#the dinner is detritus B-)

[aquatark]

Terra Coin Zoom - Zahhab Region Depths

Endless Ocean: Blue World, Nintendo Wii

the shrips!!!! me and my shrimp wife watching coin with dinner tonight

[copias-thrall]

Domming Mary Goore

This was supposed to be a short PWP. Oops. 

*choking/breathplay; frottage; everything’s gross*

It’s one of those nights where Mary comes to you already in a snit over something. You two have developed something that’s not quite a booty call, not quite FWB. Usually he just shows up, banging into your apartment (“Fuck, don’t you lock your door? There’s all kinds of weirdos out there!” “I have a hammer.”) ready to fuck you into next year.

And sure he’s kinda . . . ripe . . . and dirty, but you’re not winning any prizes either with your hair you haven’t bothered to wash in a week, wearing a hoodie covered in pasta sauce stains. (“Are you depressed or some shit?” “I live alone, who’s gonna notice?” “I fucking noticed.” “I don’t perform for—” “Yeah, yeah . . . I don’t actually give a shit. I’m just here for the pussy.”) Most of the time you guys don’t even make it into your bedroom, and you usually never make it out of all your clothes. You drew the line at your kitchen counter after that time one of you hit the faucet on and you got a face full of water. He never stays after, always gone after you get out of your shower.

But sometimes you come home to find him camped out on your couch eating the last of your sour cream and onion chips watching The Golden Girls on your TV. He just grunts at you—like it’s totally normal he’s gotten into your (yes, locked) apartment and is watching 90′s syndication. You make yourself a dinner of rice and beans, offering some to him even though he just ate half a bag of your chips. You don’t stop yourself from dozing off on the couch after—you’re never concerned about being rude to him—and when you wake up, he’s always gone.  Other times, he’ll just be on your couch when you shuffle into the living room in the morning—his stage paint gone—eating your cereal. You’d bitch at him, but he always does the dishes.

He’s always complaining about something—always off on a tangent about sheeple or how the work week is a capitalist construction or escalator etiquette or his slumlord—and you just let him fuck it out, loving the way he pounds fast and insistently into your body. You’re not really a “make love” kinda girl.

Tonight, though, he’s crashed into your place hard enough that one of your frames falls to the floor, glass shattering. Mary just walks through it, glass crunching and breaking further under his boots. You cry out in dismay—at the destruction of something you care about and at the fact that he’s going to track broken glass throughout your entire place.

He’s still yammering on about his “idiot bandmates”, paying no heed to your distress, and it enrages you. Goddamn Mary flouncing into your goddamn home like he owns the place and just . . . using you for your shit. Like the chips and the dinner and the cable are owed to him.

You raise yourself up onto your knees so you can face him over the back of your couch,

“Jesus fucking Christ on a cracker, Mary. Fucking stop.”

He turns to you, halfway through another pace across your living area, and tilts his head at you.

“Fucking what? What’s got your panties in a twist?”

You gesture emphatically at the floor.

“You broke my goddamned picture frame and now there’s glass everywhere.”

He shrugs. “I never pegged you as a materialist. And if you’re that worried about your prissy little feet, put some fucking shoes on.”

You see him gearing up to move again, so you straighten up and use your Teacher Voice.

“Don’t you fucking dare move another inch, you fucker. This is my home, I’m not your goddamned mother, and your dick isn’t that good [it is] that I’m going to just fucking let you trash my place because you think it’s antiestablishment, or whatever the hell your pretentious ass comes up with.”

Mary’s just staring at you wide-eyed, so you take a breath before he has a chance to continue being a dick.

“Now. Go to the kitchen. Get the broom and dustpan. And sweep up that shit. And if my prissy fucking feet step on a shard you didn’t get, I’m going to pull it out of my foot, save it, and make you eat it next time you come over looking to raid my kitchen. So make sure to clean the treads of your boots too, you little shit. Are. We. Clear?”

Mary mumbles something to the floor.

“I SAID ‘ARE WE CLEAR,’ MOTHERFUCKER?”

His eyes snap up to yours. “Yes . . . yes, ma’m.”

Hmm. That’s interesting.

You watch him, arms crossed, as he walks on tiptoe the 3 steps it takes to get to your tiny kitchen. You don’t move from your perch on the couch as he retrieves the items in question—first using the brush to dust off the soles of his boots—and begins the arduous and careful process of cleaning up all the detritus.

When he’s dumped what seems to be the last panful into your garbage, he shyly asks you if you have a mop.

“To, uh . . . to get anything small I might have missed.”

“What a clever boy you are, Mary. Thank you. It’s in the hall closet.”

It’s hard to tell if that’s a blush you see—the fake blood still cakes his face—as he scampers off to get your squeegee mop. He’s just as careful with the mop as he was sweeping up the shards, and you grunt in approval once he’s finished.

He stands there awkwardly in the kitchen corner where he’s inadvertently boxed himself in.

“Um. Should I . . . ?”

“You will stand there quietly until the floor dries. I’m going to finish watching House Hunters. Let me know when it’s done.”

You turn back around before he has a chance to do or say anything, and turn up the volume.

It’s been maybe 15min when you hear him clear his throat, and you turn lazily around.

“Is it dry?”

“Yes, ma’m.

You quirk an eyebrow at him.

“You’re sure, Mary?”

“Yes.”

“Great. Now go lie down on it.”

“Um . . . what—?”

“Did I fucking stutter, Goorey boy? Go lie down on the fucking floor. If it’s really as dry and glass-free as you say it is, it shouldn’t be an issue, especially for your disgusting ass. I know you’ve slept in a dive bar men’s room.”

Mary hurries to comply, and you wonder to where all his pissbaby bravado has fled. 

Whatever. Your gain.

He lies down on the floor, back stiff as a board, as if he doesn’t live a good pie-chart slice of his life sleeping or fucking on them.

“Good boy,” you purr. “Stay.”

“Fucking all right n—” he starts, but you swing over the back of the couch and put your foot on his mouth.

“Shut the fuck up. No one cares.”

He’s looking up at you in shock, but makes no attempt to throw you off. You tentatively raise your foot from his mouth and let it hover just within his eyesight.

“Now. Does my prissy foot have any glass on it? Be honest.”

Mary tentatively raises his hands, watching you for signs of displeasure, before taking your foot between them to carefully search for shards. It tickles like a motherfucker, but you keep your face blank. When he shakes his head, you offer him your other foot. When that also comes up clean, you smile down at him.

“Don’t forget who’s in fucking charge here, and don’t disrespect my space again. Do. I. Make. Myself. Clear?”

He gulps, nodding at you.

“Great!” you chirp. “Now we can finally get around to what you came here for.”

You straddle yourself over him, his face cautiously optimistic, before lowering yourself down, just shy of his crotch. He goes to lean himself up on his elbows, but you growl at him,

“I’m sorry. Did you not hear what I just said?”

“Um . . .”

“Who’s in charge?”

“Y-you?”

“And did I say you could move?”

