#the second one was flying along a river with a huge fish already in its talons

[sealcore]

few things are better than getting to see one of your lesser-seen kintypes IRL, especially if its doing cool behaviours such as hunting

[turtletimewriting]

The First Steps Into the Adventure (Patton partners with Janus)

Summary: well it would be no good telling you what happened!

Note: AAH! Okay, I can’t really believe how many people interacted with this! Thanks! Right, so this is still basic introduction stuff, I’ll admit. This is a bit clunky but I want to give as many chances for this to be interactive as possible. 

The decision will be presented at the end!

Once again, this is inspired by fluffomatic’s tickle forest idea!

Previous Part!

_._._

Patton screwed his face up in concentration, carefully evaluating them, before he lit up and pointed at Janus, “You’re on my team, JanJan!” 

“Well good luck on your journey, lover boy,” Janus taunted with a smirk as he walked to stand beside his team leader, Virgil quickly punched his hat down over his eyes as he scampered off as well. He was violently blushing as he approached Logan and he managed to give a friendly smile. 

“Great! Now just two more things to do!” Roman announced with an elaborate flourish.

“How much more to this is there!” Janus frowned to which Patton tweaked his side as a warning.

“Well if you wish to adventure blindly without your map and a hint, then that’s up to you!” Remus cackled as he chucked paper at them violently.

Logan frowned at their map, beyond it’s very apparent unprofessionalism, it seemed fairly straight forward. It was simply one long winding path to a large childishly scribbled ‘X’. He expected something a bit more detailed from a joint creativity project but maybe that was yet to be seen. “Is my map the same as Patton’s?” 

“Yeah, if it’s like a race thing then I’m out,” Virgil snarked.

“Nah, see your map goes down this left road and Patton’s goes to the right,” Remus answered.

“Ah I get it. Left brain goes left and right brain goes ri...” Logan mumbled off as both creativities looked at him blankly. He may as well be speaking Spanish... well if Roman didn’t speak Spanish. Maybe they weren’t quite on his level of genius. 

“Anyway!” Roman called out and magicked two sealed envelopes, “Now it wouldn’t be fair to just send you into this world without any warning. So we randomly selected two of our fantastical beasts... or one of our plants to inform you of.”

Logan perked up at that- maybe the detail would be in the inhabitants of this adventure rather than the adventure itself. Patton handed the envelope to Janus as he had a very bad habit of sucking badly at opening envelopes. Janus wordlessly and without even looking, hooked his finger under the flap and opened it in one swipe. 

“What is it!” Patton squealed.

“Give me a second,” Janus answered with a glare at Logan’s team. He hooked his arm over Patton to turn them so there was no way that Logan’s team could cheat and look at their sheet, “Also be quieter. I don’t know about you but I truly don’t care about winning this.”

It was a very short page from what looked like an encyclopaedia but the information was very limited and basic. Not that they would be complaining.  

A picture showed a huge ‘Little Shop of Horrors’-esque plant monster. Remus’ influence was pretty easy to see. Janus doubted Roman would ever want to create something like that, but he did smile as he recognised that Remus would never have the monster be this pretty looking. Clearly they were much better working as a team. The plant had gorgeous pristine white petals framing a pastel pink ‘face’. The page was titled ‘Motherbloom’. 

“A large flower that’s queen of the tickle forest. She pins down her target and lifts their shirt to deliver a long raspberry on the tummy. She also uses her vines to tickle at other areas. The leafy sacs around the base of the flower holds air she uses for raspberries. The white flowers on the bush carry an intense pollen. Scientists discovered that if this pollen is transferred to other plants, the plants offspring will become tickle plants.”

Patton released a squeal that only dogs could hear. “Patton!” Janus hissed as he tried to wrangle his team leader under control.

“Ah! Aren’t you super tickly to raspberries JanJan?” Patton launched into a hug and quickly pressed a small raspberry to his neck; which totally didn’t send Janus squealing himself. 

“Aw man, you guys got the motherbloom! May come in handy that,” Roman peered over their shoulders. 

“I thought you decided which ones we got?” Patton asked.

“No, it truly was random. We put everything we created into a list and used a number generator to chose which one everyone learned about.”

“Wow, that is... very thorough of you both,” Janus complimented. Roman blushed violently at the very small compliment and awkwardly shrugged it off. 

Logan opened the envelope with a summoned letter opener and quickly withdrew the page. He frowned as he realised this was probably ripped directly from some book. Virgil leaned on to his shoulder casually to peer at the page; therefore making his brain shortcircuit. How dare his boyfriend be so casually cute and affectionate. How was he supposed to work in these conditions. Virgil already looked quite beautiful on this day. Despite how rushed he was to get ready for what Roman and Remus planned, his makeup exaggerated his slightly sleepy eyes and of course his bright almost neon green and purple eyes looked as striking as ever. He was all bundled into his jumper just in case their adventure got too cold and he was mindlessly nuzzling into the front. He was... “Well this isn’t a whole lot to go off on?”

“Wha...” Logan perked up again and stared at the page. It was titled Tickler Jelly. 

“These jellies are attracted to pool toys and swim up to them. If a person is easily targetable, they will latch on and begin tickling the target with its four large feathers.”

It showed some very typical jelly fish with obvious feathery fluttering stingers near the centre with normal, presumably, non-stinging stingers that are used to latch on to the victims. It was pink and undeniably adorable so Logan concluded this was probably a Roman creation. But then again, jellyfish were quite intimidating animals so maybe Remus suggested the concept itself. 

Remus had walked over to them with a shrug, “Would you’ve rather we didn’t give you any information to go on?”

“Well no but we may not even go into water so really this isn’t any good!” Virgil frowned.

“And now you know what could be lurking in the water! I’d stop whining if I was you! This was totally random, I don’t control what you lot found out.”

“Right! Teams!” Roman teleported back on to the platform and stood on his throne, “I wish you the best of luck in your adventures. Your journeys will be long and treacherous. But you must keep in mind that your treasures are waiting for you. If you keep a sharp eye out, you may even find hints along the way to help unlock your treasure. May the best team get to the treasure quickest. Good luck teams!” 

Roman and Remus clapped dramatically and the whole stage puffed into a wave of technicoloured smoke. 

The same stage that everyone was standing on. 

They all fell to the floor with grumbled swears. Both teams awkwardly stared at the other before Janus leapt to his feet and dragged Patton down the path. Logan, seeing this, immediately pulled Virgil into his arms and sprinted down the dusty path ahead of them. The game was on.  

Patton and Janus raced ahead until they lost sight of the other team and settled quickly into a walk. “Right, so what do we need to do?” Janus asked, he figured he better play the game properly and actually pretend that Patton made a good team leader.

“Just follow this path. By the looks of it we have to follow this path which takes us into a wooded bit then across a river before getting to the treasure. Simple!” Patton chirped as he charged on ahead. 

The world was just as beautiful as any other the creativities had created before. Despite it being the evening, it was still a warm day with a gorgeous clear blue sky. There were a few streaks of bright white clouds and there was only enough wind to prettily rustle the leaves of the trees. It was beautiful. The path was taking them past a bit of a thicker grassy bit. Trees dotted along their path with thick bushes of ferns and dry yellow grass that stretched up to their waists. 

Janus frowned as he saw the path was still tilting around a section of trees. “Can I look at the map?”

“Sure.” Patton handed it over without any fuss. 

“Yeah, wait!” Janus pulled them to a stop and pointed to the path they were following on the map. The map clearly showed that the path they were following was awkwardly circling around the wooded bit. It would probably take double the amount of time to follow the path or just cut through the wooded bit. “We should just cut through this wooded bit. We’ll end up back on the path and probably cut off a good ten minutes.”

“Oh yeah!” Patton stared at the map before flicking up to look at the path, “but we have no idea what could be lurking in the forest ready to tickle tickle tickle us!” He was wiggling his fingers and curling up to Janus. To which he totally didn’t blush. Of course he got partnered up with the literal tickle monster.

“Yes but then again we have no idea what could be on the path. We seen some butterflies flying around, any one of them could be planning an... attack on us. I don’t think we’ll be in any more danger if we cut through. Plus, don’t you think it would be in Remus’ nature to punish us for following the boring predictable option?”

“Well, we should figure this out soon. The more time we stand here arguing, the more time we are wasting...” 

Meanwhile... with Logan’s team!

“Right. Now the most logical decision would be to analyse the map and decide which is the optimal route to travel. Knowing Patton, he will be following the map blindly,” Logan pulled Virgil to a stop and summoned a compass so to actually use the map effectively. 

“Yeah but he also has Janus with him. We have no idea what they could be doing,” Virgil awkwardly tried to conceal just how hard he was panting from the short run. Logan ignored him by examining the map and looking up for any identifying features. 

“Okay so by the looks of it, we can follow the path through the plain fields ahead of us. Or we can quickly jog over that hill and there will be a public garden.”

“Why would we go through a garden?” Virgil frowned and yoinked the map away from him. 

“Well right now we are at the mercy of whatever the twins have organised,” Logan stated.

“Yeah you don’t need to remind me. Us even standing still right now could be the opportunity this weird world is looking for. We could be standing in the middle of an ant hill for all we know!” Virgil whined but Logan pressed him into his side with a gentle smile.

“All good points. I’m just saying the field could contain anything for all we know while a flower garden would only contain flowers. Therefore we know to avoid loitering and interacting with the flowers and it could be a straightforward path forward. They both lead to the same place,” Logan reasoned as he guided them slowly forward. 

“Do you want to go through the garden?” 

“I think it’s worth considering. However, I could never outshine you in thoroughly considering our options. I’ll leave the decision up to-”

“Too much pressure!” Virgil laughed and burrowed into his chest. 

“Okay then,” Logan murmured, “we could continue through the field and face whatever they have planned. Or we go through a flower garden and know we have to face tic... plants. Hmm...”

And so the adventure has fully began!!

Should Patton and Janus:

A) Follow the path.

B) Cut through the wooded bit.

Should Logan and Virgil:

1) Go through the field.

2) Go through the flower garden. 

[4eternal-life]

MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM  /The Futurist Manifesto

by  Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, february 20th, 1909

We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness.

The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.

Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.

We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.

We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.

The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.

Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.

We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.

We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.

We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.

We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds

We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose brass cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts. And trampling underfoot our native sloth on opulent Persian carpets, we have been discussing right up to the limits of logic and scrawling the paper with demented writing.

Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves standing quite alone, like lighthouses or like the sentinels in an outpost, facing the army of enemy stars encamped in their celestial bivouacs. Alone with the engineers in the infernal stokeholes of great ships, alone with the black spirits which rage in the belly of rogue locomotives, alone with the drunkards beating their wings against the walls.

Then we were suddenly distracted by the rumbling of huge double decker trams that went leaping by, streaked with light like the villages celebrating their festivals, which the Po in flood suddenly knocks down and uproots, and, in the rapids and eddies of a deluge, drags down to the sea.

Then the silence increased. As we listened to the last faint prayer of the old canal and the crumbling of the bones of the moribund palaces with their green growth of beard, suddenly the hungry automobiles roared beneath our windows.

"Come, my friends!" I said. "Let us go! At last Mythology and the mystic cult of the ideal have been left behind. We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly! We must break down the gates of life to test the bolts and the padlocks! Let us go! Here is they very first sunrise on earth! Nothing equals the splendor of its red sword which strikes for the first time in our millennial darkness."

We went up to the three snorting machines to caress their breasts. I lay along mine like a corpse on its bier, but I suddenly revived again beneath the steering wheel — a guillotine knife — which threatened my stomach. A great sweep of madness brought us sharply back to ourselves and drove us through the streets, steep and deep, like dried up torrents. Here and there unhappy lamps in the windows taught us to despise our mathematical eyes. "Smell," I exclaimed, "smell is good enough for wild beasts!"

And we hunted, like young lions, death with its black fur dappled with pale crosses, who ran before us in the vast violet sky, palpable and living.

And yet we had no ideal Mistress stretching her form up to the clouds, nor yet a cruel Queen to whom to offer our corpses twisted into the shape of Byzantine rings! No reason to die unless it is the desire to be rid of the too great weight of our courage!

We drove on, crushing beneath our burning wheels, like shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses.

Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and sometimes lay on the ground with a noise of creaking jaws giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles.

"Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!"

As soon as I had said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks with the mad intoxication of puppies biting their tails, and suddenly there were two cyclists disapproving of me and tottering in front of me like two persuasive but contradictory reasons. Their stupid swaying got in my way. What a bore! Pouah! I stopped short, and in disgust hurled myself — vlan! — head over heels in a ditch.

Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse!

As I raised my body, mud-spattered and smelly, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart. A crowd of fishermen and gouty naturalists crowded terrified around this marvel. With patient and tentative care they raised high enormous grappling irons to fish up my car, like a vast shark that had run aground. It rose slowly leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy coachwork of good sense and its upholstery of comfort.

We thought it was dead, my good shark, but I woke it with a single caress of its powerful back, and it was revived running as fast as it could on its fins.

Then with my face covered in good factory mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid fishermen and angry naturalists, we dictated our first will and testament to all the living men on earth.

It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries.

Italy has been too long the great second-hand market. We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which cover it with innumerable cemeteries.

Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color. To make a visit once a year, as one goes to see the graves of our dead once a year, that we could allow! We can even imagine placing flowers once a year at the feet of the Gioconda! But to take our sadness, our fragile courage and our anxiety to the museum every day, that we cannot admit! Do you want to poison yourselves? Do you want to rot?

What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream?

To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action. Do you want to waste the best part of your strength in a useless admiration of the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished, trampled on?

Indeed daily visits to museums, libraries and academies (those cemeteries of wasted effort, calvaries of crucified dreams, registers of false starts!) is for artists what prolonged supervision by the parents is for intelligent young men, drunk with their own talent and ambition.

For the dying, for invalids and for prisoners it may be all right. It is, perhaps, some sort of balm for their wounds, the admirable past, at a moment when the future is denied them. But we will have none of it, we, the young, strong and living Futurists!

Let the good incendiaries with charred fingers come! Here they are! Heap up the fire to the shelves of the libraries! Divert the canals to flood the cellars of the museums! Let the glorious canvases swim ashore! Take the picks and hammers! Undermine the foundation of venerable towns!

The oldest among us are not yet thirty years old: we have therefore at least ten years to accomplish our task. When we are forty let younger and stronger men than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless manuscripts! They will come against us from afar, leaping on the light cadence of their first poems, clutching the air with their predatory fingers and sniffing at the gates of the academies the good scent of our decaying spirits, already promised to the catacombs of the libraries.

But we shall not be there. They will find us at last one winter's night in the depths of the country in a sad hangar echoing with the notes of the monotonous rain, crouched near our trembling aeroplanes, warming our hands at the wretched fire which our books of today will make when they flame gaily beneath the glittering flight of their pictures.

They will crowd around us, panting with anguish and disappointment, and exasperated by our proud indefatigable courage, will hurl themselves forward to kill us, with all the more hatred as their hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us. And strong healthy Injustice will shine radiantly from their eyes. For art can only be violence, cruelty, injustice.

The oldest among us are not yet thirty, and yet we have already wasted treasures, treasures of strength, love, courage and keen will, hastily, deliriously, without thinking, with all our might, till we are out of breath.

Look at us! We are not out of breath, our hearts are not in the least tired. For they are nourished by fire, hatred and speed! Does this surprise you? it is because you do not even remember being alive! Standing on the world's summit, we launch once more our challenge to the stars!

Your objections? All right! I know them! Of course! We know just what our beautiful false intelligence affirms: "We are only the sum and the prolongation of our ancestors," it says. Perhaps! All right! What does it matter? But we will not listen! Take care not to repeat those infamous words! Instead, lift up your head!

Standing on the world's summit we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars!

[auroralightsthesky]

The Run Across Water (Roe x OC)

Summary: There’s only one place where Moira and her little sister have ever felt like they belonged

I’m not her.......

I know I’m not

If she ever lays a hand on Katie again I’ll wring her neck.......

We’re getting out of here if it’s the last thing we do.....

Moira shoved the last of her clothes into a bag and hastily slipped her shoes onto her feet. Eight year old Katie was already at the door, listening for signs that Claire was returning home. 

“Katie m’lass what do ye hear?” Moira hissed, the panic evident in her Irish brogue. 

“Nothing,” Katie whispered. “I don’t hear anything.” 

“Are ye sure?” 

Katie nodded.

“C’mon then,” Moira said, taking her little sister by the hand.

Quietly they snuck out of the room and down the stairs, their footfalls almost nonexistent on the wood floors of the old plantation house. Moira kept her gaze fixed on the front door, waiting with each ticking second to see if that toxic witch would walk through the door and catch them in the act, something that was so much like her. Claire may have been beautiful, but her insatiable need for control and constant disapproval had driven Moira to the breaking point. 

“Come now,” she whispered to Katie. “Out the back door. We can’t stay long.” 

Moira led Katie through the halls and into the large kitchen with its old fashioned butcher block counters and spotless white floors and walls. She listened intently for any signs alerting Claire’s return but thankfully the whole of the house was silent. The family servants were all probably at church for all she knew. 

“Where are we going Mi-Mi?” Katie asked. 

“The only place we can go Katie,” she answered. 

Out the back door and into the muggy, humid night they went, the chirping crickets and frogs making so much noise that she wouldn’t have been able to hear a car pulling up. The garden looked so eerie at this hour of the night with the drooping branches of the weeping willow and cypress dragging along the grasses. Moira led her sister towards the beginning of the dirt path....

“STOP!!!!” a woman’s voice shouted. 

“Katie run! RUN!!” 

Moira and Katie took off down the dirt path, their feet flying against the dirt as more footfalls were heard behind them. They could hear Claire’s wild, angry shouts, ordering them to stop but they refused. On feet of fire they hurried down the path, running fast and hard from the older woman, leaping over fallen branches and past swags of willow branches. The river wasn’t far......nor was the boat. 

“Don’t you dare!!” Claire shouted. “Don’t you dare get in that boat!!!” 

Moira paid her no heed. She urged Katie to run faster, pushing herself further and further as a stitch tore through her side. She couldn’t let Claire catch either one of them. Moira had resolved to live free or die and she would do just that. 

Katie jumped from the riverbed into the water with a loud *SPLASH!* before climbing into the small tin motorboat. Moira tossed her back in and hurried after her sister, climbing in as though her life depended on it. 

“Oh please start!” she panicked as Claire began making her way into the water. 

Finally, the engine gave and started up. A spray of white water kicked up behind them as Moira and Katie took off down the river, its waters brown and murky from the silt kicked up by the other neighbors. At last, at long last, they could leave that wretched place behind and go where they had always felt welcome. 

                                                      ***********

Eugene sat at the edge of the dock, his feet cool in the water and his eyes fixed on the huge red disk in the distance against the dusky purple sky. The bayou was always calmest at this hour with everyone returning home from fishing, hunting or from whatever activities they had taken up during the day. The hum of a motorboat was never unusual at this hour, but one in particular had caught his attention. 

“Aw shit,” he muttered as the boat approached the dock. 

Gene waved them in and tossed a rope out to Moira who caught it as the boat drifted further and further towards the little wooden platform. Eugene helped them up, Katie first and then her. 

“We have to get rid of the boat,” she said. “Otherwise Claire will know.” 

“I’ll see if I can have Tad sink it or somethin,” Eugene replied,. “Here, c’mon in. Grandmama’s got food fo’ yas.” 

“Thank you Gene,” she said.

They followed Eugene into the house, not the best looking place by any means, but a home nonetheless. His grandmother had been the only person who had treated Moira and Katie with any kind of decency and had protected them from Claire in the throes of her rages. 

Eugene led her to his room while Katie made herself at home. It would be some time before Grandmama came back from Old Man Tooley’s place up the river, but he was willing to wait. He looked her over for any kinds of injuries or bruises but thankfully there weren’t any. 

“How’d ya’ll git outta there?” he asked, putting a blanket over her shoulders. 

“Snuck out the back door,” Moira answered, tossing a lock of dark hair over her shoulder. “Katie and I got part of the way up the path and that’s when she saw us.” 

Eugene shuddered. Just the thought of that foul witch alone was enough to bring an early start to hurricane season. 

“Well ya’ll are here now,” he said. “She ain’t gonna find ya here either. Most o’ the neighbors would be out lookin for her anyhow.” 

Moira chuckled. It was in the darkest of hours that she was grateful to have Eugene as a part of her life. He leaned into her, their foreheads touching as the space closed between them, their lips meeting as he kissed her.......never once wanting to let her go. From there on out, they would have each other.....always. 

[poloniumt]

I decided to try my hand at angst. I hope it is sufficient.

Red belongs to @theguardiansofredland . I’m planning on writing a shorter sequel to this that doesn’t have a bloody fight and this much angst.

Warning: There is a bloody fight scene in this fic. DO NOT READ IF BLOOD OR VIOLENCE IS UNCOMFORTABLE FOR YOU.

—————————————

[[MORE]]

The day was bright as Red stepped out from the light blue and white swirling portal, staring into the communication device thoughtfully. It was a quarter to eight in the morning. She was an hour early, despite getting lost for most of her trip to Taiga Town. The road was directly in front of the fountain in the square, beyond which was the decently large castle.

Red read the map sent to her by Polonium, not watching her front. She only stopped walking when a large mass stopped her rather forcefully. She looked up in confusion, before she squeaked in fear.

The man was huge, easily the size of Endi plus a couple inches. His arms were thick, almost the size of her torso. He was built like an iron golem. He huffed as he breathed, as if his large muscles impeded his ability to do so. He looked at Red, one bushy eyebrow raised. “Leetle feesh boy, are you alrigh?” His thick accent was hard to understand for Red.

Red nodded vigorously. “Uh, y-yes sir, just looking for Taigan Castle, sir..” Red stuttered the words out, trying to avoid looking at him. She hid her fins behind her hair.

He thought for a moment, huffing out a breath. “Polo princess may be sleeping, so is a leetle hard to get in righ now. I work in guard, can help.” He extended a boulder sized hand out. “ Genral Firok, at service.” Firok grinned as Red gently shook his hand.

He led her to the gate, where two armored guards protected the door. They looked at Firok and instantly stood at attention. “Firok, sir! What brings you here on your day off?” The taller one squawked out.

Firok held a hand up, gesturing loosely to Red. “Leetle fish looks for Polo princess. Meeting is soon.”

The guard nodded, motioning for the gate to open. The large spruce and dark oak doors opened silently and smoothly. Red thanked Firok for his help before jogging into the castle grounds, looking for the path that led to Polo’s chambers.

Red didn’t notice the slim figure of someone watching from one of the taller spires, a small pair of binoculars pointed at their fins, a sickening smirk on their face.

—

Polo paced back and forth in her bedchamber, frost formations outlining her steps. Her head was hung in nervousness, her voice slightly shaky and quiet. He squire opened the door silently, letting themselves in.

“Princess Polonium? I’m so sorry to bother you when you’re brooding, but miss Red of the ocean kingdom is here.”

Polonium stopped, turning to face them. “It’s the Southern Ocean Monument, not a kingdom. Let them in, Squire.” She returned to pacing, rubbing the soft material of her sleeves. The nerves had been on edge since dawn, she had been awake even longer. The door was left ajar, letting Red quietly slip through.

“Polo! P-Lo!” Red called out happily, practically leaping into Polo’s back, and taking her down.

“Ah! Ugh, hello...” Polo groaned into the carpet, lifting her head up. “As energetic as ever...” she slowly lifted her body off the ground, Red giggling as she held onto the white vest. “Don’t get comfy, now. We still have your tour to do.”

