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xantchaslegacy · 5 years ago

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Forgiven, Ch 3

This has been on Ao3 for a while but I never got past posting Ch 2 here ~

Link to Ch 1 and Ch 2 :)

Lesser eldrazi had many qualities that made them deadly predators, most of which made them relatively pathetic prey. The power to desiccate the land was a great liability when it gave your pursuers a trail to follow, especially when moving in packs. The average drone’s physiology, so adept at ambushing and bringing death, made them slow and clumsy when on the retreat.

The swarm had had a full day’s head start before Nissa, Sorin, and Nahiri set out on their trail. A day’s worth of travel that the planeswalkers could cover in considerably less time.

Unfortunately, what the Eldrazi lacked in natural advantage, inland Tazeem made up for by being an impenetrable maze of massive hedrons, cavernous ground, and rolling, titan forests. The eldrazi hadn’t even followed the Umara river, where the planeswalkers might at least have relied on reports from the merfolk settlements to indicate where the swarm was headed.

Thankfully, Nissa still felt the itch. One massive, festering, migrating rash for the mass that had abandoned the Halimar Basin, and minute irritations that helped her, Sorin, and Nahiri take care of any stragglers as they made their way north, through the reclaimed stretch of Oran-Rief.

Nahiri was dispatching two such stragglers now, far below in one of the forest’s many cavernous shafts. Nissa knelt by the mouth of the tunnel, a sheer drop of ridged stone in the middle of a large grass clearing. Sorin stood a few paces further off, one hand tapping irritably and irritatingly at his pommel. A pair of merfolk kitesailors watched from a slight distance.

“Wouldn’t that go faster with all three of you folk down there?” The smaller of the two merfolk called.

“Not enough space,” Nissa responded, gaze fixed on the tunnel. For the dozenth time she pressed her hand to the damp grass around the mouth of the cave shaft, feeling for signs of life. The underground networks were less-used nowadays ever since the threat of the Roil had subsided, but there was always a chance that a few elves might have gotten caught between the cave walls, the eldrazi, and an angry kor lithomancer.

“She’ll be careful,” Sorin said, unsolicited. “Nahiri has a skill of precision with her stonework like no other.”

“Thank you for the input,” Nissa muttered back. No unexpected pulses of life moved in the tunnels, which was the far greater reassurance at the moment.

“What sorta coat is that, mister?” The small merfolk asked.

“Demon hide,” Sorin replied, voice flat.

“Demon hide, he said, Olmer. What do you make of that?”

“Seems unlikely,” The tall merfolk replied. “But the world’s full of unlikely things, I suppose.”

Sorin rolled his eyes. “I could go help her. She shouldn’t be having this much trouble, if it really is just two.”

“The caves are vast,” Nissa said. “I’m not surprised it’s taking her a while to find them.” She glanced up at Sorin. “You have a lot of faith in her.”

Sorin crossed his arms. “She’s ruthless and she knows what she’s doing. That’s just the truth.”

“Then she’ll be fine. You’d just get in her way down there.”

Sorin sniffed, and ignored another question from the merfolk. They passed a minute in silence before he spoke again.

“We fought as a team on Zendikar before, you know. On many different worlds, for that matter. We can work together, and rather effectively, I might add.”

“I look forward to you showing me.”

That bought another two minutes of the vampire’s sullen silence. Nissa remained crouched by the tunnel shaft, trying to focus on the trailing winds drifting through the network of hedrons and trees that surrounded them. On the long, wild grasses trailing under the breeze.

“Ha!”

They both started at the sound of Nahiri’s laugh echoing up out the shaft, followed by the faint clash of stone on stone. Nissa let out a small relieved breath. Sorin’s shoulders slackened noticeably.

Nissa watched him out of the corner of her eye. He glanced down at her twice, and looked back away both times. One of the nice things about having eyes that glowed bright green was that Nissa could observe a person without them really knowing exactly what she was looking at.

If you have something to say, mover, you should not feel fear to say it.

Nissa narrowed her eyes. She was cherishing the silence-

Silence immersed in actions undone is no true silence.

“You’re very concerned for her,” Nissa blurted out in a whisper. “In light of what she took from you.”

Sorin shrugged and flicked his the wrist. “I’m allowed. I can be angry about what she’s done and worry as well.”

“You just sound like you regret what happened-”

“Of course I regret it! My entire plane-”

“That’s not what I meant. You seem like you regret it because you lost a friend as well.”

Sorin’s crossed arms tightened around each other, like a snake’s coils drawing close. “You say it like you think I’m incapable of that sort of regret.”

Nissa suppressed a twist in her stomach. No need to planeswalk away. Just deal with the confrontation at hand.

“You’ve never given me a reason to think you’re someone who regrets the consequences of their actions until a few days ago.” She turned to fully face Sorin. “I’m not complaining, but if you asked me whether I thought you were a creature of regret a week ago...well I’d have said ‘no’.”

“I’m very lucky, then, that your opinion on the matter means nothing to me.”

Nissa felt a stab of anger and irritation. She turned back away.

Are you satisfied?

Nissa shut her eyes, and sighed. “No I suppose not.”

“What was that?” Sorin asked.

“Speaking to myself.” Nissa stood. Behind Sorin, the merfolk were whispering to one another. “And...I apologize. I’m was trying to be honest, not hurtful. Your regrets are your own business.”

Sorin nodded. “Thank you.”

He was avoiding her eye, but his jaw unclenched. “It’s...it’s a matter of preservation. If that makes sense.”

“Not entirely.”

Sorin pursed his lips, frowning. A long breath trailed out his chest. Nissa wondered how much of that was habit, and how much was for effect.

“I prefer change in the world that I can control. The eldrazi were always the antithesis of that. I fought beside Ugin and Nahiri because by defeating the titans we preserved the multiverse as it was. I preserved my home from the possibility of uncontrollable, devastating change. When I thought the multiverse safe, I moved to ensure its preservation in the future.”

Nissa nodded.

“I took it for granted that the bonds I had made would preserve themselves. Next to the dangers to the physical worlds, the bridges of companionship seemed...well, much less assailable. So I neglected them. Then one friend died. And another almost lost everything she had fought for.”

“And then you lost the plane you’d given everything else up for all the same.”

Sorin nodded, slow. “All because I neglected the connections I’d made. I regret the ruin to my home most of all. And I am angry in a way that I don’t think will ever fade away. But for all that I still have space in my soul to regret that I did not preserve my friendships.” He looked past Nissa, toward the tunnel.

“That makes sense,” Nissa crouched back by the mouth of the shaft. After a beat Sorin stepped forward to stand at the edge, just a few paces away.

“Ha-haaaaa!”

A glow lit the depths of the tunnel, growing brighter and hotter with each passing second. Nissa and Sorin ducked back from the cave mouth.

A rush of air roared up, and Nahiri burst form the shaft, a cow-sized eldrazi clutched in each stone-gloved hand. She hovered above them a moment, bearing a grim grin of triumph along with her trophies. Then she set down onto the grass and cast the bodies to the ground.

“Just these ones, but if you want to check...”

Nissa nodded and felt for the leylines. The ground below was twisted and scarred still, but the active itch had subsided.

“We’re done here.” Nissa stood. “North, again.”

“That’s quite a trick, miss,” one of the kitesailors called from a slightly further distance. “How’re you flying in them tunnels?”

Nahiri grinned and patted her boots. The heels and soles, constructed so that bars of stone could slot into them, glowed with the hot-white flare of lithomancy, and gave her a lift several feet into the air, where she somersaulted over Sorin. “It’s all in the rocks, girls.”

The taller of the merfolk whistled appreciatively. Sorin pursed his lips.

* * *

The tangle of roil-sculpted earth, titan trees, and mountainous hedrons thickened the further north they ventured through the reclamation zone. And they ventured quickly. There was an urgency to Sorin and Nahiri that pressed them to weave impatiently through the roots, trunks, and floating rock. Nissa found herself relying on Ashaya more often than not for a ride and the speed necessary to keep up.

Above and to her left, Nahiri swooped under a low-floating hedron, scattering a flock of manta. Years ago there would have been no shortage of dangerous creatures about, even without the eldrazi, but the largest predators had been slow to return to the Rief, and the speed and suddenness of the trio’s travel had so far been too startling for the ones who had to even consider ambushing them.

To Nissa’s right, Sorin sprinted along a branch three times as thick around as he was tall. He hadn’t tired yet. When they’d first struck out, Sorin had suggested simply planeswalking off Zendikar, then using Nahiri and Nissa’s expertise to ‘walk back where the swarm had run to,’ to save time.

“It’s possible,” Nissa had replied, “But if the swarm disperses, I would prefer we do a thorough search on foot than have any of them scattered around the continent.”

So far the itch had remained a coherent mass. Whatever guided the drone and spawn movements, it had only led a few of the eldrazi to disperse along the way, and those few were easily dealt with without undue delay.

The merfolk, who’d introduced themselves as Olmer and Ton, had followed the trio from the cave on their flying kites, jabbering and shouting questions all the while. Occasionally Sorin even answered them back.

“Are you certain there aren’t any settlements ahead?” He called, the second such question in an hour.

“Not a one,” Ton, the shorter merfolk called back. “Most everyone’s still sheltered in an’ around Coralhelm. You’ll miss that by a good 30 miles if you keep this heading, and you’ll have nothing but leagues of dead woods around you by then.”

Nahiri caught Nissa’s gaze, nodded over at Sorin, and rolled her eyes. Nissa just grunted, and scanned the paths ahead. The low ground to the left faded into shadows as a web of roots and curved pillars of earth lifted the trees well above the dirt. On the right, the ground rose in a mossy shell of roots and massive, fallen logs.

Ashaya opted for the higher ground, and the elemental’s tread became light as the falling leaves as he loped through the moss. The trees here left tough remains, but it was the careless traveler who ruled out the possibility of a decayed spot taking their feet out from under them.

A speck of pale blue on the carpet of green ahead caught Nissa’s eye.

“Likely you won’t find any folk wandering this stretch of Tazeem for a while,” Ton drawled. “Mostly it’s bolder folk like Olmer and me who-”

“Body!” Nissa shouted to her companions. “There’s someone up ahead!”

Nahiri and Sorin split off to the left and right, as they’d discussed before leaving the wall. If either didn’t return in five minutes, the remaining two would treat the figure ahead as a trap. Ashaya slowed to a stalk and padded forward silently, Nissa scanning the surrounding trees as they approached. The merfolk landed on either side of Ashaya at her signal for caution.

“Haven’t seen much in the way of wildlife,” The taller merfolk said, just under her breath.

“It’s the despoilers, love.” The shorter merfolk pointed to the trails of dust and spots of twisted stone that grew, almost indiscernible, against the black bark of the trees.

Ashaya halted a hundred paces from the body. Nissa crouched low on the elemental’s shoulder and shut her eyes. The leylines were quiet, save for the itch to the north. On the edges of her mind the creatures that had fled from the Eldrazi’s path went about their business, a short distance displaced from their usual haunts. Calm, but alert.

Nahiri emerged first, gliding down from the trees, signaling ‘all safe’ with a brusque wave. Sorin emerged a second later, one hand wrapped around his sword, another around a grey sack that trailed spiked tendrils.

Ashaya crossed the distance to the body in a handful of long strides. The thing dangling from Sorin’s hand was covered with glassy, half-lidded eyes. An eldrazi. One of Kozilek’s drones.

“Hit it from behind.” Sorin threw the drone to the ground. A diamond-shaped gash ran straight through its body, leaking a faint distortion into the air, like it was full of gas. “It was waiting up in the branches, watching the body.”

Impressive.

“I didn’t feel that,” Nissa said, a cold lump forming in her stomach.

Sorin shrugged. “They’ve got all sorts of tricks.”

The one you called Kozilek was an apex of distorting the senses. There is no shame in having missed a trick, so long as you recognize it the next time it is played.

“So the body’s bait?” Olmer called from a distance.

Nahiri knelt by the merfolk. “Not a body.” She put two fingers to the merfolk’s neck, along his flattened gills. “There’s a pulse. We need to get him to a healer.” She ran a hand along the chest, mottled with ugly, plum-colored bruises. “Ribs shattered. He’s probably bleeding underneath. I can do some simple mending but-” She paused, as if remembering something, then looked up at Sorin.

“What?” He stared back. “We stabilize him and then what? Are we going to carry him with us?”

Nahiri’s face twisted into a scowl. “Maybe.”

“If we delay-”

“Please.” Nahiri squeezed the words out between grit teeth. “You said you were helping. This is the least you could do.”

Sorin wrinkled his nose, but still knelt across from Nahiri, laying hands on the merfolk’s neck. His fingers flexed and the veins tensed in the merfolk’s neck. The chest rose slowly, and then the belly, then the veins in the arms bulged as Sorin pushed the blood to flow to where it was needed.

“Splints.” Nahiri looked to Nissa.

“Splints.” She nodded and thrust her staff into the mossy log underfoot. Emerald shoots tore through the bark, twisting together in tight bundles. In seconds a small arc of saplings surrounded her.

Nissa pulled one up, and directed the skysailers to do the same. They exchanged wary looks, but followed her lead, stripping away the stubby roots with their trail knives. By the time they had cut the saplings to the appropriate size, Nissa had produces a length of vine to lash the splints to the fallen merfolk’s limbs.

He was drawing breath now, and a steady rise-and-fall had returned to his chest. A faint whistle of breath trickled through his lips. The bruising still looked horrible, but the body beneath was less shattered. Less sunken.

“Blood’s out of his lungs.” Sorin rose to his feet, and produced a handkerchief from his breast pocket. With slow, deliberate strokes he began to wipe down his palms and each finger. “and I’ve healed what the veins can heal. He won’t be moving under his own power without at least a month of bed rest, and he certainly won’t be able to defend himself out here.”

“We can take him to Magosi,” Ton volunteered. “We’re due there in the next week; won’t hurt too much to get back a bit early.”

“Thank you.” Nahiri glared at Sorin. “Are there survivors enough to take care of him?”

Olmer laughed at that.

“Plenty. And when they find out he was ambushed and used as bait by the despoilers? Well, you’d think folk would get tired of stories like that, but they’ll all be clamoring to hear it. Yeah, he’ll be well looked out for.”

Ton and Olmer spent the next few minutes rigging a hammock between the frames of their kites, joining them into a single, two-winged arrangement. Then they mounted the closest tree, Nissa following close behind on Ashaya, who cradled the injured merfolk in its arms.

“This’ll do.” Ton scrambled out onto a broad branch, grappling the kite with Olmer to get it up onto the limb. Ashaya lay the merfolk into the stretcher between the kites, and Nissa helped lash him down.

“Glad we found you.” Ton offered a hand to Nissa, who politely declined it. “Good to work with good people in these dangerous times.”

Nissa smiled faintly. “Always danger in our world, isn’t there?”

Ton shrugged. “Always good to find good people, then.” With a wave, she and Olmer kicked off from the branch, and glided quietly away through the depths of Oran-Rief.

* * *

Nahiri called for a short rest before pushing forward any further. She made the flight via lithomancy seem effortless while she was in the air, but the energy needed to move that way was clearly taxing her.

Oran-Rief didn’t lend itself to campfires, but Nahiri had enough energy in reserve to set a small boulder to glowing, providing some warmth for herself and Nissa. Sorin stalked off into the woods, and returned nearly an hour later, leaves and sticks tangled in his hair and clothing, two iridescent snakes hanging from one hand, and a handkerchief-wrapped collection of roots and fruit in the other.

“Supper,” He placed everything in a pile next to the stone.

Nahiri took the snakes without a word. The stone flared brighter, and she reached three fingers into the white-hot surface. When she pulled her hand back the fingers clutched a long, square knife. She let the blade cool, and began stripping the skin and scales away.

“These are poisonous.” Nissa held up several of the fruits before tossing them aside. “These are fine. This one should be cooked before we eat it. And this...well, this is technically edible...”

Sorin shrugged. “Then I guess it’s technically supper.” He didn’t move to sort through any of what he’d scavenged, and didn’t appear the least interested in partaking of any of it.

“Are you just going to stand around and look unpleasant then?” Nahiri had one snake skinned, and tossed it on top of the stone. The meat struck with a hiss and sizzle, followed by a stinging smell of cooking meat.

Sorin bristled. Nissa busied herself with rearranging the inedibles into random piles.

“Or were you looking for a ‘thank you?’”

“I never asked for thanks,” Sorin replied, tone cool. “I would appreciate not being treated like I haven’t been contributing.”

“Baby,” Nahiri replied, carving a strip of scales from the second snake with a flick of her wrist.

“Beast,” Sorin growled back.

“How about that.” Nahiri sneered up at Sorin. “Looks like the selfish old bat isn’t as willing to let things go as he claims.”

“There’s no shame to you, is there?” Sorin’s feet shifted, though he did not step forward. “Not a bit of remorse for what you’ve done and who you’ve hurt. It’s all just my fault for not being there for you, isn’t it?”

“If you call a thousand years imprisonment ‘not being there,’ then sure.”

“I did that to you, Nahiri. What you did was an act against hundreds of thousands. That is not justice of any kind.”

“You want me to do something to you?” Nahiri tossed the second snake on the stone, and pointed her knife at Sorin. “All you had to do was ask. I’ll cut off that dainty face and shove it-”

Ashaya took a step toward the three planeswalkers. Sorin and Nahiri froze and fell silent.

Nissa continued to re-arrange produce.

For a long minute there was no noise but the cooking of snake-meat. Nahiri leaned forward and flipped the pieces with her knife.

“It’s like Ugin used to say, Sorin. We’re older than some planes’ gods. We don’t do shame.”

Sorin folded his arms. “Perhaps that has been our mistake.”

“by the Pistons...” Nahiri rolled her eyes, and they landed on Nissa. “What do you think? Am I a monster like he says?”

“I didn’t-”

Ashaya shifted again, cutting Sorin off. Nissa hefted one of the fruits-a deadly green and purple thing the size of a fist-in her hand, and looked up, meeting Nahiri’s collarbone with her own gaze.

“I don’t think you care about what I think.”

Nahiri snorted. “You’re damn right I don’t care about-”

“Which is just as well, because I don’t care about what you’ve done.”

Sorin rounded on Nissa. “How can you say that? You were there! You fought the eldrazi on Innistrad. You saw the devastation!”

“Yes, I was there. I did see what happened and I did everything in my power to mitigate.” Nissa’s fingers tensed, and her gloves dug shallow furrows into the fruit skin. “And if I had been the person responsible for the things that happened on Innistrad...well personally, I don’t think I could ever look at myself without some disgust for a long time.”

Nahiri’s lip twitched.

Sorin threw his hands up in the air. “Then-”

“But that was then.” Nissa relaxed her grip on the fruit. A small crack ran down the skin where her index and middle finger had rested. “The damage is done, and it will always be done. What am I going to do about it? Kill you? For revenge? The multiverse doesn’t care about justice the way you do. I don’t care that you let worlds fall apart because of your neglect, or that you brought Emrakul to his world. Those problems are dealt with, and neither have any bearing on what we need to do next to fix the world.” Nissa met Nahiri’s eyes. “So unless you plan on turning yourself over for execution on Innistrad-” she jerked her head at Sorin “I-I suggest you do what he’s doing and focus on doing good with the power and the freedom you have.”

“Well, I would have had a lot more time to do good on the planes,” Nahiri impaled a snake with her knife and ripped it off the stone. “if someone hadn’t thrust me into a demon pit and forced my inaction.”

