#the streaming era is like taking care of a horse

[britneyshakespeare]

This might sound silly but the more time goes by the more I miss the pre-streaming era of TV. It was so delightfully simple. Sitcoms slap so much harder when you see the same episodes more than once a week.

[inkonparchment]

American Wedding | Part 2

Leon Kennedy x f!Reader

You've never seen him, you’ve never met him and yet here you are, Mrs Kennedy, a fate that was always to be yours since the day you were born. The golden band on your finger catches dust at the train station, hoping that at the very least, he's kind.

warnings: this is set in late 1800s. reader is described as having long, silky hair. allusions to mental and physical abuse (not by Leon). misogyny. marriage of convenience. arranged marriage. implied age gap. absolute zero research for era appropriateness. bodyshaming. eating disorder.

word count: 5.6k

a/n: writing this felt exactly like how it feel watching a one take movie scene. i hope this wasn't disappointing and lives up to expectations. enjoy<33

prev.

You barely sleep.  

The cotton sheets feel soft under your touch as you curl in a fetal position in the centre of the bed, your book still clutched tightly against your chest. Sleep doesn’t come to you, your heart a hammer in your chest, eyes wide and unblinking, ears sharp and trained to listen for any scuffle outside your door.

You think he will come again, in the dead of the night with no soul around to bear witness to his ravage of you. Perhaps he is careful of his image, not wanting his men to see his cruelty. Wet tears moisten your cheeks, gathering into a puddle near the embroidered roses on your pillow. The mattress feels wrong. It’s too stiff, too cold and smells foreign. It doesn’t feel like home.  

You trace the roses with your fingers, swallowing your sobs, pressing the hardcover closer to your heart in hopes of soothing it. It works terribly, for your heart still aches for your mother. With the edge of your palm, you press away the tears, trying to recreate her gentle loving caress. But it's not the same. She feels so far away, the scent of her floral perfume already a distant memory. Your hands ache to write to her, drowning in want to melt into her arms, to run back to her. 

But can you? No.  

Your husband wouldn’t allow it. I will never force you to do anything that you do not wish to do. Is that not what he had said? But you know that candour is not a trait possessed by men, their tongue crafted by the devil himself, dripping in fallacies. He means to be kind to gain your trust, perhaps a planned ruse to lull you into a false sense of security until he decides to truly reveal himself to you.  

You tangle your hand into your hair, combing it away from your face, imagining yourself sitting on the stairs of your- your father’s porch, your mother sitting behind you with a brush in her hand. You would watch the butterflies, watch in fascination as they would fly freely across the green pastures, taking their pick of the prettiest flowers whenever they wish to rest. It’s in a man’s nature to be cruel, they just can’t help it. That would unsettle you, taking her words in your mind and spinning it around in every angle. 

Surely that can’t be?  

Mr. Matthews always caressed his daughter’s cheek before handing her a butterscotch. You would always stare at their interactions from your seat three rows behind them at church, agog at the way he looked at her, something akin to fondness, you could even delude yourself into thinking it was love. You had given it a try, foolishly tugging your father’s hand against your cheek, expectantly staring into his eyes to see if you could find the same twinkle in them. 

You had to sleep on your left side that night, the sting across your right cheek too unbearable to put any weight on it, only for it to be cooled by the stream of your warm tears.  

Exhaustion soon wins over, underestimating how much you had been spent by the day. The memory of your father etched in the front of your eyes when your eyes finally flutter shut.  

You don’t know how long you sleep for, dreaming endlessly of lush field speckled with daffodils that burst against the soft trot of your horse, hair whipping in the air, suddenly shooting upright as the hammer in your chest returns, almost tearing through your ribs. It takes you a whole to absorb your surroundings. 

Your bed is in the wrong direction, it doesn’t have four tall posts with chiffon draped around, your curtains aren’t blue against the orange gleam of the morning sun shining through. The walls are different, your vanity a strange shape with possessions scattered across that you don’t recognize. You panic, thinking you are in the wrong place, taken blazingly in the dead of the night from your home. Reality finally hits as you almost scramble out of the bed, melting back onto its edge, the book falling to the floor with a loud thud.  

Of course. You’re Mrs. Kennedy now, a possession still but now by a different man. 

You blink at your blurred reflection in the mirror. Your make up is non-existent now, smudged sloppily across your face, the streaks of tears leaving behind tracks on your cheeks. You feel hollow, lips sticking to one another, chapped as you pull them apart. Your hair now cascades down your shoulders, carelessly thrown over each other, still clad in the virgin white of your supposed wedding dress.  

Your senses are slow to return but the house feels quiet, deathly so. There’s no movement, no murmur, no thunderous applause of boots or the loud indignations spurred on by drunken stupor. There are no slamming doors, no muffled tears. And that sets you on the edge.  