“Speaking of, how much of the city will we see today?” Red asked as they climbed down. “It’s a huge city, and I’m sure one day isn’t enough!”

Polonium thought for a moment. “We can pace ourselves and do sections of the town. You get to choose the first part of the tour.” She grabbed the rolled map and unfurled it. “We are in the apex of town, and there are four other sections of the town. Do you want to save the castle for last?”

Red looked at the colorful map, and pointed at the blue section, which surrounded the castle walls and the river. “I like the idea of doing this part first!”

Polonium nodded, responding with a hum. “Solid Idea. We shall begin in a moment. I’m going to change into my common clothes, then we shall go.” She turned to face her rather small wardrobe, and picked out a black vest with a fur-lined hood, a grey undershirt, and basic jeans. She retreated to a screen for only a moment, and after some shuffling and annoyed growls, emerged from the screen in the same attire she had worn when she first met Red. “Let’s go before it gets too crowded, now. Lots of markets are in today, but it’s mostly Netherite and Ice Spike Kingdom wares. I think a Desert Kingdom ship will arrive later...”

——————-

The market street was just as busy as Polonium had thought: almost no room to walk and even move. She squeezed past all the larger stalls, Red in tow. She managed to get through most of the tour without an issue, but it didn’t last.

Red had ducked into a midroad, one connecting two districts between the houses. She stood against the brick, having lost Polonium in the crowd, and having her nerves act up. She sat against the wall rigidly, like a life-like statue.

The bustle of the crowd was already enough, losing Polonium in it was worse. The noise created a sort of cocoon, effectively trapping Red to the alleyway. She sighed, tucking a piece of hair behind her head fin. A sudden cough drew her attention to the front of the alley.

The person was silhouetted by the sun, only a dark shape forming their base. They looked rather bulky, however. “Good evening.” They bowed deeply.

Red swallowed their nerves and bowed back. “He..hello. Have you seen princess Polonium..?” She asked hopefully, only to have a sudden force knock the wind out of her.

“Apologies, fish, but you’re just a target. Best to stay quiet-“

“RED! There you-“ Polonium’s voice cut through the stranger’s words. She stopped short of them as she saw the stranger and a hunched over Red. “Oh, no...” the breath had been taken out of her lungs as she began to shake.

“You. What did you do.” She began to march forward, blue magic swirled around her for arms and eyes. “What. Did. You. DO?” She called to the now paralyzed form, anger and venom laced in her question.

“Ah, of course. Haha..” the form revealed a knife hidden in the folds of their cloak, grinning madly. “I’ll get top dollar for both Kipling meat AND a princess..Have at thee!” They lurched forward, only to be impeded by a large block of ice. “Grr...Fight me, weakling!” They growled, chipping away at the wall.

Polonium removed the wall, causing the figure to stumble, and threw a heavy hit to their cloak. Shattered glass shards fell out, along with a sickening green liquid. The stranger growled, and retaliated, swinging the knife around. The knife eventually struck its target, slicing Polonium on the arm and part of her elbow.

Polonium cried out in pain and anger. She hit again, making contact with the stranger’s face. The hood fell, revealing a disheveled individual. Polo faltered, but struck again, this time with the blade.

“Foolish magic wielder! You really think you’ll win?!” The stranger cackled, slicing up, then stabbing at Polonium. Polonium dodged, grabbed the foe’s wrist, and kicked them hard, sending them flying.

“I’m not trying to beat you, now..” Polonium advanced on them. “I’m trying to protect her from YOU, Jiroh.” She growled.

Jiroh looked up at Polonium, wild eyes staring at cold fury. “You remember me NOW, princess. Soon everyone will.” They advanced again, thrusted the knife, and trapped their arm again, this time in the wall.

Polonium threw a ball of ice magic, and began aiming for the knife, which had been trapped in a crack deep in the wall.

Jiroh cackled, advancing on Polonium and stabbed her in the shoulder. Polonium screamed as the knife tore through the muscle, red hot pain coursed through her. “You can’t beat me! YOU COULD NEVER BEAT ME!” Jiroh stabbed again, only for Polonium to dodge the attack, flinging another ice ball. The ball exploded against the wall, trapping Jiroh.

“I’m done...Playing your shitty game, Jiroh.” Polonium growled, clenching her jaw in pain. “I’m not...your live game. Neither is...Red.” Red looked up finally, holding her stomach. She shakily stood, walking towards Polonium slowly.

“Po-Po...please..you’re hurt..” Red sniffled.

Polonium looked at her apologetically, but stood firm. Blood dropped from the wounds, a deep crimson dying the shirt and vest. “Jiroh, you’re under arrest. It’s best for the kingdom to be safe from you.” Polonium whistled, and an echoing vwoop was heard mere seconds later.

Endi stood tall, ripping Jiroh from the ice and teleporting away. Polonium sighed and fell to her knees. Sobs echoed through her body, as did pain.

Red moved her to the clean wall, monitoring her wounded friend fearfully. “Are you dying, Po?” She asked nervously, voice thick in fear.

“No, Red....Just hurting.” Polo coughed, a bit of blood leaked out of her mouth. “Maybe I am. Endi will come for us soon.” She rested her head on the cool stone wall, frost formed on her cheek and near her wounds. “This heat is unbearable.” She groaned.

Red sniffled again, blood staining her unkempt hair and sleeve. “Please do...don’t die..” she hugged the battle-scarred princess, nuzzling against her undamaged shoulder. “I c...cant lose you, too..”

Polonium scoffed, looked at Red, and smiled. “I’m not dying on you, Red. But damn it hurts.” She looked towards the still loud, still bustling crowd. “I’d do this again if it meant stopping a chronic crime problem.”

Red sniffed, smearing blood on her cheek as she tried and failed to wipe her tears. “You coulda l..left me for dead, you know...why’d you fight for me..?” Tentative words left before Red could controls herself.

Polonium slowly turned her head, pain shooting through her dulled nerves. “You mean a lot to me. Of course I would.” She sighed, lungs surprisingly rigid. “You’re precious to me. Even with only a couple of months of friendship.”

That answer seemed to be acceptable for Red, since Red and Polo sat in silence until Endi arrived with a paramedic and Firok in tow, and removed the two friends from the scene of the bloody scuffle.

[hlojamyrakami]

yesterday I found old Slavic historical Chronicles. I was only testing the theory of the second moon...

More than 143,000 years ago, three moons orbited Midgard-Earth. Three moons shone in the sky above the Earth, their names were Lelya, Fatta, and Mesiatz... At first, the Earth had two moons, Lelya and a Mesiatz. And Fatta came later… This is an exciting story. Then in the Universe there was a battle of dark and light forces. This was between the orbits of the planet Oreya (i.e. Mars) and the Earth of Perun (i.e. Jupiter). Then there was also the land of the Dey, around which two moons, Lititia and Fatta, revolved. During that battle, the Earth of Dey was destroyed and turned into an Asteroid Belt. But the moon Fatta remained unharmed. The arias left on the whitemans for the planet Earth. A tribe of black people, the inhabitants of the land of the Dey, also asked to live on the Midgard Land, because after that battle they had no place to live. The Aryans accepted new inhabitants on Earth, and settled them in the hot African continent (because the temperature regime in Africa most coincided with the regime on Dey Land) . And to make it easier for them to get used to the new planet, the gods also moved the moon Fatta to Earth's orbit.

And since then, three moons began to Shine in the sky of the Earth, like three sisters - the near Lelya, the middle Fatta, and the far Mesiatz. Lelya revolved around the Earth in 7 days (and for this reason, there are 7 days in our week - Lelya moon made it easy to determine the day of the week), Fatta in 13 days and the Mesiatz in 29.5 days. When the three moons rose above the horizon, the sky was lit up with a bright radiance of wonderful beauty, shimmering with blue, emerald, purple, silver, and gold light. The special gravity of the three Moons created an invisible protective field for the Earth, like the dome of a temple... under this gentle field, as in a cradle, all new plants on earth were born, and a magic source of the power of life was created. Slowly the Earth spun, and the arias met new moon and sun dawns, and the fairyland of daaria bloomed more and more beautifully. The arias named the near moon Lelya, in honor of the goddess Lelya, the beautiful goddess of pure light Love. The moons had a beautiful atmosphere and a warm climate, just as on earth, trees and flowers grew there, and so did the merry rains and the rainbows shone. On the moon Lelya there were 50 wonderful seas, and many clean rivers where magic fish swam ... And on the mysterious, wise moon Fatte, new fairy tales were born every starry night. A clear moon Mesiatz, smiling, conjured fantastic dreams, gave poetry of feelings… And still remember this ancient slavic legends: "Here is Lelya in the sky shines, and the Mesiatz has come».

But once, a little more than 111 thousand years ago, the small Moon Lelya was destroyed by the power of Tarkha Dazhbog, who destroyed the base of Koshcheev, which was on the moon Lelya (because it’s been the closest moon from Earth) and it fell to the Earth with fragments, which caused the sinking of the continent daariya – the continent at the North pole of Midgard-Earth, where our Ancestors lived for a long time after the settlement of Midgard-Earth. This continent sank as a result of the flood created by the waters and fragments of the destroyed small moon Lelya .

The greedy Koschei, the rulers of the race of Gray, found out us. And decided to capture the Earth and its entire population. To do this, they came and settled on the moon Lelya, because Lelya is the closest moon to the Earth. And they have already set up their weapons on the moon Lelya, and aimed them at the Earth to attack. But no one's plan is unnoticed by the light gods. The gods, Svarog, Perun, and Dazdbog rose to the defense, and for the sake of saving their native Land and its inhabitants, they sent arrows in the direction of the Koschei. And Lelya moon split into pieces. And poured out like tears, the salt waters of the seas poured on the Land. Since then, on Earth, the water in the seas and oceans has become salty. A large wave rose in the ocean, and the native country of daariya began to sink under the water.

This is also said by the Santi Vedas of Perun: "You, on Midgard, have been living quietly since long ago, when the world was established... Remembering from the Vedas, about the deeds of Dazdbog, how he destroyed the strongholds of the Koschei that were on the nearest moon... Tarkh not let insidious Koshchei Midgard destroy, how to destroy Dey Land... These Koschei, the rulers of the Greys, perished with the Moon in half an hour ... But Midgard paid for his freedom with Daaria, hidden by The great Flood... The waters of the moon created that Flood, on Earth from the Heavens they fell like a rainbow, for the Moon split into parts and the army of Svarozhich in Midgard descended..."

But daariya did not sink immediately, there were still 15 days left for rescue. And so the inhabitants of Daaria, Aria, managed to escape. Some of them for weimann flew into the Universe, to their starry Abodes of the gods. The rest of the Aryans began to go to the big mainland via the Riphean mountains. The arias stopped at new lands and built wonderful cities and temples anew. And again life was revived, and the gardens bloomed. Once again, the arias cherished sacred knowledge and cosmic wisdom, and brought divine light and Holy love to people. And again they continued to fly into space. And again, even more beautiful, the beautiful native Land bloomed. And in the sky of the Earth two moons, a Mesiatz and a Fatta, have shone ever since.

But all was not yet quiet in the Universe. Dark forces penetrated the secrets of nature's magic, and decided to become the rulers of the world, to use magic for the sake of personal power over people. And again the light gods came to the defense. And one of the fire arrows in this battle accidentally hit the moon Fatta. A fragment of Fatta's moon broke off and fell to the Earth. And Fatta went out of orbit and flew into space, and still she wanders somewhere among distant galaxies and stars ... a lone wanderer Phaethon… And that fragment of the moon that had fallen on the earth had again raised a huge wave in the ocean. A giant wave circled the earth three times, covering and flooding everything around. The earth trembled, the earth's axis tilted, continents and mountains shifted. The volcanoes awoke, and clouds of ash rose in the sky, and it was dark on the earth as at night, and the sun was not visible. The time of the great Cold has begun. The land was covered with snow and glaciers. But even then, people bravely fought for life, with faith, in prayer and work, helping each other to survive. Gradually the clouds of ash cleared away, and the sun began to Shine more warmly. Warm bright days returned, nature revived, people returned to their former life, and began to revive everything anew. And again the Holy temples were built, with faith and love. Children were born again, flowers bloomed. And with renewed hope the people prayed to the heavens. And precious grains of sacred wisdom, bequeathed by the Aryans and the gods, protect bright souls.

This happened 13029 years ago (for 2020). on Midgard-Earth, fragments of Fatta's destroyed moon fell into the Pacific ocean. The Leaders Of Antlan (Atlantis) they became guides of the Dark Forces and unleashed a planetary war for world domination. They used nuclear weapons and tried to control the forces of the elements of Midgard-Earth. Attempts at this control were unsuccessful and the second Moon – Fatta began to fall on Midgard-Earth.To save the planet from destruction God Niy destroyed the Particular falling, but the falling debris was too large and it has caused a dip in the sea Antlan-Atlantis. A huge fragment crashed into the Earth in the area of the Western continent (America), resulting in a change in the tilt of the earth's axis by 23.5 degrees and the continental outline. All this, taken together, caused a lot of natural disasters and the beginning of a new ice age, and most of the survivors, after this planetary disaster, very quickly fell to the primitive level.

In a number of ancient texts, this process is described as a change in the inclination of the sky in relation to the Earth. For example, in the ancient Chinese treatise "Huainanzi" it is described as follows: "the Sky tilted to the Northwest, the Sun, Moon and stars moved." The earth's axis has acquired a wolf-like movement along an ellipse, which modern scientists call the "precession period". Yarilo-the Sun began to pass through other Celestial Halls on the Svarozhy Circle, that is, it began to pass through new constellations.

On the wall of one of the Mayan pyramids in America, there is an inscription "Small Moon broke". In the Chinese treatise "Huainanzi" this event is described as follows: "the vault of heaven broke, the earth's scales broke. The sky tilted to the Northwest. The sun and stars have moved. The land in the South-East was incomplete, and so the water and silt rushed there… In those distant times, the four poles collapsed, the nine continents split... the fire blazed without subsiding, the waters raged without ceasing."A giant wave from falling debris three times around the earth, which led to the death of Antlan (Atlantide) and other Islands. Increased volcanic activity led to atmospheric pollution, which was one of the causes of the Great cold Snap and glaciation.

Hence the word "fatality", "Fatal outcome", and the number 13 (the number of days the circulation of Fatta around Midgard) has since been considered unlucky. People moved South to warmer habitats, and the glacier almost destroyed all traces of living in the Northern latitudes. Many centuries passed before the atmosphere began to clear, and the glaciers retreated to the poles.

Since then, one moon has been shining in the sky of our earth for a Mesiatz. But Lelya and Fatta did not disappear on the ground at all. They live in the seas, and in every grain of sand on the coast, they live in the mountains, they live in every flower, their clear images appear in the wonderful lights of the sky and can be seen in dreams.

[sarakuper]

Manistee National Forest, Michigan

Stop #25, Sept 20-23

We left Iowa two days prior and finally arrived at our free campsite in Manistee National Forest, Michigan. We stayed in Gary, Illinois the night before just to stop and sleep. It was just outside Chicago, so we were close enough to enjoy some deep dish pizza for dinner. 

The Friday morning we arrived I was feeling down. I don’t know if it was the come down from a fun week with Sean’s grandparents in Iowa or the fact that we weren’t in the mountains anymore, or maybe just a shift in my mood, but I spent the first day we arrived taking a nap and kind of moping around. Sean knew exactly how to help and made plans for us to go watch the sunset on the beach in the town of Manistee, only 20 minutes away. We took Jaxon and stopped at the dog park right next door before heading to the beach. Not only was the sunset absolutely beautiful, but so was the beach! The town is calm and lacking of tourists; being after labor day we haven’t been swarmed by crowds in a while. We walked along the dock, chatted with a kid fishing and enjoyed the peace and beauty around us. Just before it got totally dark Sean and I helped ourselves to the playground, getting hopping right onto the swings and the climbing up the slides. Even a little kid asked us what we were doing, and suggested we might even brake the slide because we are “too big”! He was a funny kid and showed us the tricks, like carrying sand in your shirt to the top of the slide so you could pour sand down it to help you go faster. Without the sand I was already worried I was going to fly right off the slide, and was reminded just how fearless you are when you’re a kid. Sean and I forced ourselves to go down those slides full speed. And by the way, they were pretty high!!!! Or maybe we are just scardy cats. Anyway, it was a good time :)

Saturday morning I woke up to Jaxon’s tail swinging back and forth hitting the wall. He was sprawled across Sean with his head on one side of Sean’s chest and mine on the other. This is my absolute favorite way to wake up; my heart was so full. Eventually we got out of bed and I made a hearty breakfast. Then we packed lunch and snacks for our adventurous day ahead. We headed out to a kayak rental place that offers shuttle busses for a kayak trip down the Betsie River, stopping at a local farmers market in town to pick up some fresh produce on the way. 

We started our 8.2 mile kayak trip around 2:40 pm and ended just around 6pm. The water was pretty shallow at this time of the year, but because of that we were able to see several huuuuuge salmon swimming upstream! It’s just the beginning of the salmon run, and so of course we passed serval people fishing along the way. The flow of the water was slow, but there were so many trees and other things in the river we needed to navigate around. At one point a huge tree was blocking the entire width of the river and there was only one space without branches sticking out of the truck, maybe 4 feel wide, for us to go under the tree trunk and make it through. There were a handful of times I felt like I had to limbo to prevent hitting a tree trunk or branch!  At one point there was a salmon just floating around Sean and his kayak, he was even able to reach out and touch it. I watched its fin as it slowly swam to stay still near Sean, like they had some weird connection. It didn’t even move or flinch at all when Sean reached for it.

Other than the salmon we saw several birds, mostly hawks. They were huge!! And we even saw a few bald eagles, although we could not tell if they were bald eagles or golden eagles, but either way it was really special to see! At one pint we saw an eagle quickly fly over the river and directly towards a tree like it spotted something it wanted, and second later we heard the movement of an animal struggling. We didn’t see it directly, but the eagle clearly went in for a kill. 

Our next day in Michigan we went to Sleeping Bears National Lakeshore for the scenic drive and views of the dunes and Lake Michigan. Rain was in the forecast for the next 30 hours or so, and with all the fog we didn’t get the clear views we were hoping for. Still it was beautiful, but we spent most of the day in the car. Sean had just been here with his family for their reunion 2 years ago, so this was his second time. We spent the rest of the day in Traverse City where we sat a brewery for a flight and some apps. 

We are heading to upstate New York next which will take about a day and a half of driving. Thanks for reading, love you all. 

[365daysofsasuhina]

[ 365 Days of SasuHina || Day One Hundred Sixty-Seven: Explore ] [ Uchiha Sasuke, Hyūga Hinata ] [ SasuHina, pregnancy, death ] [ Verse: River Runs Deep ] [ AO3 Link ]

It was a strange old house. Nothing like the one they left behind in the city. That one had been sleek, modern...if not small, with hardly any yard. But their new home - back in the country, in the foothills of a small mountain - was...well, huge. Old. And old fashioned, too. Complete with engawa, fusuma, tatami floors...and old house smell. Not mold, of course. Just...aged wood and paper. And the yard...the yard was huge! With few houses in the countryside, there wasn’t even a fence - just openness out into fields and the nearby woods.

And at first, Hinata didn’t understand the reason they left the city for the country. Hiashi had told her it was because her mother - pregnant with her second child - needed some fresh air, and peace and quiet. Which, young Hinata supposed, made sense. Having a baby was a pretty big deal! Everyone was excited for it: her mother, her father, and of course herself. Finally she would have a little sibling to play with!

...if only she knew what she would lose in the process.

Her mother, a soft and kind soul, took to their new home well. Enjoying the sun and breezes, she would often sit on the front deck, dozing in the morning light. Hinata would always join her, leaned against her side.

“Soon, Hinata...a new life will bloom. Time will move forward. We will grow...and we will wither. Be sure to give this new blossom all of your love to help it thrive.”

“H...hai!”

The day came in late March, Winter still firmly gripping their province. Left at home with a neighbor, Hinata watched her father’s car pull away in the snow toward the local hospital.

Two people left...and a week later, two people came home.

The day prior, the phone had rung. Their neighbor’s face was strained, and somber. “...I see. No, I understand. I’ll leave such matters to you. Please, travel safely.”

When Hiashi walked in, a small bundle in his arms, Hinata ran to meet him. He walked past her, avoiding her eyes. Looking to the door, she waited for her mother.

And waited.

...and waited…

But she never came.

The baby was a girl. Hanabi, her name. And as her mother gave her life, so did she take life away.

One flower blossomed...and another withered away.

It took time to comprehend. Death was yet a foreign concept to one so young, not even yet five years old. But in time, she knew: her mother was not coming back. She had gone to a place Hinata could not yet follow. Not until it was her own time.

The old house grew quiet. Heavy. Still. Even the coming of Spring felt muted. Without her mother’s light, the colors felt faint. The breeze not so sweet. The warmth still tinged with an edge of cold.

...but...she did as her mother asked. Gave the new life the love she could. She didn’t yet make the connection - didn’t yet know that Hanabi’s life cost her their mother’s.

Only Hiashi knew...and he wasn’t telling.

Time, however, went ever marching forward. It bowed to no whim, not even grieving family. Soon Hinata was enrolled in the local school. Despite her mother’s loss, they remained in the big old house. Whether it was money, apathy, or something else, she didn’t know...but in reality, Hinata didn’t mind. This was home now. Even without her mother.

And as she got older, and bolder...she started, at last, to explore around their home. Hiashi, at first, had warned her not to wander. But his own melancholy meant a lighter regard for his eldest’s actions. And as she took to going further and further from home...he couldn’t bring himself to notice.

The field wasn’t of much interest. The rolling grass could hide many things, but most would scatter long before Hinata could so much as see them. A small creek ran along the front of the house, where tadpoles hid in pockets of slow water, little fish like silver streaks in the sunlight. Hinata could crouch at its edge for hours, watching water striders and crawfish go about their business. Even toads would amble about in the mud from time to time.

But what most held Hinata’s curiosity...was the wood behind the house. It stretched back for miles, up over the hills and toward the mountain that watched over their house.

At first, even her newfound bravery wasn’t enough to get her to step beneath the arching boughs of the trees. Shadows filled the nooks and crannies. And while the grass could hide little critters...the big trunks, rocks, and branches could be concealing any manner of creature…!

But now? Now, Hinata is twelve years old, nearly thirteen. She’s not the timid little kid she was before. And as the rift between herself and her family threatens to widen - Hiashi favoring his younger daughter, and Hanabi soaking up the attention like a sponge - Hinata finds herself...alone.

Staring with pale eyes into the wood, a pack on her shoulders with a bento for her hike...she takes her first steps into the treeline.

Almost immediately, the Summer air cools in the shade of the boughs. The sound of rustling leaves creates a quiet ambience, along with cicada calls and other gentle noises of the forest.

It feels so...peaceful here.

Continuing along a barely-hinted path, Hinata simply takes in the sights. True, there’s not much in the way of sightseeing: it’s mostly just trees, trees, and more trees. But then something catches her eye.

Along a deep divot in a large, old tree...a little shrine has been erected. A crooked tiny torī gate sits over a tiny jinja, an offering plate mostly bare...save for several pristine black feathers.

Hinata stares. Her family has never been overtly religious. They’ll visit a shrine on New Year’s, but...nothing more, save for funerals or weddings. But she has an overwhelming urge to leave something.