Now Nissa felt a hot pit erupt into her chest. She let the fruit fall to the ground, where it burst along the seam, leaking pale juices.

“It must have taken a while to make all your preparations for what happened on Innistrad.” She kept her voice level.

Nahiri scowled. “Yes. I’m not trying to hide that. I-”

“We were fighting against the Eldrazi for months. Sometimes...sometimes I feel like I spent a whole lifetime ripping out every inch of myself to preserve any scrap of our world from them. All Zendikar rose up to drive them back, and more lost their lives than anyone could ever mourn. And yet, I don’t think I ever saw you. Not in my travels. Not when we finally brought down the titans.”

Nahiri’s jaw twitched. Her eyes were flared. She lowered her knife from her face, until the snake nearly dragged against the moss.

“I thought you didn’t care.”

“I’m not angry about what you did, not anymore. I’m upset by what you could have done instead. And...and I think you should be just as upset. You said before your regrets don't matter, but I don't trust someone with no regrets.”

Nahiri just glared across at Nissa. When Nissa said nothing more, she glared instead at the rock and started tearing chunks of meat off the knife with her teeth, letting the second snake to burn on the stone.

Nissa turned to her small pile of fruit and started eating herself, not even bothering to cut anything up, but letting the pulp stain the sides of her mouth.

After the silence stretched into minutes, Sorin spoke. Nissa almost wished he hadn’t. The strange silence between angry companions was miserable. Breaking it was worse.

“I’ll...take watch. If you two need to sleep.” There was still anger in his voice, but he drifted up into the treetops without any further comment. Nahiri settled back against her tree once she’d finished eating, and turned away so that Nissa couldn’t have told whether she was sleeping or not, even if she could have brought her eyes up to look the kor in the face a second time that night.

You wielded your words with conviction and truth.

Nissa almost jolted to her feet. She had, for the first time in a long time, forgotten the squatter in her mind.

You should be proud. With every ounce of self-belief you cultivate, the closer you come to being a true mover of existence.

Nissa didn’t reply right away, but lay back, letting her head sink into the moss. Her stomach hurt, her mouth felt dry, her head felt like there was a stone where her brain should be, and she would have felt entirely miserable if not for Ashaya. The elemental sat cross-legged at her side, wind trailing through his lusher body parts.

“Life isn’t chess, you know,” Nissa said at last, murmuring up at the treetops.

The games of the flesh minds are just a simple way to express what I mean. What matters is not the metaphor, but that it helps you understand. You deserve to be the one who directs your life. Whether it is pieces or lives you deal in, there is the risk of becoming a passive reactor. Be the actor. The one who puts ideas and movement into the minds of others.

“I don’t want to manipulate anyone,” Nissa said at last. She kept her voice to barely an echo of a whisper. “I’ll use the leylines where there’s good to be done, but I won’t force my will onto others.”

I don’t mean by force, unless force is brought against you. Though it is a skill worth cultivating. You’ve seen that not all great powers are as friendly as I.

“Then I don’t know what you mean.”

Many among your companions, past and present, have had the power of the word to inspire and direct and bring others together. A magic that needs no mana, and that I see you struggle to even try to use.

Nissa almost laughed, despite the heaviness pulling at her eyes. If the eldritch voice in your head spoke, what was there to do but listen?

I worry sometimes, mover, that you will let life slip through your fingers without ever seizing what you want.

“I’m very happy in my homeworld, actually,” Nissa snapped. Nahiri stirred slightly, and Nissa clapped a gloved hand to her mouth before continuing. “I’m satisfied with the work I do, and I don’t need you telling me I should be dissatisfied because I’m not...because I’m not powerful enough.”

That is-I will not argue that. Presuming the intent and wants of the flesh has not been my own greatest strength. I will say, whatever your intentions in this world, or any other, power will help you meet those goals. Power and understanding how to wield...no, how to apply it.

“And what would I need that for? I can heal the world with what I know.”

You should listen when the binders speak. There’s more than what you can touch that you can fix. And that’s with just your words. Or would you tell me you don’t want peace between your companions?

Nissa glanced over at Nahiri. Her pale shoulders where rising and falling in slow time. Above, Sorin was just visible as a sliver of moonlight hit his breastplate.

“Are you telling me you wouldn’t just...reach into their heads to have them do what you wanted?”

I can twist minds to embrace my being, and that is a type of victory. I myself am not satisfied with that sort of adoration. I want my foes and my friends to decide themselves that I am right, not to have to twist their minds to bring them to that conclusion. The final decision should be theirs, made freely.

Nissa rolled over so her back was facing the stone. The forest was cold. And she’d left her blankets and bedroll behind to move quickly. “I’m going to rest, now.”

Yes. The burner?

“Away.” Nissa curled her knees up, and shuffled closer to Ashaya. “Away, please.”

* * *

Nissa managed about four hours of sleep before the itch clawed her awake, burning a trail of fire-ant bites down her back. Her groggy grunts stirred Nahiri, who rolled to her feet, face calm, but brandishing her dagger in a tight-knuckled grip.

“Are you alright?” Sorin floated down, nearly at a dead drop, sword drawn.

“Fine. It’s-” Nissa shook her head, and flexed her shoulders, trying to steady her heartbeat. The itch subsided by degrees as she focused. “-the swarm is close. Moving slower.”

“Good.” Nahiri hurled her knife into stone between them. It stuck fast, then melted into the rock. “I’d like to kill something, and I don’t want to rest again until that happens.”

* * *

Nahiri led the renewed chase with a grim energy and a speed that left Nissa and Sorin trailing behind where the terrain got rough. After a mile they had lost sight of her entirely.

The trail grew more confused miles along as the markings of the retreating swarm intersected with larger swaths of eldrazi devastation. Further still and the trail disappeared entirely as the reclaimed swath of the Rief disappeared into the dusty ghost of itself.

It was at the edge of the ruined forest that they found Nahiri, staring out over the dusty landscape. The same shapes of trees and roots and bridges of earth loomed above them, but pale and desiccated. It was as if a sculptor had sought to re-create the forest from the memory of another, and had nothing but ashen whites to work in.

“It’s like this for miles further,” Nissa offered, gently, as Nahiri stared. “They didn’t get all of it, obviously, but...”

Sorin grit his teeth, audibly. “The Oran-Rief covers most of the continent for miles ahead.”

“It does.” Nissa slipped down from Ashaya’s shoulder to stand behind Nahiri. “It did. I believe it will again. Part of the forest we’ve traveled through is the result of our efforts to regrow and revitalize. Much of the land around Coralhelm and along the Umara has regrown as well, thanks to the waters returning in full. The land is eager to heal, and-”

“-and they have you.” Nahiri nodded, jaw set. “Someone with relevant skills. I’m glad,” She added, when Nissa cringed back from the result. “I really am. I couldn’t have done something like this.”

She rushed out into the forest ruins before Nissa could respond.

“Rash,” Sorin muttered. “Still rash.”

“Did you take the destruction of your home any better?” Nissa asked, quiet.

“Hardly.”

Nissa nodded. “I’m still waiting on you to show me you can work together.” Ashaya scooped her up and took a step into the dusty tangle, then another, and fell into a jog.

“I shouldn’t have called her a beast,” Sorin muttered, drifting forward after them. “That was a wound that didn’t need to be opened again. I’m sorry.”

“...Thank you. I’m not the one who needs to hear that.”

They both ran ragged to catch up. Nahiri’s pace fluctuated now, between bursts of speed that took her out of sight, to long, lagging floats through the air to the point that Nissa and Sorin would pass her by a quarter mile before she matched pace. Another hour into the chase and, without warning, she burst through one of the desiccated roots, one wider than a wurm’s neck, and swearing, doubled back once to pulverize the broken section into dust.

The remorse of a game badly played.

Nissa made no attempt to respond to Emrakul. The itch was growing stronger now, and she had to focus every fiber of her mind to not let the inflaming sensation overwhelm her. They were close. So close. They could put an end to this horde soon...

Ashaya sensed her agitation. His pace doubled, outstripping Sorin and the still-fuming Nahiri.

Nissa shut her eyes. There was life, even here, if she followed the leylines deep enough. True, it was buried under hundreds of feet of chalky forest-corpse, but it was there, ready to thrive again. Here worms still turned the soil. Here there were still minerals for life to grow strong on. Nissa sent mana through to these pockets of life, and felt them swell. Felt them jolt with energy, and begin the long climb through the waste to taste the sunlight.

There were years, maybe decades to go before Oran-Rief looked anything like its former self. In truth, there was little chance it would ever look exactly as it had. That was fine. Recovery was a slow process, change was part of recovery, and Nissa would be there to help her world heal every step of the way.

The land is steeped in my brothers’ touch

Nissa grit her teeth. “I’d noticed. Or did you miss the months I’ve spent trying to heal the land?”

An ambitious and a powerful endeavor. But I didn’t mean the wastes. My brother’s-

“I’m done hearing about Ulamog, actually,” Nissa hissed.

No, mover, not my one brother. I mean that my brothers pieces are-

A noise from behind shook Nissa’s focus. Sorin was calling after her. Bellowing something.

Her name.

The itch flooded Nissa’s mind like a rush of filth-laden water. Ashaya had passed under the bent form of an eldrazi-withered tree, and ahead, a small, sunken clearing radiated the itch from every direction.

Even below.

The ground beneath Ashaya splintered and burst upward in a column of shattered, desiccated plates. Nissa and the elemental were thrust up into the air. Trees shattered into dust. Purple-blue arms shot through the newly-formed hole in the forest floor, followed by taut red muscles and a face of blank bone.

A crusher. One of Ulamog’s brood.

Nissa leapt from Ashaya’s back onto an airborne sheet of hard packed-dust. It came apart under her feet as she sprinted along its length and flung herself onto a second chunk of airborne debris, just behind the crusher’s head. She bent her knees and sprang through the air, drawing her sword mip-leap and scoring a deep gash along its shoulder.

But not deep enough to kill.

And there were more coming. Spawn poured out of the hole. Drones leapt down from the grey-white branches of the ruined trees, filling the suddenly much larger clearing. Ulamog’s brood moved over the brittle ground with ease, and Kozilek’s obsidian-clad eldrazi added twists of bismuth to the surroundings as they threw themselves down into the clearing.

It was the swarm they had been tracking, and then some, all joined together for an ambush. Nissa swore and dove off the crusher’s neck just as it slammed its hand down where she had crouched. The blow echoed like an explosion, ringing in Nissa’s ears.

She hit the ground, rolled to a stand, then raised staff and sword as a tidal wave of eldrazi spawn flung themselves towards her.

Nissa stepped back with her first swing, cutting through the skull of one spawn and voiding the space where its companions slashed and stomped and lashed out with a dozen types of limbs. Each swing of her sword necessitated another step away from the horde. Each blow felled an eldrazi, but there was a pit full of them, a crusher just behind her, and nowhere else to dodge. Nissa threw a desperate glance over her shoulder. Ashaya had landed safely and was grappling with the titanic thing, though the crusher’s arm alone arm alone outweighed him two-to-one.

A sudden disorientation swept over Nissa, and she slipped on a sharp divot. She hit the ground hard, her vision nearly inverted. A crab-shaped eldrazi hovering above her, an upside-down crown of obsidian emitting iridescent pulses all through the clearing.

At least a dozen eldrazi converged on her. Nissa held out her sword. Her vision filled with red, and her chest a sudden, overdue fear.

“Too many.” Her gasp was barely a whisper. “Too many.”

Breathe, mover. You’ve faced worse odds.

“I had friends,” Nissa whispered. “I had-”

You still have them.

A blur of white and red swung down from the trees, scorching the air in its wake. The sizzling pendulum swept away a score of the eldrazi. The remainder of the spawn menacing Nissa lurched to a sudden stop. Their skulls burst. Their bodies fell limp to the dust.

Sorin and Nahiri loomed behind them, the vampire’s hand outstretched in an invocation of blood magic, the kor rushing forward, a molten sword in each hand.

Nahiri swept through the front ranks of the eldrazi, leaving each sword buried in the breast of a still-standing eldrazi before sweeping Nissa up in her arms. The stone that had smashed into the swarm followed in her wake like a blazing comet.

“This them?” Nahiri shouted over the rush of air.

Nissa nodded, weakly. The distortion in the air made it difficult to tell where Nahiri’s face ended and the white of the dead trees began. A blur of purple slid into her vision behind Nahiri’s head-

“Look out-!”

Nahiri swerved in the air in time to miss the full force of the crusher’s blow, but the glancing hit still sent both planeswalkers tumbling from the sky, and rolling into the dust.

Nissa recovered in time to register the looming shadow over them. Nahiri must have noticed it too, and they flung themselves in opposite directions just as the fist struck again. The ground caved in under the blow. Fragments of chalk peppered the air.

The fist jolted back up, and Nissa braced to roll out of the way of a third strike. Then the disorientation hit her again, and she fell, clutching at her ears. The crab-eldrazi was right above her. There was so much noise in the distortion. The light howled in her skull. A few feet away, she registered Nahiri scowling up at the air. The rock, which had fallen and embedded in the ground, glowed hot and streaked toward the crab-drone.

It never touched the creature. A blur of black and silver collided with the crab, and Sorin tore it neatly in half with a sideways stroke of his sword. The rock shot through the now-empty gap in the air, and glanced off the crusher’s face, cracking its skull across the bottom with the sound like a thunderbolt.

The fist still fell, square over Nissa.

This time she didn’t even flinch. With so little life in the surrounding earth, she sensed Ashaya’s approach with ease. The elemental threw himself over Nissa, intercepting the crusher’s blow and dragging the massive eldrazi off-balance. As it flailed backwards, Nissa noted that its other arm now ended in a ragged, purplish stump, and that Ashaya was splattered with similarly-colored gore. She sprang to her feet to face a second wave of the swarm with her comrades.

“Stop getting in my way, Sorin!” Nahiri had recalled her boulder, and split it in half to form two jagged, long-bladed gauntlets that covered her up to her forearm.

Sorin, coat still splattered with the remains of the crab-eldrazi, snarled.

“Keep your wits about you, then! I can’t coddle you all the time!”

“Just keep clear of me!” Nahiri shot back over her shoulder. She moved toward the trees, wading into the torrent of Kozilek’s eye-riddled drones and began cleaving their many limbs from their bodies.

“Oh, so now you don’t want help.” Sorin flipped his sword in his hand and spun in the air, striking the crack in the crusher’s face. The skull splintered, and the nightmare that passed for a face underneath was visible for a moment, until Sorin shoved his sword through the gap up to its hilt. “Good! I’d hate to respond the wrong way and have you try to kill me again!”

“Focus!” Nissa shouted, already racing towards the crusher. Ashaya followed a step behind. Even stabbed through the face, the giant eldrazi swiped at Sorin. With a thought from Nissa, Ashaya pounced at the eldrazi’s arm, somersaulting through the air, a buzzsaw of wood and root and earth. The arm, already cut deep by Nissa’s sword, was ripped from the crusher’s shoulder with a sound like a hundred coils of rope tearing apart. Sorin pumped plumes of blood colored magic into the crack in its skull, and a second later it burst, showering them all with solids and semi-solids which Nissa decided not to think about too hard.

“You don’t get to use that against me!” Nahiri screamed, she’d pinned the largest drone in the latest wave to the dust with her gauntlet. “Not when you wouldn’t even listen to me after! Not after you left me to rot in that demon filled hell!”

“I think I can use just about whatever I want.” Sorin rode the crusher’s body to the rim of the pit, and leapt off, diving through a crowd of sinew-winged spawn. Each one he dealt a single blow, cleaving their bodies in half. “unless stating facts is somehow more heinous than genocide!”

Nissa ducked under the swipe of one lanky eldrazi, and found herself face to no-face with a trio of spawn that looked like floating mountains in miniature, with fibers of alien flesh strung Between the peaks.

Ah, that’s me. One moment.

The mountains froze in place, then dropped heavily to the ground, their weight embedding them in the fragile earth. Nissa was so dumbfounded by the sight that the gangly eldrazi’s second swipe caught her in the stomach, folding her over.

Too many.

Not too many. Not for you. Breathe, mover. See them for the mass they are.

Nissa fell to one side to dodge another blow. As she fell she drove the butt of her staff through the underside of the lanky eldrazi’s skull. The force of the strike lifted the creature up and over the rim of the pit, where it fell away without a sound.

Perhaps it was the quiet of their opponents, Nissa mused, that let her comrades keep up their screaming match.

“Do you think-” Nahiri shouldered aside one squat eldrazi, then stabbed another right through its obsidian crown. “-That I don’t regret what I did? That I’m not just as angry with myself as I am with you? I have fucking nothing now. I was a protector. I kept the multiverse safe for centuries. Now I’m another gods-cursed killer.” Nahiri strode up the small pile of corpses, white face shining with sweat. “I wish every damn day I hadn’t brought that monster to your world!”

Sorin snarled, diving to the ground with a drone impaled on his sword. “Try acting like it, then!”

“What do you want to hear?” Nahiri roared, an upward swing bisecting one of Ulamog’s brood from groin to crown. “An apology? Do you want to hear sorry??”

Sorin sprang up, plunging his claws through the skulls of two more drones. “It would quite literally be the least you could do.”

“Please focus!” Nissa bellowed. An obsidian-crowned eldrazi with rows of eyes lining its bulging arms swiped at her once, twice, and shattered the rim of the pit with a scream that made the air ripple. They both stumbled, but Nissa kept her balance better than the eldrazi, and ran her sword through the flesh where a neck might have sprouted on any other creature. She jumped back and let it fall into the pit, knocking several other eldrazi down with it.

Sorin started to shout something back, but then the air was split by a vision-blurring screech, and a long-limbed eldrazi sprang from an overhanging branch, wrapping itself around Sorin, and slamming him flat into the dust. The other Eldrazi converged on him in a pile of pounding, flailing, grasping limbs.

Nissa and Nahiri paused for just a heartbeat, but that was enough time for their own opponents to capitalize on their distraction. One of Kozilek’s brood warped the space around Nahiri’s arm, slipping past the joint of her gauntlet with an oily sucking sound. The kor swore and screamed horribly as her arm went limp. Ashaya was just barely able to pull Nissa away from a disemboweling strike, but not quickly enough to keep the bony claws from drawing blood.

Nissa instinctively reached out for something. Dirt. Seed. Vines. There was nothing for miles, save for Ashaya. All that time spent coaxing growth back into the plane and she still found herself with nothing to call to their aid.

Your connection is with your plane, mover.

“I’d noticed, actually,” Nissa grunted, brandishing her sword. She cut down the spawn in front of her with a savage thrust, and began wading toward Sorin. Ashaya took her flank, providing a buffer and a plow through the crowd.

Well, this is your plane now. And not just the dirt and the vines. You are no less able to-

Nissa didn’t have the energy to focus on a retort, so she screamed, pushing forward with greater fury.

Sorin was nowhere in sight. More eldrazi piled onto the mass already pinning him down, unable to reach to the center, but adding weight with every drone.

“Sorin!” Nahiri’s scream matched and outstripped Nissa’s, as she hacked through the spawn with her good arm. “Don’t you dare die here, you selfish ass!” She hewed her way through the crowd around her with wide swipes, carving a gore-spattered path to the Sorin. Other eldrazi converged behind her as she started to carve through the pile. The blade of her limp arm flowed over her shoulders and head, hardening to shield her from the eldrazi piled onto her back.

