#the seed bank or her neighbors

[threepandas]

Bad End: Golden Cassandra

People don't listen. Not when what your saying, scares them. Especially when, what you're saying, scares them. They like to pretend, instead. That if they don't hear you? It's not happening. Can't and WON'T happen. That you're just a liar. Speading fear, for the fun of it.

But oh, when has reality ever been that kind? That agreeable?

Tell me, WHEN has it ever bowed to the tantrums of men?

I can't think of a single instance. Knew it wouldn't now, either. So, really? What was I to do? Keep trying? Beat my head against walls of willful ignorance, until the deigned to give? Hoping, against all reason and evidence, that they MIGHT, just MAYBE, do so in the nick of time? Please. I was hopeful, not a fool. Optimism does not render a soul naive.

Like the fall of Atlantis, the sacking of Rome. Great Alexandria burning. Everything was going to be destroyed. Rather dramatically, too, and rather deservedly. I couldn't and DIDN'T defend it. Try to change it? Yes. Try to SAVE them? Absolutely. But not once, not EVER, would I defend it.

After all, it was a system built upon the backs of slaves.

Death was the only reasonable outcome. Revolution, the Voice, of those unheard and in chains. Their magic, their power, used for the convenience of their so called "betters". It was disgusting. Vile.

Set dressing, for an Otome Game.

As though their VERY LIVES, their SUFFERING and SOULS, were nothing but pretty little plot points in someone else's PLAY! The indignities they faced. The starvation and thirst. Being forced to watch friend and loved ones suffer, Scream, DIE!

But Oh, at least the Protagonist gets her handsome meat to oogle. They'll know their place, as they play along. Broken nicely and so very, VERY greatful for her scraps. She can play at revolutionary. Or perhaps at savior, should she feel the need. Assuming she doesn't leave them in chains.

And I? Oh I am supposed to play dress up and face her, in some sick "duel" of love! Abuse and use to my heart's content! The Gods jest. For I will do no such thing!

I can barely recall the plot. Only that the gloss over the rather significant socioeconomic and political fall out that is sure to follow. The Kingdom is not going to survive. Should it not be one sort of Revolutionary revolt, it will be another. Corruption, stagnation, and willful ignorance are simply too wide spread among the upper echelons. Baked too deeply into the foundations.

Gods... I... I tried.

It hurts. Like ripping out finger nails, one by one, when I finally gather enough. Not even all that I wish I could. But simply... enough. There is not enough time, the rumblings of revolution have grown too loud. I... I HAVE too go. And... and I know they won't come with me. My friends, my family, the neighbors. All those who smile, nod, and listen but don't believe a word I say.

The pain is hollowing. A truely special sort of hell.

Looking back, to little cousins on tiny legs, helping you pack. With their round little cheeks and small little hands. Watching them try to lift bags like a "grown up". Your friends and family, treating it all like a trip to the country side and not the last time you'll ever see them. The... the day being... being so accursedly normal. Mild weather and gentle breeze. Like your world isn't ending. Like everything isn't gone.

Wanting to be wrong. Traveling and traveling. Wanting to be wrong. Everything mild, calm and sweet. A hell of self doubt. Every night and every dawn. Are you insane? Were they right all along? Were you reading signs, portents of Doom, where there were none? But still... you travel. A caravan filled with your life's work.

Every scrap of modern knowledge. A copy of every work and definitive artwork. Every play, treatise, and textbook. Every old Diary I could get my hands on and endless days patrolling the book markets. A lifetime's work. All spent in hand-me-downs and out of fashion clothes, just for this. The preservation of knowledge.

But what if I'm wrong?

Fiddling with the piles of ward stones, as I get farther and farther north. Closer and closer to the land I stashed away. Hidden, within layers upon layers, of ever circling bureaucracy. A magic rich grove of Gold-leaf Ginko. They would have been harvested to oblivion, if I hadn't hidden them, and the species is already endangered.

I have been using a tower I built (in a natural clearing, as I would sooner remove my own limbs, then a single branch upon one of those trees) there as a seed bank. Every endangered magical plant species I came across? I sent as many seed as I could, to my bank. Had even begun the lengthy process of creating automatons, so they could build a green house (carefully!) into the mountain.

Seems I will have nothing but time, now, to dedicate to that project.

As I get closer, passing through the beginning of the valley towns (that lead into the high lands)? My Family Ring breaks. The terrible Crack of it, a sharp knife to the gut, splitting the morning silence. Father is... oh Gods, Father is...

Yet, even before I can come to terms with this terrible new reality? Beneath my travel cloak and jacket, nestled precious like the love it represented, my Clan Mantle begins to snap and crack like popcorn. Enchanted stone beads cracking apart violently, with the lose of the life they were made to represent. Shrapnel tearing at my clothes as I desperately rip at my cloak, my jacket, blood already welling up from various wounds.

Pop, dead. Crack, dead. Snap! Dead.

I manage to rip the heavy necklace from around my shoulders. Already half the bead are gone. More, like lethal firecrackers, shooting off even as I fling the enchanted jewelry into a nearby leather bag. Scramble for a nearby heavy blanket to cover it. Blood stains everything, dripping from shallow nicks and shrapnel wounds alike. I... oh gods, I barely notice I'm crying.

The sounds have startled the horses. One of them even got hurt. It.. it takes hours to fix. I have to stop in the next town. Shaking. Shaking. I.. I think I may be shaking. C-crying. "To remember where you came from." That's... oh god. That's what Clan Mantle's are FOR. A symbolic gift, really. They... they could never have known.

That it would actually serve it's original purpose. It's ancient purpose. The reason they USED to be made. To... to show who was still ALIVE. Oh gods. I... I can't check. Can't bear to look. The sound has stopped. Is it over? Are... is there...? Please, gods, don't make me look. Don't make me KNOW, how few members of my own family are left.

I was right. Gods, damn them.

Gods damn them all.

I was RIGHT.

Bandaged, healed, I travel faster. Time is running out. It doesn't matter, now, which "route" she took. Everything will have fallen apart. I reach my grove and don't even bother to set up a tent. Wards before all. Better to sleep on the floor, then be caught unaware. I work around the clock. Feeling like clawed fingers are ever so gently, wrapping around my throat, one at a time. Tick, tock, tick, tock. And oh, the tighter they squeeze.

Barely... BARELY! Do the wards thrum to life, deep and powerful, before I feel some almost god like crash into them. My hands shake. Still kneeling in the dirt, from where I placed the last stone, I slowly look up. And... and curling above the golden trees? Shades of copper catch the light. Massive and leaning. Stepping on my wards. Looking down in annoyance, as they refuse to part.

(Distantly, I hear the horses scream in terror. I... I wish I could do the same.)

I flee. Scrambling without dignity, back to the seed bank's tower. Trying to keep out of sight. A hopeless endeavor, I know. What other reason could such a power Dragon be out here for? If not to finish what was started? But... but hope has carried me so FAR. Can it not carry me just a bit farther?

No attacks come. No insults or threats. Yet...

The presence does not leave.

I can not hide forever, for all that fear exhausts and bids me too. All my supplies are out side. My wards, at least seem, to have held? But how can I trust it? Knowing just how strong a dragon's magis is. Sure enough, the second I step outside? There he stands. The copper dragon. Just beyond the wards.

Worse still? He is a man I recognize. Which can only invite pain and suffering, as he played no small part in the revolution. Not to mention, his significance to that damnable Game. Was he "supporting character"? A "hidden route"? An antagonist I could not quite recall? I can not place it. He was THERE, but not lead about by the nose, like the others. Not broken, as they were.

Now, here he stands, light catching off his ornaments and nails. As he tap, tap, taps them lightly against my wards. In sequence. Amused. His eyes locked with mine and glowing from within. Fire and magic made manifest. The king was a fool to think he owned this man. A "royal gaurd dog" indeed. Ha! They brought death into their house, then kicked it.

A slow smile, spreading like poison through sleeping veins, creeps across that deceptively youthful face. Sharp, sharp teeth are revealed to the air. I think I may amuse him. Perhaps I have for quite a while. I have made it no secret, after all, that I know he is dangerous. Treated him as the threat he truely IS. Others thought it was funny. Would find excuses to shove me at him, just to see me panic. All the while, he pretended, like a GOOD little dog, to be polite.

His eyes had always been laughing.

And now? He doesn't even bother to hide.

"You ran away." His voice rings out, the barest hint of rasp, like the drawing of a blade. It fills the silence. Demands attention. "Did you think I wouldn't be able to find you?"

To be honest? I had hoped no one would look. That I had given them no reason to even try. Perhaps that had been naive. I was a part of the system too, in the end. Guilt by association. That didn't explain him, however. Had I wronged him? Beyond the obvious. (And the obvious sat between us, like so much rotten filth. How could ANYONE over look that?)

"Their courts burned, just like you always warned they would. You should have seen it."

He stopped to chuckle. Closer to a sneer, then a sound of true amusement. His distain and delight intertwining as he savored the memory. He leaned closer. Letting his forehead press against the barrier. Enjoying, reliving, his moment of triumph, once again.

"Ha, ha~ Oh, but you should have seen their faces. When they realized you were right. That you had warned them and warned them, but they had refused to listen! It was glorious, darling. They howled with such regret and fear. A magnificent symphony~ you made for me."

I backed up against the carts. The wounds from broken beads stinging harshly with every shift, like the screaming of the dead. Scared. Gods, I'm s-so scared. I can't possibly have invited this... r-right? I never flirted or... or suggested anything! So-! So why is-?! Gods, why is he here?!

"You can't run from me, clever girl. Not for long. You saw me and I see you. Too clever by half. They really should have listened~!" He broke off to laugh, a sharp mockery of the dead. Fangs catching the light. "But they didn't, did they? My poor clever girl. We truely were buried by filth, weren't we? How glorious it must be. To finally be free."

"But~! Did you really think you could escape ME, my clever girl?"

"You're not nearly so foolish. Open the barrier, darling."

"Let me in. Our revolution is over, I have won."

"Now you can't escape me~"

[random-thot-generator]

Thinking about dark knight!Ghost who is sent by King John to conquer a neighboring kingdom and bring him back a pretty princess to marry.

TW- Adult content below the cut. Brief violence, Sexual situations, Explicit sexual content

Notes: A long drabble(?) to purge this horny medieval brainworm from my head, so I can work on my other WIPS. Hope you enjoy my brainrot. Bone apple tea!

-

Dark knight Ghost, who sneaks in a small band of his personally trained men through the king's own escape tunnel in the wee hours of the morning. The entire castle guard is defeated by dawn, the king himself captured.

Dark knight Ghost, who corners the king in his chambers and under threat of death forces him to sign a decree, giving over the Princess' hand in marriage. The king's daughter is now betrothed to Ghost's sovereign lord, King John. He makes sure the wedding banns are posted throughout the surrounding kingdoms, cementing his king's claim on the princess.

Dark knight Ghost, who has also been tasked with delivering the bride-to-be to King John, but he ends up being duped by the crafty princess and her ladies-in-waiting, who dress you, her chambermaid, in one of her finest dresses, draping you in jewels and finery before handing you over to the frightening dark knight in your princess' stead.

Dark knight Ghost, who is only doing this odious task at his king's behest, but the gruff knight doesn't care to deal with a royal snobby brat. He's heard the stories about the Princess' terrible moods and tantrums and has already decided he will suffer none of it.

Dark knight Ghost, who can't reconcile the stories of the shrewish Princess with the shy, soft-spoken damsel now in his care. Thinking you are trying to play him for a fool, his treatment of you is gruff, manhandling you and barking orders at you until tears well up in your eyes and you cringe away in fright. If he happens to feel guilty for scaring you and making you cry, he never lets it show, but he refrains from doing it again; he honestly can't bear to see you shrink away from him.

Dark knight Ghost, who is irritated when his younger knights, Sirs Kyle and Johnny, fawn over you, dressing them down for their unseemly behavior even though he himself can't deny that your sweet smile, soft voice and big doe-eyes are a constant distraction. He can't get you back to King John fast enough.

Dark knight Ghost, who insists on accompanying you himself when you bathe. He tries to be chivalrous and keep his back turned, but after catching a glimpse of your naked, wet curves shimmering in the sunlight, he now blatantly watches you bathe from the bank, much to your mortification. He takes particular delight in ordering you out of the river, just to watch your nude form rise from the water like Aphrodite from the waves.

Dark knight Ghost, who begins to grow jealous of his knights, Kyle and Johnny, who he has ordered to guard you while traveling. The pair of them are too bloody charming for their own good, making your cute little giggles ring in his ears and harden his cock. He ends up having to call a halt for rest, just to relieve the heaviness of his aching balls, leaving a copious amount of his seed on the trunk of an ancient oak.

Dark knight Ghost, who 'discovers' the following morning that your royal mount is now gone, apparently "stolen by vagabonds" while most of the camp was asleep. He admonishes the men on guard duty for not keeping a sharper eye, but leaves it at that, uncharacteristically lenient, for a change. He does insist that you ride his destrier with him for the rest of the journey, however.

Dark knight Ghost, who makes you sleep by his side when camp is set every night, because he likes waking in the predawn hours to find you cuddled up in his arms. He now pulls you close before you even fall asleep, pulling your back into his chest before settling his big hand on your belly, telling you it's the pommel of his short sword that's poking you in the back.

Dark knight Ghost, who doesn't realize how hard he's truly fallen for you until highway bandits attack them on the forest road and steal you away. He decides in that instant he'll kill anyone who stands between him and his sweet princess.

Dark knight Ghost, who will stop at nothing to get you back, so tracks down the thieves to their den hidden deep in the forest and slaughters them all for daring to lay a finger on his woman. The cowardly bandit who pressed his blade to your throat and drew a bead of blood dies a particularly brutal death, Ghost relishing the sound of the bastard choking on his own blood.

Dark knight Ghost, who can no longer keep his feelings hidden, ripping his helmet off and kissing you amidst the carnage, swearing an oath to give his own life to protect you. His hold is possessive as he carries you back to his destrier and sits you in front of him, hands wandering over your body as he lets his horse pick its way back to camp.

Dark knight Ghost, who stops at an inn to give you a proper rest while his men camp outside of town. He demands the best room in the inn for his Princess. There is only the one bed, and though he offers to sleep on the floor, you won't allow it. What finally breaks his will to deny you is when you look up at him with those soulful eyes and soft, trembling lips, whispering, "I cannot sleep without you now, my lord. Please, come to bed."

Dark knight Ghost, who strips down to his tunic and climbs into bed with his king's betrothed, knowing full well he's already done enough to warrant his own execution, but still pulls you close in the darkness as a shudder runs through his body. When his lips meet yours, he is well and truly lost.

Dark knight Ghost, who feels your soft hands tracing the many scars underneath his tunic— on his back, on his chest, even the ones on his face, and leans into your touch instead of away, letting his own hands explore the intimate parts of your body that he has denied himself for too long.

Dark knight Ghost, who has never wanted a woman more than he wants you and can't stop himself from climbing on top of you to kiss your soft lips while his hand delves between your legs to find you wet and wanting. He drinks long and deep from your cup, making you squirm and beg, but for what you do not know.

Dark knight Ghost, who can no longer bear to listen to your soft little whines and moans, can no longer deny his need for you, so settles himself between her trembling thighs and eases his engorged cock into your virgin cunt, finally claiming you for his own. If he had to die a thousand deaths to experience this one moment with you, he would gladly receive the killing blade into his heart over and over again.

Dark knight Ghost, who takes you again and again throughout the night, insatiable for you, your cries of his name echoing down the narrow, creaking corridors of the inn. If his fellow knights happen to overhear, Kyle and Johnny do not mention it the following morning.

Dark knight Ghost, who smirks smugly under his helm when you can barely sit a horse the next day. He stops midday to take you to "bathe" at the river, soothing your sore cunt with his tongue. He lays you out on the soft grass of the riverbank, his head buried between your legs for the better part of an hour, still in his full armor, your cum painting his face. He doesn't think he's ever tasted anything sweeter; he would happily drown in you, unable to imagine a better death.

Dark knight Ghost, who begins to drag out the journey, no longer eager to return to King John's court. He's never shirked his duty to his king, but this time he is sorely tested. He knows if the king learns that his most trusted knight has deflowered his betrothed, he may well kill you both, so your dark knight insists that you say he forced you if your illicit affair is discovered. You refuse, much to his irritation, but also to his secret delight. You are well and truly his, no matter what fate has in store for you.

