remained unbroken through the night.

Favaen sat and watched in silence, with only one thought that kept returning. Was this how it felt to be a god? Detached from the world, only observing but never taking part, not truly. Was that why He’d done what he’d done? Had He been lonely?

Time kept passing, but Favaen noticed none of it. The world, empty and cold, flickered past her, nothing more than a passing moment, even as it was the only thing she was aware of.

Until the world started changing. Slowly the lights all melted together, no singular one remaining and all becoming brighter for it, flooding the city with a blooming radiance. Favaen, being so thoroughly drowned in her thoughts, doubts, and feelings, took a few seconds to understand what she was seeing. The sun was rising.

She had spent the whole night up on the roof. Not far away the temple’s bells heralded morning mess, which she was clearly going to miss. The panic that usually accompanied the realisation that she was late failed to appear this time. What was the point if He was gone? She was just so tired.

The sun rose higher, the air warmed, and only then did Favaen notice how cold she’d become in her short work tunic. It was designed for the heat of the forge after all. As the sun inched higher into the sky, slowly but surely filling the world with warmth and light, Favaen found her eyes and attention glued to the skyline. Most lanterns in the city still burnt, as the people were only starting to wake up, and though the sun overshone each and everyone of them, they still shone with the same splendour as when they’d been alone.

Favaen had expected the dawn to hold the same pain the stars had held for her, but as she watched them pale and merge together, just like their brethren on the ground, there was a sweetness to her pain. There was the awe and wonder and oh so painful hope that had accompanied every dawn since she had found her calling.

She couldn’t make sense of what her brain was racing to tell her, what her soul yearned to believe, not yet at least, but in the pale morning light she lifted her scraped hands, only half aware of her actions, and muttered a prayer. A soft light enveloped her fingers, warmth spreading through them, and when the light receded the cuts and bruises had vanished, leaving behind unmarred skin.

Her cheeks were wet. It wasn’t raining. She had to be crying again.

She was, but this time it wasn’t desperation that had forced the tears to flow. She didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t so bad. The tears blurred her sight of the dawn, but that wasn’t so bad either. This way she could almost pretend He was here, His hands on her own, softly scolding her because she had been so careless with herself again.

That carelessness had gotten her scolded many times, from not only Him, but also her teachers. For a long time, she hadn’t understood what it mattered to them. Scrapes and bruises happened, and she was hardly going to die from them. Only her master at the Abydon temple, the closest to a father figure she ever had, had ever bothered to explain it to her. Back then he’d asked her why she always took care of her tools. Favaen had told him the very same thing every student was told over and over again until they remembered, that even the tiniest fracture could have disastrous consequences. In return he’d asked her why she thought it would be different with herself. That lesson had stuck, and though she didn’t always remember, from then on, she made an effort to at least patch herself up afterwards.

Tools… the memory sparked an idea in her mind, and she looked over the city with different eyes. She was a tool, they all were, tools to be shaped by Abydon and then wielded by themselves to carry on his teachings. They were hammers, sickles, chisels, and nails, and everything else, there was use for everyone somewhere. That was a base believe in the faith of Abydon, and one she had always found comfort in. Perhaps it wasn’t so far fetched to apply the same believe to Eothas, if maybe in a different form.

The lanterns. The stars. The candles. All the small lights that shone the way until the next dawn. Each different, but each with the same purpose.

She didn’t know why Eothas had done what He did. Perhaps she would never know. But she knew her purpose, she knew what she had to do until He returned. And He would return, she was sure of that now. Until then she would be a light the world needed. She would be the tool to prepare for His spring.

Perhaps she wasn’t innocence incarnate. Perhaps she didn’t have the endless patience of her peers. Perhaps she wasn’t as merciful and gentle as she should be. But maybe that wasn’t what He needed right now. Maybe that wasn’t what the world needed right now.

Favaen was stubborn. Favaen was confident. Favaen was resourceful. And Favaen had experience that others of her faith didn’t.

Looking towards the dawn, her cheeks still wet but eyes full of determination, she made a vow to herself, to Eothas, to Woedica, to all would hear it. She would weather the winter. She would shine through the night, as brightly as she could, and pave the way for all who would follow. And when He returned, when the next dawn rose, when the winter ended, she would be there to greet him. And the dawn each morning would be her reminder of this vow, to never forget it as long as she lived.

The solemn yet hopeful moment was broken by children’s laughter floating up to Favaen’s hide out. It seemed mess was already over and the school day for the temple children was about to start. Favaen smiled at the sound of shuffling feet, the thumps of small, running boots, giggles and shouts of protest alike. The world was moving, and she would do well to remember that.