That was the last glimpse Nissa had of her ally before the next wave of spawn roared up from the pit, joining the clutch that already beat down on her from the forest side. Her warpath came to a sudden, heavy stop. Even Ashaya could not wade any further through the crush of bodies.

Sword and stick won’t solve this, mover.

“It’s all I have,” Nissa screamed back, pressing closer to Ashaya’s back. “Look around you! They’ve cut me off! I can’t bring more of Zendikar here in time!”

Zendikar is here. It may not look like it once did. It may not look like how you plan it to look in the future. But it is still here. A rusted sword may not slice, but it can bludgeon.

To Nissa’s left, eldrazi were still pouring up from the pit. She could hear Nahiri bellowing somewhere far away. There were so many. Too many. Their presence flowed like a dirty stream across the leylines.

Will you swim against the current, or flow with it?

Nissa felt for Zendikar again. Delving desperately as she beat back drone after drone. This time she did not dig. She let her mind rest on the dust and desiccation right at her feet.

The voice that answered back was sickly. Strange. But it answered.

“I think,” Nissa grunted, “That I’ll dam up the whole stream.”

Magnificent.

Chalk blew out in geysers from the shattered edge of the pit, knocking several spawn back into the darkness as they tried to clamber onto level ground. A crack ripped down the side of the hole, bursting with even more dust.

A gaping maw tore itself free from the pit wall and reared up, Jaws of desiccated earth slammed down beyond the rim. Skeletal teeth punched into drones and spawn, pulping them to the ground.

Then the maw-thing, the soul of the wastes, fell backwards, dragging dozens of eldrazi with it, crushing the rest of the eldrazi rushing out of the pit against the walls. The grind of its fall echoed through the clearing, even as the eldrazi that remained pressed against Nissa all the fiercer.

Absolutely magnificent.

“Can’t...can’t do that again.” Nissa was panting hard. She could barely keep her sword and staff in front of her, barring the crush of eldritch limbs. “Check. Or however that damn game goes.”

The game is in disarray. You’ve made one important realization already: When the game has gone poorly, you always have the option of ripping the board out from under the arrangement of pieces that displease you. And now that they lie on the ground, let me give you another clue: who is to tell you that you may not take whatever piece you want for your own?

Nissa blinked, then furrowed her brow. Three spawn sprang at once, the bone-faced ones spreading their arms wide, the eyeball-covered one leaping at an angle that gravity should have made impossible. Nissa killed one with her sword, and found herself grappling with the other two.

They pressed in with rough shoves. They were not especially strong physically, and they blocked out the spawn gathering behind them, but the press of the whole crowd moved them forward. A sack-like limb struck Nissa across the jaw. Claws the color of twilight jabbed through the gaps. A slash tore through Nissa’s wrap and tunic, ripping flesh and scoring a nick on her ribs.

This is simple, mover. If your opponent would kill you, what must you do?

“Fuck off,” Nissa grunted.

I think you’ll find this germane to your present situation, mover.

Nissa almost laughed at that. At the bank-faced monsters pressing in around her. She felt something wet seeping into her tunic along her flank.

Suddenly Nissa felt as if she was seeing the eldrazi for the first time. Alien, yes. Horrifying in numbers, yes. But they were not gearhulks or elder dragons or gods-

This is ridiculous. I’ve laid better opponents than this low without every drawing my blade.

Yes!

Nissa relaxed her muscles, and the crowd shoved her back immediately. She let them push. Ashaya flowed around her, embracing Nissa in a cage of wood with just enough space for her to fall back, as the limbs of the eldrazi scratched at the wood and grasped through the holes of the cage. Leaf-coated vines descended from the roof of Ashaya, wrapping around Nissa’s flank to staunch the flow of blood. She felt the lines of Ashaya’s vital force surrounding her, and, using that as her starting point, reached out to the eldrazi.

Their lines were confused. They were individuals, certainly. Yet in another, truer sense, parts of greater, more intricate wholes. Wholes that had been burned out of existence, leaving a hole in the multiverse. Leaving these lesser eldrazi severed. And yet fragments of the ties that had bound them to the larger entities remained; strands of power, severed at one end, but alive, in their own strange way.

Nissa seized those strands by the metaphysical handful, gathering them together and folding them into a single thread. Grasping them was tricky. Like snatching streams of current from the water. Some she fumbled. Some wriggled through her grip. But with each pull of her mind, more spawn twisted under her power. Her influence radiated outward from where she stood, and slowly a growing number of eldrazi stood still, providing her a bulwark against those that remained hostile.

Nahiri cried out.

Nissa couldn’t see the kor from her position, so she directed the drones closest to Ashaya to lift him up, over the heads and head-like appendages of the crowd. Ashaya peeled open as he rose, wooden limbs curving outward like petals to protect Nissa from the eldrazi on the ground, though none in the immediate vicinity made a move towards her that she did not direct.

Further out, spawn still fought their way towards her, and towards Nahiri. Nahiri had met them with a fury that outmatched anything the mindless drones could hope to amass. Her stone armor was cracked and pitted in a dozen places. She was bleeding from more wounds than Nissa could count. Still she shredded eldrazi, one-handed, bellowing and driving closer to the pile atop Sorin, inch by hard-won inch.

“I’m sorry, you miserable corpse! Isn’t that what you wanted to hear?!” Her armor flared red-hot, singing the drones closest to her. A second later it exploded outward, and debris ripping through skulls, sinew, and eldritch flesh. She thrust the hand of her good gauntlet into the pile, and heaved.

Sorin emerged. At least, his arm and upper body did, the rest still pinned under the swarm.

But he lived, and somehow, still moved. His other arm cut free of the pile, gripped tight around a strange, jagged-edged knife. Nissa sifted further into the horde, grabbing more and more of the eldrazi and commanding their stillness, reaching out for the mass that menaced her companions.

“Sorin!” Even from a short distance, Nissa could make out the look of manic relief on Nahiri’s face.

“I hear you.” Sorin gasped. His flesh was bruised and torn, his garments shredded ribbons of leather and cloth. He thrust with his strange knife, impaling a drone at Nahiri’s side before it could slash at her. It died, but Sorin’s arm crumpled under the creature’s weight. “I said I wanted an apology, not for you to die.” He thrashed, freeing his legs from the pile and turning his knife back on the eldrazi that had buried him.

Nahiri snorted. “Who’s dying? It’ll take more than-”

Sorin’s blow caught her in the shoulder. Nahiri stumbled to one side. A spike of obsidian punched through the air where she had stood, and then, just as easily, through Sorin’s breastplate, pinning him to the ground.

Nahiri was back on her feet in seconds, swatting aside spawn left and right, desperately trying to keep them from converging on Sorin again. Nissa grit her teeth. She could set the eldrazi she had under her influence on the ones that still fought against the planeswalkers, but that wouldn’t stop the hostile ones before they tore her allies apart. And if she couldn’t grab control of the rest in that time-

A bolt of black flew into Nissa’s periphery. Just as quickly, Ashaya lashed out with a tendril, deflecting another spike of obsidian into the dust. Nissa glanced up into the trees. A broad-chested drone was perched in the ashen branches, a long spiral of tapered black stone forming from its throat, aimed right at her. She scowled and, with a strain that drew blood from her nostrils, reached into the dead leylines of the wastes and severed the branch. The eldrazi plummeted to the forest floor, where it landed among the still-growing horde that surrounded Nahiri.

Nissa gasped. She tasted iron as her blood ran over her lips. There’s too many

You see them as individuals and grasp them as individuals, Mover. A general does not call soldiers by name, but by unit.

Nissa blinked, and furrowed her brow. “What do you-?”

The spike-shooting eldrazi reared up suddenly from the crowd, a thorn of obsidian still forming in its throat. It lunged through the crowd, bowling other drones aside, its spike aimed at Sorin’s head.

It made it within a foot of the vampire’s face, and not an inch closer. Nahiri grabbed the spike with her gauntlet, stopping it dead and, with a scream, super-heated the spike until it cooked the drone from the inside out.

Nissa watched for only a moment until her attention was grabbed by a shape lying in the space the drone had cleared when it charged. More of the round, mountain-shaped eldrazi lay unmoving in the dust, unmarked by any weapon. Emrakuls in miniature A quick glance around the clearing confirmed a dozen other like them, some lying where none of the fighting had taken place.

Dealt with all at once. Like snapping my finger.

Nissa shut her eyes. In her mind, the eldrazi had were bundled together like bales of hay, the ones she did not yet have under her control lying loose like straw littered in a field.

“Straw will take too long to gather,” She muttered.

The image in her mind shifted. The spawn of Kozilek were like silt pouring through of muddy, running water. Rough. Difficult to perceive. She formed a sieve in her mind, and dragged it across the stream, collecting up the alien consciousnesses of the brood. In one swipe, she had half the clearing frozen under her control.

Ulamog...Ulamog was salt. Drying. Desiccating. In her mind Nissa pictured the clearing as a table, and swept the grains of Ulamog’s spawn into a bowl.

When she opened her eyes, every creature was still. All except Nahiri.

Sorin hung at an angle with the ground, forming a triangle with his body on one side, the earth on another, and the spike as the third. Nahiri cracked the spike with a blow form her gauntlet and pulled Sorin off onto the ground. He was bruised over every inch of exposed skin, and a hole ran straight through his belly.

Nahiri, at a sudden loss of anything dangerous to hit, then channeled her fervent energies at Sorin.

“I’m sorry!” Nahiri screamed down at Sorin’s still form. “Please! I shouldn’t have done it! It was wrong!” She didn’t seem to even register the circle of drones around her, still and watching.

Softly, Nissa commanded the Eldrazi to lower her and Ashaya to the ground. There was a slight buzz in her head as she instructed the individuals holding them up, but it faded away as she tucked them back into the collective in her mind, and strode through the still crowd toward her comrades. Ashaya plodded behind, the chalky ground crumbling under each of his steps.

Nahiri looked up as Nissa neared. Her eyes were wild. Bloodshot. There was something between a smile and a grimace on her face.

“They can’t have killed him, right? He wouldn’t just die like this. Somewhere like this.”

Nissa grimaced. “Nahiri-”

The Kor’s sudden gasp cut her off.

Sorin’s head lolled, then slowly dragged upright. His eyes slid open and a groaned.

“No fear there.” He lifted a hand slowly and lay it across his breast. “I freed myself from an impaling trap made by the meanest lithomancer in the multiverse. What’s one spike from a cockroach?”

Nahiri’s set Sorin down in the dust. “I-I thought so!” She laughed. A rough, manic bark. She held the smile for a moment, then it fell off her face. “I’m sorry.”

Sorin shook his head. Barely a twitch of his neck to the side. “You don’t have to-”

“I’m sorry,” she echoed, soft. “I really am.”

His face twisted. “I can’t accept an apology from you. I don’t deserve forgiveness any more than you do. I hurt you in a way few people in the multiverse have been hurt, and I did it deliberately, to preserve my own selfish peace in the world.” He lay a hand on Nahiri’s. “I don’t want you to be what I pushed you toward being. Not when I know destruction isn’t what your soul is meant for. I’m sorry. That was selfish as well.”

Nahiri shook her head, rapid. “It’s no excuse. Whatever happened to me, it’s no excuse for...for...”

She stood, suddenly. She stared past Nissa like she was seeing something far off among the dead trees. Nahiri’s chest rose and fell with an increasingly furious pace, and she stepped over Sorin, past Nissa, almost to the edge of the eldrazi circle.

Then she just stood, staring.

Sorin and Nissa exchanged glances. The Vampire’ face was contorted as he pumped blood magic into the hole in his chest, but the contortion was mixed with...it was the same look Gideon used to make when he fretted over the others.

Nahiri fell to her knees, screaming in a sudden rage.

“Damn you!” Her fists broke the brittle ground easily. “Damn me! Another fucking killer!” Her fists quickly reduced the patch of ground to a conical pit of powder. “The sealing, the hedrons...none of it means a damned thing now!”

“You kept your plane alive for millennia!” Sorin shouted, horse. There was a horrible sucking sound as he yelled, and Nissa realized with a start that he only had one inflated lung. “That’s not nothing.” He struggled upright, and Nissa ran forward to grab him under the arm before he collapsed again. He wheezed, and looked up at Nissa. “Thank you.”

They ambled over to Nahiri. Sorin knelt nest to her, head bowed. “What I did to you...where I left you. I owe you as much of an apology.”

“You didn’t kill anyone to hurt me. Not on purpose.” Nahiri’s response was ragged; barely a whisper through a scream-sore throat. “You were a fucking selfish bastard but you didn’t try to kill anyone other than me. I’m worse than you.”

“Maybe.” Sorin said it automatically. “Probably. I still wronged you.”

Nahiri shuddered suddenly, with a violent sob. She reached out and seized a handful of Sorin’s torn sleeve, and slammed her other fist against the dusty ground. Her shoulders shook, and her hand twisted the leather around. Sorin did not move or back away. Nissa wondered if she should.

“I’m a murderer! Evil! I don’t deserve anything!”

“That’s true,” Nissa whispered. She leaned back against Ashaya, holding the vine-bandages wrapped tight around her side. “But life’s not about what we deserve; it’s about what do.” Her legs started to buckle, and she slid down the elemental’s leg to sit in the dust. “What we’ll do next.”

Nahiri drew in a dry, rattling breath, and shuffled around to face Nissa. “Next?”

“This...this is good, what we did here today. Together. Look how much fewer we’ve made the spawn that still threaten our world.” Nissa looked down at the waste beneath her. “Look at how much world remains to be saved.” She lifted her head and looked from Sorin to Nahiri. “You can heal. You can build. I can grow. And if you can work with each other, I would...happily work with you.”

Sorin nodded, slow, and looked to Nahiri. She returned his gaze with eyes red and watering, but unblinking.

“No forgiveness.” She held out her hand to him. “We build something new, starting today.”

“That...that works for me.” He grasped her hand, and they shook; a quick, singular motion. He turned to Nissa, and inclined his head. “And I hope we might do the same. My actions against you and toward your world-”

“When I said I didn’t care, I meant it. And I meant nothing of malice against either of you.” Nissa jabbed a head at her temple. “I’ve had this force in my head for some time now. By most sane definitions it is evil, a thing that’s twisted and killed millions. Still I tolerate it. I listen to it. I try to use its guidance to do good, because I do not have the power to oppose it, and because the alternative is to leave it unattended.”

My guidance has been of great use.

“I had a friend who believed in justice. Who believed that there were good actions in the world, and wrong ones, and that the latter should be opposed without question.” Something rose up in Nissa’s chest, but she forced in down, breathing slow to calm her heartbeat. “But he believed in every person’s capacity for good, no matter their past. I can’t say if he was right in the end, only that that sort of justice is the only kind that’s ever made sense to me.” Her arms felt heavy, but Ashaya lifted his own for her. “So please. Let’s do better, and let our mistakes be lessons, not yokes.”

The other two said nothing, though Nahiri nodded, slowly. Sorin leaned forward, hand still pressed to his breast, fingers still weaving healing magic.

Silence and dust drifted through the clearing. When the latter settled, only silence remained.

* * *

They sat around another stone fire that night, back where the chalk wastes gave way to the green remains of Oran-Rief. Nissa sat cross-legged in front of the stone, both hands laid in the comforting sponginess of the moss. The remaining spawn, a little under four-hundred by Nahiri’s count, all lay a distance away, huddled together in a crude corral of vines and stone bells to alert the trio if they starting moving while Nissa slept.

Her head was full of buzzing, and there was a throbbing ache behind her eyes.

But it was better than their last rest. The tension had gone out of her companions, and Nissa could breath easier.

“There’s pockets all over,” Nahiri said over a supper of roasted tubers and wild onions. She picked at her food with her left hand, her right still hanging limp in a sling. “Not just spawn, but opportunists taking advantage of ruined settlements and wild creatures displaced by the dead stretches on the plane. We could, the three of us, we could give those Zendikari a better chance at starting their lives over.”

Nissa nodded. She was leaned up against Ashaya, moving as little as possible to not disturb the lacerations along her side.

“That’s true, though I would like to set aside time to continue replenishing the forests. Oran-Rief is a daunting project, and I still hold out hope for restoring Bala Ged to a place for the elves.”

“Is it true, the stories about the elemental?” Nahiri was much more eager to talk since the battle.

All the words unsaid over the past week.

“Yes. Yarok, they call it. Another creature we may have to coexist with.” Nissa dared a small smile. “But, coexisting is something we’re all getting much better at.”

Nahiri nodded, suddenly interested in wolfing down the rest of her supper. Sorin just nodded from where he reclined on a stone slate cushioned with harvested moss. Faint wisps of blood magic crawled over his form, and the bruises that mottled his body were beginning to receding by bits. He pointed in the direction of the spawn. “Will they be coming?”

“Until I can find something useful for them to do. There is a strain, trying to keep them in line,” Nissa noted after a time. “I expect we may still need to face more in the days to come.”

“Not the companions I expected,” Nahiri observed through a mouthful of food. “But...beats having enemies, I guess. Were you ever able to track down Ugin?” She asked, looking to Sorin.

“Not a sign since Tarkir. When it comes to that dragon, I don’t know what to believe anymore.” The barest hint of a smile crawled over Sorin’s face. “Remember how surprised we were to find out he was in contact and collaboration with so many other walkers? Even in the middle of that accursed mess on Ravnica?”

Nissa lowered a piece of onion from her mouth. The memory of the spirit dragon, bright and looming, flashed briefly in her mind. He’d been there at the end last time. He’d spoken to her. To Jace. To...to Gideon and-

“Of course. I stopped trying to kill you, I was so intrigued.” Nahiri chewed her lip. “Do you think it’s true?”

Sorin glanced over to Nissa. “The mind-mage was your companion, right? Do you trust him?”

“With my life,” Nissa said, soft. She pressed down another lump in her chest.

“What about you?” Nahiri asked Nissa. “You didn’t-I never even thought to ask how your companions fared after the...well, the war, I guess we’re calling it. The mind-mage and the pyromancer and-”

“We’re fine,” Nissa replied. “All fine.”

“Ah.” Nahiri nodded.

“More hands couldn’t hurt here,” Sorin ventured. “If we can’t get the spirit dragon...I don’t know how many of your companions are able and willing to help, but I saw many talents on display against Bolas that would help here. The time mage, certainly. I believe I saw another elf calling upon dead spirits as well. Plenty of those to go around. Even the fire-flinger might be useful for clearing out-”

Nissa didn’t hear the rest as she, much to everyone’s surprise, hunched over and started sobbing.

“...but maybe not...?” Sorin finished.

Nissa tried to catch her breath, but she could not stop the heaving in her lungs, and the twisting of her face as tears spilled out over her chin and into her lap.

The other two didn’t say anything right away. Through shudders Nissa could see them exchange nervous glances.

“I’m sorry,” She muttered, choking out the words between sobs. “Sorry, I-”

“It’s fine.” They said it together automatically. Nahiri leapt up from her spot to amble over and sit next to Nissa. Nissa dug her fingers deeper into the ground, if only to keep herself from covering up her face.

Nahiri lifted her good hand, and it hovered over her own lap a moment before she moved to rest it on Nissa’s shoulder. Nissa shook her head. A tight, frantic shudder that might have been mistaken for more shakes from her crying, but Nahiri took her hand back all the same.

