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#tenebrity tag
junewild · 2 months
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digging through ao3 for personal reasons & ran across the list of charlie swan ships and had a Journey. let me reproduce it for you
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makes sense! at the top of the list is the canonical ship and right below that is hot dad yaoi. i love it. i respect it.
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i am beginning to have questions.
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this is fair! we all want to fuck the hot dad. who said that
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my otp tbh. go the fuck off
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HE WOULD NOT FUCK THE CAR
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this is the harry potter thing again. but wait hang on why—
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oh? the hot dads are swingers now? love that for them. wait. WHO
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HE WOULD NOT FUCK THE CAR
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baronmpontmercy · 10 months
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The Bisexual Gayming begins
Top to bottom:
Alexander the half high elf storm sorcerer
his dream guide, based on his familiar Lughnasa
Amadeus the Drow paladin
His dream guide, based on the owl goddess Strix from his original backstory
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bizarreparadox · 2 years
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*something tense is happening in a dario argento film*
the score:
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carbonateddelusion · 1 year
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Woe, Homestuck be upon ye
Anaric probably would never but theyre Heart bound so also probably would for the fun of it
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sorry for the wait, Pie
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meet Malumi, or as he's known as a human, Mikhali. I don't have much info on him in my brain other than he's trans, asocial, has a short temper like Jack, and is a natural born entertainer. but he MUCH prefers being alone. if he ever uses his talent, it's to return to isolation as quickly as possible. he's a knight of doom
Jack himself would be a violet blood according to his birthday, but I think burgundy fits him better. troll genetics are confusing though I'm ngl. I don't think (at least according to my research) that the "child" of two trolls has to be in the same caste as the parents? but yuh.
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baylardian-1 · 2 years
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redesigning my OC Juneau's monster form a bit so her fur patterns are a tad more cohesive and less overall ugly lmao (new one on top)
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“But beware the sound you are hearing out the pipes of organs-
Screaming holds a blessed code that's leading to the cove of the unforgiving.”
“A Machine in the Mouth of Hell”
-a doodle of V1 vs Panopticon/P-2 Flesh Prison
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sennamaticart · 2 years
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Zine-o-ween days 17 and 18; Tenebrous and Up in Flames
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the-glade-backrooms · 2 years
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hi. we read your opinion post on why adhd/autistic systems splut fictives so easily, and we have a question. what about autistics who don't mask? i never learned to mask. i tried learning in middle school, but i gave up after a week cuz it was too tiring.
in our system of 9(or 10. one alter may be dormant/fused) we have 4 introjects and 5(or 6) originals.
we just wanna hear your opinion, since your post was surrounded on neurodivergent introject heavy systems who mask their nd-ness.
no pressure to answer btw. feel free to delete it if you want to lol
Post is question
I went back and read the post and wow we really did lay heavily into masking. Our mistake, we mask almost all the time and sometimes forget not everyone does. (Before I go any farther I just want to remind people that this is our own personal opinion, not fact. It’s simply based on personal experience or things we’ve seen several other systems talk about. Also, we are currently running off of very little sleep when writing this so we’re sorry if it’s written or conveyed in a weird way.)
I’m going to point at the spot where we explained that all alters are formed through introjection. Even singlets have their fair share of introjection. It’s not just a system trait. The things with systems is that sometimes our traits don’t come from several different sources, it can come from one or a few very specific sources. People who hyperfixate or have special interests tend to be hot wired to one source of entertainment to begin with, so ADHD/Autistic system brains probably don’t think to look for traits outside of their current constant intake from one source. There’s also the fact that people with ADHD/Autism usually find comfort in their current hyperfixations or special interests, so a system might decided comfort is the best way to handle a situation and split an comfort introject.
Splitting a “comfort” introject is 100% a plausible thing that happens. If a system is under stress or is going through trauma, it’s possible that the brain decides comfort is the best way to handle it and splits an alter specifically for that. As an AuDHD system, we’ve had personal experience with comfort splits. We have a very bad habit of using our hyperfixations as escape mechanisms so when we get overly stressed or go through something traumatic our brain handles it by trying to make our hyperfixations real. Our problem with this is that our introjects then tend to be very connected to their source and it’s hard to get them source separated, but that’s for a different post.
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literaryvein-reblogs · 2 months
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yet another list of "beautiful" words
to try to include in your next poem/story
Book-bosomed - coined by Sir Walter Scott; means "carrying a book at all times." If you love books, certainly you've been book-bosomed at times in your life.
Caliginous - misty, dark
Dithyramb - a usually short poem in an inspired wild irregular strain. This word comes from the Greek word dithyrambos which was the name for a wild and irregular poem honoring Dionysus, the god of wine, who was often lauded throughout the year during festivals at which poems of this style were read.
Embonpoint - plumpness of person; stoutness
Farinaceous - having a mealy texture or surface
Farouche - marked by shyness and lack of social graces
Florilegium - a volume of writings; an anthology. The word was borrowed into English from a New Latin word that comes from Latin florilegus meaning "culling flowers." Think of a florilegium as a bouquet of writings, specially selected and arranged for your enjoyment.
Goety - black magic or witchcraft in which the assistance of evil spirits is invoked
Lachrymist - one given to weeping
Lamia - a female demon; vampire
Osseous - bony
Phantasmagoria - a bizarre or fantastic combination, collection, or assemblage
Stygian - extremely dark, gloomy, or forbidding
Tenebrous - shut off from the light
Theurgy - the art or technique of compelling or persuading a god or beneficent or supernatural power to do or refrain from doing something
If any of these words make their way into your next poem/story, please tag me, or leave a link in the replies. I would love to read them!
More: Lists of Beautiful Words
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rel124c41 · 1 month
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THE LOST ART OF KEEPING A SECRET. jade leech & floyd leech
The aquarium receives new additions perhaps once every two weeks; usually they are cute little things with rainbow fins and gem eyes. These two are not cute little things; they're huge and they have human faces. "Well I've got a secret, I cannot say" - Queens of the Stone Age, Track 2 on Rated R. a gift for @hallowed-father; based on their beautiful fanart 💕
tags: aquariums, late night conversations, captivity, situational humiliation, dehumanization, mutual pining, dubious ethics, kidnapping, vivisection, nursery rhyme references, eventual happy ending
word count: 12,668
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The first two times you try seeing them, all you see is your reflection. 
It makes sense unfortunately. With the lack of any light, you are going to have a hard time seeing them. Cloudy black settles over the skeleton and hair shaped vegetation. You can turn your head on a swivel (which you do on the second try) but there is no way to discern what swims through darkness. Instead, all you see in the aquarium tank’s water is your face. 
Each uniquely human feature of yours squints in the nebulous, oscillating dark. To an observer, it would seem that you think if you flatten your eyes into pressed almonds something will reveal itself to you. Nose scrunching, you squint in a grandmother who lost her glasses way that is simply laughable. 
There must be something inside the exhibit.
Nothing. Nothing but your desolate reflection. 
On a small plaque, the words no use of flash photography wags a censure finger at you. Besides the cerulean halo on the corners where the wall meets ceiling, the room must remain dark at all times. Even during operating hours – or so you have heard from Deuce – they refuse to allow any other light in the secluded room. 
Besides the ultramarine ouroboros, the oval-shaped room is dark beyond dark. An extreme that is on another level than what you are familiar with. As a nightguard, you are familiar with the dark. Quite familiar. 
For example, there is one aquatic animal that you managed to see that other people cannot find nine times out of ten. In the shadows, spider crabs hide. They call their environment interestingly enough: the twilight zone, a part of the seafloor that gets little light and is very cold. With only three crabs in a sizable aquarium, it is understandably hard for others to find them. While the guests that linger after hours or closing staff puzzle over their location, you find them with ease. Behind the ship, by those bones, in the left corner no no higher in the left corner;  your eyes have long since adjusted to the nocturnal proclivity of your job. 
(One of the closing staff employees joked you were like a cute, little opossum. You think he meant it as a flirt; you found it insulting. Pressing your shades higher up on the bridge of your nose, you clocked in with your head down, vexed.)
However, in the tenebrous depths before you, you are like a disgruntled archaeologist standing in a desert of Swiss-cheese holes. Unable to locate anything. Tilting your head in a slightly different direction, your eyes squeeze into petite slices, searching. 
The flashlight in your hand is a heavy temptation. If you just raise it, the absence of light will readily receive it. Melted pinks and greens of vegetation will pop, brown and amber of decorative rocks will shine, and whatever colors lie on these new fishes will certainly look like a gorgeous splendor under visible light. It would take the smallest wrist motion. Your reflection held in black water stares back at you, glaring daggers. ‘C’mon, do it,’ your reflection urges.
Light slugs over your sneakers, contemplative. ‘Perhaps not,’ you think with regards to the penlight. You know that you loathe having any type of light in your face; do unto others as you would have done onto you. The button of your tool clicks off. By now, you should already be down by the stingrays. 
‘Third time might just have to be the charm,’ you think with a frown. 
In the fishbowl glass, mummified with shadows, your reflection mimics that childhood disappointment.
‘I’ll try again tomorrow.’
Turning to leave, spine to the aquarium tank, you miss the first instance of light emerging out of dark. 
It pulls upward like an ember blown skyward out of a campfire pit. The movements of it are languid. Flickers of yellow orbit in a whirlpool, lazy like they have just woken up. That clean circle becomes distorted, shrinking and growing like window-shades are being maneuvered over it. Then, a twin of yellow joins the first, a hair keener than the first. Both circles of light hang in the shadows, not brightening or shining beyond an intensity that is noticeable. Shrewd with their intentions.
When the door to the oval room clicks close, the window-shades pull down like a blink and the aquatic water changes from being speckled with playful yellow back to tenebrous black.
As it turns out, the phrase ‘third time's the charm’ holds an eternal merit. Because the next night, which is the third time you look into the aquarium tank, your wish is granted. 
The unluckiest charm; the unluckiest wish.
The aquarium gets new deliveries once every two weeks. As the nightguard, you are not kept on the up-and-up unless Deuce Spade is working. And as an honor college student, Deuce is usually scheduled – during daylight hours of course – on the weekends when exam season is not keeping him occupied. So, you missed the news about this new delivery initially. All you knew about them was from the very insightful texts of Deuce Spade (two in total):
The new deliveries can’t be around light. Think it's anglerfish? 
and
Apparently not anglerfish, those have to live under pressured water. Why do people act like that’s common knowledge to know??
Your available information is: they are not anglerfish. That is all.
You really are left with no hints to what hides in murk. After two weeks, no plaque detailing the species is nailed to the wall or statued on a slanted board. The room is void of identification. Perhaps that is the reason your body seems so magnetized towards deciphering this mystery. No identification by now is unusual. Plus, night shifts drag like limping feet; why not try to stall off boredom?
This time around, you power off your penlight before entering the room. Instead of letting the light stamp a circle of itself on the ground, you enter pure darkness. Blue vibrates above you. Not complete darkness, you correct, stepping on the path that limited blue illuminates. 
The room and tank resemble an egg with a cut-off top. The room is oval shaped but missing a quarter of its full shape, the top half knifed off to make room for a tank full of about five hundred gallons of water. When you reach the wall, the length is forty feet, this sliced egg-top, you place determined hands in your slacks pocket. 
And squint until the muscles in your eyes quiver with strain.   
Penguins must be kept in cold waters. Vents are constantly blowing cold air into the exhibit to keep it under forty degrees. As your breath comes out in a puff of frosty air, you wonder deeply just what kind of species can be kept in such frigidness. Deep sea penguins? That would certainly be interesting. 
Your reflection challenges you with a mimic of your squinting. Keep dreaming, it says. No matter which way you look over tenebrous shadows of vegetation and rocks, nothing is making itself clear to you. This time you risk inching closer. From this distance, you can count the vertebrae-esque leaves of a winding ludwiga. Ice seems to heartbeat off the glass, kissing your features. 
What can you see?
Nothing. Nothing but your desolate reflection.
