#the frog ate an ant right in front of us

[o-ceti]

went on a walk tonight and saw two fossorial ant eating beasts we’ve never/rarely seen before, brahminy blindsnake and an eastern narrow mouthed toad

[elliethesuperfruitlover]

*sings* the family REUNION

A/N: A nice Klaus x Topazi. I’m projecting, and this is also comfort for me right now xx. I’m sick of this country, I want to get the fuck out, but I can’t, so this is what’s happened. I’ve thought about writing this one before, but I think what we all need right now is some tenderness and warmth, so what better way to do it than through fanfiction. This is the first time I’ve written for an OC, and I like it so far. This was initially for a black reader, then I thought, literally today “oh topazi” so here we are.

Warnings: food (and lots of it), mild drink, knowing myself small mentions of racism, mention of sex

Cheeky Tag List: @misskittysmagicportal, @super-unpredictable98, @badsext, @sean-falco, @the-freckled-luba, @iamsexytrash, @crabstick, @robertsheehanownsmyass, @frogs--are--bitches, @seancekitsch

“KLAUS, COME ON, I CAN’T BE LATE” Topazi yelled through the house, checking herself in the mirror one last time before springing to where Klaus was.

 He was sitting on the kitchen island, nibbling on some chips. His feet tapped against the counter every other second.

“I told you, don’t eat yet, you won’t want to eat before we get there and that’s forbidden fruit sir.” she sternly stated, fauxly crossing her arms at him.

“Fine, by the way, your pasta salad is amazing.” he said, making a small chef’s kiss motion with his hands.

  Topazi facepalmed as Klaus kissed her cheek, and he walked to the door and put his sandles on. Jesus sandles, actually. To spent hours making two tins of pasta salad, and he ate almost a full corner of it. He must’ve eaten some of it while she was in the bathroom, or when she was lightly scolding the cats for disturbing the resident mice. She rolled her eyes and packed into the car, but not before saying goodbye to the houseplants.

“How long is the drive supposed to be?” Klaus asked, long limbs extending in the car.

“Just about an hour. It won’t be long, trust me. You’ll wish the drive was even shorter when you get there too.” she said, smiling and Klaus grinned back at her, and he kissed her once more before shuffling over more to his side of the car.

  About 45 minutes of time passed, and during that time, Klaus had opened a plethora of tangents, including pegging, ketchup being a smoothie (to him), why he doesn’t personally trust roaches(they just look weird, and they live forever), as well as why it took so long for him to cut that god-awful beard. All the while T was swerving in lanes, and glancing every now and then at the clock in the car. Klaus sat guzzling water while talking, and she knew the question was going to come up at some point, so she slapped her big girl panties on and took it.

“Are we there yet?” Klaus asked, shifting uncomfortably in his seat. His stomach was poking out, but just barely, and Topazi sighed heavily.

“Klaus, come on. We’ve got a little less than 20 minutes left, it’s not my fault you drank all that water.”  she said, half stern, half jokingly.

“But I have to gooo. Can’t you pull over or something?” he whines, puppy dog eyes showing.

‘We’re on a highway, Klaus.” she muttered, gritting her teeth before pulling into a lane. That caused him to cross his legs, and close his eyes, groaning.

“Please, I really have to go. I’ll try to repay the favor when I can, I promise.” he begs, hands covering his crotch. T thought about it for a moment, and she’d been meaning to have Klaus eat her out again, so why not. She reached in the back and pulled out an empty bottle, and he picked it from her hands.

“I’ve been meaning to do this for a while.” he says, turning away from her and she gagged lightly, but at least he didn’t wet his pants....this time.

Topazi continued to drive for the promised 20 minutes, and she arrived at her parent’s house, cars already piling onto the lawn. Klaus quickly headed to the trash can outside, and threw the bottle away, getting sanitizer from the car. She grabbed a tin of the pasta salad, as well as Klaus, and he followed her to the front of the house.

“Are they even going to like me?” Klaus mumbled, eyebrows scrunching. They’d  had discussions about it before, and his worry was extremely valid. She didn’t want Klaus to feel left out, or bad about anything. He was still a really good lover. He’d voiced his concerns multiple times, and time and time again, she reassured him.

“You’ll be fine. If they say one thing you’re uncomfortable with, I won’t hesitate to leave this place and drive all the way back. You know that.” T replied, using a hand to softly rub his cheek. He leaned into her touch, and the door opened, right as she was reaching for the doorbell for a second ring.

“Hi! Come on it! And you bought a guest, who is this?” Alena asked, ushering her daughter and guest into the house.

“Mom, this is my partner Klaus. Also, pasta salad, which is getting warm as we speak, so let me set it down.” Topazi rushed into the kitchen, shuffling quickly into the house, Klaus bumbling after her, looking around. She opened the fridge and shoved her dish in, gently patting it before stretching mildly, an aftereffect of staying in one spot.

  T walked back over to Klaus and he smiled at her mom, who was walking him outside to meet the rest of the family. She followed closely behind, and she noticed him getting more and more comfortable. He went around meeting everyone and shaking their hands, or hugging them. T met up with her siblings, hugging them, and letting her nieces and nephews up on her hips. She played with them and chatted for a while, and Klaus came back to her, almost skipping.

“Did you know that your dad served in the Army?” Klaus asked her, a small sparkle in his eye.

“Klaus....he’s my dad. Why wouldn’t I know?” she replied, tilting her head to the side. She giggled at his look, and her siblings noticed him, and gave him a collective small rundown. She did argue with her siblings a fuck ton, but they always tended to come to her aid if needed.

  Klaus went around and introduced himself to T’s aunt that just came in, and she giggled as he was almost crushed by the force of her hug. She patted his back and looked him up and down.

“Goodness, you need somethin’ to eat, one more gust of wind, we won’t see you ‘til Christmas!” she stated, shaking her head jokingly.

  He giggled at the effort, and prodded about needing to go to a chiropractor. She cackled, and he went back to T, placing a tiny kiss to her cheek.

“This is going surprisingly well, what the fuuuck?!” he whispered, and she wrapped her arms around him, and hugged him. He placed his chin on top of her head and sighed in her touch. The moment, however, was short lived, as one of Topazi’s nieces came between them and giggled around their ankles, and Klaus picked one of them up, asking their name.

  She was pleasantly shocked at his reaction with the kids, and soon enough, the two of them were running in the yard, playing tag. She was currently in the lead, and her siblings were bounding towards her, waiting for there to be a chance to tackle her. Klaus came up from behind her and tackled her, causing the both of them to crash to the ground.

“Oh come on, that’s nowhere near fair!” she yelled, trying to wiggle away from him. He looked into her eyes, and pecked her lips. They sighed against each other and the sun baked their skin. Klaus eventually rolled off of T, and just as they were getting hungry, dinner was called.

  She ran to the backyard, dress billowing behind her, Klaus in tow, and she washed her hands before getting in line. Her mouth simply watered at the selection of southern food placed in front of her. Klaus was somewhat surprised at everything, but welcomed it happily when confronted with....wait a minute....sweet potatoes with cherries?? Topazi laughed at him, and promised to explain it to him once they sat down. Your family, and you could practically hear their thoughts “Shouldn’t he get more?”. It half sickened her to think of that though, so she found a lawn chair to sit in, carefully placing it to avoid the ant beds and tree roots.

“Okay so, what the fuck is with the sweet potatoes?” Klaus asked, shoving a spoonful of potato salad in his mouth.

“They’re called candied yams. The cherries help them become sweeter. And don’t take the fucking breadcrumbs off the mac and cheese. I’ll slaughter you, that’s the best part.” T whispered, slowly becoming more and more full.

  She went back for another serving (or two) and stopped at dessert, which was provided graciously. Many cakes and pies laid in front of her, as well as tarts, and, wait, who the fuck brought Krispy Kreme?

“Who got lazy?” she mumbled, walking back to Klaus with her plate full of sweets, and she immediately took a bite from the glazed donut, eyes closing. “Still warm though.”

“I mean, Honey only taught me to make a couple things, and donuts weren’t one of them.” he stated, sipping his tea.

  The sun began to set, and the drinks started pouring. The stories began to filter out, and Topazi saw Klaus start to nod off, and she announced their leaving. He sleepily said his goodbyes and when they got into the car, Klaus knocked out almost immediately. The drive home was very quiet. Music played quietly on the radio, and T hummed along quietly. Klaus shuffled every now and then in his sleep, and his breathing fogged the window on his side of the car. When they arrived home, Topazi gently woke Klaus, and he slowly made his way into the house, practically sleepwalking. As they were undressing and getting into bed, Klaus quietly whispered a couple words. Topazi barely heard him, and he repeated himself.