There’s a sharp rap of knuckles against your door that has you jumping from your seat, standing upright, straightening the state of your hair as you fold your shaking hands in front of your skirt. I hope he doesn’t bruise. The door swings open softly and standing on the other side is a kindly looking woman, the roots of her hair turning grey, pulled back into a neat bun and dressed in a soft brown plain dress.  

She introduces herself but you’ve already forgotten her name, too struck down in your fear to register anything. Soon after she’s ushering you out of your room, bustling you across through another door. Steam greets you with a soft gentle tug, a bathtub sitting in the centre of the room, smelling deliciously of perfumes and oils. You are stripped of your previous clothes and submerged in the water. 

It’s nice, at a perfect temperature. But you’re numb to the woman’s gentle scrubbing, washing you as though you are porcelain. She doesn’t say much, doesn’t stare, doesn’t ask questions but instead lets you be, kneading out knots from your tense shoulder. You must take care of your hygiene. Smell nice, look pretty, be of some value like a jewel. Only then will he learn to cherish you. 

Maybe that’s why he didn’t lay with you. Maybe he considered you impure, tainted by your past life, carrying with you a stench that you could not smell. Perhaps he will now that you are scrubbed clean. Still frozen in your state, the woman coaxes you out of the tub, wrapping something equally warm around your shoulders and then you’re herded back to your room. 

 You blink and she is gone. 

The stool of your vanity is comfortable, the velvet plush under your touch. Any evidence of yesterday’s travels has been washed away from you, all of your make up gone, leaving behind soft unmarked skin. You’re in a periwinkle blue dress, the colour light and soft against your skin. Your hair has been left to curl loosely around your shoulders, strands fluttering across your forehead. You gather them quick and push them back, hastily locking them tightly, not a single lock out of place. There should be no flaw visible on you. 

And then you sit like a corpse, fingers tugging against each other, the sun merry in its journey to the apex. You wonder why you’re not happy, always having dreamed of escaping your home. But perhaps you had indulged in your fantasies too much for this to bring you satisfaction; dreaming of heroes coming to save you with their glittering swords and brilliant stallions, threatening to tear apart anyone who stood in the way of his love, cupping your face with utmost gentleness, whispering grand professions of their love, of how you are the moon that guides them home before setting off to a blissful life awaiting in the land beyond where the sun sets. Perhaps this was your own undoing. 

Sunlight floods your room now, the gurgle of your empty stomach finally prompting you to dare to venture into his house. You heard no noise during your pitiful vigil, confirming that you were perhaps alone. The stairs creak as you descend them slowly one by one, careful not to make too much noise. 

The first thing you notice is the door that leads outside. There’s a glass panel in the centre, allowing you a glimpse into the outside world. The sun shines bright, dust kicking up every now and then by what you assume is the wind. The sudden urge to run grips you again, screaming at you to take the opportunity, to not look back. Too late for all that now, isn’t it? You smooth your skirt, bury those thoughts for good and walk forward.  

The parlour is a vast space, surrounded but couches and chairs alike all turned towards the bricked fireplace. There is no stuffed animal head hanging atop the fireplace, the usual subject of boasting during men’s gathering, gauffing about the animal’s helplessness before the final killing shot, whiskey tipping out of their glasses and onto the wooden floor below.  

It looks unused, something about the space that seems cold, perhaps it’s the thick layer of dust atop the abandoned book sitting on the table like it hasn’t been disturbed in years. The curtains are drawn, material thick as it doesn’t let any light permeate through it. You don’t dare to take a step inside, not wanting to disturb whatever has been left abandoned in it.  

You find the kitchen easy enough, right next to the main entrance. It is sizeable, your eyes widening at the space, admiring the solid wooden dining table seating eight in the middle. A small basket carrying assortment of fruits calls you towards it, hesitantly reaching out for an apple, its red skin glistening under the golden rays. You look over your shoulder once before allowing your fingers to curl around it. 

You pull it towards yourself, inhaling deeply, eyelashes fluttering at its sweet scent. You skin your teeth in, juice erupting where you had bruised its skin, tongue quick to lap them up. The apple disappears quick in your haste, bitten down to the very edge of its core, leaving your fingers sticky from where you hold it. The hunger quells in your stomach, no longer protesting from starvation but also not quite satiated. But it is all that you allow yourself, quickly disposing off the remnants, hiding any evidence of your meal. No seconds for you, we don’t need you chubbing up uselessly. No man will want you.  

You think about exploring the rest of the house but pause. Isn’t the kitchen the most important room now as the lady of the house? It is your responsibility, every other corner irrelevant. Your room for you to rest and the kitchen for you to serve. You begin to move by yourself, scouring the entire room, familiarising yourself with its every crevice. You look out the window over the sink, the sun almost as high as it can get and the thought of making lunch hits quick, shivering at the thought of your hungry husband returning home without a warm meal waiting for him. 