Taking her pack from her shoulders, Hinata digs out her bento. It’s not pretty: she was in a hurry to get out of the house this morning. Looking over her meager meal, she plucks a round red fruit from the corner, laying it on the dish before clapping her hands with a little bow. Once that’s done, she packs up her box and starts to move down the path.

But the soft whisper of feathers makes her pause...and look back.

...nothing.

...but, wait…

Her tomato is gone!

She stiffens, jogging back. Did a bird swoop down and steal it? How rude! Checking around the little shrine, she doesn’t see it: it didn’t fall...it must have been swiped.

“It’s been a while since someone left something here.”

Gasping, she stumbles back a few steps before collapsing to her backside. Looking up into the tree, she spots - perched on a branch - a boy in old clothes like she’s seen in her history books. But...another few moments of staring let her notice the dark, silky wings folded at his sides.

“You’re...y-you’re a…!”

“Tengu.” With that, he takes a sharp bite...out of her tomato!

“H-hey!”

“What?”

“That’s for the kami!”

The boy narrows his eyes with a pout. “And what do I look like to you?”

“I...I-I thought tengu were...yōkai…?”

He scoffs, taking another bite. “Shows what you know.” Chewing, he then explains, “We're the guardians of the mountain. And that includes here, too. So, the shrine’s ours. As it happens, I love tomatoes, so...I took it. As I should.”

Hinata just...blinks. In all reality, she never thought such a being was real, let alone that she could argue its category with it. Shifting to sit a bit more comfortably, she asks, “...so...you’re really not h-human…?”

After a pause, he flares his wings. “Do these look like something a human would have?”

“N...no…”

“So...no. I’m not human. I told you, I’m a tengu!”

“Can you fly…?”

“Of course I can fly!” Standing, he chucks the tomato stem into the foliage. With a flap, he glides down to the path in front of her. “See?”

The girl brightens with wonder. “That’s...amazing…!”

Ego clearly stoked, the boy gives another scoff...and a smile off to one side. “I’m a son of the clan head! He watches over this whole forest...and someday, my brother and I will, too!”

“You have a brother?”

“Mhm, he’s older than me...but I’m faster!”

“I-I have a little sister. She’s louder than me…”

“And you’re braver! I’ve seen you exploring around the woods...your sister never leaves that house!”

Hinata gives a soft laugh. “She doesn’t like outside...there’s dirt, and bugs.”

“Well of course there is! It’s outside!” As though floating, he lifts, folding his arms and legs before settling on the grass. “So...what are you doing in here, human? No one like you comes here anymore…”

“I guess I was just...curious. And I like being outside...away from the house.”

The tengu’s head tilts. “You don’t like your home…?”

“It’s...c-complicated. And...I’m not just human, ne? My name’s Hinata.”

“And I’m Sasuke!”

“Are there...more spirits in these woods?”

“Mhm. There’s not many humans, so we thrive here! My father was worried when you humans came to that house, but...none of you have bothered us.”

“E-except me…”

Sasuke considers her. “...well, you seem nice for a human. You even left a gift at the shrine. No one does that anymore…”

“I t-thought it would be polite.”

“Will you...come back?”

Hinata’s head tilts. “...I guess so. It’s a bit late, now...I should probably go home.”

“Already?”

“I don’t want my f-father to scold me.”

“Oh...okay.” With that, he leaps to his feet with a small flurry of air. “I’ll go with you. Make sure you don’t get lost.” Sasuke then offers a hand.

“...oh! T...thank you.” Letting him lift her, for a moment, Hinata feels light as a feather, floating as he did until touching the ground.

“Next time you come, I’ll show you more of the forest, okay? There’s even a river with a spirit in it, too!”

“Really…?”

“Yeah! She’s really nice, and kinda young...she formed from melting snow from the mountain when it took a new path, so...it formed a new river! And every river needs a spirit. And you can meet my brother, too! And maybe my cousins - I have lots!”

Brightening, Hinata gives a smile. “I...I would like that!”

The pair make their way back to the entrance of the path, overlooking the field as afternoon starts to fade into evening. “Well...here we are.”

“Thank you for t-taking me back.”

Sasuke nods...and then jolts with an idea. “Oh, wait!” Flaring a wing, he carefully plucks a feather. “Here...take this with you.”

Eyes wide, Hinata gently cradles it in her palm. “...but…?”

“If you let the wind take it, it’ll lead you back to the shrine, so I can find you again!”

Realizing what a gift this is, Hinata gives a little bow. “Thank you v-very much!”

“Sure! But you better get home, huh?”

“Yeah…”

“Can you...come back tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I can! But pretty soon, I’ll have school.”

“School…?”

“Where I go to learn things!”

“Oh…” Sasuke’s head tilts. “Strange…”

That earns a soft giggle. “G-goodbye, Sasuke-kun!”

“See you tomorrow!” The little tengu waves as she jogs back down the field toward the house. Then, with a whisper of feathers, he disappears.

                                                         .oOo.

     Well, this is kinda random, but...I like it! I always like the idea of Japanese mythology being "real", so...hence doing so every so often with these prompts. This was based a LITTLE bit on My Neighbor Totoro! Only...I guess it's My Neighbor Sasuke, lol      Anyway, I'm...very tired. Strange day, and it ended on a rather sour note, so...I'm gonna go try to sleep it off~ Thanks for reading!

[belphegor1982]

Way back in December 2015 I made a post that started with (tldr) “I’m writing the sad and I’m afraid I’ll fuck up”. Well, I finally finished the chapter, so I’ll leave you to judge whether I fucked up or not.

BETWEEN THE MOUNTAINS AND THE PLAINS

Chapter One: September Chapter Two: The Clandestine Chaplain Chapter Three: Tidings of Comfort and Joy Chapter Four: Giosuè

Chapter Five: Vigil

Quand la vie ne tient qu’à un fil, c’est fou le prix du fil ! (When life hangs by a thread, you won’t believe the price of the thread.)

Daniel Pennac, La Petite Marchande de prose (Write to Kill)

August 1944

In the heart of summer, heat is no laughing matter in the Lowlands. Whoever decides to go out on the roads in the dead hour, between one and three in the afternoon, when the air trembles above the ground and you can burn your fingers just picking up a pebble, needs at the very least the protection of a hat if they don’t want to keel over from sunstroke. Going from the cooler houses out into the sun too quickly feels like being on the receiving end of the hottest, most powerful slap in the face you can imagine.

When the sun is at its zenith, everything is painted white: the sky, the roads, and even the grass on the dykes. Thin shiny threads of stagnant water stretch in the bottom of canals whose proportions then look completely excessive to an outsider. Lizards and grass snakes loll on hot stones, birds hide in trees or in the cool of hedges. Everything slows down, everybody waits for the worst to pass. The searing heat makes it hard for anyone to believe that the world hasn’t just stopped and that things, presumably, are still happening somewhere.

And yet.

* * *

It was an hour after lunch on one of the hottest Thursdays of August. Don Camillo was slumped in his armchair with his eyes closed and his collar undone. It was too hot to light a half-cigar or even read; a nap in the relative cool of the rectory seemed the best way to pass the time until the heat abated. Besides, it would be a welcome distraction from his thoughts.

The procession of the Assumption had been two days ago. Windows and doors all around town had been decked with the traditional flowers and garlands to celebrate the Madonna as her statue was carried along the streets, but only half the usual people turned up; most of the ones who did looked nervous from start to finish, glancing around anxiously and jumping at sudden noises. In the end, instead of Nazi or Fascist tanks, only Guglielmo Fantoni, the head of the local Blackshirt section – which consisted of half a dozen men and a dog – showed up on a bicycle to watch the proceedings.

Toward the end of the procession, however, as the cortège crossed the main square back to the church and people started to relax, they became aware of a low humming sound that quickly turned into the roaring whine of plane engines. It grew closer, so much that the terrified people picked up their children and their old folks and scattered; in the blink of an eye Don Camillo was alone in the middle of the deserted square with the statue of the Madonna. He ran to the terracotta statue, gritted his teeth, and lifted it with a huge effort. A few minutes and a lot of sweat later, he had carried it to the parvis, under the porch of the church, just in time to look up and see the planes fly over the square, so low you could make out their markings, and continue north-west to the river and the Canalaccio.

Two or three seconds later, the earth shook. The Germans had just lost three trucks, a tank, and half a dozen men; on the other hand, fifteen villagers of a nearby hamlet had lost their homes, and two families had lost their lives down to the last child.

The funerals had taken place this morning. The carpenter had to borrow wood from Boretto to finish the nine coffins, even though two of them were no more than a hundred, a hundred and ten centimetres long.

It was not uncommon for Carlino, the current altar boy, to fall asleep in the middle of Mass and forget to ring the bell at the moment of the Elevation1; Don Camillo usually muttered “Carlino, the bell!” between his teeth and, if it didn’t work, woke him up with a smack to the top of his head. Although he never let his hand do more than brush past the boy’s hair – otherwise he would probably knock out Carlino altogether – it was always more than enough for Carlino to yelp awake. This time, though, the reason the boy missed his cue for the bell was because he was sobbing too hard to pay attention; one of the dead children had sat next to him in class for the past two years and they were good friends. Don Camillo sighed, and ended up gently taking the bell from the boy’s hands and ringing it himself. Nobody blinked at the anomaly.

Grief won over fear. The entire town accompanied the bodies to the cemetery.

After the funeral, Don Camillo stayed in the church for a long time to talk to the crucified Christ on the main altar, as usual when the coffins lowered into the ground that day were a little too many, or a little too small. As lunchtime drew near, though, heat and hunger overcame sorrow, and he retreated to the rectory for a bite to eat and a nap. Or at least some shut-eye.

Don Camillo was just starting to doze off when someone knocked at his window so frantically he almost fell off his armchair. Once he was the right way up he ran to the window, where he saw the upturned nose and freckled face of thirteen year old Angelina Mozzini from the Boschetto. She was in such a hurry that her bicycle lay discarded on the ground.

“What happened?” Don Camillo asked, alarmed. “What’s wrong?”

Angelina, panting after a ten-minute bicycle ride at full speed under the sun, inhaled deeply and said in one breath, “My dad told me to tell you my grandpa is very sick and he wants to see you right now and there’s no time to lose.”

Don Camillo hastily put his collar back on and fastened up the couple of buttons he had undone as a concession to the heat. Then he rushed out of the rectory and into the church, followed by Angelina.

“Did he have an accident?” he asked loudly as he rummaged in the sacristy then under the altar for the holy oil, the vestments and the usual things needed for the last rites. “Or was it the heat? He was fine this morning!”

Angelina had stayed in the aisle; she twisted her index finger in her right hand and said nothing, looking red in the face and rather distressed, so Don Camillo did not insist. He locked the door of the church and tied his bag to the pannier rack on his bicycle. After a second thought he ran back to the rectory to take his hat. When he got back to his bicycle, Angelina had picked up her own and was already halfway across the square, pedalling towards home.

The Boschetto was one of the frazioni of the town, a few houses planted here and there next to the little grove that gave it its name. It took Don Camillo a few minutes to get there, and when he did, Angelina’s bicycle was already propped up against the wall of her house.

He found her inside with her parents and, more surprisingly, her grandfather, who was sitting in an armchair reading a newspaper and waved cheerfully when he saw Don Camillo.

“What—”

Angelina interrupted him. “I’m really sorry I lied to you, Don Camillo,” she said, visibly upset. “I didn’t want to.”

Her father gave her a comforting smile and turned to Don Camillo, looking grave.

“Sorry about the trick, Reverend,” he said. “I believe there is indeed someone who needs the last rites, but not here.”

“You mean in the mountains?” asked Don Camillo slowly. He had suspected Maurizio Mozzini to be in contact with the partisans for a while now, but since he was not absolutely certain, he had said nothing. Besides, there were so many brigades and small bands roaming the mountains and the hills. Who knew which one, or which ones, Mozzini communicated with?

Mozzini nodded. “I have a radio,” he said after a moment of hesitation. “I usually use it to relay information and report the Germans’ and the Black Brigades’ troop movements. I just received a message that said, ‘Tell Don Camillo that Agostino’s cousin is in a very bad way and wants to see a priest right now’; since it wasn’t part of any code I know, I sent Angelina to get you. Does that make sense to you?”

Don Camillo nodded, suddenly worried. ‘Agostino’ was Signora Antonietta’s code name. No cousin of hers lived nearby. It could only mean one thing: she was sheltering somebody who might not be long for this world. Angelina’s father had been right. There was no time to lose.

Since Angelina still had guilt written all across her face in capital letters, however, Don Camillo said quickly, “Look, you didn’t lie to me. You said your dad told you to tell me those things. That wasn’t a lie, was it?”

She shook her head, looking a little relieved. Don Camillo hastily saluted everybody – old Mozzini gave him a toothless smile from his armchair – and took off on his bicycle like a rocket towards Pasotti’s.

A few weeks ago, Pasotti, tired of having to get out of bed or stop working every time Don Camillo needed his motorcycle, had given him a spare key to his barn. Don Camillo took the motorcycle, leaving his bicycle in its place, and sped off in a roar of engine and a cloud of dust.

Riding a motorcycle, especially in the summer, had nothing on riding a bicycle. Not only the machine made him gain precious time and save up on energy, but the speed created a wind so strong he had to tie a handkerchief around his hat to keep it in place. After the trips to the Mozzinis’ and Pasotti’s with the sun beating down hard on his head and his shoulders – respectively covered with a black hat and a black cassock – he felt like a fish the fisherman had just thrown back into the water.

Who could be the poor soul in need of the holy oil? A soldier, maybe, with some information he could only tell to someone who would keep his secret to the grave? A civilian? One of the partisans?

And why had they asked for him?

The motorcycle swerved, jerking Don Camillo from his grim train of thoughts. He shoved the worry to the back of his mind and twisted the accelerator.

Despite the air shimmering above the ground that made it look like puddles of water in the distance, the dirt road was very, very dry, and by the time Don Camillo reached Roccaverde, around three in the afternoon, he was covered in white dust up to his hair. He barely took the time to brush off the worst of it before knocking on Signora Antonietta’s door.

Nobody answered.

Don Camillo knocked again, louder this time. Since he still didn’t get any reply, he tried opening the door.

It was unlocked.

The transition from the blazing sun to the darker indoors – the shutters of all the windows facing south and west were closed – was so jarring that it took a few seconds before his eyes got used to the lack of light. As he blinked and opened his eyes as wide as he could, there was a dull thud and sudden movement next to him.

The first thing he could make out clearly was a gun pointed straight at his face. The second was a pair of eyes just behind the gun.

Don Camillo had never been afraid of weapons, but he knew enough about human nature to freeze at the sight of those eyes. The person they belonged to was clearly beyond knowing friend from foe and could shoot without a second thought. All of a sudden the sweat that had been running down his temples went cold, and he shuddered.

“Brusco,” he said with a placating gesture, “it’s me. Calm down and put that gun aw—”

Two things happened at the same time: Brusco recognised Don Camillo and lowered his weapon, and Don Camillo took a better look at Brusco and gasped. The man’s clothes were spattered with blood and his hands and arms were blotched almost up to the elbow.

Brusco slowly put his gun back in his belt and bent to pick up what he had dropped: a mass of sheets with large stains of a colour that was instantly recognisable, even in the half-light. The expression in his eyes had shifted slightly. Not that it got any easier to look at.

A lot can be said without anyone opening their mouth at all. The two men stared at each other in wordless dialogue for a few seconds, then Don Camillo ran to the corridor.

The trapdoor to the attic was open, the ladder down. He clambered up, still dragging his bag.

What he saw when he scrambled to his feet made him stop dead. The bag fell from his hands with a thump on the dusty floorboards.

The tiles lay directly on the rafters and the purlins, and the rays of sunlight peeking between them were more than enough to see by. Signora Antonietta used the vast space mostly for storage, but also to hide fugitives stalked by the authorities, partisans between two actions, or downed Allied flyers. Small boxes of stuff that were not sensitive to cold or humidity were strewn here and there; in the back, a few piled up crates and boxes usually served as a low makeshift screen to isolate the old mattress she kept for the occasional traveller in transit. Signora Antonietta sat beside it, her sleeves rolled up high on her sinewy arms, taking knife-like tools out of a tureen full of red water and cleaning them with ethanol in slow, deliberate gestures despite the fact that her hands shook a little. When she was done with one of them, she handed it to the man sitting opposite on the dusty floor, a middle-aged bespectacled gentleman in his shirtsleeves who handled the knives with the kind of familiarity that comes with long experience. He took them one by one and carefully put them back into a long, thin box.

There was someone lying on the narrow mattress behind the two of them, and Don Camillo’s heart seized up in his chest, because it was Peppone.

Not the Peppone he knew, the one he had last seen just a week and a half ago as he waved him goodbye, face and arms very brown after almost a year of outdoor living, one hand gripping his submachine gun’s strap, firmly planted in the ground like a tree. This Peppone was still, silent, limp; his skin was grey, his eyes sunken, his lips almost as white as the thick bandage around his midsection. His jacket, his neckerchief and what was left of his shirt lay in a heap nearby, so drenched in blood that the floorboards underneath were red.

Don Camillo felt around for something to lean on. The nearest rafter was too far, and he swayed on his feet. Signora Antonietta had looked up at the sound of Don Camillo’s bag hitting the floor; when she saw the expression on his face she stood up with some difficulty and hurried to him.

The man vaguely looked up from his bag. He was drenched in sweat and looked exhausted.

“I’m afraid you won’t get much of a confession from this one, Father,” he said, taking off his glasses to clean them. “I hope it’s not that much of a prerequisite to get to Heaven.”

Was it the pervasive heat, or the pungent, sickly smell of blood and antiseptic mingled with dusty wood? Don Camillo’s legs wobbled and would perhaps have given out if Signora Antonietta hadn’t taken a solid hold of his arm and supported some of his weight. She glowered at the man, her eyes gleaming out of her pale face.

“He’s a friend,” she said sharply, bending down to retrieve Don Camillo’s bag from the floor and walking up to the mattress and the prone form on it. Don Camillo didn’t correct her. He followed like a ghost, his head strangely empty, as though full of winter mist.

The man – obviously a doctor – put his glasses back on and sympathy softened his expression.

“I’m sorry, that was thoughtless. He’s still alive; I managed to take the bullet out and sewed up the wound and what I could inside. The damage to the internal organs wasn’t all that extensive, considering, and I gave him an antibiotic to ward off infection. But he did lose a large amount of blood, and I’m not equipped to give him a transfusion – even if I could find out his blood type and find someone with the same I don’t have the proper equipment here. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon, but…” He shook his head. “Honestly, it’ll be a miracle if he even lasts the night.”

Don Camillo half-fell, half-sat heavily on the floor.

Funny how some kinds of silences can have different textures, different colours. The doctor’s voice had been low, and nobody else made a sound, but the silence suddenly became even heavier as a fourth person – fifth, if you included Peppone – added his own lack of words. Brusco had come back with clean hands and a pile of folded-up sheets just in time to hear the last sentence, which had frozen him in his tracks.

Signora Antonietta sighed, and went to take the sheets from him. Between the four of them, they managed to make a decent bed without jostling Peppone around too much. Peppone did not complain or even make a sound the whole time. The only outward sign of life he gave was his chest rising and falling imperceptibly along with his thin, uneven breaths.

The doctor retrieved his jacket, his hat and his bag, and took his leave. Signora Antonietta picked up Peppone’s shirt and jacket and followed him down the ladder, adding in a tired voice that she was going to make some tea, being out of coffee. The red neckerchief – now a much darker red – fell from the heap of clothes right next to Don Camillo. Don Camillo picked it up automatically, then let it go as though it had burned his hand. The fabric was soaked through and through, probably from an attempt to stem the flood of blood.

Brusco went to sit down next to Peppone, staring into space. He and Don Camillo stayed silent a long time. The only sound that mattered to both of them was that faint irregular breathing.

Then, at some point, Brusco rubbed his eyes and took a deep breath.

“Bad luck. That’s what it was. We’d subdued the driver and the passenger, and were about to take the truck and go when that damn—that Kraut came out of nowhere. Turned out he went in the woods to relieve himself, lost track of his squad and bumped right into us. Still had half his trouser buttons open. Can you believe it?” Incredulity broke from behind the dark despair, then was gone as soon as it had come. “He only fired one shot. We got him before he could fire a second, Nino and me. One of us shot him right in the head. Might’ve been me or Nino. No way to tell.”

From downstairs came the muffled sound of the front door opening and closing. The middle hinge always creaked a little, no matter how often Signora Antonietta oiled it. Outside a goat bleated.

“Peppone insisted we bury the body before anything else, because there’s always reprisals when the Germans get wind that one of their own got killed. He’s the boss, and the wound didn’t look so bad at first, so we took care of the corpse and handed the guys from the truck to another band we’d rendezvoused with. Signora Antonietta’s house was a dozen kilometres away, so I took the truck and headed there with Peppone.

“At one point Peppone said that we’d have plenty of things to tell the chaplain next time you came to visit. It was a narrow, dangerous road to drive on, so I didn’t really pay attention. Then a little later he said, ‘You couldn’t stop by my house, could you? There’s something I forgot to mention to the wife.’ He was getting white and the seat was getting red, so I stepped on it. And then a couple of kilometres later, he gripped my shirt and said real quietly, ‘Get him. Go. Now.’ He stopped talking pretty quick after that.” Brusco cleared his throat and continued with an effort. It was the longest Don Camillo had ever heard him talk. “When we got here I sent Smilzo to get the doctor in Borghetto and wrote a message for Francesca to send over the radio. I’m supposed to meet with the others in half an hour, with or without news.”

Brusco fell silent. Then he got to his feet, his body unfolding limb after limb, looking like every joint should be creaking at least as much as Signora Antonietta’s front door did.

“When… If… Anything happens, leave a message in the usual tree. We’ll check whenever we can. The sooner we know, the better.”

Don Camillo was still incapable of forming a coherent sentence; he only nodded. The situation felt completely unreal, yet at the same time he felt as though somebody was hitting him in the head quite soundly with a thick plank.

Signora Antonietta climbed the ladder to bring the tea and give Brusco the go-ahead; Brusco downed a steaming cup in almost one go, most likely burning every single taste bud in his mouth. When he was able to speak again, he whispered a few words, probably in thanks. Signora Antonietta responded in kind and laid a gentle hand on his arm, but Brusco shook his head and left without looking back. A minute later the front door creaked again as he closed it.

Signora Antonietta put down the tray on a box and drew a crate to sit on. She was silent for a while, nursing her cup of tea and absent-mindedly rubbing her fingers. Most of the blood was gone and she wore a clean apron, but it was obvious from the way her hands still trembled a little that she would keep seeing that particular shade of red on her fingers – the same shade that was now on Don Camillo’s from when he had picked up the red kerchief – for a long time.

She put the other cup in Don Camillo’s hands. Once he noticed the tea, he drank it up, like Brusco had done – and, like with Brusco, it set his throat on fire. Only after the burning sensation started to fade and his face went back to a more normal colour did the world really come into focus again.

It was not a pretty sight.

Signora Antonietta slowly drank the last of her tea. Then she picked up Don Camillo’s bag which was lying on a box nearby and gently put it down next to him.

“I imagine you’re going to need this,” she said quietly. She took the empty cups and the tray to put them away and added, “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything. There’s a lot of washing to be done and the goats need milking. I’m going to close the trapdoor just in case; knock four times if you want the ladder.”

“Thank you,” said Don Camillo in a voice he didn’t recognise. He heard her footsteps thud across the attic and down the ladder, then all sounds from downstairs were muffled as Signora Antonietta shut the trapdoor. This time she had taken the bloody kerchief with her.