That is until a little organic lantern – small like a dragonfly– comes alive in the water. Despite your excitement, you keep yourself frozen and still. Your tiny gasp bleeds out your mouth and hits the glass gradually. The dragonfly powers on and off in two blinks. Morse code for ‘I’ but you doubt this animal knows that – you just happened to take a college elective for Morso code. You watch this single, pinprick lantern with great interest.
‘I think it really is an anglerfish. I mean, it makes complete sense. Deep sea water temperatures. The utter lack of light. Maybe, the researchers found some way to replicate the pressures, and the staff just doesn’t know yet. That would be revolutionary.’
Then, a second dragonfly joins the first. On a black-emerald and black-turquoise torrent, the ember dips down low. Glittering like a sun-rays on water, it slithers closer with curious intent. It was leagues keener than its twin, metaphorically hexagonal instead of circular. This dragonfly too powers off and on in quicker blinks. Four blinks which is ‘H’ in Morse code … useless knowledge. 
Anglerfish cannot communicate. The entire ecosystem of a brain from fish to human is different, like trying to compare a tropical amazon to a winter wonderland. Just far too different to understand one another.
But, it is impressive that the aquarium was able to get such a deep sea creature to survive in a simulated habitat. 
“Hi there.” You wave your fingers. Pressing yourself closer to the glass, you wait for your eyes to adjust and register the razor teeth and fat jowls of an anglerfish brown face. Cold air starts to swim under your jacket, your body’s tilt causing the material to slip. Then, you make eye contact.
Eye contact? Eye contact. Turns out those lantern-shaped dragonflies you are looking at are not the bait anglerfish have attached to their bodies. It is not a hunting evolution you openly leer at. Rather, you look them in the eye. 
All the fire of your wonder extinguishes like a pinched match.
As if the vents are working overtime, a sudden chill falls over you. Goosebumps settle over your shoulders. You jump back and misty gray air (your gasping breath) explodes in front of you. It is not your desolate reflection that swims in front of you. Someone else’s face is in there.
There are creatures in there; that is undeniable. What fights to make itself conclusive in your reeling mind is the image of the creatures. Creatures – so completely alien when compared to the mixture of muscles that make up an anglerfish– with human faces. Human features. A nose. A pair of lips. A pair of squinting eyes, staring right back at you. 
One of them throws their head back in laughter when you fall to your ass, reeling inward and outward. What the fuck is a human – two humans! – doing inside an aquarium tank at 2 A.M.!
You climb back up to your feet with all the grace of an injured crab. Your left arm feels longer than your right; you feel like the ground has morphed into quicksand and is suckling on your right boot; all of your world has become disoriented. In your jacket, your penlight weighs down your left side like a brick. Pulled by a mental riptide, you wrestle until you finally stand on two (trembling)  legs like all bipedal humans should. Earth tilts as you watch the one who laughed move forward, blue blanketing him. 
He taps the glass. Exact over the bullseye point of where you stand, reeling, in the glass from his point of view. In intelligent acknowledgment of you.
You two lock spheroid eyes, analyzing each other with hell-bent resolve. Mapping the features of each other in your brain’s fusiform face area so you can recognize each other at later times. His human features settle like all the others before him in your cerebrum. Packaged in the inferior temporal cortex, packaged in the fusiform gyrus. The human visual system that specializes in recognizing faces accepts him. 
‘That is a face. I will recognize it later and recall it as one thing only: a face.’ Just like that, your brain, your fusiform gyrus mails you the annotation. 
A part of you wants to cry and the other wants to puke. You do neither. You react with a different system of your body.
Muscles press your flashlight’s button on and muscles move it up quickly when the second one starts to move closer to the glass. You do it out of fear. And with strange, instant regret. 
The one closest to the glass folds into himself, seething. A webbed, tooth-white-with-green-gradient hand covers his eyes in agony. His other hand slams the tank in a tight fist. It knocks the world back into orientation. You flee the scene with your flashlight swinging wildly back and forth with your sprint. 
This time there is no laughter.
You rush out like they are chasing you, laughing over your shoulders. With a harsh crash to the ground, panting in disbelief, you pull trembling knees towards your stricken face. What the fuck – what the absolute fuck! A carapace cloak falls over your brain to ignore knocking thoughts and rationalization. Wordless beyond three words, they swirl in your head. What the fuck – what the fuck.
Your spine lies on another exhibit. Stingrays lie underneath the aquarium’s sand, sleeping and unaware of you. Part of you knows you will not be able to sleep in the morning. 
“What the fuck.”
You unlock your phone with your face when you get home. 
The lamp glows, allowing your phone to register the face identification. As quickly as the string is pulled on, it is tugged off. Dawn rests against your black-out curtains like zombies pounding on doors sheltering food. Brightness on the screen is kept down to the lowest possible setting. You type the name of where you work into your phone.
‘There has to be information on them. You can’t just have that’ – pale-green faces with matching gold eyes – ‘that living in an aquarium. And if it’s in an aquarium, shouldn't that aquarium be like inside Area 51 or the Oval Office. Anywhere but nowhere!’
You click on the website of your place of employment. The types links are highlighted in white bubbles: GET YOUR TICKETS, WAYS TO SAVE, and ANIMALS UP-CLOSE. Your finger follows the last tab and you come across a Let’s Get Started sheet, asking if you are a member and, if not, to start booking. A colorful curse parts your lips.
You return to the home page. Take in the organization again. Okay, there are some links above too: Visit, Animals & Exhibits, Learn, Research & Conversation, News & Events, Support Us, Shop. 
Gravitating towards Animals & Exhibits, you watch as a list unfurls like a scroll. None of them are unusual animals. From beluga whales to steller sea lions, you are looking at a dead-end list of regular animals which you have passed multiple times on your nightguard route. Aquatic animals whose features do not turn your entire morning full of sleep into restless pacing. 
This is nauseating. For piscine features to be manipulated like that. Sea creatures come in a variety of features that are unique to them; eyes that reveal the innate instinct to survive above compassion or companionship, dorsal fins that branch off their body like tiny mountains, or those puckering lips that circle to suction fish-feed from the surface of their tanks. Those features you can compartmentalize with the aquarium you work with well. They belong there with the other undersea creatures. Your heart pangs in disgust.
This is immoral. For human features to be manipulated like that. A face you might see walking out of a movie theater, hand in hand with his girlfriend. A face you could have the possibility of getting to know if you were not a college dropout; someone in your biology or english elective or calculus class that would ask for help with a certain question. Staring into that man’s left umber eye and right gold eye, you realized how all those features made him human. Your heart pangs in sympathy. 
This is? You take a tranquil breath that soothes you like medicine from an inhaler, and the next thought sets your world back on the correct axis. This is out of your paygrade.
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You return because, fucking, of course you do. A job is equivalent to a life. You experience less hardships when you have a good job – which you thankfully do. You have a good job that you must keep.  
One: legally, graveyard shifts pay more than others in your state. Two: it was ideal for the degenerative disease you have. Three: “I need money. Money is good. I need money. Money is good. I need money. Money is good. I need money. Money –'' There have certainly been better mantras sung in your car; though, this melody keeps you sane. Most importantly, it keeps your foot steady on the accelerator. So with three very good reasons – really just two overlapping ones and a single unique one – you return to work the next day like nothing is wrong. 
Thus, you are going to ignore it. Thus, “I’m going to ignore it,” you tell yourself. Thus, you are going to stand in front of the oval-shaped room’s door for the larger half of thirty minutes, studying the steel. Ah, this is far from ignoring it.
It is just … absent of sentimentality, you know that they are only fish. Fish that you see on guys’ dating profiles, fish that you eat with a medley of dipping sauces, fish that shit in the very water they swim in. You are no PETA advocate that will say fish are like the monkeys of the ocean, learning to use rudimentary tools and are sophisticatedly smart because they form social groups. However, despite this, there is a tiny pebble in the river that manages to disrupt the entire flow; the pebble wants you to apologize to them.
Which is outlandish and pure insanity!!
Which is really why you should not push the door open with your hand. And, which is why you glare at your traitorous fingers and listen to the creak of an opening door, bemoaning how utterly stupid you are to be opening this Pandora box of possibilities.
You let the flashlight sway once in an overarching cut across the room. Then, you point it at the ground and squint at the aquarium again. Besides a few layering shades of ebony speckled with blue, there is really not much for you to distinguish in the stomach of shadow. Putting yourself on an even playing field, you flick off your flashlight and step forward. 
Feet shuffle inch by inch. Looking straight, your acuity of vision decreases bar by bar. Gravity shifts like a restless faultline has awoken under your feet. You want to run away while you walk forward.
When you touch a hand to the frigid glass, you finally feel steady again. Once more, your exhale makes itself physical in a small cloud on the tip of your nose. The temperature is graciously grounding. 
“I’m okay,” you remind yourself. You blink to stabilize your vision.
Apologize to the fish then you can finally leave. Simple enough.
Yet, as you wait and squint, no glowing eyes emerge in the dark. You hold yourself there, waiting for just a flicker of motion in what seems like everlasting comatose. 
This is pointless. Why am I even here? I doubt they remember my face, much less hold a grudge over it. Fuck, why did I let myself get sentimental over some eldritch homunculus that is an affront to biological evolution! Why aren’t they at Area 51 or the Oval Office – why did faith push them here?
Inner seething concluded, you turn your flashlight on and the room brightens. For a split second, your face lies its reflection on glass with a resentful aura. You maneuver light towards the door with determination. Your body follows, making a hasty turn towards your exit. There are rounds around the aquarium to be made, iced frappuccinos in the breakroom you want to drink, and momental, life-altering plots to be ignored forever.
Until the glass behind you thuds in tension-raising noise like when a bird hits window-panes with little to no warning.
Breath caught in your throat, you whirl around to make eye contact with him. He wears such a handsome face, one that could belong to a heartthrob actor if not marred by the fins replacing his ears and the mossy green hue of his skin. His playful inquisitive eyes are entirely human in shape and structure; the black pupil and then the color ring of an iris. Too bad they too are disfigured by rare and nauseating colors, olive-umber and gold. 
That right eye reminds you of lighthouses on the coast. Captains are not supposed to stir towards lighthouses; they avoid the light, even if it carries a certain warmth. Why is he looking at you so warmly?
Somehow, you just manage to catch out of the corner of your eye the motion of his hand. An acute nail points down at your beaming flashlight which imprints a halo of light on the carpet floor. Then, he raises his hand up to around his shoulder. His fingers move in the starting shape of someone about to play thumb-war before he starts to move his thumb up and down. Clicking an imaginary button, signaling for you to turn off your flashlight.
Stunned, you numbly do. Light is pulled and magnetized back into the pen’s surface, like an object beamed up into a spacecraft, at a speed unseeable to the human eye. The eye contact between you two is almost an intense lip-lock that both of you cannot part with. 
This is one you shined the flashlight at. Right into those encapsulating eyes. The right one is yellow like liquid spilling out of a pineapple. Bright and playful.
“I- I uh,” you fumble with your apology. He probably won’t understand a word. You purse your lips nervously. Are there any words in the English language that can package up your sympathies from homo sapien to fish; is opening your mouth even worth it? “I wuh-wanted to –.”
Your apology withers when the eel-mer starts to tap on the glass. 
Intentionally, you listen. Yet irrationally, you expect to see or hear more Morse Code. Perhaps it is his anthropoid features that misled you to the conclusion that he might know the coded language. With a needle-hook nail, he taps a rhythm. 
It’s nothing though? The letters are gibberish, with even the number 5 sitting pretty between an O and a C. Of course it is not a code. Coming to your senses, you doubt he could even understand your apology if you gave it to him. There is a fine line drawn in the aquarium’s sand: fish and humans are not equal, one is more intelligent.
With some infinite patience, the fish taps the glass again. You listen and recognize it as the exact same taps and pauses from before.
“This is ridiculous,” you mutter under your breath. You hold eye contact, scrutinizing him. So used to having zero company, you surmise aloud, “I must be so sleep-deprived and loopy that I dreamed you up … A piece of undigested beef like Scrooge said.” As if to solidify his independent self and independent thinking in your solipsistic world, he taps the rhythm again.