“I’m sorry.” Nahiri lay the hand instead on the grass next to Nissa’s. “I owe you one as well. If I...if we distressed you – I mean, if we acted in such a poor way as to-”

“No.” Nissa shook her head, a more deliberate movement this time. “Not you.

“Mostly not you,” she added.

Sorin cleared his throat. “Is it...is it something we can help with?” The words stumbled out from him so unnaturally that Nissa almost laughed through her tears.

“I-no? I don’t know.”

The other two exchanged another look. What look, Nissa couldn’t say, but even through blurred eyes she could see them turn toward each other.

“Is it the pyromancer?” Sorin asked after a moment. “Did something happen to-”

“I don’t know!” Nissa pulled up a fist and punched the ground, grinding her knuckles into the moss. “I haven’t seen Chandra in months! I – she came to see me and then she just-she just...”

“What did she do?” Nahiri’s own fingers clenched, and the heat from the stone rose perceptibly. “Did she hurt-”

Nissa shook her head. “She just...she just came and left. And I let her. I stood there like an idiot and I just let her.” She brought her elbow up and coughed into it. Snot was starting to run down to her lips. “I’m sorry, this isn’t important, I just-”

“Clearly it’s important to you,” Sorin interrupted. “So it is, by definition, important.”

Nissa shook her head. “I just wanted her to be happy . She said distance was what she needed, and I let her...of course I let her go. I love her. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

Sorin drew and released a breath in a long sigh. “You need to be a bit more selfish sometimes.”

“And what?” Nissa replied. “Force her to stay with me? Make her do something that will make her miserable?”

“You said yourself,” Sorin returned after a short silence, “that you didn’t even tell her how you felt. That you let her make assumptions from your silence.”

“What would you know?”

“It’s what you did last night,” Nahiri cut in. “Until I provoked you. Um, sorry for that.”

“She said she wasn’t right for me.” Nissa steadied herself, and drew in a short, rattling breath. “She said...she knows I like the quiet sometimes. I liked that about her, that she understood that. But then she said she couldn’t-that we couldn’t be...I don’t know.” She brought the back of her glove up to clear her eyes. “She thought...she thought I wouldn’t have made space for her in my life. That I wouldn’t have liked making space for her in my life” She breathed in again, longer this time, steadying herself.

“Would you have?” Nahiri kept her voice low, just loud enough for the three of them.

“I think so.” Nissa lifted her head. Sorin had sat up and to face them. “It wasn’t the firs thing on my mind when we parted the first time. There was too much work for me here. But I did think about it when I came back again, after Ravnica, but there was still so much to do, and...” She choked again. “I took too long. I didn’t...I needed more time. I didn’t think she’d just-”

“That’s not your fault for needing time,” Sorin said. “No matter what came of it, there’s no shame in thinking through a hard decision.”

“Months though?” Nahiri said. “I mean – sorry, that’s not the point.” She lifted her hand again tentatively, but put it back down on the moss without Nissa having to say anything or shake her head. “It’s...it’s been a strange time for all of us, since, well since we were all together last. A hard time for introspection.”

“I don’t think she had to wait for me,” Nissa whispered. “I just wish she had.”

For a while there was no sound but the occasional hiss of the wind carrying a stray leaf into the stone. The trails down Nissa’s face started to dry, and she drew in slow breaths of the cool night air.

“Your paths could easily cross again,” Sorin offered, eventually. “She knows where you are, and even if you don’t-”

“I do.”

“...what?”

“I do,” Nissa said. “I mean, I could know. I can feel many things in the leylines now. More and more since I traveled with the Gatewatch. Since...since Emrakul began speaking to me. If I focus-” Nissa held out her hand, and channeled mana into the leylines that threaded through the air. There were so many on Zendikar. The plane was so abundantly alive in a way that so few other planes were.

“-She burns brighter than anyone I’ve ever met. If I wanted to – that is, if I felt it was right, I could just follow that light.”

“So why don’t you?” Nahiri leaned in, voice louder now. “Go and tell her what you told us.”

“She said we weren’t right for each other. What if she still feels that way?”

“Then you’ll have tried,” Nahiri replied. “You’ll have told her how you feel about her, and she can make her decision knowing what you want. Otherwise she’ll just go on thinking that she made a choice that you agreed with, and...well, it doesn’t seem like that’s the case.”

Nissa tensed. The thought of doing just that had occurred to her weeks ago, and seemed laughably implausible since then. Nahiri suggested it like a real possibility, but...going to Chandra? Using her words to express whatever it was she felt for her? It made Nissa’s whole body seize up from the inside out. But if she could bring the right words…

“I...think I would like that,” Nissa said at last. “But, even now, I don’t know that I’ve given it the thought it deserves.”

“Then take the time,” Sorin said. “You’ve got us now, as long as you need us. You don’t need to run yourself as ragged as a one-elf savior across the whole plane. We’ll all do our good work, and we’ll be your counsel as you work through your thoughts. And when you’re ready, whenever that might be, you can go to her with the right words.”

Nahiri nodded. “If you want our help, of course.”

Nissa was silent a long while. Her head still ached from the commotion and confrontation of the day. Her body still throbbed with pain from a dozen wounds, and the alien tinge of the eldrazi spawn still crawled along her body like a new limb. She didn’t want to talk. Didn’t want to do anything but close her eyes and rest.

Still, the comfort of caring company made the night just a degree less cold.

“I think...I think I would like that. Thank you.”

* * *

Mover, before you sleep…

Nissa groaned softly. She had just lay her head down and begun to close her eyes. The soft ground felt like a balm against her buzzing scalp, she had only a few hours before Nahiri woke her for her turn at night watch, and she wanted nothing more than the quiet of sleep.

If you’d rather wait...though I find the sooner the debrief-

“No, let’s do this now,” she muttered, keeping her whisper low.

You’ve added great power unto yourself. We’ll discuss that.

Nissa waited for Emrakul to say more. The eldrazi titan remained silent.

“I’ve reached out and taken control of another mind. Minds. Or lack of a mind. Several voids where minds should be. I’m not sure I understand entirely what I’m going to do with them, and I’m not sure that qualifies as becoming more powerful.

You used one method to add the power of my brothers’ pieces to yourself. You used another to add the power of your companions, the binders. Even the mere act of finding a new application for an existing competency is an act of growing power.

“Yes. Nissa poked wearily at her connection to the herd of drones off in the wastes. “That will take...it will take some getting used to. And there’s peace between Sorin and Nahiri now. I’m not certain how much of that was me, to be honest.”

You facilitated a renewal of their companionship. Indirect intervention is still intervention. It’s all part of becoming powerful.

Nissa blinked. “I...I’m pleased to have them as allies. As friends, even. But I don’t know what you...I haven’t been sapping their powers or taking power from them or-”

Friends are power stored in other bodies. A friend made is power added unto yourself, and better still, power that aids you willingly. Joyfully.

The earlier battle flashed in Nissa’s mind. The crush of bodies. Emrakul’s voice booming in her mind all the while…

“If my opponent is about to kill me, make them my friend.”

Yes.

“I don’t know how to feel about that. What if making a friend means conceding part of who I am?”

Then you get to decide if it’s worth it to you. Look around though, and I think you’ll find you’ve conceded very little.

“I’ve conceded to interrupt my work healing the plane. I’ve conceded to speak the language of the eldrazi. To let them into my mind.”

Emrakul was silent a long moment.

You’ve spoken my language with me for some time now. Has it not been worth your while?

“...let’s talk about that later.”

...has my presence been unwelcome?

“No but...having someone else’s thoughts in your head all the time makes it challenging to know what thoughts are your own.”

This is so. I do intend only to advise, mover. I do not wish to control a fellow controller.

“I’m glad,” Nissa whispered. “And glad you’ve been less prone to objecting to our fight against your...pieces.”

I am not beyond learning, mover. And any sentimentality for what remains of my brothers does no good. All in the past, as you said to the binders.

Nissa nodded vaguely. Her eyes were growing heavier by the minute.

On the topic of my presence, do you wish for the possibility of dreaming of the burner tonight?

“Why do you call her that?” Nissa’s eyes opened slightly. “Burner? She had a name, you know. I have a name.”

She is defined by her burning. That is what binds the two of you.

Nissa pursed her lips. “That’s all you think binds us? That we killed eldrazi together?”

The burning of my brothers is not what defines her to you, Mover. It is her mind that burns for you, so she is the burner.

It seems obvious to me, at least , Emrakul added.

“You call them the binders.” Nissa nodded at Nahiri's sleeping form, and at Sorin, hovering further away.

They bound me. It was a significant, defining thing that they did.

“That’s not what defines them to me.”

It’s not always about you.

“Mm.” Nissa laid her head back. “Sure.”

Mover...the burner?

Nissa stared up a long while, past the looming edge of the hedron mass overhead. A thousand pinpricks of starlight filled the open stretch of night sky beyond that.

“Not tonight. If I dream of her...” Nissa lapsed. A pair of glints, like from twin panes of glass filled her mind, along with a brush of cinnamon. “If she’s in my mind, I prefer she remain there.”

Emrakul did not reply, but a warm rush crawled along the back of Nissa’s scalp as her eyes slid shut.

The above is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.

#forsaken #mtg #fan fic #mtg fan fic #gruulfriends week #forgiven

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ai-suru-hito-yo · 6 years ago

Text

Waiting For Someone To Release Me (Pt 5)

Summary: Your life has become rather busy, leaving you no free time to spend with your friends, but John comes up with a solution for this. However, the night may just end in disaster.

Warnings: angst, jealousy, tears, tiny blond tempers, broken glass, a steamy moment, and some fluffy, vomit-inducing charm.

A/N: I just want to make it abundantly clear that Brian has no interest in reader other than a friendly one. He is, of course, excited to have reader take interest in his interests, and they get along well, but (as you may have caught in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it line in the last chapter) Brian has met Chrissie. Also, John, Roger, and reader have no clue about anything. Freddie is, so far, the only one suspicious about there being a bit of a love triangle forming here. And, just for curiosity’s sake, I imagine reader as right smack between John and Roger’s ages. So, John is 20, reader is 21, Roger is 22.

It had officially been two weeks since “The Party” and your bond with your new friends had only grown stronger—more so with one of them in particular. John had driven you home in a peaceful, companionable silence, the both of you stealing glances at each other and giggling like children whenever you made eye contact. Like a perfect gentleman, he walked you to your door and no further, and left you with an achingly chaste kiss and a promise to call you over the weekend.

You had walked into your flat the next afternoon after a quick run to the shops to your phone ringing, and quickly dumped your shopping onto the counter as you raced to the phone.

“Hello?” you answered breathlessly.

“Uh...(Y/N)?” a familiar voice answered.

“Hi John. Yeah it's me. Just got in.”

“Oh! I'm sorry, I can call back later if you like,” he answered, sounding a little unsure.

“No!” you nearly yelled down the line as you struggled to remove your coat. “I mean, there's no need. Now is perfect. I'm so glad to hear from you, John.”

You had spent the next two hours talking about nothing and everything. And nearly three hours the next afternoon. And an hour every evening since then. The more the two of you spoke, the more convinced you were that John was just about the most interesting man you had ever met. You had gathered just how incredibly intelligent, kind, funny, and hard-working the man was, and the more you knew about him, the more you wanted to know. You simply could not get enough.

Roger had been a frequent presence throughout your workdays, coming to the cafe regularly on his breaks. You always made a point to chat with him for a few minutes, asking his opinion on how things were going with the band (“brilliant!”) and his schooling (“absolute rubbish, I don't know why the bloody hell I try anymore!”) as well as keeping him up to date on your own studies.

Unfortunately, because the band was working so hard, you and John had not had a moment to yourselves since your rendezvous at the after party and the trip home afterward. You had seen him in person once since then, when Freddie dragged you and the boys out shopping for new stage wear. You had tried to worm your way out of it, hearing the slightly manic way Freddie spoke about his plans and knowing it was a bit of a tense topic within the band. However, Freddie insisted you must have some dress sense after he had last seen you in “such a fabulous outfit, darling, you must have at least an ounce of understanding of fashion and I NEED all the help I can get when it comes to these heathens!” Once you had arrived and met up with them outside of Grannie's, you were glad you had come along upon seeing the look on John's face. He clearly wished he was anywhere else on earth in that moment.

You stood next to him and gave his hand a quick, reassuring squeeze, which he returned gratefully. He seemed much happier to see you there.

“Chin up, buttercup. It'll all be over soon.”

“You've never been shopping with Freddie. You'll eat those words,” he said with a dramatic eye roll before entering the shop behind Brian.

You certainly ate every last bitter word.

“I'll never be doing that again,” you said sternly, pressing the phone to your ear and your free hand over your eyes, trying to find some relief for the headache that had settled in about halfway through the previous evening, sometime between the fifth jacket for Brian and the third belt for Freddie, and stuck with you all day. It had left you feeling unrested and irritable, making your 4 hour shift at the cafe feel more like 12. Thankfully Roger had not come in that day. You were sure you could not have handled the sunny mood he seemed to bring into the shop with him every time you saw him there. You were just about to mention this to John when you heard a voice in the background cut in to the conversation.

“Listen, sweetheart, Freddie's finally showed up and we need to rehearse. Brian's brought in a totally new song and it's going to take some work, so I have to go,” he said softly.

“Do you really have to? I've hardly had a chance to talk to you in three days and barely saw you last night,” you said, not bothering to mask the pout you were sure was evident in your voice.

“I'm sorry, (Y/N), really I am,” he said, then paused. “Tell you what. Tonight probably won't be very pretty, but how about you come along tomorrow night? You can sit in and see a little bit of how we work, and I might actually get to see you for more than 10 seconds at a time. Plus I've got a surprise you might be interested to know about.”

“A surprise? John what have you got up your sleeve?” you ask him, eyes narrowed though he could not see you at the moment.

“Come tomorrow and you'll find out,” he said with a hint of a smile in his voice. “I can pick you up at quarter to eight, yeah?”

“Yeah, alright. But this better be good, mister!” you said as if he was putting a huge imposition on you though you were actually very excited at the prospect of seeing all your friends again and getting to hear them play some more music.

“Great! I'll see you then, sweetheart,” he said softly. “Goodnight, sleep tight.”

“Sweet dreams,” you answered, your now regular goodbye falling naturally from your lips with a small sigh.

You rang off and set about putting your things away and making tea, preparing to settle in for the evening, feeling excited and optimistic for the following day.

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You were once again stood in front of your full wardrobe, staring into it's depths as if somehow your clothes would rearrange themselves and reveal something new that had mysteriously materialized in the last hour you had been rifling through it. A knock sounded on your bedroom door and Sarah's fiery head poked in, looking you up and down in surprise.

“(Y/N), why aren't you dressed?! Your ride is here!”

“He what?!” you practically shouted, jumping to your dresser to start rifling through for a clean pair of tights. “He's early! He said he'd be here at quarter to eight!”

“Uhm...,” Sarah pointed to the alarm clock on your bed, which was flashing 7:47. “I'd say he's pretty punctual.”

“Fuck! Sarah what am I going to wear?!” you started flinging sweaters and blouses out of your wardrobe, not really looking at any of them, as Sarah tried not to laugh at you. She quietly stepped forward and pulled out a gold corduroy skirt and striped sweater from the mayhem now strewn across your bed, and pointed silently at the teal blue tights hanging halfway out of one of your dresser drawers. You quickly grabbed the items, smacking a kiss on Sarah's cheek, and pulled them on in record time, managing to fall over only once.

“What would you do without me, huh?” Sarah teased you.

“I have no idea. I owe you one, babe!” you grabbed your purse and pulled on your boots, making your way quickly to the living room to find John standing by the door, wrapped up in a beautiful red coat and grey scarf.

“I'll remember that!” you heard Sarah call from down the hall, but you ignored her, as you only had eyes (and ears) for John at the moment.

“Hi,” you breathed, happy yet nervous to see him again. It was also the first time he had set foot in your flat and you were a little anxious as you had not been prepared for this.

“Hello,” he said softly with a sweet smile. He reached out to take your hand and brushed a soft kiss against your knuckles. His lips were a little chapped and rough against your skin, but you felt warmth bloom from where his skin made contact with your own and radiate across your entire body. You were sure you must be blushing and cursed your decision to only wear the barest amount of make-up tonight, as you probably looked like a walking tomato now. John, however, smiled wider, revealing the cute little gap between his front teeth, his eyes crinkling adorable around the corners, and brushed a thumb across your cheek.

You ducked your head down with a shy smile, addressing your toes when you next spoke. “Shall we head out? We don't want to keep the others waiting.”

John laughed. “Oh I guarantee we could wait another ten minutes and still be the first ones there. Punctuality is not in any of their vocabularies. However, you're probably right. It's started to snow, so we might need to take it slow.”

You reached for your coat hanging near the door, and your scarf beneath it. John took your coat while you knotted the warm wool around your neck, then held your coat out and helped slip it up around your shoulders. You called out to tell Sarah that you were leaving and were not sure when you'd be back. She called out a “have fun and be safe” which caused you to groan internally. Sarah was lucky she was such a good friend, or you might have to kick her to the curb.

John reached for your hand as soon as you had made sure you had your keys and that the door to your flat was firmly shut. He gently swayed your hands between you as you made your way to his car, which he opened for you to get in first. It was still warm from his drive over, and you melted into the comfort immediately. John switched on the radio, and both your faces lit up as the iconic riff of Cream's “Sunshine Of Your Love” sounded through the car's speakers.

“You like Cream?” John asked, eyes twinkling in the low light.

“Yeah of course!” you answered, reaching out to turn the volume up a little. “This bass line is fantastic. Such a feel-good kind of song.”

You both sang along as the funky riff filled the interior of the car, forgetting your earlier shyness and giving in to the fun, arriving at the studio space where Queen was rehearsing just as the song was fading out. John quickly put on the parking brake and turned the engine off before he hopped out and over to the passenger door to help you out. You were honestly amazed by how much of a gentleman he was. You had never been treated in such a manner by anyone before, and just by this simple show of kindness you felt yourself falling for him even more. You had spent so long putting up with Charlie's bullshit, and almost as much time alone since you had broken up with him. It felt like a thousand and one nights, waiting in your loneliness and isolation, and suddenly here was someone treating you like a treasure. You felt warm and happy and a little bit overwhelmed by it, but honestly would not give it up for anything. You were falling hard and fast for this young man you had only known for about a month now, but it felt right.

Lost in your thoughts, you had failed to notice that John was now leading you up a rather steep flight of carpeted stairs, complete with creaks and water stains, to a rather stale-smelling room. It was spacious and well lit, but obviously rarely used up until recently. One corner was piled with a few tables and chairs in various states of disrepair, all obviously pushed out of the way of the makeshift drum riser where a rather large and elaborate kit was set up. A few amps were strewn about the place, as well as what looked like a large speaker case and a few distortion pedals set off to one side. John set his own instrument case down on the opposite side of the drum kit before turning back to where you stood in the middle of the room.

“Can I take your coat for you?” he asked, reaching out nervously before dropping his hands awkwardly to his sides again. You smiled at his adorable awkwardness and quickly shrugged off your coat, handing it and your scarf to him with a word of thanks. He carefully carried them over to one of the tables and laid them down gently. You turned around to take in more of the room, noticing the worn but comfy looking couch against the wall separating the stairway from the room, as well as two doors off the room which you supposed were probably a bathroom and a closet of some sort. You crossed to the couch and took a seat, brushing out any perceived wrinkles in your clothes before smiling up at John.