Dark knight Ghost, who finally arrives at King John's castle, feeling sick down to his very soul as he leads you into the throne room to greet your future husband and king. He watches with a heavy heart as you demure before the king, bowing in a deep curtsy, hand laid over your fluttering heart.

Dark knight Ghost, who frowns in confusion when King John barks out a laugh and waves a hand at you, the so-called Princess. "This is not the princess, Sir Ghost," King John informs him. He sniffs in amusement. "Should have known the little minx would pull something like this. You've been duped, Sir knight, by no fault of your own. I will have to retrieve the stubborn wench myself, I suppose, show her who her future husband really is."

Dark knight Ghost, who glares at you while you stare down at your fidgeting hands, biting your lip in that way that drives him bloody mad with lust. He seizes your arm in his grip, his cock twitching beneath his armor when you let out a squeak of fright. "An' what o' this one, my king? What shall I do with her?"

Dark knight Ghost, whose eyes go half-lidded and dark when the king grants him permission to interrogate this false princess for information about the king's true betrothed. He can keep you as his servant, the king tells him, if you're still alive once the interrogation is over. This is said only to frighten you, of course, but there's no need to tell you that just yet.

Dark knight Ghost, who is already planning on marrying you once all this Princess business is finally done and over, but he isn't about to tell you that just yet, either. He finds that he very much likes the way you tremble in his hands. He's most eager to begin your 'interrogation'. "Don't worry, my Liege. I know just what t'do t'make her sing like a li'l bird." He grips your arm and pulls you close. "Ain't tha' right, Princess?"

-

Good King!John drabble (sequel)

[argyrocratie]

"But this is like sowing seeds. People who work in agriculture know: when you open the furrow, you do not put in a seed, you put in several, because you know that some are not going to take and others do. And when you have a neighbor, when you encounter her desperate, anguished, wrecked, and then you see her grow by overcoming her low self-esteem, that is, she begins to feel valid, she realizes that she can bend the arm of the City Council, she can bring Sareb to its knees, she is not afraid of a bank but rather the bank is afraid of her…

when that woman has her little pictures of saints and her virgin on an altar, and one day you go to the house to bring her a microwave, and you see that next to all that she has the FAGC [Anarchist Federation of Gran Canaria] logo printed, and suddenly she starts talking about anarchism, when the same woman who, when the press once interviewed her, said “please help me,” and was directed to the institutions, now when they interview her as a union spokesperson says “we are anti-system, we don’t want governments,” something significant has happened. I believe this process, even if it only occurs in one out of every 100, already deserves everything that can be done."

-Ruymán Rodríguez and the Federación Anarquista de Gran Canaria: An Interview

[avengerscompound]

The Tower - The King and I

The Tower - The King and I

Series Masterlist

Pairing:  Avengers x OFC, Bruce Banner x Bucky Barnes x Clint Barton x Wanda Maximoff x Steve Rogers x Natasha Romanoff x Tony Stark x Thor x Sam Wilson x OFC (Elly Cooper)

Word Count: 3143

Warnings:  smut (MF, Rimming, vaginal sex, anal sex)

Synopsis:  After a long day on the throne, Thor and Elly take time to relax with each other

Author’s Note: Requested by  @unnecessarypineapplesstuff on Tumblr,  and KaylaCallahan  & K-Destiiny on Wattpad. You can send in your requests too.

Takes place after Happily Ever After

The King and I

The day had been long and mentally exhausting.  It felt like every resident of Asgard had come in wanting Thor to help adjudicate their petty squabbles.  As I sat through them all with him in the afternoon, I could see how frustrated he was becoming.

Thor is a good man.  Kind.  Wise.  Loving.  Despite my feelings about monarchy, he’s a good king and does his best by his people who have multiple times rejected the idea of democracy.  He always listens to his advisors and us, as well as his people when he makes a decision.  The problem is, he hates it.  He hates being confined to a throne when he could be out doing something physical.  When it’s all little stuff, he gets very antsy, longing for the wind in his hair and something to smash.

I tried to help him be arbiter over the myriad of little grievances, such as broken windows due to children playing in the street, the ownership of certain animals, a farmer who wanted to know if he could graze his animals on royal land, and someone complaining about their neighbor hosing down the path in front of their store.  If the answer was simple or could have been dealt with just some simple common sense and consideration of others, I’d take the reins, letting Thor have a moment to switch off.  By the end of the day, if two women had come in arguing about which one of them was a baby’s mother, King Solomon style, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

When the last person had left the throne room Thor stood and stretched.  “Come, my queen.  We should return to our family.”

I stood and took his hand. “We have time before we need to get back,” I said as I looked up at him.  The way he was standing was so tense, it was like every single one of his muscles was being held taut.  “You need some fresh air.”

He furrowed his brow for a moment as he looked down at me and slowly his face softened.  “Did you have something in mind?”

“The seed of an idea,” I said and tapped my earrings. 

The armor from my suit bled out over me and I clipped Sanguine to my back.  Thor’s face lit up and he unhooked Mjolnir from his belt.  “Lead the way, my life.”

I took off flying out through the open doors at the end of the throne room.  Thor was not far behind and I flew up and banked to the left, cruising over the edge of the city below.  My head-up display took note of everything below, keeping a lookout for a store that sold beauty products.

When it alerted me that it had located one, I landed on the street just outside.  Thor landed just after me as my suit was retracting.  “What are we doing here?” he asked.

“Just a quick stop,” I said.

I went inside the small store.  It was cluttered with shelves, each holding various bottles and jars.  They ranged from ornate hand-blown glass bottles in a rainbow of iridescent colors, to tiny little brown clay pots with wooden lids.  Each item had a thick piece of brown parchment tied to it with the name of the item and what it did written in runes.  Dried herbs hung in the window and behind the counter was a bench covered in ingredients of all kinds.  At the bench, a young woman with long blonde hair with small braids that had dried flowers weaved into it, and a floaty white gown, sat crushing something with a huge mortar and pestle.  She looked up when she saw us and her eyes went wide.  She nearly knocked her stool over as she rushed over to serve us.  “Your majesties,” she said, bowing to us.  “I am at your service.”

“I’m looking for massage oil,” I said as I glanced around the room.  I had been learning Asgardanian since we moved here, but I wasn’t sure it was enough for me to be able to tell if something was safe to use as a lubricant if we needed it.  I didn’t want to give Thor too many hints about what I was planning, but I either had to ask him or the shopkeeper and I didn’t know if I wanted her to know our personal business.

Of course, your majesty,” she said and led me to some shelves on the far wall.  Each oil bottle was beautiful and ornate, in different colors with gold accents, and had an elaborate glass stopper.  I started looking at the labels and holding them up to Thor to smell.

I leaned up to his ear and whispered.  “Are these okay for sex stuff?” I whispered.

Thor laughed and put his arm around me, pulling me tight to his side.  “Oh, I see what’s happening here.  You do have some plans.”  He took the bottle from me and looked over the label.  “They will work for your nefarious plans.”  I broke down into giggles and tried to hide it by holding one of the bottles to my nose and breathing in deeply.

Together we chose a bottle that smelled a little like wood and vanilla.  I also grabbed a bar of soap that smelled like honey.  I paid and we stepped back outside.  I was about to call my armor again when I spotted a store over the road selling linens.  I hurried over with Thor on my heel.  We didn’t even step inside because I found exactly what I wanted hanging on a rack out the front.  It was a big green rug with golden knotwork on it.  It had an almost mink feel to it and I kept running my palm over it as Thor paid the middle-aged-looking man who ran the store.

“Was there anything else you were after, my queen?” Thor asked.

“Nope,” I said.  “This is good.”

I pressed my earrings and my suit bled out again, this time with a case to hold the glass bottle of oil safely but I kept hold of the rug.  “Let’s go,” I said and took off.

We just spent some time flying.  I knew that it would help Thor to let go of his exhaustion and frustration.  He liked the feel of the wind in his hair and the crackle of lightning on his skin as he was pulled along behind Mjolnir.  Plus it was nice to see his country from above.  It glittered like a jewel and when it was at peace, it was a good way to remember that those petty grievances he was dealing with today came out of a people who had no big worries.  The city was running well and prosperous.

After a few laps of the city I banked away, sticking to the coast. Thor followed after me, occasionally calling out to me to ask where we were going or what I was looking for.  I’d just all out to him to be patient, I’d know when I saw it.  While I was looking for something in particular, I mostly just wanted to fly for a while.

It wasn’t too long before I spotted a small secluded bay on the coastline.  It was a perfect crescent shape with a forest that grew right up to the white sands of the beach and beautiful turquoise water that got darker and darker as it moved past the bay and closer to the edge of the planet.

I landed and I grabbed my purchases as my suit retracted.  Thor landed beside me, sending sand whipping down the beach.  “This is a beautiful spot.  Did you know of it already?” he asked.

“No.  I just thought it looked nice,” I said.  I set the oil and soap down and spread out the blanket on the sand.  Thor set Mjolnir down on the edge of the blanket to stop it from blowing away, and I did the same with Sanguine at the opposite edge.

I started to unclasp my pauldron from my breastplate.  “What are we doing here?” Thor said as he began to undress as well.  I set the heavy armor down and moved onto the ties of my dress.  “I thought we could swim,” I said.

“I didn’t bring a swimsuit,” he said.

I let my dress fall.  I was naked underneath and I stepped out of the fabric with a smirk.  “Neither did I.”

I grabbed the soap and rushed into the water.  It was cold enough that as soon as I hit the water my skin broke out in goosebumps and my nipples pebbled.  I had time to acclimatize as it took Thor a little while to get out of all his armor and clothes.  I slowly eased myself into the water and washed myself with the soap, scrubbing my skin so that by the time he was in, I’d sunk down so only my head was above the surface of the water and I smelled like a mixture of salt and honey.

Thor approached me, hugging his large arms around himself.  “How are you not cold?” he asked.

“Because I have body fat, unlike some Norse gods that I know,” I teased as I waded over to him, letting the waves push me along.

He caught me in his arms and pulled me up tight against him.  “Mmm… you are warm.  Maybe you can warm me up.”

I laughed and leaned up and kissed him. “Be patient,” I said and began to run the soap over his body.  “You’ll get used to it.”

I washed him carefully, running the soap over his chest and arms and down his back.  He gradually relaxed as he got used to the water and I caressed his skin.  My fingers slipped between his ass.  He hummed and tilted forward a little, pushing his ass out against me.

“You’re so eager,” I giggled.

“You bought special oil,” Thor said. “Can you blame me, lover?”

“But the oil is back on the sand,” I laughed and soaped up my hand and began to run it up and down his shaft.

He groaned and pressed his forehead against my temple. “That’s not helping,” he said in a deep rumble.

“Okay,” I said.  “We can get out.  Go and lie on your stomach.”

Thor laughed and hoisted me up over his shoulder.  I squealed and broke down into giggles as he carried me out of the water.  The initial hit of the air after being in the cold water brought on another wave of goosebumps, but the sun was warm enough that by the time he set me on the rug, they’d already passed.

I grabbed the oil as he got comfortable and straddled his waist so I was sitting on his butt with him spread out under me, pillowing his head with his arms.  Even seeing Thor as much as I did, it was still easy to forget how large he was.  I felt dwarfed as I sat above him.  I poured the oil onto his back and his muscles all tensed, making his back ripple.  I licked my lips as I watched and pushed my hands down on his back.

He quickly began to relax as I slowly and carefully massaged his back.  My hands moved down his back from his shoulders, pushing out from his spine.  His muscles popped as they released their tension and he let out a deep moan every time it happened.  It made me wet hearing him.  By the time I reached his lower back, I was sure he must have been able to feel how wet I was because my thighs were damp and sticky.

I shimmied down his thighs and began to massage his ass.  He moaned and lifted his hips and spread his legs a little, wiggling his ass at me.  I couldn’t help but laugh and I gave his butt a playful spank.  “You are trouble,” I teased.

I didn’t keep him in suspense though.  I moved between his legs and spread his ass cheeks with my hands.  Thor shivered slightly and tilted his hips up and I leaned in.  My tongue curled around his balls and I sucked one into my mouth.  Thor groaned and shifted onto his knees more.  It gave me better access and I moved from one ball to the next before swiping my tongue up his perineum to his asshole.  He tasted of salt and honey thanks to the fact I washed him, but this was the beach, and with beaches came sand.  Each lap of my tongue meant more grit got into my mouth and I knew I wasn’t going to want to keep this up for long.  Thankfully I didn’t need to because even just prodding at his asshole with the point of my tongue seemed to send him into an animalistic need.  He turned on me, no longer willing to be teased, and he pushed me down onto my stomach and pulled my hips back against him.

“Fuck,” I gasped and the sudden change.  I spread my legs as he moved between them and looked back at him looming over me, his hand wrapped around his cock.

“No more games,” he said as he pressed the wide head of his cock against my entrance, and with a hard shove he thrust in.  I was pushed forward as he bottomed out inside me, and I cried out at the sting of his cock hitting my cervix.

He gave me the briefest of moments to adjust, running his hand up my spine and kissing my shoulder, and then he began to thrust.  He was like a man possessed.  There was no gentleness or warmth to his actions, he just railed into me, shoving me forward with every snap of his hips.  I tried to push myself up onto all fours, but I was immediately shoved back forward again.  I ended up bracing my arms in front of me, with my back curved down, so I looked like a cat mid-stretch.

“Norns,” Thor groaned as he gripped my hips.  “I will never tire of this.  You always feel so good.”

I couldn’t even form the words to answer him.  Every time he thrust into me, his balls would slap against my pussy and such an intense jolt would pass through me, making me cock drunk.  I moaned and clenched around him, pushing back, trying to get more from him.

He wrapped his arm around me and danced a spark along my skin, it passed through my clit and I cried out, my legs kicking out behind me as pleasure surged through me.  “Fuck!” I cried, my whole body clenching up at once.

His hand slid down to my pussy and he started to rub my clit in the same.  I could barely hold myself together.  The only thing stopping me from collapsing onto my stomach was Thor’s hand at my hip.  He sent another jolt through my clit and everything seized up and my orgasm tore through me.  I cried out loudly, my voice echoing through the bay as I gushed on Thor’s cock.

“Gods!” Thor groaned as he pulled out of me.  I collapsed onto my stomach, breathing heavily as lights popped in front of my eyes.  Thor grabbed the oil and drizzled some between my asscheeks.  I moaned and clenched up as the cool liquid hit my skin.  He slicked his cock with it and pressed the head of his cock against my asshole.

He pressed his entire body down on mine, completely engulfing me under him and wrapping his arms under my chest and he began to push in.  This was not the first time we'd done this, not by a long shot.  If it had been, Thor would have been much more careful about stretching me out first.  I could take him, and yet the sting and the burn as my ring muscle stretched and he filled me, was intense.  I whined pitifully under him and kicked my legs as I tried to relax and take him.

I wanted this.  He knew I wanted this as soon as I had asked him what oil I could use as lube.  I loved the way pleasure and pain mixed.  I loved feeling stretched out and filled. 

He pulled back and pushed himself up on his knees, so just the head of his cock was penetrating me.  He grabbed the oil and poured more of it over his cock and my ass, shallowly thrusting in and out as he did to push the oil inside me.  I moaned and arched my back. “Thank you, Thor.”

“You’re very welcome, my life,” he said, pressing himself against me and wrapping his arms around my chest.  He started to roll his hips, each push forward into me went a little deeper.  I felt like I was breaking apart under him.  I moaned and whimpered under him, my toes curling and my fingers grasping at the blanket in front of me.  My fingers closed around the handle of Mjolnir and all at once electricity flowed through me.  It danced off our bodies, sparks flying out as he brought me closer and closer to the edge.  “Thor!  God… I can’t…” I babbled as I reached down under me with my free hand.  He pulled me into a hard kiss and he thrust into me harder and faster.

I started to rub my clit and that little extra sensation to my already overstimulated senses sent me reeling over.  Thor groaned as my ass clenched tight around him and he shoved in deep and came with me.  There was an almighty crack as a bolt of light crashed down, passing through us to the ground below, the whole bay lighting up suddenly and then falling dark.

I lay under Thor breathing heavily as my body settled and my eyes readjusted to the light.  Thor slowly slipped out of me and rolled over onto his back, and I curled into him, putting my head on his chest as it rose and fell with each breath.  “Do you think we made another sex sculpture?” I asked.

He laughed and played with my hair. “I am sure of it,” he said. “And yes, I will send someone to bring it home for us.”