He shakes his head, and lies back down.

“You aren’t that quick on the uptake, but I do like a boy who can take direction. Do you think you deserve a reward, Mary?”

He’s giving you a look like this is a trap, which—well, it is—before he stutters out a No like it’s a question.

“Hmm,” you say as you run your hands up the outside of his greasy, ripped jeans. “I’ll admit your performance here tonight has been lacking, but I love a man who can admit his failings.”

Your hands reach his studded belt, after pointedly bypassing his prominent bulge, and you begin to unbuckle it. He’s looking down at you with hooded eyes that turn to confusion when you start to tug the belt through the loops (you don’t need to remove his belt to ride his cock!).

Finally, you yank the belt free, scrutinizing it for length—he’s pretty skinny, so you’re not certain if what you want to do is plausible—but you think it’s probably long enough.

“Sit up,” you command, and he does so with alacrity, eyes eagerly fixed on the belt in your hands. It’s no secret, to you at least, that Mary is into autoerotic asphyxiation—so he knows to tap your arm 3 times if it gets to be too much—though it’s the first time you’ll be using something on him other than your hand.

You loop the belt around his neck, feeding the one end through the buckle, and consider how much lead you have by tugging gently on the end in your hand. Mary’s eyes roll back even at this subtle constriction. You smile wickedly and jerk him toward you. He puts up no resistance.

He’s still wearing lipstick, and you smudge it across his plump bottom lip and onto his cheek before kissing him on the mouth. He tastes like skunked beer, which should be disgusting, but now just tastes like “Mary.” Your hand winds up into his hair, still greasy with product and stiff with the (hopefully) fake blood he uses.

You’ll wipe it off on the back of his shirt later.

Lead still curled in your hand, you grind down on Mary’s erection, and you hear him wheeze. So you do it again and are rewarded with a rumble in his chest. You make out with him like that for a bit, belt tight around his neck, tongue in his mouth, rubbing yourself on his cock through his jeans.

When you get tired of just grinding on Mary, you pull away and grab one of his hands to put the end of his belt in. He’s red and perspiring, but still attentive.

“You’re in charge of this for the time being. Don’t let it go slack, or you lose privileges.” 

He makes a tight fist around the end you’ve given him, careful not to let it loosen. You curl over him, intent on shucking off his jeans without ripping them further—you doubt he’d care, but after that long speech you gave, you’re not going to play the hypocrite. You don’t actually think the two of you have ever gotten his pants all the way off before—he’s usually into fucking you through the slit in his jeans (“To remind me of you later.”—he’s honest to god got one pair with fading brown stains from when you let him fuck you on the rag), but when when you manage to push them down, they don’t seem to ever make it past his surprisingly ample thighs. This time you manage to pull them down inside out over his knees—enough to give you access to what you want, but not enough to give him a range of movement. 

And his boots are in the way, anyhow. 

You yank off your rank hoodie—really it should go straight into your laundry basket—and realize belatedly that you’re wearing one of his band tees: the one he inexplicably left in the cushions of your couch (did he just go home bare under his leather jacket??) that’s got a hole so big in one armpit the sleeve is merely decorative, whose one side had been ripped and stitched up like Frankenstein’s monster, and on which there are discolored spots you assume are from improper bleach care. You had washed it and meant to give it back to him . . . but then you ran out of clean shirts again, and you figured it wouldn’t matter if you took it for another round of use. And, ok—truth be told—after wearing it for awhile, you just decided it was asshole tax.

You can see in his eyes that he's considering whether or not to disobey you and break his silence to say . . . what? (you cannot read his expression)—but you cut him off before he ruins this. You don’t actually want to punish him.

“Finders keepers, Goorey boy. You shouldn’t be so careless with your stuff.” As usual, you’re free boobing it, and you cup a breast in each hand to waggle at him. “Besides, my tits look better in it than yours, Mr. AAA.”

You stand up so you can wriggle out of your pajama bottoms and red lace panties. You can see he’s surprised you’re not going commando—you usually are when you’re home—but you put them on earlier when you went for a beer run. 

You’re a classy broad.

“This is how it’s going to go: I’m going to get myself off, and if you’re a good boy who stays still and quiet, I’ll let you cum. If you piss me off, you can blue ball it all the way back to whatever hole you crawl out off in the morning. Capisce?”

He nods at you, wide-eyed.

“Great!”

Whatever he’s expecting, it’s not for you to lower yourself onto one of his thighs, straddling it, labia spread open.

“Fuck, Mary. You’ve got such nice thighs. How can you be so skinny and still have such shapely motherfuckers?”

You begin to rock yourself on him. Once you feel you’ve got a good arousal buzz going, you lean back to swipe your hand through your cunt. You get it nice and messy so that when you wrap it around Mary’s weeping cock, he jolts and twitches with the exertion of following your orders. You extract the belt lead from his clenched hand and give it a little tug, watching as he bites his bottom lip to white at the strain of not crying out.

“That’s my good boy. You’re doing so well, Mary.”

It takes a little bit or coordination on your part, but soon you’re riding Mary's thigh while jacking his cock slowly and giving him short bursts of constriction while he’s tensing and flexing in time under you. You’re sure your hand is nice, but you know that the wet slick of your cunt is so close but so far from where he wants it to be. (If the hardness of his erection is anything to go by, however, being covered in your juices isn’t a turnoff.)

He keeps looking at you pathetically—you know what he wants, but you're not going to give it to him, even if he's begging you please with his eyes. Despite himself, he's making low, whining noises.

“Shhh, it’s ok, baby. Do you need me to help with keeping quiet? I know it’s hard. You can ask me for help. Do you need it?”

He nods his head, his eyes wet.

“Thank you for being honest.”

You grab your panties and shove them in his mouth.

“There now. If you keep being a good boy, I’ll give you what you need.”

He's staring at you plaintively, his knuckles white where they’re clenched in fists at his side. You stop stroking him as you get close (though you only tug tighter on the belt)—intent on reaching your own climax—and you hear an aborted whimper around the fabric in his mouth. You let it slide though—he does have to feel and watch you as you use him.

Finally you reach your peak—curling over and palms flat on his hips as you press hard down into the meat of his thigh, grunting unattractively—and when you come down you realize that he is still, but he’s trembling. His face is red from how tight you have the belt pulled around his neck, but he’s not in any distress (well, not the bad kind, anyway).

Hot and flushed, you yank his your shirt over your head, smiling wryly when you notice how sweaty and glistening you are. Mary has a thing for trying to fit your tits in his mouth, even though you’re a D cup on your skinny days. You shake them at him again, meanly teasing. After manhandling him out of his own t-shirt, you lean over him—not quite pressing your bodies together—and you run your hands up and down the planes of his body that’re within reach. You loosen the choke hold just a little, and coo to him that since he's been a good boy, you'll give him what he needs. 

But instead of easing him into your cunt—which is what he’s clearly expecting—you splay your legs on top his groin, rubbing your slick folds over him, your lips parting to either side of his cock.

You said you’d let him cum.