As the silence stretched and stretched, it seemed to weigh so much that his heart and his limbs felt like they were made of lead. Reaching for his bag was an effort. When he looked inside, though, he immediately closed it again.

Don Camillo knew, for having learned it in seminary all those years ago and practising it all too often, that the holy oil was not only for the dying, but for the sick as well. Extreme unction existed to help souls on the way to Heaven, make sure they got there quickly and didn’t get lost along the way, even if said soul still had quite some time to spend on earth. It was ‘just in case’.

It was that ‘just in case’ that kept some people from calling the priest until the very last moment, when they or their loved one was practically drawing their last breath – almost as though the oil was not seen as a consequence of someone being at death’s door, but as the final confirmation that the person would indeed die.

There were priests – generally from big cities – who shook their heads at that and called it ‘silly rural superstition’. Don Camillo had always found it anything but silly. It was superstition, of course, but how could anyone call ‘silly’ people who just aren’t ready to say goodbye to a parent, a child, a friend?

Don Camillo took a deep breath and reached for the bag again. Then he closed it once more.

No, not now. It was too early.

The only sounds that came from outside was the occasional bird song and the ferocious thuds of the washing paddle on wet fabric below. Signora Antonietta was otherwise completely silent as she worked. Considering the amount of blood that had stained her sheets, she would be at it for a long time.

It was the heart of the afternoon; the sun had left the zenith a couple of hours before but was still beating brutally on the trees, the ground, and the rooftops. In the attic, directly under the tiles, the heat was crushing. Don Camillo wiped the sweat from his forehead with the hand that didn’t have blood on it and looked down at Peppone, who was still breathing shallowly, grey-faced and sunken-eyed.

Don Camillo looked at his bag again.

No. There was still time.

Don Camillo shifted position to get on his knees – little bones popping in his back and shoulders – and started praying.

They weren’t the usual prayers one said at someone’s death or sick bed; his missal was in his bag and he wasn’t opening it for the world (not for the moment at least, as he kept telling himself). Rather, he borrowed from Masses: the daily ones, the Sunday ones, the weddings and baptisms. The Ave Maria, the Magnificat, the De Profundis. The prayers addressed to God directly and the others, addressed to men in comfort or consolation.

And still time crawled by, agonisingly.

* * *

Signora Antonietta came up around four with a pitcher of water. She managed to have Peppone down the contents of a glass.

“Try to have him drink at least every hour,” she told Don Camillo, adding before she went down the ladder again, “and it wouldn’t be a bad thing if you helped yourself, too. It can get fairly hot up here.”

As understatements went, this one was rather spectacular. Don Camillo had to make several trips to the kitchen pump.

When temperatures started to go down a little and the sunlight softened and turned gold, then orange, then red, Signora Antonietta climbed into the attic again, this time with a bit of broth and bread, hard cheese, and culatello. Peppone drank the broth without waking up; Signora Antonietta ate half the rest of the food. When she insisted that Don Camillo should have something, he politely but firmly declined.

A while later, Signora Antonietta looked at him, sighed, and brought him a blanket.

* * *

Don Camillo spent one of the longest nights of his life, huddling under a blanket on that hard, dusty floor, staring into space and listening with unprecedented attention to one particular sound. Time was suspended to that faint breathing, right there, fifty centimetres from him. A few times, it slowed to a crawl, and Don Camillo’s heart froze and only started beating again when he realised it hadn’t, in fact, stopped.

When Latin started to slip away from his mind – because it’s always right when you think hardest about something that your memory fails you – he switched to Italian. At some point he realised he was praying in dialect, too.

Seconds passed, turned into minutes then hours, then abruptly turned into seconds again. Peppone kept breathing. Don Camillo kept praying. The bag remained unopened.

* * *

“Reverend?”

Don Camillo had not realised he had closed his eyes. When he did, his heart gave an ugly lurch and he quickly looked down at Peppone.

Not much had changed. He was still deathly pale and almost completely motionless, as though keeping what little life he had left huddled in his chest to keep his heart and lungs working. Breathing looked a little less like a huge effort, however.

The faint blue light of pre-dawn seeped in through the spaces between the upper tiles. Signora Antonietta was crouching in front of him, already dressed and with a shawl around her shoulders. When she saw his panicked glance, she gave a wan smile.

“He’s still with us, thank the Lord. I brought breakfast. Do you want some?”

“No, thank you,” said Don Camillo, rubbing his eyes with the palm of his hand that didn’t have dried blood on it. “I can’t before morning Mass.” He took out his pocket watch; it was a little past four. There was still time for him to make it home before morning service.

The last thing Don Camillo wanted was to leave Signora Antonietta’s attic, but he knew that if he stayed away for too long, there would inevitably be gossip, especially from the little old ladies who never missed even the six o’clock mass barring snow, sleet, or buckets of rain. Gossip was not that dangerous in and of itself, but since the German invasion, anything could be turned into a weapon. Having already missed vespers last night for no apparent reason, he could hardly afford to miss another Mass.

He rose to his feet with some effort. Signora Antonietta put down her cup of tea on a box nearby and gently touched Peppone’s hand. Peppone didn’t stir.

“You’ll come back, won’t you?” she asked softly. She wasn’t quite looking at him, and she wasn’t quite looking down either, so Don Camillo wasn’t sure whether she meant him or Peppone. He nodded all the same and left silently.

* * * *

Pasotti’s motorcycle flew towards the horizon as though on its own accord. Its rider was too preoccupied to consciously do a good steering job. The fact that they both reached Pasotti’s farm intact was nothing short of a miracle. It was only when Don Camillo took up his bicycle again that he realised he had left his bag in Signora Antonietta’s attic.

There was quite some time left before Mass, but Don Camillo didn’t stop at the rectory to brush the dust off and change. Instead, he slipped into the church through the little door of the bell tower.

The church was cool, still, and quiet, as it usually was this early in the day. Sunlight was still halfway down the belfry and it would be a while before it reached the stained-glass windows. The candles next to the altar and in the little chapel devoted to the Madonna had gone out, but the little light on the main altar still burned as it always did.

That little light had never failed to comfort Don Camillo, not once, for as long as he could remember. Now, though, as he stared at it, it seemed to him that it shone from afar.

His head still felt empty, but his heart was full to the brim, like the river when swollen with winter rains. And, like the river, it suddenly overflowed with barely any warning.

He raged against the Germans, who invaded lands that did not want them and murdered their people; against their guns, and their bullets, and the harm they did; and, most of all, against idiots who had wives and children and still went out to fight like they thought they were Garibaldi. He strode back and forth along the railing before the altar as his words filled the little church.

The church and its surroundings were deserted. The only people up and awake at this time are the farmers, who know that land and livestock don’t keep office hours, and they don’t come to the heart of town to work. Nobody interrupted or interfered, and after a while, Don Camillo simply ran out of steam and collapsed on a front pew, his face in his hands.

The silence that followed was not quite as absolute as it had been in Signora Antonietta’s attic, but it came close.

Then there was a sigh.

“Don Camillo.”

Don Camillo didn’t move.

“I know you are worried, Camillo, and upset, but this is not the way to go about it.”

Don Camillo finally let his hands fall. On his cheeks, tears had left tracks in the dust.

“Whose fault is it, then, Lord?” he whispered, his voice hoarse and barely audible.

“You’ll always find blame if you go looking for it in others and in yourself. But where it truly lies is in hate and indifference to the fate of other men.”

“But if they… if he just…” The blood on his right hand had dried, gone brown and cracked, now a little smudged in places. He stared at his feet to avoid looking at it. “That soldier had a choice. Peppone had a choice. He could have… I…”

“Of course they had a choice. But why did they make it? The soldier shot, because he was taught to hate and to destroy the enemy. Brusco and Nino killed him because he had shot Peppone and threatened to shoot other people. And the soldier’s family will wonder forever whether they had a choice, too.”

“A soldier knows he can get killed at any given moment in war.” That lesson had been learned quickly in 1917: the uniform, no matter what kind, painted a target on your back. People even shot at stretcher bearers – and chaplains – provided they wore a different colour.

“Peppone knows this, too,” said Jesus kindly.

“He hasn’t been a soldier for over twenty-five years!”

“If you asked him, I think he would say it doesn’t matter right now.”

“I can’t,” said Don Camillo, trying and failing to swallow the lump in his throat. “I can’t ask him right now, because he’s… not here.” He sat up straighter and, for the first time since he had come in, looked up at the crucified Christ on the main altar. “War is a young man’s game. What possessed him to go looking for German soldiers, and at his age too? He’s got four children!”

“People have different ideas of what it means to protect the things they love,” said Jesus. “Are you angry with him because he made a choice, or because you are afraid?”

“I’m not angry,” snapped Don Camillo. Then he cleared his throat and said quietly, “He can’t die, my Jesus. He just can’t.”

“Only souls are immortal, Camillo,” said Jesus very gently.

Don Camillo lowered his head. “I don’t want him to.” He ran a hand across his eyes; his cheeks were still wet. “Not like this. Not without a confession, not without his family around him. They didn’t even get to say goodbye, Lord.”

“I know. Such is the way of things sometimes.”

Silence fell again, because Don Camillo had no idea what to say. Words had tumbled out of him earlier; now they deserted him completely.

Outside, the sun was rising, sunlight slowly descending on the church, warming the stone walls and drying up the dew. When the first ray of sunshine hit the top of the stained-glass windows, a small rainbow spilled out inside on the wall opposite, and it was like watching a second sunrise.

Don Camillo, lost in his own head and still looking at his feet, did not see the colours. Then, slowly, he unfolded his great mass from his pew and disappeared into the rectory.

It was much too early to go buy candles from the general store, so he took the four or five he had left and went to light them near the main altar. Then he lit the other candles around them and the ones near the terracotta statue of the Madonna.

He watched his candles burn in silence for a dozen minutes, shoulders hunched and hands folded behind his back; then, as it was nearly time for Mass, he went down on one knee and made the sign of the cross before going into the rectory for a wash and a change of clothes.

* * * *

There was never much of a crowd for first Mass on weekdays. Only a few little old ladies, a couple of old men, and the town’s road mender sat in the church.

Don Camillo went through the entire liturgy like a sleepwalker. He did not get one word wrong, but people noticed something off about him. They were not accustomed to a faraway voice and unfocused eyes from their giant of a parish priest, who on some days seemed the human embodiment of a thunderstorm.

Carlino, though half-asleep – as usual, so early in the day – seemed to catch on, too. He kept throwing him furtive glances; when he realised that he had completely forgotten to ring the bell for Elevation and Don Camillo had said nothing, he looked downright scared.

“Are you all right, Don Camillo?” he ventured after the few faithful had left, sharing puzzled looks.

Don Camillo looked at him absently and waved him off. “Go home,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound like him at all, “and be careful.”

Carlino ran off, still in his altar boy attire, wondering what calamity could make such a drastic change in someone. Surely it was something awful. Maybe the end of the world.

When Carlino slipped out of the church he left the front door open. Don Camillo went to close it, out of habit.

Outside, the sun was already shining bright as it rose in the cloudless sky, the promise of another scorching day. People took advantage of the relative cool to go about their businesses, riding by on bicycles and walking under the arcade that bordered the square, left of the church. Stores opened, people greeted each other cheerfully, and a few children played marbles, watched lazily by a dog drowsing in the shade of the statue in the middle of the square.

Don Camillo watched life happen for a little while, then asked quietly, “Jesus, is Peppone still alive?”

“What do you believe, Don Camillo?” came a voice behind him from the heart of the church.

“I believe I should go back. He shouldn’t be alone.”

“Signora Antonietta hasn’t left his side. And no-one is ever alone.”

“Signora Antonietta is a good woman, and I know You’re watching over him, but if he… He needs someone from home. And Brusco and the rest of the gang are in hiding.”

“And you left your bag with the holy oil at her house,” Jesus remarked.

A few seconds passed in silence. Then Don Camillo closed the door and turned to face the crucified Christ.

“I won’t need the holy oil,” he said slowly.

“Do you think so?”

“I believe so. Peppone is not going to die. Not today.” Don Camillo locked the door and walked up to the main altar with new purpose and energy. When he was at the foot of the crucified Christ he hastily crossed himself. “I have to go, Lord, sorry. I’ll talk to You on the way.”

Don Camillo rushed up the rectory stairs to his bedroom to take his hat; after a second’s reflection, he grabbed the little wooden crucifix on the wall above his headboard and put it into his pocket. Then he ran out to where he had left his bicycle only a couple of hours before and pedalled like mad towards Pasotti’s farm.

* * * *

When Don Camillo reached Signora Antonietta’s little farm, he was drenched in sweat and covered in dust, just like he had been the day before. Unlike the day before, the owner was there to let him inside when he knocked.

“How is he?” he asked immediately.

Signora Antonietta looked tired and worn; his heart skipped a beat. But she gave a small smile.

“Still hanging on. Looks like he decided to prove the doctor wrong.”

Don Camillo mentally thanked Jesus, God, and the Madonna as fervently as he could, and all but ran to the ladder to the attic.

Yes, Peppone was still limp and ashen-faced, his eyes were still closed and his breathing ragged, but he was still holding on to life like the pigheaded mule Don Camillo knew him to be. Relief hit him like a cannonball, powerful enough to make him see stars, and he exhaled slowly.

“I’ll only say this once – sometimes it’s not easy being your chaplain.”

Peppone, being unconscious, didn’t say anything. In nigh on forty years Don Camillo had never seen him remain silent for so long. There was something he found profoundly disturbing about it.

Still, he reminded himself, being a chaplain is not something one decides to be because it’s easy.

Something jabbed his right hip and he remembered the crucifix in his pocket; he propped it against a box near Peppone’s head and looked around. His bag was where he had left it, out of the way to and from the trapdoor, within easy reach.

Like last night, Don Camillo didn’t open it. Only this time something in his heart told him he wasn’t wrong not to.

To his surprise, the white spots just wouldn’t disappear no matter how much he tried to blink them out of his eyes; worse, the world started to spin suddenly and he had to lean on the framework to avoid dropping to the floor. That was how Signora Antonietta found him as she climbed up the ladder. She took one look at his white face and hurried to Peppone’s makeshift bed, hitching up her skirt and her apron in her hands.

“Did he—” She made sure he was still breathing, and looked up to Don Camillo, puzzled. “What’s the matter with you, Reverend?”

If Don Camillo had had the energy to, he would have blushed.

“I haven’t eaten anything since noon yesterday. I only just remembered.”

Signora Antonietta eyed the big black-clad mass in front of her and frowned.

“Father, that’s not very sensible.”

“I agree,” said Don Camillo over the rumbling of his stomach.

“Sit down, I’ll bring something up.”

Signora Antonietta came back with bread, cured ham, some tomatoes and a couple of eggs, and shared an early lunch with Don Camillo. Don Camillo ate slowly, steadily, until the last spot was gone from his vision. From time to time, he glanced at Peppone, who still hadn’t stirred.

“You’re missing out, comrade,” he told him between two mouthfuls of bread and cheese.

Signora Antonietta smiled behind her glass of water. She straightened the little crucifix, which had slid against the crate and threatened to fall, and looked at Peppone.

“He’s lucky to have such a good friend.”

Don Camillo almost choked on his bread at the thought of the face Peppone would make if he heard.

“We’re not friends,” he said with emphasis once he could breathe correctly. Then, as Signora Antonietta stared at him incredulously, he added with his index finger in the air, “We’re enemies thrown together by circumstance.”

“And,” asked Signora Antonietta, who seemed to have trouble suppressing her smile, “how long have you been enemies?”

Don Camillo did some quick mental arithmetic.

“Thirty-nine years, more or less.”

Signora Antonietta gave a solemn nod.

“That makes you very faithful enemies.” She looked at Don Camillo from the corner of her eye. “I told you once that folks around here think you valley people are mad. From what I’ve seen this past year, Reverend, I can say that everyone from the Lowlands that I’ve met has a screw loose.”

“Take it up with him,” said Don Camillo, pointing at Peppone with his thumb. “He’s the mechanic, not me.”

But there was something like pride in his smile.

* * * *

The doctor was true to his word: he came back around two o’clock to change Peppone’s bandages, looking less harried but more tired. He was somewhat surprised to find his patient still clinging on doggedly to this world.

“He must be stubborn, to say the least,” he said as he opened his bag and pulled out his tools of the trade.

Don Camillo gave a shrug. “That’s how it is in the plains. We’re nothing if not persistent.”

“Today it’s a good thing. Do you know his blood type?”

“Yes,” said Don Camillo, “we have the same.”

The blood-transfusion instrument the doctor took out of his bag had tubes, a pump, and syringes; Don Camillo remembered seeing one in action exactly once before, on the battlefield in early autumn 1918. It looked just as barbaric then as it did now. He also distinctly remembered that the soldier had survived.

Back home, when Don Camillo rolled up his sleeves, people took it as a hint that blows were about to be exchanged with whoever was taking off his jacket at the time, and ran off to watch from a respectable distance and count points. This time, though, blood got drawn when he rolled up one sleeve, but no violence was involved.

The whole affair seemed to last a long time; by the time the doctor cleaned the syringes and put the whole thing back into his bag, Peppone’s colour had improved a little. Then again, it had been so awful to begin with that it might not mean much.

“Well,” said the doctor after he finished changing Peppone’s bandages, “he seems to be in good hands; if nothing else happens he might just make it. No strenuous activities for a few hours, Father,” he added while Don Camillo rolled down his sleeve on the brand new bandage around his elbow. “Eat something, and drink a lot of water.”

“I’ll see to it that he does,” said Signora Antonietta with a warning look at Don Camillo. To tell the truth, he was oddly exhausted, like after a long fever, and had no desire to do anything that might qualify as ‘strenuous’. Thus he gave Signora Antonietta his most innocent look.

The stony stare she returned told him he didn’t have much choice in the matter anyway.

The doctor saluted Don Camillo and followed Signora Antonietta down the ladder. Don Camillo looked down at Peppone, who seemed to be breathing deeper, and gave a small smile.

“Jesus, how angry do you think Peppone will be when he finds out he has priest blood in his veins now?”

“Is it really necessary for him to know that?” came Jesus’ voice from the little crucifix.

“Maybe not, but once he’s better he’s going to ask.”

“And you will of course show the kind of true humility and goodness of heart God asks from His ministers and not torment him in any way.”

“Of course, Lord.”

Only half of that was a lie. The scare had been a little bit too great.

Soon Signora Antonietta came back up with bread, a pot of jam and some tea; this time she only stayed a few minutes, having things to do around the little farm that couldn’t wait. When he was done, Don Camillo went downstairs to wash the cup, put away the jam jar, and place the rest of the bread in the bread bin.

Once back in the attic, he grabbed his bag and sat on the floor, in the same spot he had been a few minutes ago while the doctor worked. It wasn’t any softer, or any less dusty. From his bag he took out his breviary, carefully avoiding the holy oil. The cover was slightly worn, the pages had forgotten the meaning of ‘crisp’ years ago, but the familiar Latin words slowly soothed a piece of his heart that had been frayed and torn for the past twenty-four hours. Occasionally he glanced at Peppone and at the cross he had put down next to him, and returned to what he was reading a little more peacefully.

From the sounds that filtered from outside, not counting birdsong and a slight breeze rustling the tree leaves, Signora Antonietta tended to her horse, worked the garden, cleaned out the stable, and did a thousand things that needed to be done.

The heat was ferocious in the attic under the tiles, just like the previous day. The sounds of life outside the house seemed to come from a great distance, and Don Camillo, lulled by the faint but thankfully constant breathing next to him, gave in to tiredness and finally fell asleep.

* * * *

“…here?”

“Wh—what?” Don Camillo awoke with a start. It took him a few seconds to remember where he was, and why he was half-sitting, half-lying on a hard wooden floor with his breviary open on his stomach. He looked up, expecting to see Signora Antonietta, but no-one was there.

Then he looked down at his right, and met Peppone’s puzzled gaze.

Peppone hadn’t moved from his spot at all; the only change was that his eyes were half-open, and looked here and there sluggishly, as though he was trying to make sense of everything he had missed.

Don Camillo’s heart leapt in his chest. What threatened to be a huge, beaming smile started making its way across his face; naturally, he fought it tooth and nail. And failed.

“Look who’s decided to join the world of the living!” he said, closing his breviary and handing Peppone a glass of water. “You took your time.”

Peppone sipped the water carefully, and stared at him. One could practically see the cogs of his brain working at full speed under his deep frown. He lifted a hand that appeared to weigh a ton and felt the bandage around his stomach, wincing; then he looked around at the attic and rubbed his face with a sigh.

“The lads?”

“They’re fine,” replied Don Camillo immediately. “No-one else got hurt – nobody in your squad, anyway. I saw Brusco, he told me what happened.”

“Where is he?”

“In the mountains somewhere, probably worried up the wall about you. You almost bled to death on his passenger seat.”

“I remember,” muttered Peppone in a hollow voice. Then the look in his eyes sharpened as he focused on Don Camillo. “I sent for you, didn’t I?” It was barely a question.

Don Camillo nodded. “You did.”

“And you came.”

“Of course I came.”

“I…” Peppone blinked. “This I’m not sure I remember.”

“You wouldn’t. You were too far gone to…” Don Camillo’s voice trailed off, and he cleared his throat, hoping Peppone wouldn’t notice the shaky breath that came with it. “Well. Although you also could have sent for the priest of Roccaverde or Borghetto. It’s much closer, they would have got here a lot quicker.”

“I didn’t want any old priest I’d never seen before in my life,” said Peppone abruptly. “It’s my chaplain I called.”

This answer was to Don Camillo the equivalent of an uppercut to the chin. It caught him completely off guard, and he remained thoroughly speechless.

For once Peppone didn’t press his advantage. He still looked very tired, very pale, and very much not up for verbal boxing.

“What time is it?” he asked in a low voice after a while.

Don Camillo took out his pocket watch and told him. Peppone’s eyebrows went up.

“So I only blacked out for four or five hours?”

“Twenty-nine, more like,” said Don Camillo, sharper than he intended. “You got shot yesterday around one o’clock.”

It had been the ghost of the hollow, empty shock which had dogged him all day and night talking; Don Camillo regretted it immediately when he saw Peppone lose some of what little colour he had left.

A few deep breaths later, Peppone had recovered enough to ask, “Did you tell my wife?”

Don Camillo shook his head.

“No. I just returned to the village this morning for first Mass and I didn’t see her.”

“Good. I don’t want her or the kids to worry.” Peppone squinted up at him. “You were here a long time, huh.”

“Well –” Don Camillo shifted uncomfortably “– only as long as it took.”

“While I was… gone, you didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to give me extreme unction, did you?”

“Peppone,” Don Camillo said in the tone of someone who squares up for a fight, “when I give you the last rites, I’ll do it proper. To do this I’ll need a confession, and you’ll need to be conscious to give it.”

“Then you’ll have to wait a long time, Reverend,” said Peppone with some self-satisfaction, “because my last confession was some twenty-five years ago and I don’t intend to break with tradition.”

Don Camillo was about to retort something scathing, but stopped as Peppone made to sit up, turned stark white, and muttered a profanity his mother could have smacked him for, no matter his age. Peppone stilled, drew a few careful breaths, and turned woeful eyes to his old enemy.

“Now I know yesterday was bad. I’m sure you would have said something back if I wasn’t half-dead.”

“I would have, believe me,” muttered Don Camillo. “But it hardly seems fair right now.”