“Thank you for letting me meet your family. I enjoyed it. I’m happy I got to know the people who raised you. They did a damn good job too.” he whispered back, gently kissing Topazi’s head. She got a bit flustered from the compliment and gently thanked him as well, and the two of them fell asleep to the sound of their respective partner’s heartbeats.

Masterlist

[panfishonthefly]

Fly Tying Friday: The Wee Frog

When it comes to topwater flies for panfish, anything goes. That is one of the things I love about warm water fly fishing. Panfish, bass, and other warmwater predators like pickerel and pike are not concerned that your offering is not an exact replication of the last thing they ate. If it looks alive and can fit in their mouth, they will often have a go at it. 

The lack of demand for realism in fly patterns is one thing that sets warmwater fly fishing apart from trout fishing. We are far more concerned with matching the hatch and delivering a proper presentation in the trout world. Warm water fly fishing is a more rough and tumble affair. Fly selection based on whim and fancy can be just as effective as attempting to match what the fish are currently eating.

Looking into one of my warmwater fly boxes, you see a lot of whim and fancy. Garish colors like chartreuse, fluorescent yellow, bright pink don't often occur in the natural world. Based on the contents of my fly boxes, you would think that panfish live in a world filled with psychedelic colors. There is no doubt that these brightly colored, un-natural looking flies work. If they didn't, they would not take up so much room in my fly boxes. However, if you look close enough, you will find more natural-looking flies mixed in with that kaleidoscope of colors. 

Maybe the decades spent chasing trout keep me coming back to more natural-looking flies that imitate the things that panfish eat. I enjoy tying and fishing patterns like damselflies and dragonflies, two essential food items for warm water fish. Also mixed in with the odd-looking foam and hair creations, you will find a smattering of flies that you can readily recognize as terrestrial insects like hoppers, beetles, and ants. The natural-looking flies that stand out the most are the frogs. My frog patterns are instantly recognizable as the amphibians that are meant to represent.

Everyone knows a bass or a pickerel has a hard time ignoring a properly presented frog pattern, but panfish? You can make the argument that most adult frogs are too big of a prey item to be eaten by most panfish. However, there are smaller species of frogs whose habitats mix with that of panfish. In my area, the Northern Cricket Frog is one such example. While technically a tree frog, it does not take to the branches but prefers a more aquatic existence. They are often found along the muddy banks of ponds and slow-moving streams. As an adult, they range in size from three-quarters of an inch to an inch and a half, which firmly puts them in the size range of something big bluegill would try to eat.

If you search the pages of this blog, you will find several small frog patterns that I tie and fish exclusively for panfish. Most are created using a foam or preformed body. The fly pattern in today's post has been teased in a few recent posts and on social media. Each time I show a picture of it, I receive messages and emails requesting more information on the pattern, so I figure it is high time I share it with the world.

This pattern is tied using flat foam. I have tied small frog patterns using flat foam in the past but have never been entirely satisfied with them. Thin 2mm foam does not have the bulk needed to imitate a chunky little frog, and the thicker foam I have worked with in the past was tough to work with on the small scale in which these flies are tied.  

After joining Semperfli's team of fly tiers, I was introduced to a new type of foam. Semperfli's flat foam is a closed-cell foam, but the air pockets or cells are larger than what is found in most fly tyers foam. This characteristic means the foam compresses easily. Their foam is also remarkably strong and resists tearing quite well. Because it compresses so well, I can use thicker foam, in this case 4.5mm, to create a frog body on hooks as small as a size 12. Combine a body made from this thick foam and Pat Cohen's Creature Frog Legs; you have the perfect panfish-sized frog pattern.  

You could tie the fly very simply with just those two materials, but I like to add an underbody that adds a little sparkle and movement by using a material like Semperfli Straggle String or Straggle Legs. It gives the fly a finished appearance along with added color, movement, and flash. Rubber legs are a must because a topwater bluegill fly without rubber legs doesn't feel right.

I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of warmer weather and the return of my favorite pastime, topwater fishing for panfish. There is something about bluegill taking a fly off the surface that puts a smile on my face every time. Finally, it appears my wait is over, and mother nature has warmed things up to the point that my favorite fish have returned to the shallows and a looking up for their next meal.

One of the things I love about fishing tiny frog patterns for panfish is the take. Bluegills often slide under a topwater fly and suck it off the surface with an audible slurp. Not the case with a frog pattern. They seem to know that this type of prey can elude them if they're not careful, and they grab them off the surface with a vengeance, more like the take of a bass. I am often surprised when a big bluegill comes to hand, mistaking the violent take for a bass.  

Fishing Frog Patterns

When fishing frog patterns, I prefer to cast parallel to the bank instead of casting out into the middle of the pond. Frogs are found along the bank, seldom straying far from it, and this is where I find these flies to be most effective. My favorite way to fish them is to slip on a pair of hip boots or waders and walk out a short distance from the shoreline. I then slowly make my way along the shore, casting ahead of me as I move. My first cast will put the fly as close to the bank as possible. I then fan out my casts until I reach a point 10 -15 feet from shore. I will then move down the shoreline a short distance and repeat the process. Fishing from a float tube or kayak is also a good option for this type of fishing as you can bring the watercraft close to the shoreline and use the same method. Fishing from the bank is usually problematic as there are generally too many obstructions to grab a fly line or rid tip.

A plus side to fishing frog patterns for panfish is that you will attract predators like bass and pickerel. Even though a size 12 frog is not much of a meal for a bass, they seem to recognize an easy snack and seldom pass it up. I have found that pickerel are so fond of these tiny frogs that I refrain from fishing them in waters where they are present in good numbers as I lose far too many flies to these toothy predators. If tiny frog patterns are not part of your topwater panfish arsenal, they should be. Give them a try; you won't be disappointed!

Pattern Recipe:

Hook: Size 10 or 12 Firehole 618 or comparable hook

Thread: 6/0 Semperfli Classic Waxed Thread in the color of choice

Frog Legs: Cohen’s Creature Fog Legs size micro or mini depending on hook used

Underbody: Semperfli Straggle String or Straggle Legs

Legs: Round Rubber

Body: Semperfli 4.5mm Flat Foam in the color of choice cut in a teardrop shape using a foam cutter or trimmed by hand with scissors, craft knife, etc.

Thread Treatment: Solarez Bone Dry UV Resin or Solarez Bone Dry Plus UV Resin

Tying Instructions:

The first step is to prepare the body. You want an appropriately sized teardrop shape piece of foam. You can cut the shape out by hand, but I like using a spider body foam cutter. The largest size spider body cutter produces a perfectly sized body for a size 12 frog.

Start your thread on the hook shank and wrap it down to the bend of the hook. At the bend, tie in your frog legs. Note: I add color to the legs before tying them in. I get the best results using fabric markers as the colors will not fade even after repeated dunkings in the water.

Optional: Before tying in the frog legs, you can add a small loop of stiff monofilament. This loop may help keep the frog legs from fouling on the hook shank (something that is seldom a problem on a fly this small), and it gives you a convenient tie-in point for adding a dropper. The legs are then added on top of the loop.

After tying in the frog legs, I bring the thread back towards the eye, stopping an eye length or two from the front of the hook.

Capture a small piece of the wide end of the foam body with thread wraps and lash it down to the front of the hook. When working with foam, don't use a lot of pressure on the first few thread wraps to avoid cutting the foam. Lightly trap down the foam with a wrap or two, then increase the thread pressure with subsequent wraps to further compress and secure the foam. Semperfli foam excels here as it compresses easily without bulk.

Once the front of the body is tied down, tie in a short piece of Straggle String right at the tie-in point for the foam.

Leaving the Straggle String in place, advance the thread to a point mid-shank and tie in a pair of rubber legs, bringing the thread back to the bend once the legs are secured.

Wind the Straggle String down the hook shank, careful not to tie down the rubber leg material. When you reach the frog legs' tie-in point, you can tie it off and cut away the excess.

The final step is to fold the body back and lash it down. Once secured, trim away excess foam (if using a foam cutter there will be a small tab of foam remaining), whip finish, and cut away the thread. A drop of thin UV Resin like Solarez Bone Dry protects the thread and keeps everything in place.

Note:  There is probably no need to color the body as the fish likely only see the underside of the fly. Despite that, I always add some froggy-looking spots to the fly because I think they look better, but I doubt the fish care. I usually add custom colors once the fly is completed.