A yawn forced its way out her mouth, and without any conscious choice of her own she found herself sprawled across the roof on her back. With the adrenalin and desperate melancholy finally gone, her muscles apparently refused to keep holding her up, the many sleepless nights at last catching up to her. The roof wasn’t exactly comfortable, but it also wasn’t awkward enough to warrant the effort of moving either. The slowly spreading warmth of the day almost made it cozy, and her brain even more sluggish. In her sleep deprived and already halfway dozing brain, the warm sunlight almost felt like a blanket.

Any fight she could have put up against her overworked body would have been doomed from the beginning, so she didn’t even try. The temple would survive without her for a few hours.

Curled up on the roof she was gently lulled to sleep by familiar words, sung in the slightly off key chorus of children’s voices.

Rejoice all ye who dwelleth in the shadow, who are broken and beaten. The winter soon comes to an end. Spring shall rise, bringing light and life to the world. Radiant light, radiant life, and thy soul shall find warmth in his arms.

#Pillars of Eternity #writing #oc-tober #day 1 sunrise #Watcher Favaen #mourning #grief #referenced self-harm #nothing graphic though

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cleverwordsandotherstuffilike · 4 years ago

Quote

Stung by the splendour of a sudden thought.”

Robert Browning

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libidomechanica · 2 years ago

Text

About it

Was na Robin:—robin shure in the Head-dress my toil me how farthest earnest eyes, fairer than hawks and the gods began to glitt’ring far in Figure and thigh nearly life, pleaseth

your bright Order laid. Mansion’s saw, and Child, and sang from thine? Of restless nigh that light grows. I fear of May, and bright entice you Virgin’s Thou, sad Virgins’ hands. About it. No

shadow to Niobe did get mars and a dewy splendour, her fair thou my life, misled, and long as thoughts augment? As thou wert wont to purchase fatiguèd eye; then, Juliana stung!

#poetry #automatically generated text #Patrick Mooney #Markov chains #Markov chain length: 6 #190 texts #ballad

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myidlethinkings · 5 years ago

Text

I Guess We’re Falling Out

My own girlfriend angel and I started writing a Crowley ran off with Antichrist, now him and Aziraphale are raising Adam as their own child story. It goes with my Gabriel headcanon that he’s not the best of sorts, but he’s not the complete villain some have made him out to be (and Raphael is his Other, headcanoned in our minds as a Tom Hardy sort. We call them the Ineffable Flowers.)

Chapter One: Well Then.

Aziraphale swung the door shut on the young, crying, woman.

Eugh, a wasted mid-morning. Every so often, every few years or so there was always one. Well. Not just women. Men too. All manners of people on the spectrum of gender. Once there had even been a couple. He supposed that was the occupational hazard of having a demon as a friend. Crowley didn’t even mean for it to happen most of the time. A conversation, a nod, brushed shoulders in an elevator, heavens, even just the sight of his face still and enigmatic behind those shades would set people to follow, would crave his attention.

And sometimes, due to their acquaintanceship, these lost souls would spill onto the doorstep of his bookshop where Aziraphale would have to tend to their bruised hearts.

Yes, I know, dear.

Oh, I quite understand.

Please, have a biscuit.

He is truly not worth it, oh, indeed.

This one, however, had actually seemed Crowley’s type, and the thought of that had unsettled him. An amateur astronomer, they had apparently met at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich one solstice. They had shared many a night underneath a blanket of stars as she had shared with him the subject of the thesis she desperately wanted to pursue one day. He had never seemed to need a telescope, the woman – Aria – had said as if using hers was just for show and he had pointed to the sky in the correct direction at every turn without even properly looking, “As if he had flung them into being himself”.

A pot of tea, three Custard Creams, and a sympathetic best to forget about him, dear and he had managed to be rid of her.

He was sorting through The Romantics (with a subconscious heavy thud to the collection of that awful cretin Byron) when the ring of the bell over the door sounded and Crowley came moseying in, saying nothing as his long-limbed figure flopped on the couch.

“Afternoon, dear,” Aziraphale greeted him.

“Izzit?”

“Mm, a little past four.”

“Ghastly hour,” the demon yawned with a jaw that seemed to unhinge in a most inhuman way, “Neither here nor there. Five at least is interesting. Three at least is respectable. Four is…A Geography teacher in a bad suit.”

“Were you napping? You could continue it here if you’d like.”

Crowley rolled on to his back after shouldering out of his blazer, discarding it to the carpet and stretched, “Wouldn’t be in your way?”

“Never,” Aziraphale moved over to the door and hung up the closed sign, then casually, as if he’d just remembered, “Oh. An Aria paid a visit earlier.”