“Do you mind if I...?” he asked, pointing behind him toward his bass and amp.

“Not at all! You're here to practice, not entertain me. Pretend I'm not even here,” you answered. You were rather excited to be here and potentially hear some new music, but did not want to be an imposition on the band or any of its members.

“Well, I don't think I'll be able to do that,” John flashed you a smile as he pulled his bass out, plugged it in, and started fiddling with volume knobs. You watched in fascination as he tweaked the tuning and tested the tone, setting everything to his exact specifications, before he worked through some riffs to warm up.

Halfway through the third warm up, you heard footsteps on the stairs behind you and turned just in time to see a mop of dark curls peek around the dividing wall at you.

Brian flashed you a quick smile before taking off his coat and moving toward the speaker you had noticed earlier. He sat down on it, reaching behind it to fiddle with something you could not see on the backside, before producing a cord which he plugged into his Red Special. You soon realized it must be an amp, but it was the strangest amp you had ever seen. It looked like a plain speaker, not unlike one your dad had on his own stereo system, and nothing like the other amps and monitors around the room. Brian saw you looking puzzled at it and waved you over. You stood and joined him.

“Impressive, huh?” he said, patting the top of the amp. “Wait until you hear it. It's something special. I bet I spent two hours experimenting with it's capabilities when Deacy brought it in.”

“So it is an amp, then.”

“Mhm,” Brian answered, going about tuning his guitar.

“It looks nothing like any of the others. Is it some kind of special set up for your custom guitar?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that!” Brian answered with a slight laugh that shook his shoulders. “John made it.”

Your head whipped up to look at Brian, then you spun to look at John. He noticed the sudden movement and stopped in the middle of what he was playing.

“What?” he asked, eyes wide under your scrutiny.

“You made this?” you asked, pointing behind you at the amp.

“Uh...yes?” he answered.

“As in, built the whole thing yourself,” you were amazed, these gents surprised you more and more every day. Not only were they good looking and quite talented, but it seemed they were all geniuses, too.

“Well, sort of,” he answered, and he pulled the strap of his bass over his head, setting it down on a stand to join you next to Brian. “I found the parts to an old transistor in a skip a few months back. Took an old blown speaker, rewired a few things, a little soldering and a 9v battery later and I had a practice amp. Brought it along thinking I could use it here as it doesn't have the best sound quality, but then somebody stole it away and claimed it as his own.”

Brian just stuck his tongue out and went back to his tuning. You stood there in awe, finding yourself somehow even more excited to be invited along that night.

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Finally twenty minutes later the last two members of the band showed up, Roger complaining that he tried to leave on time, but Freddie felt the need to change his shirt no less than four times, causing a fifteen minute delay and for all the parking near by to be filled up by the time they got there, further delaying them as they had to walk two blocks from where they parked. It wasn't until after Roger got this full rant out of the way, tossed his coat aside randomly, and turned to sit behind his kit that he seemed to realize there was an extra person in the room. His face suddenly lit up, his whole attitude changing like someone had flipped a switch.

“(Y/N)? Didn't know you'd be here!” he said, shaking out his long, dark blond hair.

“John invited me along,” you answered. “We've not gotten to see each other for more than 30 seconds since your last show, so I thought I'd take him up on that offer and tag along.”

“Oh,” Roger turned to John with a strange look on his face, but it quickly melted away into a pleasant smile. “Well, (Y/N), get ready to rock'n'roll!”

With that, he planted himself behind his kit and went to town, smashing and banging loud enough to wake the dead. You glanced toward Freddie, who simply rolled his eyes and pulled a notebook from the bag he'd brought with him.

An hour passed by in the blink of an eye, and you were having the time of your life. They played through a few of the songs you recognized, and soon were on to working Brian's new song. After twenty minutes spent arguing on the same chord progression (mostly by Roger and Brian) and eye-rolling (Freddie) the boys finally decided they needed a break to cool down and recharge. Roger and Freddie headed outside for a smoke while Brian headed downstairs for a drink (it was then you realized the rehearsal space was over a small pub) leaving you along with a quiet but clearly annoyed John. You were unsure how to approach him and so just stayed quietly seated, watching him work through another song.

You had leaned back against the couch and closed your eyes for a moment when you suddenly heard a huff and a loud clanging. John had angrily strummed against his bass before putting it down rather forcefully and striding over to one of the doors. He quickly disappeared inside, obviously angry and needing a moment to himself. You decided to give him his space, not wishing to push him too far. A few minutes turned into five, and when you heard no noise and did not see John reemerge from the room, you decided to go ahead and try talking to him.

You stood and slowly crossed to the door, knocking gently and calling to him softly as if speaking to a spooked animal.

“John? Is everything alright?” You reeled back as the door suddenly opened, and you were quickly pulled inside.

“Wha-?” you were silenced as a pair of lips descended upon your own, warm and soft but insistent. You melted against the body in front of you, not realizing just how much you craved another kiss from this man until it was given to you.

Just as quickly as the lips came they were gone as John pulled away, panting slightly, pressing his forehead against yours.

“I'm sorry, (Y/N),” he whispered, warm breath fanning across your jaw. “I didn't mean to be so rough. I didn't think they'd fight like this with a guest around. I'm so sorry you had to witness that. I’m just...sorry.”

You carefully reached up toward John's face, cupping his jaw and lifting his eyes up to meet yours which were finally adjusting to the dim light.

“Hey, hey, no, don't be sorry,” you said softly, smiling at him. “You've nothing to be sorry for. Sure it was a little awkward, but bands fight. You guys are all so immensely talented and clearly perfectionists when it comes to your music. Of course you're gonna bicker and pick and disagree. You all expect the best each of you has to offer out of each other. There's nothing wrong with that. It's also clear you all care a lot about each other. I'm not worried about it and you shouldn't be, either.”

Green eyes looked into your own (y/e/c) ones for a moment before John was surging forward again, lips capturing your own in a breathtaking kiss. You answered in kind, your hands once again brushing through thick sideburns and tangling in soft brown locks as you were pressed gently up against the wall behind you. Large hands came to rest on the slight curve of your hips, warm and heavy, a very much welcome presence.

You felt a tongue gently sweep against your lower lip and you parted your own slightly, letting John in. You subconsciously pulled a little tighter on the hair in your fist, which caused John to moan softly. You pulled away, afraid you had hurt him, only for him to chase your mouth and gently pull your lower lip between his teeth. You gasped, pushing your hips against his, tummy brushing against an obvious bulge beginning to form. John whined brokenly as you felt his hands slide around your hips and down to your bum, pulling you flush against him. You no longer knew where you ended and he began, slowly becoming entangled into one being, so lost in each other you had failed to notice the door knob rattle until the door flew open and the dim room was flooded with light.

John took a step back from you as you untangled your hands from his hair, resting them instead against his chest. As your eyes adjusted to the light, you could make out Freddie's surprised face, eyes wide and apologetic.

“I’m so sorry! I just came looking for the-” he tried to explain himself, but was cut short.

“What the fuck?!” a shriek came from the room beyond and you could see Roger standing just a few feet behind Freddie, having just shrugged his coat back off and turned toward the room again. Brian was standing wide eyed but silent in the corner, clutching his guitar and looking like he wanted the floor to swallow him whole. John turned to stand in front of you, blocking you slightly, but you fought your way forward, confused.

“Roger, what's wr-” you were cut off as Roger picked up Brian's beer bottle and threw it, hard, against the wall.

“What the fuck, Rog?” Freddie yelled, shielding his face from the spray of ale and glass. Roger started toward you, but Freddie reached out with a surprising amount of strength and held him back.

“YOU! What the hell, Deacon? I thought you were my friend! What the fuck are you doing?” Roger screamed, fury in his eyes. All you could do was let out a little squeak, slightly terrified at the wild animal before you.

“What the hell is your problem, Roger? I am your friend!” John shouted back, clearly confused.

“You are my problem!” Roger tried once again to lunge forward, but Freddie pushed him back and shouted at him to calm down and be civilised. Roger stood still and tense, breathing heavily like an enraged bull readying to charge.

Brian was still quiet and frozen like a deer in headlights at the other side of the room. Freddie was looking between the two angry men with a furrowed brow, an arm out in front of Roger to hold him back. John continued to look confused and a little hurt, and you had begun to silently cry, also confused and hurt, as well as overwhelmed by the roller-coaster of emotion you were on.

You locked eyes with Roger for a brief moment, and his face immediately crumpled. He no longer looked angry, just defeated.

“You know what? Fuck this,” he said quietly, then a little louder, “Fuck this! This practice is over.”

The four others in the room could only watch as the blond stormed over to where his still snow-dusted coat was draped over a chair, grabbing it angrily before banging his way down the stairs and slamming the door.

John turned to check that you were okay, cupping your face and swiping at your tears before pulling you in and holding you close as sobs wracked your body. You had no clue what had just happened, but the feral creature you had just witnessed was nothing like your friend. He looked and sounded like the man you had come to enjoy spending so much time talking with at work, the man who you had come to regard as one of your best friends, but his actions had been terrifying. You felt that you had triggered this meltdown, but you were completely unsure why.

As your tears subsided, you could hear John speaking angrily with Freddie between attempts to soothe you. He himself sounded rather shaky, and Freddie sounded shocked and breathless. You finally pulled away from John to reach out to Freddie and pull him and John to the couch with you. John wrapped an arm around you as Freddie smoothed your hair away from your face.

“Freddie, w-what just happened?” you pleaded with him.

“I’m...not sure, darling,” he answered slowly, exchanging a glance with John over your head. “But there better be a damn good explanation for this.”

“Bri's gone after him,” John chimed in, voice still shaky with anger and hurt. “Hopefully he'll catch up with him and keep him from doing anything stupid.”

All you could do was nod in agreement, leaning closer into John's side as Freddie held onto your hand, the three of you left to wait for any word from Brian.

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@itsametaphorbriansblog @queendeakyy @reavenedges-lies

#Waiting for someone to release me #wfstrm #john deacon x reader #john deacon x you #roger taylor x reader #roger taylor x you

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ducktales-wco-oo · 5 years ago

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001 ducktales hello kfdgkjdkfg - ✩ { @musetothemusic } ✩

✩ { Meme } ✩

001 | send me a fandom and i will tell you my:

Favorite character: Gee... I wonder who that could possibly be. XD ... FENTON CRACKSHELL-CABRERA ALL THE WAY

Least Favorite character: Bubba (*shruggles*)

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Fendrake, Crackbeaks, Fenro, Drakepad, Gravesbeaks, Gladchito (Pfffff... That fuckin’ name) PolyNerds, Fendrakepad- ... Fuck, there are so many ships and I’m well over the limit, so please just assume that I am a Shipping Bish. lol

Character I find most attractive: Drake Mallard

Character I would marry: Fenton would be the Best Husbando

Character I would be best friends with: Launchpad

a random thought: I wish Fents was in more eps... and he needs to sing :’D

An unpopular opinion: Honestly, I don’t mind the changes in personality with some characters for the most part or the influx of Original Ones being used in the show.

My Canon OTP: Drakepad (it’s canon and no one can convince me otherwise)

My Non-canon OTP: Fendrake X3

Most Badass Character: Drake Mallard (boi has cartoon-level strength and resilience)

Most Epic Villain: Look, Imma just say it... Mark Beaks can be a badass when he’s not meme-ing shit up and being a Trash Parrot. Just- how he manipulated Fenton into joining him, reprogramming the suit, slipping Gandra in as a Red Sparrow, getting through the security systems, etc... HE’S A GOOD VILLAIN sometimes.

Pairing I am not a fan of: Scroldie (don’t @ me, I just Don’t Like It)

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Don’t get me wrong, Gladstone is awesome and I adore that bastard gander... I just- I have a soft spot for Comic Gladstone, and DO wish that some of his more in-depth personality could be touched upon in the show... as well as his more Iconic Design Traits. Ex: His HAIR and his HAT and his BOWTIE and- *rambles on about Lucky Goose Son*

Favourite Friendship: Drakepad

Character I most identify with: Huey

Character I wish I could be: Fenton ‘cause he’s a hella smart, fluffy duck who is helping peeps both in and out of a frickin’ superhero suit lol

#ducktales-wco-oo #⭒ ˙ ˖ ✧ — ˗ˏˋ ❝ ʙʀᴇᴀᴋɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴇ ꜰᴏᴜʀᴛʜ ᴡᴀʟʟ ❞ ¦ 「 OOC 」#⭒ ˙ ˖ ✧ — ˗ˏˋ ❝ ɴᴏʙᴏᴅʏ ᴋɴᴏᴡꜱ ꜰᴏʀ ꜱᴜʀᴇ ❞ ¦ 「 Answer 」#musetothemusic

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mi4012indranathralapanawa · 2 years ago

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From Humble Beginnings to Animation Greatness

The top 3 greatest animators of all time. (according to my point of view)

And the list is -

Walt Disney

Hayao Miyazaki

Chuck Jones

The real reason why I chose these animators on my list is that Each of these animators made significant contributions to the art form and has a unique style and approach to animation.

So let's get into Deep

Walt Disney. The Man Behind the Magic

Walt Disney is a name that is synonymous with animation and entertainment.

We all know who is he but I'll explain who is he to our new generation. The creator of Mickey Mouse, Disneyland, and countless beloved films, Disney's impact on the world of animation is immeasurable. In this article, we will explore his childhood, his journey to becoming an animator, and some of his most famous animations.

Early Life

Walt Disney was born on December 5th, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois. His father was a contractor, and his mother was a homemaker. The family moved to Marceline, Missouri when Walt was four years old, and it was here that he developed a love for drawing and storytelling. Disney's father would often take him to see vaudeville shows and traveling circuses, which inspired his early works.

Journey to Becoming an Animator

Disney dropped out of high school at the age of 16 and joined the Red Cross to serve in World War I. When he returned from the war, he worked as a commercial artist, creating advertisements and cartoons for newspapers.

In 1923, he moved to Hollywood with his brother Roy, and they started the Disney Brothers Studio. The studio initially produced a series of cartoons featuring a character named Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, which became popular. However, Disney lost the rights to the character and was forced to create a new one.

Disney and his team then created Mickey Mouse, who made his debut in Steamboat Willie in 1928. The film was an instant success, and Disney went on to create numerous other characters, including Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto

Famous Animations

Disney's impact on the world of animation is immeasurable. His films have entertained generations of people and have become a part of our cultural fabric. Some of his most famous works include Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Bambi, Cinderella, and Sleeping Beauty.

Disney was a pioneer in the use of sound and color in animation. He was also the first to create a full-length animated feature film with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Disney's legacy extends beyond his films and characters. He also created Disneyland, which opened in 1955 and revolutionized the theme park industry.

My opinion

Walt Disney was a creative genius whose impact on the world of animation and entertainment is immeasurable. From his humble beginnings in Missouri to his journey to becoming one of the most influential animators of all time, Disney's story is one of determination, creativity, and innovation. His films and characters have brought joy to millions of people around the world and will continue to do so for generations to come.

Hayao Miyazaki: The Master Storyteller of Animation

Hayao Miyazaki is a name that needs no introduction in the world of animation. He is a visionary storyteller whose films have captured the hearts of audiences around the globe. With his unparalleled creativity, attention to detail, and powerful storytelling, Miyazaki has become one of the most influential animators of all time. His films transport us to magical worlds where we encounter unforgettable characters and explore timeless themes. From the whimsical wonderland of My Neighbor Totoro to the epic adventure of Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki's films continue to inspire and enchant us with their beauty and depth.

Early Life

Hayao Miyazaki was born on January 5th, 1941, in Tokyo, Japan. His father was the director of Miyazaki Airplane, a company that made parts for airplanes. Miyazaki grew up during a time of great change in Japan, with the aftermath of World War II and the country's economic growth and modernization.

Journey to Becoming an Animator

Miyazaki's interest in animation began at a young age. He was an avid reader of manga, and he often drew his own comics. He studied political science and economics at Gakushuin University but eventually decided to pursue a career in animation.

Miyazaki's first job in the animation industry was at Toei Animation, where he worked on the TV series Wolf Boy Ken.

He later joined Studio Ghibli, which he co-founded with Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki. Miyazaki's first film as a director was The Castle of Cagliostro, but it was his next film, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, that established him as a visionary storyteller.

Famous Animations

Miyazaki's impact on the world of animation is immeasurable. His films have won numerous awards and have become classics of the genre. Some of his most famous works include My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Howl's Moving Castle.

Miyazaki is known for his attention to detail, his imaginative worlds, and his focus on character development. His films often explore themes of nature, humanity's relationship with technology, and the importance of empathy and compassion. Miyazaki's films have inspired countless artists and filmmakers, and his influence can be seen in the works of animators around the world.

My opinion

Hayao Miyazaki is a master storyteller whose impact on the world of animation is immeasurable. From his humble beginnings in Tokyo to his journey to becoming one of the most influential animators of all time, Miyazaki's story is one of perseverance, creativity, and passion. His films have touched the hearts of millions of people around the world and will continue to inspire and captivate audiences for generations to come.

Chuck Jones: The Animation Legend Who Brought Laughter to the World.

Chuck Jones was a visionary animator whose work has become iconic in the world of animation. His unique and innovative approach to animation has left a lasting impact on the art form, inspiring generations of animators and filmmakers. Jones' ability to create characters with depth and nuance, and his distinctive style of humor, have made his animations some of the most beloved and iconic works in animation history. Whether you're a fan of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, or any of his other creations, one thing is for sure: Chuck Jones' work is truly timeless and will continue to captivate audiences for many years to come

Early Life

Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was born on September 21, 1912, in Spokane, Washington. His family later moved to Hollywood, where he grew up surrounded by the burgeoning movie industry. Jones' love for art and animation was fostered by his parents, who were both artists themselves.

Journey to Becoming an Animator.

Jones began his career in animation in 1932, working for Ub Iwerks, a former animator for Walt Disney. He later joined Warner Bros. Studios, where he became one of the most influential animators of all time.

Jones' early works were marked by their experimentation with style and form, and his animation style was quickly recognized for its unique and innovative approach.

Famous Animations.

Jones' impact on the world of animation cannot be overstated. His work on Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons has become iconic, and his characters have become beloved classics. Some of his most famous works include What's Opera, Doc?, The Rabbit of Seville, and One Froggy Evening.

Jones is known for his distinctive style of humor and his ability to create characters with depth and nuance. His animations often explored timeless themes such as the relationship between predator and prey, the struggle for power, and the complexity of human emotions. Jones' work has inspired generations of animators and filmmakers, and his influence can be seen in works ranging from The Simpsons to Toy Story.

My opinion.

Chuck Jones was a master of animation whose legacy will continue to inspire and entertain audiences for generations to come. His contributions to the world of animation have been immeasurable, and his influence on the art form will be felt for many years to come. His animations are a testament to his creativity, humor, and ability to capture the human experience in ways that are both profound and entertaining. Jones' impact on the world of animation will continue to be felt for many years to come, and his work will always be celebrated as some of the greatest animated works of all time.

conceptualizing story angles about every animator and how I can narrate them in a creative manner.

So here are two-story angles on how to narrate Walt Disney's story in a creative manner:

The Magic of Imagination: This story angle would focus on the power of Walt Disney's imagination and creativity. It could explore how his love for drawing and storytelling sparked his interest in animation, and how he used his unique vision to create some of the most beloved characters in animation history. The story could also delve into the creative process behind some of his most famous works, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Fantasia. Additionally, the story could highlight how Disney's imagination and creativity went beyond animation and influenced other areas of entertainment, such as theme parks and television.