[angelanimedesaray]

Through The Looking Glass Chapter 2: Like Smoke

AN:  Ahhh, yes, I get to continue this one--I keep getting distracted...by the planning for this series.  I’ve got pages and pages of notes for this series now, It’s getting to be quite the ambitious project.  OH and I have a playlist for the series, too, on YouTube.  There’s a link for it on the Masterlist.  BTW I’m tagging all of the things that have to do with this (Chapters, Masterlist, and Playlist) #TTLG and all my fanfics have my penname AngelDesaray in the tags (Unless for some reason I forgot)

P.S. to find my masterlists, I link the masterlists for series in every chapter (As well as previous or next chapters).  Links to stories and series masterlists can also be found in my Author Masterlists, which can be found as a separate page on my blog under the Masterlist tab on desktop (Only shows published pieces), or as a link in my blog bio for mobile users (Also has upcoming pieces listed).

Characters:  Levi, Reader, Reader’s Mom, Kenny (Mentioned)

Pairing:  (Eventual) Levi x Reader

Warnings:  I mean, there’s fluff...and there’s some sad stuff near the end...

Word Count:  5004

<---Previous Chapter    Masterlist    Next Chapter--->

(Gif From Your Lie In April, found on Your-Lie-In-April on Deviant Art)

*Levi’s POV*

The sound of a distant woman calling a familiar name roused Levi from what may have been one of the best rests he’d had so far in his very young life, eyes fluttering open slowly as he tried to remember where he was.  Everything was so soft, and he just wanted to drift back to sleep, curl up in the fluffy warmth around him and…

The woman’s voice came again, a little closer this time, and there came a sudden burst of movement next to him, Levi’s eyes flying open as the little body of Y/N flailed to untangle themselves from the mess of blankets around both of them.  She struggled to her feet with a squeak and fumbled for the door that she toppled ungracefully out of, crawling on hands and knees out the door and kicking it shut.  Levi was left dazed, halfway risen out of the blankets, and wondering what had just happened, but now also laden down with the weight of several more blankets since she had thrown blankets and pillows onto him in her mad dash to get out the door.  He pushed a few blankets off, crawling over to one of the tiny windows to catch a glimpse of the girl reaching the door to the back of the house, where the woman who had been calling her name was standing in the doorway.  He could only hear fragments of the conversation if he listened hard enough.

“...sleep in...all night?”

“...forgot...check...almost couldn’t sleep....”

“...school...thirty minutes...late…”

Levi shook his head, dropping back down into the mess of blankets with a muffled yawn as he glanced around trying to find the water bottles in the now tumultuous mass of blankets and pillows.  Once he found them buried in one of the corners he finished off the one bottle he’d started on the day before he laid back down, contemplating going back to sleep despite the light filtering into the little house.  He was so comfortable, and if something happened and he had to go back, then he wanted to enjoy it while he could.

The door was thrown open, startling Levi with the suddenness of it all as he saw Y/N stick her head inside, huffing like she was out of breath and hadn’t stopped running since she scrambled out of the tiny house.  After her head poked in and she saw where Levi was, she tossed a sac of some sheer, opaque material inside, its contents rolling around.  She spoke quickly in the brief flash that he saw her, the last part tacked on as she shut the door and hurried away.

“I gotta go, I’m late for school!  Here’s food, see you later!”

Her mother shouted from the house for Y/N to hurry, even though she was already scrambling back.  Afraid that if he tried to fall asleep again she’d simply re-appear and scare him awake, Levi resigned himself to getting up for the day, reaching for the bag she’d tossed inside and poking through its contents.  There were two more rolls inside, no longer fresh and warm like they’d been yesterday, but still good.  There was also a green apple, something hard wrapped in some kind of thin, shiny, silvery covering, a spoon, and two white and red containers a little bigger than his hands that were cool to the touch and had a similar silvery covering over the top.

Deciding to investigate the stranger things later, he munched on the bread and the apple first, gazing out the window thoughtfully.

When all that was left of the start of his breakfast was half the apple, he grabbed the bag and one of the water bottles and decided to venture back outside, a little more used to the light this time since he’d woken up to it.  His legs were stronger than yesterday, steps surer as he tentatively ventured out of the little house, staying close to the walls of the little house and his head turned towards the house to keep an eye on it as he shuffled closer to the trees behind the house.  He wanted a closer look at the trees--wanted to sit quietly outside in the warm sun, breathing in the fresh air while he ate and explore the surface while he was up here.  If Y/N was going to be gone for a while, then that was what he wanted to spend the day doing.

The shade was much kinder to him than the direct sunlight, easier on his eyes that were used to the dark and not as hot.  It was comfortable and cool in the shade, and he stopped when he saw another large house starting to appear through the trees, doubling back a bit and finding a nice dry patch of grass in the shade to sit down in, curling up comfortably on the ground and squinting up at the sunlight flickering down on him through the leaves.  He was close enough to a tree he could put his hand gently against its trunk, feeling the grooves of the bark beneath his fingers and watching the rather large black ants travelling up its trunk while carrying tiny crumbs of food.

Speaking of, he still had the stranger things in the sack she had thrown him to eat.

Resting his back against the tree trunk with his knees pulled halfway up to his chest, Levi set about investigating the stranger, silvery wrapped things in the bag, finding a soothing solace in the quiet and the green all around him.

*Reader’s POV*

School couldn’t go by fast enough.  Sure, you were in trouble with your mother for messing around outside looking for a stuffed animal instead of getting ready for school.  It was better than her finding out you’d hid a boy in your playhouse all night, though, right?

Of course, with how antsy you were to get back home and see him when you had school to distract you, he must be bored out of his mind alone in that playhouse!  And he wasn’t going to get lunch until you got home, either!

With all these thoughts, you were bouncing in your seat on the bus, then racing home on foot once you finally reached your stop.  Your backpack lay abandoned at the front door, causing your mother to yell at you to pick up after yourself as you skidded into the kitchen.  Your tongue poked out as you hurried to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich before your mother came in and tried to stop you from having a pb&j for a ‘light snack’.  Once that was finished, you grabbed two Capri Suns your mother probably thought she’d hidden, grabbed a family sized bag of chips, and dashed outside towards the playhouse.

“I’m back!  I brought...some…”

You paused, head craning and foot poking at the mess of blankets in case he was simply buried under all the fluffy things.  Still, you didn’t find Levi in the playhouse, and you stepped back outside with a frown, wondering where the little boy had disappeared to.  Your mother would have instantly pulled you aside to talk about Levi if he’d gone inside the house and been seen.  Maybe he’d wandered into the brush behind your house?

Changing directions, you started picking your way through the trees and bushes, looking for the skinny boy you’d been smuggling quite a bit of food to by now.

“Levi?  Levi!” you called as you came closer and closer to the backyard of the people who lived behind your family.

You squeaked in surprise as his head suddenly peaked out from behind one of the thicker trees, disheveled strands of black hair falling into eyes that were slightly brighter than they had been yesterday.  It seemed he was sitting with his back against the tree, legs curled up towards him, and the plastic bag of food you’d given him earlier now holding his trash at his side.  You gave him a bright smile, sitting down next to him and offering the pb&j to him.

“I brought lunch,” you said cheerfully, opening the bag of chips that made Levi jump from the loud pop sound before you placed the bag between the two of you, working on punching the yellow straws into the Capri Suns.

The silence lasted perhaps only a few seconds as Levi tore into the sandwich before it rapidly devolved into almost frantic smacking noises from Levi.  Maybe you’d put too much peanut butter on it?

You giggled as you watched him continue to make those smacking noises, struggling with the amount of sticky peanut butter with an amusing look of bemusement on his face.  When he looked at you accusingly for laughing at him, you offered him one of the Capri Suns with that bright smile still on your face.  He took it carefully from you, eyeing you more than it as you sucked happily on your own Capri Sun.  When he finally started drinking the juice, he seemed to relax, the juice soothing his peanut butter problem.

“You must have been bored, out here so long,” you said once your Capri Sun was finished.  Levi shrugged, taking smaller bites of the pb&j now.

“I like it out here,” he said simply, and now that you looked, his eyes did seem to constantly drink in the greenery around the two of you.

“There’s a...a con...conservation place a little ways away,” you said slowly, making sure the bigger word came out right.  “Mom lets me go play there--we could too.  There’s long grass, and trees, and berries, and a pond with fish and frogs and rabbits--we can play there.”

Levi was silent, chewing on the last of his pb&j thoughtfully.  “How far is it?” he asked slowly.  You suddenly remembered how he’d had a hard time moving around yesterday.

“A few streets over…” you admitted sheepishly.  “But I could carry you!”

Levi made a face, but you were already on your feet and exuding raw unbridled, positive energy.  “No, really, I’m pretty strong, I can pick up my friend at school, and you’re tinier than them.  I could give you a piggyback ride there!”

You started putting your trash in the plastic bag, rolling up the so-far untouched bag of chips.  “We can take the chips with us--I’ll throw this away, tell Mom where I’m going, and come get you!” you said cheerfully, already making your way back through the brush towards the house before Levi had the chance to agree or disagree.