Peppone gave a mirthless laugh. “See? I knew having you for a chaplain was a good choice.” He blinked at the ceiling a few times, then his eyes landed on something on his left. “What’s that?”

“I would have thought that even a godless Bolshevik could recognise the Crucified Christ.”

“Oh for the love of – I mean what is it doing here? Did Signora Antonietta put it out to pasture?”

“Peppone,” roared Don Camillo, “quit it or you might just go from half-dead to completely dead.”

“Oh yeah?” Peppone bellowed. “I’d like to see you tr—”

This time Peppone did not swear. He gasped, and spent the next few minutes clenching and unclenching his fists, his eyes screwed up in pain. When he finally relaxed he was drenched in sweat.

“All right,” he panted, “truce.”

The state of things in Don Camillo’s head was a little complicated: anger and fear vied for first place, closely followed by good old exasperation, with sympathy lagging behind.

“Truce, but once you’re well again, we’ll have scores to settle, you and me.”

“You can count on it,” murmured Peppone in a tone that said, I hope so.

The silence that fell then was not quite the comfortable, companionable silence that sometimes reminded Don Camillo that words – or punches – were not the best way of communicating; but it was infinitely better than the previous day. Peppone’s breathing was still shaky and his eyes clouded, but he was here, with his sharp mind, his bad temper, his infuriating bullheadedness, and the big heart he didn’t bother hiding most of the time.

Don Camillo’s anger evaporated like the dew under the morning sun. It was too hot to stay angry.

“I put it there.”

“Eh?”

“The crucifix. Figured you might need help finding your way back.”

Peppone let out a deep breath.

“It’s good to know I had you in my corner, Father.”

“I didn’t mean me, Peppone,” sighed Don Camillo.

“I know. I’m grateful for that, too.”

It was as close to an actual truce as they could get, and under the circumstances Don Camillo didn’t insist. In the quiet that followed, both heard the front door creak, and then a clacking sound as the ladder was placed against the wall and the trapdoor opened. Signora Antonietta hoisted herself up and pinned both men with a look that was not quite a glare, but was fairly close.

“I was in the barn and I thought I heard yelling, so I figured both of you woke up.” She put her hands on her hips and asked incredulously, “Why is it that, every time you two are in my house, you have a shouting match? Can’t you just get along? Don’t you think there’s enough fighting the world over that doesn’t need adding to?”

Don Camillo and Peppone looked wordlessly at each other. While they figured out what to say, Signora Antonietta had crossed the space to Peppone’s mattress and crouched down. From up close she looked exhausted, with a few wisps of straw in her hair and smudged dirt where she had tried to wipe the sweat off her face; when she put the back of her hand to Peppone’s forehead she smiled thinly.

“You don’t seem to have a fever. That’s good; it means the wound is not infected.”

Don Camillo caught Peppone’s side glance and saw his own relief reflected in his eyes. Both had seen their share of the ravages infections could cause in the Great War. Most veterans lived in horror of the word.

When she had finished her inspection, Signora Antonietta stood up, a hand on the small of her back, and nodded.

“Well, I’m no doctor, but from what I’ve seen, you just might be out of the woods. No, don’t move,” she said as Peppone tried to sit up again. “I’ll be right back.”

She was gone a couple of minutes, and came back with a big pillow in an old-fashioned pillowcase that smelled like lavender and just a touch of mothballs.

“It’s from my daughter’s bed,” she explained as she and Don Camillo carefully put it under Peppone’s head and shoulders.

“Won’t she miss it?” he asked once he was settled, looking very grateful to be able to see something else than the rafters and the tiles, not to mention have something soft under his neck.

“I doubt it. She’s been married for two years now and lives in Parma. But since her husband is an idiot and a ne’er do well, I’m keeping her bedroom intact just in case she realises it and wants to return to the farm.” She shot an apologetic look at Peppone. “I’m sorry I have to put you up in the attic when there’s a real bed downstairs. Sometimes Germans come up here to patrol, or take a chicken or a slab of butter they rarely pay for. If they’d seen a strange man in my house with a bullet wound, they’d have shot you – and me – without asking questions.”

“Or worse, they could have asked questions,” muttered Peppone.

“Exactly.” She straightened up, tucked a stray strand of hair back into her bun, and gave a real smile. “Welcome back. You gave us quite the scare.”

Peppone returned the smile slightly, looking somewhat uncomfortable. Then he and Don Camillo caught each other’s eyes.

There were a lot of things Don Camillo wanted to say or could have said. Some of it were downright lies, some of it was true, and a lot fell in between. Therefore he remained silent, and so did Peppone.

As a result, they understood each other perfectly.

* * * *

The return trip could not have been more different from the previous day. Before going back to Pasotti’s motorcycle he had left in Signora Antonietta’s barn, as usual, Don Camillo went to the old dead tree to leave a message for Brusco and the rest. Then he rode home under a blazing sun, on the long strip of dust devoid of any trees that became an oven in the summer.

He was just in time for vespers. There still was some dust in his hair when he stood in front of his congregation; this, however, wasn’t what people noticed. What they did notice was that their priest, unlike for morning service, not only said all the right words at the right places but also appeared focused on what he was doing. They concluded that he must have got sunstroke, then got better, and they moved on.

Carlino, oddly, seemed quite happy with the return of the status quo. He was daydreaming again at the moment of the Elevation and barely heard the familiar mutter “Carlino, the bell!” in time. When he looked up and saw the priest scowling down at him, he rang the little bell with such a relieved expression that Don Camillo quite forgot to be angry with him.

After Mass, as Don Camillo was putting his vestments away in the sacristy and Carlino was almost at the door, they felt rather than heard a rumble that made the stained-glass windows shiver in the stone. The boy froze and turned absolutely white; Don Camillo grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and stuffed him under the altar until the planes were gone. It took him a while to make sure, because his heart was pounding in his chest fit to burst.

Bombs didn’t fall on the village that day, but on another village about forty kilometres to the north. Don Camillo delivered a still trembling Carlino to his parents’ doorstep and told them that, if the boy missed first Mass the next day, nobody would hold it against him.

Then he returned home to the rectory, closed the door, leaned heavily against it, and wiped the cold sweat off his face with a shaking hand.

* * * *

Three or four weeks passed before Don Camillo was able to take his field altar, borrow Pasotti’s motorcycle, and go back to his duties as clandestine chaplain. A rainstorm had come and gone; the sun now shared the sky with a few white clouds which made the horizon look like looming snow-capped mountains well before the actual mountains came into view.

This time the rendezvous point was a good fifteen kilometres from the dead tree. When Don Camillo got there, the old crowd came to greet him and several new faces stared at him, running the gamut between curiosity and suspicion. He went through the group, saluting people and shaking proffered hands, sidestepping crates of supplies and ammunition. Finally he found what he was looking for and stopped near a wreck of an armoured car standing on four concrete blocks.

The old Lancia was a sorry sight; it had probably seen more of the Great War than Don Camillo. Between the peeling paint, the rust, and what appeared to be fire damage, it looked like a war memorial for armoured cars fallen in battle.

Two legs stuck out from under the bodywork next to a toolbox. It was half empty, the tools lying neatly side by side on a big chequered handkerchief spread out on the short grass. From the various sounds that came from under the car, some serious tinkering was underway.

Don Camillo searched his pockets in vain for a cigar butt. “Do you really think you can get that ruin to run?” he asked.

The tinkering stopped, then started again.

“If I know my craft,” came Peppone’s voice, “the only thing this car needs that I can’t give her right now are four new tyres and some petrol. I’ll just have to get them – from somewhere.” His voice tightened on the last word. “Pass me the 12 point spanner, would you? This ruddy bolt just won’t let go.”

Don Camillo chose one spanner and put it into the big brown hand. After a few seconds the bolt surrendered and Peppone crawled out on his back from under the bodywork.

He looked good – a great deal better than the last Don Camillo had seen of him. His colour had almost completely returned, and although he moved somewhat gingerly, with a care that was foreign to his character, his eyes met Don Camillo’s with their usual sharpness. Don Camillo reached out to help him up, and his hand was warm and strong when he grabbed it.

When Peppone stood in front of him, his face still smudged with motor oil and dust, grass and earth all over the back of his shirt, and wearing the same old red kerchief around his neck, a small piece – a tiny speck – of the world that had been askew for weeks finally righted itself.

“Come to bring God to the mountains again, have you?” asked Peppone with a grin, pulling a large handkerchief from his pocket and rubbing his hands with it.

“God is everywhere,” replied Don Camillo absently, righting the strap of the altar box on his shoulder. “This is just the reminder.”

“Right. Speaking of, I have a favour to ask.”

“Speaking of what, exactly?” asked Don Camillo suspiciously before he even thought of asking about the favour. He followed Peppone to a makeshift tarpaulin shelter – of which there were a couple now – and watched him take out a long, thin bundle wrapped in paper and tied up with string.

Don Camillo untied the string and raised one corner of the wrapping paper warily, half-expecting to find dynamite sticks. Instead he found a somewhat large candle.

“Bought it in a village not far from here. Normally I’d have it engraved, but I didn’t have that much in my pockets and I didn’t want to stay there longer than necessary.”

“Where do you want it?” asked Don Camillo when his voice came back. Peppone hesitated.

“Well, if you think there’s room for it near the main altar…”

“There is.”

“Then you can light it there on my behalf.”

“I will.”

“Thank you, Reverend,” said Peppone with feeling. Don Camillo nodded with a smile.

Then they talked while Don Camillo prepared the field altar for Mass, and found that for once, truce didn’t have to mean silence.

* * * *

When Don Camillo had given Pasotti his motorcycle back and retrieved his bicycle, he made a stop at the church. He put down the field altar next to the railing and unwrapped the paper around the candle.

“Jesus,” he said excitedly to the crucified Christ on the main altar, “look at this!”

“It’s a beautiful candle, Don Camillo,” said Jesus with a smile.

“Isn’t it? This is from Peppone, in gratitude for being alive. He’s sorry to be unable to come light it himself, but you know how things are.”

Don Camillo carefully lit the candle with another, and placed it next to the one he had bought after the last time he had come back from Signora Antonietta’s attic. Like Peppone’s, the candle was devoid of any ornament, because, like Peppone, he had lacked money for trimmings and hadn’t wanted to arouse suspicion. The two candles stood there among the smaller votive candles, one burned to the last quarter and the other still shiny and whole. Their flames made a pretty light, and Don Camillo sat on a front pew to watch them with his chin in his hands.

“Lord,” he said after a while, “there’s something I’m still wondering.”

“What is it?”

“There’s a lot of villages up in the mountains. Most of them have churches. Why did Peppone go to the trouble of taking his candle with him back to camp, and then give it to me?”

“Did you ask him?”

“No, Lord, I only thought about it on the way back here.”

Jesus let the lie pass and replied, “Maybe he wanted his chaplain to light his candle; maybe he wanted his candle to burn in the church he got baptised and married in; maybe he wanted something of him to remain here, in his village, while himself cannot. Or maybe it’s all three. Does it really matter which?”

Don Camillo thought about it for a minute.

“Not really,” he said eventually. “I think I understand.”

Exactly what he understood, he didn’t say, but stayed watching the candles in silence for some time.

Notes:

1In Catholic liturgy, before communion, the altar server rings a little bell while the priest raises the holy host. Carlino sleeping is a nod to Cinema Paradiso and the first time the viewer sees Totò as a child. I really love this movie. It’s one of the few melodramas that I really love.

I’ve had the idea for this chapter in mind since... August 2015 :o) (even made a post about it.) Basically, from the first film and one of the first stories:

PEPPONE: “Remember I have a weak spot in my stomach from that bullet I took in the mountains. No low blow or I’m grabbing a bench.” DON CAMILLO: “Don’t worry, Peppone, I’ll land them all upstairs.” *punches him on the ear*

*throws out her arms* How could I not do something with a hint like that? :D

Next up: Carol of the Bombs.

[kaibutsushidousha]

Did this one as separate post instead of just answering the ask because the answer got long and I didn't write all in just one day.

My main picks would be Caster Sekien Toriyama because I just think he would be extremely cool, Rider Bellerophon because his name is there since Fate/stay Night as Medusa's NP but there’s no sign of the man himself and pretty much any Brazilian Servant since we still don't have any. My Twitter TL discussed this 2~3 years ago and made a Grail War roster using only Brazilian Servants (but we got 2 Casters because we couldn’t settle on the best option). More details about all of them under the cut:

Sekien Toriyama: Toriyama was an artist from Edo. Before his drawings, youkais were considered invisible formless spiritual monsters born of human fear and no one could know exactly what they looked like. However, Toriyama dedicated his life to publish 4 volumes of an art compilation called “Gazu Hyakki Yagyou”, a sort of a youkai Pokédex where he drew all he could find and gave the famous youkai the looks we know them for today. (Trivia: the later volumes of his work contains youkais no anthropologist could find any previous  mythological information for, so it’s highly speculated he started making youkais up for art money at some point)

As a Caster, his moveset would obviously be focused on youkai summoning with the Gazu Hyakki Yagyou as a passive Noble Phantasm enabling that. He could also have a skill that allowed creating new youkai from scratch if he fulfilled some condition (like having already used up most known youkais in battle).

Bellerophon: Bellerophon is a young Greek hero, son of Poseidon and famous for 3 great feats. When Perseus killed Medusa, the Pegasus was born from her blood and many people tried to tame him without success. Bellerophon heard that and tamed it for his first feat. Ever since then the Pegasus became his personal horse and he was seen mounting it in every battle he fought. The second feat was slaying the Chimera. No one could that before because the Chimera breathed fire and that would melt any blade that would be used against it. Belle however had the brilliant idea of shielding the tip of his spear with a huge lead ball. He flew above the Chimera with the Pegasus and dropped with the full weight of his lead ball spear into its head. The Chimera’s fire breath melted the only lead, leaving his spear inside intact and with that he slayed the monster with one blow. I don’t think that’s how thermodynamics work in real life, but worked for him in the legend. The third feat was Bellerophon’s death. Due to fame and success earned with his two previous feats, the arrogant ass thought he was good enough to deserve a spot among the gods and started flying his Pegasus to the Olympus. Zeus said no (read: dropped him of his horse). Bellerophon actually survived the fall, but blind and with his legs paralyzed in the wasteland, just waiting to die.

As Rider, obviously have the Pegasus as main NP most likely identical to Medusa’s version. He probably would also have a second NP based on his lead ball trick. I’m think his initial spear could have a ball close to tip kinda like Ren from Shaman King and he could use to block an enemy Noble Phantasm once, and if he did, the ball would melt revealing his true better spear inside.

Brazilian Saber (King Pedro I): King Pedro IV of Portugal/King Pedro I of Brazil (full name: Pedro de Alcântara Francisco António João Carlos Xavier de Paula Miguel Rafael Joaquim José Gonzaga Pascoal Cipriano Serafim) is not really a Brazilian person, but is probably the most known name in Brazilian history so we couldn’t go without including the guy. Pedro was born in Portugal, where he lived the first 10 years of his life, until the war with France forced the Portuguese Royal Family to escape to Brazil. When the King went back to Portugal, Pedro stayed back as the reigning prince in charge of Brazil. Later, his father King João VI of Portugal died and needed a successor, so Portugal called him back. Brazil was more free than ever with a reigning prince living in the colony, so 8000 people signed a petition begging him to stay and so he stayed going directly against Portugal’s orders. This lead to some little war with Portugal for 9 months until probably the most iconic moment in Brazilian history, where Pedro yelled “Indenpendence or death!” at the shores of the Ipiranga River. Portugal couldn’t really kill him at this point, so Brazil’s Indepedence was declared and he became the First Emperor of Brazil (his son Pedro II was the second and last, yeah the Brazilian imperial era didn’t last very long). He became known as “The Liberator” in Brazil for being responsible for our Independence and as “Soldier King” in Portugal because of how war was an ever-present thing in his life. His government as the Emperor lasted 9 years and was marked mainly by economic crisis generated by the Independence process (Brazil had to pay compensation to Portugal) and a lost war against Cisplatina. Eventually he grew a lot of political enemies for being Portuguese and therefore dealing too much with Portugal and for being too liberal for his time (he rejected everything that went against free speech and was planning to end slavery), so he was forced to resign and went back to Portugal. There he caused a civil war and died before it was over (sasuga Soldier King).

As a Saber, he would probably get a very low rank Imperial Priviledge, high stats for his reputation as Soldier King and a conceptual Noble Phantasm based on “Indepence or death”. I’m thinking of him declaring a condition to an enemy and if he is not killed within a time limit this condition is fulfilled.

Brazilian Archer (Lantern): Lantern (Lampião in Portuguese) is the most famous and successful cangaceiro ever. Foreigners probably have no idea what cangaço is so I guess I’ll have to explain that as well... Ok, the Northeast was basically this huge wasteland where everyone was poor (and kinda still is, to a much smaller extent) and some people had to resort to banditry to feed their villages and to get back at the government for ignoring their part of the country. Cangaceiros were pretty much pirates, but in the wasteland instead of the sea (no, they didn’t ride ships through the desert), including the part were they are constantly herofied in adventure literature. The main weapons associated with cangaço are pistols, small rifles, shotguns and peixeiras (huge knifes meant to remove the scales from big fishes but used by cangaceiros as make-shift swords). They didn’t have pirate flags but they did sign themselves in other way, with cangaceiro hats. The number one cangaceiro was Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, who joined the cangaço after his father was shot dead by the police and his success eventually made him known as the Cangaço King (insert One Piece joke here). That would make him the Brazilian equivalent to Blackbeard, but we can all hope he won’t get the Blackbeard treatment in Fate/. By the way, he is called Lantern because they said his gunshots were so fast they would illuminate the night. He led a strong band of over 100 sand pirates and dominated the Northeastern wasteland until his band was betrayed by a member, ambushed by the police and everyone got machinegunned. Ironically, Lantern went down exactly like his dear old dad who made him start this whole thing. 

As an Archer, he would use mainly his gun and peixeira as primary weapons and maybe have a sand-related skill along with Honor of Pirates. The story behind his nickname is badass enough to warrant at least a Skill if not a minor Noble Phanstasm. For his main NP I was thinking about the desert as a Reality Marble with his band alongside, but that’s kinda too similar to Ionioi Hetairoi. Sorry for the lack of better ideas.

Brazilian Lancer (Curupira): Already explained.

His main “backward feet” gimmick could easily be translated into Presence Concealment clone combinable with his other forest affinity Skill. I have no good ideas for his Noble Phantasms though.

Brazilian Berserker (Zumbi of Palmares): Zumbi was a founding member and king of the Palmares, the biggest quilombo in history. As you know, Brazil used African slaves until 1888 and every slavery system has it’s great share of escaped slaves. Here in Brazil, the escaped slaves built big self-sustaining hidden communities just for them and those were called quilombos. One quilombo, Palmares, stood out among all others, being speculated to be roughly the size of Portugal. Sure, Zumbi was not perfect in hiding a community this big and Palmares was eventually found and attacked by the government, but when it happened Zumbi proved himself to be a fierce warrior, brilliant tactician and willing to rebuild Palmares from its ashes as many times as necessary. Eventually the government realized they already wasted too much resources on the quilombo wars and offer to end this by freeing everyone in Palmares but Zumbi refuses, saying he would only accept the terms if every black person was freed. The conflict continued in a smaller scale for 17 years until Zumbi was killed and his salted head was brought to his state’s governor. Still, he is the most notorious black man in Brazilian history.

He was picked as a Berserker mostly for his story was similar to Spartacus, so his stats and skillset should be similar as well, but probably stronger due to just how big Palmares was and more sane due to his status as a tactician. He would probably get a better Battle Continuation as well since his name is literally the Portuguese word for “zombie” and a Presence Concealment clone thanks to the hidden nature of the quilombos.

Brazilian Caster 1 (Antônio the Counselor): In times of crisis, people tend to find refuge in religion. The empoverished Northeastern wastelands had many known charasmatic and influential religious leaders that marked history, like for example Priest Cícero, the one Lantern devoted his life to. Another very powerful Catholic leader there was a pilgrim called Antônio the Counselor, who wandered the lands followed by 15000 people, received messianic treatment by his devotees and even managed to start and lead a large scale civil war against the government that neglected the Northeast (he lost and died).

As a Caster, he would use the usual Type-Moon priest magic, much like Amakusa. Being a known prophet, he would have Jeanne’s and Amakusa’s Revelation Skill and his Noble Phantasm would be based in his most famous prophecy “The wasteland will become sea and the sea will become wasteland”. This prophecy NP was actually the reason why I recommended him as a Caster on our roster.

Brazilian Caster 2 (Oswaldo Cruz): Oswaldo Cruz was a famous medical scientist known for studying tropical diseases and developing vaccines for most known epidemic of his time. However, back in 1904 people afraid of vaccines, believing some crazy dumb rumors it was some sort of dangerous biological weapon issued by the government or it could cause autism or some other nonsense. Through Oswaldo’s efforts, the government allowed sanitary agents to violently break out into people’s houses and vaccinate people by force. This caused a violent popular backlash called the Vaccine Revolt, where the common people fought against the sanitary agents and caused public chaos in order to end the mandatory vaccination. The social impact of rebellion and the erradication of smallpox and yellow fever caused people to realize vaccines were harmless and effective and completely ended the anti-vacc sentiment over the entire country as early as 1907.

Caster Oswaldo’s power set would be based less what he were, but more in how he was feared by the common people during his life, in a Innocent Monster-like fashion. His main attacks would be magic injections with varied effects and his Noble Phantasm would make them as unavoidable as Gae Bolg, based on the concept of forced vaccination.

Brazilian Assassin (Saci Pererê): See the link on Curupira’s part.

Like the Hassans, Saci is the ideal Assassin Servant because his name can be tied to very word Assassin (A"saci”n). Besides he is an elusive mythical creature who can appear and disappear in whilrwinds, so the Presence Concealment qualifier applies. His Noble Phantasm would be related to his magic hat and would called Luison as a follow-up to the “Asacin” joke, since Luison is the name of the Tupi mythology equivalent to the zabaniyyas.

Brazilian Rider (Santos Dumont): Sure, Dumont lived in France for most of his life and was there when he invented the airplane, but he was born in Brazil and lived here for 18 years, so we Brazilians love to somewhat inaccurately brag that the plane is a Brazilian invention and he is fully treated as a national hero here for it. 

As a Rider, his main Noble Phantasm would be the 14-Bis, with plane engine-like weapons being used as his primary weapon. He is also indirectly tied to the invention of the wristwatch, but I don’t know how to incorportate that as Skill for him. His research involved hot air balloons as well as airplanes, so I guess he could use those as make-shift bombs.

[wineanddinosaur]

24 Defining Moments in the History of Bourbon

Bourbon used to be so simple: A humble, economically priced spirit from Kentucky. You could drink it neat, or with ice, maybe even mixed with soda — it needn’t be fetishized. Over two centuries of existence, bourbon had its ups and downs, but it was always reliably there. Often less than 20 bucks a bottle too, whether you favored Jim or Jack or even one of the “Olds” (Crow, Grand-Dad, Weller).

And then the aughts came and bourbon lost its mind.

Distilleries began releasing bourbons that cost hundreds of dollars. Drinkers cleared them from store shelves. Black markets arose to sell those bottles online for even more money.

Suddenly, the only bourbon anyone could find any more were those humble, economically priced Jims and Jacks and Olds that have always been there for us. In bourbon, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

These are the 24 moments that built an industry, helped it survive during troubled times, elevated it into the zeitgeist, and made it what it is today.