2. The Man Behind the Mouse: This story angle would focus on the personal life of Walt Disney and how his experiences and struggles shaped his career and legacy. It could explore his upbringing, including his early love for drawing and his struggles with poverty, and how these experiences influenced his creative work. The story could also delve into his personal life, including his marriage and family, and explore how his relationships with those around him impacted his work. Additionally, the story could examine the challenges and setbacks he faced throughout his career and how he overcame them to become one of the most influential figures in the entertainment industry.

Now let's talk about two-story angles on how to narrate Hayao Miyazaki's story in a creative manner:

The Art of Storytelling: This story angle would focus on Hayao Miyazaki's skill as a master storyteller. It could explore how his early experiences in manga and animation inspired him to become a storyteller, and how he honed his craft over time. The story could also delve into the themes and motifs that are prevalent in his work, such as environmentalism, the power of nature, and the struggle between good and evil. Additionally, the story could examine how Miyazaki's storytelling has influenced other artists and storytellers, and how his works have resonated with audiences across the globe.

The Animator's Journey: This story angle would focus on Hayao Miyazaki's personal and professional journey as an animator. It could explore his early career in animation, including his work on popular television shows, and how he eventually became a director and founder of Studio Ghibli. The story could also delve into the production process behind some of his most famous works, such as Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro, and how he approached the animation of characters and environments. Additionally, the story could examine the challenges he faced throughout his career, including his struggles with depression and the pressures of running a successful animation studio.

Unfortunately, I cant add more images to this article cause of this site's rules.

Now now we can talk about two-story angles on how to narrate Chuck Jones's story in a creative manner:

The Art of Comedy: This story angle would focus on Chuck Jones' contribution to the world of comedy through his iconic cartoons. It could explore how Jones' love for humor and his experience in animation led him to create some of the most memorable and influential cartoons in history. The story could also delve into the comedic techniques and timing that Jones used in his works, as well as the inspiration he drew from other comedians and artists. Additionally, the story could examine how Jones' humor and style have influenced other animators and comedians over the years.

The Animator's Vision: This story angle would focus on Chuck Jones' unique vision as an animator and artist. It could explore his early experiences in animation, including his work with Warner Bros., and how he developed his signature style over time. The story could also delve into the themes and motifs that are present in Jones' work, such as the importance of friendship and the struggle between good and evil. Additionally, the story could examine the challenges he faced throughout his career, including the pressures of creating successful cartoons and his personal struggles with depression.

So I hope you guys learned something from my post

Comment if you have any questions, Thank you

#animation #cartoon #walt disney #anime art #kids #animator art

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frontproofmedia · 2 years ago

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Anthony Yarde Is An Example To Follow For All Fighters

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Published: February 02, 2023

Once again, Anthony Yarde did not look for the easy route. He didn't wait to pick on a one-time lucky, vulnerable champion. He didn't fight a beatable opponent to win a vacant belt. For the second time in his 26-fight career, he faced the best light-heavyweight on the planet. His two world title shots have come against the two best light heavyweights of the past decade and two of the hardest-hitting men at 175 lbs in recent history. One thing Yarde can never be accused of is ducking a challenge.

Seeking the best should be a respected approach that always receives due credit, but it can often be a mercilessly cruel one. Since Yarde got stopped in the 11th round by Sergey Kovalev in Russia, he has not had it easy. Yarde rocked Kovalev in the 8th round and appeared to have the Russian on the verge of defeat before Yarde was stopped in the 11th. This performance should have put 'The Beast From The East' on the map. However, in his six fights since, prior to Artur Beterbiev, Yarde had not fought beyond the European level, and no momentum had been gained from that inspired Kovalev defeat.

Perhaps that was a huge, irreversible disadvantage heading into a showdown against the formidable Beterbiev. The Russian is a modern great. Let's give him his flowers now, and not through nostalgic-inspired rose-tinted sunglasses in 10 years. He had over 300 amateur bouts as an amateur. Yarde had 12. Beterbiev then subsequently stopped all 18 professional opponents, and these were solid, world-class opponents. Yarde's career-best win was his redemption against Lyndon Arthur. Arthur is talented, but the gap with Beterbiev was vast.

When facing a pound-for-pound proposition like Beterbiev, the importance of experience cannot be understated. At times during the fight, the difference in amateur pedigree and experience was telling.

However, the great success that Yarde did have against Beterbiev speaks volumes as to his natural talent, along with his pure grit and will. The fight was not the expected destruction. That was simply because Yarde willed himself to take the punishment so many have previously wilted under, to rally when appearing like he is on the verge of defeat on numerous occasions. Every Beterbiev punch hurts. You don't need to be on the receiving end of them to realize that. They just sound different. If pain had a sound, Beterbiev's punches are it. Even the jabs cause damage. The cuts and bruises on Yarde's face at the end of the fight were a reflection of his tremendous bravery.

Against Kovalev, Yarde was out of his depth. Yes, there was a moment when Yarde was on the verge of pulling off the upset, but all in all, the levels were there for all to see. Against Beterbiev, Yarde was on a whole new level. Both men displayed elite-level boxing. Along with his heart and toughness, Yarde threw devastating power punches, which forced Beterbiev to dig deep and show his own reservoirs of heart and will.

Yarde's admirable approach of ignoring interim belts and IBO alphabet belts to make an almighty challenge for Beterbiev's unified titles was a risky one. Yes, if he won, he'd become a unified three-belt light-heavyweight champion and a box office star overnight, but if he lost to this hard-hitting monster and most dangerous of champions emphatically, his days at the upper echelons of the light-heavyweight division, before even properly commencing, would have been over. However, Yarde produced one of those rare performances which raise your stock even in defeat. He became a winner in defeat, much in the same vein as Roberto Duran against Marvelous Marvin Hagler or Deontay Wilder against Tyson Fury. Yarde proved he belongs at the world level with a brilliant display against a pound-for-pound contender.

Now, Yarde's options are aplenty.

This was a grueling war, and the Brit cannot be faulted for having a well-deserved break, then a tune-up once he does return.

There is the fight against London rival Joshua Buatsi, which has always been a potentially mouth-watering domestic dust-up.

The likes of Craig Richards, Dan Azeez, and Shakan Pitters are other British light-heavyweights that can provide exciting domestic match-ups.

Someone like Ricards Bolotniks, a Latvian 2021 opponent of Buatsi's, undoubtedly Buatsi's toughest test to that point, could be a very good and challenging comeback fight, and Yarde could carry on the momentum gained from competing at the elite level with Beterbiev.

Following Saturday's fight, Yarde's promoter, Frank Warren, floated the idea of staging a showdown against former WBO champion Joe Smith Jr.

Although not quite as powerful as Beterbiev (very few men in the light-heavyweight division's history are), Smith is a hard-hitting, come-forward brawler who would provide Yarde with a real test. Smith has the sort of fight-changing power that will give him the belief he could stop Yarde, and Yarde will take confidence when comparing their performances against Kovalev, with Smith being blown away by Beterbiev in two rounds during their unification in June 2022.

To avoid mistakes previously made after Kovalev, Yarde should only engage in world-level fights now. He showed he belonged there against Beterbiev. A fight against Smith, if a victorious one for Yarde, could have him right back in title contention or at least in good stead for when another title shot comes along.

We live in a certain era of boxing now. This is not the Sugar Ray Robinson era, in which Yarde could be fighting 20 times in 2023. An active year will see Yarde fight up to three times, and in today's boxing, aged 31, Yarde and his team should utilize their time. There is no substitute for experience. Facing numerous fighters below his level, back to back, would not be ample preparation for fights at the elite level. Moreover, Yarde happens to be competing in a strong era in the historic light heavyweight division. The champions are the elite of the elite, and the contenders are serious.

At 31, Yarde can challenge for the title again. Beterbiev is 38 and won't be sticking around forever. WBA champion Dmitry Bivol is another monumentally difficult task in trying to acquire a world title at 175 lbs, but Yarde is not a man to avoid challenges.

Yarde's willingness to test himself against the best is what he should be judged on. This is what should be served as an example to follow for all other fighters.

As the great George Foreman said: "Many people fail not so much for their mistakes; they fail because they afraid to try."

(Featured Photo: Top Rank)

#SL #Anthony Yarde #Artur Beterbiev #Sergey Kovalev

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moonlightandromache · 8 years ago

Note

jacemaia prompt jace telling alec about maia

“Alec, can we, uh, talk?”

Alec glanced up from the tablet in his hands. “Uh... yeah, of course. What’s up?”

“It’s, uh, about...” Jace bit his lip. “I need... I need relationship advice.”Alec raised an eyebrow. “Is this about Clary?”

“No- no, it’s not about Clary.” Jace closed his eyes. “I- I don’t think I can ever- Nothing good will ever come from me and Clary being... a thing.”

Alec frowned. “This- this isn’t a sex thing, is it? Because I don’t think I could help you out any-”

Jace raised a hand cutting Alec off. “No- no. I- I... do you remember Maia?”

“From Luke’s pack?”

“You know any other Maia?”

Alec snorted. “No, but knowing your... reputation it wouldn’t be all that surprising if you did.”

“I asked if you remembered her.” Jace pointed out, playfully punching Alec in the shoulder.

“First you ask me for advice and then you punch me? I’m not sure I should help you.” Alec said, sarcastically glaring at Jace.

Jace sighed, ducking his head and running a hand through his hair. “Shit, Alec, I think I might be in love with her.”

Alec’s face quickly morphed into shock. “W-what?”

“I think I’m in love with her.” Jace repeated, his voice unnervingly soft. “I’m in love with Maia.”

Alec held up his hands, this conversation taking a drastic turn that he was in no way prepared for at all. “Woah, uh, maybe... maybe we should get Izzy?”

Jace’s head whipped up. “No!... I, uh... I want your opinion, Alec... I mean you obviously did something right to get... to be with Magnus. And I don’t want to screw this up... I love Iz, but she’d... freak out... I need your calm head.”

“Oh,” Alec wasn’t sure what to say, he honestly had no clue whatsoever what he did to get Magnus to like him. And he was absolutely out of his depth. But he could feel Jace’s emotions swirling around through their parabatai bond. He could tell that Jace was one hundred percent serious about his confession of love and that this wasn’t just his latest infatuation. “How long have you two been... a thing?”

“Two months?” Jace said.

“Does she...” Alec bit his lip, trying to find the right words. “Do you think she has feelings for you?”

Jace dropped his head back into his hands. “I have no idea. She’s so hard to read. And when we started... it was just supposed to be a one time thing... but it turned into a two time, and then three time and it just kept expanding until I was waking up in her bed at least twice a week...”

Alec ran a hand through his hair. “This has been going on for two months?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“And she hasn’t kicked you out yet?”

Jace gave Alec an odd look. “Uh... no? Not really?”

“You could... you could talk to her? About your feelings?” Alec suggested. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

“She could kick my ass.” Jace pointed out. “Or even just flat out kill me. Which I would probably prefer to the humiliation that would come with living.”

Alec rolled his eyes at his brother’s over-dramatics. “She’s not gonna do either of those things-” He paused. “Well, she’s not gonna kill you. Maybe kick your ass.”

“Wow, you’re so helpful.” Jace deadpanned.

“Hey, you chose to come to me, Mr. Emotionally Repressed- Izzy’s words, not mine- instead of the actual relationship counselor in our family, Izzy.” Alec reminded him.

“ ‘Mr. Emotionally Repressed’ ?” Jace repeated with a raised eyebrow.

“Shuddup, this is about you not me.” Alec huffed, before adding in. “Like you’re any less emotionally repressed, Mr. Feelings Cloud Judgement.”

Jace tossed Alec a meaningless glare before burying his head in his hands again. “You really think I should just... tell her?”

“Yeah? I mean... What else can you do?”

“Ignore my feelings and hope for the best?”

“When has that ever worked for you?”

Jace didn’t respond, putting them both in an awkward silence.

“Look- Jace, despite all your... flaws, you’re a good guy. Anyone would be lucky to have you.” Alec said, putting a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Besides, if she’s stuck with your ass for two months, she’s gotta feel something for you or be out of her mind.”

That earned Alec an actual glare and a punch to the shoulder.

“I’m starting to think I should’ve gone to Izzy.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Alec said, knowing full well that Jace didn’t mean that whatsoever. “Just go talk to her.”

Jace gave Alec something oddly close to a thankfully smile before standing up to, presumably, do what his brother suggested.

#this escalated quickly and I'm not sorry whatsoever #jacemaia #jaia #jace #maia roberts #alec lightwood #jace wayland #jace herondale #jace lightwood #jace whatever #shadowhunters #mine #my fic #abby writes #fanfic #fanfiction #fic #Anon

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seyaryminamoto · 8 years ago

Note

You said Ozai is the worst but you still like him. Why? :)

Well, first off, the usual disclaimer is in order: I find him interesting but that does NOT mean I agree with him, his ideologies, his methods, his behavior or anything like that. So me saying I like Ozai =/= agreeing with him in any way. No.

Now, on with the real thing!

There’s something sad but interesting about Ozai: people assume he’s flat because his character is scarcely developed by the show itself, and it’s a perfectly valid opinion because it’s true! There’s next to no development for Ozai. But when you start writing about him (as I have), you discover a lot of interesting things about the wicked Fire Lord that maybe weren’t apparent at first sight.

The first of these things is that Ozai is what I keep defining as “bad-ending Zuko”. He was in the same situation as his son, only difference is Ozai is the second son instead of the first. But basically, the characters are built the same way: neglected sons of a father who favors their more clever and talented sibling, then they take off on a goose chase for the Avatar that, in Ozai’s case, was a huge failure to add to his resume (Zuko, as we all should know, got lucky Aang broke out of the iceberg when he did, or else…).

In short, if Zuko hadn’t found Aang, the odds for him ending up EXACTLY like Ozai are very high. A failed Zuko, with no military achievements, conspiring to take the throne that Ozai will giftwrap for Azula? More likely than you think!

Ozai is this failed Zuko. He’s the mirror to his son. He’s what could have been, and precisely because we have Zuko as comparison, we can see that Ozai also could have been Zuko! So it’s interesting and intriguing that the show gives everyone the key to interpret Ozai as a deeper character than he’s portrayed (just, most people don’t like acknowledging Zuko really could have turned out exactly like his father…). And I like Ozai precisely because I find his parallels with Zuko absolutely fascinating.

There are more reasons why I like Ozai, such as his ambiguous relationship with his wife. You can literally build this relationship up in a million different ways: the way Yang went was the obvious, simplistic, flat one, where Ursa is only a sad victim and Ozai a cruel monster. But the show doesn’t really point their relationship in that direction: who’s to say he didn’t actually care for Ursa on some level? The small glimpse of him by the turtle-duck pond was rather unexpected, and it really puts a different spin to Yang’s tale. What if the relationship between the worst parents ever was a lot more complicated than what was portrayed in the comics?

Lastly, a reason that may certainly sound controversial… and it’s Ozai’s relationship with Azula. Of course he’s not a great father to her, he fashions himself more as her military boss rather than a real father, BUT…

… the way I see it? He projects on Azula. He sees himself in her, despite the fact that to anyone with keen eye, it’d be obvious that Azula resembles Iroh far more than she could ever resemble Ozai. What Ozai saw in Azula, though, was that she’d be trapped by the same limitations (and potentially more) that he faced in his childhood. He saw his daughter as the more talented child, and I have no doubts he thought himself the more talented of Azulon’s children, too. As a man who certainly must hold no love for his father, I imagine Ozai decided he would NOT be like Azulon.

Cue the irony when he treats Zuko in the exact same way Azulon treated him.

But anyways, point is: Ozai may not love Azula, but he saw in her an ally, someone he groomed from childhood into being on his side because he gave her the chances he wished his father had given him. He offered her his full support in her endeavors, entrusted difficult missions to her, and she delivered. If there’s someone in the entire Avatarverse who Ozai trusts? It’s certainly Azula.

It’s true that Ozai gave Azula a hand-me-down title, and that being Fire Lord when there’s a Phoenix King feels pretty pointless… but confession time: since the first time I watched this, I thought it wasn’t an enitirely bad decision. While Ozai believes there’s no real opposition that could defy him, and that his great attack on the Earth Kingdom will destroy everyone who dares rebel, bringing Azula along would have given Zuko leeway to just grab the crown, put it on his head, sit on the throne and say “Oh yeah! Nobody’s home, I’m Fire Lord now” with no opposition.

So… as a basic rule, if you go out to war, you don’t take every last one of your soldiers with you. You can’t leave your city undefended. Now, leaving Azula out of the fray completely after everything she’d achieved was a low, unfair blow, but from a strategic point of view… I kind of see the point? Clearly, if you’re going to have someone protecting your main base, it has to be someone you trust. And alas, that’s what Ozai does. Ergo, I think he trusts her enough to genuinely want her to succeed him when he eventually dies. Even though he lost against Aang, he probably thought Azula wouldn’t lose. I kinda wonder how he reacted when he found out…

Anyways, that’s a long list of reasons why I find Ozai interesting as a character. There’s of course, more, such as how hilarious it is to make fun of him (let’s face it, he’s not as smart as he likes to think he is), and how ridiculous it is to imagine him being a fitness nut and an absolute diva. But the main reasons why I started taking a liking to him was because of what I said above. Ozai can be interpreted as less flat than the show portrays, which does not take away from the cruelty of his actions in the slightest. What it does is give different depth to who he is, and it even gives Zuko himself more depth when you see that he could have easily become Ozai 2.0 if anything had been different.

#anon #in short I just like writing him #and on Tumblr I like mocking him #yes yes yes

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bibliosexxual · 8 years ago

Text

a fluffy thing I was thinking about tonight.

...that morphed into a fic.

(now also on ao3)

They meet in Biology 101. Stiles is a freshman, and he's in this class mostly because Scott is pre-vet and Stiles signed up for all the same classes because he has no earthly idea what he wants to do, career-wise. Derek is a junior Spanish lit major taking this because he needs the gen. ed., and he's terrible. He's the only person in the class who's not a freshman. He's always a few minutes late—that's how he ended up sitting at the table by the door with Stiles and Scott the first day—and he's so gloomy, and he always lugs around this backpack full of Pablo Neruda books because he has a Spanish poetry class right before this one, and he takes the neatest, most meticulous class notes Stiles has ever seen. (Stiles, meanwhile, doesn't take any notes. He takes photos of every slide with his phone as the professor talks and then spends the rest of the time goofing off quietly, doodling dumb stuff on Scott's arm and working on five different assignments at once on his laptop.)

The class meets one hour three times a week for lecture sessions and once a week, practically all afternoon, for lab. It's basic stuff, learning things like lab safety and how to use pipettes, and then they're divided up for their semester-long partner projects, growing and monitoring various strains of bacteria in petri dishes. Stiles tries to get Scott as a partner, of course, but their professor separates them, probably because she's seen how they act in class and suspects (correctly) that they'll be a hazard to themselves and others if left together in a lab.

She matches Stiles with Derek instead. It's not so bad. One day they have to put on gloves and rubber boots and wade into the creek behind the science center to gather samples, and Stiles nearly falls on his ass before Derek catches him with a surprisingly strong hand around his waist. Stiles hadn't really noticed before just how built Derek was under all the cardigans. He's like Superman, hiding out in plain sight behind old-man sweaters and nerd glasses.