*Levi’s POV*

She hadn’t been lying when she said she could carry him.  It was embarrassing, but no one seemed to be looking as the two children made their way down the sidewalks.  Levi’s legs were wrapped around her waist, her hands tucked under his knees to support him as she leaned forward slightly, Levi leaning against her back with his arms wrapped around her shoulders and across her chest for extra security.  His head peeked around hers to look around him as she carried him down a few streets paved with some kind of seamless black stone down the middle and raised brown stone on the sides.  Every now and then he saw some sort of strange horseless carriage like objects sitting unmoving along the edge of the black street or still on the wider brown-stone pathways leading up to homes.  He didn’t ask what they were, figuring it was something only surface people got to have, and Y/N was pretty much ignoring them, so he figured it was a normal sight for her, even if he found it strange.

As they went up a hill, Y/N started to pant underneath him, her hands starting to feel sweaty on his legs and her movements a little slower.

“I can walk,” Levi murmured as she continued to struggle.  He wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to make it if he tried, honestly, but the girl shook her head.

“No, it’s...just on the other side.  I can carry you...the rest of the way,” she said between huffed breaths, shifting her grip on his legs and picking up her speed slightly as she powered stubbornly forward.  Levi clung tightly to her, turning his head and resting it on her neck as his eyes looked up at the light blue sky, gaze tracing the outlines of the soft white clouds that drifted lazily by and watching the leaves of the trees in various yards sway high above him in the breeze.  If he hadn’t been so transfixed by the sight of the surface world, he could have easily fallen asleep against her back, the secure comfort she was giving him making him feel drowsy in contrast with the energy that raced through his system with the excitement of everything around him.  Her breathing underneath him was heavy, and he could feel her quickened heartbeat against his ear, but she kept climbing with Levi on her back without a word of complaint.

When she crested the hill, the street dipped low just briefly before stretching out in one straight road, trees framing both sides for several paces before the trees on the right gave way to a meadow of long grass, just like she said.  Levi stretched forward over her shoulder to see it, eyes widening as more and more of it came into view.

Y/N only carried him until the edge of the meadow, setting him down in the soft grass with a relieved sigh.  Levi pressed some of the longer grass down as they walked forward, the meadow opening up and dipping into a lower basin where a fairly large body of water rippled and sparkled in the sunlight.  On the other side of the meadow was a thick collection of trees and bushes, and if he looked hard enough, he could see spots of dark red or blue on some of the bushes.  But that was for later--right now, he wanted to get closer to that giant pond in the middle of the meadow.

The grass tickled his arms and legs, causing him to scratch here and there as he stumbled his way down the uneven slope on shaky legs, Y/N close by the entire time with her head tilted up to the sky and the warm sun with a smile on her face.  She was so...so...happy.  She probably didn’t have to worry about anything, didn’t have to be afraid of anything.  She could only be this happy because she lived on the surface, and the things that lurked in the dark underground weren’t lurking above it.  Her life seemed...easy, perfect, and he envied her for it.  But he couldn’t envy her for it for long, because she was still sharing it with a dirty Underground dweller like him, even if he couldn’t fathom why.

“Can you swim?” she asked him as they finally reached the bank, already taking off her shoes and socks as she spoke, sitting on her rear with her feet kicking in the air in the process.  Levi shook his head, and she gave him a sheepish smile.  “I’m not a good swimmer, yet, I just bob.  We can just stick our feet in, cause it gets a little deep.”

She sat down on the edge and dipped her feet in with a little giggle, smoothing down a patch of the long grass around her and looking at him expectantly.  Levi still approached the water slowly despite the fact he was already imagining how refreshing it was going to feel, not wanting to get too eager and accidentally fall in after she said it was deep.  He settled down next to her, feet stretching out experimentally towards the water and tentatively dipping his rather dirty feet below the surface.  It was cool--not cold thanks to the sun shining down on it, but not warm either.  Pleasant in contrast to the warm air with the sun beaming down on him when there was no shade to protect him.  Levi leaned down, letting his hand dip into the water as well, swirling the waters around between his fingers.

While he was doing that, a thought occurred to him, and he dunked both hands below the water, taking the time to scrub at the dirt on his hands, arms, legs, and feet before he cupped his hands and scooped up water to splash on his face, rubbing at the dirt there, as well.  It felt so good to be clean, to see and feel the dirt giving way against the crystalline water and see the water droplets against his skin shimmer clearly under the sunlight.

Now he wouldn’t get any more dirt on all those comfy blankets and pillows in the small house he was sleeping in.

There was a sudden splash, and water spattered across his face, followed by the sounds of giggles beside him.  He was taken aback at first, looking over at Y/N just in time to see her splash the water towards him again with a huge grin on her face.  She laughed more audibly this time, with Levi trying to duck to avoid getting splashed in the face again before he returned the splashes with some of his own.  It quickly escalated, water sloshing violently between them and getting them both soaked, Y/N’s gleeful shrieks filling the air and a wide smile working its  way across Levi’s face.  He felt lighter than he’d felt in some time, like he would float away up into that blue sky any moment.

“Okay, okay!  Uncle!  Uncle!  I give up!” she eventually laughed, the splashing finally calming down and the waters returning to its calm state around their feet.  They were soaked now, and Levi shivered, but the sun was still warm against his skin, and he felt like he’d dry out in no time.  Y/N pulled her feet out of the water, trying to wring the water out of her hair as she stretched, eyes on the bushes on the other side of the pond.  “Do you want some berries?”

“Okay.”

He watched her head over to the bushes he’d been eyeing earlier, brushing hair out of his face and watching as she picked berries off the bushes and used her shirt as a makeshift basket to collect them in.  The only sound was the occasional drip of disturbed water or the rustle of leaves, and he laid down, some of the grass curling back up around him and towards the sky.  A soft breeze wafted the grass above him, the thin blades waving in and out of his immediate field of vision.

Please...let me stay...

A few minutes later, Y/N had reappeared, standing over him with her shirt basket heavy with berries as she kneeled down next to him.  He sat up on his elbows as she showed him her collection of small red cup-shaped berries and round blue berries, her free hand already digging into her collection to grab a few of the red berries.

“Raspberries are my favorite,” she explained with a small giggle, offering the berries to him after she’d grabbed what she wanted.  Levi got a handful for himself, a lot less hesitant in trying the foods this time since almost everything she’d given him so far had been delicious.

He didn’t care much for those chalky rectangular things in the silver wrapping this morning, though.

Something caught Y/Ns attention, her head turned to the side as she went still, nose wrinkling as she suddenly became far more concentrated than Levi had seen her so far.

“Hold these,” she said quietly, dumping the rest of the berries on him so suddenly that Levi had to scramble to snatch them up before they all tumbled to the ground.  She wasn’t even paying attention anymore, crouching low in the grass and creeping slowly towards the pond like a kitten stalking a mouse.  He watched her, confused, wondering for a few moments if she’d seen a fish in the pond or a bird or something.

Suddenly, her hands shot out, cupped around something as she let out a loud squeal and leapt to her feet.

“I got it, I got it!” she crowed, prancing back over to where Levi was sitting, getting really close on her knees with her cupped hands between them.  She held it up close to his face, but craned her head awkwardly so she could see as well, forehead knocking against his.  “I don’t want it...to get away…”

Slowly, she bent her thumbs, a small crack appearing in her cupped hands that she gradually widened further and further.  At first, Levi didn’t see anything, but then, slowly, two glimmering, tiny, beady black eyes caught some of the sun, and Levi realized there was some kind of tiny creature trapped in her hands.  He got closer, trying to see what it was, faintly making out a fat but tiny body, spindly limbs, and--

Y/N suddenly shrieked, hands opening reflexively.  “AH!  It peed on me!”

All Levi registered was peed and the fact that suddenly a tiny little brown and spotted body was flying out of her hands, through the air, and directly towards him.  His own vocal reaction was lost in her continued shrieks of disgust as he tried to get out of the way, a tiny, bumpy, sort of slimy body landing on his arm.  Afraid the thing was going to pee on him, too, his arm jerked upwards in response, and it flew off of him and disappeared back into the tall grass.

Y/N had abandoned him to the little menace already, her hands plunged into the pond as she scrubbed valiantly at her hands, muttering ew over and over before she pulled them back out and tried to shake the water off her hands.  Levi was still wide eyed and trying to figure out what just happened.

That grin was back on her face as she turned towards him again.  “I think I want to try and catch another one!”

“Why?”

“So I know I can really catch a frog; I wasn’t just lucky that time!”

Levi scowled, looking down at all the berries that had been scattered everywhere while he’d flailed around trying to get away from the stupid, tiny frog.  She only laughed at his reaction, coming over and grabbing his arm to pull him up onto his feet, dragging him with her towards the trees.