This time – you think because of the repetition – you finally understand why he is tapping. It almost sends you flat on your ass once more. 
Oh. You throw a hand up to your mouth, faintly covering up a disbelieving laugh of joint horror and amusement. Disbelief crystallizes itself in the air; a tiny cloud of your reeling mind dissolves in front of you as you drop your numb hand. “Hah.”
The fish taps a nursery rhyme. One you know from kindergarten. One you would clap the rhythm of with your hands. You remember vaguely the pattern you’d move your hands to play with another child. The vague lingering sense of being hushed and secretive while playing your little singing games, giggling in the back of the classroom, bites your goosebumped flesh. 
How appropriate for a man trapped in an aquarium to know the nursery rhyme A Sailor Went to Sea. He does it again, the lyrics plucked from the cobwebs of your memory: A sailor went to sea, sea, sea; to see what she could see, see, see; but all that she could see, see, see; was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea. 
You don’t know fully how well your sight would fare in the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea. Still, with a hesitant squirm, you approach the frigid glass. The man inside the aquarium waits this time rather than launching right back into tapping.
Raising your arm, you make certain to dig your nails into your palm. A little reality-checking pinch never hurt anyone. One of those pallid nails rises up and taps back. Feeling like you are the spinning ballerina, you listen to the melody of this Pandora box plays unchained and uncaged in the ice cold air:
A sailor went to sea, sea, sea
To see what she could see, see, see
But all that she could see, see, see
Was the bottom of the deep blue sea, sea, sea
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There is no way to get around it. The third shift is lonely. Here in this aquarium? They only require one person to clean all the tanks, turn off decorative filters, and supervise aquatic life. That sole person has been you. With an iced frappuccino and penlight as your pirate’s sword and hooked hand, you have managed the task of protecting this vessel well.
Just because of your longevity of working as a third shifter, it does not make it come easy. Two tabs in your eighteen open Safari tabs are on articles about coping with night work. Coping with solitude when the entire world works in the opposite of you. One article details trying to stay on top of social interactions. All these shifting hours have been mistakenly used up. As you move through hallways like a haunting shark, you roll in your mind all the lost opportunities and all the regrets of having people in your life that you could’ve formed relationships with but never did.
Your metaphorical ailment has been sleep apnea. Eye scorned. Unable to catch your breath. You've been awake for years with no company. Along with being alone, you have been so achingly tired. Circadian rhythms in a body never change.
Your friend plays well in rhythms. The instrument of his disposition is easy to read after a month of ‘knowing’ each other. He has the attitude of a drummer. 
It is hard to get yourself used to his existence at first; he remains uncaring to your fretting. Lacking melodies or harmonies, he seems like the type that would rather keep things easy and simple than embellish. 
You come to visit? He wants to play. You’re too exhausted to play? He can entertain himself. What you have is very plain sailing and hardly involves any talking unless you start it. Besides, he is still just a fish and thus cannot converse with you. 
He really enjoys tapping on the glass. He plays a variety of rhythms; ones you do not know then, very strangely, some that you do know. As night by night moves along in time’s steady march, you grow comfortable enough to play back. He will play a rhythm only once, you copy it back with aid from your memory. You have even started to show him music on your phone, seeing how quickly he can pick up on certain beats and mimic them for himself.
Sometimes though, all he wants to do is simply listen. Which is activity the two of you share in tonight, absent of that third member who you are sure is hiding deeper among the burrows and the oscillating, five ribbed kelp. That distant drummer in your phone floods the cold room with music.
A small booklet covers your heart as you lie wistful. The floor is rough cement. There is no better place to lounge though. Underneath your head, a furry gray seal pup you borrowed from the toy store acts as your pillow. You try to think of yourself weightless like you are in water as you remain close-eyed and contemplative.
Like a siren call, music slithers out of the bottom of your phone’s speakers. Legs crossed over one another, you briefly tap your foot along to the rhythm that you are sure your friend is enjoying. “Look for reeeflections, in yo-our face; canine devotioo-ton, time can’t erase; Out on the cor-ner or locked in your room; I never buh-lieve them and I never assume-uh!”
Speaking of your friend, you have not bothered to check on him in a while. One of your diseased eyes peels open. Face held in a wink, you estimate if your friend is close enough to the glass that you should be able to see him clearly enough despite all the darkness. 
You do not expect him to be lounging right there beside you. It gives you a little shock of surprise. A moment passes by and that feeling suddenly intensifies to a shock of the heart. Not in a romantic way but in the way of a death row prisoner being electrified to death. 
You bolt upright, skull and hair flying off the seal pup plushie. Prescription sunglasses tilt down from their forehead perch, landing crookedly on your nose. The creature waves a sharp set of gradient-covered claws in your face. The only reason that your electric heart runs above its normal BPM is because that glowing lighthouse-esque eye is on the left side rather than the right.
“It’s you.” The creature, who you have not been becoming friendly with for an entire month, smiles at you and your shocked voice.
Though you are certain he has been watching you – not just while you were resting your eyes on the ground for a much needed cat nap, but for the entirety of these thirty-one nights – his eyes still flutter around the space where you sit in observation. He takes in each individual item around you like trying to find certain objects in spot-the-difference puzzles. After a moment, you ask while pointing to your phone, “Do you not like the music?” His wandering eyes are magnetized to your face when you address him.
Hell, they are intense. Intenser than any eyes you have really looked in before, rivaling even the strictest teachers you had or the meanest secretaries you have known. The colors in his gold and umber iris swirl like tiny galaxies of brown dust and broken stars. Intelligent eyes like those are daunting and, thus, terrifying to level your gaze with.
Despite knowing you will not get an answer, you march on in your one-sided conversation, “I get it that music isn’t everybody’s thing. Does it disturb you?” You wait. The newcomer does not talk either. “Ah, not a fan. I get it.”
You may receive no verbal answer, however you sense he does not want to play patty-cake through a sheet of reinforced aquarium glass. “Whatever yooo-u dooo-oh, don’t tell anyone; whatever yooo-u dooo-oh, don’t tell –” The song cuts off as you press the pause button.
“I should have been more considerate,” you apologize, able to steadily carry on this solo because you have grown used to it. You do talk a lot to the other fish. Almost in the same way one can carry on an unbalanced conversation with a pet cat or dog. “You just swim over to let me know and I’ll turn it off. I would never want to disrupt anyone’s sleep.”
‘Just like I would never again want to shine a light in anyone’s eyes.’ You still regret that with each fiber of your being.
For a silent moment, you two observe each other. Though you are a hundred percent certain this is not his first time scrutinizing you. You realize his hair is a mirror-flip reflection of the other fish’s just as he raises one of his hands. 
Maybe he is like the other fish. Despite not giving the impression of a drummer, he might still want to play that rudimentary game of patty cake where you two match and copy each other’s rhythm. Perhaps it is all their fish brains can comprehend. Even though his eyes might seem intelligent, he is nothing more than a piscine creature. However, that thought stalls when a single, black-dyed claw reaches up to his own throat, tapping it delicately.
“Hm?” You tilt your head curiously. 
In response, he takes his index and middle finger and taps once more his own throat. Then, he takes those fingers and depresses them over the reinforced sheets of glass. 
“Do you want me to,” you trail off, eyes stuttering over the items at your disposal. “I can’t sing if that’s what you’re getting at. I’m no singer.”
 Eyes, one of them full of shattered stars and the other full of blown-up planets, stare on. Unchanging and showing you no inclination of what he wants you to do. The other fish will at least whine, squint, or show joy if he thinks whatever words your vocal cords stretch into will entertain him. “Though, I could,” you trail off again.
Trailing off is an awful habit of yours. You rarely can make full, complete conversation after almost half a decade of night shifts. However, those intense eyes encourage you to go on. “I could read to you?” Your fingers point towards the booklet that had fallen off your chest. “If you want?”
Once again, no answer. But, at least you are not staring alone at your desolate reflection. His figure behind the glass – the yellow eye on his left side watching each of your body’s movements – is so very real and alive. At least, you are not alone this time. Though, the company is unorthodox biologically.
“Reading … I can do that.” Only for a little while though. Eventually, your eyes will start to blur at the tiny scripture. However, as you pick up the book and place it in your lap, the first line is big enough that you can read it easily, “Once upon a time –”
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As a wedding gift, Pandora received a box from Zeus. Though gifts by definition are simply something given from person to person, the word gift carries with it a subliminal, secondary definition. Gifts are to typically be opened.
Acting against that thought, Zeus warned Pandora to never open the box. You never understood that. 
Why would one dangle temptation in front of another’s face? Why even plant an apple tree in the Garden of Eden? Why even craft a box if it should remain shut evermore? Temptation is a seductive thing. It slithers up into a body with shining honey eyes and lures like a hook. Because of this, it is best to keep it under lock and key.
If Zeus really did not want the box opened, he should have kept it as a hidden secret underneath thousands of layer crusts in the mountains.
As the story goes, curious Pandora opens her wedding gift. From it, the four horsemen of Judgement Day leap and gallop out, thick plumes of disease rattle out of the box in shaking coughs, and envy and greed claws their way out with black, knife fingernails, raping Pandora of her beautiful face and stealing her glittering necklace. Bleeding scratches upon her cheek and lungs filling with disease-ridden smoke, Pandora slams the box shut with a regretful hack. 
Only one thing remains in Pandora’s box. Hope remains trapped inside the wedding gift. Alone, hope paces the perimeters of the box in their curiosity. Marveling at how much room and space they have to stretch out, hope takes a long, peaceful nap for all eternity.
You wish you could take a long, peaceful nap. You have a lot of trouble managing to fall asleep fully without waking up in intervals. When you work against your body’s natural circadian rhythm that is simply what happens.
Today, you have what Doctor Safari’s helpful tabs are telling you is a third shifter headache. To alleviate them you take no pills. Far too smart of an idea to take those. Instead, you take an iced frappuccino out of the break room’s fridge and turn off every single light in the aquarium, down to the blue LEDs that snake on the ceiling.
“Much better,” you sigh to yourself in relief. In nebulous black, your feet carry you to the place where company awaits and has been awaiting for about two months now.
It has been a slow trail of companionship. Progress is not fully linear. Part of you has forgotten how hard it is to socialize after years of isolation. 
To be honest, you feel like a man who has lived up in the mountains alone for years, living and hunting by nomad methods, only to be shown a cellphone as soon as you reach the mountain's descent. However, they must feel the same way. They have lived down in the ocean for years, living and hunting in aquatic methods, only to be brought up and shown the eye of a penlight shining in their face. The three of you are all just struggling along in finding how to make companionship work. 
But God, does it work. You hesitate with it, suddenly remembering the fins as placeholders for ears or the tails under their belly-buttons. Yet, human eyes and smiling lips will restore your content in the next moment. Something about them solves your loneliness.
They may never speak. However, you often have trouble navigating the maze of words.  In the end, you consider them friends in an unease definition of the word.
By the time you make it to Pandora’s box, your coffee is drunk down to the last drop and you use the chilled glass container as an impromptu ice pack across your forehead. Where you come through is not the typical oval-shaped room. Instead, you venture up a tongue of metal steps to the top of their aquarium tank. It is a circle-shaped room. Designed largely like a pool, the only lighting is three spheres on each wall. The room consists of a gaping black hole of water and a slight drop in floor elevation so staff can stand ankle-deep while feeding or caring for them.
At least, you assume. Because the first time curiosity lured you to the top of their tank, your fingers had been nibbled at. Nothing extreme and more like dogs cobbing to show affection, but it still surprised you when the right-gold-eyed one took your hand in his.
Now, you carry along with a plastic bag of treats and tread into the water without hesitation. Walking in the familiar steps of your companionship as you have done night after night. They are eager to see you it seems.
Too bad the world tilts and you are suddenly no longer looking down on them but eye to eye. You realize what has happened with gritted teeth. A careless trip of unbalanced feet, now you sit on hands and knees in inch-deep water.
You also realize something with more horror than before. The prescription sunglasses that were perching on your forehead have been knocked off and are slowly slipping inside the tank’s depths. 