Sometimes they study together before a big test, all three of them, until Scott inevitably bows out early. Scott's a natural at science; he barely needs to study to make A's. Also, he’s sussed out just how much Stiles likes being left alone with Derek. He keeps sending Stiles pep talks about it over text.

Derek is brilliant, sure, but not in any way that helps him with this class, where he doesn't have to spout off any Spanish or write any literary analyses. He's frankly terrible at Biology. Stiles can see why he put off taking the class for so much of his college career. Stiles doesn't mind helping him, though. Working through it all with Derek helps him remember it all better for the test.

Not to mention, he just plain likes Derek. He looks so somber all the time that when he says a joke or snarks about something, Stiles is always pleasantly surprised. He can tell Derek is lonely; he comes from a big family, he tells Stiles, and he's used to having lots of people around him, in his life, nosing in his business and dragging him to social events. But here he doesn't know anyone except Stiles and Scott, really, since he just transferred here from another college. (He hasn't said why, except that a girl was involved. It didn't end well, apparently. Stiles doesn't press.)

Stiles doesn't hang out with Derek out of pity, though, and he tries to make that clear. He likes Derek's company and finding out about little pieces of Derek's life, music he likes and what other classes he's taking and all the little minutiae of his day. He likes hearing Derek's opinions and making fun of him a little and getting made fun of right back.

One Friday night Stiles texts him something silly from the book he's reading. It's like 3 a.m., and he's surprised when Derek texts back only a minute later.

Stiles calls him. "What are you still doing up, man?"

Turns out Derek can't sleep; he got sexiled from his room. Erica, he says euphemistically, "is having a really nice night." (Stiles snorts.) The library is closed. All the academic buildings are locked. The common area on his hall is still trashed from a party last weekend that no one has cleaned up yet. Derek has taken refuge out by the little student garden at the bottom of the hill near his building; there's a pond there with some benches. Stiles has nothing better to do, and it's not like he's going to sleep any time soon—he'd loaded up on caffeine while writing a paper, then finished it a ton sooner than he'd expected in a whirlwind mix of brilliance and bullshitting. Now he's wired.

So he pulls on a hoodie and shoves his feet in the nearest pair of sneakers and jogs down the stairs and outside, where it's cool but not freezing out, a nice night really. He finds Derek and they just sit there together on the edge of the pond and talk. It's almost five a.m. before the conversation fades out to a comfortable silence and Stiles starts to feel his caffeine buzz wearing off. Derek stifles a huge yawn in his sleeve; it's pretty adorable.

"Hey," Stiles says on impulse, "if you want, you can totally come back to my room."

Derek's eyes widen, and Stiles realizes what it sounds like he's said.

"Whoa, not what I meant. Not that I wouldn't— I mean, no lie, you're really attractive," Derek looks down at his feet at that, like no one's ever told him he's hot before, "but I just meant to sleep. Scott's staying over at his girlfriend Kira's apartment, so you could crash on his bed. He wouldn't mind as long as I changed the sheets before he got back."

So Derek agrees, and together they gather up the books he'd spread out to study before Stiles showed up. Stiles carries an armload for him since Derek looks dead on his feet. It's weird how intimate it feels, just walking together, not saying anything, Stiles carrying Derek's stuff for him.

Stiles and Scott's dorm is tiny and windowless, practically a closet, with barely any room to walk around the furniture, the one rickety desk and the little bookcase and the bunk bed in the corner. Stiles can tell Derek's surprised. Being an upperclassman and all, he probably has a room about three times this size. Still, he doesn't say anything except to compliment Stiles' The Force Awakens poster on the closet door as he tiredly kicks off his shoes.

Stiles goes down the hall to the bathroom to brush his teeth and take out his contacts. When he gets back he remembers to ask, "Hey, dude, do you need to borrow anything?"

When there's no response, he belatedly glances over at Scott's bottom bunk. Derek is lying on his stomach on top of the comforter, one foot sticking out from the bed, so deeply asleep he's practically unconscious. Stiles stares down at him for longer than is probably appropriate, feeling something warm and affectionate swelling just under his breastbone. Then he pulls down the extra blanket from the closet, covers Derek as best he can, and climbs up to his own bunk in the darkness. He falls asleep listening to the soft sound of Derek breathing.

He doesn't wake up until almost noon. Back home, he never needed an alarm clock, always just woke up gradually as the sun lit up his room. Here, though, without a window in the room, it always feels like the middle of the night, no source of light but the weak 60-watt bulb of Scott's desk lamp.

He's halfway through checking all the notifications on his phone when he remembers he didn't come home alone last night. He raises his head to look over the railing of his bed. Derek is awake and apparently has been for some time now, camped out at Stiles' desk with a brick-sized tome of what looks like poetry.

"When did you get up?" Stiles groans blearily.

"Eight a.m.," Derek answers, and god, Stiles knew Derek was a morning person but he didn't realize it was that bad. "I'll probably take a nap later," he adds, seeing Stiles' expression.

Stiles laughs. "Me too, but not because I need the sleep. Just because it's Saturday and I like naps. Naps are the best."

He has just enough sense not to suggest they take a nap together, but he does add that to his mental list of things to daydream about extensively later, right alongside inventing a cure for cancer and finding out what Derek's tattoo looks like. Derek let it slip once that he had one, right between his shoulderblades. It's been one of the great obsessions of Stiles' life ever since.

They eventually wander over to the dining hall together. They've finished their food (Derek eats almost as much as Stiles, which is truly impressive) and they're in the middle of a pretty in-depth conversation about Don Quixote, based on the fact that Derek is thinking of doing his senior thesis on it and Stiles read it once in high school, when Erica wanders over.

"Looks like I wasn't the only one getting lucky last night." She winks.

Stiles splutters and Derek sinks down in his seat like he wants to disappear.

Erica bursts out laughing. "Oh my god, your faces. I was just kidding. I know Derek's too lame to have any fun on a Friday night. Anyway," she says, "if it's okay with you, I was wondering if I could have the room today, too? I'm not quite done having my wicked way with Boyd. We've got some pretty extensive plans involving fruit and—"

"Please god, stop talking," Derek says. "You can have the room."

So that's how Stiles ends up inviting Derek back to his dorm again for the afternoon. They’ve hung out a lot over the last few months, but never for this long before. He kind of expects Derek to say no now that the library's open, but instead he says sure.

So they go back to Stiles' dorm after Derek ducks by his room first for a change of clothes and some books he needs. As Stiles is fumbling to unlock his door, Greenberg from across the hall wolf-whistles at them obnoxiously on his way past to the bathroom. Stiles flips him off. Derek looks awkward.

"Do you usually, um… Did he think..." Derek starts when they're in the room. He looks away. "Never mind."

"Nah, it's fine. Greenberg is always hooking up with people, so I guess he assumes everyone else must be, too, but I'm not. I mean, I'm not really a casual kind of guy."

Actually, he might be down for casual stuff, theoretically—in fact, he kind of expected he would be, and he'd even started down that path by making out with a random girl during orientation and then a different random girl later that same night at the freshman bonfire—except that then he walked into Biology on the first day of classes and there was Derek, and suddenly no one else looked half as interesting.

"Anyway," he adds, obviously not wanting to get into all of that, "I've never had a hook-up, if that's what you're asking."

Derek volunteers, "Me neither. I'm way too possessive."

Stiles imagines, fleetingly, what it would be like to have Derek be possessive over him. It would be nice, he thinks. No one's ever really gotten possessive over him before; no one's ever really wanted to keep him. Fool around with him, sure, but not keep him. He doesn't say anything.

Derek sits at Stiles' desk again after Stiles assures him he doesn't mind, and Stiles spreads out his biology notes on Scott's bed because he doesn't feel like making his own bed. Derek has to sit sideways in the chair because Scott's using the space under the desk for storing everything that couldn't fit under the bed or in the closet, and the desk is so close to the bed that Stiles' knees keep knocking Derek's.

The fifth time their knees bump and Derek apologizes again, Stiles flippantly says, "If you'd rather, I could just sit in your lap. Problem solved."

He's used to saying that kind of thing around Scott because they have this habit of aimlessly flirting with each other as a joke. Stiles doesn't think anything of it now, doesn't even look up; he's in the middle of highlighting a passage about cell division. He's halfway through the paragraph before he realizes Derek has gone weirdly quiet. He looks up. Derek is staring at him like Stiles just said he had herpes or something. He's got a smudge of ink on his chin and he's taken off his glasses; he doesn't need them to read, and Stiles can't for the life of him remember where he learned this about Derek.

Stiles actually has to think for a few seconds to remember what he even said and connect that to the way Derek's shoulders have gone so tense under his cardigan. "Oh," he says when he realizes. "I was just kidding, you know."

"So you don't like me like that," Derek says, not a question.

Stiles slowly puts down his highlighter. "I'm not saying that. I'm just saying I'm not going to ambush-straddle you in your chair."

"But do you..." Derek shakes his head. "Never mind."

"Wait." Stiles blinks, sits up a little straighter. "Do you like me like that?"

Instead of answering, Derek bites his lip and looks cornered, which is answer enough.

Stiles feels suddenly giddy. "Hey, can I kiss you?"

Derek's hands spasm where he's clutching his knees. "You want to kiss me?"

"No, I just asked you that hypothetically." Stiles rolls his eyes. "Duh, I wanna kiss you."

Derek looks endearingly flustered. He tries to push his glasses up his nose like he always does when he's nervous before he seems to remember he's taken them off. "Um. If you want. Okay."

Stiles scoots forward eagerly on the bed and hits his forehead on the edge of the top bunk. "Ow. Sorry, that was supposed to be a lot more suave."

"Nothing about you is suave," Derek says, and it should be insulting but it's really, really not.

Stiles ducks forward, avoiding hitting his head this time, and Derek leans down a little, and Stiles gets the impression Derek doesn't do this kind of thing very often because he just pauses there, uncertain, waiting, not touching Stiles at all. Stiles grins and guides him down by the ears into a soft kiss, like a hello.

Derek is actually really, really good at kissing. Stiles cups Derek's face in his hands, just to feel the way his jaw moves as he deepens the kiss, and moans.

"Wait, um," Derek pants, and Stiles reluctantly pulls back. "Is this just because I'm convenient?"

"No. If I wanted convenient I could've been hooking up with fucking Greenberg from across the hall all semester." Stiles shudders a little at the thought. "Is this just because you're lonely and I was nice to you?"

"No."

"Oh, good. Then... carry on?"

"Yeah," Derek nods, and sets about biting a mark into Stiles' neck.

Scott comes back from Kira's right about the time Stiles is saying rather loudly, "Shit, where are my pants," from the top bunk. Beside him, Derek's eyes widen, and he hastily ducks down behind Stiles' naked torso.

Scott turns around and walks right back out again.

There's a moment of silence.

"Oops," Stiles laughs. Then he sees how hard Derek is blushing and he laughs even harder, until Derek reluctantly starts to smile, too.

When he finally gets control of himself, he wiggles around to straddle Derek and says, with as much seriousness as he can muster, "I really like you, you know. Like, really really."

"I know," Derek says, settling his hands warm and possessive on Stiles' bare hips. "Me too."

"We should date."

"Yeah," Derek agrees. "Okay."

#eternalsterek #my fic #a college au because i haven't done one in a while!#this is basically just a drabble i sat down and wrote tonight while listening to copious amounts of cello music #i don't even know

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thrashermaxey · 6 years ago

Text

Ramblings: Deadline notes, Currie analysis, Trade Speculation, Zuccarello fallout and so much more (Feb 25)

***

With regards to today’s NHL Trade Deadline coverage, this will be the 14th year I am covering it on this site. Please check in throughout the day to see my breakdown of each NHL trade. When things get too nuts, Cliffy and Ian will be around to do a few as well. We’re fast, and we’re thorough. You’ve seen it year after year – and if you haven’t, then you’ll be impressed. We have the full list of trades, player links, and forum links related to that trade, in our Trade Deadline Tracker.

When I saw Josh Currie scored his first goal and Allan Walsh, whom I’m assuming is his agent, tweeted that he had three consecutive 20-goal AHL seasons after working his way up from the ECHL, I wanted to look into him. Much like I’m always looking for the next possible Martin St. Louis – a smaller underrated player who becomes a superstar (so far I’ve dug up Cam Atkinson and Vinnie Hinostroza – obviously still waiting for the next steps if they ever come, but it’s as close as we’ve gotten so far), I’m also always on the lookout for the next possible David Desharnais. And as much as you probably have distaste for Desharnais due to his more recent years, he really was a fantasy boon early on. He was a prolific scorer in junior, was plunked into the ECHL without being drafted or having an NHL contract and worked his way up to the NHL. In his first couple of seasons he was not only very fantasy relevant, but it was also great because you were able to scoop him out from under the noses of your supposedly savvy fellow GMs and he helped you very quickly. The fun part, of course, is the ‘under the nose of your fellow GM’ part.

So what do we have in Currie? Well, he did get 104 points in his final year of the QMJHL…but he was 20 years old when he did that and tons of players have done that over the years. It’s almost expected of you at 20 years old to top 100 points in the Q. The year prior, he did get 30 goals but only managed 46 points. The rest of his PEI team wasn’t loaded with goal scorers, so maybe he could have had more assists with better star power around him, but he’s still a sniper. He’s a late October birth so he actually began those two years at 18 and 19. He went directly to the ECHL when he turned pro and steadily improved his numbers – from 41 points in 70 games to 49 points to a 65 pace. He made the jump to the AHL two months into the latter year, and had season-over-season points-per-game averages of 0.45, 0.54, 0.68 and 0.76 before getting the call to the big show last week at the age of 26. However, what’s interesting is the latter number includes 24 goals (though only 13 assists) in just 49 games. Very different from Desharnais in the following ways:

1. Currie is a sniper

2. Currie’s production is less than Desharnais’ at every level

3. Currie is a winger

On the surface, it appears that his upside is lower than Desharnais was. Clearly Currie is a passenger, whereas Desharnais was more of a driver albeit a low-level one. Put Currie with Kyle Brodziak, he gets 12 goals and 20 points. Put Currie with Connor McDavid? Because Desharnais never had a McDavid-type in winger-form to play with, he couldn’t possibly match Currie’s upside. So can Currie succeed where Ty Rattie, another solid AHL sniper, failed? Will he even get a chance to try? That’s the question. I’ll be watching as – for now – he’s just another one of a hundred players with a 1% chance of truly thriving with a lucky break. But as Jim Carrey once noted:

{youtube}zMRrNY0pxfM{/youtube}

Trade Speculation

If Tampa Bay does any trade other than a backup fourth liner or a No. 7 or 8 defenseman, then they are overthinking things. The roster as is should win the Stanley Cup, all that’s left now is pro roster injury protection.

It’s not just the big-name players you should be watching for today. Sure, that’s going to be much more exciting. But these are great players – they’re doing well now, they’ll do well no matter where they go. As far as fantasy is concerned, it’s not even going to move the needle. What we should be looking for, as fantasy owners, are the underused and underrated players who could stumble into a great opportunity. Yes, the odds will be slim in the way that Ty Rattie (or the aforementioned Currie) could get a chance and thrive. And between slim odds of getting decent ice time, and risk of injury (that to me derailed Rattie twice this year), you probably won’t see anything special. But the exciting thing is that you could. Chris Kunitz was once claimed off waivers. Patrick Sharp was traded to Chicago and considered a third-liner. Lots of examples out there. I wonder if Austin Czarnik goes anywhere. Or Nic Petan. Players not only on the cusp, but possibly getting their last shot. Keep in mind that whatever team they go to it will be a team with a shortage of forwards so they’ll get their chance.

Another name to watch for is Daniel Carr, who is embarrassing the AHL right now with 66 points in 47 games which is by far the league lead. Or whoever the Blues trade today. Could Robby Fabbri or Sammy Blais go? Any takers for Jordan Schmaltz as a throw-in?

At midnight, Sunday/Monday, Bob McKenzie reported that Gustav Nyquist was about to be traded to San Jose. I think we can assume that will happen. UPDATE: Deal done, for a 2nd and a conditional 3rd that can become a second if the Sharks re-sign him or make it to the Final. Trade breakdown on this will come in the morning (or is already up if you’re reading this later).

Lots of minor moves as teams gear up for life beyond the deadline. The Islanders have signed Dennis Seidenberg, who had loyally remained with the team without a contract all this time. Depth option at less than half the cap hit. The Bruins have signed winger Lee Stempniak, also for depth. Both players need to get through waivers in order to join the team. The Sabres signed a depth goalie in Adam Wilcox, the Islanders have signed depth goalie Jeremy Smith, and the Panthers have signed depth goalie Chris Driedger. Teams are making sure that they have all the bases covered.

Anaheim Ducks traded Brian Gibbons to Ottawa for Patrick Sieloff. I’m not sure about that one, other than Ottawa maybe looking for an NHL body for their lineup to give the kids more AHL time…

Goalie A vs. Goalie B

If you could take Goalie A, who has a strong likelihood of getting you 40 wins for the foreseeable future, is in his prime on a great team…or Goalie B, who also has a strong likelihood of getting you 40 wins, is probably a little more talented, has a slight chance of getting you 49 wins, but carries say a 10% chance of missing half the season with an injury. Which one do you choose? The answer is, both goalies are great, I’d be fine with either. And they easily top the rest of the field.

I’ve been taking heat on Twitter and FB over having Frederik Andersen at the top of my goalie list over Andrei Vasilevskiy. It’s the usual problem for writers when people don’t read the full article (or in this case, the intro). Andersen is not over Vas. He is in fact equal. They are in the same Tier and deservedly so. If you can’t see the reasoning I outlined above, you have a right to that opinion. If you want to see mine, I proudly present it every month. But do me the favor of reading the intro too, and know exactly what it is you are criticizing.

This is unbelievable and I feel horrible for Dallas and their fans. But they lost Mats Zuccarello for four to six weeks after suffering a (apparent – at least as I write this) broken arm in the third period Sunday. He took a Connor Murphy shot off the arm. This is after Zuccarello slid seamlessly into the lineup and picked up a goal and an assist.

King Henrik breaks down, discussing Zuccarello:

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Jamie Benn also left game, but he left early and is day to day. Dallas, as I noted in the trade breakdown, was a three-forward team when it came to offense and it makes a huge difference when they added a fourth. It changes everything. So many more options now up front at even strength and on the power play. But now, instead of having four stud forwards they are down to two? Brutal!

In the game against Chicago, Patrick Kane had his 20-game point streak snapped. But Erik Gustafsson surges on with his seventh point in three games and 33 in his last 31. He also has 38 in 39.

Kris Letang and Brian Dumoulin each left Saturday’s game. The latter has a concussion, the former has an upper-body injury.

Rangers’ line combination with Zuccarello gone:

26.4%

KREIDER,CHRIS – VESEY,JIMMY – ZIBANEJAD,MIKA

19.1%

FAST,JESPER – NAMESTNIKOV,VLADISLAV – STROME,RYAN

10%

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So Vesey has slid into Zuke’s spot and Lias Andersson takes Vesey’s spot. Advantage: Vesey, who picked up two points in the game.