“Okay, okay, we can play hide and seek instead.  There’s plenty of places to hide in the woods.  C’mon, c’mon!”

And just like that, the little hellion frog was forgotten as she urged him on towards the next experience, sweeping him away into more discoveries and experiences before he had the chance to dwell too long on whatever bad tried to poke through.  Even though his legs were shaky, she volunteered to be ‘it’ over and over so he could rest in his hiding spots while she tried to find him, stopping every now and then to look at a bug they’d found, to pick a few berries from the bushes in the area, and at one point, to stare in wonder at a small nest of baby bunnies hidden in a hollow at the base of a tree.  They looked but didn’t touch, watching the two tiny rabbits squinting back at them with their little noses twitching furiously, the two rabbits curled close together much like Levi and Y/N had curled up under the blankets last night.

And when the sky started to turn to a rusted orange, she carried him on her back without complaint once again as they headed towards her house once more.  Levi could hardly stand after all the running around they’d done, but he didn’t regret it.  In fact, he was perfectly content, even with the burn in his legs and ache in his arms.  He was already dozing off as he tucked his head against her back once again, the exhaustion mixed with the relief from her carrying him back instead of him having to walk back, mixed in with the warm air and the dim light from the sun making it easy to simply...drift…

He woke up long enough to realize when he was being set down in front of the little house, weaving on his feet as Y/N helped him back inside and he curled up in the cloud of blankets and pillows with a softly sighed good-night, his hand groping about to find Tuff before he slipped into a blissful sleep.

When Levi opened his eyes again, it wasn’t to the bright light filtering into the tiny house as he curled up in a nest of blankets.  It was dark, and the smell of sweat and dirt and decay assaulted him much more viscerally after the contrast of the clean, fresh air.  He wasn’t even curled up on his side like he’d been when he’d fallen asleep, but still sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest, back against the wall, arms wrapped around his legs.

Directly across from him was the bed that still had his mother’s dead body.

It was...a dream?

Blinking slowly, it seemed he hadn’t moved an inch, and he was covered in dirt and grime once more, not a hint of a clean patch of skin after scrubbing clean by that pond.

Or was I...seeing things?

It didn’t matter...it wasn’t real.  Levi’s heart plummeted, and he ducked his head into his arms, surprised that his eyes actually stung with tears when he’d thought he was too dehydrated to cry anymore.  None of it was real.  The surface, the sun, the air, all the green, the nest of blankets, the food, the girl...it wasn’t real.  He was still wasting away, forgotten where no one cared about him anymore, waiting to finally die.  If he was seeing things, maybe he was finally close.

And yet…

The door to the room opened, a pale yellow light cutting across the room and over the bed, drawing Levi’s attention towards the man who stood just inside the doorway.  The sudden appearance made him forget--for the time being--that he wasn’t hungry anymore.

*Reader’s POV*

“Where do you think you’re going with that bowl, young lady?”

You froze by the back door, a bowl of cereal you were hoping to bring out to Levi before you had to go to school in hand, suddenly feeling cold at your mother’s scolding tone.  This was it, you’d been caught, you couldn’t think of an excuse fast enough and your mother was already closing in, probably to take the bowl from you, but Levi needed to eat before you left.

Looks like you couldn’t hide the boy in your playhouse much longer.  Why did you feel like telling your mom about him was going to get you in trouble.

“I...I need to...Levi needs breakfast,” you said in a small voice, feeling like you were about to get yelled at any moment.

“Levi?” your mother asked, pausing just by the door.  “Who’s Levi?”

“T...The boy in the playhouse.”

Her expression went blank, and then for some reason, worried.  “There’s a boy in the playhouse?”

You nodded very slowly.  “He-he’s been there since the other day.  He needs to eat before I go to school, or he’ll have to wait till I’m home.”

Your mother’s expression was unreadable as she stared at you and the bowl in your hand for several long moments, then carefully said in an even tone, “Can I see Levi?”

She wasn’t yelling, so you didn’t think she was angry.  Maybe this was good--if your mom knew about Levi, she could make sure he was taken care of while you were at school--he could have real food and eat dinner inside with you, sleep in a bed--or on the couch at least--and probably get a change of clothes.

After you nodded, your mom took the bowl out of your hands and followed you outside towards the playhouse.  You hoped he was already awake--he probably was, since he’d fallen asleep so early yesterday.

“Levi?” You called softly, opening the door to see...a mass of blankets and pillows, like yesterday.  Again, you pushed around a few of the blankets but couldn’t find him.  Your mom was standing outside the house with the bowl still and you shook your head as you immediately went to look in the brush again.  “He was back here when I came outside yesterday, he’s probably there, now.”

“Y/N…” your mother was starting to say tiredly, but you were already picking through the trees looking for Levi again, ignoring her as you tried to find your new friend.

“Levi?  Levi?  Levi!” you called, hoping his head would peek around one of the trees again.  But he didn’t show up--you couldn’t find a trace of him.  Did he leave?  Did he leave in the middle of the night or before you woke up?  He’d seemed happy yesterday, so why would he leave?  Didn’t he like you, didn’t he like sleeping in the blanket nest?

“Y/N, its okay to have imaginary friends, but you can’t waste food on them, they don’t eat like you and mommy and daddy--” your mother was saying carefully behind you.  Hearing her suggest Levi wasn’t real made you suddenly angry and frustrated as well as hurt at the thought that Levi had simply left.

“He wasn’t imaginary, he was real!  A real boy that was really here!”  Your eyes burned and a few angry, hurt tears slipped past your eyes, the words starting to stick in your throat as you felt yourself starting to cry.  “His name was Levi...and he didn’t even say bye.”

Next Chapter--->

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[jaredandlee]

Loudtale Chapter 1, RUINS

A long time ago, there lived two races, humans and monsters. One day, war broke out, but because there were humans that have befriended the monsters for a long amount of time, so a few of the humans joined the monsters as their allies during the war. After a long battle, the humans were victorious, and with the best sorcerers, they created a magical barrier to seal the monsters underground, along with the humans whom sided with them were casted deep underground together and never to be seen again.

201X, Mount Ebbot

Legand say that people who climbs this mountain never returns.

AN:the humans whom sided with the monsters had gain their trust and were granted with some magic abilities, and some humans even lived as long as the monsters, which the scientists had claimed the humans had evolved into half like monsters ,(for instance, Rita has toriels horns, Lisa has alphas tail and Lynn has blue skin) in which case, they shared the ability to stay alive for a long time.

A small figure with a red cap fell into the cave of mount Ebbot, she landed on a patch of white flowers,it was dark, the only source of light was from where she had fallen, "Well, guess there's no turning back now. "Lana thought. She was wearing a dark blue sweater with sappy green stripes, with her hair in two pigtails tied down and missing front teeth. She saw only one way and went through the door, in front of her was a patch of grass, and among the patch was a single white flower ,the flower had a baby-ish face, and greeted Lana with mostly baby gibberish, but somehow Lana understood the white flower, the lilian said, "Poo poo" (Howdy, I'm lily, lily the lilian, you're a human aren't cha? Hehe ,you must be so confused, somebody ought to teach ya how things work around here). "The room got dark, a red heart formed in front of Lana, "poopoo(that's your soul, the culmination of your being, your soul starts off weak, but you can get stronger by gaining exp, which would increase your lv, what does lv stands for? Why LOVE of course! You want some love don't cha, here have some friendliness pellets). "Five white pellets appear in front of her, " poo poo(Move your soul to catch them, ready? Here we go). "Lana thought, "this is unexpected, but this cute flower couldn't want to hurt me ,could it?? "

Just as the pellets gained a closer distance, a voice whisper in her head ,"MOVE YOU IDIOT!! "But it was too late, Lana was struck and pain coursed through her whole body, her hp went down to 1.When she was able to see, she saw lily laughing menacingly and said more baby gibberish, "Hehehe poopoo(YOU IDIOT! WHY WOULD ANYONE PASS UP A CHANCE LIKE THIS?!? AFTER ALL ,IN THIS WORLD ,IT'S KILL OR BE KILLED!! )"With that lily threw more pellets surrounding the red soul, as they inched closer, lily laughed with a maniacal smile, just as Lana thought she was a goner, the pellets vanished, she felt a sudden surge of relief, and was healed back to full hp, Lily the lilian was astonished and suddenly a fire ball flew and hit the flower out of sight. Just then , a blonde women in her mid forties wearing a-pink robe and white sleeves, she grumbled,"Dang it, this weird flower has been nothing but trouble. ",she turned and saw Lana confused and scared. "Hello there sweetie,don't be scared, I'm Rita, the caretaker of the ruins, I come through the ruins in case anyone is need of help, looks like you fell down from the surface aren't you honey? Come on, I'll guide you through the catatombs. "

As Rita lead Lana through the gateways and puzzles, she explained that one must solve each puzzles in order to enter the next room. Rita also explained that monsters in the ruin would attack and would be in a FIGHT,she said she can choose to FIGHT or ACT so that Rita would be able to solve the conflict. After a few rooms and a battle with a froggit (in which Lana was handling just fine by talking to it and bringing up her pet frog, but Rita got worry some and ask her to keep up), Rita intentionally fasten her pace to test Lana's independence. Fortunately for Lana, she was a fast one, and caught up to Rita with ease. While Rita was fixing her hair, she noticed a set of small horns on her head, but decided it was an underground thing and put the question aside. Just as Rita finished explaining the reason, Lana received a cell phone from her , in which looked very ancient and can only be used for calling. When Lana was asked to stay in the room she obliged, and off left Rita. After five minutes, Lana received a phone call from Rita, as she was concerned of Lana being alone, Lana told her she was doing just fine, but then she heard barking from the other side of the phone, "No Charles, come back here with my phone!!, "Lana was determined on helping Rita, (plus she wanted to check out that dog )so she entered the next room.