I smiled and leaned up and pecked his lips.  He held me in place to deepen it, and when he pulled back and looked into my eyes.  “Thank you for this, my life.  I needed it.”

“You’re very welcome,” I replied and kissed him again.  “Shall we head back?”

He hummed and shook his head.  “Soon.  Let’s just lie here for a little longer.”

I relaxed against him and closed my eyes, basking in my post-orgasm afterglow and the setting sun.

~ END ~

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

1000 names out of the 100,000 lost.

“Radiologist, Woodworker, artist and Scholar… People were her hobby… Stopped working to take care of his parents… Face behind the counter at family owned grocery… Drove the bus and worked school security… First responder at 9/11 attacks… Freed from life in prison… Her last words were ‘thank you’”…

“We called him the grand Poobah” -her backyard birds ate right from her hand -could fix almost anything -first black woman to graduate Harvard Law school -quick with his fists in the ring -her will was indomitable -he could spit a watermelon seed halfway across a double lot -agent who turned on the CIA -her favorite quote was ‘I am as good as you are, and as bad as I am’ -cancer survivor who lived as a deacon -nothing delighted him more than picking up the bill -saved 56 Jewish families from the Gestapo -could be a real jokester -thought it was important to know a person’s life story -maestro of a steel-pan band -saw friends at their worst and made them their best -engineer behind the first 200mph stock car -discovered his true calling when he started driving a school bus -made the best Baklava ever -emergency room doctor who died in his husband’s arms -leader in integrating schools -architect behind Boston’s City Hall -shared his produce with food banks and neighbors -family believed she would have lived the traditional Navajo lifespan of 102 years. -loved his wife and said ‘yes dear’ a lot -mother to a generation of AIDS patients -worked long hard hours and still made time for everyone -walked across the Golden Gate Bridge on opening day -liked his bacon and hash browns crispy -more adept than many knew -would stay awake the whole night shift because she didn’t want anyone to die alone -freed from life in prison -her last words were ‘thank you’

[joyousmaximus]

When COVID got started and everyone was inside for so long, nature wasted NO TIME in blowing up in the ditches and between the highways and in the parks and everywhere else. I was in the piney woods area for university and it fucking EXPLODED. Birds everywhere, bees coming out left and right, paper wasps, FROGS, so many frogs, cicadas, lizards, snakes.

Earth is a very adaptable organism. Her survival instincts are way better than we can even imagine. We stopped being on the road for a couple of months and we started seeing wildlife everywhere again.

We learned a lot about what shortcomings there are in our world during the lockdown. Don't let despair make you forget. Push for railway systems. Push for protection for plants and pollinators.

EDUCATE people about how poor yards are for the environment. Go out to the suburbs and put flyers in mailboxes. People go door to door selling knives and makeup and Jesus, if you're brave, go door to door and give some info about native plants, or how to kill grass in a yard for replanting. Canvass

Remember a lot of illegal things surround restoring nature. Guerilla gardening is a real thing that people do. I do not condone this.

I would never say to do things like break into golf courses and invade them with clover or native plant seeds. Never force greenery into places it deserves to be but has been replaced with grass or asphalt.

Don't go to those empty banks of grass city planners like to put in parking lots and till the earth and plant native plants. Cuz it's illegal. So don't do it. Don't plant community gardens with your neighbors to share with whomever is hungry. Because feeding unhoused people is illegal.

"There's no wildlife here. The land is barren and stripped from farming chemicals"

I just saw two blue herons fly super low over our house, which means they've been fishing in the creek behind us, which means there's fish there. Which means there's bugs to feed the fish and algae to feed the bugs, which means the water and soil is worth something damnit.

Yes, I'm sorry the suburb isn't the grand, sweeping swath of uninhabited land that you so desperately crave but would learn to loathe, but saying that the land here is barren and that there's no wildlife here and that there's nothing to salvage- that's a You problem. Nature might be struggling, but against all odds it is at least trying.

[warningsine]

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (also rec’d by André Leon Talley, Bob Dylan, Brian Eno, Ernest Hemingway, Martin Luther King Jr. & Nelson Mandela)

“Tolstoy is considered by almost everyone as the greatest novelist that ever lived, and I can only say, me too. From his first beautiful book on [war] and [Sebastopol,] all through his long and marvelously productive life he stands alone as a writer…It is interesting to me to think of the seeds of his stories, ‘his illuminations.’ Anna Karenina was evolved because he had heard of a woman who had jumped in front of a moving train and died. The grandeur of [War and Peace], a historical novel, which must have brought Tolstoy almost daily illuminations. He was fastidious as Proust in his realism of the styles and fashions of the times, and like Proust he was working on an immense canvas.” -CM

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (also rec’d by Grimes & Ralph Steadman)

“The next and possibly one of the strongest influences in my reading life is [Dostoevsky] – Tolstoy, of course, is at the top… One is just swept away from one incredible scene to another incredible scene. The scene when [Nastasya] lights a fire to burn up the bank notes in front of [Ganya] is almost like a [True Story] fiction, but in spite of it, the emotions of the scene make it so real.” -CM

My Life by Isadora Duncan

“When I was fourteen years old, the great love of my life, which influenced the whole family, was Isadora Duncan. I read [My Life,] not only read it but preached it. My daddy, who believed with my mother, that a child should read without censorship, could not help but be amazed by my preaching of ‘free love’ to the family at large, and anyone else who would listen. One nosy neighbor criticized my parents for letting me speak so precociously about [Isadora] Duncan and her love life.” -CM

Dubliners by James Joyce (also rec’d by Cheryl Strayed, Ernest Hemingway, Hozier, Jim Morrison & Leonard Cohen)

“This week I’ve been reading [Dubliners.] How such a spasm of poetry could have come out of the grimy Dublin streets of that time is miraculous to me. [A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,] I also read every year or so. … Whenever I think of artists having a hard time I think of James Joyce. He had one hell of a time to earn a living for himself and his family. [Dubliners] was suppressed, and at one time burnt, I believe [Ulysses] was suppressed and pirated all over the world, and of course James Joyce did not receive any of the pirated money. He earned only the fame and the grandeur of a noble spirit.” -CM

Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (also rec’d by Cate Blanchett, Gene Wilder, Henry Rollins, Julianne Moore & Peter Hook)

“…Another lesser writer who is also dear to me. Scott Fitzgerald, always in debt to his agent; with a wife that was mad and confined to institutions. Scott, extravagant, [lovable,] playful and impossible. His genius flourished, and he wrote [Tender is the Night,] in the most appalling psychological situation.” -CM

The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James (also rec’d by Susan Sontag)

“It’s a bleak white January day, and I’ve been drinking cup after cup of hot tea and reading Henry James. I’d never realized how really good he is. One is quite willing to stumble through pages of ambiguities for those sudden, exquisite lines, those almost unexpected revelations. I’d never realized how deeply he has influenced the present poets—Eliot, Auden, etc. I want us to read the Beast in the Jungle together.”  -CM

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

“[Edwin Peacock and John Ziegler] insisted that I read a book called [Out of Africa,] and since I thought it was about big game hunting, I insisted just as firmly I didn’t want to read it. In the end they got their way, for when Reeves and I were in the car on our way to Fayetteville, they slipped two books in my lap; they were [Out of Africa] and [Seven Gothic Tales.] I started [Out of Africa] in the car and read until sundown. Never had I felt such enchantment. After years of reading this book, and I have read it many times, I still have a sense of both solace and freedom whenever I start it again. I have naturally read all of her books, but these particular two are my favorites.” -CM

Black Boy by Richard Wright (also rec’d by Howard Zinn)

“Another writer who was particularly dear to me is Richard Wright. … Dick and I often discussed the South, and his book, [Black Boy,] is one of the finest books by a Southern [Negro.]” -CM

Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust (also rec’d by St. Vincent)

“After the postman comes this afternoon I’ll read Proust. Today I was thinking of the immense debt I owe to Proust. It’s not a matter of his ‘influencing my style’ or anything like that—it’s the rare good fortune of having always something to turn to, and great book that never tarnishes, never become[s] dull from familiarity.” -CM

Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M. Forster

“Another author whom I read constantly is E.M. Forster. One of the most enjoyable times I’ve ever had was when Mary Mercer read aloud [Where Angels Fear to Tread.] We both went into fits of laughter.” -CM

[sadoeuphemist]

Building off this:

*****

There was once a woman who sought to build a house upon the sand. But as she tried the foundations sagged beneath her, and the beams toppled and thwarted all her efforts. And so she repented and heeded the wisdom of her elders, for folly can find no purchase in God's creation.

*****

There was once a woman who built a house upon the sand, as it was the only property she could afford, real estate prices being what they were. There were many such shacks along the shore, and one day the rains came down and the floods came up and swept the shore clean, leaving nothing behind but misery and ruin. And those who lived on solid rock all agreed that such was the price of folly.

*****

There was once a woman who sought to build a house upon the sand, but could find no laborers willing to work for her, nor officials willing to issue her permits, for all refused to participate in her folly. And so, unable to build a house single-handed, she was forced to settle for a home upon the rock instead, and for the remainder of her life resented them all deeply.

*****

There was once a woman who built a house upon the rock. Where she sowed her seeds, they sprang up quickly, but soon withered under the scorching sun when they could not take root, and so her homestead was left barren.

*****

There was once a woman who built a house upon the sand, and the rains came down and the floods came up and the winds beat against the house until it fell. But once the waters had receded she returned to examine the ruins of her house, and resolved to begin construction on another. And so she built many such houses upon the sand, learning with each attempt, until one day she built a house that withstood the storm entirely.

*****

There was once a woman who built a house upon the sand, laying down pilings and foundations most cunningly, so that it stood as sturdily as if it had been built on rock, withstanding storm and flood. And yet, as the years passed, the sea levels rose to reclaim the shore, and swallowed up her house regardless.

*****

There was once a woman who built an ark upon the sand, and was roundly mocked for it by all her neighbors, but that's another story entirely.

*****

There was once a woman who built a house upon the rock, where it withstood the rains and flood. To herself she said, "I have built well. I am safe, and warm, and have goods laid up to outlast the storm; I shall eat, drink, and be merry." But God said to her, "Fool! This very night thy life shall be demanded from thee. Of what use then shall be this sturdy house, save as monument of thy folly?"

*****

There was once a woman who built a house upon the rock, where it withstood the rains and flood. But as the storm raged outside, all she could think about were the dozens of shacks arrayed along the shore, and the bodies huddled within them, and so even in her house she knew no comfort.

*****

There was once a woman who built a house upon the rock, so as to withstand the rains and flood. And when the rains started, and she saw the streams begin to swell their banks, she hurried down to the shore calling against the wind, so as to gather as many people as she could into her house for shelter. But the winds buffeted her, and the path grew more treacherous the deeper she went in, until by the poorest shacks the sand gave way beneath her and she drowned.

*****

There was once a woman who built a house upon the rock, or upon the sand; its exact location is uncertain. For one day the rains came down and the floods came up, dashing against rock and tearing up sand, churning together everything indiscriminately. And so when they dredged the bodies out of the water, all bloated beyond recognition, it could not be said whether her death was more or less deserved than any other.

*****

There was once a woman who lived in a city built upon the rock, with many houses that could withstand the rains and flood, with many rooms to welcome visitors. But then one day an earthquake struck, for there is no surety to be found in earthly things; nay, for by God's will even rock shall yield like water. And the city was upturned like a ship upon the waves, and not a brick of it was left standing.

*

**

there was once a woman

* *

there was once a woman who built a house that no longer stands

* * *

There was once a woman who built a house.

******

There was once a woman who built a house, raising beams into place, plastering its walls with mud and clay. The roof kept the rain off her head, and the walls kept out the winds, and during the night a fire crackled away in the hearth, inviting and warm. In time the house would collapse, or be washed away, or be reduced to dust by wind and time so that not even its foundations would remain to be discovered. But it was was her house, that she had built with her own two hands, and it was home, at least for a little while.

* * * * *

There was once a woman who raised her tent upon the sand, in the manner of her people. The sun beat down and the wells dried up, but by then they had already pulled up stakes and moved onward, leaving nothing but the shifting sands behind them, for they were a nomadic people, and had little use for rock-based parables.

[melancholyandfrogs]

I'm writing a essay about my generational house—here's some things about it:

it is a house in Birdland, Clarkston, MI / it was built by my grandparents, Barbara and Robert, over the course of a few years and finished in 1966 / before that, my papa can't remember where they lived / he is third generation Italian immigrant, and the first to graduate college

my papa, John, was 5 / his sisters, Cindy and Lisa, were 6 and 3 / they were heavily italian in white-Michigan in the early 1960s / my papa tried but generational trauma from their racism is passed down / there is pigment in the hair of my arms that i'm still ashamed of

-

they only had money to put grass in the front yard, so after the house was finished, they spent the rest of the next two years trying to grow grass themselves / before the grass grew, my papa and his mother built two gardens in the backyard between the ages of 5 and 7

-

this was before I-75 was built / because of this, one of his first memories is a bald eagle flying over his backyard with a squirrel in its talons / the area wasn't populated yet / there were snakes (rattlesnakes and gardener snakes, as papa says, were the most common) and animals and amazing things were all around still

-

papa got his first pet (a half terrier, half chihuahua dog named Tubbs) between 1967-1968 when he was 6ish / every day she would run over to the neighbor’s back patio and do her business, refusing to go anywhere else, and every day, patiently, my grandmother would go and clean it up

his grandmother, Adalina, used to give him a fifty cent piece and say “Don’t tell your mom, she’ll put it in the bank.” / after a few months, when he was eight, papa used the collected money to buy an apple tree, and the weirdest thing is that it never grew apples

when he was a young teenager, Tubbs died / my grandmother wrapped Tubbs up in my papa’s baby blanket and buried her under the apple tree / it bloomed for the first time in his life but that year, it only grew one apple (he ate it) / the tree still blooms every year on the same month (three weeks behind other indeginous apple trees) / the apples are delicious

-

they would routinely come down to Saginaw (about a 1 1/2 hour drive) and would get samples from flowers and plants from my dad's Aunt Meg and Uncle Sam's yard / my grandmother is 1 out of 12 children / only my Great Uncle is still alive / they would bring the flowers home / papa only remembers the Forget Me Nots

every year, my grandmother would get seeds from her mother's place in Detriot / she brought seeds from Italy (an immigrant) and because of that my grandmother planted Rose of Sharon all along the back of the gardens / they're blooming white and purple as I'm writing this

my grandmother wanted Poplar saplings in the very end of the backyard and my papa still smiles as he talks about planting them / there is still tension left in his hands / he told me the rows of them couldn't have been straighter

-

there was virtually no neighbors around the house until the mid-1970s / until about 1978, there were large woods behind the house that papa played in as a child / these woods slowly disappeared as plot land was bought / I think he still misses them

most of the surrounding neighbors were white, blue-collar families / there was one hispanic family and one Black family / the Italian skin that is passed down grows darker in the summer, he was darker than the hispanic family but lighter than the Black one / he has told me stories of angry mothers who snapped white boy and cruel men / I tell him time have changed / that Italian is no longer a slur

-

papa used to catch gardener snakes that hid under logs in the woods / his mother doesn't like snakes / he would put them in the garden that she wanted him to weed with her later that day / he got away with it a lot / he remembers a time he caught a snake on his way to school / he put in a brown paper bag / she caught him and he laughed while mocking her, "Johnny, you got a snake in that bag?" "Yeah, ma, I do." / he still didn't have to weed the garden

every day he went through the woods to get to school / there was a swamp in the woods and he would hunt salamanders, lizards, snakes and frogs / he would collect salt packets from McDonald’s to put on the leeches that he’d get at the swamp / he'd have to take off his shoes, socks and roll up his pants so he wouldn't get in trouble / he still admitted that he went in the swamp anyway

-

there is one bathroom on the first floor and one bathroom on the second / my papa's bedroom used to be in the basement / he moved onto the second floor when he was ten / that room is my cousin Adeline's room now / until she was four, it was still his navy blue / now it is fushia

-

when papa was eight he stuck his head through the guardrail on the stairs / his father was mad when he took it apart / they are still loose to this day / nobody is going to fix it / it is like a poem already

-

the house is two stories / my grandmother thought that it would make people think she is successful / she grew up with eleven siblings and two parents and animals / she grew up poor / she lived her life like she was poor until the day she died / on my eightenth birthday I recieved bonds from her / she wants me to live my life like I am poor too

papa lives his life like he is poor / there have been nights that he was dumpster diving for money / or food / he told us it is okay / it is okay to cry about things like this / he taught me how to make the most out of it / he has never let us go hungry