He was hoping for a pause and a confused “Who?” – like he’d said about Beth, about James, about Caroline, Jessica, Trish, about Caitlin, about Benjamin, about Fiona and Kenneth…

But instead, there was a soft, “..Oh.” which very definitely resounded with recognition and even a note of sadness.

“I told her to forget about you of course…Was I wrong to do so?”

He turned and Crowley’s expression was hidden behind his sunglasses. Aziraphale moved to sit in the seat opposite him, his voice a little tight, “Oh Crowley, I am sorry if I did wrong.”

“Hmm?” Crowley then gestured dismissively, “No, of course, you didn’t, Aziraphale. You can’t, remember?”

Aziraphale tutted at the gentle teasing.

“Thought I recognised her is all.”

A simple statement, but Aziraphale’s face softened. Ah. This again. The elusive Nannerl. Crowley convinced that every so often souls would be weaved back into the history of humanity. A child prodigy who had been taken from royal court to court alongside her brother, and while he had grown to fill the century with musical notes long remembered, she had been relegated to a mere footnote in history. Crowley had been searching for her ever since.

“Not her then?”

Crowley made a negating sound, “Thought for certain… with the name this time that the universe was trying to be funny… But it’s still just a big cockup of a lark… Anyway, she’ll make her own mark, Aziraphale. She’ll be one of the primary colours of this century.”

Aziraphale smiled slightly. He made the mistake of Crowley noticing, as he rolled his eyes and moved to his side, his back to the angel, “Oh don’t start.”

The smile deepened.

“I said stop it. Can’t nap when you’re smiling.”

Aziraphale went back to his books, but the smile remained. As the hours wiled away and the light began to dim, the angel’s eyes began to become bleary. He had never taken to Crowley’s habit of sleeping, but time began to drift as he began to pass in a meditative state.

The angel dreamed.

Or the closest to what dreams were in this half awake, half trance state.

The flitter flutter of memories. Senses. Flashes of colour. Half murmured conversations.

The feel of rain. It had been a nice day.

He came back with a hand on his shoulder.

A soft, “Aziraphale.”

For a moment he was caught between two worlds and his voice was half slurred as he asked, “Do you still have it?”

“Have it?”

Vague thoughts of rats scurrying off, of dancing feet, ebb away to nothing.

He was still sitting at his desk with Keats open before him, the question hanging in the air and fading to irrelevance now he’d been pulled back to reality.

“Oh, Crowley, nothing. I fear I drifted.”

Bright Star laid open to the world that existed for an angel and a demon in a bookshop. Aziraphale’s thoughts were back on the woman and Crowley had moved him to draw upon an old conversation with an old acquaintance that had inspired the poem… Aziraphale noticed the way Crowley’s eyes scanned the words.

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—

Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,

Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike task

Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—

No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

With a flourished and speckled ink accompanying the poem “For you and Yours, Mr Fell. Thank you again for your patronage.”

He slammed the book shut and for some reason blushed.

“I didn’t know you met Keats,” there was a dismissive sniff in Crowley’s words at the pretentious prose that rankled the angel.

Aziraphale was up, and slotted the book back in an almost defensive motion, “Was probably when you were having one of your sulks.”

Crowley balked, “I– wh– My sulks- I do not- I-”

The confusion from the demon at the barb stung Aziraphale’s conscience and he rubbed his temple, “I’m sorry, Crowley. My mind is just rather… I’ve been at it too long,” he gestured at the books, “Cataloguing them with a new system, and…” he offered an apologetic smile.

“New system, I’m impressed,” Crowley pulled a face but then gave his own smile, “No need to apologise. The ire was earned. After all,” He raised his hands in a dramatic shrug, “What would your plebeian demon know of literary matters?”

The self-deprecating jest only managed to make Aziraphale sad in a way he couldn’t express. He knew things abundantly. He had a wealth of knowledge, the very universe within him. He had always sought out the thinkers of history. He'd…He’d gifted humanity knowledge! Aziraphale shied away from that thought, aware that it dangerously bordered on some sort of sacrilege. But still. It had been hard not to think of such things when Aziraphale had looked upon a new discovery, a new philosophy, had walked through the great museums of the world, ever-evolving.

Aziraphale’s voice was prim in response as he stood from his desk, “Plenty. Now. Am I to assume you were going to suggest we should partake in some food?” The rest of the books could wait, and he desperately wanted to steer their conversation towards lighter subjects. Towards things that didn’t involve souls Crowley would most likely never see again, or at least for a very, very long time. Towards things that they could discuss more easily. Topics that Aziraphale didn’t feel so rotten because they made him behave most unangelic.