“No, shit!” You cry out before, with one-track-mindlessness, you duck your head underwater like a hungry mallard. 
Your eyes fly open as soon as you submerge yourself. You watch as languid sunglasses drift lower and lower. Ribs tight on the cement floor, you spear out your arm in a panic, missing the edge of the glasses by a finger’s width before they go down further and further.
No, no, no! Those glasses cost a fortune! 
Stupidly, you consider the idea of diving right into the rest of the tank before you realize another thing. It paralyzes you, shocking and binding your heart. The entire sight of the tank is so easy to see. The bottom of the ocean floor is as clear as crystal, enough where you pick out each gradient of sand. It is comparable to being a person putting on their prescription contacts in the morning, everything clearing up with the right correction lens. 
Usually, your vision is always mildly blurry. Enough where you can navigate night to night without any serious medical aid. But that lingering, splitting-headache pain behind your irises dulls like a blanketed sound. 
It allows you to watch clearly as delicate, black fingertips scoop up your ebony pair of sunglasses. 
Relief fills you as the fish with upturned eyes gently brings them up to you. You surface from water just as both fish break the surface too. It dawns on you that you haven’t been this close, eyes parallel to one another with you on your knees. 
No reinforced aquarium glass separates you this time and yet, calmly, you say, “Thank you. I really can’t thank you enough for retrieving those for me.”
A giant grin grows on the one with downturned eyes. Though you hold a hand out to the other, this one seems to think your gratitude is for him for he loops his arms around your neck, squeezing you. He starts to pepper kisses on your cheek, which you suppose resembles how dogs like to lick their owners.
Your outstretched hand never receives the glasses. Instead, the fish with upturned eyes takes to placing your sunglasses back on the perch of your head. The temple tops fit snugly behind your ears. You watch as the fish with shrewdness in his eyes starts to move the tendrils of wet hair out of your face. 
As your hair is tucked and your cheek is kissed, you wonder just once more why faith has brought them to you.
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“(Name)?”
You smile at Deuce’s surprised gap. Today, you wear Noir sunglasses. The lenses are as dark as vantablack, refusing to allow any light touch your retinas. Even the artificially colored lights of an aquarium during operating hours is too much for you. 
Deuce is in charge of the photography printing booth today. Twenty or so different families, couples, groups of teens flicker in rows across the screen he stands in front of. 
“You sound almost disappointed.”
“No, no, not at all,” he rushes to amend. “Just haven’t seen you out in –”
“The sun?”
“Yeah, that.”
“Even a vampire needs a change of pace.”
Like an examined showhorse, you show off your plain teeth. No fangs or shark teeth to be found. 
“I’ll tell you though. Driving here? A complete nightmare.” And, it really was. Usually you drive one handed. Your right hand lies on your thigh, tapping along to the rhythm of the radio’s drums. Today, you had to grip the steering wheel with both hands.
“Well, it is a summer weekend after all. Sucks to get stuck in traffic. ” Deuce nods his head in sympathy.
“Ah,” you look to the side. “Actually it was kind of just weird driving with other people on the road.”
Deuce’s eyes brighten in particle understanding. He might not entirely comprehend it but he still goes, “Oooh. Because you’re so used to driving at night.”
It is not that entirely. “Yeah,” you give a small, lying smile. When you remember driving, you remember it like a dream. You drive in a single lane, all alone in your white truck. Bordering you, two lanes of heavy, steady traffic move in succession towards the opposite direction. Going somewhere you are not. 
Your isolated Chevrolet Silverado was so high up on the ground that you felt a bird. The width of your truck was so wide that you felt you were shouldering your way through a crowd. That is only what felt like happened, not reality. “I just felt a little disjointed.”
The photographs on the monitor keep changing in flickers. Your eyes fall on them. Mother with daughter. Boyfriend and girlfriend. Father and mother and only son. Three girl best friends. Grandfather with two girls and one boy. Blank. 
“Did you get your photo taken?” He asks. He must have noticed your gaze. Has to do his job after all. 
“Ah no.”
You look at the empty block of spotlighted blue. Dark cobalt around the edges and white in the center. How many photos do you have of yourself? You feel in that moment … if you ran away somewhere, no one would notice; there’s no photographic evidence that you exist.
“Nah; had to fight to let them let me pass. Oh, it’s just mandatory. Completely free of charge. And then, they started thinking I was insecure or something so they started complimenting me. Had to explain,” you tap the side of your sunglasses in reference, “and then, finally they let me go. So much fuss for just a photo.”
“They’re really that insistent on it?”
You nod. 
“So what brought you out into civilization anyways?”
“Wow, rude.” 
Deuce laughs. You smile strained. Every time you speak, it feels wrong. You are being too mean or not engaging enough. God, why can’t you just talk to someone like a normal person and carry a conversation smoothly? There is no desolate reflection for you to spy on the laptop, just an empty space of spotlighted blue.
“Visiting some friends.” is your reply.
The publicity on them is quiet and hush. So much so that you feel the world has already known about them – two merman pulled from the bottom of the deep sea, sea, sea. It is entirely possible. With how disjointed you are compared to 99.9 % of the population, it is not so far-fetched to think that they have been in the public’s eyes for a long time and wonder over them has died down. 
However, this exhibit is still listed as the first one. Out of how many? Well, you suppose you will find out later if more are to come, if this is going to be a big success. You only found out from working the night shift, seeing the date on the break-room calendar. 
COME SEE, FOR THE FIRST TIME, CREATURES FROM THE BLACK LAGOON! That is the first message you spy on the aquarium walls, following along with the crowd. Must have been put up by the morning crew. In bright letters, strung underneath party streamers, a multitude of phrases bounce and shout. Instead of being in awe over the pictures of them, your mind focuses on each line detailing: unprecedentedly new; for the first time; never seen before!
Yet, no one shrieks in terror at the sight of them in the posters. Even when you and others are filed into the aquarium auditorium, the crowd murmurs to themselves softly instead of shouting. Under the hypnotic spell of voyeurism, everyone seems more anticipatory than agitated.
You fixate your glasses tighter to your face as you scale up metal stairs, looking over your shoulder at the water. This is where they do the sea lion or seals show. You have not seen a single one in an entire decade. Under the shadowed surface, you can spy two serpentine lengths flowing through currents. 
“Bet this whole thing is a scam. We should go back to Disney in Florida next year; it’s warmer there. More stuff to do too.” You cast a glance at the daughter in her early twenties sitting next to her mother before moving further up.
You do not pick the top row but you do pick an isolated section. Sandwiching yourself next to a stone pillar, your butt lands on the rickety metal bench. Just as you are about to readjust your glasses, making sure that sides of the lenses are atom to atom on your skin, you are interrupted by a loud, consecutive ‘woah’ that you are not a part of, that swims through the crowd.
But, you manage to see a glimpse of it just in time.
You are not sure which one of the two it is. Yet, all the same, you watch entranced as one of them breaches that ink pool. Bioluminescence tints his body in glittering blue topazes. It is like watching a shooting star suddenly fly across the dark night skies. 
The porcupine quills of black that make up his fins bend and the dragon tail of sapphire that makes up his lower body arches. Aerodynamic, he flies through the air and manages just in time to snag the large, squirming spider crab that hangs from a ceiling beam on a metal wire. He disappears with the same speed as his appearance, taking with him into the black hole of water his meal.
Yet, before anyone can close their hanging jaws or the water can stop rippling with the impact of the eel-mer diving back under, music blares from the speakers, moving spotlights suddenly slide over the water and crowd, and a man comes out of the backroom and onto the stage.
You are just done wincing from the bright flash of a spotlight surfing over the bench you sit on when the man suddenly exclaims, “How are we all doing?” You stay tight-lipped as the crowd cheers. “C’mon, you can do better than that! How are y’all doing today?” The crowd cheers, claps, and responds in a long Goooood! 
Cringing with shut lips, you suddenly remember why it has been a decade since you watched an aquarium show. The script is always a bit childish. 
“We have two very special guests for you today. The strong guy you saw just a few moments ago was Flotsam. His brother, Jetsam, is here too. Jetsam, why don’t you come out and say hi to everyone.”
You lean forward, enraptured with the sight. Serpentine coils cut through the water, water jetting up with the force of how quickly he swims. Onto the wayward platform that bobs in the black hole, Jetsam pushes his body up onto it. Instead of a pair of flippers, he waves his clawed fingers to the awestruck audience. 
“Flotsam and Jetsam are both eel-mers. Found and rescued from the northern waters, they are the first of their kind and are very excited to show you all what they can do!” Thus, the spectacle begins.
They go through a variety of tricks. From doing a few figure eights in the water, shooting balls into hoops, and even a freeze dance to the music blaring through the speaker, the mixture of tricks they do feels almost infinite. When the staff member rolls out a clownfish mailbox, announcing the birthdays of a few children in the audience, you wonder how long they must have been training. Days upon days of practice drilled into their memory. 
Birthday children come up to the auditorium’s yellow line as the eel-mers hand out little high-fives to them. One child even proclaims, “Ew sticky!” before his dad tickles him under the arms and picks him up, returning to their bench. Even though it is their first show, Flotsam and Jetsam seem so well-versed in social etiquette. 
However, you cannot help but find it a little demeaning. It seems so beneath them to have to perform like this to a leering audience. Sure, the rewards for each trick is generous, a stocky Japanese spider crab tossed and crushed in their razor sharp jaws, but it feels so ignominious. 
Despite the horrified joy swimming through everyone’s gasps and aws, your heart is so sad.
Another round of tricks starts up. This time it involves a dual pair of bongos. As the staff member picks up a squirting spider crab from the cage onstage, he speaks into his echoing earpiece, “Now, our here, Flotsam is an exceptional drummer. We often find him playing something new every morning, completely of his own free experimentation.” Flotsam swims and props himself on stage as the staff member continues, “Today, we’re going to have him show off a skill to you fine folks!”
Your heart buries itself deeper and deeper into sadness. Perhaps, he never was intelligent. Perhaps, he is just another dumb fish. Canine obedience hammered in through reward and punishment, rhythms only learned because it is trained in him. As you two lock eyes, you cannot find anything that would dispute this theory.
You wait, as does everyone else, for Flotsam to start drumming away as promised. In addition, you wait for his eyes to flicker away from your unrecognizable face hidden by your sunglasses. Neither happens.
“A little indecisive today. I understand, there is just so much good music in the world,” the staff member stalls for time. He rips off a crab leg, holding out the reward by Flotsam’s suddenly demure face. “Why don’t we start off with something easy, buddy. A bit of the musical scale. Do-Re-Mi?”
‘You want to watch out for his teeth,’ you think, rubbing your fingers over the little scars you have from his nibbling. They really are such sharp instruments to break through the shell of a Japanese spider crab.
Thoroughly entrenched, the audience watches the repercussions of a box that was supposed to remain closed being opened.
Disbelief ripples through the crowd like one subtle wave. It is the only sound you participate in. Finally, in sync with the crowd of awake people. Someone to your left moans out of a low groan of phantom pain. The volume of interlocking disbelief grows when the staff member raises his hand up into the light. His trembling red hand hovers in front of his face to verify the view, his ring and pinkie finger bitten clean off. 
Poor bastard’s wedding ring is probably sinking down to the bottom of the tank alongside the crab leg that Flotsam spat out.
Volume pitches and rises. A woman screams. Naturally, that rouses up the attendance like puppet strings. The staff member falls on his bottom then crawls backwards. Crawling away from Flotsam like one, big stumbling crab. Since the seatmate to your right is a stone pillar, there is no one to trip over your feet in their rush to leave but you watch hypnotized many individuals shove and trip their way through bodies blocking the stairs leading down to the exits. Then, calmly, you stand on your metal bench to overlook the crowd. 
Flotsam’s eyes are wide as he stares at you. Reminds you of two tunnels branched off in a cave’s stomach. His fusiform gyrus lights up like newly plugged in Christmas lights, recognizing you. The little pea that makes up your fusiform face area– that clocks in every night to a job rarely done, cobwebs on the cubicle's laptop and dust as a seat covering – recognizes him too. 