You never specified how.

So you work him like that, rubbing yourself on his hard cock, your still sensitive clit lighting up whenever it hits his cockhead. True—it's not exactly what he was aiming for, but he'll take it, if the way he’s rocking his hips and has his eyes rolled back is any indication.

You lean over him, braced on your arms for leverage, and let your tits graze and bounce along his flat torso. You can see his arms twitching with the need to touch you, so you say, "You may touch if you want, but If you do anything more than that, I'll stop and then you won't get anything."

He nods eagerly as his hands fly to stroke your arms, then settle lightly on your hips, his range of motion much hindered by the length of belt you have pulled taut.

You're already so close again—the orgasm on his thigh was good, but not quite direct enough to fully sate you—but you don't feel any need to hold back even though he's still miles away. His grip on your hips tighten in frustration as you stutter to stop after you ride through an orgasm for the second time.

"What did I say?" you snap, and his eyes widen as his grip slackens.

You start up again, slower now that you've gotten off, and he starts to shake below you, little pathetic whimpers coming from behind the lace in his mouth. You have him just as you want him: needy; begging; desperate—and Lord help you, you're still so sensitive and you feel like you could definitely cum again soon. You speed up on his dick again, making sure the ridge of his cockhead hits your clit with every rock of your hips.

"Fuck," you say. "I think I'm going to cum again." And then you do, your body spasming at the intensity of it as you moan and accidentally drool on him.

His grip tightens for a fraction of a second before he stops himself, but his eyes look at you in naked disbelief that you're not going to make him cum yet.

I’ve been such a good boy, he gaze tells you.

You smirk at him and say, "You can cum anytime you want, princess. This is for you. I have my vibrator if I want multiple orgasms."

He’s flushed and red, whether from the teasing, the frustration, or the lack of oxygen—maybe all 3—but he doesn't say a word. He's too afraid that if he breathes wrong, you'll stop and he won't get to cum at all.

A 4th orgasm is actually eked out of you before he starts sweating in earnest—the rivulets making naked trails through his corpse paint—and jerking under you; and while you do feel a bit bad, he has to learn his place. 

You know he's close when he starts tensing and convulsing in time to your rocking. He's lovely like this—panting heavily, the whites of his eyes showing, and making little mewling noises as he sucks for air through your panties. You’ve been saving this upcoming move for when he got really close, and you hope you’ve timed it right.

Slowly, you begin to wrap what little slack there’s left on the belt’s lead around your palm as you continue to thrust on his cock. Mary actually has to bow his back if he doesn’t want you outright choking him. You carefully wind it tighter until he’s practically upright, his head tipped back, the veins in his neck bulging as he swallows.

He trembles and jerks—and you’re about to let go—when suddenly his hands slam down hard onto the floor. Then you do release the belt from your hold, and Mary lets out two unrestrained screams around the fabric in his mouth as he finally orgasms, his cum shooting in quick bursts up his chest to the throb of his kicking cock.

Mary falls back heavily onto the floor, gasping and panting. You work him through it slowly until you're jostled off of him when he curls into himself and onto his side. Quickly, you remove the belt from around his neck and toss it aside, the studs making a swish noise as they slide across the wood. You maneuver yourself behind so you can wrap around him, stroking down his arms and whispering words of praise and comfort into his ear as he pants and shakes.

You run your fingers through his hair and it lulls him to sleep. For now you'll let him rest, but you know that soon you’ll have to clean him up and move him somewhere soft. Unkindly you think of the mess he’ll leave in your bed, but—yeah, ok . . . probably time to change your sheets anyway. When was the last time you did that?

Grabbing the comforter you’ve had since college off your bed, you make your way (about 5 steps) back into the living room. After divesting him of his boots and jeans, you toss the blanket over his sweat-cooled body, tucking it in around him. You pull on his your shirt and pyjama bottoms before heading into your kitchen. Your fridge reveals no surprise sports drinks or chocolate bars, but you do have some frozen oj and a Ziploc bag with old jelly beans and Hershey’s kisses from . . . last Easter?

Whatever, it’s fine.

By the time you have the fake oj ready and a few kisses unwrapped, Mary is beginning to stir. You tiptoe over to him and squat down to his level as he shakily sits up, rubbing at his eyes and smearing his makeup even worse.

“What the fuck,” he says.

“Hey, buddy,” you say as you rub his arm, “how’re you doing?”

He bats you away.

“Don’t baby me. I’m fine.”

Surly is good.

You get up so you can bring over the wonderful bounty you have prepared for him. His eyes follow you, wary, but relax when he sees what you have. He accepts the fake oj from you eagerly, and begins to gulp it down.

“Shit. Slowly, Mare.”

He stops, coughing a little. “Ugh, no shit. What is this crap?”

You flush a little, embarrassed. “Fuck off, it’s all I had,” you say as you look down at your hands. He glances over at you.

“Whatever, it’s fine. Thanks, I guess.”

The two of you sit in silence as he finishes his glass.

“You want more?”

Mary wipes his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Nah. I mean, I’m good for now . . . but maybe in a minute?”

You nod and reach out the hand that’s been holding the chocolate. He takes one and immediately pops it into his mouth before accepting the remaining pieces. You lean against the back of the couch as he works his way through the kisses, taking his time to let each one melt in his mouth instead of chomping them down.

When he’s done, he holds out the glass to you again, and you’re quick to refill it. After he’s finished his second glass, he sprawls out and says,

“Thanks and all, but just so you know: oj and chocolate taste like ass together.” You frown at him and he smirks. “You know. For next time.” He winks.

“Next time,” you say slowly.

“Yeah. ‘Next time.’ That was hot. Can’t wait to do it again! But if all you’re gonna offer me is concentrated crap and moldy chocolate—”

“It’s not mold, it’s the wax coming to the surface!”

“—then I’m going to have to find a new girl to fuck.”

You make a sour lemon face at him.

“Whatever. Like your other women have it so much better. Unless you got a sugar momma I don’t know about—in which case, you’ve been holding out on me.”

Mary squints at you. “What other women?”

You roll your eyes at him. “You know,” you say as you twirl you hand, “the other women that you fuck when you’re not here.”

Mary is now looking at you like he can’t decide if this is a trick.

Slowly, as if he’s making sure he’s not messing this up, he says, “There are no other women that I fuck.”

You blink at him owlishly. He scoots a bit closer to put his hand on yours, rethinks it and pulls away, and then re-rethinks it and places it down anyway.

“I mean. I know we never said—or whatever—and like, it’s cool if you aren’t into the whole thing—I mean I could take it or leave it too, you know—but I kinda thought you were . . . my girlfriend.” 

You stare at him, but he’s very pointedly looking only at where his hand rests atop yours.

“I . . . “ you start, “but you’re never here. I thought . . . ?”

Mary looks at you like you’re the dumbest cunt he’s ever known.

“I’m always here.” He stares at you dumbly staring at him. “How have you not noticed this?” 