1785: Basil Hayden Brings Immigrants to Kentucky

A Catholic living in Maryland, Hayden was tasked with bringing 25 local families to Nelson County, Ky., to help set up a church community. Many of these folks were Scottish, Irish, and English immigrants, and many already had distilling in their blood. Hayden was also a distiller and today two bourbons are named after him, Basil Hayden’s and Old Grand-Dad.

1791: The Whiskey Rebellion Sends More Distillers to the Bluegrass

Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton puts an excise tax on whiskey — the first tax ever imposed on a domestic product by this new American government — to try to pay off the debts of the American Revolution. This angered many farmers in western Appalachia who often distilled their excise grain into whiskey. In turn, many of them moved to the tax-friendly havens of Kentucky and Tennessee.

1790s: Bourbon Accidentally Get Barrel Aged

Kentucky didn’t just have distillers, it also had exceptional Indian maize corn and access to limestone-filtered water. More importantly, it was located on the Ohio River, where barrels of this new-make corn whiskey would be loaded onto flatboats in Lexington and sent down to New Orleans. (Many claim that a Bourbon County pastor and distiller named Elijah Craig was the first to figure out that the cheapest storage method was to clean a fish barrel by burning the inside of it, then add the whiskey to it.) By the time the “bourbon” arrived in port 90 days later, the charred oak barrels had turned the liquid caramel in color, and made it a whole lot tastier.

1818: He Did the Mash, the Sour Mash

Though the inventor of this process is usually credited to Dr. James C. Crow (of Old Crow fame), its usage has been traced back further than that. In the early 19th century, distillers began “souring” their whiskey mash by adding back some of the acidic liquid strained from the previous mash, known as backset. This wouldn’t just inhibit bacterial growth, it would add to the flavor of the final product. Today, almost all bourbon is “sour mash,” with many even stating it on their labels.

1870: Old Forester Is Bottled

A former pharmaceutical salesman, George Garvin Brown, had a stroke of genius when he decided to sell his Old Forester bourbon not from barrels, but from sealed glass bottles instead. It was a savvy move; Old Forester has literally never been out of production since then, even during Prohibition, the longest-running bourbon in the U.S. today.

1897: The Bottled-in-Bond Act

But it wasn’t all high quality — many dubious bottlers and rectifiers would take their whiskey and add everything from prune juice to tobacco spit into their bottles of “bourbon.” Thus, a need for an assurance of quality arose and the legitimate distilleries lobbied congress to pass legislation. To get a “Bottled-in-Bond” designation, whiskeys had to come from one distillation season courtesy of one distiller at one distillery, then get aged in a federally bonded warehouse for at least four years, before being bottled at exactly 100 proof.

1919: Bourbon Finds a Prohibition Loophole

If there were a good two dozen distilleries in Bourbon County at one point, after ratification of the 18th Amendment, ironically, the county would never produce bourbon again. Meanwhile, six major Kentucky distilleries exploited a loophole and began making “medicinal” whiskey — in reality, simply affixing prescription labels to flasks of bourbon. (“Sick” Americans would have to have a doctor claim they were suffering from one of 27 ailments.) By the time the “Noble Experiment” of Prohibition ended in 1933, conglomerates like Schenley, Seagram, and National had acquired many family-run distilleries.

1935: “Pappy” Van Winkle Opens Stitzel-Weller

A traveling liquor salesman starting at age 18, Julian “Pappy” Van Winkle, with a partner, took over W.L. Weller & Sons in 1915 and immediately began producing stellar bourbon in conjunction with A. Ph. Stitzel, even during Prohibition. On Kentucky Derby Day 1935, Van Winkle’s first distillery, Stitzel-Weller, would open, eventually making waves for their uniquely wheated bourbon seen in products like Old Fitzgerald, Cabin Stiller, and Weller. When he died in 1965, who would have ever guessed that one day Pappy would be the household name of 21st-century bourbon?

1947: Frank Sinatra Starts Swigging Jack Daniel’s

Perhaps an apocryphal origin story, Sinatra would claim Jackie Gleason had told him that Tennessee whiskey was a “man’s drink.” He quickly became the brand’s biggest fan, flying a Jack flag at his house in Palm Springs and finishing an entire bottle of Old No. 7 every day, two fingers over three ice cubes in a rocks glass. Many say Sinatra turned this small Tennessee brand into literally the biggest bourbon brand in the world (yes, nerds, Tennessee whiskey is bourbon). In 2013, Jack Daniel’s returned the favor by releasing Sinatra Select, a limited, higher-end bottling.

1954: Jimmy Russell Clocks in at Wild Turkey

Some 66 years ago, on Sept. 10, 1954, a 19-year-old boy raised just six miles from the JTS Brown Distillery in Lawrenceburg, came to his first day of work sweeping floors. He would soon be mentored in the art of making the distillery’s Wild Turkey bourbon by the brand’s second-ever master distiller, as well as Ernest W. Ripy, Jr., the son of the original distillery owners. By the late-1960s Russell had the keys to the castle. As master distiller, the lovable “Bourbon Buddha” traveled the world as an ambassador for bourbon, finally seeing the fruits of his labor in the last couple of decades. Today, at age 86, Russell remains the longest-tenured master distiller in the world, still making some of the finest whiskey around, along with his son and fellow Wild Turkey master distiller, Eddie Russell.

1958: Maker’s Mark Creates the Premium Bourbon Category

Bill Samuels Sr. would famously zig when others were zagging, launching a premium whiskey in classy packaging at a time when people were moving away from bourbon. The gambit would eventually pay off. By the 1980s, the iconic red-waxed, square-shaped bottle was considered the industry’s Rolls Royce among a parking lot of Pintos. Bourbon tourists were visiting the Loretto distillery as early as 1968 and today many credit Samuels and Maker’s Mark with ushering in the current bourbon boom.

1964: Bourbon Becomes a “Distinctive Product”

Worried the rest of the world had eyes on stealing America’s homegrown product, in 1958 the Bourbon Institute was formed with the sole purpose of getting bourbon the same internationally recognized regulatory protections enjoyed by product categories like Cognac and Champagne. Lobbying Congress, on May 4, 1964 bourbon was officially recognized as a “distinctive product of the United States.” Bourbon could now only be produced in America (not just Kentucky as some internet commenters will have you believe), putting an end to Mexican-made bourbon.

1969: White Spirits Emerge, Light Whiskey Is Created, and a Glut Occurs

By the 1960s, white spirits like vodka and gin were taking over the bar scene, delivering a major blow to the bourbon industry. The distilleries came up with a plan to create an entirely new product to compete: Light whiskey, distilled to such a high proof it tasted like vodka. It was an abject disaster. By the early 1980s bourbon sales had plummeted, and plenty of barrels and bottles were sitting around with no one to buy them — a fate that collectors would one day regret as vintage bourbon from this era is now much desired.

1976: Wild Turkey Adds Some Honey

Cringe if you must, but another attempt to fend off white spirits and position bourbon as less of your “old man’s drink” was by adding flavors. Jimmy Russell was the first when he thought to make a liqueur by blending Wild Turkey with pure honey. It was a huge hit, and other bourbon brands would begin offering their own flavored concepts. This would eventually lead to fratty flavored whiskey sensations, such as Fireball and Skrewball Peanut Butter Whiskey.

1984: Single Barrels and Small Batches Arrive (but Only Japan Cares)

Wanting to impress Japanese consumers, the newly formed Ancient Age distillery asked its master distiller Elmer T. Lee to create a truly one-of-a-kind product. He hunted down some primo “honey” barrels from Warehouse H and bottled them as is. Blanton’s would be the world’s first commercial single-barrel bourbon — it was a sensation in Japan, though it would flop domestically. Still, it gave the other bourbon distilleries some new ideas. The year 1988 would bring Jim Beam’s Booker’s, a small-batch, barrel-proof offering. By 1992, the release of Jim Beam’s Knob Creek was starting to woo more and more neophytes into the bourbon world.

1994: Pappy Van Winkle Hit Shelves

In 1972, Pappy’s son, Julian Van Winkle Jr., started the Old Rip Van Winkle brand, selling bourbon he had acquired from Stitzel-Weller after its brands were sold off that same year. By 1981, his son, Julian Van Winkle III, was running operations, eventually selling 12- and 15-year-old Old Rip Van Winkles (bourbons that only existed due to the aforementioned glut). In 1994, he had the gumption to release a then-unheard-of 20-year-old bourbon, which he called Pappy Van Winkle, after his grandfather. It would immediately win acclaim across the country. Pappy Van Winkle 23 Year would come along in 1998, and the 15 Year Old would arrive in 2004.

1999: The Bourbon Trail Is Officially Created

With a renewed interest in bourbon, tourism began to take off and the distilleries wisely moved to capitalize on it, opening gift shops and offering public tours. As the Y2K drew near, the Kentucky Distillers’ Association registered a trademark and launched the official Kentucky Bourbon Trail. Initially, seven of the eight major distilleries were on it, and today eight more craft distilleries like Wilderness Trail are also included. The Bourbon Trail is said to have brought Kentucky 2.5 million tourists over the last five years.

2002: Four Roses Starts Selling Bourbon Again

A once venerable brand, in 1967 Seagram’s turned Four Roses into a blended whiskey, cutting it with grain neutral spirit and flavoring. And, yet, in Japan, it was still sold as a straight bourbon and was a huge hit. When Jim Rutledge took over as master distiller in 1995, he began lobbying his bosses to let Four Roses return to its former glory stateside. He finally got his wish when Japanese company Kirin bought the brand in 2002. The straight bourbon would indeed return to America, and by 2004 Four Roses was even selling single-barrel bottlings, offering drinkers a chance to try one of 10 mashbill-yeast recipes the distillery offers (something wholly unique in the industry).

2006: Willett Offers Single Barrels

Everything changed at Kentucky Bourbon Distillers when owner Even Kulsveen’s son Drew joined the family business in 2003. Almost immediately, he began taking the company’s incredible stock (more glut bourbon sourced from places like Bernheim, Heaven Hill, and even Stitzel-Weller), and releasing it as cask-strength, non-chill-filtered single barrels. Such well-aged and high-proof bourbons and ryes were almost unheard of at the time, and bottlings like Red Hook Rye and Doug’s Green Ink would soon become some of the most coveted American whiskeys of all time. Even today, Willett inspires a fanaticism among the cognoscenti matched by no other brand, not even Pappy.

2007: Parker’s Heritage and Other “LEs” Arrive

Buffalo Trace already had its limited releases like Van Winkles and its vaunted Buffalo Trace Antique Collection, and other distilleries would soon throw their own hats into the rarity ring. This Heaven Hill yearly limited edition release (or “LE” in collector parlance) would be one of the first to make its mark, named after the distillery’s beloved (and now-late) master distiller Parker Beam.

2007: Non-Kentucky Bourbons Appear

Lest we forget, Kentucky isn’t the only state legally allowed to make bourbon. And, as craft whiskey began ramping up in America in the mid-aughts, other states started taking a stab at it. One of the first was New York’s Hudson Baby Bourbon, produced by Tuthilltown Spirits in the Hudson Valley. Today, just about every state produces a bourbon or two, though, if you talk to a Kentuckian, they’ll tell you none of them are worth a damn. But we recommend tasting and deciding for yourself.

2012: The Black Market Emerges

Since bourbon had always been an everyman’s spirit, distilleries had often been skittish about overcharging for it. But, when everyone in the world wants Pappy Van Winkle, an MSRP of 80 bucks just ain’t gonna cut it. Thus, in the early 2010s a secondary market began to form, first ad hoc on eBay and Craigslist, before becoming a bit more organized via private groups on Facebook with names like Strong Water Showcase and BSM (Bourbon Secondary Market). Wheeling and dealing ensued and releases like George T. Stagg and Weller Full Proof started fetching closer to their true market value. Not everyone was happy, however; on June 13, 2019, Facebook shut down all secondary market groups.

2014: The Curtain is Pulled Back on MGP Madness

The industry’s dirty little secret was that many of these Iowa or West Virginia or Vermont craft “distilleries” weren’t actually distilling their own bourbons and ryes, but instead sourcing them from Midwest Grain Products (or MGP), a mega-factory distillery in Lawrenceburg, Ind. Luckily, MGP made quite good whiskey — and offered some of the oldest rye stock around — and helped brands like High West and Smooth Ambler attain stardom among whiskey geeks.

2020: Sticker Label Mania Foretells End Times

First, bars, retail outlets, and private whiskey groups started buying single barrel “picks” from the leading distilleries. Then, some of them began adding their own cartoonish decals to the bottle. Suddenly, merely having a 50-cent sticker on a single barrel pick of, say, Eagle Rare or Russell’s Reserve would magically turn it into something worth hundreds of dollars. The industry may not have fully jumped the shark yet, but, if you want to, you can probably buy a bottle with a shark sticker on it these days.

The article 24 Defining Moments in the History of Bourbon appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/complete-history-of-bourbon/

[m8nhr]

미래주의 선언(1909)

전체 내용에 다 동의하지는 않지만, 어릴 적 나에게 많은 영감을 주었던 마리네티의 미래주의 선언 ;)

The Futurist Manifesto _ F. T. Marinetti, 1909

 

We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose brass cupolas are bright as our souls, because like them they were illuminated by the internal glow of electric hearts. And trampling underfoot our native sloth on opulent Persian carpets, we have been discussing right up to the limits of logic and scrawling the paper with demented writing.

Our hearts were filled with an immense pride at feeling ourselves standing quite alone, like lighthouses or like the sentinels in an outpost, facing the army of enemy stars encamped in their celestial bivouacs. Alone with the engineers in the infernal stokeholes of great ships, alone with the black spirits which rage in the belly of rogue locomotives, alone with the drunkards beating their wings against the walls.

Then we were suddenly distracted by the rumbling of huge double decker trams that went leaping by, streaked with light like the villages celebrating their festivals, which the Po in flood suddenly knocks down and uproots, and, in the rapids and eddies of a deluge, drags down to the sea.

Then the silence increased. As we listened to the last faint prayer of the old canal and the crumbling of the bones of the moribund palaces with their green growth of beard, suddenly the hungry automobiles roared beneath our windows.

"Come, my friends!" I said. "Let us go! At last Mythology and the mystic cult of the ideal have been left behind. We are going to be present at the birth of the centaur and we shall soon see the first angels fly! We must break down the gates of life to test the bolts and the padlocks! Let us go! Here is they very first sunrise on earth! Nothing equals the splendor of its red sword which strikes for the first time in our millennial darkness."

We went up to the three snorting machines to caress their breasts. I lay along mine like a corpse on its bier, but I suddenly revived again beneath the steering wheel — a guillotine knife — which threatened my stomach. A great sweep of madness brought us sharply back to ourselves and drove us through the streets, steep and deep, like dried up torrents. Here and there unhappy lamps in the windows taught us to despise our mathematical eyes. "Smell," I exclaimed, "smell is good enough for wild beasts!"

And we hunted, like young lions, death with its black fur dappled with pale crosses, who ran before us in the vast violet sky, palpable and living.

And yet we had no ideal Mistress stretching her form up to the clouds, nor yet a cruel Queen to whom to offer our corpses twisted into the shape of Byzantine rings! No reason to die unless it is the desire to be rid of the too great weight of our courage!

We drove on, crushing beneath our burning wheels, like shirt-collars under the iron, the watch dogs on the steps of the houses.

Death, tamed, went in front of me at each corner offering me his hand nicely, and sometimes lay on the ground with a noise of creaking jaws giving me velvet glances from the bottom of puddles.

"Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!"

As soon as I had said these words, I turned sharply back on my tracks with the mad intoxication of puppies biting their tails, and suddenly there were two cyclists disapproving of me and tottering in front of me like two persuasive but contradictory reasons. Their stupid swaying got in my way. What a bore! Pouah! I stopped short, and in disgust hurled myself — vlan! — head over heels in a ditch.

Oh, maternal ditch, half full of muddy water! A factory gutter! I savored a mouthful of strengthening muck which recalled the black teat of my Sudanese nurse!

As I raised my body, mud-spattered and smelly, I felt the red hot poker of joy deliciously pierce my heart. A crowd of fishermen and gouty naturalists crowded terrified around this marvel. With patient and tentative care they raised high enormous grappling irons to fish up my car, like a vast shark that had run aground. It rose slowly leaving in the ditch, like scales, its heavy coachwork of good sense and its upholstery of comfort.

We thought it was dead, my good shark, but I woke it with a single caress of its powerful back, and it was revived running as fast as it could on its fins.

Then with my face covered in good factory mud, covered with metal scratches, useless sweat and celestial grime, amidst the complaint of staid fishermen and angry naturalists, we dictated our first will and testament to all the living men on earth.

 

 

MANIFESTO OF FUTURISM

We want to sing the love of danger, the habit of energy and rashness. The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity and revolt.Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap and the blow with the fist.We declare that the splendor of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed. A racing automobile with its bonnet adorned with great tubes like serpents with explosive breath ... a roaring motor car which seems to run on machine-gun fire, is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace.We want to sing the man at the wheel, the ideal axis of which crosses the earth, itself hurled along its orbit.The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements.Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute, since we have already created eternal, omnipresent speed.We want to glorify war — the only cure for the world — militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice.We will sing of the great crowds agitated by work, pleasure and revolt; the multi-colored and polyphonic surf of revolutions in modern capitals: the nocturnal vibration of the arsenals and the workshops beneath their violent electric moons: the gluttonous railway stations devouring smoking serpents; factories suspended from the clouds by the thread of their smoke; bridges with the leap of gymnasts flung across the diabolic cutlery of sunny rivers: adventurous steamers sniffing the horizon; great-breasted locomotives, puffing on the rails like enormous steel horses with long tubes for bridle, and the gliding flight of aeroplanes whose propeller sounds like the flapping of a flag and the applause of enthusiastic crowds.

It is in Italy that we are issuing this manifesto of ruinous and incendiary violence, by which we today are founding Futurism, because we want to deliver Italy from its gangrene of professors, archaeologists, tourist guides and antiquaries.

Italy has been too long the great second-hand market. We want to get rid of the innumerable museums which cover it with innumerable cemeteries.

Museums, cemeteries! Truly identical in their sinister juxtaposition of bodies that do not know each other. Public dormitories where you sleep side by side for ever with beings you hate or do not know. Reciprocal ferocity of the painters and sculptors who murder each other in the same museum with blows of line and color. To make a visit once a year, as one goes to see the graves of our dead once a year, that we could allow! We can even imagine placing flowers once a year at the feet of the Gioconda! But to take our sadness, our fragile courage and our anxiety to the museum every day, that we cannot admit! Do you want to poison yourselves? Do you want to rot?

What can you find in an old picture except the painful contortions of the artist trying to break uncrossable barriers which obstruct the full expression of his dream?

To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action. Do you want to waste the best part of your strength in a useless admiration of the past, from which you will emerge exhausted, diminished, trampled on?

Indeed daily visits to museums, libraries and academies (those cemeteries of wasted effort, calvaries of crucified dreams, registers of false starts!) is for artists what prolonged supervision by the parents is for intelligent young men, drunk with their own talent and ambition.

For the dying, for invalids and for prisoners it may be all right. It is, perhaps, some sort of balm for their wounds, the admirable past, at a moment when the future is denied them. But we will have none of it, we, the young, strong and living Futurists!

Let the good incendiaries with charred fingers come! Here they are! Heap up the fire to the shelves of the libraries! Divert the canals to flood the cellars of the museums! Let the glorious canvases swim ashore! Take the picks and hammers! Undermine the foundation of venerable towns!

The oldest among us are not yet thirty years old: we have therefore at least ten years to accomplish our task. When we are forty let younger and stronger men than we throw us in the waste paper basket like useless manuscripts! They will come against us from afar, leaping on the light cadence of their first poems, clutching the air with their predatory fingers and sniffing at the gates of the academies the good scent of our decaying spirits, already promised to the catacombs of the libraries.

But we shall not be there. They will find us at last one winter's night in the depths of the country in a sad hangar echoing with the notes of the monotonous rain, crouched near our trembling aeroplanes, warming our hands at the wretched fire which our books of today will make when they flame gaily beneath the glittering flight of their pictures.

They will crowd around us, panting with anguish and disappointment, and exasperated by our proud indefatigable courage, will hurl themselves forward to kill us, with all the more hatred as their hearts will be drunk with love and admiration for us. And strong healthy Injustice will shine radiantly from their eyes. For art can only be violence, cruelty, injustice.

The oldest among us are not yet thirty, and yet we have already wasted treasures, treasures of strength, love, courage and keen will, hastily, deliriously, without thinking, with all our might, till we are out of breath.

Look at us! We are not out of breath, our hearts are not in the least tired. For they are nourished by fire, hatred and speed! Does this surprise you? it is because you do not even remember being alive! Standing on the world's summit, we launch once more our challenge to the stars!

Your objections? All right! I know them! Of course! We know just what our beautiful false intelligence affirms: "We are only the sum and the prolongation of our ancestors," it says. Perhaps! All right! What does it matter? But we will not listen! Take care not to repeat those infamous words! Instead, lift up your head!

Standing on the world's summit we launch once again our insolent challenge to the stars!

[memsmedic1]

Family, Work, and Divemastering (Nov 5, 2018-May 23, 2019)

At noon on Monday, November 5 Nathan and I, along with a couple of our more adventurous team members, took our scuba tanks and gear into downtown Yangon to the public pool I’d scoped out the week before and gotten permission to use from the pool manager.

We were going in order to practice some basic diving drills to refresh our skills (and have fun) in preparation for an upcoming dive. Nathan had been diving several times over the spring and summer since he was working on his instructor certification, but I’d always had other responsibilities and hadn’t been able to go with him. I’m pretty sure nobody at the pool had ever seen anything like it before because soon we attracted several amazed spectators!

The night of the 7th Nathan and I met up with one of our friends, Dr. Than Win, to drive 5 hours northwest of Yangon out to the small coastal fishing town of Ngwe Saung, on the Bay of Bengal, to go scuba diving again. Arriving at the beach after an exhausting, bumpy ride over narrow, primitive roads, we parked in a vacant lot for a few hours until dawn and then hauled our gear bags over a rickety wooden bridge spanning a small estuary and across a wide sandy beach to the predetermined rendezvous point with the boat.

The boat, was, as we should have expected, enormously late. This was not a problem though, as it gave us the opportunity to watch a sunrise wedding photoshoot and visit with three other young divers who were traveling the world on a cruise ship while enrolled in a ‘study at sea’ type of college program!

A small outboard motorboat finally arrived to ferry us out across the crystal clear water, just a little bit warmer than the early morning air, to the larger boat we would be diving from. This boat was a great hulking wooden monstrosity, with a huge, loud, water-cooled, underpowered inboard engine taking up the entire hold. When the engine cranked over several liters of greasy oily water belched out from the bilge directly onto the deck of the boat moored next to us and commenced spreading out in a thin film over the water.

As soon as the gear was stowed and the anchors weighed we started on what was supposed to be a 45 minute ride out to some small islands where the dives would take place. The problem though was that our boat was slow. We were on the slow boat to India! We couldn’t see it on the way out, but this boat was so slow that on the way back the incoming swells were rolling past us as if we were standing still!

Scuba diving in Myanmar is relatively uncommon, probably because it’s like trying to herd cats to get anything done here; very little English comprehension, outdated regulations, atrocious roads, restrictive lodging requirements, and the list goes on. (Could the not-uncommon Saltwater Crocodiles be another factor?)