-

there is a hand rail that was on the four steps up to kitchen from the first living room / the hand rail was taken out of the house when my grandmother died / papa made sure it was polished and drilled it onto the floor of my kitchen, which has one step up from the dining room floor / we don't trip on the step / we use the hand rail anyway

-

there are two living rooms / one has 'new' couches that my cousins aren't allowed to sit on until their parents consider them 'old' / they understand that people need to be comfortable / they are still scared to have ugly things / ruined things / anyway

one has a big piano in it / my grandmother grew up in the great depression and to make money she would play the piano / she was called a prodigy / she is in the background of albums and old school band recitals / nobody remembers her name / she died in a little side room her husband used as a office / it is my cousin Preston's gaming room now / there is nothing disrespectful about this

-

there’s a large, 50 year old maple tree in the front yard that’s a seedless maple / it's grown from a branch from a tree that my great-grandpa, Emory, who my papa is named after, planted when he was young / this tree was in Italy / he took the branch with him when he came to America / there is something to be said about him unwilling to leave the smell of his own leaves behind

when Grandpa Robert’s twin brother, Richard, died, it was the first and last time that maple tree ever produced seeds / none were collected / the tree is supposed to be infertile

-

papa knew where the wild raspberries grew in the surrounding, previously endless area of flora / there were freshwater springs he could drink from / in the afternoon where it would get hot, he knew where the big rocks were that he could nap on with Tubbs before she passed / when we talked on the phone, he called himself feral

-

this house is why, when papa moved out, he bought the biggest farmland he could and made sure we (me, my sister and brother) knew about the woods / he dug his own pond / he calls it a taste of life that’s ‘bigger than the city’ / he doesn't like cities / he lived as taxi driver in Ann Arbor for 8 years anyway / Ann Arbor is the closest thing to New York that small town kids from Bridgeport like me can get / the air is never as stale than it is there

-

I grew up trick or treating at this house / the house is on a hill / Clarkston has enough hills to make Mount Everest blush / my legs have muscles that still ache from those cold nights / my papa used to drive our van along the hills, waiting at the end, recording us shrieking and giggling / we raced our cousin Dominic from house to house

papa grew up trick or treaing at this house / his birthday is November 1st / he is born five days before my mother / his nieghbors knew him (they all knew each other) / he would get extra candy on Halloween as a birthday present / he gave me this as a reason he steals some of my candy every year

-

when talking about this I did not know my great-grandmother's name / my sister was supposed to be named after her / I had forgot where my father's middle name came from (great-grandfather Emory) even though it's my trans friends chosen name because I told her how much it means to me / she said she likes it anyway

-

he asked me twice if he was talking too slow for me / he was talking too fast / papa only left out some of the good things / he doesn't know how to leave the bad things behind / he raised us with the impression that those are not the things someone should hide / this house is in my blood / I do not remember the color of the kitchen walls

[lioninsunheart]

“Behold, the Spring has come; the earth has received the embraces of the sun and we shall soon see the results of that love! Every seed is awakened and so has all animal life. It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves, to inhabit this land. Yet, hear me, people, we have now to deal with another race – small and feeble when our fathers first met them but now great and overbearing. Strangely enough they have a mind to till the soil and the love of possession is a disease with them. These people have made many rules that the rich may break but the poor may not. They take their tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule. They claim this mother of ours, the earth, for their own and fence their neighbors away; they deface her with their buildings and their refuse. The nation is like a spring freshet that overruns its banks and destroys all that are in its path. We cannot dwell side by side. Only seven years ago we made a treaty by which we were assured that the buffalo country should be left to us forever. Now they threaten to take that away from us. My brothers, shall we submit or shall we say to them: 'First kill me before you take possession of my land” ― Sitting Bull-

(Thank You redroadwanderer.tumblr.com

[onafreckledsunflower]

AU where All Might actually is Izuku’s father but no one, including All Might, Inko & Izuku realize it.  Why?  Because Time Travel.

Under the cut because it’s stupidly long.  It probably would have made more sense just to actually write this but I am in no way talented enough to so...yeah...have it as an AU instead.

At some point All Might gets sent back to the past.  Unsure how to get himself back home he eventually goes to Nedzu for help because he’s the only person he can think of who is both smart enough to get him back to his own time and smart enough not to want to mess up any timelines.  Not sure how long it’s going to take All Might gets himself an apartment and and job as an English translator he can do from home.  Having to think fast to come up with a fake identity he goes with the first last name that he can think of which is of course Midoriya and then gives himself the first name Hisashi because it FEELS right though he can’t quite put his finger on just why it does.

Then to his shock and horror he discovers that Inko is his neighbor.  He tries desperately to keep her at arms length but she’s as annoyingly stubborn as her son and she quickly fusses him into submission when she learns of his condition and that he’s not exactly taking care of himself.  They grow to be friends and he lies and tells her he has a fire breathing quirk when she asks him (Endeavor was stumbling through an interview on the TV at the time) and then blames his injury on it and that on the reason he never uses it for anything.

He tries to remain just friends with her.  He knows that she has to meet Izuku’s father at some point around this time period and he absolutely can’t risk getting in the way of that but then a villain attack happens and they both almost die (and he embarrassingly meets himself) but in the aftermath one thing leads to another and suddenly they’re in a romantic relationship.  He knows it’s wrong but he allows himself to indulge knowing full well when Izuku’s father comes into the picture he’ll have to end it.

Then she ends up getting pregnant.  Then she starts talking about how she’s always loved the name Izuku.  Then she starts hinting that they should get married.  Then he FINALLY realizes that the name he gave himself was the name of Izuku’s father.  

Everything comes to a screeching halt in his brain.  Because the family he’s always wanted, the family he HAS been wanting since he first came into the Midoriya’s lives is actually HIS.  With no sign yet that he’ll be going home anytime soon he gives in.  They get married, he buys a house, Izuku is born and they become a family.

Then the ticking clock hanging over his head catches up to him.  Nedzu has finally found a way to get him back to his own timeline.  For a moment he contemplates just staying.  Screw the timeline he can make a BETTER.  He’s earned this with all the sacrifices he’s made over the decades of being the number one hero.  But in the end he knows he can’t.  Staying might make things worse and he can’t risk that.  So he starts laying the seeds in Inko’s mind that he’s a bad person that he’s a villain and that she would be better off without him.  He stages a huge argument and walks out.  His heart breaking with every step.  He knows he’s not only loosing them in the past but in the future as well once Inko realizes and tells Izuku the truth and Izuku inevitably will hate him for all of this.  

As he goes he leaves divorce papers.  She never signs them.  He also leaves behind a substantial bank account (by hacking into his own accounts and taking his own money knowing full well that he’ll never notice that it’s missing) to keep them both taken care of.  She tells Izuku that their father had to leave them to protect them (something he lets slip during the argument) and that they’ll never see him again but she can’t let go of her hope that someday maybe he’ll come back to them.  She’s smart.  She knows there’s more going on then he’s telling her has known from the start.

She only realizes what is going on while watching the Kamino Ward incident and of course all the news footage of the newly de-powered All Might.  She remembers what her husband looked like when they first met before she fussed him into taking better care of himself and forcing him to regain more of his strength.  She’s chilled to the bone but the denial is strong.  There’s no way that her husband could have been All Might she’d seen them together talking to each other after the villain attack.  It’s only after she meets him when he comes around to talk about the dorms that she KNOWS.  She’d known that ridiculous horrible-at-lying over dramatic man anywhere.  He’s finally in front of her again and it becomes instantly clear that while she knows him he doesn’t know her.  Not like that not as anything but Izuku’s mother.  She hasn’t changed that much and she’s still using the last name he gave her why is he pretending that he doesn’t know here. 

It’s only later after Izuku leaves to do some training that Nedzu comes to see her.  To both make his own promises about Izuku’s well being and to tell her the truth about her husband.

All Might returns to the future and the truth comes out.  He expects both Inko and Izuku to hate him and while Inko is angry that he didn’t trust her enough to tell her the truth.  But also reveals that she never did sign those divorce papers.  it’s not an automatic instantly back together kind of romance.  Inko is older and has gone through so many things that he was not a part of but slowly over time the romance rekindles and is stronger since it’s actually built on trust this time around.  Izuku is shocked and confused and maybe a tiny bit weirded out but is just thrilled that his dad is his dad and now he gets to call him that.

(I can also see an Alternate Version of this Alternate Universe where he was honest with her after Izuku’s birth and she’s been waiting this whole time for him to catch up with her again.  I don’t know if that would be MORE angsty or LESS.)  

Bonus: Todoroki Upon Finding Out: I KNEW IT! Izuku: I don’t think it actually counts if none of the rest of us did... Todoroki totally still gets to collect on the bet the Class had going on if All Might actually WAS his real dad.

[solar-pxwered]

A List Of Norman Reedus Movies/Shows I Have Seen And My Opinions On Them

1. The Boondock Saints

The Best. A classic. Bloody and inappropriate and if I remember my count correctly, contains 194 “fucks” or variations of it (this movie certainly illustrates the diversity of the word). Terrible Irish accents. A KICKASS soundtrack. Willem DeFoe crossdressing. Dropping toilets on people’s heads. Over the top action sequences. Cheesy dialogue. Campy as fuck. I freakin’ love it.

2. The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day

Some people didn’t like this one as much as the first one, and I admit that I wasn’t as fond of the new detective in this one as I was of Smecker...but, overall, I really enjoyed it and I drove 2 hours to see it in theaters. I love Romeo more than Rocco. The humor was on point. It was nice to see the original actors for Doc, Dolly, Duffy and Greenley. There was more terrible Irish accents, another KICKASS soundtrack, cheesy dialogue, over the top action sequences, still campy as fuck. I freaking love it.

3. The Walking Dead

Cannot even describe how much I love this show. I have ALWAYS loved zombie related shows and movies so this show was right up my alley from the very beginning all the way back in 2010. I watched it religiously every Sunday. I adore this roller coaster ride of a show and I especially adore Daryl, Carol and Jerry. This show has it all: Comedy, drama (hella lots of that), tragedy and triumph...and it never fails to pulls me in and hold my interest.

4. Mimic

Honestly, I saw this a LONG time ago and I hated it because...well, because I have a cockroach phobia, ok?! Don’t judge. Norman’s part was pretty small, not one of his lasting impressions on me.

5. Six Ways To Sunday

This is a weird one. It’s about an overly innocent 18 year (played by Norman) who gets involved in the Mob and develops an alter ego that’s violent and his complete opposite. There’s murder, prostitutes and good ol’ fashioned mother-son incest and it wasn’t a movie I suggest for the lighthearted or anyone with those sort of triggers. 

That being said, I watched the whole thing and didn’t hate it. It was just uncomfortable...as seems to be a theme with Norman Reedus movies.

6. Dark Harbor

This fucking movie...

Ok, so, I’ll be straight with you: I really enjoyed this dumbass movie. It had me guessing right up to the very end and it took me on a very strange ride along the way. 

If watching someone sexually feed a woman a poisonous mushroom, lots of dark eyed staring scenes or Norman Reedus making out with Alan Rickman is your thing, then go for it. 

7. Let the Devil Wear Black

It’s modern Hamlet. What else is there to say? If you like Hamlet, you’ll like this movie. If you like pre-car accident, baby face Reedus with the black hair, you’ll like this movie. I liked it.

8. 8MM

You know what the best thing about this movie is? Nicholas Cage. He steals the damn show no matter what movie he’s in and no one can even deny that fact. Norman’s part in this one is pretty small too but I liked this movie anyway because...well, Nick Cage. Enough said.

9. Bad Seed

I honestly can’t remember how this movie ends, all I remember was that it wasn’t at all how I expected it. I liked this movie because it’s a psychological thriller and that’s my most favorite genre of all time. The movie’s premise is a guy suspects his wife of having an affair and comes home one night and finds her murdered so he goes after her lover (Reedus) to try and kill him because he believes he was the one who killed her. It’s a cat and mouse chase sort of thing...now I need to rewatch it because I can’t, for the life of me, remember how it ends.

10. Gossip

Ok, no JOKE, this is the best movie I ever randomly discovered and I can’t believe how many people have never heard of it! It’s got some big names in it (Lena Headey, Norman Reedus, James Marsden and Kate Hudson to name a few).

It’s a psychological thriller/mystery drama in which three friends start a rumor at their school as a social experiment for their class. The rumor grows, however, and suddenly it’s out of their hands and spiraling out of control. People start getting hurt, reputations get dragged through the mud and then it escalates to the point of someone losing their life. The three main characters {Reedus, Headey and Marsden) try to figure out the truth behind the out of control rumors and discover more than they ever imagined, or ever wanted.

I HIGHLY recommend this movie. I really, REALLY do. The ending is one of the best twists I’ve seen in a LONG time.

11. The Beatnicks

This movie is so weird. It’s like...it’s just really weird. It revolves around two beat poets who find a magic box that somehow magically helps them get good at being poets but it’s like...an evil box and so they decide to only use it once and then get rid of it. Yeah, it’s a weird movie. Not my highest suggestion.

12. Blade II

Ok, if you’ve never seen the Blade Trilogy then I just don’t even know what to tell you. 

My favorite of the three movies, Blade 2 gives us the glorious Reedus character of Scud, the pot smoking, horrible-shirt-wearing, mechanical genius and Blade’s sidekick. Not only is he precious and adorable, the movie in all is enjoyable and has a fun rave-esque soundtrack. 

The one thing I hate? *SPOILER ALERT* Scud’s scummy betrayal.

13. Tough Luck

This is another one of those movies that I liked but it’s just so freaking weird. 

It’s a psychological drama where a down on his luck con artist, Archie (Reedus), tries to rip off a carnival worker and gets caught. As punishment, he’s hired to work at the carnival  to pay off the debt. He gets involved in a scheme to murder the owner’s wife, but falls in love with her in the process.

Things go to shit. He gets the short end of the stick. More plots and lies develop. It’s all twisted until the end and the answers fall into place.

I really like this movie, it’s one that I kept and still have my copy of. 

A word of warning though, never leave this movie on your movie shelf for your father to find and watch while you’re away at college, resulting in your mother calling you and asking you why you have such a nasty movie. Because the sex scene at the end is OUTRAGEOUS. I mean, it is the FUNNIEST fucking sex scene I have ever seen in my life and I can’t ever watch it without cringing and laughing. My mother, however, didn’t think it was funny at all and my father was too shocked to even form a sentence.

I highly suggest this trippy as hell movie.

14. Octane

Ok, to be fair, this movie is actually alright, although Norman’s character gets the shittiest death possible. I mean, imagine dying because some psycho vampire kisses you and bites your tongue out. That’s one shitty death.

But, overall, this is a good thriller. Johnathan Rhys Meyers plays the villain and he’s always pretty quality. The story is basically a teenager has a disagreement with her mom and gets picked up by this drugged up, blood sucking, vampire wannabe cult and indoctrinated joining them. Her mother joins up with a tow truck driver (Reedus) whose daughter was also kidnapped years ago and who has been hunting the cult down ever since. 

It was a cringe filled, yet interesting, movie and I didn’t hate it.

15. John Carpenter’s Cigarette Burns

This is John Carpenter....OF COURSE I liked this one. 

I won’t say what it’s about because that would ruin the story, but it’s part of an anthology and John Carpenter loved Norman’s role so much he STILL talks about it today and suggests Norman to people in the industry.

It’s a good one if you’re into horror shorts or anthologies or the genius of the legend that is John Carpenter.

16. A Crime

I had completely forgotten about this movie until I started making this post, but now that I remember...I REALLY liked this one!!

This is a pretty sad one, but it was very good and Norman’s acting in it is absolutely wonderful. His character’s wife was murdered and the suspect was never found so his neighbor, who really likes him, creates a fake culprit so that he can finally get some closure. 

This is a good one. I suggest this one if you’re in the mood for a strange sort of romance movie that has underlying thriller tones.

17. Moscow Chill

I remember watching this one, and I remember enjoying it, but I honestly can’t remember anything about it except that it’s a Russian film in which Norman plays a computer hacker who gets hired to hack into a Russian bank and gets caught and put in prison. But I honestly can’t remember what happens in detail.

If you like foreign movies with hacking and subterfuge plots, then give it a try because I do remember enjoying it while I watched.

18. Red Canyon

This one is kinda fucked up. Imagine Daryl Dixon mixed with Breaking Bad mixed with Deliverance and you’ve pretty much got the story...