You stand up. “Wait—no,” you say. “You’re always only here at weird times. I never know when you’re just going to randomly show up on my couch, and you never spend the night.”

He gapes at you.

“Christ, are you serious? I work nights. Mickey lets us play his stage for free because I bus tables, wash dishes, and bartend. Plus you know I do gotta spend actual time at my own place so my bandmates don’t get their boxers in a knot—they already think you’re Yoko. But, yeah—other than that, I’m here: washing your dishes, doing your fucking laundry, and making sure your bills don’t get buried in that landslide-prone, unopened tower of mail you got going on in that corner. You’re kinda a fucking mess, you know that?”

“Oh.”

“ ‘Oh.�� ‘Oh,’ she says. Well, fine. GREAT.” Mary throws his hands up in the air. “Well, you know what? Thanks for the great fuck, thanks for the mediocre aftercare, but I’m outta here. Have a nice fucking life.”

He stands up too quickly and teeters. You make to grab at his arm to steady him, but he yanks it away from you and ends up falling on his ass.

“FUCK,” he says, putting his head in his arms.

You stare down at him for a moment before sinking down to join him on the floor. Tentatively you put an arm around him, and he doesn’t shake it off.

“I’m an asshole,” you say.

He turns his head in his arms to look sideways at you. “You’re an asshole.”

“I suck at feelings.”

Mary snorts. “No shit. Do better.”

You nod. “I’ll do better.”

The two of you sit like that—shoulder to shoulder, his head in his arms and you lightly massaging his flaky scalp—for what seems like a long while. Finally you decide to speak up.

“Is the Girlfriend Thing still on the table?”

He looks at you sharply. “Look, I don’t need any pity—”

“Do I seem like the type to pity whatever you?” you snap back.

“Fuck if I know anything anymore.”

“Well, I’m not. I’m just. Fucking dumb.”

He looks at you, full lips pressed into a hard line. He sighs.

“You’re not dumb. You’re just . . . just pay more attention, ok?”

“Ok.” You put your hand out toward him. “Girlfriends, then?”

Before thinking about it, Mary puts his hand in yours and says, “Girlfriends. Wait—no. Fuck.”

You start giggling at him and he pushes you away.

“Christ, you’re a pain in my ass. My mother’s probably laughing in her grave. Told me her revenge would be me finally meeting my match.”

You don’t really cuddle, and neither does he, but you crowd yourself into his space and drape the comforter around you both.

“Look. I know you gotta go out and work and all, but—as your girlfriend—I’m concerned with you going out after, uh. Everything.”

He bumps his forehead to yours—hard, it kinda hurts—and snorts out a laugh.

“They’re closed for inventory tonight. I, uh. I might have begged out of it so I could come by and fuck you all night.”

You cluck at him. “Fuck, Mary. Don’t go getting all mushy on me. If you fall in love that’s your own fucking fault.”

“Whatever.”

You stand up, reaching a hand out to pull him up. 

“Well, if you’re going to spend the night, there’s no way I’m letting you in my bed with all that shit on your face. Wait—why is all the shit on your face? You didn’t have a gig.”

Mary accepts your proffered hand and almost tugs you back down with his momentum.

“I have a fucking reputation, you know. I had a hard day of canvassing record stores and in general being up to no good. You put on makeup and underwear just to grab beer from the corner bodega. So.”

“Fine, point made. You’re still disgusting and not getting anymore pussy until you wash that shit off.”

You lead him the two steps into your closet of a bathroom. He runs his fingers through your hair.

“It wouldn’t kill you to wash your hair either. Put it off any longer and you’re going to get those nasty-ass white-girl dreads.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you say as you fiddle with the shower dial. “Get in,” you direct before turning on the cold water on full force.

Next ➡️ 

[kariachi]

Red Sea Body Plans

We’ve gone over the single-celled life from which everything else on Osmos V arose, so now it’s time to get into multicellular lifeforms. It’s here where things are going to get a little basic, purely because I don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to make up a dozen or so body plans per sea. Instead, we’re going to be building two or three base body plans each for both major forms of symmetry (radial and bilateral) for both haplicytes and lampicytes, and using them as the basis for life moving forward.

This is where the haplicytes are really going to split for us into specialized autotrophs and specialized heterotrophs. The autotrophs, which will become out Red Sea originating plants, will be dealt with at another time. Here we’ll be dealing with our heterotrophs, our animals.

We’ll call the autotrophs chlorocytes from here on out, and the heterotrophs phagocytes.

The things to keep in mind when designing any basic body plan are feeding, defense, respiration, and reproduction. We’ll be keeping all these in mind as we go forward.

Radial Symmetry

To start off with we’re going to focus on our radially symmetrical body plans. Radial symmetry is when creature can be split into multiple identical parts in a circle around a central point. These creatures are often slow moving, if not entirely sedentary, and we’re going to have to take that into account.

We’ll do two of these here, one sessile and one mobile, to start us off.

Sessile first. The first thing we know about this creature is that we’re going to have to work out a way for it to catch it’s food, as it can’t go hunting. The way most species in this predicament do it is through tentacles or fronds, with which they either catch passing animals or detritus floating along the currents. We’ll go with fronds to start with, say an even dozen, as it’ll make catching detritus easier and that’s probably where such a creature will start off. We can even give them external digestion, so they don’t yet have to worry about a stomach. As they don’t do much moving, respiration isn’t as much of a concern, so they can probably make due with using pores in their skins to diffuse oxygen in the water into their systems.

Reproduction will be more of an issue though. Nature tends towards sexual reproduction, which allows for greater genetic diversity and security for a species, but that’s difficult when you’re sessile. Can’t exactly hit up the club, ya know? Some sessile species handle it through pollination, others through spore distribution. In the water something like the latter is most common, referred to as ‘broadcast spawning’. We’ll be going with that, but to make it more interesting we’re going to make this a three sex species, all capable of making ’eggs’ and fertilizing them. We’ll make it a circular system, where Sex A+Sex B=Sex C, Sex C+Sex B=Sex A, and so on. They’ll broadcast their spawn, eggs will be fertilized, and the young will float around on the currents as zooplankton until they become large enough to settle in and attach to the sea floor. Their main defense at this stage will just be a pure numbers game.

As for the adults’ defense, toxicity is an option, but the scaly-footed snail has my interest recently and this Osmos V has a large amount of metals, so I think we’ll go with protective ‘shell’ around the base of our vaguely anemone-ish friend into which it can retract it’s fronds. We’ll make this shelter out of iron sulfide, just like the snail, which should give it oranges and blacks as coloration. To know when they have to retract, they’ll need some form of sensory input, so we’ll give them primitive eyes running along the fronds. That way they can see danger before it reaches them to retract to safety.

We’ll call these little guys siderpodes, or ‘iron foots’.