Just as Lana entered the room, a froggit from before showed up and talked to Lana. "Ribbit ribbit(Excuse me human, I have some important information on fighting monsters. When you encounter a monster, you can FIGHT them or ACT in a certain way to wear them out, but when they do not want to FIGHT, please human, use MERCY, and spare them.) "Lana deeply considered the options, as she was an animal lover on the surface, she nodded and went into a room with only a bowl of candy and a note that said"Take a piece ",so she took the monster candy and continued her journey.

Just as her journey begun, she encountered a whimsun, it was a small creature with wings behind, before she could say anything, whinsun flee in terror and disappeared. After another few encounters with some monsters and puzzles, Lana arrived in a room where a ghost was blocking the way, and from the unusual snoring, she realized the ghost was faking it. "Zzzzzzzsigh......aretheygoneyet?zzzzzzzzzzzz"Lana was tempted to walk pass it as it was misty and gloomy but decided it would be rude, so she gave a gentle push, and was encountered. NAPSTALUCE blocks the way. Napstaluce starts to sigh, the dread air slowly intercepts Lana while she dodged them. "Oh........... I'm sorry................ ".Lana decided to cheer her up, "that felt......a little better........ "Bats flew in and were all over the room, "Fangs, please ...............ask your friends............... to be nice............. "Lana dodged the little critters and cheered Napstaluce again, "Hey.......... do you......... want to hear........ my poems.....? "Lana agreed and so the ghost recited her poem.

I came to the ruins alone,

Never to be heard of a moan.

But just then somebody came,

And put all my misery away.

Napstaluce awaited patiently for Lana's response, Lana simply cheered and the ghost blushed"Oh gee......... "And the fight was over. Lucy the ghost have never felt this happy, she almost suppressed a smile"Sigh............I'm just a dark and gloomy ghost, never was I praised of anything but being dim, overlooked, but today I met someone who enjoys my poems and my presence being, and that's what I'll do." Napstaluce went through the wall and dissapeared.

After Napstaluce left, Lana continued her journey through the ruins. A bunch of other monsters were encountered, monsters like mouldsmol the pudding like monster, Vegetoid the carrot monster insisting Lana to eat her greens, Migosp, a beetle like monster that just wants to chill, three normal size froggits and an ant-size froggit who waved at Lana. Loox, who wanted Lana to pick on him.

In one room, the puzzle consisted of six trap doors, and only one of them had a button, so Lana decided to try her luck but ended up battling another Vegetoid. "Eat your greens.. "said Vegetoid, with a lot of concentration and avoidance Lana ate the green vegetables, just enough for Vegetoid to be satisfied. After the battle, she found a pink ribbon, and used it for her loosen blond hair ,which increased her defence. Lana came out of the chute and decided to try again,though in the next room, she saw nothing until Lucy the ghost materialized right behind her and scared the heck out of Lana , "Sigh...........,I was too focused on my poems that I stumbled in , sigh.............. now I'm stuck down here, sigh............"Lana questioned Napstaluce about her ghostly abilities,then it dawn to Napstaluce,"Oh right.......... I'm a ghost .............,sigh..........I can just levitate out of here............"And with that, the gloomy ghost left the room, but faintyet distanced sighs can be heard. Lana looked around, but saw no switches for the obstacle, and went back up. At the next room, she finally found the switch, and proceeded with her adventure.

After another series of puzzles, Lana went inside another room, and in a corner were spider webs and other little critters, there was a stand that said"Bug smooties, by bug critters, for bug critters. "Lana went through her inventory, and found it empty ,but she received a lot of gold from the battles, so she bought three bug smooties, and kept them just in case she would be at low hp. Next, she went forward and a foggit said to her "Hello human,not to be a bother, but I saw Rita passed by."Lana realized it was the same froggit from before and said"Okay, thanks for the tip. "wondering if she was on her way to the groceries, and decided to ask about it later .

In another room, a breathtaking view of a big city was shown, but from Lana's point of view, the city looked abandoned and hollow, not much life going on anywhere. On the left side of the floor, there laid a toy knife, Lana had a piece of stick as a weapon, she rarely used it in FIGHTS, but kept it anyway. So the toy knife was left behind, and Lana continued forth.

Lana reached a lifeless tree in the middle of the room,orange leaves we're scattered all around the tree bark, she felt sorrow for the old tree. Suddenly her phone rang, she heard someone from the other side of the tree saying"Oh dear, what's taking her so long? "And was startled as Lana appeared right in front of her ,"Oh, sweetie you made it, you must be tired from the whole journey, come, let's go inside ,I'm making a chocolate cake for you. "Lana followed Rita inside the house. The house looked small but cozy, in front of the doorway was a staircase down, Lana thought this must be the way to the basement or something. Rita said, "Welcome to your new home sweetie "She led Lana to the right and entered a hallway, but stopped in front of a room, "So this is your room, "she explained, and patted Lana's head in a sweet motherly way. A burning scent came in, "Is something burning? Ermm I'd better go check, you just make yourself comfortable okay? "With that, she paced off anxiously to the way they came in. Lana decided to look around and adjust herself in to the new territory and went down the hall. There were white flowers decorated all over the place, Lana stopped at Rita's room, trying to debate to herself whether to explore the rooms or just get into her own, her final decision was thinking, it couldn't hurt to peek around a bit right?

And so she did.In Rita's room, more lilians were in various corners, a single bed was placed at the left side of the room, a desk at the doorway, a huge closet, and some reading materials. There was a book laid on the desk, a paragraph was circled red , it said"What did the sea do to say goodbye? Nothing, they just waved "Lana snickered a bit, but doesn't intended to read anymore personal business of Rita.

At the end of the hallway, there was a locked door, but it said, "Closed for renovations ".A mirror was beside the door, Lana looked at herself, the reflection was just as before, blond hair, empty front teeth, but with a ribbon tied in her hair. As energetic as Lana was,she decided to take a break in her room, the room was small enough for two children, in front of her was a toy box, which doesn't interest her at all, in a closet hung different colours of striped clothing, and below was different shoes in various sizes.

Lana yawned, tired from a day's adventure, got in the bed and slept. In her dream, there was froggit in a corner, the froggit stared at Lana as if she was someone familiar, her vision blurred, in front of Lana was a mirror, but instead of her own reflection, she saw someone else,different yet so alike, the reflection was wearing a tiara and a pink dress, which Lana would rather not wear in any occasion .The girl in the reflection was smiling, her face glowing red ,"Hello there mirror, "the pink girl said in a sadistic way. Lana wanted to protest that she looked nothing like her, but seeing that they were both blonds and at the approximately the same height, she decided to listen what this princess has to say. The girl continued "You know how these monsters treat you like a friend, like family, Well, your being too much of an idiot to realize that they are not what they seem".Lana gave her the silent treatment, but the pink girl refuse to take it, "oh, so this is what I get for telling you the truth? Well then, hear me out this one time. You'll never get home with your current attitude of kindness and friendship and whatnot, it's all about getting what you want, and now all you want is to get back up there, right? "Lana gave her a -_- face, the pink girl ignores her state and said"Never mind, you'll see what I mean by the end of your journey. "With that, she vanished.

When Lana woke up, she smelled a delicious sensation of chocolate cake, and saw a piece laid on the desk and a small fork beside, she took a small bite , but decided it would be best to save the rest for later. She decided to look for Rita, and thank her for the pie. She went out of the room, walked past the basement stairs, and into another room, in front of her was where there's a fireplace and an armchair on the left side, and a dinner table at the other corner. She went straight to the kitchen, and there laid normal equipments refrigerator to stove. The kitchen sink shone as if it was newly scrubbed, the stove looked untouched, Rita must've used fire magic for the baking. On the counter laid the pie, it's too intimidating for you to eat ?The comment was bit excessive, but she decided to be reasonable and leave it be.