Safe and conservative diving is recommended when diving in Myanmar because Myanmar healthcare facilities and infrastructure are so substandard. Also, poorly maintained equipment, minimally trained “instructors”, or instructors and Divemasters with expired licenses result in the level of professionalism and the quality of the dive gear being lower than what international divers would expect. Diving accidents should therefore at all cost be avoided.

I was glad we had all our own gear, including a fully stocked custom-built med bag to deal with any unavoidable diving-related emergencies that might arise, whether medical or trauma, because it’s a bloody long way back to anything resembling a hospital, and even farther to Monkey Point Naval Base in Yangon, which currently boasts the only operable hyperbaric chamber in the entire country!

Finally we arrived at the dive site just off Bird Island, and after getting geared up, entered the water to start our first dive. The water was warm and pristine, with crystal clear visibility for over 100 feet! This amazing visibility gave us a nice buffer to keep a sharp lookout for Saltwater Crocodiles, which are commonly seen in the area, but fortunately we didn’t see any.

Sadly though, unbridled fishing practices including heavy dynamite fishing has decimated the coral reefs and other marine life, and the water was sparsely inhabited in general. I was, however, able to see a lionfish, a bluespotted whiptail ray, several nudibranchs, small reef fish, and flying fish while on the way back to shore.

Diving here reminded me of a fascinating though disputed story that occurred on an island just north of our dive location during World War 2: for six weeks during January and February of 1945, Ramree Island, situated just off the coast of Burma in the Bay of Bengal, was the setting for a bloody battle between Japanese and Allied forces.

The Battle of Ramree Island was part of the Burma Campaign during WW ll, and was launched for the purpose of dislodging Japanese Imperial forces that had occupied the island since early 1942, along with the rest of Southern Burma, and establishing an airbase there.

They were met with stiff resistance from the Japanese, and vicious fighting ensued. Finally, after a long and bloody battle, the Allies captured the enemy base, but a platoon of an estimated 1,000 Japanese soldiers escaped, and since they were surrounded on three sides by the British, they decided to retreat straight across the island through 16 km of dense tidal swampland to rejoin a much larger Japanese battalion on the other side.

Traveling through the thick, muck-filled swamps, over maze-like mangrove roots, and under tangled vines was slow and exhausting work, made worse by the clouds of mosquitoes biting to distraction and spreading malaria and dengue fever, as well as leeches and the various poisonous spiders, scorpions, and snakes slithering through the mud and underbrush like it was the forest of Endor.

During the night, as the fleeing soldiers struggled on towards the safety of their reinforced beachhead, British troops reported hearing panicked screams of terror and gunfire emanating from within the dark swamp. Unfortunately for the Japanese, the swamps of Ramree were infested by countless, very large Saltwater Crocodiles, which can grow over 20 feet long and weigh over 2,000 pounds.

Drawn by the tasty sounds of the weary and bloodied soldiers thrashing clumsily through their territory, the opportunity was just too good to pass up, so they didn’t. Out of just under 1,000 Japanese soldiers that entered the swamps of Ramree, only about 20 were found alive by their reinforcements the next morning!

*******************************************

On November 12th I was “surprised” by visitors when my mom and little sister Lexi came to see me! They flew into Yangon where I met them and we all went out to a Burmese restaurant for supper and to catch up on everything. They came loaded with food and gifts from my family and some of my Montana friends which was another big surprise and very much appreciated!

The next morning we took a taxi to the bus station and caught the bus traveling from Yangon to the small hill station of Kalaw, high up in the mountains of Shan State, the same town that hosted the half-marathon Trail Run our ambulance stood by for last year.

Kalaw is also one of the best places in Myanmar to go trekking, which is the reason we were here. I’d already researched the best trekking outfits and found out who was available, so that evening after checking into our hotel we went out and talked to a couple of them in person and made reservations for the next day.

Early morning on the 14th we started on the 3 day, 36 mile adventure by walking through the expansive early morning street market in Kalaw with our Pa’O guide, David, and 4 other adventurers with whom we became very good friends by the time we reached our destination of Inle Lake, on the other side of the mountains.

During the 1st day we walked through high pine forests, grassy wildflower strewn meadows, small scattered villages, and rich mountainside farmland where farmers were plowing with water buffalo and cultivating crops of ginger, chilies, mountain rice, and niger seeds.

In the afternoon a sudden rainstorm blew through, even though we were already several weeks into the dry season. Very quickly the trail became cold, slippery, and treacherously muddy. There were several spills and one of our group even had both their shoes sucked off their feet going through an especially wet and leechy stretch of the mountains!

In the evening we came to the village where we would be spending the night. After taking a bucket bath from the open communal well in the center of the village, I went up the stairs to the large communal bedroom that one of the villagers rented out and rolled out my blanket, then we all went to another villagers house and had a delicious (spectacularly) supper.

Maybe it was all the exercise, but the food on the trek was some of the best examples of Burmese and Pa’O (the predominant tribe in this part of the country) food I had while living in Myanmar, with a few exceptions when foreigner food was attempted (the pancakes on the final morning would have made great pothole fillers).

On the second day after breakfast we struck out again, soon leaving the high mountains behind dropping down into an expansive valley interspersed with rolling hills, small villages, and a cantankerous cow. We passed villagers shelling cobs and laying the corn out to dry in the sun, harvesting tomatoes and ginger, and weaving intricate baskets out of delicate strips of bamboo.

It was substantially hotter in the valley than the mountains, so when we came upon a medium sized river meandering along beside the trail and our guide suggested we stop for a swim and a rest, we were happy to take him up on it!

This was actually the very same river whose terminal end we would canoe out of and into the lake at journeys end, but David explained that its course was too serpentine and roundabout to warrant building a bamboo raft and floating out on it, which I had been thinking would be far more ameliorative for my blistery feet, the shoes of which were disintegrating before my very eyes as the trek unfolded.

Late in the afternoon we finally reached the lower bamboo and jungle clad mountains on the other side of the valley, which we began ascending for a couple hours. Just as dusk was falling we arrived at an enormous, ancient wooden monastery, which appeared to have been built in the middle of nowhere, and here we stopped and were granted lodging for our second night.

The fun thing about staying here was that a couple dozen small novitiate monks lived here in the monastery, and they challenged us to a game of pickup football (soccer) with them when we first arrived before it got dark. I’m convinced the only reason we were beaten so roundly was due to the various hardships of our journey, for example blisters and leech-induced anemia!

Early on the third morning, after finishing breakfast and patching up our feet as best we could, we continued on, first up, then down through the mountains, eventually coming upon a beautiful cobblestone road left over from colonial days which we followed all the way out of the mountains into another beautiful valley, and on towards Inle Lake, the second largest lake in Myanmar, and one of the highest, at 2,900 feet (880 meters). Near the lake, the ground is at or below water level, and the road was flooded in several areas even though the rest of the country was well into the dry season.

Finally the road ended entirely and we climbed a rickety wooden stile, crossed a rickety wooden catwalk over a boat canal that connects the village to the river, balanced along a slippery, muddy dyke, and finally arrived at a villagers house where we could rest and have lunch.

After lunch we walked back over to the canal and climbed into a long, wide, wooden outboard canoe and started on the last leg of our adventure. First we floated past all the houses through the village, then we entered the river from the day before which shortly opened into a huge area which was nothing but amazing floating tomato gardens, the rows of vines clearly bobbing up and down over the water, with the farmers (settlers? colonizers?) living over the lake in stilted huts and doing all the trellising, harvesting, and other farm work from their small wooden dugout canoes.

These are the Intha people, a very small tribe who only live around Inle Lake and who make their living farming on the lake and fishing, using unique cone-shaped basket-like fishing traps, and an even more unique method of paddling using their leg to grip the oar, standing on the other leg in the back of their canoe.

Finally we entered the open water of the 13 1/2 mile long lake and sped along up the lake enjoying the sensation of effortless movement, taking in the spectacular views of the surrounding mountains, Intha fishermen, and all the other boat taxis and lake traffic out enjoying the fresh air and pleasantly warm sun on the sparkling, though very murky, lake. Arriving at the northern end of the lake in Nyaungshwe, a small fishing town with as many boat canals as roads, we bid our guide and traveling companions farewell and went our separate ways.

After the trek the three of us traveled to the capital of Shan State, Taunggyi, to attend the annual Tazaungdaing Fire Balloon Festival, where hundreds of amateur teams compete over 4 days to launch the best hot air balloons, sometimes shaped like various animals, birds, and mythological creatures, and filled to capacity with homemade fireworks. Sometimes the balloon is too heavy or poorly designed to even make it off the ground before the payload ignites, or it catches on fire soon after takeoff and plummets into the thousands of spectators. There are fatalities every year but there’s just the right twinge of danger to keep it interesting. The festival occurs close to the end of the Buddhist Lent and marks the official end of the rainy season. While a huge celebration and local phenomenon, its deeper purpose, like so many “Buddhist” traditions, is to ward off evil spirits; the giant balloons are just upsized Chinese sky lanterns.

On November 18 we had to take a night bus back to Yangon in order to make it in time to catch our plane! The only bus I could find that was able to take us was a bottom-tier 3rd class bus with absolutely no legroom and innumerable stops throughout the interminable night.

Early the next morning we flew from Yangon to Kuala Lumpur where my mom had some meetings and had invited us along, then we flew to Malaysian Borneo to go scuba diving. My mom had been a diver in college and my sister had wanted go diving ever since I myself started diving, so now they both finally had a chance! Diving was wonderful, with my mom deciding to renew her license and Lexi vowing to get hers.

From Malaysia we flew up to Chiang Mai, in northern Thailand, for a few days, and then, after meeting up with friends, drove out to Sunshine Orchard, where Lexi would be residing while interning as a paramedic at a small nearby clinic in the middle of the jungle.

After seeing all my friends at Sunshine Orchard and visiting for a few days I had to return to work, so I told my mom, sister, and SO friends goodbye. On December 4th my mom and I drove into MaeSot where my mom took a bus down to Ayutthaya to spend one more week before flying back home and I walked across the Friendship Bridge to the Myanmar border and took the night bus back to work. Lexi of course stayed behind to work at the jungle clinic.

During the last week of November and first week-and-a-half of December Nathan was back in Thailand finishing his scuba diving instructor course and upon completion received his NAUI Scuba Instructor certification!

On December 7th I took a taxi to the bus station and traveled back up to Kalaw to join my ambulance and partial crew already present to stand by at the Trail Run for the second year in a row. This event is a fun assignment for several reasons: The crisp, sunny, humidity-free days and cold, invigorating, mosquito-free nights are a pleasant change from the oppressive lowlands, the food at the antique Kalaw Heritage Hotel where the race is hosted is delicious, and it’s fun to see our friends there, especially my friend who is the doctor for the Australian Embassy in Yangon, who collaborates on projects with us from time to time.

The morning of Sunday the 9th the race began, with nearly twice as many participants as last year. We were fairly busy treating the expected maladies- blisters, twisted ankles, scraped knees, heat cramps, but there weren’t any major injuries.

After the race was over and most of the people had left we packed up our gear and drove directly to the very old city of Sagaing, in central Myanmar, where we would begin teaching an EMR course to 24 students from Sagaing Emergency Rescue Team and a few volunteers from other nearby groups the next day. This is why I hadn’t ridden to Kalaw in the ambulance, because we needed a team to go early and drop off our training materials in Sagaing on their way up to the Trail Run.

The leader of SERT, Mr. Soe Min Oo, had been our best student at our fourth ever EMR training, and he had been trying to get an EMR training for his group ever since, but there had been major scheduling issues on both sides until now.

The Sagaing EMR training ran from December 10-21 and was unusual in that it was covered by a major national television channel, so I’m happy to say that it went very smoothly and was probably the best overall EMR course I had ever taught!

I did have to go intercede on one students’ behalf though because the rescue group he works for was making him man their “dispatch center” every night even though he was the only person from that group attending our course! They were doing this to low-key punish him and try to make him fail class for trying to get training which they hadn’t endorsed and would put him at a higher-trained level than the leaders of his group. But despite this he was still coming to our class and arriving on time in the mornings! Fortunately, after all the formalities of the visit to this rival rescue group were out of the way they agreed to find someone else to fill in for him until training was over, and he ended up being one of our students who passed the class and received our internationally accredited EMR certificate!

After the EMR course, we packed up and brought all the training supplies back to Yangon to be cleaned and stowed until next time, and then spent the next week catching up on end of year paperwork, delayed CPR-AED and First Aid trainings, and continuing to respond to emergencies.

At 9 AM on Sunday, December 30th, Nathan began instructing his first scuba diving course to 4 students, with myself as an assistant. We spent the first day in the pool in Yangon, familiarizing the students with the equipment and teaching basic principles and skills like how to use the buoyancy control device (BCD) and regulator to breathe underwater and control depth. The next morning we drove out to the beach at Ngwe Saung and again spent the whole afternoon in a pool there teaching and practicing skills, although Nathan and I did manage to squeeze in a shore dive that evening!

January 1 and 2, 2019 was the open water component of the course, a fantastic way to start the New Year! As luck would have it, we happened to draw the same boat as last time, and found ourselves putzing along at a feather-star pace (one of the most graceful animals in the sea, though never known to win a race). At least we certainly couldn’t complain about the location, scenery, or company!

On our way out to sea for the 2nd day of open-water, the boat decided to needle us a little more than usual and the engine died about a quarter-mile offshore, leaving us at the mercy of the incoming tide and letting us drift dangerously close to a small, rocky island before the “engineer” could get it started again. We finished the voyage and scheduled dives without further incident and after putzing back to shore late that afternoon, washed the saltwater off us and our gear, ate supper, and then drove back to Yangon during the night.

Early the next morning on January third, just a couple hours after arriving back in Yangon from our scuba class, Nathan went to the airport and flew back to our school property in Thailand to begin preparing it for a Remote First Aid class that we were scheduled to teach that next week. The day after Nathan left I also started traveling to Kanchanaburi, taking the night bus from Yangon to Myawaddy, and crossing into Thailand the morning of the 5th. I really wanted to stop for breakfast at one of the amazing restaurants in MaeSot, but as I was hoping to catch the day bus down to our school in Kanchanaburi, I took a Songtau straight to the bus station and bought a ticket for a van that would take me over the steep, always-under-construction mountain road to Tak, an hour and a half from the border, where I could catch the bus I needed.

Arriving in Tak I rushed to the ticket counter and discovered that I had just missed the morning bus and would have to spend the day in the bus station until the night bus arrived at 11 PM (story of my life). After a day spent thinking about taking two night-busses in a row and all the other things I could be doing instead, I finally boarded my bus and arrived in Kanchanaburi mid-morning on January 6, then jumped on a local bus which took me out to the village near the school where Nathan met me in our ambulance.

The rest of that day and all the next we worked around the property getting it brush-hogged and trimmed and weeded and watered, then we cleaned out and scrubbed down the classroom we would be holding the training in.

Monday evening after work we drove into Kanchanaburi to pick up my sister Lexi at the bus station. She had been working the medical beachhead along the Thai-Burma border ever since I’d last seen her (no joke either; suturing knife wounds, treating breasts hollowed out by mastitis, sick babies, drowning victims, strange and wonderful tropical diseases...). For some reason, she had decided to have an ocular emergency of her own which had prevented her from traveling south with me when I crossed into Thailand. Now she was coming down to accompany us to a real beach and finally get her diving certification at the next scuba diving class Nathan had scheduled to teach immediately after the RFA.

From Jan 8-10 Nathan and I taught the Remote First Aid class to local rescue volunteers plus the owner and some of the employees of a Bangkok-based rock climbing company specializing in guiding climbing tours to scenic and remote locations across Thailand. They had been looking for a company to give their guides some medical training in case someone had an emergency and they were thrilled to have found us.

On Friday Nathan and I loaded up our Thai ambulance with scuba tanks and dive gear and with Lexi we drove out to the local military base where we have a quid pro quo that allows us to use their training pool for swimming and diving. Along the way we picked up Pi Top and Pi Game, two of our local friends who were also taking the scuba diving course.

At the pool, the 5 of us met 5 more prospective students sent by the local rescue diver foundation, who had given Nathan and I our first scuba diver training two years ago. Now that Nathan was a NAUI Instructor, the foundation leader was sending him the first of many foundation divers to receive real training, since all their previous training to date had been 2nd or 3rd hand at best and entirely empirical.

So, the former students taught the former teachers, and I was again assisting as with the first course to provide an adequate student-instructor ratio and just to help streamline the process. For instance, if someone panics or has trouble equalizing their ears while practicing underwater skills I’m there to help them regain control or fix their problem instead of having to pause the whole class and bring everyone else up also.

The next day we hung out at the school, picking fresh limes and making fresh limeade, and just relaxing. Early Sunday morning we reloaded the ambulance and all piled in to drive 10 hours farther south to the ocean near Krabi, Thailand for the open-water part of training. Heading out of town we parked our ambulance at Pi Top’s gas station and transferred everything into Pi Game’s vehicle, which is also an ambulance, but it’s bigger than ours and we needed all the space we could possibly get since both he and Pi Top were coming along, plus Lexi and I, and Nathan with his family.

On the 14th and 15th we rented a wooden longtail fishing boat and dove as many times as we safely could. This completed the first level of scuba diver, and our two friends went back home, but Lexi and Nathan and I stayed and got a couple more dives in on the 16th to start fulfilling the requirements for Lexi’s advanced scuba diver license, since she loved it so much.

We weren’t able to finish that course immediately though, because Nathan had some family of his own coming over to Thailand for a visit and had to leave, leaving Lexi and I to poodle around the beach on our own for a couple days. This was great fun and also gave me a chance to look around for a dive shop that might be looking for someone to intern with them.

(I had completed my divemaster training over a year before, but in order to be certified I needed to have a certain number of logged dives, and despite our best intentions, with all our other responsibilities Nathan and I hadn’t been diving as much as we’d have liked, which would have more than satisfied my pre-DM-cert dive quota. So... before our Remote First Aid class we had talked and decided that after the next scuba training I would stay behind and try to find a divemaster internship to complete my training.)

I was worried about finding an opening because Thailand was currently experiencing an unseasonably low volume of tourists due to recently changing their tourist visa requirements, but when I checked at one of the very first shops I came to, which I only knew about because this is where one of the instructors who’d helped teach Nathan and I our initial divemaster course now worked, they were delighted to have another diver help them out and offered me the ternship!

After seeing my sister off back to her clinic internship on the 19th, I started my divemaster ternship the very next day, Wednesday, January 20. This entailed learning and doing everything a divemaster does, plus helping the other divemasters and instructors with everything they needed help with, in exchange for gaining the essential experience I needed to qualify me for my DM certification.

On Sunday night, February 24th, I took a 12 hour bus ride from Krabi up to Bangkok where I immediately switched busses to take another 12 hour bus ride on up to MaeSot where I switched yet again to a Songtau and went up to visit Lexi and everyone else at Sunshine Orchard for a few days before continuing on to Yangon on March 1st. I had to make this trip back to Yangon in order to apply for a new Thai visa, and also to pack up and move my stuff out of our office/house, as there was a contemplated upgrade on the horizon. I brought my stuff back to Thailand and parked it temporarily with a friend in MaeSot. Here I again met up with Lexi, who had taken a Songtau down from Sunshine Orchard and was going to accompany me back down to the coast, because Nathan was now available to finish teaching Lexi her advanced scuba diver course.

From March 19-21 we dove off the coast of Krabi and Phuket, completing the necessary skills for Lexi to be certified at the advanced level including: light salvage, underwater navigation, night diving, shore dives, wreck dives, and Nitrox dives, plus Rescue Diver skills.

Afterwards, I went back to complete my DM internship, working there until May 24, when I started making preparations to go to Africa and work at a rural clinic in Ethiopia!

[krystangreen-blog]

San Diego is one of the best places in the world to be in the summer season whether you live here or are on a San Diego vacation. During the summer of 2019, things to do in San Diego with kids include some new events in addition to our usual, seasonal ones.

It’s by no means a complete list so if you have ideas, please leave them in the comments.

1. Watch an Outdoor Movie (Parks, Beach, or USS Midway)

This summer, make it a plan to watch one of our outdoor movies. The Summer Movies in the Park initiative began several years ago to draw attention to local parks. It’s been such a huge success that venues like the USS Midway are participating. What a unique opportunity to watch a movie from the deck of a famous aircraft carrier!

Other opportunities to watch a movie al fresco include a series shown on the Botanical Lawn by the San Diego Museum of Art that highlights themes incorporated into recent gallery installations.  

Watch a movie at the beach, hosted by Hotel Del Coronado. Sit on the sand or arrive early to secure a Del Beach chair rental. VIP Movie packages include s’mores, two Del Beach chairs and a Del Beach day bed (reserve in advance, $300).

2. Grab Tickets for the San Diego Symphony’s Bayside Summer Nights

Bayside Summer Nights is the San Diego Symphony’s outdoor summer concert series (Summer Pops) at the Embarcadero Marina Park South. I can’t tell you enough how much I recommend this experience for the entire family as it’s one of our favorite summer activities in San Diego. You’ll see a beautiful sunset over the San Diego Bay during the concert while sipping wine or noshing on gourmet fare.

Concerts this year feature the likes of the B-52s, Chaka Khan, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and more. Grab your friends with kids and go for some fun family time (Or, go for date night). Tip: Bring glow sticks for the kids and check out their new ticket packages.

3. Explore the San Diego-La Jolla Underwater Park

La Jolla is home to a unique underwater park that is full of marine life. The San Diego-La Jolla Underwater Park is outlined by seven sea caves, including Sunny Jim, the only sea cave in the West that is accessible by land (via the Cave Store on Coast Blvd.). Their history is an interesting one as some were used to smuggle booze during prohibition.

Take a guided snorkeling tour or rent a kayak at one of the vendors in La Jolla Shores.

4. See the La Jolla Leopard Sharks

La Jolla is home to the largest aggregation of leopard sharks in the world and it’s possible to enjoy them in even knee-deep water. Females come to incubate in warm waters near The Marine Room restaurant on La Jolla Shores beach.

Yes, they’re safe to be around. Numbers peak in July and August so plan to paddle out on SUP or kayak for a look. You can also snorkel and swim among them (minimize kicking to avoid scaring them away).

In honor of annual leopard shark season, Birch Aquarium offers multiple opportunities to snorkel with a Birch Aquarium naturalist.

5. Go Grunion Running

Yes! The grunion are running on various days all summer long. Grunion runs occur late at night so the activity suits tweens and teens best. Check the calendar and note when its open or closed season. Closed season means that there is no fishing allowed. Open season means you can actually catch them with a valid fishing license. Tip: It’s more fun with a headlamp to see the fish versus risking your phone over water or sand.

6. Sleep at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, USS Midway Museum, or Maritime Museum

Looking for a cool overnight thing to do in San Diego with kids this summer? Did you know that you can glamp with the animals at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park?

Themed overnights provide an opportunity to sleep (safely) near animals, enjoy educational programming, and participate in special close-up encounters. Don’t stress about having camping gear as it can be provided. The Roar and Snore Safari offers several tent options (including deluxe cabins with beds). 

Sleepover at the USS Midway Museum during youth, family, and movie night Overnight Adventures. You’ll dine like crew in the galley, sleep on sailor bunks, and participate in unique behind-the-scenes activities.

Join the Maritime Museum of San Diego’s Family Overnight on the Star of India on June 22.  