It already was recognizing him, seeing him as what he really is. Your lips crack open, “Flo -.” Then, you start barreling down the metal steps. 
Weaving in and out of the disjointed crowd, you race down, sometimes landing on the cement floor and sometimes landing on the metal benches in your hopping steps.A shoulder jostles you so harshly that your sunglasses fall off your face. Between rows of benches, they dive to the floor. You trip, trying to make the leap onto a metal bench. The sound you make as you fall onto metal is so tiny in the cacophony. 
The world goes white. It is like flash blindness from a nuclear explosion. 
Tears pour out your eyes. You clap a hand over them in shame and to hide from the bright … too fucking bright … lights. 
When you finally pick up your sunglasses, marks of shoe soles stamped like tattoos on your upper arms and hands, the auditorium is empty of a single soul. Not even they remain swimming in the tank. Someone must have sedated them and dragged them out. You are alone once more.
That night, you dream a dream that is more memory than a mystified fabrication of wonders or terrors. 
Tender like a newborn, you lie on a wafer-thin sheet of paper that unrolls itself from a cylinder like one big, white wave. Perhaps an iceberg is more appropriate. Hospitals are as cold as the arctic. On the paper iceberg, on the fence of girlhood and the fated teenage years, on the tongue of a vivisection, you balance with broken ankles. Under your thin gown, flowing air and goosebump-freckled skin collide. Blue tints your bottom lip.
You are laid down, anticipating future pain.
“Lay down and I will be with you two shortly.” He had said this and nothing more.
The scent at the doctor’s office is ozone with a hint of vanilla. Near your toes, the long neck of a giraffe stretches skyward, painted on the bricks. Under bright, too fucking bright, light, metal tools glitter like slick seashells. You can feel the prescribed numbing droplets in your eyeballs slowly seep in.
You pinch your eyes shut, feeling like there is a cement block lodged and scraping between the bones of your temple. Why wouldn’t they give you something for the pain? When you open them, they are held open by a speculum and hooks like you are nothing past being an animal in a zoo doing your daily checkups. 
Oh, and you are sitting upright on the paper iceberg now.
Must be the dream’s altercations. Time skipping forward in intervals. 
Dreams are always like a pile of bones. The skeleton all jumbled up and disorganized that you move from femur to ulna. You are not graced with a lot of time to think on the analogy as a very big kitchen knife leans towards your pried open eye. 
The muscles in your cheek twitch when it cuts. With the skills of a head-chef slicing an egg, your eye is cut perfectly down the imaginary midline. Both sides are even. 
He scoops out one side of your eye like a person pulling back from a whole cake with a single slice. It is more inky black and sickly gray. The hues of your eye-cake that is. Far from the bright blue or pink frosting of a cake, it stays saturated in montone hues. You always thought an eye would look like the diagrams in school, colorful with reds and blues, but it is a sickly ebon and ashen gray.
The cornea is hard as a freshly cut nail and the half globe of retina slimes in his gloved hand like glue. Now looking at it, it appears the flesh inside an eye reminds you more of a bruised plum’s insides. A muted hue of purple-black rather than full ebon.
It is the lens of your eyes that really captures the doctor’s attention. He takes the half-cut marble in a pair of tweezers. Between those lobster claws of thin steel, your lens which makes up a pupil is rotated back and forth in observation. 
An eye, though entirely soft and vulnerable, has only one hard bit inside like the tough seed of a peach. It can be cut but it will give resistance. With one good eye and half of your other, you watch the hard material between the lobster claws be pinched in and out to test the give and resistance of itself. Steadfast, it does not bend under the squeezes. 
That half-cut pearl glitters.
Time skips again, moving bone to bone like switching channels. Instead of smells and sights, sound takes over the scene. The faint buzzing of the air conditioner as it breathes over the giraffe’s neck. Water oscillating back and forth over rubbing soapy hands cries loud in your ears. Though, faintly, you can hear the blood from your eye that slips down your chin hit the pad of the paper iceberg you sit on.
The tissue in your hand crinkles softly in sound as you wipe away blood tears. In a chair that might as well be across the globe of Earth, your guardian sobs in intervals with a trembling chin. “Guuuh … gah … hu-hu-hugaaah.” You keep soaking up blood, dabbing the tissue against your face as it whispers in light friction. 
After he finishes washing his hands of your sanguine, the doctor intones two words like a priest giving the final prayer at the start of Armageddon, “cone dystrophy.” That is the last sound your ears can bear to hear before you jolt awake.
Your current doctor has given you exactly twenty-one little sheets. Ishihara tests; multiple circles with a number made of circles in the center. They are tests for color blindness. 
That morning, the colors red and orange permanently fuse into one shade. 
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You took three nights off work. A little mini-vacation. The first was so you could spend the daylight hours watching the show with Flotsam and Jetsam; the second was so you could attend your doctor’s appointment; the third was so you could clean up what has been neglected in your apartment. Vacations are supposed to relieve the average worker of stress. You find yourself an outlier, once again.
“Blind by thirty? Blind by fucking thirty?” You bundle up the graphic shirt you were trying to fold into a circle and punch your mattress. The pile of already folded shirts tilts and falls in an arch to your right. “That fucking asshole,” you sneer.
Unraveling the graphic-tee-ball, you straighten your hunched posture with a deep sigh. No use taking your frustration out on innocent clothes. The wrinkled shirt joins the tower once you rebuild it. You reach out and grab a pair of socks. Foolishly, you thought organizing your apartment up for a very overdue spring cleaning would help to organize the disorder running rampant in your head. 
Forlorn and desolate, you look at the laundry mountain. Too bad that is far from happening. 
It is just … A person takes a guess at jars full of jelly-beans or what they’re significant other might have made for dinner, those are the true purpose of guessing games. The audacity of a person to guess when someone else is going to blind. You almost tear the sleeve off your cardigan when you pull in from the mountain’s maw. How dare your doctor estimate your finite health with such casualness. 
You suppose it makes sense. The Salvador Dali-esque dream you had the night before, coupled with losing the ability to differentiate between red and orange; all of these were just the bad omens setting up the stage for your doctor’s appointment. 
Mostly a homebody and not a frequent traveler, there aren’t many sights you are dying to see. However, the idea of losing your sight causes you to grieve it prematurely. Mourning the death of yourself. To just wither up inside this box-shaped apartment as a tomb, the thought of that is odious. You shudder and fold a towel.
Across the mattress, you look at your CRT television cloaked in a thin, see-through blanket to dim the lighting. On the square, a blue pick-up truck punches through metal and wooden gating. Even though the movie wrongly uses the sound effect of glass breaking, it is still impactful as you watch the pick-up truck reverse into an open boating harbor connected to the ocean. The whale and little boy harnessed to the back slowly sink in. 
Freeform is playing Free Willy. To be honest, you are just biding time until the Harry Potter marathon starts up. Thank God, this movie is nearing its end because it is putting dangerous thoughts in your head. You just want to see little Daniel Radcliffe under the staircase and be interrupted by commercials every twenty-five minutes.
The orphaned boy pushes the orca whale out to sea. You fold another article of clothing, unsure if it is orange or red. The hope that Pandora kept in her box begs for freedom.
It is an open secret now. That is a little contradictory, if you do say so yourself. 
However, it is the truth. The public now knows them without embellishment. With the shining gandour and seductive metaphorical-lingerie, it comes to their attention that predators are still predators. No matter how human they may look. 
The thought saddens you. Slowly and unsurely, you have been starting to humanize them in your mind. When you wrestle with the locked doorknob of the oval-shaped room, you grow sadder. 
It makes sense though. Flotsam and Jetsam? They should have been kept in the Oval Office or Area 51; instead they were brought to an aquarium in the middle of nowhere, used for publicity. The crux of humanity rears its ugly head. Sharing each fetish and body part to the audience is the sin of being a curious human. Everyone is a voyeur for something. No one can keep their mouth shut nowadays, always needing to post about their lives. So, they brought Flotsam and Jetsam here to do the exact same thing.
To think there was a time when you were disguised by their humanity. And now, it's all you hope to preserve and keep safe. Ascending the stairs to the circular-shaped room, you contemplate if there could ever be an inch of humanity in an animal. As a set of honey eyes peer at you from across the black hole water, you wonder if it is only canine obedience in their faces. 
Two against one, you all take a moment accessing each other. There are no plastic bags of yummy treats hanging from your arms. No thumping rhythms of songs echo on the walls. Instead of familiar friendliness and comfortable companionship, you all seem incredibly wary of each other. 
“Ya can come closer … We wouldn’t hurt ya, Shrimpy.”
Who the fuck said that?
Frozen in disbelief, you can do little besides watch the black hole ripple in violent sprays. A harsh slap echoes off the wall as a clawed hand breaches water only to grab the face with a right gold eye. Both drop under the water as your mind reels, spinning around options like a broken, juiced-up carnival ride. 
You are tired! You are so tired that you must have hallucinated that! Being awake for so long on the night shift … Why, it must be entirely possible to hallucinate every once and a while! An evolved headache of sorts! 
Yes. You grab onto that thought. Those words were hallucinations. Too bad your grip on the thought grows flimsy when Flotsam breaches the water, snarling, “I wanna talk to Shrimpy! Jade, lemme go! Get off!” A clawed hand grips the back of his hair and pulls him right back under.
A vivid hallucination you are having. Yes! A paragon of hallucinations and headaches after so many night shifts!
Despite the fear, you stay rooted in your spot. Not close enough to where the spilling water of the tank touches your shoes but close enough where you can watch the water steadily. Every once in a while, the sound of rocketing water echoes in the room. Dragon tails of green-blue fracture the surface. A clawed hand will rise up like a zombie breaking dirt only to disappear in seconds. Water flies in turrets and towers. 
Maybe because of the fear, you stay in your exact same spot and watch. Things start to calm down eventually. Bubbles pop on the surface like they are conversing under there. But, that is impossible because fish cannot speak.
‘Don’t backtrack (Name),’ you think to yourself. ‘Their entire existence is impossible. It’s been impossible since the beginning. This is just another step into that twilight zone. Another unorthodox secret brought to the surface.’ The thought makes you feel disjointed like a pile of bones.
It had hurt. The day of the show. You do not why but it had hurt to know they weren’t yours alone. That the secret had been open for some time and it was not just you and them. Thus, you stay and wait for them to breach the surface one more time.
They both do simultaneously. Water cutting the visage of the rest of their body from the shoulders down. Red returns to the scene, staining both Flotsam and Jetsam’s faces in thick scratches. You barely get a second to analyze the wounds before Flotsam shouts, “It was haaard, ‘kay? I wanted to tell them the pretty nickname I made for them! And tell them I liked the new rocks they put in our tank!” He pouts childishly. “It’s so borin’ not being able to talk. I got so bored! You’re boring.”
Even when Flotsam snaps his sharp teeth at Jetsam, he remains unpulsed. “Forgive me for trying to look out for your well-being, but both of us agreed in junction that we would under no circumstances talk to humans.”
“But Shrimpy’s different from the rest!”
“Under no circumstances, Floyd.”
“I knooow,” Flotsam? Floyd? whines. Then, his downwards angled eyes slide over your comatose form. An excited grin comes up to his face. “Doesn’t matter now though. Shrimpy!!”
You are barely given a second to gather your thoughts before Floyd barrels towards you. Spindly arms wrap around your neck and suddenly you are down on your knees in an inch of water. The kiss on your cheek this time feels much less like a dog licking to show affection; it resembles more a human kissing you on the cheek which causes you to fluster. 
“Truly, you make things so difficult at times,” Jetsam? Jade? tuts. The sound of him swimming through the water draws closer. His deep timbre sends a cardiogenic shock through your ribcage as he addresses, “I do apologize for my brother. He was a bit desolate without you here the past two nights.”
For some reason, you wonder how Jade felt in your absence too. Hands holding onto Floyd’s upper arms for a semblance of balance, you reply, “Uh, I took — I took a vacation.” The words feel like marshmallows rolling off your tongue. Gluttonous, fluffy, unreal with their texture. This really is happening, and you have to come to terms with it.