A brother and sister return to their mother’s hometown to settle things and put their horrible past behind them...but upon returning they end up reliving the nightmare all over again.

It’s a good thriller/horror watch, but there are scenes of sexual violence so if that’s not something you can handle, then don’t watch this one.

19. Hero Wanted

This. Is. A. GOOD. Movie.

Cuba Gooding Jr. is the lead and he does an AMAZING job. Gooding’s character is a garbage man who falls in love with a girl who never takes any notice of him. To get her attention, he stages a heist in which he is supposed to jump in, save the day, and win the girl...only the heist turns out to be real and he is shot and the girl is also shot in the process. He sets out for revenge and gets in way over his head.

Norman’s part in this isn’t very big...but HOLY SHIT, was it impactful. His character didn’t have a lot of screen time, in comparison to a lot of other people, but he had a solid backstory and reason for being involved and MY GOD did I cry about it. This was actually the first movie of his I watched AFTER discovering Boondock Saints and it solidified my love for his acting abilities.

A very good watch. Highly suggest.

20. Messengers 2: The Scarecrow

This one is pretty ok, actually, as far as lame horror movies go. 

The plot is simple: Blonde, beardy, corn farmer Norman gets slowly driven insane by the haunted scarecrow in his field that he thinks putting up is a good idea for some damn reason. He starts to get more and more violent and rapey as time goes on until his family is forced to take up arms against him.

It’s not bad. Second part in what I THINK is a trilogy? I’ve only ever seen the first two. If you like horror movies then this one is a good watch. As I mentioned though, there is an attempted rape scene in this one so just be aware.

21: Pandorum

It’s an alien movie. Astronauts run into a species that is stronger and hungry for tasty humans. Shepard (Norman’s character) doesn’t make it out alive. If you’re not in the mood to see Norman get LITERALLY gutted or other characters get nommed by aliens, then don’t watch.

If you ARE, then go ahead and watch, because it was pretty alright.

[lakelewisia]

A Lewisian Year

Presented in partnership with the Lewisia Communications Board and Lewisia Public Library

Sponsored by The Historical Society

Hello, readers, listeners, and psychic osmosizers! Welcome to A Lewisian Year, a monthly showcase celebrating the rich culture here in the Lake Lewisia district. Each month, we'll highlight some seasonal events, local celebrations and interpretations of national and world holidays, and historical tidbits.

SEPTEMBER

The Final Sunset

It's approaching seven in the evening when you walk outside and turn to the west. The sun sinks down to the horizon slowly, reluctantly, and paints the sky with fire as it goes. While the nights and early mornings have started to take on a chill--or at least, what feels like a chill to those now acclimated to the heat of summer--the days are still baked hot enough to carry over into evening. So you find a shady spot to sit, keeping the western sky in view.

Up and down the street, you can see your neighbors doing the same. Some have brought their meals out with them, but this is not one of the raucous barbecue events of the last three months. The groups are small and quiet, acknowledging each other from one front step to another with a nod at most. All attention is saved for that sinking sun. It's September twenty-first, and the Autumnal Equinox takes place tomorrow just after noon. This will be the last sunset of summer.

Of course, it won't be the actual final sunset of the year*, but just as we marked the return of the sun's strength in spring and its blazing zenith in summer, we will mark its waning into the growing dark and chill of oncoming winter. Much like the Window Opening Festival and Spring Equinox seed exchange that are the counterparts on the wheel of the year, the Final Sunset is something mainly celebrated at home, rather than in the public square. It is a moment of quiet reflection between the bright excitement of summer and the gleeful mischief of Halloween.

Legend has it, any creature that flies by during this time is an omen of the fall to come for the one who spots it. Crows for prosperity, owls for secrets revealed. Bats for visitors, gryphons for travel. So you keep your eyes on the sky until the sun is out of sight, the light has died to a banked ember glow, and the night chorus has started up in the planters next to the front steps. Did you spot something good, I hope?

When you head back inside, you pick up the bonfire-warmed stone you have from midsummer and hold it close to your heart. Its time has come to see you through the long nights and cold days ahead. Summer now is only a memory. Autumn sweeps in behind it and settles over Lewisia like a shroud.

*Historical note: it was, however, the final sunset of 1938, during which the winter was marked by a succession of astrological anomalies. Catastrophe on account of the lack of light was averted by the immediate arrival of a temporary and localized second moon, which provided enough illumination to keep life going.

Labor Day

Labor Day is observed in Lewisia as elsewhere, but it is the day (and even week) before that sees the most difference from the outside world. It is traditional to bring gifts to workers who have been of particular service to you in the past year. These days, the gifts generally take the form of large cash tips offered on the worker's last shift before the holiday. In the past, it was more common to offer food or durable goods of your own making as a way of repaying labor with labor.

Lewisian culture has always been one of fair dealings and decency, and as such has not been the direct site of significant labor protests historically. But many Lewisians work outside of the region and still others move to make their way in the wider world. So the town's ideals--and methods--have come into play in the fight for pay and protection for workers.

Several prominent anarchists involved in pro-labor demonstrations, riots, and bombings of the 19th century were Lake Lewisia natives now living elsewhere. At least three factory fires, at the time attributed to improvised incendiary devices lobbed through the first story windows, were later proven to be the result of several combustible newts set loose in the night. Exactly who released the newts, whose native habitat is well known to be coal mines and not textile factories, was never discovered. Suspects included Lewisian activist Milka Salonen, though, who upon her death in 1962, at age 101, donated an extensive private menagerie of incendiary vertebrates to the Knellen Family Trust's preservation program.

Lost Mail Day

Continuing with the month's historical leanings, Lost Mail Day comes September 2nd with its long-delayed tidings. Part swap meet, part matchmaking event, part historical exhibition, this day is one last concerted effort to get the mail to its destination, however far off-track it may have strayed. The backrooms and storage bins of the postal service are opened up and their contents spread out for one more try at delivery.

Here is a letter sent from the European front in 1941 to a wife who had, unbeknownst at the time to her husband, disguised herself as a man and made her way to find and fight beside him. Here is an order form and enclosed payment for a correspondence course in the nearly-forgotten art of sentient paint breeding. Here is the last letter sent by a portal explorer to her parents before her disappearance into a time anomaly in the scented candle aisle of a DORSHOP megastore.

The public is encouraged to look through the collection for their own mail or that of their acquaintances. More so, the public is asked to volunteer to track down recipients not immediately identified. Every year, there is a core collection of these volunteers, who range from history teachers to private investigators to genealogy hobbyists, who turn their particular skills to finding someone, living, dead, or descended, who might wish to receive such a long-lost letter or package.

If, at the end of the day, a piece of mail remains unclaimed by either the original sender, the intended recipient or suitable proxy, or one of the volunteer investigators, it is given over to the care of the Historical Society for long-term preservation. While there have been a few rare cases where a letter was identified and delivered even after this stage, most will enter into the Society's extensive archive of historical documents and primary sources. These are available for researchers outside of the Society by special arrangement, with the arrangement generally being a Society member informing you via cryptic messenger that you have been selected for their purposes.

This Month in History

We turn our attention this month to a much more recent anniversary than our usual selections. Two years ago, on September 20th, 2019, the store at First and Lilac first opened as an otherwise unnamed organization in the business of time retrievals. Well, we say "opened," but of course the shop is rarely open in the conventional sense of hours in which the doors are unlocked and customers can come inside.

Those who have partaken of the shop's services report that it is possible to go inside to pick up items when they arrive from their prior timeline locations. No one could recall going inside the shop, meeting with employees, or providing payment in advance when placing an order. I did identify two people who work at the shop, but their answers regarding their employment proved less than enlightening. It is, if nothing else, reported to be a comfortable and satisfactory way to make a living.

Those who have been willing to admit to what they purchased listed everything from stuffed toys from childhood to disappeared pets to heirloom watches. One person very proudly presented to me an oak tree of stunning height and fullness, complete with an endearingly rickety treehouse nestled within its branches. I never entirely cleared up if it was the tree or the treehouse (or perhaps both) that was rescued from the depths of time. Many, even those who would not admit exactly what they received, spoke movingly of a loss at a younger age that had haunted them ever after.

If you will allow your host a brief aside, I know this month has leaned more heavily than usual on the subject of history, the past, and the passage of time. Call it my own Final Sunset-inspired rumination. From ancient days of early people observing the changing seasons to our own very recent, very personal pasts, we are always in conversation with time, however modern we like our daily lives to feel. What we call "history" is a fiction, an ordering of the chaos of our lives. It is all, always happening, each moment and memory ready to be plucked from the stream if we wish to keep it. We forever have another chance to change the flow of time around us.

That's a taste of what September has to offer us. See you next month, when October brings Halloween (and yes, maybe a few other things as well).

[notapaladin]

and this faith is gettin' heavy (but you know it carries me) redux

This is literally and unironically the SECOND TIME i have added another thousand words to this fic but now it is finally done. Behold, over 10k words of food as metaphor for love/angst-with-a-happy-ending! In which Teomitl goes missing on a foreign battlefield, and Acatl mourns...but events in his dreams suggest Teomitl maybe isn’t gone for good.

Also on AO3

-

Acatl grimaced as he stepped from the coolness of his home into the day’s bright, punishing sunlight. Today was the day the army was due to return from their campaign in Mixtec lands, and so he was forced to don his skull mask and owl-trimmed cloak on a day that was far too hot for it. Not for the first time, he was thankful that priests of Lord Death weren’t required to paint their faces and bodies for special occasions; the thought of anything else touching his skin made him shudder.

He’d barely made it out of his courtyard when Acamapichtli strode up to him, face grave underneath his blue and black paint. “Ah, Acatl. I’m glad I could catch you.”

“Come to tell me that the army is at our gates again?” They would never be friends, he and Acamapichtli, but they had achieved something like a truce in the year since the plague. Still, Acatl couldn’t help but be on his guard. There was something...off about the expression on the other man’s face, and it took him a moment to realize what it was. He’d borne the same look when delivering the news of a death to a grieving family. Ah. A loss, then.

He’d expected Acamapichtli to spread his hands, a wordless statement of there having been nothing he could have done. He didn’t expect him to take a deep breath and slide his sightless eyes away. “I have. The runners all say it is a great victory; Tizoc-tzin has brought back several hundred prisoners.”

It should have pleased him. Instead, a cold chill slid down his spine. “What are you not telling me? I’ve no time for games.”

Acamapichtli let out a long sigh. “There were losses. A flood swept across the plain, carrying away several of our best warriors. Among them...the Master of the House of Darts. They looked—I’m assured that they looked!—but his body was not found.”

No. No. No. A yawning chasm cracked open beneath his ribs. He knew he was still breathing, but he couldn’t feel the air in his lungs. Even as he wanted, desperately, to grab Acamapichtli by the shoulders and shake him, to scream at him for being a liar, he knew the man was telling the truth. That his face and mannerisms, the careful movements of a man who knew he brought horrible news, showed his words to be honest. That Teomitl—who had left four months before with a kiss for Mihmatini and an affectionate clasp for Acatl’s arm—would not return.

It took real effort to focus on Acamapichtli’s next words. The man’s eyes were full of a horrible sympathy, and he wanted to scream. “I thought you should know in advance. Before—before they arrived.”

“Thank you,” he forced out through numb lips.

Acamapichtli turned away. “...I’m sorry, Acatl.”

After a long, long moment, he made himself start walking again. There was the rest of the army to greet, after all. Even if Teomitl wouldn’t be among them.

Even if he’d never return from war again.

Greeting the army was a ceremony, one he usually took some joy in—it had meant that Teomitl would be home, would be safe, and his sister would be happy. Now it passed in a blue, and he registered absolutely none of it. Someone must have already given the news to Mihmatini when he arrived; she was an utterly silent presence at his side, face pale and lips thin. She wouldn’t cry in public, but he saw the way her eyes glimmered when she blinked. He couldn’t bring himself to so much as lay a sympathetic hand on her shoulder. If he touched her, if he felt the fabric of her cloak beneath his hand, that meant it was real.

It couldn’t be real. Jade Skirt was Teomitl’s patron goddess, She wouldn’t let him simply drown. But there was an empty space to Tizoc’s left where Teomitl should have been, and no sign of his white-and-red regalia. Acatl’s eyes burned as he blinked away the sun.

Tizoc was still speaking, but Acatl heard none of his words. It was all too still, too quiet; everything was muffled, as though he was hearing it through water. If there was justice, came the first spinning thought, every wall would be crumbling. No...if there was justice, Teomitl would be...

He drew in a long breath, feeling chilled to the bone even as he sweated under his cloak. Now that his mind had chosen to rouse itself, its eye was relentless. He barely saw the plaza around him, packed with proud warriors and colorful nobles; it was too easy to imagine a far-flung province to the south, a jungle thick with trees and blood. A river bursting its banks, carrying Teomitl straight into his enemies’ arms. They would capture him, of course; he was a valiant fighter and he’d taken very well to the magic of living blood, but even he couldn’t hold off an army alone.

And once they had him, they would sacrifice him.

Somewhere behind the army, Acatl knew, were lines of captured warriors whose hearts would be removed to feed the Sun, whose bodies would be flung down the Temple steps to feed the beasts in the House of Animals, whose heads would hang on the skull-rack. It was necessary, and their deaths would serve a greater purpose.  He’d seen it thousands of times. There was no use mourning them. It was simply the way nearly all captured warriors went.

It was what Teomitl would want. An honorable death on the sacrifice stone. It was better to die than to be a slave all your life. But at least he would have a life—all unbidden, the alternative rose clear in Acatl’s mind. Teomitl, face whitened with chalk. Teomitl, laying down on the stone. Teomitl, teeth clenched, meeting his death with open eyes. Teomitl’s blood on the priests’ hands.

Nausea rose hot and bitter in his throat, and he shut his eyes and focused on his breathing. In for a count of three, out for a count of five. Repeat. It didn’t hurt to breathe, but he felt as if it should. He felt as if everything should hurt. He felt a sudden, vicious urge to draw thorns through his earlobes until the pain erased all thoughts, but he made his hands still. If he started, he wasn’t sure if he would be able to stop.

Still, it seemed to take an eternity for the speeches and the dances to be over and done with. By the time they finished, he was light-headed with the strain of remaining upright, and Mihmatini had slipped a hand into his elbow. Even that single point of contact burned through his veins. They still hadn’t spoken. He wondered if she, too, couldn’t quite find her own voice under the screaming chasm of grief.

And then, after all that, when all he yearned for was to go home and lay down until the world felt right again—maybe until the Sixth Sun rose, that would probably be enough time—there was a banquet, and he was forced to attend.

Of course there’s a banquet, he thought dully. This is a victory, after all. Tizoc had wasted no time in promoting a new Master of the House of Darts to replace his fallen brother, with many empty platitudes about how Teomitl would surely be missed and how he’d not want them to linger in their grief, but to move on and keep earning glory for the Mexica. Moctezuma, his replacement, was seventeen and haughty; where Teomitl’s arrogance had begun to settle into firm, well-considered authority and the flames of his impatience had burnt down to embers, Moctezuma’s gaze swept the room and visibly dismissed everyone in it as not worth his concern. It reminded Acatl horribly of Quenami.

Mihmatini sat on the same mat she always did, but now there was a space beside her like a missing tooth. She still wore her hair in the twisted horn-braids of married women, and against all rules of mourning she had painted her face with the blue of the Duality. Underneath it, her face was set in an emotionless mask. She did not eat.

Neither did Acatl. He wasn’t sure he could stomach food. So instead his gaze flickered around the room, unable to settle, and he gradually realized that he and Mihmatini weren’t alone in the crowd. The assembled lords and warriors should have been celebrating, but there was a subdued air that hung over every stilted laugh and negligent bite of fine food. Neighbors avoided each other’s eyes; Neutemoc, sitting with his fellow Jaguar Warriors, was staring at his empty plate as though it held the secrets of the heavens. He looked well, until Acatl saw the expression on his face. It was a mirror of his own.

At least his fellow High Priests didn’t try to engage him in conversation, for which he was grateful. Acamapichtli kept glancing at him almost warily, but he hadn’t voiced any more empty platitudes—and when Quenami had opened his mouth to say something, he’d taken the unprecedented step of leaning around Acatl and glaring him into silence.

If they’d been friends, Acatl would have been touched; as it was, it made a burning ember of rage lodge itself in his throat. Don’t you pity me. Don’t you dare pity me. He ground his teeth until his jaw hurt, clenched his fists until his nails cut into his palms, and didn’t speak. If he spoke, he would scream.