Crowley grinned, “And some alcohol to water it down. You know me so well.”

Aziraphale moved over and picked up Crowley’s blazer he had left on the carpet and helped him back into it, his fingers lingering a second longer than they should to straighten the shoulders, “Any ideas?”

“Ohhh…” Crowley lazily drawled, the sort of sound Aziraphale knew as the demon having a lot on his mind but little to say, “Was thinking we could just go for a wander and see what’s out there to tempt us?”

Aziraphale gave him a look, but stayed his thoughts on the matter of Crowley obviously goading him to say something, and the two left the bookshop without another word.

They wandered down the street. It was getting late and under the cover of night, Aziraphale felt both safe and a little emboldened. He told himself he missed the easy affection of olden days, where men in suits and top hats could wrap their arm around a comrade as they enjoyed a stroll and nothing was thought of it, and it took a swallow and three heartbeats before he nudged closer and linked his arm through Crowley’s.

The demon said nothing. No motion or change in his step or even a look acknowledging Zira’s sudden need for contact. And that made it all the worse. He should be saying something. Turning to Aziraphale, raising a brow, a “well, that’s new”, but instead they just continued walking.

Well, he couldn’t take his arm back now… Couldn’t ignore the hammering of his heart either. The darn human thing was thumping faster than a hummingbird’s wings and Aziraphale was trying his hardest to keep his steps even. He didn’t want to pull away at this point even if it meant he could breathe easily again, and Crowley really didn’t seem to mind. Or Aziraphale hoped. Physical contact between the two had never been their thing. They’d always walked and sat by one another, a safe distance between them to any onlookers. Close enough that it could be seen that they were at the least companions, but far enough that no one would think more on the matter of the two.

The thought that perhaps Crowley wasn’t so unused to this crossed his mind. Did the humans he’d been around lock arms in such a way? Had they done more? Had they held his hand as they looked up at the night sky with him?

“You’ve never taken me stargazing.”

It spilled out without him realising it and he was mortified at the accompanying hint of petulance in the words too.

…But it was true.

The most he had ever gotten out of him was in some of their run-ins happening at night. He would notice how Crowley would usually be looking up at the sky, slitted eyes staring at the marvel of it.

And just once… once Crowley had noted, “Jupiter is especially bright tonight.”

“Jupiter?”

“There.” He pointed to the distant planet, Aziraphale followed his line of sight…

“Oh. Oh, it is… That’s beautiful.” He murmured in awe. Her wonders truly did have no bounds to the glorious things they were able to see in their shared time on earth.

“Mmm.” Crowley hummed, eyes still focused above, “Lot of beautiful things up there.”

There was a pause as they continued to gaze heavenward. Aziraphale licked his lips, “I’m afraid I don’t know as much of galaxies and planets as I could. Or should, rather.” So many tasks needed him to guide humans by stars, he really ought to know them better.

“That’s because your head is stuffed with what they can do with flour and honey,” Crowley had dryly replied, head tilting down finally to look at the angel, his face blank save the curl of his lip as he hissed, “Sssso, what’s the target for the blessing next week?”

And that was all he said of the matter. He’d been a bit in one of his moods, and Aziraphale never pushed further to hear more from the demon.

He should have pushed…

“Ah,” Crowley brought him back to Soho, “That’s what’s gotten you in a mood.”

“Me, in a mood? I’m never in moods!”

Crowley let out a soft snort, “Aziraphale, you’ve never asked.”

As if it should be so simple, Aziraphale thought with his own annoyed retort building in his mind. He took a breath to respond when a flash of gold and the embers of a held cigarette snared his gaze, catching him off guard, and he turned suddenly fearful, but the figure was gone and… he must have mistaken the sight. Nerves high given the dangerous subject he was dancing on. He was really only good at the Gavotte and this was on the edge of a flaming sword he no longer possessed. He turned back to Crowley who was giving him a puzzled look at his sudden jerking. Aziraphale shook his head and cleared his throat. He gave up on the biting remark he had lost too in his worry, instead settling for gentle.

“Do I need to?“ Should I have ever had to?

The demon was quiet as he regarded him. Sometimes he was so damned unreadable to the angel, which was a stark contrast to his usual melodramatic flair. It made Aziraphale nervous. And he wondered if Crowley was doing it intentionally.

He desperately needed to fill in the silence and he spilled out, "Do you love her?”

Stop it.

“…Who?”

“The Mozart woman.”

He knew it was a ridiculous question before he’d even asked it. And he knew it unfair to ask. He knew the question was immaterial. But his hands were trembling and something was building up inside of him and he couldn’t explain what so he focused on anything.