“Told ya it wasn’t because they were scared of us.”
“I never made such a connection. Merely hypothesizing.”
“Mmh, hypothesizin’ my ass,” Floyd grins as he turns to … sniff your hair?
Pushing him away to gain a bit of distance, you address the one you find the least distracted of the two. “You — You can talk? Why — Why didn’t you say anything to me before?” The companionship you had? Was it truly so fragile that you two had to keep secrets from one another?
“Well, you see, (Name),” — your name is so tantalizing coming from his voice that you feel like you are being resurrected from a heart-attack, defibrillator pounding away on your chest — “it was a matter of safety for my brother and I. If we were to say anything —.”
Floyd interrupts, “Everyone’s kind of a bigmouth buffalo fishy here so we keep ours shut.”
“The day to day conversations of the staff, the chatter from the people who visited us in the daylight hours, the unending gossip. We figured it was best to keep our lips sealed for the time being. Who knows how they would have reacted.”
“Nothing’s better than having a few tricks up your sleeve, Shrimpy.” Finally, you are done being squeezed as Floyd falls back into his tank. He rests his hands behind his head and floats buoyant.
“It is an epidemic, I fear. Fufu. Secrecy is such a rare trait to find nowadays.” Jade crosses his arms on top of the cement incline that you kneel in, looking at you sweetly. “Almost a lost art of sorts, eroded away after centuries of geological and evolutionary advances.”
Then, ping-ponging back and forth, they start to slip each secret (that others would probably want under lock and key) they’ve heard.
“Your manager’s wife is infertile thus he avoids conversations about children or preschool.”
“Lucas hit a guy with his car two years ago in a hit-and-run. Didn’t kill him but still.”
“Martha’s daughter just had an abortion. She gripes to Tatiana about how to possibly be supportive about this.”
“Ashley doesn’t like her boyfriend and they’re breakin’ up soon.”
“Deuce is going to fail his statistics class if he scores lower than a 95 on his next test.”
“Patrick is proposin’ to his girlfriend on December 1st.”
“We could keep going,” Jade says with a sly grin. “However, I think the point has gotten across.” He trails one fingernail across your thigh and smiles when you do not flinch. “All that useless prattle makes for some divine entertainment. Besides, matching up with more animalistic expectations can mean others are wildly underestimating us. Having the upper hand is better, always.”
Scrutinizing over his wandering fingernail, you ask quietly, “Is that why you attacked that man?” The question is meant for Floyd. Jade pulls his keen nail back all the same.
“Nah,” Floyd does not look at you as he answers, fixated on the ceiling. “It was humiliatin’. Being looked at that way by ya, Shrimpy.”
You blink in surprise. Shame is such a human trait. Born of social circles and social behaviors that are just uniquely tied to the bipedal species you are. The look on Jade’s face seems to agree with the consensus. You watch green-blue muscles glide through the water, simply drifting to a tame current. You watch black fingernails tap on cement in a tiny rhythm. 
Floyd continues, noticing your silence, “Shrimpy’s the only one that talks to us like people. Everyone else just treats us like a spectacle.” 
The heart in your ribcage knocks. You cannot Free Willy the entire aquarium. But, your Chevrolet Silverado has enough room in the bed for a kiddie pool or two.
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Faintly, you recall a distant memory, when you read to Jade so many weeks ago, just as you open the oval-shaped room with the stolen key:
“The creatures stung Pandora over and over again and she slammed the lid shut. Epimetheus ran into the room to see why she was crying in pain. Pandora could still hear a voice calling to her from the box, pleading with her to be let out. Epimetheus agreed that nothing inside the box could be worse than the horrors that had already been released, so they opened the lid once more. 
“All that remained in the box was Hope. It fluttered from the box like a beautiful dragonfly, touching the wounds created by the evil creatures, and healing them. Even though Pandora had released pain and suffering upon the world, she had also allowed Hope to follow them.”
For the past decade, photographic evidence of your existence has been nonexistent. You have found yourself to be an outlier; the world operates to a different rhythm that you have not been able to copy, relicate, or even play along to. Living in perpetual sleep apnea of the soul, you have only found true connection with two other people.
The blue ceiling lights are off as is now the new normal. Without the aid of your penlight, you make your way into the space with confident steps. Sunglasses perched on your head, you find that what has been slowly developing has reached the summit of itself. An impromptu, unorthodox Free Willy plagiarism.
The dark is easier than ever to see through tonight. You smile back when they smile at you. 
Floyd is curled up close to the glass, calling for your undivided attention with his placement. Subdued yet stealthy as ever, Jade lingers behind yet close enough to be seen. Floyd crosses his body across the glass-canvas up and to your right. Jade crosses his body to your left, floating demurely lower. 
The glass-canvas is painted with a few smudges of handprints. Some are from yourself and others from the only and only drummer. He depresses his dominant hand on the glass, leaning in close. His right hand waves up in dark waters in a fervent, warm greeting. His excitement to see you is palpable. You raise your own. 
Both of their eyes shine like spotlights. The only light that you have looked into and found it does not hurt. Jade’s anticipatory smile slithers onto your face in a perfect mimic. You are going to rob the aquarium of those glittering gold dragonfly eyes. Tomorrow, there will be nothing for the staff or customers to find in nebulous darkness. 
Nothing. Nothing but their desolate reflection.
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junewild · 2 months
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he just like me fr fr
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baronmpontmercy · 8 months
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tagged by @ikarons ty ilu
name: Amadeus Tenebral
nickname(s): Demi
pronouns: he/him
star sign: I don’t know yet but I think he’s a fire sign
height: 5’7
orientation: gay 
race: seldarine drow bhaalspawn (in his original iteration ie not bg3 he is aasimar and in my heart he still is)
romancing: Wyll (or he will be, we’re not quite there yet) 
fave fruit:  pomegranate
fave season: the bridge between winter and spring where the snows still fall but the ground is turning green again
fave flower: snowdrop
fave scent: the particular cold ‘smell’ when you first step into a early morning frost, leather, freshly shaved wood, the way hints of salt and metal hang about in your throat after you’ve had a nosebleed 
coffee, tea, or hot chocolate: hot chocolate, especially if it’s dark and sweet
average sleep hours: 4-6 tranceing, if he needs to Actually Sleep it’s because he’s completely knackered and will be out for a good twelve hours
dogs or cats: cats, but he has an Understanding with Scratch 
dream trip: as far from the city as he can possibly get, into the deepest thicketed forest he can find, just to kinda vibe. But also, wherever his siblings are and wherever they want to go; he feels he owes it to them
amount of blankets: 3-4, he likes to cocoon himself a bit
random fact(s): 
He has two siblings, a stepsister called Mags and a half brother called Willem
Prior to taking his paladin oaths he was more of a rogue type (with a generous helping of assassin) (basically he was sneaky and mean and liked killing people)
Wants to be a good person. Currently very bad at being a good person. 
tagging uhhh @bottomvalerius
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taylor-titmouse · 24 days
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I'm Taylor Titmouse, I write and illustrate queer erotica featuring freaks and monsters. I also draw a lot of porn that I can't post here, so those will be posted as crops with links to my various uncensored locations.
You can find my illustrated novellas and artbooks on Itchio. I've published a Lot of them. If you don't know where to start, I recommend the Dragon Double Feature series or Roger Crenshaw, or Spring with the Unicorns--that one's free!
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Some of my latest releases, try The Long Road if you like gender-based worldbuilding!
You can find the most complete collection of my uncensored art on Patreon and Subscribestar (both are equally served.) I post high resolution art regularly, and everything is neatly organized going back to 2022 (that's longer than I've been posting here!) $5 patrons get access to over 180 exclusive illustrations, and can vote in monthly polls from suggestions made by the $10 tier--who can also commission me at any time with a 10% discount!
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Just .05% of the exclusives you unlock by subscribing!
You can also follow me on Twitter, Cohost, or Bluesky, where I post my art uncensored. Below the cut is a list of story tags, which will link you to art and posts about those stories, and provides some context to what they're about. Thanks for checking out my work!
TT Art: my art tag TT Talks Drawing: my tag for talking about the art-making process TT Talks Writing: my tag for talking about the writing process TT Testimonials: my tag for asks reviewing how good my books are :^)
Story Tags Barnyard Bound: F/M, human/furry, bondage, breeding kink, Harvest Moon also for some reason Brilliant Ryder: M/F, aliens and medical play (The Xenosexuality Conference) Chique: NB/Various, fantasy monsters, elves, nudism, catch/fuck (The Sunken City, The Wild Woods) The Dragon Double Feature: M/F, M/M, M/M/F, dragon/human, oni/human, plus size. Fantasy princess/dragon CNC, Edo era Japan (The Dragon Double Feature, The Dragon Double Feature 2) Eternella 7: M/M/M, Gundam-inspired space opera erotica. (Eternella 7 Parts 1-3) House Gerhardt: F/F/M, vampires, trans women, femdom, male humiliation, 1800s. House of the Risen King: M/F, old god, exhibitionism/nudism, sex cult. (House of the Risen King) Knight of Thorns: M/F, giant faceless knight/petite princess forced marriage Laurestine: Trans unicorns, monsters, bondage/stuck in situations, catch/fuck (Spring with the Unicorns) The Leylic Sea: M/M, historical fantasy, pirates, university wizards (The Captain of the Tybaltine, The Boy from Karkutt) The Long Road: Goblins, bandits, a princess and a knight. Gangbangs, rope bondage, CNC (The Long Road) Lover Rescue: F/F/Genderfluid, magical girls, monsters, plus size, cam girling The Masson Circle: M/M, M/F, 1970s crime romance, multiple ships, femdom, trans male character (The Masson Circle) Max and Mortis: M/F, exhibitionism, naturalism, photography, nudism Monsterfuck Mountain: Fantasy monsters, WIP erotic CYOA (You're A Mage on Monsterfuck Mountain) The Night Guest: M/F, young man/older woman, oni/human (The Night Guest) Objects of Affection: M/F, F/F, robot girls and people being weird about them The Sleeping Garden: M/Agender, alien, science Starbuster: M/M, a WIP novel-length superhero romance Roger Crenshaw: Trans M/M, monsters, occultism, early 1900s (The Vampires of New Haven, The Wolves of the West, The Shadow in the Shelves, The Dogs at Duskfall) Romick: M/F/Various, evil wizard/obedient doll, magical sex, experimentation kink, dungeon bondage (The Tenebrous Tower)
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venomous-qwille · 1 year
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Weekly Magma Session 16
That’s a wrap for our sixteenth ☆ DCA Artists ☆ Weekly Magma!
Soz for the posting delay! Here are the beautiful boards from the sixteenth session <3 You can check out everyone popping off below~
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[ID: The above images are from a Magma canvas with various pieces of Sun and Moon fanart drawn by different artists. End ID]
If you like what you see and you crave more (..I know I do), you can find a bunch of these amazing artists are tagged below!
@foxboidrew // @truorstrawberry // @sunnyxdx3 // @jadescortaurius-alt // @penguins-dragons // @grayyskies // @nicmares404 // @lilsteppybigoof // @alexluminosbucket
@chaireem // @bucketbabs // @cero-sleep // @pr0ng3ls // @moonlight1caladium // @penguins-dragons // @tenebrous-one // @ilsole // @starsketchez // @clxckwork-sun-n-moon
@trixxstrawberry // @slimelijah // @skizabaa // @fishydaycare // @thecatnipwizard // @just-a-drawing-bean // @oofouchstovehot // @pasteldragonstuff // @callmeschmoodey
@theblog-with-thestuff // @venomous-qwille // @anonymousmouse556 // @lec743 // @ohno-the-sun // @00arlala // @mizuriot // @beeeepis4why // @eclipsedcrystalstar
@ayippeei // @chknbzkt // @agent-darkfest // @fudgernutter // @socksandbuttons // @luckipangelz // @bluegamerchick // @pointyfruit // @coulsart // @rambunctioustoons
@simpalert // @nexerist // @jadewolfy // @greedyarts-official // @miss-night // @o-g-i // @bubbiethesaur // @sillywabbits // @muffant // @vpsky
Someone missing? I try hard to keep track of all the artists who participate! Make sure you add a legible signature (tumblr handle) to future Magmas so I can find and tag you!