Even the plates in front of him weren’t enough of a distraction. Roasted meats glistened in their vibrant red or green or orange sauces. Each breath brought the deliciously warm fragrance of chilies and pumpkin seeds and vanilla to his nose. The fish and lake shrimp, grilled in their own juices and arrayed on beds of corn husks, would at any other time have tempted him to take a bite. Soups and stews were carried from table to table by serving women in gleaming white cotton; he breathed in as one woman passed and nearly choked on the rich peppery scent. He didn’t need to look to know it was his usual favorite, chunks of firm white fish and bitter greens in what was sure to be a fiery broth. Teomitl had always teased him for that, saying it was a miracle he could even taste the greens with so much chili in the way.

Don’t look. Don’t think about it. The ember in his throat was slowly scorching a path through his gut. He couldn’t eat. Didn’t even try.

There were more courses, obviously. More fish, more vegetables, more haunches of venison or rabbits bathed in spicy-sweet sauce. More doves and quail, and even a spoonbill put back in its own pink feathers for a centerpiece. When the final course was triumphantly set in front of him—wedges and cubes of fruit, with a little cup of spiced honey—he was nearly sick over the sweet crimson pitaya split open on his plate. It had been Teomitl’s favorite.

Somehow, he held it together until after the dessert had been cleared away. He rose jerkily to his feet, legs trembling, and fixed his mind firmly on getting home in one piece. No one hailed him on his way out of the room, and for a hopeful moment he thought he was safe.

Quenami’s voice stopped him in the next hallway. “Ah, Acatl. A lovely banquet, wasn’t it?”

He didn’t turn around. “Mn.” Go away.

Quenami didn’t. In fact he took a step closer, as though they were friends, as though he’d never tried to have Acatl killed. His voice was like a mosquito in his ear. “You must not be feeling well; you hardly touched your food. Some might see that as an insult. I’m sure Tizoc-tzin would.”

“Mm.”

“Or is it worry over Teomitl that’s affecting you? You shouldn’t fret so, Acatl. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s not dead after all; there are plenty of cenotes in the southlands, and a determined man could easily hide out there for the rest of his life. He probably just took the coward’s way out, sick of his responsibilities—“

He whirled around, sucking in a breath that scorched his lungs. It was the last thing he felt before he let Mictlan’s chill spill through his veins and overflow. His suddenly-numb skin loosened on his neck; his fingers burned with the cold that came only from the underworld. He knew that his skin was black glass, his muscles smoke, his bones moonlight on ice, his eyes burning voids. All around him was the howling lament of the dead, the stench of decay and the dry, acrid scent of dust and dry bones. When he spoke, his voice echoed like a bell rung in a tomb.

“Silence.”

You do not call him a coward. You do not even speak his name. I could have your tongue for that. He stepped forward, gaze locked with Quenami’s. It would be easy, too. He could do it without even blinking—could take his tongue for slander, his eyes for that sneering gaze, could reach inside his skin and debone him like a turkey—all it would take would be a single wrong word—

Quenami recoiled, jaw going slack in terror. Silently—blessedly, mercifully, infuriatingly silently—he turned on his heel and left.

Acatl took one breath, two, and let the magic drain out of his shaking limbs. He hadn’t meant to do that. It should probably have sickened him that he’d nearly misused Lord Death’s power like that, especially on a man who ought to have been his superior and ally, but instead all he felt was a vicious sort of stymied rage—a jaguar missing a leap and coming up with nothing but air between his claws. He wanted to scream. He wanted blood under his nails, the shifting crack of breaking bones under his knuckles. He wanted to hurt something.

He made it to the next courtyard, blessedly empty of party guests, and collapsed on the nearest bench like a dead man. His stomach ached. I could have killed him. Gods, I wanted to kill him. I don’t think I’ve ever been so angry in my life. All because...all because he said his name...

“...Acatl?”

Mihmatini’s voice, admirably controlled. He made himself lift his head and answer. “In here.”

She padded into the courtyard and took a seat on the opposite end of the bench, skirt swishing around her feet as she walked. Gold ornaments had been sewn into its hem, and he wondered if they’d been gifts from Teomitl. “I saw Quenami running like all the beasts of the underworld were on his tail. What did you do?”

Nothing. But that would have been a lie, and he refused to do that to his own flesh and blood. “...He said…” He swallowed past a lump in his throat. “He said that Teomitl might have deserted. He dared to say that—” The idea choked him, and he couldn’t finish the words. That Teomitl was a coward. That he would run from his responsibilities, from his destiny, at the first opportunity…

She tensed immediately, eyes going cold in a way that suggested Quenami had better be a very fast runner indeed. “He would never. You know that.”

Air seemed to be coming a bit easier now. “I do. But…”

Of course, she pounced on his hesitation. “But?”

I want him so badly to not be dead. “Nothing.”

Mihmatini was silent for a while, wringing her hands together. Finally, she spoke. “He would never have deserted. But...Acatl…”

“What?”

“I don’t know if he’s dead.” She set a hand on her chest. “The magic that connects us—I can still feel it in here. It’s faint, really faint, but it’s there. He might…” She took a breath, and tears welled up in her eyes. “He might still be alive.”

Alive. The word was a conch shell in his head, sounding to wake the dawn. For an instant, he let himself imagine it. Teomitl alive, maybe in hiding, maybe trying to find his way home to them.

Maybe held captive by the Mixteca, until such time as they can tear out his heart. He closed his eyes, shutting out everything but the sound of his own breathing. It didn’t help. He hated how pathetic his own voice sounded as he asked, “You think so?”

“It’s—” She scrubbed ineffectually at her eyes with the back of a hand. “It’s possible. Isn’t it?”

“...I suppose.” He took a breath. “I think it’s time for me to get some sleep. I’ll...see you tomorrow.”

He knew he wouldn’t sleep—knew, in fact, that he’d be lucky if he even managed to close his eyes—but he needed to get home. He refused to disgrace himself by weeping in public.

&

The first dream came a week later.

He’d managed to avoid them until then; he’d thrown himself headlong into his work, not stopping until he was so tired that his “sleep” was really more like “passing out.” But it seemed his body could adapt to the conditions he subjected it to much easier than he’d thought, because he woke with tears on his face and the scraps of a nightmare scattering in the dawn light. There had been blood and screaming and a ravaged and horrible face staring into his that somehow he’d known. He did his best to put it from his mind, and for a day he thought he’d succeeded. He shed blood for the gods, stood vigil for the dead, tallied up the ledgers for the living. Remembered, occasionally, to put food into his mouth, but he couldn’t have said what he was eating. Collapsed onto his mat and prayed that he wouldn’t have a dream like that again.

It wasn’t like that. It was worse.

He was walking through a jungle made of shadows, trees shedding gray dust from their leaves as he passed under them. There was no birdsong, no rippling of distant waters or crunching of underbrush, and he knew deep in his soul that nothing was alive here anymore. Not even himself. Though his legs ached and his lungs burned, it was pain that felt like it was happening to someone else. His gut held, not the stretched desiccation of Mictlan, but a nasty twisting feeling of wrongness; part of him wanted to be sick, but he couldn’t stop. Ahead of him, someone was making their way through the undergrowth, and it was a stride he’d know anywhere.

Teomitl. He thought he called out to him, but no sound escaped his mouth even though his throat hurt as though he’d been screaming. He tried again. Teomitl! This time, he managed a tiny squeak, something even an owl wouldn’t have heard.

Teomitl didn’t slow down, but somehow the distance between them shortened. Now Acatl could make out the tattered remains of his feather suit, singed and bloodstained until it was more red than white, and the way his bare feet had been cut to ribbons. He still wasn’t looking behind him. It was like Acatl wasn’t there at all. Ahead of them, the trees were thinning out.

And then they were on a flat plain strewn with corpses, bright crimson blood the only color Acatl could see. Teomitl was standing still in front of him as water slowly seeped out of the ground, covering his feet and lapping gently at his ankles. There were thin threads of red in it.

“Teomitl,” he said, and this time his voice obeyed him.

Teomitl turned to him, smiling as though he’d just noticed he was there. His chest was a red ruin, the bones of his ribcage snapped wide open to pull out his beating heart. A tiny ahuizotl curled in the space where it had been.

He took one step back. Another.

Teomitl’s smile grew sad, and he reached for him with a bloody hand. “Acatl, I’m sorry.”

He awoke suddenly and all at once, curling in on himself with a ragged sob. It was still dark out; the sun hadn’t made its appearance yet. There was no one to see when he shook himself to pieces around the space in his heart. It was a dream, he told himself sternly. Just a dream. My soul is only wandering through my own grief. It doesn’t mean anything.

But then it returned the next night, and the next. While the details differed—sometimes Teomitl was swimming a river that suddenly turned to blood and dissolved his flesh, sometimes one of his own ahuizotls turned into a jaguar and sprang for his face—the end was always the same. Teomitl dead and still walking, reaching for him with an apology on his lips. Sometimes it even lingered after he woke. Once he jolted awake utterly convinced that he wasn’t alone—that Teomitl was in the room, a sad smile on his lips and an outstretched hand hovering in the air. Only when he looked around, searching for that other presence, did reality reassert itself and he remembered with gutwrenching pain that it had only been a nightmare. That Teomitl was dead somewhere on a Mixtec altar, his heart an offering to the Sun.

He started timing his treks across the Sacred Precinct to avoid the Great Temple’s sacrifices to Huitzilopochtli. Sleep grew more and more difficult to achieve, and even when he caught a few hours’ rest it never seemed to help. He even thought, fleetingly, of asking the priests of Patecatl if anything they had would be useful, only to dismiss it the next day. He would survive this. It wasn’t worth baring his soul to anyone else’s prying eyes or clumsy but well-meaning words. He would work and pray, and that would keep him occupied. There was a haunting case that needed his attention; while he was tracking down the cause he had an excuse not to focus on anything else. He forgot to eat, no matter how much Ichtaca scolded him. The food tasted like ashes in his mouth, anyway.

Still, when one of Neutemoc’s slaves came to his door asking whether he would come to dinner at his house that night, he didn’t waste time in accepting. Dinner with Neutemoc’s family had become...normal. He needed normal, even if it still felt like walking on broken glass.

Up until the first course was served, he even thought he’d get it. Neutemoc had been nearly silent when he’d arrived, but he’d unbent enough to start a conversation about his daughters’ studies. Necalli and Mazatl were more subdued than they normally were, but they’d heard what happened to their newest uncle-by-marriage and were no doubt mourning in their own ways. Mihmatini’s face was as pale and set as white jade, but as the conversation wore on he thought he saw her smile.

He didn’t much feel like smiling himself. The smells of the meal were turning his stomach. It was simple enough fare—fish with peppers, lightly boiled vegetables in a salty, spicy sauce, plenty of soft flatbread to mop it up—but he couldn’t bring himself to touch it. The last time he’d eaten a meal like this had been with Teomitl at his side, hugging Mazatl and fondly ruffling up Necalli’s hair and barely paying any attention to his own plate until Mazatl had swiped something off it and he’d tickled her as revenge, the both of them laughing. Acatl would never forget the look on his face the first time she’d called him uncle.

He was vaguely aware Neutemoc was frowning at him. “Eat. Before it gets cold.”

He put some fish onto his plate. He ate it. He couldn’t say what it tasted like. Peppers, mostly. It sat in his stomach like a lead weight, and he swallowed so roughly that for a moment he was afraid he’d choke. I can’t do this. But they would notice if he didn’t eat, and then they’d worry about him. He forced himself to take a few more bites, filling the yawning void within.

A second course arrived eventually. Roasted agave worms and greens, which he usually liked. He took a small portion, nibbled on it, and set his plate down.

“More greens?”

Neutemoc’s voice was too careful for his liking, but he nodded. Another portion of greens was duly set onto his plate, and he ate without really tasting it. He only managed a few bites before he had to give up, his gorge rising.

Mihmatini picked at her own dish, and Neutemoc frowned at her. “You’re not hungry?”

She shook her head.

Silence descended again, but It didn’t reign for long before Neutemoc said, “Acatl. Any interesting cases lately?” With a quick glance at his children, he added, “That we can talk about in front of the kids?”

“Aww, Dad...”

Neutemoc gave his eldest the same look his father had once given him. “When you go off to war, Necalli, I will let you listen to all the awful details.”

It wasn’t enough to make Acatl smile, but nevertheless the tension in his throat eased. “Well,” he began, “we’ve been trying to figure out what’s been strangling merchants in the featherworkers’ district…”

Laying out the facts of a suspicious death or two was always calming. He could forget the ache in his heart, even if only briefly. But even when he was done and had just started to relax, Neutemoc was still talking to him as though he expected to see his younger brother shatter any minute. The slaves, too, were unusually solicitous of him—rushing to fill up his cup, to heap delicacies on his plate. At any other time he might have suspected the whole thing to be a bribe or an awkward apology for some unremembered slight; now, he just felt uneasy.

When the meal was done, he declined Neutemoc’s offer of a pipe and got to his feet. “I think I’ll get some air.”

The courtyard outside was empty. He lifted his eyes to the heavens, charting the path of the four hundred stars above. Ceyaxochitl’s death hadn’t hit him anywhere near as hard as this, but gods, he thought he could recover in time if only the people around him stopped coddling him. Everywhere he went there were sympathetic glances and soft words, and even the priests of his own temple were stepping gingerly around him. As though he needed to be treated like...like...

Like a new widow. Like Mihmatini. He sat down hard, feeling like his legs had been cut out from under him. Air seemed to be in short supply, and the gulf in his chest yawned wide.

But I’m not. I care for Teomitl, of course, but it’s not like that. It’s not—

He thought about Teomitl sacrificed as a war captive or drowned in a river far from home, and nearly choked at the fist of grief that tightened around his heart. No. He shook his head as though that would clear it. He wouldn’t want me to grieve over him. He wouldn’t want me to think of him dead, drowned, sacrificed—he’d want me to remember him happy. I can do that much for him, at least.

He could. It was easy. He closed his eyes and remembered.

Remembered the smile that lit up rooms and outshone the Sun, the one that could pull an answering burst of happiness out of the depths of his soul. Remembered the way Teomitl had laughed and rolled around the floor with Mazatl, the way he’d helped Ollin to walk holding onto his hands, the way he sparred with Necalli and asked about Ohtli’s lessons in the calmecac, and how all of those moment strung together like pearls on a string into something that made Acatl’s heart warm as well. Remembered impatient haggling in the marketplace, haphazard rowing on the lake, strong arms flexing such that he couldn’t look away, the touch of a warm hand lingering even after Teomitl had withdrawn—

He remembered how it had felt, in that space between dreams and waking, where he’d thought Teomitl was by his side even in Mictlan. Where, for the span of a heartbeat, he’d been happy.

There was a sound—a soft, miserable whine. It took him a moment to realize it was coming from his own throat, that he’d drawn his knees up to his chest and buried his face in them. That he was shaking again, and had been for some time. As nausea oozed up in his throat, he regretted having eaten.

It was like that, after all.

And he’d realized too late. Even if he’d ever been able to do anything about it—which he never would anyway, the man was married to his sister—there was no chance of it now, because Teomitl was gone.

He forced his burning eyes to stay open. If he blinked, if he let his eyes close even for an instant, the tears would fall.

Approaching footsteps made him raise his head. Mihmatini was walking quietly and carefully towards him, as though she didn’t want to disturb him. As though I’m fragile. You too, Mihmatini?

“Ah. There you are.” Even her voice was soft.

He uncurled himself and arranged his limbs into a more dignified position, keeping his fists clenched to stop his hands from trembling. At least when he finally blinked, his eyes were dry. “Hm.”

She sat next to him, not touching. There was something calming about her company, but gods, he prayed she couldn’t see the thoughts written on his face. She stretched out a hand and he thought she’d lay it soothingly on his shoulder, but instead she traced a meaningless pattern in the dirt. “...It’s hard, isn’t it?”

His dry throat made a clicking noise when he swallowed. “It is.”

“At least we’re both in the same boat,” she murmured.

The words refused to make sense in his head at first—but then they did, and he reared back and stared at her. No. I’ve only just realized it myself, she can’t have...she can’t be thinking that I—! “I beg your pardon?”

Her voice lowered even further, so that he had to strain to hear her. There was a faint, sad smile on her face. “You love him just the same as I do, don’t you?”

He drew a long breath. He knew what he should say, what the right and proper words would be. No, like a son. Or like my brother. But he couldn’t lie to her, not even to spare what was left of her broken heart, and so what came out instead was, “Yes. Gods, yes.” Hate me for it. Tell me I have no right to love him, that you’re the one who has his heart. Tell me I’m a fool.