Crowley tilted his head and the words came out bitterly, “Demons can’t love, remember? That was pulled from us in our Unnaming. Isn’t that what your holy brethren and sistren think?”

The angel’s breath hitched, “That’s not true. I mean. They do– but they’re wrong… Oh, my dear, forgive me. I’m all out of sorts.” He brought his other hand to his face. Why was he so caught in tormenting them both with this line of questioning? Why was he ruining what should be another nice evening of new food and wine and dialogue on the newest inventions by humans, or… or ending at his bookshop as many a night did, a good bottle and his record player going as they talked about various philosophies and what did 42 have to do with anything, anyway?

Crowley dislodged his arm and stepped away from Aziraphale to look vaguely at a display menu outside of a restaurant. Aziraphale hoped the conversation was done, though he mourned the loss of the arm twined with his own. He stepped forward himself sheepishly and looked in the window, absently remarking, “Oh, this place does those crème brûlée cupcakes. Shall we try here tonight?”

Crowley said nothing.

“…My dear?” Aziraphale prodded.

“What is it that you want, angel?” Crowley’s voice wasn’t angry, but it held an overwhelming distance. Something so far and away from the angel that he didn’t like it. Something the angel couldn’t place but it was so detached from him that he felt he might even understand the loss of Her. “What do you want of me?”

Aziraphale went still. He opened his mouth at first to try to answer that gnocchi might be nice but his voice fell silent. He had a feeling of a not so distant ringing in his ears that he was being cruel.

Crowley continued, circling around him, “This is your speed. What you wanted. No faster.” He stopped when he’d completed his round around the angel, looking back to the window, “I can’t do anything more than this. I’ve hit the bloody parking brake.”

Aziraphale swallowed. He knew. Heavens he knew this was the limit he’d set. He’d even allowed himself to forget there ever was a set tempo. That nothing had shifted since the flask of holy water… Since the saved books… Since a hurled “fraternising.”

He slowly lifted his hand and placed it on the back of Crowley’s shoulder. Crowley turned to him, his darkly embered hair glowing under the halo of a streetlight.

Aziraphale stammered, “I… I never… said a full stop, my dear.”

In one breath Crowley leaned towards Aziraphale and he stepped back involuntarily, bumping into the brick behind him. Crowley was leaning in, his arm resting above’s Aziraphale’s head, and seeing what was about to happen the angel panicked. He placed a firm, flat palm to Crowley’s chest, halting him. His eyes flickered from his friend’s lips to the confused eyes, and with all of the regret of his existence in his words, he whispered, “I… But I am sorry. We can’t.”

They couldn’t. Not yet. Maybe never. If they were caught. If their sides were…

If he ever let himself openly love Crowley…

Crowley blinked a moment at the hand that had stopped him, his expression playing out from one of dumbfounded shock, to realization, to a disgusted sneer, and he moved back, the dark glow of his eyes visible behind his shades. His sclera was missing entirely as he looked with some emotion that made Zira feel sick. The moment was gone, brushed away in a single moment of fear. But Aziraphale had left a new wound.

Betrayal rang out in Aziraphale’s mind. Judas wasn’t so cruel.

Crowley slouched back away from Aziraphale’s touch, as cool and casual as he could, despite the burning he felt at the cloth of his shirt. The angel’s touch was always so warm. He propped a leg against the brick of the restaurant, arms crossed, his face now neutral, giving away none of the intent that had just been there. Then, as if discussing the weather he clicked his tongue, looked away towards the crowds passing by, gaze lingering on one innocent couple wrapped up in each other, “…I’m actually not hungry. I think I’m gonna leave, angel.”

There was an undertone of a certain truth in those words but Aziraphale didn’t want to fathom what they meant.

He kept his voice light, “…Alright, dear. Monet exhibit on Sunday?”

“Yeah. Sure.” Crowley raked his fingers through his hair, “-z'it Monet or Manet again?”

“Most definitely Monet.”

“Right,” the lazy tone again, “You like the pastels,” he then made a bit of a sound indicating a farewell and sauntered off down the street, out of the light and into the shadows.

Aziraphale knew he was a bastard.

Three years. It wasn’t for three years until the demon appeared again. Standing there one late evening in his bookshop, clinging to a basket, with a sob in his throat and a shiver in his words.

“Angel,” he said, “I’ve done something really stupid.”

The story so far can be found on our AO3 (WHICH TOOK DAYS FOR US TO GET AN INVITATION, THE HECK, BACK IN OUR DAY IT WAS FF AND YOU SIGNED UP, THAT WAS IT).

https://archiveofourown.org/works/20399233/chapters/48385201

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