If you would like to take part in our future Weekly Magmas please take a moment to join the ☆ DCA Artists ☆ Magma group where we will be hosting all our weekly sessions. Future Magmas will be live on:
Saturday 6pm-4am UTC
I will be posting the Magma link on tumblr when we do go live, so keep an eye out around this time!
If you are looking for more events and fun stuff to do in the DCA fandom come join the DCA Palooza discord, where we will be doing more collabs and community stuff for creatives in our orbit!
See ya next time Superstars ☆
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Pairing: John Price x fem!oc (3rd person pov)
Word count: 4.4 K
Warnings/tags: smut, p in v sex, established relationship, pet names, suggestive dialogue, swearing, drinking, caught in the rain, stuck in a blackout, couple plays truth or dare, super long winded set up for porn, and a slightly rushed ending
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NSFW taglist [opt in/out]: @imogenkol @illmetbymoonlight @roofgeese @efingart @inafieldofdaisies
@raresvtm @evvie-a @an-drawer @clicheantagonist @rc-dragons
@la-grosse-patate @direwombat @solstheimart @statichvm @cassietrn
@lady-eudaemonia @strafethesesinners @thedeadthree @voidika @mutantthedark
@strangefable @simplegenius042 @writeforfandoms @quantum-lover @heroofshield
Rain pelts down on the concrete streets of London, the scent of cool drops hitting hot pavement one of the rare scents that could only be attributed to summer in the middle of the city – not quite petrichor, but that bleach clean scent of ozone remained apparent as the storm builds to its height. Thunder booms, shrouding once sunny skies in clouds the colour of deep bruises, shades of purple and green, while lightning cracks in bright luminescent streaks worthy of ancient beliefs in Thor or Zeus’ wrath.
Amongst the masses splashing through the quickly pooling puddles, John rushes Rory inside their townhouse, his jacket held over their heads as a deterrent from the rain, though it does little good as the precipitation pours with the steady flow of a broken faucet on full blast, an absolute deluge coming down at once. They're soaked. Drowned rats with matted hair and sopping wet layers of clothing glued to their forms. 
Once inside the four walls meant to shelter them, they are no safer from the clutches of the storm. Rory flicks at the switch by the front door – click-click, click-click – doing nothing at all. The interior of the townhouse left tenebrous, shadows creeping in from the darkened corners. “Bollocks,” she mutters under her breath, heading to the coat closet and grabbing the candles and battery-operated lamps in her power outage kit – even in an unplanned crisis the woman is never unprepared. 
Water sloshes off of her as she moves about, dripping down the contours of her face from her drenched hair as John grumbles, peeling off waterlogged shoes and socks by the front door, his jacket in no better shape. “Worse spots we could be in, love. At least we’re at ‘ome, liquor cabinet stocked, gas is still on so we can cook the perishables.” “Yes. Yes, I know. Ever the pragmatist, John,” she snarks before heading to the kitchen for the lighter. “Comes with being a Captain.”
His reply is muffled as he moves down the hall, the sound of wet bare feet slapping on hardwood floors following after him, and she rolls her eyes. “Well make sure ‘the captain’ mops up after himself, yeah? Don’t need puddles on my floor,” she calls back. Rory begins lighting candles and placing them around the kitchen, filling the space with the warm amber glow of firelight flickering as a draught from the open window flows throughout. Entering moments later, John rubs a towel through his hair and tosses it at her after she places the last candle on the table in the corner nook. 
“Cheers.” She runs the terry cloth through damp strands, rustling it back and forth, leaving her hair a wild, haphazard mess of waves. “So, what do we do to pass the time for the next however many hours?”
A smirk is the only reply she receives from the bulky man in her periphery. Piercing eyes, normally steely and hard while focused on war and staying alive, sparkle with playful intent. A life to them that Rory only finds in their moments alone. The man who, when they’re miles away from base, gets to fold up and pack away things like duty and honor the way he does his clean laundry neatly into drawers.
“Fuck off, you do not have the refractory period of a 15 year old boy, pillock.” Tossing the soggy towel back at him with a grin, it slaps against his barrel chest like a dead octopus. A hearty chuckle fills the room, blue eyes sparkling from behind crinkled lines in his face. “Mind out o’the gutter, my girl. Was just gonna say we could take a nap.” Bouncing on his heels, proud as a peacock with the way he grins at her. 
She hums skeptically, “Is that so?” Her fingers curl around her hips as she stands before him, challenging him like always. “And Soap doesn’t have a bloody rolodex going of numbers he gets from the bar.” “That may be so,” John purrs, drawing closer, dropping off the soggy towel onto the top of the kitchen island. Strong arms wrap around her waist as he stands behind her, drawing her closer to him, grinding his hips against her backside. His mouth near her ear, the bristles of his beard tickle her cheek. “But I think we can both agree after going a round or two together, a rest is often necessary,” he breathes seductively, voice rough and low with desire. “Isn’t that right, love?” “So much for my mind being the one in the gutter.”
He tips his head to the side, angling it to better kiss the side of her neck, plush lips softly pressing to sensitive skin. “Could do something else instead with our time,” Rory offers.
“Like what?” He mumbles against her, lost in his own advances while nuzzling against her slick flesh. Collecting drops of rainwater that roll down the smooth column of her neck on his whiskers.
“Truth or dare? Share a bottle of whiskey while we do it?”
His laugh is a deep rumble in his chest, vibrating against her slender body and through her back as his hands knead at moist clothing cleaving to her frame. “You want to play a bloody kid’s party game?” 
Rory shrugs, nonchalant. “Why not?” “Sure know how to drive a hard bargain, Sinclair,” he snickers.
“Oi, on your bike.” Her elbow moves to gently nudge him in the stomach, her nose wrinkling as she plays up her mock annoyance.  
“Fine. Are we playin’ ‘7 minutes in Heaven’ while we’re at it then?” A lopsided smile pulling at his mouth as his brow cocks.
“That’s for afterwards.” With a frisky wink she grabs a bottle of whiskey and two glasses from the counter. “Now, come on.” Placing them on the floor, she sits with her back resting against a cabinet and pours them each a double. The amber liquid streaming in carefully controlled twists of her wrist, she’s a woman well-practiced in the art of a properly measured dram. John sighs and slowly lowers to the floor, careful with his knees and lower back as he settles, his long legs stretched out between his place against the oven door and the kitchen island in front of him. She slides one of the drinks across the tiles towards him and they clink their glasses together in a toast. “To the most ridiculous way two grown military officers could possibly spend their time together.” A bright, lilting giggle fills the space between them as dimples carve into her cheeks. 
“Haven’t done this since before I was at Sandhurst,” he muses quietly, lifting the glass and bringing it to his lips, taking a hefty sip. “Without the drink, ‘course.”
“Oh, of course.”
Sitting in the dark of their kitchen, candles aglow, it was more intimate than it likely should have been considering their choice of entertainment for the foreseeable future while the power was out. Sipping at their drinks, enjoying the smooth, warm burn of the top shelf liquor Rory always had in her collection, they sat together as if it were any other Saturday evening. “Right, sweetheart. Truth or Dare?” John asks, breaking the silence first.
“Truth.”
“Really?” Placing the glass down on the floor beside him with a gentle crystal chime against the dark marble. “Right off the bat, not even going to go for a little danger? What happened to my brave Lieutenant, eh?” His crooked grin appears all the more sinister in the dampened light.
“Yeah, and if I hadn’t said ‘truth’ you would have given me shit about ‘not trusting you’. So piss off, you bloody prat.” He laughs once more, nodding. “Probably right, I just might’ve.” Blue eyes roam around the ebony wood cabinets of the kitchen as he thinks of a fitting question for Rory’s first choice of truth. “Our very first time together – would we have still ended up in the stall if I had the mutton chops?”
Rory, choking on the sip of whiskey she was currently drinking, coughs up the alcohol as she pats her hand against her chest, laughing. Her voice a throaty croak as she speaks, “Fucking hell, not pulling any punches, are we?” “Well?” He remains stoic, waiting for her answer, the brusque response of the Captain and not John. A barely visible curl pulls at the corner of his lips. 
“Probably.” She angles her head to the side and examines him in detail, roaming over him, imagining the baby-faced Lieutenant she met all those years ago with her future husband’s choice of facial hair. “Not exactly a look most girls are used to seeing, however. Few men can pull off the style of someone who would blend in rather nicely in an old west saloon.” A smirk pulling at her full lips as she jokes with him. 
“Probably?” John’s heavy brow furrows as his penetrating gaze lands on her, burning into her like a laser sight.
“Don’t know how the 23-year-old me would’ve felt about them.” Her one shoulder lifts in a shrug. She’s never been anything but honest with him, John having always appreciated her bluntness.
“Ah, so it takes a more mature and refined woman to respect ‘em, yeah? Not worthy of a bathroom stall, but a romp in a tent suits ‘em just fine?”
Laughing, her head tosses back, amplifying it. “Fine, you got me there.” Stretching out from her cross legged position, prodding his shin with her toes, she taunts him, continuing the schoolyard antics that started with the choice of game.
However, she’s met by the swift response of John leaning towards her and taking her hand in his. Her dainty one overwhelmed by his grip as he brings her knuckles to his lips, kissing them softly, the stubble of his beard brushing against her soft flesh. “Glad I waited to grow ‘em out then.”
“Wouldn’t have you any other way now.” Hazel eyes sparkle as she gazes at him, reflecting the candlelight in the amber flecks of her emerald depths. 
“Suits me, my girl.”
A cozy moment of silence settles between them, smiling at one another, rapt in one another’s shared attention. Six years together. It wasn’t all bliss, but it certainly suited them, with enough memories to fill several albums. Love, the most earnest either of them had ever felt, and it was only for each other. “Truth or Dare?”
“Dare,” John answered, not hesitating for a moment as he released her hand.
“Find the most embarrassing item of clothing you have in the closet, and tell me why.”
“Cheatin’.” He points his finger at her, suddenly a stickler for the rules. “Tha’s a truth and a dare.”
“Maybe so, but fuck it, if we’re gonna play a teenager’s game we might as well have teenager’s rules.”
Steely eyes narrow, his mouth purses making his mustache twitch in response. “Is this just a chance f’you to make fun of that Christmas sweater mum got me last year?”
Shaking her head, she works to hold in a chuckle that tries it’s hardest to sneak past tight lips. “I didn’t say dorky, I said embarrassing. Something with a little more meaning behind it than a big reindeer head with a light up nose – as adorable as that was on you,” she teases.
Jaw clenching, his nose wrinkles as he grimaces. “Fuckin’ ‘ell.” Rising with a grumble, he uses his mobile flashlight to find his way through the darkened home. In the silence, free from the usual electrical hum of appliances, Rory relaxes against the cupboard and sips her drink. Quiet and her weren’t usually on good terms. Unlike John, her peace was found through noise, chaos. Silence simply let the ghosts that haunted her seep in, her usual means of coping keeping them at bay. But, for once, she seems to enjoy the relative calm. A certain sensory deprivation about the stillness and the dark, the peaceful hypnotic dance of candle flames flickering around her, keeping her from drifting too far into the shadows in her head. 
Arriving back in the kitchen several minutes later, John unfurls an old Motorhead tee shirt, the once black material now worn out and grayed with age. 
“Motorhead?” Her brow lifts. “How is that embarrassing? I already know your music taste, love.” A cheeky smirk pulls at her lips as she crosses her arms over her chest.
He sighs and drags a hand through his hair. “You wanted the story behind it, yeah?” His brow lifts to meet hers, staring at her from under the ridge, frustration apparent on his face. “So, let me tell it.”
“Go on then.” Holding out her hand in an invitation to him to sit and tell the tale. As he sits, her hands return to the space between her lap, cupping the glass that sits nestled between her thighs, body heat warming the last sips of liquor inside.