Which brings us to the mobile ones. These guys are gonna be able to track down dinner, rather than just having it come to them, but they’re still going to have to focus on slow moving or immobile food. Their mouths will most likely be located at their center, with a stomach attached, and with things like this are typically on the underside. We’ll make them omnivores, occasional scavengers, that feed on the chlorocytes, siderpodes, and other slow moving or immobile animals. They’re need to be able to track down their food, so we’ll give them rudimentary eyes as well, and thin tendrils they can use as early smell receptors. We’ll put these at the end of, say, seven thick arms, sort’ve like a starfish. They’ll breathe same as the siderpodes, and for defense will instead go with a chitin-like scale armor, to preserve mobility and maximize speed. (After all, if dinner moves at 0.0003 mph you don’t wanna be stuck moving at 0.00024)

For reproduction, we’ll still go with broadcast spawning for now, with the young joining those of the siderpodes as zooplankton. And actually, I think we’ll keep the three sex system, not just for these guys but as a Red Sea trait.

These guys will be the ozasters, meaning ‘smelling star’.

Bilateral Symmetry

Bilateral symmetry is the contrast to radial symmetry. We’re an example- species that can be divided into two symmetrical halves, generally with a notable front and back, with the front often but not always being where brains and sensory organs go. They’re the more motile of the two types of body plan, for the most part, and have higher respiratory needs. These guys will all have some form of circulatory system, generally a free-wheeling ‘blood everywhere’ system, and a form of respiratory system to go with it.

We’re gonna try to make two of these guys too, and they’re going to be the rulers of the open sea, at least the Red Sea.

The first thing we’re going to make is a segmented swimmer, because as near as I can tell they were quite literally everywhere in early evolution. Apparently you couldn’t put on a pair of socks without crushing something exhibiting distinct segmentation. We’ll give it a long, thin body, to minimize drag, with rudder-like fins along it’s sides, four to a segment. eight segments in total. It’ll primarily eat plankton, and to that end we’ll probably give it four little, almost feathery digits at the front to catch them in, then it can eat the plankton off them. This wouldn’t necessitate much sensory input, but I’ve got a plan for a predator for them so eyes will be handy. We’ll give it six, three along each side. These, along with the speed granted by it’s shape and fins, will serve as it’s primary defensive measure.

For respiration we’ll go with gills, placing them along the belly so water rushes over them as our little critter swims. Reproduction, meanwhile, will be more direct. With the ability to see comes the ability to see potential mates, and so these critters will be able to actually seek out members of their own kind for breeding purposes. This will probably lead to a degree of sexual dimorphism among them, possibly in coloration. They’ll lay their eggs in simple nests in crevices and on the sea floor.

They will be plumaretes, or ‘feather net’.

But our little plumaret buddies will need that predator I mentioned. We need at least one fishy line in this mess or I’ll riot, so let’s play around with that, hm? They’ll be larger than the plumaretes by a fair bit, large, long, and laterally flat. We’ll give them eyes as well, since everyone else has them- only four, forward-facing. They’ll have gills along their sides, along with eight fins, for mobility and respiration. Our first dedicated predators, willing and able to eat anything that’ll fit into their mouths.

They’ll also be our first foray into size as a defense. They’re big enough that the biggest threat to them at this point in development is other, larger, members of their group. This’ll come up more as the project progresses.

Reproductionwise, I think we can safely class them in the same spot as the plumaretes. Sexual reproducers, external fertilizers, that lay eggs in crevices and such. For both groups the young probably make up yet more zooplankton, because a body of water can never have enough of those.

These guys, we’ll call primavenes. ‘First hunters’.

And these four will be the base off which we build all future Red Sea originating species. Next time, we’ll dive into the Grey Sea and see what’s happening with those mad lads.

Trust me, it is definitely stuff.

[agoodflyting]

He That Fights With Monsters - 1/5  (monster!Kylo/Hux historical AU)

3100 words / Mature (for violence and gore, this chapter). This is basically a Kylux AU of the movie ‘Ravenous’.

W E N D I G O: a powerful creature from native american folklore. a man who consumes the flesh of another and is transformed into a monster with a fierce, insatiable hunger 

1842 Fort Spencer, California

The so-called fort is a ramshackle affair, barely deserving of the title. Little more than a cluster of rough-hewn wood and mud buildings- leaning, crumbling- huddled against each other inside a tall fence like children hiding behind their mother’s skirt. Fort Spencer cowered, at if frightened of the distant peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains which loomed on the horizon.

The place seemed thrown together thoughtlessly, additions tacked on without skill and as need arose. Piles of discarded lumber propped up the dirty thatch to make haphazard work shelters. Posts leaned like drunks. A few scrawny chickens wandered the yard freely, pecking at twigs on the frozen ground.

It was a neglected place. Unkempt and uncared-for.

The military brat in him, the part that- even now- folded his sheets neatly and polished all the buttons on his uniform every morning, had taken it all in with a faint sense of rising horror. There was no order. Pots and tools and washing lines hung from whatever was available. There was no sense of purpose to anything. It was hardly fit to be called an outpost of the U.S. Military.

It was the sort of place where you shoved the things you wanted to forget about.

That was, of course, why he had been sent there.

“You’re no hero, Hux.”

General Tarkin had taken him aside after Hux had disgraced himself at his own promotion ceremony, his first act as Captain being to sneak out and hide behind the building, shaking and vomiting like an addict when the sight of a too-rare steak at his own celebratory dinner had unexpectedly brought back the memory of his commanding officer’s half shot-off head.

The words rang like a condemnation. All of his flaws so neatly rolled into one. You’re no hero. When he was a boy, he used to sit at his father’s knee and beg for stories from the elder Hux’s time as a commander during Madison’s War of 1812. Sitting by the fire listening to the soft lilt of his father’s voice over a cup of tea or a game of chess were some of his fondest memories, and by the time he was ten he could recite the story of each battle as well as if he’d been there himself. There had never been a time when he hadn’t pictured himself earning his own glory on the battlefield someday. All of the men in his family had been soldiers.

Naturally, Hux had been top of his class at West Point. A promising young officer. A rising star. He developed a reputation for his intelligence, his skill with battleground tactics –  moving lines of men in his mind, like chess pieces – and his tenacity. Sharp-edged ambition ensured that these traits were noticed by the right people, and he was quickly promoted to first lieutenant without ever having seen battle.

Hux had loved everything about military life, from the brutish camaraderie of his men to the bright gold braiding on his uniform.

The day he got word that he was being deployed against Santa Anna with the rest of his platoon, he had never been happier. He hoped, only, that the fighting wouldn’t be over too soon. Not before he could distinguish himself. He excelled at everything- it had never occurred to him that battle would be any different.

That younger Hux seems like a character from a book to him now. Someone he has only read about, and even then, didn’t much like.

The first time a ball had whizzed past his head close enough to ruffle his hair, Hux had frozen. Simply frozen, his knees locking up, limbs turning gelatinous with fear, as cannonshot exploded around him. The sound was deafening. A rolling boom like thunder inside his very bones. His ears rang and he tried to cover them with numb hands, but his limbs were liquid, useless- why had father never told him how loud it was-

Everything was screaming, exploding. The crack of gunshot and men dying all around him. Dirt and mud and blood- and someone is yanking on his arm, shouting at him to get his rifle- "Stop!"