Lana went back to the living room, and saw Rita on the armchair, she went to the fireplace, and felt pleasant warmth.Rita noticed Lana and explained that she was delighted to have her around ,wanted to show her favourite spot in the ruins, and admitted that she wanted to be a novelist, to write about the life of a caretaker in the ruins, but with small population and uninterested behaviour of reading nor writing in the ruins, she needed to put that dream aside for a while.

"Oh, did you want to ask something? "she questioned, Lana thought about living here in the ruins for the rest of her life, the idea bores her, but not to hurt Rita, she didn't complained and asked if she could read her something, "Anything for you child, "she responded, "How does 109 milk facts? Did you know that milk also reproduced cheese other than cream? Fascinating! "Lana turned from interested to slightly less interested ."Yeah, it is. "She replied.

Lana went back to her room, she tried to entertain herself by checking out the toys in the chest. But sadly, still nothing interest her at all. A few days passed, Rita was happy with Lana's company, they read books together,(Rita read them to Lana as she listened) ,they went to her favourite bug hunting spot ,in which was fine with Lana as she rolls in the mud full of worms and tried to eat them (and the dirt covering the insects) only to get stopped by Rita, "I know they are full of protein and nutrition, but it is safer for them to be properly boiled or cooked, all right? "Lana shrugged and said, "Yeah sure. "But took a sip of a worm anyways without Rita noticing.

More days passed, or maybe weeks, Lana lost count and there wasn't a calendar in the house. She was so bored she ventured the ruins multiple times and was getting pretty sick of the same scenario all over again. Finally, She mustured up her courage on asking Rita to let her go home, "What? "She replied with concern and a hint of fear, "Oh no sweetie, this is your home, you can't leave, it's dangerous out there ."she answered with hints of sadness. Lana refused to stay much longer ,being mundane was never her lifestyle, but she also doesn't want to have a collision with her, so she requested with much patience. With hours of pleading, Lana stayed determined ,but Rita was determined of Lana staying as well. "Wait here, there's something I need to do first ,"she fast paced to the entrance and down to the basement, leaving Lana confused yet it was clear what has to be done.

Lana followed her down, they were in a dark corridor, but bright enough to see. "Every kid who comes down here is met with the exact fate ,they come, they leave, they die. You naive little youngster, if you leave the ruins, you can never come back, so please, "she said deliberately, "GO TO YOUR ROOM , this is an order, do not even try to rebel against me. "Lana's head wanted to obliged the order, but her heart was reluctant, and her heart lead her deeper into the corridor. At a turn to the left, Rita warned her in a serious tone, " This is your last warning, if you go out there, they.... "She paused, "King Lynn senior... "She shuddered at the name, "will kill you. "Before Lana processed this whole scenario, The blond mother continued, "don't you see I'm just trying to protect you?Saving you from all those pain and misery in your way? so please, go back upstairs. "The mother continued forth, with Lana on her tail, feeling hesitant and determined at the same time. At last, they've reached a huge door as tall as the wall, and with the same symbol on Rita's dress.The blond mother was still facing the door, "Behind this door lies the way to the outside world, I will destroy it, so you can be safe ,so I can watch you grow up, .......so I would be lonely no more. "She said with tears filling up her eyes. Silence was everywhere, Lana could not comprehend the situation she was in, she only issue she understood was that Rita has been alone in the ruins for so long, and she would rather destroy the exit of the ruins than be alone for a few hundred more years.

Rita stayed calm in her position, understood that Lana would not be as easily convinced as thought, in so, another way had to be done. "If you want to leave so badly, there is only one way for you to do"Rita's expression darkens, "Prove yourself, prove to me that you are strong enough to survive the inevitable outcome ."Lana thought of ways to overcome this situation, but all her ideas were useless, and decided that the situation must be handed head on.

The room blackened, Lana's soul appeared in front of her chest, Rita blocked the way, flames were everywhere ,her stance was fixed yet fierce, and with that, the battle began. Rita started forming balls of fire around her and threw them at the soul while Lana sidesteped the attacks. When it's lana turn she uses ACT and tried to reason with her, but she doesn't listen nor took interest on what she said. The blond mother attacked again by using a tactic of an hourglass while Lana dodged them, but was struck with a fireball and was down to 14 hp. Despite the pain, Lana decided to use MERCY and spared toriel, "What are you doing?! "She exclaimed, "Fight me or leave! "Lana was surprised by her anger and anguish voice, but proceeded to do the same. Rita prepared a magical attack, the speed of the flames was getting ridiculously fast even for Lana, and her hp went down to 1."Attack or run away! "Rita ordered, but also looked aloof, when it's her turn to attack, the fire balls missed the soul intentionally, so Lana decided to take the chance, and spared her again. In the next turn, Rita was looking through Lana while aiming the fireballs at the wrong route, while Lana was still using MERCY to spare Rita, this scenario went on for so much time, and Rita was getting tired of using so much of her magic."Stop looking at me like that! "Rita said in distress, but Lana did nothing but proceed more MERCY. Rita looked more drained than before, and with Lana's last strength she drank the bug smoothie and her up was healed to 15. With Lana alleviated and Rita being so drained out of energy, Lana explained her reason of wanting to leave, not because of the hostility that was given nor was it because of the tedious scenario given over and over, but because she shouldn't stay so long for the people who worry for her so much. "I have to go, not because I don't want to stay, it's because I miss the outdoors, and there's NO MUD IN HERE! "Rita got pretty startled at the last part, "my point is, there are something we have to let go sometime, and even if I got back, I'll always come visit you mom. "The blond mother was stunned of Lana calling her mother, but was glad as well that she wouldn't forget her nor abandon her. "Well, if this is really what you want, "Rita said, "then, I won't stop you, I know we don't have much, but we could have a good life here, and maybe..... "She paused, "Ha... Ha....woeful, isn't it, I can't save even one of you, but...... "Lana felt a little guilt tripped,and Rita continued, "I understand, you would be unhappy trapped down here the Ruins is kinda small once you get to used to it, my expectation, fear, loneliness, for you sweetie, I'll put them aside for now. "The battle concluded.

The room was dark no more, Lana saw some tears clinging on Rita's eye, but above her chin was a great motherly smile. "Oh honey, I'm so sorry for what I've done, I never wanted this to happen again, but I can let you go and know that you will be safe the whole journey. "Lana started to smile, but when she was asked to never return, the smile faded. "You have to understand, this is for your own good, and so I won't have to look back and regret everything I have done to you. "She explained. Rita bend down on her knees and hugged Lana tightly as their last goodbye, when she was done, she went back the way they came, looking at Lana one last time, and left without a word.

Lana sent through the door, into a long corridor, went through another door and reached a patch of grass with a certain devil waiting outside.Lilian started smirking,and said,"He he he.. Poo poo(well well well lookie here, it's seems that you were able to go through your own rules afterall, but hear this, my little monarch. Don't you think you've won yet, you haven't kill anyone and spared the life of a single person, but what if you encounter a relentless killer? You'll die again and again! Would you kill them out of frustration? Or give up entirely on this world? And let ME have the power to control? I AM THIS WORLD'S FUTURE! So don't worry mud girl, my plan isn't regicide, this is much more interesting he he.) With that, the flower made an evil crackling laugh with an expression with the force of nature and disappeared under the earth.

Lana took no interest in the Lillian's plan and kept moving forward, when the door was opened, a bright light blinded her sight and a sudden cold air went through her, when her vision cleared, there was a forest and a snowny path in front, and her adventure was no even half done.

[ezatluba]

The Mysteries of Animal Movement

A scientist’s unfettered curiosity leads him to investigate the physics at work in some very odd corners of the natural world.

By James Gorman

Nov. 5, 2018

David Hu was changing his infant son’s diaper when he got the idea for a study that eventually won him the Ig Nobel prize. No, not the Nobel Prize — the Ig Nobel prize, which bills itself as a reward for “achievements that make people laugh, then think.”

As male infants will do, his son urinated all over the front of Dr. Hu’s shirt, for a full 21 seconds. Yes, he counted off the time, because for him curiosity trumps irritation.

That was a long time for a small baby, he thought. How long did it take an adult to empty his bladder? He timed himself. Twenty-three seconds. “Wow, I thought, my son urinates like a real man already.”

He recounts all of this without a trace of embarrassment, in person and in “How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls: Animal Movements and the Robotics of the Future,” just published, in which he describes both the silliness and profundity of his brand of research.

No one who knows Dr. Hu, 39, would be surprised by this story. His family, friends, the animals around him — all inspire research questions.