She lifted her head, and her faint smile grew to something bright and brittle. “Good.”

Good?! He blinked uselessly at her, gaping like a fish before he could find his voice again. “You—you approve?”

“You’re my favorite brother,” she said simply. “And...well.”

She fell silent, her smile fading until it vanished entirely. He waited. Finally, in a much softer voice, she continued, “If you love him, there’s no harm in telling you what he swore me to secrecy over.”

Dread gripped him. Of course Teomitl was entitled to his secrets, but he couldn’t imagine what would be so horrible that Mihmatini wouldn’t tell him. At least, not while he lived. He didn’t want to ask, but he had to know. “...What?”

She blinked rapidly, fingers going still. She’d traced something that looked, from a certain angle, like a flower glyph. “...He...he loved you, too.”

No.

But Mihmatini was still talking. “He didn’t want me to tell you; he was sure you’d scorn him. But he loved you the same way he loved me...gods, probably more than he loved me.”

It was the last straw. His nails bit into his palms hard enough to draw blood, and he barely recognized his own voice as rage filled it. “Why are you telling me this?!”

Mihmatini took a shuddering breath; he realized she was fighting tears, and had been since she’d spilled Teomitl’s heart to the night air. “In case he comes back. If he does...no, when he does...you should tell him how you feel.”

He rose on shaking legs. “I think I need to be alone.”

Without really seeing his surroundings, he walked until he came to the canal outside the house. The family’s boats were tied up outside, bobbing gently on the water. When he sat down, the stone under him was cold; the water he dipped his fingers in was colder still. Neither revived him. Neither was as cold as the pit cracking open in his gut. Mictlan was worse, true, but all the inexorable pains of Mictlan were dull aches compared to this.

In case he comes back. In case he comes back. I love him—I am in love, that’s what this pain is—and I will never see him again in this world. Mihmatini says he loves me too, and it doesn’t matter, because his bones lie somewhere in the jungle and his flesh feeds the crows and I will never get to tell him.

Between one breath and another, the tears came. They spilled hot and salty down his face; he let them, shoulders shaking, because he no longer had the strength to stop them. And nobody would come to offer unwanted sympathy, anyway. Mihmatini had her own grief, and the hurrying footsteps he’d grown so used to hearing would never run after him again.

Eventually, when he was spent, he wiped his face and left. It was time to go home.

&

The rest of the month ground on slowly, and his dreams began to change.

At first they were minor changes—the blood was less vibrant, the forests and plains brighter. Teomitl bled less. Acatl woke without feeling as though the inside of his chest had been hollowed out and replaced with ash. His appetite started to return; he still never felt properly hungry, and his meals didn’t exactly fill him with joy, but he could eat without feeling sick. The bones in his wrists were not quite so prominent as they’d been. And if that was all, he might have simply thought he was beginning to deal with his sorrow. Such things happened, after all. Eventually the knives scraping away at his chest would lose their edges, and he would face a life without Teomitl’s sunny smile.

But there was more than just a lessening of pain. He dreamed of a sunsoaked forest in the south, and woke feeling like a lizard basking on a rock, warm in a way he couldn’t blame on the heat of the rainy season. He dreamed that Teomitl was fording a fast-flowing river—one that did not turn to blood this time—and when dawn broke his legs were soaked up to the shins. That got him to visit a healing priest; he knew when he was out of his depth, and if his soul was wandering too far in his nightmares then he wanted to be sure it would come back to him by dawn. But the priest was as befuddled as he was, and only told him to call again if he woke in pain or with unexplained wounds.

Unexplained wounds? he thought bitterly. You mean, like the one where half my heart’s been torn from my chest? But he knew better than to say that out loud; his feelings for Teomitl were none of this man’s business. So he thanked him and left, paying a fistful of cacao beans for the consultation, and tried not to think about it until the next time he slept and the dreams returned.

And they were dreams now, and not nightmares. While he slept his soul seemed content to follow Teomitl’s solitary travels through the very outskirts of the Empire, and he no longer had to see him torn apart by monsters or smiling ruinously with bloody teeth. Teomitl barely bled at all now, and his wounds were only the normal ones a man might get from traversing hostile terrain alone—a scraped knee here, a bound-up cut there. He sang to himself as he walked, though the words slipped through Acatl’s mind like water. Once Acatl stood just over his shoulder at a smoky campfire while he roasted fish in the ashes, and his heart ached as he watched him cry.

“Acatl-tzin,” he whispered into his folded knees. “Acatl, I should have told you.”

“Should have told me what?” he tried to ask, but before he could form the words he woke up. There were tears in his own eyes.

It’s only because I miss him, he told himself. This is grief, that’s all. But there was the smell of smoke and the sweet fresh scent of cooked fish clinging to his skin, and a single damp leaf was stuck to the bottom of his bare foot. It hadn’t rained in Tenochtitlan last night. He stared at it for a long time.

Each night went on in the same vein. He would clean his teeth, lay down on his mat, and drift off to sleep—and in his dreams, there would be Teomitl, hale and whole and walking onwards. Despite himself, Acatl started to wake with a faint stirring of hope. Maybe Teomitl really had only been separated from the army. Maybe he truly was on his way home. And maybe I’m delusional, came the inevitable bitter thought when he’d finished his morning rituals. It had become much harder to listen to.

It was almost a surprise when he dreamed about a city he knew. It was a small but bustling place about half a day’s walk from Tenochtitlan, and as he walked through the streets he realized that the torches had been lit for a funeral. He could hear the chants ahead of him. There was a darker shape in the shadows which spilled down the dusty road, and he knew the man’s stride like he knew his own.

“Teomitl!” He hadn’t been mute in his dreams for a while now.

Teomitl didn’t turn. He never turned. But he stopped, and by the way his head tilted Acatl just knew he was smiling. Wordlessly, he pointed at the courtyard ahead.

A funeral pyre had been lit, and it was so like the rituals he presided over that he felt a distinct sense of deja vu. There was the priest singing a hymn to Lord Death; there were the weeping family members of the deceased. There were the marigolds and the other offerings, brilliant in the gloom.

“That could have been me,” Teomitl said, and Acatl heard his voice as though he was standing next to him in the waking world instead of only in a dream. “But it’s not yet, and it won’t be for a good long while. So you don’t need to fear for me. I keep my promises.”

They’d never touched before. But this time Teomitl turned to face him, and the hand he held out was free of blood entirely. Slowly, giving him time to pull away, Teomitl pressed his palm to his. Their fingers laced together, warm and strong and almost real.

“Teomitl,” he said helplessly.

“Acatl.” Teomitl’s smile was like the sun. “I’m sorry I made you worry, but I’ll be home soon.”

And then he woke up, the dream shredded apart by the blasts of the conch-shell horns that heralded the dawn. For a long moment, he stared blankly up at the ceiling. He could still feel Teomitl’s hand in his; each little scar and callus felt etched on his skin. He lives. The slow certainty of it welled up in him like blood. He lives, and he is coming back.

He rose and made his devotions before dressing, but now his hands shook with something that was no longer grief. As soon as he left for his temple, he could feel the change In the air. Scraps of excited conversation whirled past him, but he couldn’t focus long enough to pick any out. He concentrated on breathing steadily and walking with the dignity befitting a High Priest. He would not sprint for the temple, would not grab the nearest housewife or warrior or priest and demand answers. They would come soon enough.

They came in the form of Ezamahual, rushing out of the temple complex to meet him. “Acatl-tzin! Acatl-tzin, there is wonderful news!”

Briefly, he thought he should have worn the hated regalia. “What news?”

Ezamahual’s words tumbled out in a headlong rush, almost too fast to follow. “The Master of the House of Darts—Teomitl-tzin—he’s returned! Our warriors met him at the city gates!”

Even though he’d half expected it—even though the recurring dreams, his soul journeying through the night at Teomitl’s side, had kept alive the flickering flame of hope that now burned within him—he still briefly felt like fainting. He clenched his fists, the pain of his nails in his palms keeping him upright. “You’re sure?”

Ezamahual nodded enthusiastically. “The Revered Speaker has reinstated him to his old position, and there’s talk of a banquet at the palace to celebrate his safe return. I think he’s at the Duality House now, though—they’re like an anthill over there.”

Right. He exhaled slowly, forcing down joy and disappointment alike. Of course Teomitl would want to see his wife first above all, to reassure her that he was well, and of course he had no right to intrude. Nor would he even if he did—Mihmatini deserved her husband back in her life, deserved all the joy she would wring from it. The things she’d told him didn’t—couldn’t—matter in the face of their union. “I see. I suppose we’ll learn more later. Come—tell me if there’s been any new developments in those strangling cases.”

Ezamahual looked briefly baffled, but then he nodded. “Of course, Acatl-tzin. It’s like this…”

The latest crop of mysterious deaths turned out to be quite straightforward in the end, once they tracked down their newest lead and had him sing like a bird. He nodded at the appropriate times, sent out a double team of priests after the perpetrators, and had it very nearly wrapped up by lunch—a meal that, for once, he was almost looking forward to. He was settling down with the account ledgers to mark payment of two gold-filled quills to the priests of Mixcoatl for their aid when he heard footsteps outside.

Familiar footsteps.

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, the tightness in his chest eased. But he didn’t have a chance to revel in it, because he knew the voice calling his name.

“Acatl? Acatl!”

He dropped the ledgers and his pen, getting ink all over his fingers. As the entrance curtain was flung aside in a cacophony of copper bells, he scrambled to his feet. Had he been tired and listless before? That must have been a thousand years ago. He thought he might weep for the sheer relief of hearing that beloved voice again. “Gods—Teomitl—”

He had a confused impression of gold jewelry and feather ornaments, but then Teomitl was flinging himself into his arms and the only thing that sunk into his mind was warmth. There were strong arms wrapped around him and a head pressed against his temple, and Teomitl’s voice shook as he breathed, “Duality, I missed you so much.”

Slowly, he raised his shaking hands and set them at Teomitl’s shoulderblades. He could feel his racing heart, feel the way he sucked in each breath as though trying not to sob. It was overwhelming; his eyes burned as he fought to blink back his own tears. He couldn’t speak. If he opened his mouth, he knew he’d lose the battle—and there were no words for this, anyway.

Teomitl abruptly released him, turning his face away. His voice was a soft, ragged thing, and his expression was a careful blank. “Forgive me. I was...Mihmatini said you’d be glad to see me. I wanted to look less like I’d been dragged over the mountains backwards, first.”

He swallowed several times until he thought he could risk a response, even as his eyes drank in the sight of Teomitl in front of him. He looks the same, he thought. His skin had been further darkened by the sun, there were new scars looping across his arms and legs, and someone had talked him into a fortune in gold and jade with quetzal feathers tied into his hair, but he had the same face and body and sweet, sweet voice. “It’s—there’s nothing to forgive. I’m glad you’ve returned.”

“They told me everyone thought I was dead.” Teomitl bit his lip. “Except for Mihmatini. And you.”

He steered his mind firmly away from the shoals of crushing grief that still lurked under the joy of seeing Teomitl before him. He is here, and hale, and whole, just as I dreamed. I have nothing to weep over. “I knew you weren’t. You wouldn’t let something like a flood stop you.”

There was the first glimmer of a smile tugging at Teomitl’s lips. “You have such faith in me, Acatl.”

“You’re well deserving of it,” he replied. And I love you, and even in dreams I could not think of any other path than your survival. That, he refused to say.

Especially because Teomitl still wasn’t looking at him.

They stood in agonizing silence, and he couldn’t bring himself to break it. Teomitl was so close, still within arms’ range; if he was brave enough, he could reach out and pull him back into his arms. Could bury his face in his hair and crush the fabric of his cloak in his hands and tell him...what? It didn’t matter what Mihmatini had said to him. There was simply no space for him in the life Teomitl deserved, nothing beyond that Acatl already occupied. He wouldn’t burden him with useless feelings.

But then Teomitl shook himself like an ahuitzotl and turned back to him, holding his gaze. “Do you want to know what got me home, Acatl? What sustained me?”

Mutely, he nodded. He still didn’t trust his voice.

“You.”

He felt like he’d been gutted. “I...Teomitl…”

Whatever Teomitl saw in his face made his eyes soften. He took a step forward, hands coming up to rest like butterfly wings on Acatl’s waist, and Acatl let him. “I thought about you. I...Southern Hummingbird blind me, I dreamed about you. Every night! I made myself a promise while I was out there, in the event I ever saw you again. Scorn me for it all you’d like, but I’m going to keep it now.”

Oh, Teomitl. I could never scorn you. They were very, very close now, and Teomitl’s gaze had fallen to his parted lips. His mouth went dry.

And then Teomitl kissed him.

It started out soft and gentle, lips barely tracing Acatl’s own. Asking permission, he thought with an absurd spike of giddiness—and so, leaning in a little shyly, he gave it.

Teomitl wasted no time. The kiss grew harder, fingers digging into Acatl’s skin as he hauled their bodies together. They were pressed together from chest to hip but it still wasn’t enough, they weren’t close enough; blood roaring in his ears, he wrapped his arms around Teomitl’s back and clung tightly. His mouth opened with a breathy little whine stolen immediately by Teomitl’s invading tongue, and when he dared to do the same, Teomitl made a noise like a jaguar and let go of his waist in favor of clawing at the back of his cloak, grabbing fistfuls of fabric along with strands of his hair. It pulled too hard, but he didn’t care. The pain meant it was real, that this was really happening. That for once it wasn’t a dream.

Teomitl only drew away to breathe, “Gods—I love you—” before claiming his mouth again, as though he couldn’t bear to be apart.

Acatl twisted in his arms, knowing he was making a probably incoherent and definitely embarrassing noise, but shame wasn’t an emotion he was capable of at the moment. He loves me. By the Duality, he loves me. “I didn’t think—Mihmatini told me, but I didn’t think...”

Teomitl jerked back, brow furrowed. “Wait. Mihmatini told you?!”

His grip on the back of Teomitl’s cloak tightened at the memory. “She was trying to reassure me, I think. I’d just told her...well.” He couldn’t say it, even with Teomitl in his arms, and settled for uncurling one fist and running his hand up the back of Teomitl’s neck in lieu of words.

He was rewarded with a shiver, and the near-panic in Teomitl’s eyes ebbed into something soft. “What did you tell her, Acatl?”

He’d asked. He’d asked, and Acatl had always been honest with him. He’d be honest now, even if it made his heart race and his hands tremble. “That I love you.”

Teomitl made a desperate noise and kissed him again. There was no gentleness now; he kissed like a man possessed, hungry as a jaguar, and Acatl buried a hand in his hair to make sure he didn’t stop. Teeth caught at his lower lip, and he moaned out loud. This seemed to spur Teomitl on, because his mouth left Acatl’s to nip at his throat instead; the first sting of teeth sent a wave of arousal through him so strong it nearly swamped him. “Ah—!”

Teomitl soothed the skin with a delicate kiss that didn’t help at all, and then he returned his focus to Acath’s mouth. This time he was gentle, a careful little caress that gave Acatl just enough brainpower back to realize that he’d probably been a bit loud. Which is Teomitl’s fault, anyway, so he can’t complain. “Mmm...”

Even when they eventually pulled apart, they clung to each other for a long while. Acatl stroked up and down Teomitl’s spine, tracing each bump of vertebrae and the trembling muscles of his back. Teomitl dropped his head onto Acatl’s shoulder, breathing slow and deep. He’d twined locks of long hair through his fingers, gently running his fingers through the strands. Acatl had to close his eyes, overwhelmed. The stone beneath my feet is real. Teomitl’s skin under my hands is real. This—this is real. He is in my arms, and he loves me.

“I don’t want to let you go,” Teomitl whispered. “I never want to let you out of my sight again.”

Neither do I. He tilted his head, nosing at Teomitl’s hair. Gods, even cut to a proper length again it was so adorably fluffy. He sighed into it. “You’ll have to eventually.” Even though he hated the thought, he couldn’t help but smile. “You’re the Master of the House of Darts, aren’t you? You have an army to help lead. Wars to wage. Glory to bring to the Empire.”

“Hrmph.” The arms around him tightened in wordless refusal.

Joy bubbled up within him, and he chuckled quietly. Still such a stubborn young man. But now he was Acatl’s young man, and there was something wonderful about that. He felt loose as unspun cotton, ready to sink into the floor with the release of all the tension he’d been carrying, but it had left a void behind. A void that rumbled—loudly—to be filled. His face burned with embarrassment at the noise. “...Ah. Why don’t we see about lunch?”