He can’t tell which are his men and which are Santa Anna’s. Everything is moving too fast. He just needed to get his bearings, if everything would only stop-

“Move, lieutenant- Hux, come on!“

A cannonball bursts close enough that Hux’s teeth rattle, and he feels a little bit of shameful wetness seeping into the front of his wool trousers. Then he is on the ground on his knees. Scrabbling around in the muck. How did he get here-

There's a butcher's sound. The hand yanking on his arm goes slack, limp fingers clutching briefly on the woolen sleeve of his coat before the arm slithers heavily to the ground- severed. The man- his man- it had so recently been attached to is still alive. Staring up at Hux with wide, frightened eyes. His shoulder is nothing but meat, shattered by canon-shot, and the blood- there was so much, too much, how- turns the dirt under his hands and knees to warm mud-

Blue. They were blue eyes, and they remained open, staring at Hux, even after the man died.

“You’re no hero, Hux. I want you as far from my company as possible.” In private, General Tarkin’s voice was wry with scorn. The same voice which, mere hours before, had commended him in front of his father and all of his peers for ‘heroism above and beyond the call of duty’.

“I’m sending you to California- Fort Spencer.”

“Yes, sir.” Hux stood at attention, his sweat-slick hand gripping his new papers tightly. He feels that he may be sick again.

It was officially a reward. With his promotion, Hux will be second-in-command at Fort Spencer, the last military outpost west of the mountains. The papers clutched in his hand, which he had read and re-read dutifully, explain that it is a minor waypoint for travelers on their way to California, which sees little-to-no traffic in the winter, when the mountains become impassable.

“My first choice was a firing squad, you know. But seeing as how you did manage to capture the enemy post, I thought it might set a bad precedent.”

A compromise. A post where he can do no harm, and General Tarkin’s old friend Commander Hux need never know that his son is an abject coward.

“Thank you, sir.”

It is not the praise and commendation he had dreamed of as a boy, but he has proven that he isn’t fit for anything better.

“Do you have a hobby, Hux?” There was a knife’s edge of satisfaction in the twist of the General’s mouth.

“I… Swimming, sir.” He swam sometimes in the summer, for exercise. It was close enough to a hobby. His career has always consumed the majority of his life.

“Swimming,” General Tarkin echoed, amused. “I suggest you pack a book. It gets tedious out there.”

Hux had dutifully packed three books in his case. Aristotle, his father’s dog-eared copy of ‘The Federalist’, and a James Fenimore-Cooper novel he had grabbed last-minute at the final trading post before they crossed the Nevadas.

He rations them. Doling himself out words in careful measure, the way a starving man might his last meal.

Fort Spencer thrives on tedium, Hux discovers quickly. Once the cold sets in there is little to do.

Fewer than a dozen men occupy the fort during the winter- there for seemingly no other purpose than to allow the U.S. government to state that the place is occupied year-round. His command, Hux learns quickly, consists of other men like himself- disgraces. Drunks and cowards and madmen. Human detritus that the army has swept under the rug. His commanding officer is a greying, temperamental Major named Krennic. The name is vaguely familiar from some bit of fuss involving a saboteur when Hux was a cadet.

“The Spanish built this place as a mission. We inherited it,” Krennic had informed Hux when he first arrived, tipping a few fingers of cheap bourbon into a pair of antique crystal glasses that seemed, to Hux, far too fine for the use to which they were being put. He sat gingerly in the chair across from Krennic’s sturdy desk. “Along with Phasma. She’s local. Or raised by them, anyway. I can’t imagine you got a word out of her,” he added, referring to the tall, stoic woman who had guided Hux from San Miguel to the fort.

“It’s just us until the thaw clears in April. The only enemy out here is the boredom,” he flashed a thin smile at his own joke. “Mitaka does all the cooking. Rodinon used to be a veterinarian, so he plays doctor.” Krennic drained his glass in one swallow and cleared his throat, seemingly bored already with the task of briefing his newest officer. “I would suggest you don’t get sick. I’d say don’t eat, but then most of us have to.”

“Yes, sir,” Hux said, for lack of anything better to say.

Krennic slouched indolently in his chair, one hand toying listlessly with the gold braiding at his collar, which Hux could see was frayed in several places.

“With your promotion, you’re second in command. Lucky you.”

It didn’t sound like a compliment, and so Hux did not take it as one.

Krennic poured himself a second glass of bourbon and drank it more slowly. “Can I ask what you did to earn the honor of a Fort Spencer commission?”

Hux considered lying. He sipped at his bourbon, felt the cheap sting of it in his throat. “I captured an enemy fort single-handedly, after the rest of my unit was killed,” he said finally. It was the truth. Rather than being impressed, Krennic half-smiled, like Hux had reminded him of something fond. Or perhaps told a joke without realizing it. “Ambitious. Well don’t worry, this place will soon break you of that.”

After that first day, Hux rarely sees Krennic unless the man has some onerous task to assign him, or else he has run out of bourbon. Hux cannot complain overmuch. Assuming control over the daily running of the fort provides him with some sense of purpose, however flimsy. He wastes no time in assuming the brunt of command at Fort Spencer, merely because no one else seems to want it.

While whipping a sense of order into the motley assortment of men there does not make him popular, it at least occupies his time.

There is a running joke at Fort Spencer. It’s, “Did you do anything today?”

He rises at dawn, polishes his boots in the pale light and pushes aside the floating chunks of ice in his wash basin to shave. Drags the rest of the men under his command, protesting, cursing, and half-dressed, out of their beds, and endures muttered comments and hateful glares from all save a stammery little lieutenant named Mitaka, who seems to fairly worship the ground Hux walks on.

It is far from how he imagined his first command.

It would be easy- too easy- to allow the seeping entropy that permeates this place to take hold of him. So Hux deploys his men to whatever petty, tedious little tasks he can find that need doing. Fortifying the main gate, gathering firewood, re-stringing the washing lines- anything he can find to give some sort of shape and purpose to the endless parade of identical days.

Save Mitaka, the men seem to think he’s a senseless little tit for trying to fight the inevitable.

They have all been here longer than he has. Sometimes, when he lies awake in the depths of the pitch-dark night, unable to sleep without dreaming, he wonders if they’re right.

Nights like that he drags himself out of his chilly, narrow bed. With a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, he pads to the window and draws up the oilcloth covering so that he can look out at the distant mountains. Moonlight reflects off their snow-covered peaks, leaving them nearly luminescent. They sit crouched on the horizon, and nights like this he cannot but feel that the mountains living things and that they are watching him back.

Cold frosts his breath. Hux draws the blanket tighter around his shoulders.

“How did you take the fort?”  The man had asked at his debriefing. Hux had hated him and his smooth, calm, nonjudgmental voice. He wanted to be judged.

“When the fighting started, I panicked. I froze.”

“You froze?”