His wife, Jia Fan, is a marketing researcher and senior data scientist at U.P.S. When they met, she had a dog, and he became intrigued by how it shook itself dry. So he set out to understand that process.

Now, he and his son and daughter sometimes bring home some sort of dead animal from a walk or a run. The roadkill goes into the freezer, where he used to keep frozen rats for his several snakes. (The legless lizard ate dog food). “My first reaction is not, oh, it’s gross. It’s ‘Do we have space in our freezer,’” Dr. Fan said.

He also saves earwax and teeth from his children, and lice and lice eggs from the inevitable schoolchild hair infestations. “We have separate vials for lice and lice eggs,” he pointed out.

“I would describe him as an iconoclast,” Dr. Fan said, laughing. “He doesn’t follow the social norms.”

Dr. Hu with his 2015 Ig Nobel Prize, for showing that nearly all mammals empty their bladders in 21 seconds.

He does, however, follow in the footsteps of his father, a chemist who also loved collecting dead things. Once, on a family camping trip, his father brought home a road-killed deer that he sneaked into the garage under cover of night.

The butchering, a first time event for everyone in the family, he wrote once in a father’s day essay for his dad, “was an intense learning and sensory experience. There were a lot of organs in an animal, I learned.”

His own curiosity has led him to investigations of eyelashes and fire ants, water striders and horse tails, frog tongues and snakes.

Dr. Hu is a mathematician in the Georgia Tech engineering department who studies animals. His seemingly oddball work has drawn both the ire of grandstanding senators and the full-throated support of at least one person in charge of awarding grants from that bastion of frivolity, the United States Army.

Long before his role in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearing, Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, put three of Dr. Hu’s research projects on a list of the 20 most wasteful federally funded scientific studies. The television show, “Fox and Friends,” featured Sen. Flake’s critique.

Naturally, Dr. Hu made the attack on his work the basis for a TEDx talk at Emory University, in which he took a bow for being “the country’s most wasteful scientist” and went on to argue that Sen. Flake completely misunderstood the nature of basic science.

Dr. Hu was tickled to think that one scientist could be responsible for such supposed squandering of the public’s money. Neither he nor his supporters were deterred.

Among those supporters is Samuel C. Stanton, a program manager at the Army Research Office in Durham, N.C., which funded Dr. Hu’s research on whether fire ants were a fluid or a solid. (More on that and the urination findings later.)

Dr. Stanton does not share Dr. Hu’s flippant irreverence. He speaks earnestly of the areas of science to which he directs Army money, including “nonequilibrium information physics, embodied learning and control, and nonlinear waves and lattices.”

So he is completely serious when he describes Dr. Hu as a scientist of “profound courage and integrity” who “goes where his curiosity leads him.”

Dr. Hu has “an uncanny ability to identify and follow through on scientific questions that are hidden in plain sight,” Dr. Stanton said.

When it comes to physics, the Army and Dr. Hu have a deep affinity. They both operate at human scale in the world outside the lab, where conditions are often wet, muddy or otherwise difficult.

In understanding how physics operates in such conditions, Dr. Stanton explained, “the vagaries of the real world really come to play in an interesting way.”

Besides, Dr. Stanton said, the Army is not, as some people might imagine, always “looking for a widget or something to go on a tank.” It is interested in fundamental insights and original thinkers. And the strictures of the hunt for grants and tenure in science can sometimes act against creativity.

Sometimes, Dr. Stanton said, part of his job is convincing academic scientists “to lower their inhibitions.”

Needless to say, with Dr. Hu that’s not really been an issue.

Dr. Hu has shown that the ideal eyelash length for mammals, like this sheep, is one-third the width of an eyeball.CreditGuillermo Amador

An aspiring doctor is led astray

“Applied mathematicians have always been kind of playful,” Dr. Hu said recently while talking about his academic background — although they are perhaps not quite as playful as he can be. A few years ago he did gymnastic flips onto the stage of a Chinese game show that sometimes showcases scientists.

He grew up in Bethesda, Md., and while he was still in high school, he did his first published work on the strength of metals that had been made porous. He was a semifinalist for the Westinghouse Science Prize (the forerunner of the Regeneron Science Search) and won several other awards.

That work helped him get into M.I.T., which he entered as a pre-med student planning to get an M.D./Ph.D.

He was soon led astray.

Dr. Hu’s undergraduate adviser at M.I.T. was Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan, a mathematician who works to describe real life processes in rigorous mathematical terms.

Dr. Mahadevan, known to students and colleagues as Maha, investigated wrinkling, for example. Naturally he won an Ig Nobel for that work.

“Maha lit the fire,” Dr. Hu said. Before he encountered his adviser’s research, he said, “It didn’t really make sense that you could make a living just playing with things.”

But he came to see the possibilities.

He stayed at M.I.T. for graduate work, in the lab of his adviser, John Bush, a geophysicist. Dr. Bush remembers him as very enthusiastic.

Asked by email about some of Dr. Hu’s wilder forays into the physics of everyday life, he said, “A sense of playfulness is certainly a good thing in science, especially for reaching a broader audience.” But, he said, “targeting silly problems is not a good strategy, and I know that David has taken considerable flack for it.”

Dr. Hu may be the first third-generation (in terms of scientific pedigree) Ig Nobel winner, because Dr. Mahadevan studied under the late Joseph Keller, a mathematician at Stanford University. Dr. Keller won two Ig Nobels. One was for studying why ponytails swing from side-to-side, rather than up and down, when the ponytail owner is jogging. The other was an examination of why teapots dribble.

After M.I.T., Dr. Hu did research at the Courant Institute at New York University, another hotbed of real-world mathematics. He moved to Georgia Tech, after Jeannette Yen, a biologist there, told the university they ought to take a look at him.

From ants to self-assembling robots

Dr. Hu’s research may seem like pure fun, but much of it is built on the idea that how animals move and function can provide inspiration for engineers designing human-made objects or systems.

The title of Dr. Hu’s book refers to the “robots of the future,” and he emphasizes the way animal motion offers insights that can be applied to engineering — Bio-inspired design.

When Brazil’s Pantanal wetlands flood, for instance, fire ants form rafts so tightly interlaced that water doesn’t penetrate their mass. When he picked up such a mass in the lab, Dr. Hu writes, it felt like a pile of salad greens.

“The raft was springy, and if I squeezed it down to a fraction of its height, it recoiled back to its original shape. If I pulled it apart, it stretched like cheese on a pizza.”

He found out that the ants were constantly moving even though the shape of the mass stayed more or less the same. They were breaking and making connections all the time, and they became, in essence, a “self-healing” material.

The idea is appealing for many engineering applications, including concrete that mends itself and robots that self-assemble into large, complex structures. Depending on the force applied to them, a mass of a hundred thousand ants or so can form a ball or a tower, or flow like a liquid.

He and students in his lab also showed that the reason mosquitoes don’t get bombed out of the air by water droplets in a rainstorm is that they are so light that the air disturbed by a falling drop of water blows the mosquitoes aside. The finding could have applications for tiny drones.

They also showed that the ideal length for a row of mammalian eyelashes is one-third the width of an eyeball. That gives just the right windbreak to keep blowing air from drying out the surface of the eye. Artificial membranes could use some kind of artificial eyelashes.

And what about urination? It didn’t make sense to Dr. Hu that a grown man and an infant would have roughly the same urination time.

After he sent out undergraduates, under the guidance of Patricia Yang, a graduate student, to time urination in all the animals at the Atlanta Zoo, the situation became even more puzzling. Most mammals took between 10 and 30 seconds, with an average of 21 seconds. (Small animals do things differently.)

The key was the urethra, essentially a pipe out of the bladder, that enhanced the effect of gravity. Even a small amount of fluid in a narrow pipe can develop high pressure, with astonishing effects.

Water poured through a narrow pipe into a large wooden barrel can split the barrel. Dr. Hu said the experiment, known as Pascal’s barrel, can be replicated nowadays with Tupperware.

“Applied mathematicians have always been kind of playful.”

What is interesting about the urethra biologically is that its proportions, length to diameter, stay roughly the same no matter the size of the animal (as long as it weighs more than about six and a half pounds).

The 21-second average urination time must be evolutionarily important. Perhaps any longer would attract predators? But then predators are subject to the same rule. In any case, the principle of how to effectively drain a container of fluid could be useful, Dr. Hu wrote in the original studies, to designers of “water towers, water backpacks and storage containers.”

As usual, in his book Dr. Hu does not neglect the human side of his work, or treat it too seriously. He refers to the urethra as a pee-pee pipe. And he corrects his son when he brags that only he, not his sister, has a pee-pee pipe.

Not so, Dr. Hu insists. The urethra is present in males and females.

Once older, his children may never forgive him for this book. But middle school science teachers and nerds everywhere will thank him.