Brett Connolly has seven points in his last nine games, but is still only getting 11 minutes of ice time. He’s already at a career high of 33 points and has tied his high of 15 goals. I’d like to see him get another chance – he got all his chances too early in his career. But now is the time he’s ready. As a big 6-3 player he needed more time than the average player. (And yes, Striker, that fits in with your model! Love that model)

Another hat trick for Joe Pavelski gives him 18 points in his last 13 games, with nine of them goals. Kevin Labanc has 15 points in his last 15 games.

After three games with the Minnesota Wild, Ryan Donato has four points. Now, before you start building that Donato shrine it’s important to note a couple of things. First, he made a similar splash at the end of last season when he arrived in Boston. Second, of his three assists all three of them were secondary assists. Great player, good upside, but before declaring that he has arrived I am preaching caution.

Jake Allen has faced 111 shots over the last three starts and he has stopped 105 of them. Perhaps the fear of losing his job is belatedly starting to kick in. But what he needs is to go three consecutive games without allowing four goals. The last time he did that was early December.

Speaking of Austin Czarnik, who I made note of in the trade speculation above, I was wondering why after he scored in three consecutive games did he only get 10 minutes of ice time on Saturday? It just makes a Dobber Darling become even more of one when the coach holds him back. On Sunday he scored again, and it was the game winner. His ice time was 12:15.

Sunday also marked the first ever NHL game between Matthew Tkachuk versus Brady Tkachuk. Matthew won the game but Brady was the only Tkachuk to put a point on the board.

The Senators scratched Mark Stone, Mikkel Boedker and Cody Ceci, each of whom could be dealt before the deadline. With Stone out of the lineup, the top scoring forward on the Sens was Chris Tierney. And yet he still wasn’t on the first PP unit. That trio was Tkachuk, Bobby Ryan and Anthony Duclair. Frankly I prefer the second unit that had Tierney, Logan Brown and Drake Batherson.

Interesting note from the NHL about Saturday’s outdoor game – 13 of the league’s 27 outdoor games have resulted in come-from-behind victories. That’s a shade under half. No lead is safe when the game is outside.

The Coyotes retired Shane Doan’s number on Sunday, as they should. The guy played his entire career with the franchise and finished with 402 goals and 972 points in 1540 games. So close to 1000 points, I can see why he flirted with the idea of playing for another season had there been any takers. Doan’s best fantasy season was 2007-08 when he had 78 points in 80 games, though in 2005-06 he had 30 goals, 66 points and 123 PIM.

Patrik Laine has three goals in his last two games and is now on the top line with Blake Wheeler and Kyle Connor. It gives Laine 28 goals on the season. Last year after 62 games he had 31 goals, so is his season really so bad? Assuming you’re not in a caveman league that still counts plus/minus, that is (ha ha). He could be right back to his usual self in two more good games, that’s all it takes.

Josh Morrissey was injured in the third period. He left the game and did not return.

When Clayton Keller scored Sunday it was his first point in seven games and his first goal since January 20.

Personal Note

Friday marks 18 months since my stem cell transplant. Most of you already know this, but in May of 2017 I was diagnosed with Myelodysplasia and by July it had expedited to Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). Thankfully a world donor was a 100% match and after a summer in-hospital receiving chemo and radiation, I received the transplant. Today I am happy to report that I feel normal, and I am in disbelief that this can be the case. And of course, grateful. What 18 months means is that I am (or will be on Friday) officially halfway to being deemed cured of cancer. Needless to say, the more difficult half is behind me. At this point, the only thing different in my life versus before is the fact that I need to check into the hospital every few weeks for tests, and I need to gradually re-do all my vaccinations. In fact, things are even better because with the new blood I have more energy, and when I exercise it actually makes a difference – the body processes energy and calories better, to say nothing of an improved immunity. (You can read my initial statement here, my update here – and you can register to donate your stem cells here for Canada and here for the USA. As you can see this does save lives.)

Anyway, this is an enjoyable day for hockey fans and I just thought I would add my good news to that.

See you…all day long as I pound out the trade analysis…

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-rambling/ramblings-deadline-notes-currie-analysis-trade-speculation-zuccarello-fallout-and-so-much-more-feb-25/

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thornburgrealty · 7 years ago

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hollywoodjuliorivas · 8 years ago

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The Congo River. Credit Christian Ziegler/National Geographic, via Getty Images With Conrad on the Congo River What counts as progress? I traveled to Africa to see what has, and hasn’t, changed since the author’s visit over a century ago. By MAYA JASANOFF AUG. 18, 2017 The smoked monkeys brought the point home. During my first day on a boat on the Congo River, I’d embraced the unfamiliar: how to bend under the rail to fill my wash bucket from the river, where to step around the tethered goat in the dark and the best way to prepare a pot of grubs. But when I saw the monkeys impaled on stakes, skulls picked clean of brains and teeth thrusting out, I looked otherness in the face — and saw myself mirrored back. I was the real exotica: the only tourist to take this boat in nearly a decade, and the only white woman, as far as the crew knew, ever. Expect to be kidnapped, people had warned me. Expect to have everything stolen and expect every arrangement to go awry. Bring your own mosquito net, waterproof everything twice and strap your cash around your ankle. The Democratic Republic of Congo, I read in my guidebook, was “a huge area of dark corners, both geographically and mentally,” where “man has fought continuously against his own demons and the elements of nature at large.” This, in other words, was the heart of darkness, which was why I had wanted to come. More than 100 years ago, a Polish sailor named Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski traveled to Congo to take a job as a steamboat captain on the river. The Congo Free State, as it was then called, had been founded in 1885 under the supervision of King Leopold II of Belgium with the self-declared mission of promoting progress and civilization, free trade and the abolition of slavery. Korzeniowski was supposed to stay for three years, but after just one round-trip on the river, from Kinshasa to Kisangani and back, he quit. Photo Joseph Conrad onboard a ship. Credit Culture Club/Getty Images Behind all the high-minded ideals, he saw a colonial regime of appalling greed, violence and hypocrisy, and he left in despair. He kept a diary of his journey and almost a decade later, in 1899, when he’d settled in England and Anglicized his pen name to Joseph Conrad, he transformed those notes into a novel called “Heart of Darkness.” The book describes a voyage up and down a river in Africa by a British sea captain named Charles Marlow, who is commissioned to fetch a renegade ivory collector called Kurtz. Marlow travels up the river enveloped by a sense of increasing mystery and encroaching danger. Kurtz, Marlow discovers, has become a tyrant in the jungle, his idealistic hopes for spreading European civilization in Africa perverted into a brutal injunction: “Exterminate all the brutes!” Photo A 19th-century depiction of an encampment on the Congo River. Credit Universal History Archive/UIG, via Getty Images The book has been read as many things, from an exploration of the individual psyche to a prophecy of genocide. Most of all, it’s a meditation on progress. Conrad indicted the European imperialists who plundered Congo in the name of progress even while he portrayed Africa, in terms that seem racist today, as irredeemably backward. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story The Democratic Republic of Congo has now been independent for nearly 60 years, almost as long as it was a European colony. Yet it is by any measure one of the world’s most dysfunctional states. Congo’s modern-day Kurtz was the kleptocrat dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, whose ouster in 1997 led to a civil war and some five million deaths. It has one of the lowest per-capita incomes and is ravaged by continuing rebellions in the east, an escalating conflict in the central province of Kasai and a national political crisis: President Joseph Kabila has refused to leave office despite reaching months ago the end of his last term. So what counts as progress? To try to answer that question, I went to Congo last December, to see the places Conrad had seen and take the measure of what has and hasn’t changed since his time. Kisangani, the innermost navigable point Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story Bumba 100 MILES Congo River REPUBLIC OF CONGO Mbandaka Kisangani GABON DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO AFRICA Brazzaville Area of detail Kinshasa Boma ANGOLA By The New York Times In 1890, Conrad traveled on one of the first steamboats on the Congo River. The Roi des Belges had been constructed in 1887 out of parts imported from Europe, then carried up the rapids on the backs of 1,700 porters and assembled in Kinshasa, the capital then and today. Steamships were the engines of European civilization, bearing merchants, missionaries and militias into Africa’s uncolonized interior. Conrad hated them. More than a century later, with hardly any roads or rails linking most of Congo’s cities and with flights too expensive for nearly all Congolese, boats — belching tugs that push open barges with no facilities — are still the primary way people use to travel between Kinshasa and Kisangani, a commercial hub a thousand miles upstream. If you’re lucky, you can make the upriver journey in four weeks and the downriver journey in two, the same amount of time it took Conrad. I began my trip in Kisangani, the river’s uppermost navigable point and once a crossroads between eastern and central Africa, for the trade in ivory and slaves. In the city center were faded colonial bungalows and crumbling brick factories, interspersed with advertisements for diamond brokers. Not many boats venture so far these days: Fuel costs too much, and there aren’t enough goods to transport. The handful of vessels that were moored along the waterfront when I arrived weren’t leaving for another two weeks at best. But upstream stood one vessel in stately isolation, moored in a private stretch of waterfront. It belonged to Bralima, Congo’s biggest brewery, and was emblazoned with “Primus,” the name of the company’s signature beer brand. Four barges were lashed to the boat, stacked with plastic cases piled into 12-foot-high cubes like crenelations on a castle wall. Primus I was going to pick up some rice in Bumba, deposit the beer in Mbandaka and deliver the rice to Kinshasa. Miraculously, it was leaving the next day. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Officially, Bralima doesn’t allow passengers — a dinged-up metal sign disavows company responsibility for any “unauthorized” travelers — so it took a day of negotiation (and a payment) to persuade the captain to take me and my guides, a white expat and a native Congolese. But the next morning at dawn, I scurried on board with at least 80 other people toting stools, sacks, sleeping mats, tarpaulins, buckets and stoves. The first mate showed me to a cabin on the boat proper, whose two tiny decks housed just five cabins, the engine room and the bridge. Photo The vessel we began our journey on, Primus I, belonged to Bralima, Congo’s biggest brewery. Credit Maya Jasanoff As I walked down the barges, maneuvering around bollards, hatch covers, cables and ropes, I felt like I was peering into a series of living rooms. A family gathered around a game of ngola, scooping and dropping seeds in carved hollows on a wooden board. A group of men on low rattan stools were studying the Bible. A young man with a pair of clippers and a bamboo chair unrolled a poster of men’s hairstyles and set to shaving the crew members’ heads. I counted at least two chickens, two ducks and a tufted black mangabey monkey, which scampered around a plastic oil barrel held back by a short strap bound to his left leg with a hair clip; later, I’d discover a live crocodile tied up under the freezer chest. We were underway for only a couple of hours when the pirogues started to come, poled frantically by people trying to catch our boat. They tied up alongside and clambered aboard with wares to sell: deck furniture woven from cane, heavy wooden mortars for pounding manioc, baskets of charcoal for cooking and ngola boards to pass the time. In the diary Conrad kept on the river, he never mentioned whether canoes approached the Roi des Belges. In “Heart of Darkness,” the primary interaction Marlow and his crew have with the people on the banks comes when they’re attacked. As I watched the constant traffic between ship and shore, I saw none of the hostility portrayed in the novel, only interdependence. I suddenly remembered a photograph of the Roi des Belges from 1889, the year before Conrad’s trip, with pirogues tied up alongside, exactly the way I saw them outside my cabin. There’s a famous scene in “Heart of Darkness” where Marlow looks through his binoculars and sees what he thinks are “ornamental knobs” on a palisade around Kurtz’s house. Drawing closer he realizes they are human heads, barbarous trophies of Kurtz’s power. Some historians have suggested that Conrad based this detail on a real-life Belgian colonial official. I think Conrad had closer interactions with the African villages on the river than he ever let on: From what I saw of smoked monkeys, they make a pretty good model. Bumba, which used to be somewhere The Congo River is always changing, as sandbanks morph and shift. Conrad kept a detailed journal of the river as he traveled up, noting landmarks and turns and obstructions, sometimes sketching the profile of a stretch of bank to help him remember. But how to sail the Congo River has barely changed since Conrad’s day. The captain of Primus I showed me his only navigational aid: a crumbling atlas with mimeographed pages containing bird’s-eye sketches of the river, divided into 10-kilometer (about six-mile) legs. In shallow stretches, two men flanked the helm, turning sounding poles in the water to assess the depth, exactly the way they did in Conrad’s time. A third crew member stood on the beer cases on the prow and signaled readings to the captain by punching his fists in the air, like Black Power salutes. Continue reading the main story Photo Approaching Bumba. Credit Maya Jasanoff Thirty-six hours out of Kisangani, Primus I moored at Bumba to stock up on rice. I’d never heard of Bumba before, but in the colonial era, this used to be somewhere: part of a string of stations that drew the country’s economic spine. Upstream I saw rice warehouses, a palm-oil factory and vast sugar works. But the businesses have left, and the factories have shut down. An emblem of what once passed for progress has become a relic. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story The first order of business for me there — as for any foreigner in any Congolese city — was clearing my presence with the infamous Direction Générale de Migration, charged with monitoring the internal movement of people and goods. That means showing your papers (passport, visa, yellow-fever certificate), which generally means officials finding problems with them, which means finding a solution, which means giving someone “money for beer,” as the local euphemism goes. On a makeshift bulletin board on the wall were pasted dozens of passport pictures of foreigners who’d passed through Bumba over the decades. From one quadrant stared a succession of strong-browed European nuns frozen in black and white; from another peered the spit and image of Sigmund Freud and the browned 1970s Polaroid of a tow-haired little boy. After an hour of hard haggling, my guide bargained the Bumba authorities down from $40 to $20 to let me walk freely through the town. The place felt like the set of a western, the road red dust and every facade like a false front. Small traders set up what passed for shops in the unlit hollows of concrete buildings. There were scarcely any mopeds, let alone cars; just squeaky bicycle taxis with red and yellow crocheted cushions for seats. Continue reading the main story Photo The boat, Primus I, transformed into a bustling, haggling market. Credit Maya Jasanoff One day was enough to get a feel for Bumba, but Primus I stayed for three. All day long men with calves like clubs trotted down planks from bank to barge, balancing one, two, even three 50-kilogram (about 110-pound) sacks of rice across their shoulders and smoking marijuana between runs to dull the pain. When there was a soccer match on, the crew set up a small generator-powered television on the freezer chest. Boys in pirogues sidled up in the dark to watch. Our boat, with its reliable generator, fully functioning motor and more or less reliable schedule, was the most developed thing in sight. River life, a way to get by As we left Bumba, I sat on my stool on the prow, drinking instant coffee mixed into ginger broth, and watched the forest rise again around us. Since Kisangani, the riverbank had been a ceaseless curtain of green, tall and taller, with canopies so majestic they seemed like forests in themselves. Here and there a small village appeared in a clearing, a few thatched huts on stilts — to the eye, no different from the ones I’d seen in 19th-century photos. However basic they looked, though, they were on the vanguard: the one part of the forest linked to the mechanized, urban world, thanks to boats like ours. In front of the Primus sign, Jeanne, the strong-looking woman who served me my tea, had set up a stall of shiny packets of biscuits, AA batteries and small bags of salt — urban luxuries unavailable in the forest — which she sold, at a premium, to the river dwellers in pirogues. Photo A checkerboard on sacks of charcoal onboard Primus I. Credit Maya Jasanoff What seemed like a way to get from here to there was also, I was coming to realize, a way to get by. Most of the people I spoke to had been educated to do one thing, but in an economy without viable wages and jobs, ended up doing whatever else they could find. Jeanne used to study law; now she did washing and cooking on the boat, tended her onboard shop and bought sacks of rice en route to sell in Kinshasa. Nadine, a generous woman with gold-edged teeth, used to work for the central bank but couldn’t live on the pay. On the boat she got up before dawn every day to mix a batter for beignets, which she fried up and sold for breakfast at five cents each. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story In the midafternoon heat, as I lay on my bunk rereading “Heart of Darkness,” batting away tsetse flies, I had an uneasy sensation that for all that I’d come to Congo to follow Conrad, he’d never felt farther away. “Everything is hateful to me,” he once told a confidante. “Men and things, but especially men.” Yet I was having precisely the opposite experience: On board Primus I, I was becoming part of a dynamic floating village, where things had become familiar and people were becoming friends. Such a rich country, such poor people: That was the universal refrain. One evening I watched the sunset on the prow with members of the crew. The fundamental problem in the country was bad governance, they all agreed. But how to fix it? Some championed radical protests to unseat Mr. Kabila. One person said the problem was lack of infrastructure; another said that even if you built hospitals and roads, nobody had money for a doctor or a car. One said he wanted the Belgians to come back because they actually invested in the country. Another reminded him that the Belgians pillaged, too. From Mbandaka to Kinshasa, the last leg On the 10th day we reached Mbandaka, the biggest town between Kisangani and Kinshasa. It would take at least a day and a half to unload the beer, so I checked into a hotel for a night, hoping for a brief reunion with tap water. The Nina River Hotel, Mbandaka’s best, was well situated on the river bank and had a swimming pool and a dining room with red upholstered chairs and chandeliers. Posted rate: $350 a night. But there was no water in the hotel, and electricity only between 6 p.m. and midnight. Continue reading the main story Photo The Congo River. Credit Alex Majoli/Magnum Photos I took a walk down the riverfront road, past a market of thatched stalls tumbling down the muddy slope and street vendors in the shadow of colonial bungalows, when I spotted something startling. Behind a whitewashed wall stretched a shipyard for Onatra, the national transport agency, and on the grassy bank sat the rusted-out hulls of four or five old steamers. I approached a group of men sitting in the shade outside the office and asked to have a closer look. One of them led me to the craft that had caught my eye. The Yanonge, he explained, was a wood-fired, stern-wheel paddle steamer built in 1928 from pieces cast in Hoboken, Belgium, and assembled in Kinshasa. It had a 250-horsepower engine and traveled at nine kilometers (about six miles) per hour, the same speed as the faster boats now. It had electricity, showers, a kitchen and refrigeration. I’d never imagined I would see something so similar to Conrad’s Roi des Belges, and the feeling of proximity to the past was electrifying. And then, just beyond the hull of the Yanonge, I saw the passenger boats of today, so overcrowded and so squalid they look like refugee camps. Conrad was rightly skeptical about imperial promises of progress. I left the shipyard sickened by a hideous realization: Measured in relative terms, most people in Congo were probably better off 100 years ago. We left Mbandaka the next day for the last leg of the journey. I sat outside Nadine’s place while she cooked dinner and talked to her mother, a jowly lady who never smiled. Nadine’s mother had been traveling up and down the river since she was 18. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story What are the biggest differences between boats then and boats now? I asked. “These aren’t boats,” she said. “Then, there were boats, with cabins, restaurants. This” — she paused — “this isn’t a boat, where everyone sleeps under the stars.” I asked her if the river had changed. “The river hasn’t changed.” I asked her if the forest had changed. “The forest hasn’t changed.” But, I hazarded, it was a lot taller closer to Kisangani than it is here. Has it always been like that? “The forest hasn’t changed.” Early the following morning we entered the deep, narrow stretch of the river that runs straight down to Kinshasa. There were no more pirogues; villages now had huts with walls and solid roofs. The forest had thinned out, and I could see how, if you traveled upriver, as Conrad had, you might imagine it closing in around you. Yet the river itself would widen, I now knew, and the more time you spent on it, the more you might feel the deepening warmth of familiarity, and human contact, in place of Conrad’s alienation. That, to me, was progress. Maya Jasanoff is a professor of history at Harvard and the author of the forthcoming “The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World.” Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

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