Teomitl snorted. “I have been gone a long time. You’re remembering to eat for once.”

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually had an appetite for food, but he decided not to mention that. Teomitl would worry too much. But eating lunch meant that they had to be seen in public, which meant they both had to actually let go of each other. Reluctantly, he lifted his head and lowered his arms, finding himself stymied halfway through by Teomitl’s serpentlike hold on his ribs. “Teomitl.”

At least now he wasn’t the only one blushing. “Right. You’re right. We should eat.” Teomitl stepped back, clearing his throat, but the look in his eyes was more awestruck than awkward. He was staring at Acatl as though he couldn’t get enough of the sight.

And since Acatl found himself doing the same thing, he couldn’t blame him. Had his eyes always been that dark? Was that scar slicing a pale line across his skin new, or had he just never noticed it before? I might have gone my whole life without this. What an idiot I was.

It took longer than Acatl liked for he and Teomitl to be properly alone again, this time with a plate of food between them. Lunch was simple fare: a plate of grilled newts and amaranth dough with a vibrant red sauce so spicy it made his nose prickle. The serving priests had taken one look at Teomitl and thoughtfully put it on the side instead of directly on their meal, which he’d had to thank them for. As he sat down, inhaling the scent, he felt as though his body was waking up after a long slumber. It filled his lungs and swirled through his veins, and his mouth watered.

He dug in greedily. Gods, it had been so long since he’d properly tasted the food he put into his mouth. The juicy grilled meat was the most savory thing he’d had in ages, and he couldn’t blame his suddenly blurry vision on the sauce he dunked his next bite in. It was perfect. He had one of the amaranth dough sticks to smother the burn, finding it crunchy and slightly sweet with its dusting of seeds on top. “Mmm.”

A hand landed on his thigh. “Enjoying yourself?”

He lifted his head, face hot. “I was hungrier than I thought.”

“That’s good. You need to eat more, anyway.” Teomitl smiled, and he couldn’t help smiling in return. “Pass me some sauce?”

He passed the sauce. Teomitl tore at his own grilled newt with more manners but just as much enthusiasm. The long trek through the wilderness must have hardened him, because he didn’t wince at the heat of the accompanying sauce. Then again, he also didn’t use quite so much. “Mm. This is good.”

There was a fleck of bright red chili paste by the corner of Teomitl’s mouth. He wanted to kiss it away. A heartbeat later, he realized that he could. They were alone. Nothing was stopping him now.

So he did, and Teomitl went crimson. “Acatl!” he yelped delightedly, grinning even as he turned his head and kissed him back.

Chaste as it was, it lingered long enough that Acatl was flushed when he pulled away. His pulse thrummed under his skin; he felt like he’d drunk a cup of pulque, dizzy at his own daring as it sunk in. They were alone. Good food was in his belly for once, giving him the energy he hadn’t realized he’d been missing. They could do a lot more than kiss, if they wanted.

Teomitl’s grin turned teasing. “I missed doing that.”

“It hasn’t even been half an hour,” he muttered. “You’re insatiable.” But there was no heat to it, and he found his hand resting at Teomitl’s waist. The skin under his palm was just so warm. He’d felt cold bones and grave dust for too long.

An eyebrow went up in stunning imitation of Mihmatini. “And I’ve waited years for even one kiss, Acatl. There’s a backlog to get through, you know.”

The blush had just started to fade, but now it returned with a vengeance. “Years?”

“Mm-hmm.” Teomitl’s eyes gleamed. “I’d like to make up for lost time, if you wouldn’t mind.”

He swallowed hard. Now that he could think again he wanted to know how Teomitl had survived, how he’d managed to make it all the way back home—the unreal fragments he’d witnessed each night had not been informative—but his questions suddenly didn’t seem that important anymore. Not when there were other, more immediate desires to be sated. “...I would not.”

And so their mouths met. Teomitl’s idea of making up for lost time was long and hungry and tingled with the spice of their meal; Acatl’s lips parted for his tongue almost before he knew what he was doing, and that was still a little strange but far from unwelcome. Especially when Teomitl drew back, mouth wet and red, to catch his lower lip between his teeth in another one of those stinging little nips that made his blood sing. A breathy noise escaped him, but this time Teomitl didn’t soothe it.

No, this time he lowered his mouth to Acatl’s neck and did it again. It was light and delicate, unlikely to leave marks, but Teomitl’s teeth were sharp enough that he felt each one in a burst of light behind his closed eyelids. He had to bury one hand in Teomitl’s hair and wrap the other around his waist just to keep himself upright; he couldn’t entirely muffle his own gasps. “Ahh...gods...”

Teomitl hummed, low and wordless, and slid a hand down his stomach. Acatl’s fevered blood roared in his ears, and all of a sudden it was almost too much. “Teomitl.”

Teomitl lifted his head, eyes bright. “Mm?”

“You.” He sucked in a breath, willing his heartrate to slow down. There had to be some limits. Too much had already happened much too quickly. “You can’t keep doing that here.”

“You don’t like it?” Teomitl grinned at him. “Or do you like it too much, Acatl?”

If by some miracle all the rest of it hadn’t already made him blush, hearing Teomitl purr his name like that would definitely have done the trick. He had to turn his face away. “You know damned well it’s the latter. We both have our duties; we can’t very well take the rest of the day off to…” Flustered, he gestured between them.

“Hrmph,” Teomitl said, and kissed him again. This time it was slow and sweet and came with warm arms sliding around him, and he lingered in it for long, long minutes.

By the time they finally remembered the rest of their food, it was stone cold. They ate anyway; cold food was still good, especially with the chili sauce. Acatl was privately of the opinion that it even made the sauce taste better, but he’d learned that people tended to look at him strangely when he voiced it. Besides, Teomitl was leaning against him with one arm slung loosely around his waist, a reassuring weight against his side anchoring him to the earth. There wasn’t a need for speech in moments like this.

Not to mention that, strangely enough, he was still hungry. The joy he’d first felt at knowing Teomitl was safe and alive had opened the floodgates, but it felt as though his body was determined to make up for lost sustenance. Even after their plates were both thoroughly clean, he was still rather looking forward to dinner.

The afternoon light was turning the air gold when Teomitl reluctantly got to his feet. Acatl followed; they stood without touching for a moment that was just long enough to be awkward, and then Teomitl pulled him into a fierce hug. Acatl knew it was coming this time; he marveled at how they just seemed to fit together, with one hand buried in Teomitl’s hair and the other pressed flat between his shoulderblades to feel the steady beat of his heart.

Teomitl took a long, slow breath. “Lunch wasn’t long enough.”

“It wasn’t,” he agreed softly. “But there will be others. Many others.” With Teomitl by his side, he didn’t think he’d ever skip a meal again.

Despite the hint of dismissal—yes, he loved the man with all his heart, but they did both have other things to do—Teomitl made no move to let go of him. In fact, he squeezed a little tighter, turning to bury his face in Acatl’s hair. “Mrghh...”

He had to bite the inside of his cheek to quell the urge to laugh. As fond as he was, he knew it probably wouldn’t go over well. He made do with stroking Teomitl’s hair—gods, it was so soft—and taking a deliberate step back so that Teomitl had to release him or be pulled off-balance. Now Teomitl was glaring at him, but nothing would stop the slow upwell of joy in his veins. “Go on. I’ll see you at the banquet tonight.” He knew he’d enjoy this one.

Teomitl’s eyes were fierce as an eagle’s. “And afterwards? Will I see you afterwards, Acatl?”

He had a pretty good feeling he knew what Teomitl had in mind for a private celebration. Nerves twisted his gut, but only for a moment. He’d come this far, hadn’t he? “Yes,” he said simply.

The way Teomitl’s lips parted in wonder let him know he’d made the right choice. For the rest of my life. Whenever you want, for the rest of my life, I’ll be there.

Teomitl didn’t reach for him—he seemed to be deliberately holding himself still, tension ringing through his body like a drawn bowstring—but he looked like he wanted to. He looked like he wanted to yank Acatl back into his arms and finish what they’d started earlier, and the thought was exhilarating. “My chambers in the palace? They’re closest.”

Acatl flushed, shaking his head. That was a risk he refused to take. The palace had too many people, too many ears and eyes. Far too many chances to be interrupted. If he was going to do this, it would be somewhere safe. “My house. I’ll...I’ll be waiting.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.” There was a wild, radiant smile.

He smiled back. Though he’d miss Teomitl while he worked—Duality, they’d been apart for so long—it would be fine. He was already looking forward to the banquet and what would come after, when nothing would part them again save the dawn.

Teomitl had promised, after all.

[reading-writing-revolution]

Jacqueline Kamel wrote this:

Every year on the date, the 3,000 victims of September 11th are read aloud at the World Trade Center. It takes 3 hours.

If we were to read the names of each person who has died of Covid-19 so far, it would take over 4 days, without stopping. It would cover each Sunday issue for over the next two years. Today I read 1% of those names. Each of those names was allowed half a sentence to describe them. Half a sentence for a lifetime on the front page of The New York Times. I picked out some of my favorites:

-“We called him the grand Poobah”

-her backyard birds ate right from her hand

-could fix almost anything

-first black woman to graduate Harvard Law school

-quick with his fists in the ring

-her will was indomitable

-he could spit a watermelon seed halfway across a double lot

-agent who turned on the CIA

-her favorite quote was ‘I am as good as you are, and as bad as I am’

-cancer survivor who lived as a deacon

-nothing delighted him more than picking up the bill

-saved 56 Jewish families from the Gestapo

-could be a real jokester

-thought it was important to know a person’s life story

-maestro of a steel-pan band

-saw friends at their worst and made them their best

-engineer behind the first 200mph stock car

-discovered his true calling when he started driving a school bus

-made the best Baklava ever

-emergency room doctor who died in his husband’s arms

-leader in integrating schools

-architect behind Boston’s City Hall

-shared his produce with food banks and neighbors

-family believed she would have lived the traditional Navajo lifespan of 102 years.

-loved his wife and said ‘yes dear’ a lot

-mother to a generation of AIDS patients

-worked long hard hours and still made time for everyone

-walked across the Golden Gate Bridge on opening day

-liked his bacon and hash browns crispy

-more adept than many knew

-would stay awake the whole night shift because she didn’t want anyone to die alone

-freed from life in prison

-her last words were ‘thank you’

They didn't get a funeral.

They didn't get to say goodbye.

- Jacqueline Kamel

[inky-duchess]

Heroes to Villain, A Guide:

"You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

— Harvey Dent, a.k.a. Two-Face, The Dark Knight

A hero is someone good, somebody whose morals are never in question and someone who stays the course of good for all time. Until... they don't.

A hero who has battled through horror and loss can easily lose their way and find themselves on a darker path. We have all suffered something in life and in the throes of that, we often find ourselves thinking dark thoughts or not acting like ourselves. This can be one of the hardest things to do right in any story, so let's have a look at it from the inside out using 5 characters: Book!Theon Greyjoy, Anakin Skywalker, Book!Tyrion Lannister, Carrie White, Magneto.

In the Beginning

If we accept that your protagonist was a hero, we need to know what kind of person they were. Who were they before hand? Everyone, even if their life has been shit, sees goodness in life at first. Begin when we are first introduced to them.

Theon Greyjoy: He was a smiling playboy with notions of grandeur who loved nothing more than hunting and whoring.

Anakin Skywalker: He was once a slave but made himself into a Jedi Knight during the Clone Wars.

Tyrion Lannister: He was an intelligent, kind playboy.

Carrie White: She was a picked-on, plump and unpopular girl with a terrible home life but with a hope things would improve.

Magneto: He was a caring son who had only his mother in the world.

Though each has a different beginning, we see positivity in all of them. Every hero is hopeful and believes in good.

Sowing the Seeds of Darkness

In every hero, there are seeds of some unsavory trait lingering under their persona. No person is squeaky clean. Having a bad trait doesn't always mean that character will turn bad however. But when looking at any character, you can see how they COULD go bad.

Theon Greyjoy: He has illusions of grandeur, he wants to make his father proud, he is rash, he is sullen, he is resentful

Anakin Skywalker: He can be a sullen person, he is comfortable in battle and can be very rash and violent.

Tyrion Lannister: He's intelligent, prudent, pragmatic, shrewd and sharp

Carrie White: She's a religious fanatic with deep disgust for anybody who doesn't follow her mother's brand of fanaticism.

Magneto: He is very comfortable with inflicting violence and horror upon people, he doesn't trust in people, he is full of unsated rage and hatred.

Peering through the Veil

You ought to let your characters show these through their actions. Even if it is just a glimpse. Percy Jackson is a great example of this. We have watched him grow up since he was 12 but in the newer novels, we have begun to see a darker side to him. He tortures the goddess of misery and even begins to share some startling traits with the primary Hero turned Antagonist, Luke Castellan. Though I doubt Rick will turn Percy villain, showing the seeds beginning to flower is enough to plant doubt in our heads. Harry Potter also experiences this when he tortures one of the Carrows for spitting in Professor McGonagall's face. Even his deadpan comment would chill you, "I see what Bellatrix meant, you have to mean it."

Theon Greyjoy: We first begin to see Theon's nature in the scene in A Game of Thrones, after he kills the wildling threatening Bran. When Robb points out the rashness of the action, Theon answers back in a distant tone.

Anakin Skywalker: He went to go see his mother after a vision, finding her dead. Anakin goes on a rampage and kills everything in the village before burning it down.

Tyrion Lannister: In a Clash of Kings, Tyrion has his first taste of power. The exchange between he and Janos Slynt shows Tyrion's villainous side.

Carrie White: Carrie is walking home and she begins to think bad thoughts about a neighbor, using her powers to shatter the window. This shows her disdain for the people in her life.

Magneto: When he is sitting before the banker in the Swiss Bank, he snaps and pulls the metal filling from the teeth of the banker. Then his torture of Emma, when he almost shatters he diamond form.

The Reasons Why

Every Villain has a sob story. Especially those who were once heroes.

Theon Greyjoy: Was taken from his home aged ten by the man who invaded his home and destroyed his father's kingdom. He was raised with the knowledge that he would be killed by Ned, if the Ironborn threatened Westeros.

Anakin Skywalker: Anakin saw a vision of Padme dying and believes the Sith have the power to save her.

Tyrion Lannister: He is abused by his father and Westerosi society for his dwarfism.

Carrie White: She is abused by her mother, humiliated by her peers and abused by society.

Magneto: His mother is shot by Nazis nd he is abused by them

The Breaking Point

Though we may laugh at the tragic villain backstory trope, there is an interesting flip. Heroes can have a sad backstory and fight through it to still be good but what makes a person turn evil. The Breaking Point is the tipping point between hero and villian. This is the final straw that drives the hero into the arms of Darkness.

Theon Greyjoy: His rejection from his family, the Starks and then the people of Winterfell. He murders two farmboys, one who could very well be his son as he was banging the miller's wife, orders the death of many people he knew well and betrays Robb, his best friend.

Anakin Skywalker: Padme refuses to help him and then he strangles her to death beginning his turn to darkness. He casts off Anakin to become Darth Vader.

Tyrion Lannister: His wife is gang-raped by his household guards with his unwilling help, his girlfriend betrays him, his father tries to kill him after years of emotional abuse, he is cast down and vilified by those he thought his allies. He soon begins to talk openly of destroying Westeros, his dreams of killing and raping Cersei and the destruction of the legacy of House Lannister.

Carrie White: She is humiliated with a bucket of pig's blood at prom leading her on a path of destruction and revenge.

Magneto: After slaying the man who killed his mother and saving humanity from a Nuclear war, Erik joins the others on the beach. When the humans try kill them via missiles, Erik snaps and tries to kill them all.

The Hero Turned Antagonist: The Failure of Dave and Dan and the Destruction of Daenerys Targaryen.

Now that we have looked at how to turn a hero into a villain, I want to point out the dangers of the trope and how it can be done wrong. Daenerys is never shown as a possible villain until the last season. There are no prior points and scenes to back up her turn to darkness. Tyrion's speech to Jon even highlights how stupid casting Dany as a villain is when he points out that killing the slavers was evil. Anybody with the wits of a pea would gave listed this as a good act of Dany's, though a violent one. It is a long and difficult road to turn a hero into a believable antagonist and Dany, though with her troubles and issues, does not fit the template. It was lazy writing that killed a perfectly good character.

For the ever patient @kathryn-anna