7. Ride Water Slides at Aquatica San Diego

San Diego’s seasonal water park is open on select dates from May 24–October 6. All ages have something to do at Aquatica San Diego between high-speed thrill rides and a special area for kids no taller than 48″. Reserve a private cabana or lounger, eat funnel cakes and California-inspired food (craft beer and frozen margaritas for 21+), and lounge in the lazy river. There are several ways to buy discount Aquatica San Diego tickets.

Shortcut to the Most Popular Ticket

Discounted Single Day Aquatica Tickets.

Save and go straight to the gate.

8. Look for Special Theme Park/Museum Experiences

So, maybe you already have an annual San Diego Zoo membership or a Balboa Park Explorer pass. Scour their websites to find additional programming to take advantage of as these attractions offer many, many edutainment opportunities led by experts in their fields.

Fleet Science Center has Saturday Science Club for kids on the second Saturday of each month.

Join Birch Aquarium for their long list of summer camps.

San Diego Museum of Natural History offers hikes, toddler story time and more. Check their family event calendar.

The list goes on.

9. Visit Balboa Park on Friday Nights

Be sure to check the Balboa Park event calendar for a Food Truck Fridays between May 31–September 27 where several museums stay open late, food trucks line Plaza de Panama, and musical performers entertain.   

10. Explore a New-to-You San Diego Museum

Why not visit a museum that you haven’t been to before? Many San Diego museums also offer extended summer hours. Visit the San Diego Museum Council’s list of museums and pick one that is new-to-you.

Don’t forget about Residents Free Tuesdays where San Diego residents receive free admission to a rotating list of Balboa Park museums on Tuesdays. And, if you expect to visit two or more museums or attractions within 30 days, consider the Build-Your-Own Go San Diego Card.

11. Hike Torrey Pines

The trails of Torrey Pines State Park are fantastic for those who want a bit of outdoor exercise but they are easily explored at a leisurely pace with kids. The views of the Pacific are fantastic and between the flora and fauna, there’s quite a bit of fun stuff to look at.

Food isn’t allowed but you could picnic on the beach or grab a sandwich at the Torrey Pines Gliderport afterward.

12. Ride a Surrey

Have you ever seen those multiple passenger bikes cruising down San Diego boardwalks? These surreys are available for the public to rent by the hour in front of the Hilton San Diego Resort (Mission Bay), Hotel Del Coronado, Loews Coronado Bay, and other resorts mostly via Action Sport Rentals. It’s another fantastic and fun way to explore.

13. Ride an Aquacycle on Mission Bay

Speaking of fun rentals, wouldn’t the kids get a kick out of riding an aquacycle with you on top of the water. They basically look like a giant floating tricycle. We haven’t done it, so it’s on our list for something to do in San Diego with kids this summer.

The same venues that offer water sports rentals also usually offer stand-up paddle boards, kayaks, Jet Skis and other fun things to do in the water. You may also try jetpacking. Carlsbad Lagoon rentals on Agua Hedionda lagoon also has aquacycles.

14. Fly a Kite

Kite flying is not a lost art and it’s a great free thing to do in San Diego with kids this summer. Find green space (there is plenty) around Mission Bay, South Carlsbad State Beach, Dog Beach (when not crowded), or a park near you to fly a kite.

REI has kites but you could always head to a kite store like Kite Flite in Seaport Village. Make sure that the kite is kid-friendly and that you are careful not to fly it over roads, over people or near power lines.

15. Go on a Picnic

Enjoy the great outdoors by going on a picnic with family and friends. Pack a lunch (or, heck, grab some awesome sandwiches for takeout) and head to a local park with picnic facilities, the beach, Balboa Park, or wherever you like to eat outside.  

Bundle this activity with kite flying and other outdoor fun to knock several to-do’s off your summer bucket list at once. My picnic to-do includes nabbing one of the green huts along Ellen Browning Scripps Park in La Jolla in time for the sunset.

16. Attend an Outdoor Concert

A number of cities throughout San Diego County (Del Mar, Carlsbad, Coronado, Santee, El Cajon, Mission Hills and more) offer summer outdoor concerts that are free to attend. There is usually plenty of space for the kids to run around, food for sale, raffle prizes and more.

Check the list here, which also includes some fun ticketed options.

17. Attend Raptor School (La Jolla, Ramona, and Alpine)

This is one of the more unique things to do in San Diego with kids this summer though it’s available year-round. Total Raptor eXperience offers owl encounters and falconry classes for all ages at the Torrey Pines Gliderport in La Jolla and their main facilities in Ramona.

We’ve taken a basic falconry class with Sky Falconry. They offer hawk walks, falconry classes, and more at their ranch in Alpine. These classes not only provide unique interactions with raptors but also teach you about how our actions impact amazing animals like these.

18. Support San Diego’s Only Rollerskating Rink

It’s been in business for over four decades and the historic building is threatened by closure. So, get out there and roller skate with the family at Skateworld. It’s great exercise, gets kids off their electronics and its super fun. They’re offering rollerskating camps, too.

19. Take an Electric Bike Tour

This idea will suit the teens in your life (typically ages 16 and older) but an electric bike tour is an excellent way to see San Diego. This summer, I’d like to take the SoCal Riviera Tour of La Jolla and Mount Soledad with San Diego Fly Rides. I see these riders cruising my neighborhood on occasion and it looks like so much fun. Plus, there is way less pedaling (if you want) on an electric bike.

20. Visit a California Mission

This tip is especially relevant when kids are studying missions in 4th grade. But, it’s just as easy to pop a baby in a carrier for a nice walk around a new place.

San Diego County is home to the largest of the 21 California missions, Mission San Luis Rey in Oceanside. It is open daily for self-guided tours of the onsite museum and grounds, but do check their calendar for a list of events including behind-the-scenes tours, retreats, cooking classes, and workshops.

Mission San Diego de Alcala, which overlooks Old Town San Diego, was California’s first mission. Visitors can explore the grounds, attend mass or sit for quiet reflection in the gardens. An audio tour is available.

Or, it is incredibly easy to take an Amtrak train to San Juan Capistrano. The mission there is within a very short walk of the station and such a cool day trip.

21. Tour the Stuart Collection

Take kids on somewhat of a scavenger hunt to find the various sculptures and art installations in the Stuart Collection, a public art display that is sprinkled throughout UC San Diego. Stop into one of the casual campus restaurants that are open during summer for lunch or a snack. Read more about the Stuart Collection.

22. Have Afternoon Tea

If the kids are feeling fidgety in the late afternoon and you’re not feeling like an outdoor activity, how about a proper afternoon tea with scones, tea sandwiches, and sweets? Choices include:

Shakespeares Corner Shoppe

Fairmont Grand Del Mar

The Westgate Hotel

23. Attend a Luau

The Catamaran is hosting its annual summer luaus on the beach on Tuesdays and Fridays. The buffet menu includes a long list of Hawaiian favorites such as Kalua Roast Pig. Enjoy live music, lei making, and more without the long flight.

24. Take a Surfing Lesson

San Diego is home to some truly awesome summer surf camps that you can sign up for on a weekly basis or book for a half-day. They’re great for kids ages 5 and above (sometimes, even a bit younger) and adults can join in the fun, too. This is something I always encourage families who are visiting San Diego to look into. Try Surf Diva Surf School in La Jolla or San Diego Surfing School in Pacific Beach.

25. Tour the San Diego Bay

Get out on the water with the family with one of these suggestions:

Take a Seal Tour in the amphibious bus-boat that goes from land to water in a snap

Drive your own mini speedboat on a tour with Speedboat Adventures

How about Flagship Cruises harbor cruise?

Take the Coronado ferry between downtown and Coronado

Zoom around the bay in the high-speed Patriot Jet Boat

26. Pick a Pier

When was the last time you took a walk on one of our piers? Whether it’s Crystal Pier in Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach Pier, or Oceanside Pier, they’re fabulous places for ocean views and sunsets. Did you know that Oceanside Pier is the longest wooden pier on the West Coast?

27. Plan a San Diego Staycation

I’m a huge fan of being a tourist at home. Visit a part of San Diego that you’ve never actually explored before. Popular staycation hotels include:

Fairmont Grand Del Mar

Omni La Costa Resort and Spa

Hotel Del Coronado

Rancho Valencia

Cape Rey Carlsbad

Pier South

28. Go to the Beach

While this is an obvious thing to do in San Diego with kids this summer, it has to be mentioned. Top beach picks include Coronado Municipal Beach, Law Street beach, La Jolla Shores beach, Del Mar beach, and Moonlight beach for family-friendly amenities.

Go luxe at the beach by renting a cabana at Del Beach in front of the Hotel Del Coronado. You’ll love the margaritas while the kids will love the shade and food. You don’t have to be a hotel guest to book one either.

29. Join a Beach Cleanup

Check the calendars for I Love a Clean San Diego and San Diego Surfrider Foundation for opportunities to join an organized beach cleanup. Summer equals more people on our beaches, and inevitably more trash.

30. Do Volunteer Work at Home and Elsewhere

San Diego is full of opportunities for kids to get involved in community service. 

San Diego Humane Society needs kids (and adults) to make various DIY projects like no-sew blankets for dogs, pom-poms for cats and more at home.

The San Diego Food Bank offers a myriad of ways for small groups and individuals to volunteer.

Feeding San Diego offers opportunities for ages 6 and older to fill backpacks for kids in need, sort food and more.

That’s the list of my things to do in San Diego with kids this summer. Make your plans now, fall will be here before you know it!

See also: 

11 Unique and Extreme San Diego Sightseeing Tours (ranging from hot air balloon rides to tours by biplane or Ferrari)

How to Save Money on San Diego Attractions

[ulfwolf]

Wolfku Musing 117

Sunlight to starlight  to sunlight again as Life to Death  and then Life

Twenty-four hours. Day to night to day again. We don’t reflect on this too often, but this cycle really is a lifetime for some, say a mayfly who, indeed, wakes up one morning to fly about all day but most likely will not fly at all the one following.

By the way, why is a mayfly called a May-fly anyway? Well, if you have heard that these little darlings start hatching from their water-larva state starting in May each year (to then continue to hatch, hatch, hatch through the balance of spring and most of summer) then you’ve heard right. Yup, that’s why the name. So, next time you see, or run into, a swarm of these flying critters, be assured: the days have been getting longer for a while.

It is also true that the mayfly is incredibly short-lived. Once out of the larva stage, the female mayfly gets bored with life on Earth after about five minutes, and departs this world then and there while the more long-lived male can make it through not only one day but on occasion a whopping two. But these boys don’t waste a single second of the 86,400 to 172,800 they have been allotted, and spend most if not all of them mating and reproducing. 

In other words, sexing like there’s no tomorrow.

As for nicknames, I don’t know where on earth they got it from, but it’s true that there are folks in our land that refer to them as Canadian Soldiers. Why? one wonders. Not a clue. They are certainly not called that in Canada, where they’re better known as shadflies. And then the British had to weigh in with the more observant and anatomically accurate: up-winged fly.

To some, the mayfly looks like a multi-sectioned flying ant for its abdomen consists of ten individual segments. Strangely enough, some of these segments carry open-and-closeable gills (like a larva hangover). Why? you ask. Well, with so many sexual seconds to fill, perhaps they need to take a break now and then and go for a swim, only to discover that they don’t know how to. No worry, no drowning here. We have gills. I think the word is amphibious.

Actually, I think the word is sloppy evolution, in-elegant.

Most people don’t like mayflies. One people, however, loves them, and these people are called fly fishers; and they love the mayflies because from May on, a fly fisher’s favorite fly to fish with is a mayfly fly (I can say that 23 times in a row, and fast, without screwing up). You may have noticed (or not) that once the mayflies start to hatch, the avid fly fisher starts using artfully made flies resembling this flash in the insect pan. The reason? you ask.

Well, I answer, the mayfly is an extremely popular dish for many a fish, trout included, and since fish keep a close eye on the calendar and know when May rolls around, they will then lunge for anything mayfly-like and if they’re really short on their luck—or karma’s not so good—they’ll swallow an artificial one, much to the fly fisher’s delight and the trout’s dedark.

I think that’s a devious tactic, though, and should be outlawed.

Here’s another interesting mayfly tidbit: they are winged protein and are good food even for humans. What is seen as a nuisance in America is seen as a gift in Africa. Locals around Lake Victoria, for example, gather mayfly adults along with Chironomid midges to make a type of patty called ‘Kungu’. Yum. In fact, this protein-rich food is an important part of their diet.

And bakers in Malawi add them to breads and cakes. Yum, again.

Weird, you say, but did you know that children in the Congo will eat live larva that they dig out of trees, these white larvae so fat that they explode when you bite into them. No, I don’t know this from personal experience, from books. This, though, is my way of offering that there’s no accounting for taste.

So, other things (fish and humans) like to eat them. But what do they eat in turn? The answer is nada. Nothing at all. Why? you ask.

Because they don’t have mouths, I answer.

There is, in other words, no such thing as over-eating in the mayfly world; no diet issues or cookbooks. No counting calories.

Really, it stands to reason, since for adult mayflies, as different from the two-hour old adolescent nymphs, every second (except for those spent swimming slash drowning slash using gills) is earmarked for reproduction and, yes, feeding the occasional lucky fish.

They simply don’t have time to eat so they never developed functional mouths. As larvae, on the other hand, the have very good mouths indeed, which they use consuming tons and tons and tons (as a species) of algae.

I wonder if there are mayfly fly-fishers who fly-fish with algae looking flies? 

Turning now to reproduction: mayflies have lots of babies. Let me restate that: mayflies have LOTS of babies. The female mayfly (who, remember, only lives about 300 seconds, spends the tail-end of those valuable seconds (having first been duly mid-air impregnated) laying anywhere from 400 to 3,000 eggs on waters surfaces. These eggs soon sink to the bottom where they eventually hatch into hungry larvae—look out algae.

Oh, I can hear the question now: How, with about five minutes’ worth of life, does the female mayfly manage to get pregnant? Well, let me enlighten you.

This is what happens:

A mayfly’s life cycle starts with a bunch of horny males forming a cloud-like swarm of “come-and-get-it” above the water for the females to fly into (and they do) to mate—in-flight, no less. The words airborne and orgy comes to mind.

The clouding male mayfly, who is equipped with elongated front legs developed for this very purpose, grabs a passing female and the pair then mate in the air, on the wing (which could be one reason they have very well-developed wings, come to think of it). Done sexing, the male lets go of the female, who now—with a precious minute or two left to live—descends to the water surface where she lays her tons of eggs.

Once done, literally spent, she then collapses on top of the water, gives up her ghost, and now, motionless with her wings spread on the water, does a different “come-and-get-it”, this time for the fish who now pick them off at their leisure.

The male mayfly (say that fast, ten times) rarely returns to the water but, as the final hours approach, instead wings off to die on dry land. Should he, however, return to the water for a late-life swim, he will not, gill-equipped as he is and as we’ve already discussed, drown.

One curious thing about mayfly eggs, by the way, is that they are extremely sensitive to pollution. They like, even demand, clean water. Even modest levels of water pollution can kill up to 80 percent of the eggs, and that is why scientists sometimes use the density of viable mayfly eggs to quickly determine the purity of the water.

I biologists are to be believed, they have been around for a long time, the mayflies, and have over the years caught the attention of many of us humans; Aristotle mentions the mayfly in his “History of Animals.” The poet George Crabbe used the mayfly as a symbol for the brevity of life. And these days many people gather to witness the swarms that form and rise during hatching season. In some regions, the number of insects is so incredibly voluminous that they show up on the local weather radar.

The selfsame biologists say that mayflies have been around since before the dinosaurs, and after more than 350 million years of trial-and-error evolution, they have now perfected what they consider the art of life. Not so sure I’m all that impressed.

They start as eggs that soon turn larvae, which after a month or so hatch into nymphs (also called naiads) who emerge from the water to then, give them an hour or two, mature into adults to reproduce and then start a family of at least 400.

That’s some schedule if you ask me. They all should wear T-shirts saying “live fast, die young.”

Taking a closer look at their development: one of the many characteristics that makes mayflies the unique insects they are is their two-step evolution from larva to adult. Hatched from the larva as a nymph the mayfly-to-be emerges from the water as a dull-colored sub-imago (or dun) that seeks shelter in bankside vegetation and trees. After an hour or so, the sub-imago now sheds its nymph skin to transform into the brightly colored imago (or spinner). It is not clear why mayflies have retained this unique step in their lifecycle; however, it is thought that they may not be able to achieve the change from nymph to sexually mature adult in one step—which doesn’t say much for mayfly intelligence, I think, if, indeed, they’ve had 350 million years to figure things out.

Some mayfly species exhibit an amazing hatching synchronicity. For example, one North American mayfly species hatches in huge numbers from the Mississippi river every year. The total number of mayflies in this hatch alone are estimated to reach 18 trillion—more than 3,000 times the number of people on earth.

Another thing is that these guys are attracted to lights from riverside towns and villages which on occasion has forced the local authorities to deploy snow clearing vehicles to remove small mountains of mayfly corpses. Not a pretty thought.

What a creature.

Of course, this is not what this Wolfku is about, it’s about our local sunlight vs. our remote suns’ lights, e.g. starlight. It’s about life to death to life again.

It’s about impermanence—a fleeting state of affairs much more easily seen and recognized among our mayfly friends than among us humans. However, if an alien species with a lifespan of, say 30,000 years took a closer look at us, and at our ridiculously short lifespan of 80 years or so, they would indeed be justified in calling us mayflies.

It’s all relative, isn’t it?

::

P.S. If you like what you’ve read here and would like to contribute to the creative motion, as it were, you can do so via PayPal: here.

[talesofhawaii]

We humans are strange. I don’t know of any other living being on earth that does so deals horribly with nature and the environment like humans. He not only exploits our earth massively, he also poisons it with his filth. He simply throws all of his produced garbage into the environment without ever having thought about the damage he is doing with it. According to the motto: out of sight out of mind. We speak of “cycles of nature” etc., but we do not want it to be true that this bad deed of us humans returns fully and directly to ourselves and hits us hard. Because this is the cycle of nature!

Tourist in the middle of the garbage  ©Foto: Gérard Koch, 2017

Hawaii is a dreamlike paradise in the Pacific Ocean. Already in 1967, after barely 8 years under the United States government, Hawaii reached the first million tourists, especially since around 7 million visitors from all over the world travel there every year. But Hawaii has a major environmental problem due to these tourists and its geographical location, which one is happy to suppress. My wife and I were able to experience this ourselves in 2017 in Kahului, Maui on the beach. The whole beach was overflowing with plastic, microplastics, old fishing nets and other garbage. Warning signs for swimming were also appropriate. In short, we decided to collect the rubbish on this small stretch of beach.

Collecting the waste – ©Foto: Gérard Koch, Dez.2017

In order to perhaps document the understanding with a few numbers, I have given just two examples:

The smoker habitually throws the rest of the cigarette onto the street, into the river or wherever after his satisfaction. The world is the biggest ashtray. Although cigarette consumption is declining in Europe, 5.6 trillion cigarettes are smoked worldwide every year (2011 figure), 4.5 trillion of them are being carelessly thrown away. In terms of weight, this means that 1 million cigarettes weigh exactly 1 ton. This is about 5 million tons of cigarette waste in nature every year. Human mortality from smoking every year is around 6 million people. One cigarette contains 4,800 chemicals, including 250 poisons (as of April 3, 2018, SZ.de), 50 of which are carcinogenic. The other chemicals are still under investigation. The cigarette filter is made robust by chemical processes during manufacture and takes 10 to 15 years to dismantle. If a cigarette butt comes into contact with water, it contaminates 200 liters of it and, through chemical reactions, generates around 7,000 poisons in the water, which does not benefit wildlife and nature. In the water, the filter decomposes into its microplastics, which is taken up by the plankton (microorganisms in the water), which in turn is the basic food of the fish, which we, the fish, in turn consume. A great cycle, I only wish you a good appetite!

Another example is plastic:

The oceans and the sea are used by our society, industry and government as cheap dumps. Studies estimate that 675 tons of garbage are disposed of directly into the sea every hour, half of which is plastic. The dismantling of the plastic, one is amazed, takes about 500 years. Almost 1.5 million tons of plastic were produced each year in the 1950s, today it is almost 400 million tons. Let’s take the 128-year-old company Coca-Cola, which produces over 100 billion plastic bottles a year. This is about 3,400 bottles per second! According to the Greenpeace studio, 60% of these are single-use bottles that can be found in any way in nature and the ocean.

Researched and registered by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), 4.8 to 12.7 million tons of plastic end up in the sea every year. The ocean currents then create the giant new plastic continents in the middle of the oceans, which cost around 135,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds each year. The best known new continent is the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” in the North Pacific between Hawaii and California.

  We humans urgently need to be more careful, gentle and close to nature with our environment and nature, because we have only one earth, where we all live together. We have to do something as soon as possible and clean up and detoxify our landfill. If we can all throw something on the floor, we can all pick something up from the floor, right? Let’s do this as our new sport.

Born in Mexico, Fernando, who has lived in Hawaii for 20 years, took this to heart. When he walked along the Ala Wai boat harbor and saw the splendid, colorful fish swimming in the immense pollution, he took the initiative and began cleaning the harbor basin from debris. Without an order from the city or the community, he goes to the port in Honolulu once or twice a week after his 100% job to clear the debris. Instead of being grateful for his free, hard work, the government put stones in his way and tried to prevent him from cleaning the water. Regardless of this, Fernando goes his way and not only cleans this port in Honolulu, but extends it to the island and cleans nature with great diligence. We should all be grateful to him and support him in this. One possibility would be to help him or to start freeing the environment from civilization ballast in the area, on his own doorstep. Fernando is a great role model for me, a hero. He shows us what to do and opens our eyes. My request to you, dear reader, please become active like Fernando. Support him wherever you can, be it financially or just that his social media community is growing, which you can find here: Instargram: @greenmanhawaii facebook: Green Man Hawaii

Mahalo nui to Hawaii Volcanic

My contribution to him is that as soon as I can fly back to Hawaii, I will keep my promise to Fernando and help him fish the garbage out of the water for a day or two. I will also suggest him as a real hero at the organization at Trash Hero World, so that he may also get support from there.

A huge thank you and Mahalo nui to Fernando, as well as an appreciation for everything he does. Fernando, is a hero!

Photoalbum

Motor of a car – Big Island – 2017 ©Foto Gérard Koch

the rest of a car – Big Island – 2017 ©Foto Gérard Koch

Fishernet – Maui – 2017 ©Foto Gérard Koch

Everywhere is tresh – Maui- 2017 ©Foto Gérard Koch

Harbor of Kahului – 2017 ©Foto Gérard Koch

Warning for swimming – Maui – 2017 ©Foto Gérard Koch

Tourist in the mittle of waste – Maui – 2017 ©Foto Gérard Koch

It say byself… , Maui – 2017 ©Foto Gérard Koch

Cleaning up by Kahului, Maui – 2017 ©Foto Gérard Koch

Everywhere the trash… Maui – 2017 ©Foto Gérard Koch

Almost the End of Cleaning Maui – 2017 ©Foto Gérard Koch

Good feeling after cleaning,Maui – 2017 ©Foto Gérard Koch

Ala Wai Harbor Honolulu witch cleans Fernando, Oahu – 2018 ©Foto Gérard Koch

    Link:

Bericht über Coca-Cola Die Welt-Zeitschrift über Coca-Cola Watson Coca-Cola Schweiz Coca-Cola Global Citizen über den Abfall in Hawaii Reset United Nations Environment Programme UNEP Pollution in Honolulu Oceanservice – Plankton  Australien Museum – Plankton

  Fernando, a tireless hero We humans are strange. I don't know of any other living being on earth that does so…