“Right. So, before we met – the first time, I mean – there was a bird. Had just gone and seen the band live in concert on my leave, been sweating and fighting my arse off in Iraq before that, meant to give this to her before I left again,” he says, gripping the shirt tight in his fist like he’s choking the life from it, the tendons in his arms standing out in stark relief. “Didn’t work out, for several reasons.” By the tone of his voice, she can already tell it was less than amicable. No wonder he had been looking for a quick hook up the same way she had all those years ago. “But I liked the shirt,” he shrugs, “Had it sitting at the back of the closet for years now.” Tossing the shirt away from him, it skids across the floor in a crumpled mess. Rory’s eyes follow it’s trajectory, attuned to the movement like it's a target in the sight of her scope. Her gut churns, annoyed with herself for making him dredge up the past. She glances back at him, chewing on her lip, her brows knitting together as that natural predilection to be a smartass to cover for the tension boils up inside her. But she can’t. Not like this. 
“You’re a better person than I. Would have burned the damn thing, good riddance too. The bitch,” she snarls.
A smirk plays at the corner of John’s mouth at her reaction. Glancing up, he grunts, the little growl from the back of his throat a response to the possessive hint in Rory’s tone as he lifts his glass to take another drink. 
Sparks flare in her eyes, an idea coming to mind, the little fireball John’s madly in love with coming out to play. She could never sit idly by when she had the chance to solve a problem. “Tell you what, you and me, we’re going to make a good memory with it.”
Wiping his mouth with the side of his hand after swigging back his last sip, his voice is hoarse with the burn. “What the ‘ell are you on about?”
“Well, we’ve made very good memories together quite often, haven’t we?” She purrs, implying the obvious as she snatches the shirt from its puddle of material it landed in on the floor. “There is no way I am letting some slag ruin this for you, my darling.” “What d’you suggest then, sweetheart?” he asks with a cocky lift of his brow. “Clothes are wet anyhow.” 
Peeling off her damp shirt like a second skin, Rory then unhooks her bra. Tossing both articles of clothing to the side as she smiles at him, her intense doe-eyed stare seemingly bottomless in the shadowy kitchen. “Bloody good start, love.” His heated gaze roams over her exposed chest, a sight he’s seen a thousand times before, and still that predatory stare residing just below the surface comes creeping back up to the forefront. Skin the complexion of peaches and cream glows, illuminated by dancing flames licking at wicks, shadows and highlights forming over the scars that blemish her skin from combat. Standing, she unbuttons her trousers, letting the wide legged black pants fall to the ground and drape around her feet. John’s hand deftly sneaking in before they pool around her ankles to grab her glass on the floor, finishing off the last dregs of it himself. Slipping her panties down next, stepping out of the pile of wet clothes, she kicks them away and grabs the oversized band tee. The threadbare cotton hugging her lithe form as she stands over him, hands on her hips. 
“Even better, you ask me.” His stare sparkles mischievously up at her from his spot on the floor, unmoved. Square jaw going slack as he swallows thickly, pushing the glasses away from him, his steadily stiffening erection growing more evident by the moment as it strains against the material of his gray sweatpants.
A quiet, breathy giggle leaves her as she lowers to sit in his lap, legs straddled on either side of his thick, muscular thighs. Her forehead resting against his as she gazes into his eyes and whispers, “When you see this shirt in future, I just want you to think of that time you shagged your wife-to-be thoroughly on the kitchen floor during a blackout.”
“Can do, my girl,” John rumbles as his hands lift to rest on the curve of her waist, gripping her tight.  
Cocking her head to the side, angling it to better mark his mouth with her lips, she kisses him ardently. The rough pads of his fingers curl under her chin as he pulls her closer to him, their lips meet in a searing embrace. 
With little coaxing, the waistband of his sweatbands rolls down his hips. His cock hard, ready to be made of use, thick and heavy. Eyes smoldering with desire, he watches her every move as she settles down on his length, her tight sex enveloping him in its velvet grip. Wet heat. Pure bliss. Groaning – a low, guttural sound – he buries his face in the crook of her neck. Hot breath fanning against her, the skin below becoming moist, his beard burning against sensitive flesh. She starts to move, and his hips rise to meet her, thrusting to drive deeper with each roll of her hips and lift of her toned thighs. Breaths are punched from her lungs as he buries himself inside her, muscles visibly flexing with each shift of her body. A dance, one they've perfected over the years, a rhythm that brings them both to that sweet edge.
As if on cue, John begins to lavish her in praise. Give and take. The ebb and flow of the ever shifting landscape of who leads and which one follows, a comfortable equality within their dichotomy that never fails to work for both parties, knowing exactly what works for each of them to reach that inevitable peak.
"Fuck, Rory," he growls, grabbing at her for leverage. "So fuckin’ perfect f’me.” 
Large, rough paws grip at her waist possessively, pulling her close as if he needs the anchor. He bucks his hips, desperate to delve deeper, but her pace remains deliberate, maddening. A sense of control that causes a smile to tug at the corner of his mouth as he watches her ride him, the sight of her body undulating over his, a work of art.
Flesh meets at several points of contact, penetrated folds and warm hands sliding up the curves of her body send sparks through her nerves. Goosebumps rise, left behind along his ascent towards the firm peaks of her breasts, gentle swells hidden by the excess material of his oversized shirt. As deft fingers tease at her pebbled nipples below the shirt, pinching and pulling, Rory increases the pace in his lap, rocking with a meter that matches the pounding of her heart.
"Yes, just like that, my girl. Doin’ so good, sweetheart,” he groans, hoarse and panting. 
Encased in her body, control slipping, needs demanding to be met, the rhythm builds, sounds of lovemaking growing louder. 
"God, I love you," John mumbles as he nuzzles against her once more. The words, heavy with emotion, fall from his lips, a testament to the bond they share. In this moment, there is no war, no death, no fear - only the two of them, entwined in passion. Rory moans, breathless, her desire carrying her forward. Her arms wrap around his broad shoulders, and her fingers card through cropped hair at his nape. “Love you too, my darling,” she whispers against the shell of his ear. Her soft breaths against him fanning the flames between them.
It’s not a sentiment that is often shared aloud, one saved for moments of life or death or intense vulnerability. But, as he looks up at her, there is a depth of adoration in his eyes that cannot be denied, a devotion and desire that is as fierce as it is tender. This is a man who has killed for her and will likely do so again – when he says love, she knows he means it. Their mouths collide, tongues sliding against each other, lips wrapped in a tight seal that lets not a single breath escape. Sounds of pleasure pass between them as they share everything else in their lives. Home. In his arms she finds solace from bullets flying overhead or silent nights marred by guilt-ridden dreams; this sanctuary exists nowhere else on Earth but right here between them.
John carefully lowers her to the floor, his hand cradling the back of her head, protecting her like some fragile prize as she comes to rest against the tile floor, supine. His mouth refusing to leave hers – firm, adamant kisses claim her lips. A low groan coming from him as he kneels on the hard floor between her thighs. His touch trails up her body, tracing curves he’s felt a hundred times before and still never gets enough of. 
She watches him the whole way down to the floor, her eyes locked on his in a heated exchange. He’s the one, she thinks, and her heart confirms it as it races, her chest rising and falling with short, heavy breaths. She’s never been more sure of anything in her life, of anyone – just him. 
His strong hands slide up her arms, lifting them to bring them up over her head, held there as their hands clasp together. His scarred knuckle brushing against the gold, diamond-set band on her ring finger, a stark reminder of the life they have planned together, entangled forever. The needy head of his cock nudges against her entrance, pushing against her slick folds, as it begs for re-entry. Aching for him, the momentary emptiness felt deep within her. Whimpering together at the gentle pressure before her heat welcomes him in once more, inch by inch, he slides in until their hips meet, taking her slow and deep on the floor of their kitchen. Her back arches, lifting to unite with him. Mewling desperately, not caring if the neighbors hear. Every touch of his mouth and tongue along her jawline and down her throat towards her collarbone drives her wild as she sinks further into her choreographed submission, a practiced performance, knowing the steps forwards and backwards and never showing signs of needing another partner. 
“John,” she breathes his name as his hips continue to move against hers, their chests pressed together with only a shirt that had once left a bad taste in his mouth between them, now slick with their combined sweat. 
“Yeah, love?” He looks down at her, his brow furrowed with concentration, jaw flexing below his scruff as his adam’s apple bobs with each heavy breath and thick swallow. 
Her body begins to show the tell-tale signs of her impending climax, her muscles tightening in her legs, toes curling, the flush that grows from her chest to her cheeks warming her from the inside out and melding with the heat of his body pinned to hers on the cold kitchen tiles. Her stomach muscles flutter, her cunt clenching down on the thick of him. “I’m so close,” she whines. “I know, darlin’,” he husks as the tip of his nose nudges at the side of her neck where her pulse thunders. His lips sucking on her salty flesh stained with sweat, rasping against her, “Come for me, Rory.”
She clings to his hands held to hers, nails digging into the tendons and scars on the back of them. Long, toned legs wrapping around his waist as her body begs to be even closer to him, linked as one. Her breath hitches just before she cries out and her vision blurs, her eyes rolling back as each pulse from her core floods her body, weaving its way up her spine. 
Lost for a moment, unable to find her way in the dark, forgetting where she is, she succumbs to the ravages of John’s single-minded focus on her body. Letting their dance sweep her away as he continues to thrust, chasing his own release. Her body heavy, weighted with the pleasure of release, sinks into the sturdy floor below and she enjoys the jolts of sensation that build up inside her once again with his attention.
The slick of them moving together, the rise and fall of their bodies in unison, the tight contractions around him, drives the two ever nearer to the end of their waltz. His grip on her hands tightens in return, holding her in place as each pump of his cock becomes more erratic. More urgent. 
“Fuck, Ror,” he grunts, “Nearly fuckin’ there.”
The wet noises of their coupling echo through the kitchen, meeting with the incessant patter of rain outside the window. A convergence in tempo with his last surging thrust as he can no longer hold back, cumming deep inside her.
He releases his hold on her, their palms both sweaty and red from the grip they had on each other. Pulling her into his arms, their sweat mingles as he cradles her close. "Tha's my girl," John murmurs, his fingers running through her hair as his hand snakes up the back of her neck. “Gonna need you to wear that shirt more often now, I s’pose.”
It’s a simple comfort, the afterglow of passion, basking in it while the storm continues to rage outside, but they were right where they were supposed to be. They belong to each other, plain and simple, and neither would have it any other way.
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lvsifer · 5 months
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the sweet & talented @cilil tagged me on WIP Wednesday, so have a lil snipped from the next chapter of my Paul x Feyd fic <3
Feyd-Rautha lies down on the bed, closes his eyes and thinks of the boy. Reflected red light slashes the tenebrous room in half, a laceration that cuts Feyd-Rautha off by the chest. He touches where the light warms his skin just above his seventh rib and dips his fingers between his costal arches. Here. He imagines Paul’s blade push inside. He moans. “Come to me, Atreides,” Feyd-Rautha murmurs into the empty room, then throws an arm over his face, bites at his own skin enough to bruise while his free hand sinks between his legs. What if the secret door opened and the boy came to him now? Feyd-Rautha imagines Paul’s lesser weight on top of him, spreading Feyd-Rautha’s thighs.
And ALSO, this super old angbang wip from...2016..........that I will finish...some day:
Yet in gloaming Melkor had once more returned, gargantuan and of-augury. A light had shone in his eyes, both fiery and frore. Naught of offering or promises foul, only this: his hand extended, and crackling along the whiteness of his skin, power. And Mairon had taken it. For what Mairon wants is not to serve. He wants to make. Suddenly he needs not pledge himself. Nil binds him, but his own will to power. Torn from slumber, he for the first time sees, and stares into the depths of the world. And deeper than woe or servitude, cradled in igneous rock, lie his own blackening desires, clamouring for eternity. And eternal shall they be.
tagging: @sauron-kraut (i know cilil also tagged you but still <3), @jamlocked, @liesmyth, @saintstars, @crackinthecup, @curufiin @theskeletonprior
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