“I was...” Scared. “I laid down on the ground. I played dead.” He remembers the dirt in his mouth, warm, tinged with his comrade’s blood. Closing his eyes, like a child who thinks that doing so will somehow make him invisible.

“You played dead while the rest of your unit fought and died.”

“Yes.”

“But you made it behind enemy lines.”

The words had stuck in his throat. “I was buried.”

A mass grave. His commanding officer’s half shot-off head inches from his face. The crushing weight of dead men piled on top of him. Blood and other filth covering him. The taste of lukewarm blood in his mouth, choking him, running down his throat-

“I climbed out once it got dark.” Pushing aside the dead weight of men twice his size like they weighed nothing. Covered in muck and gore as he climbed from an open grave, the first guard who had seen Hux had simply dropped his rifle in fear and bolted.

“And how did you take the post?”

How to describe that rush of power? The sudden influx of energy, like being possessed, and yet more in control of himself than he had ever been before. Predatory. Fierce.

It had been the adrenaline, surely.

Time passes in a listless trickle of days. Hux oversees the fort, dodging Mitaka’s earnest attempts to get underfoot, and the baleful curses of the rest of his men, who, never the cream of the crop in the first place, had grown lazy and indolent under Krennic’s lax hand. “No side trips. Go straight to San Miguel and back,” Hux refuses to relinquish his hold on the supply list until their errand boy, a particularly addle-brained young private named Cleeves, meets his stare. The man shifts and slouches on the back of his horse- one of their two broken down old nags, the other currently being ridden by Phasma- rolling his eyes like a teenager being lectured by his father and trying halfheartedly to twist the paper out of Hux’s hand. “I know what I’m supposed to be doing, goddamn-” he complains, in a thick southern accent. “Get exactly what’s on the list, nothing more, nothing less, you hear me? No dawdling. No drinking. No women,” Hux adds firmly, releasing the paper. He tempers the urge to smack the man off his horse, knowing it would only make him more enemies. “Aww, come on-“ “I’ll watch him,” Phasma says in her low, calm voice. She is swaddled up in grey furs, looking infinitely more comfortable in the frigid winter air than he is in his woolen greatcoat. Rumor around the fort was that they came from a wolf which she had killed bare-handed. Looking at her, it was not a difficult story to believe. “Thank you, Phasma.” Hux lifts the crossbeam off of the main gate and pulls open the doors just enough for their horses to pass through. Ironic, the woman had proven herself to be the only one of them worth a damn. Hux would have gladly traded his entire command for another of Phasma. The next week without her will be torment, but Hux doesn’t trust Cleeves to find his own prick with both hands, let alone make it two days overland with all their shopping intact, and this will be the last supply run they have time for before the winter snow well and truly cuts them off. On top of that, he had asked Phasma to pick him up another book. Hux reads by light of a single candle in the frozen evening hours, always with a blanket pulled up over his shoulders to ward off the chill that seeps into every corner no matter how much straw he stuffs into the cracks in his walls. He has finished the Aristotle and the Fenimore-Cooper and is dawdling over a re-read of The Federalist, hoping to make it last until Phasma returns with reinforcements, when the cold finally chases him out of his solitary room and into the warmer mess building, where the men stay up late in the evenings conversing, smoking, and warming themselves besides the big fireplace. If there is an epicenter of culture at Fort Spencer, it is the mess hut. He’s made a habit of absenting himself, aware of his own unpopularity, but even he isn’t stubborn enough to lose his toes just to avoid a bit of social awkwardness. Hux bundles himself up in his greatcoat, book under his arm, and crosses the frozen ground at a quick clip. His leather boots are unlined- made for the much warmer climate of New Mexico. There should be a new pair coming back with Phasma and Cleeves.

It has started to snow again, and flecks of it land in his copper hair and on the shoulders of his coat like stars. When he opens the mess door, the wind picks up, forcing a burst of flurries inside with him before he forces it shut.

To Hux’s surprise, his arrival barely stirs a grumble out of the half-dozen men lounging around the fireplace. There are a couple of amused mutters, Private Reich drawls, “Well look who decided to join us,” and that is the end of it.

Major Krennic is the only one who isn’t in the mess, but Hux isn’t surprised. Hux had seen the low light burning in his window as he crossed the square. Considering the hour, he was probably drunk.

Mitaka, who seems to be losing badly at chess with Rodinon, lights up when he notices Hux and he offers a breathless, “Evening, Captain-“ Rodinon takes advantage of his distraction to nudge Mitaka’s rook a few squares to the side.

Hux nods to them, but says nothing, holding his book in his hands like a shield against unwelcome questions. He finds a chair close enough to the fire that he can warm his frozen toes and sinks into it. The book is held open in his lap, but he only gazes at the page, unseeing. He only has a few dozen pages left of The Federalist, and it needs to last him the remainder of the week... In the quiet dark up here in the mountains, reading is the only defense he has to keep the memories at bay.

It’s a balancing act- reading a few sentences at a time, considering them as he watches the snowstorm pick up through the mess hut’s single low window, and returning to his pages before his mind can wander all the way back to New Mexico, and the pit of his comrades bodies that is waiting for him every night when he closes his eyes.

In between pages, he watches the men around him, surreptitiously, idly wondering what sins they committed to earn a sentence in this purgatory.

Rodinon was a cheat and a liar. The absent Cleeves was a fool. Mitaka had dropped his entire life story at Hux’s feet at the first prompting- he had been General Tarkin’s aide de camp until he spilled tea all over the man’s desk. The others Hux doesn’t know, but can guess.

How many of them had tried to escape the world, only to turn back around and try to escape this bleak, awful place?

Outside the window, the snow had begun to fall in thick drifts, and so Hux gazes aimlessly out into the night for long moments before he realizes, with a sudden jolt of fear, that something is gazing back.

[ignitesthestxrs]

i wanna give an example of something i have talked about a fair amount in advice posts, which is twenty percent goals for twenty percent days.

i have been having a few twenty percent days lately and honestly the thought of achieving any goals has felt too hard. get up, go to work, come home, eat, sleep. it’s pretty standard depression behaviour, which often has the effect of making you more depressed, and so the cycle continues.

i can’t fix everything about what is attacking me right now. for a start, a lot of it is brain chemistry! and over-planning everything and then inevitably failing at it is only going to a) trigger my anxiety and b) feed into the depression cycle.

so. 20% goals. i have some chicken defrosting and am going to make a simple dinner for myself with some veggies. roast the chicken so i don’t have to watch it, steam the veggies because all that takes is chopping + time. 

i also have been promising to bring some dresses into work for a friend and forgetting, so i have taken those dresses out of my wardrobe and put them into a bag ready to grab tomorrow.

i cleared some space in my room so that i have some uncluttered areas to exist in instead of letting the depression detritus just sort of roll over me. it’s not pretty, but i’ll do it properly on the weekend when i have some more space to breathe.

and now im gonna wash my face with some great skincare stuff and relax for the evening. i have done some things that needed doing, some things that are good for me, and i am going to be kind to myself.

[aliceinguatemala]

Sunday and Stoves

(Due to technical difficulties, I can’t add pictures to this post, so please see my next post for pictures related to this post.)

Sunday morning we got up, had some breakfast on the hotel’s terrace and set off in our bus for Panajachel on Lake Atitlan. (By the way, tumblr doesn’t give you the option of using accents over vowels as one does in written Spanish - or at least I can’t figure out how to do it. I mention this as Lake Atitlan should have an accent over the second “a.”) Before we left Antigua, we drove up to the Parque Cerro de la Cruz, which translates as Hill of the Cross Park. You can walk up 330 steps from below or you can drive up. In the interest of time, we drove up, but I’m certain all of us could make the climb, no sweat. Well, okay, probably sweat, but still. The view looks out over the city and you’re able to see all three volcanos, but the one that shows up most prominently in pictures looking straight out from the cross is Agua. We took our first group photo and then hit the road.

The trip took a little over two hours. We stopped at a rest stop where various vendors sell art, clothing, food and natural bath and body products. I bought some avocado body lotion at a great price. When I travel to other countries I am often surprised at how little artisans of all kinds charge for their work, based on the amount of labor involved. I’ll say more about this when I get to our visit to the weaving cooperative in San Juan la Laguna.

We arrived at the Cacique Inn here in Panajachel around 12:30 or so. After settling in and having lunch, we had a little free time before going off to the Habitat office here. Many of us walked down the main street to the lake, where a beautiful view awaits. But to get to the view, you have to walk down this street lined with restaurants alongside vendors selling t-shirts, locally woven and embroidered clothing, backpacks, bags and whatever else can be adorned, pottery, tchotchkes and various other sundries. You may also be followed, as we were, by one or more young boys trying to sell their wares. Jackie B, who is quite softhearted, made the mistake of paying attention to one of the young vendors. Encouraged by her attention, he followed us all the way down the street until I, the callous New Yorker, told him that we weren’t going to buy anything and he went off to try his luck elsewhere. It’s challenging to constantly say no and fend people off, especially kids, but as many of us know, especially those of us who live in New York, you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. Otherwise there will be nothing left of yourself and your soul to help those you can help.

During our orientation, we learned about the work we would be doing. Besides building houses for families, Habitat also has a program where they build smokeless stoves and latrines, as well as provide water filters. A family must pay something toward these projects and in the case of the stoves, they pay 150 Quetzals, which is equivalent to about US $20; the total cost of the stove is about US $150. On our build, we’re building only stoves. We have three teams of four and we each build a stove a day for four days. So you math whizzes will have determined we’re going to build 12 stoves.

Many of the poor Guatemalan families cook inside over an open flame. Over time, the room can become black with smoke. Tom showed us a photo of one room that had developed stalactites, or as Tom calls it, “carbon crud,” on the ceiling from years of cooking indoors over the open flame. The Guatemalans with whom we’re working generally live in a collection of cobbled together huts or cinder block dwellings. A room can stand alone or share a wall with one or two other rooms. 

Both of the stoves my group has built the last two days have been in kitchens that you enter directly from outside. To get to another room, you need to go outside and then come back inside the next room.  Often times these dwellings are covered over by a tin corrugated roof and have doors held closed by string, rope or wire. 

The “bathrooms” are often, as our last two have been, a cement “toilet” over a hole in the ground with “walls” of bed sheets or tarps strung up on bamboo poles held in place by string and whatever else is available. If you visit the loo, you’ll be sharing the space with a lot of flies.

Often the areas surrounding the homes of these families have tools, wood, plastic buckets, chicken coops, dogs and cats and detritus scattered about. Yesterday there was one small, pink plastic shoe left abandoned by a small puddle in the yard. Today a bright yellow plastic hair clip shared the same fate, minus the puddle. We’ve been working in an area twenty minutes or so from Pana. Our families might own a small plot of land which cannot be farmed so they work in other people’s fields. Or in the case of the two brothers and their wives, from yesterday’s build, both brothers supported the family by embroidering fabric which is fashioned into clothing.

Thus far our building sites have been surrounded by fields of tall corn stalks. Today there was a stark contrast between the beauty of Lake Atitlan, which we could see from our site, and the poverty in which the family lives. On our way to their home, we walked in past a cow tied to a rope standing down a slight hill from a grouping of sheds and huts of a neighboring family. Approaching our family’s site, we passed a pig in its pen and some chicken coops with their occupants in residence though they were later let out to roam. Taking a snooze in the dirt were three dogs. Laundry hung everywhere, strung along clotheslines. 

There were three or four “kitchens” in the family’s compound which were outside and covered by makeshift tin roofs. One of them had a stove, though not up to the quality of those we’re building. And when I say stove, I don’t mean a Viking range. I mean a stove built with large, handmade bricks, mortar, sand and cement. A plancha, a stainless steel cooktop with three “burners,” sits across the top. The burners are circles of metal you lift off with a special tool, which looks sort of like a candle snuffer outer. There’s a small hook on the end that goes into the small hole in the “burner” so that you can lift it off the plancha. The stove is heated by a wood fire made directly underneath the plancha. The chimney is made of aluminum and goes up and out through the roof. Hence, the smokeless stove.

At orientation we learned about the stoves and latrines and water filters, even though we’re building only stoves. Each of these three items vastly improves the health of the families. There is a significant difference between before and after cooking areas. 

After our introduction to the local staff and our work, we enjoyed some delicious tres leches cake. Being a connoisseur of cake and dessert in general, I can say that tres leches cakes vary greatly in taste. I’m partial to the homemade cake I first had in Oaxaca years ago. Most times when I order tres leches in a restaurant, what I get doesn’t come close to that first cake. I’m pleased to say this one did. I’m also pleased to say that delicious as the cake was, I was virtuous and left about half my piece on my plate.

We returned to our hotel shortly after our cake, which was served with cola. I believe most of us declined the cola. The cake on its own was sweet enough. According to Sandra, one of our terrific field coordinators, Guatemalans put sugar in everything. You get fruit for dessert, it’s got sugar on it. You want a cold drink, it’s got sugar in it. That’s not to say these things aren’t good, but they’re super sweet.

On the way back to the Cacique Inn some of us got sidetracked at this cool shop selling shoes, boots and bags with the local weaving incorporated into all the designs. Karen and Jackie B. both got some neat shoes - Karen some colorful ballet flats and Jackie some shoes that look like Tom’s shoes, the original design. I have my eye on a couple of the very attractive handbags made of leather and woven fabric. As I’ve already mentioned, I've already made some purchases. And I haven’t even told you about the shopping I did at the women’s weaving cooperative in San Juan la Laguna.

Later that night we met with four of the women from Casa Flor Ixcaco, the women’s weaving cooperative. They told us about their business and how it had come to be and how it’s managed now. We heard about their plans and dreams for the future. After their talk, we had dinner together, and the next morning we took a boat ride across the lake to their village, San Juan la Laguna. And that is where I shall pick up in my next post.

Hasta luego para ahora.