You find the ingredients needed for a hearty stew, some missing but you’ll inform him later, setting quick over the stove. A warm meal always cools tempers. You find a pretty apron hanging by a hook inside the pantry, an aura of dust around it. The image of your husband donning it on to cook relieves your anxiety a bit, but shame quickly follows about thinking of him that way. The lid goes on the pot bubbling away and you set aside a plate for him, lessening the time it would take to serve him.  

It’s when the sun begins to come down from the top mast that the sound of heavy boots snaps you out of your daze. You straighten quick, pushing the chair back in its place and dust off your apron, adjusting your skirt and then standing with your hands folded together.  

You see his shadow fall on the floor before you see him, bringing with him the scent of dirt and sweat. Leon walks in through, hat in one hand and a rag in another that he’s using to wipe his face, too busy to notice you immediately. You try to control the way your pulse starts to hum, struck at how different he looks from the first time you met him. Gone is the proper looking gentleman. 

In his steed stands a rancher, a man who works tirelessly on his land, unafraid of hard work. His outfit is replaced by a plain dark blue shirt with sleeves pushed to his elbows, his veins carving out paths on his glistening forearm, disappearing in the bulge of his concealed biceps. His suspenders attach to his dirtied work jeans, boots heavy in their steps, leaving a trail of dust behind him.  

He notices you, lowering the rag and swiping his hair back from his face where they remain, wet from his sweat. Leon’s expression immediately softens, turning towards you, eyebrows furrowed at how you cling so stiffly to the edge of the dining table. The concern in his eyes pulls you in, not a word uttered but the look on his face urges you to relax. His eyes flicks to the pot on the stove, then to you, then to your apron. But he makes no remark. 

“Good morning,” You blurt out without thinking. 

The upturn of his lips is instant, stuffing the rag in his back pocket and putting his hat on the table. “Good afternoon.”  

Right, you almost smack yourself, growing heated as he places his hands on the chair, leaning against it, biceps flexing as he shifts his posture. He looks over your form, bright blue eyes taking you in, never lingering anywhere too long to make it uncomfortable.  

“Did you sleep well?” Leon gently asks, furrowing his brows. 

“Yes.” The lie is instant. There’s no reason to burden him with your worries. He’s keeping you in his home and that is enough.  

He hums thoughtfully, eyeing you up as though in question and searching. For what, you don’t know. 

Your mind snaps at you again, reminding you of the heated stew and chastising at your lack of response after seeing your husband return from work. “I made some food. If...if you’d like.”  

It’s childish how you blurt short sentences around him, anxiety making you word vomit instead of taking deep breaths and talking in proper sentences like a proper lady. You’ll have to correct it soon; there’s only so much patience you can demand from him.  

“Thank you.” Leon sounds genuine as though truly grateful for your effort, his voice gravelly after a day of labour. “I’ll wash up.”  

You stand there as he walks past you towards the sink. You stand frozen, the sound of running water drowning out the chaos in your mind. His broad shoulders draw your gaze, each movement igniting a mix of admiration and anxiety. Should I say something? 

Leon turns off the water and turns, clean towel in his hand as he dries off, catching you staring at him. You immediately look away, anxiously pulling at your apron as you busy yourself in scooping out the food in his plate. You pick up the plate of the bread you cut up, turning around to set it down in front of him and then feeling your footsteps stutter.  

He’s not sitting at the head of the table like you thought, like you were made to practice the proper etiquette to serving your husband. He sits on the far side from you where he can watch the stove, the window and the main door. It's no matter. You still serve him. 

You set the plates down in front of him, hoping he doesn’t notice the slight shake in your hands. 

“Thank you,” He repeats in the low gentle tone of his, “You really didn’t have to.”  

You back away just as quickly hands clasped like they were before.  

He leans his head forward, catching wafts of steam in his nose, inhaling deeply. When he opens his eyes, there is a glaze in them, but it disappears before you can catch it. Leon picks up his spoon but doesn’t start, not yet, twisting his head to look at you expectantly. 

Your heart leaps out of your throat. What have you done? Have you done something wrong? Does he not like to eat stew? God, you should have asked him for his meal preferences. Was it the bread? Did you set- 

“Where’s your plate?”  

Oh.  

“I...I’m not hungry.” Another lie. But this time your stomach grumbles loudly, betraying you. 

He sets his spoon down, leaning back in his chair as he fixes you with a look. “I am not going to eat without you.” 

His clear admission leaves you dumbfounded. What? Should he not eat first while the food is warm? What good would it be for him if you’re too busy eating yourself? What if he needs something? You’ll be slow to get it for him and he will be fast in reprimanding you.  

You dish out a serving for yourself, pushing away your anxieties. The portion you get for yourself is significantly smaller than his, choosing the pieces with less meat on them, feeling undeserving of it. You don’t need it anyways. He works hard does he not? Meanwhile you will sit away under the shade of your house. You have no use to eat heartily. 

 You hear the scraping sound of a chair being pulled back and you turn to see Leon holding the back of the chair at the head seat, waiting for you to sit so he could safely tuck it under you.  

Your mouth runs dry. How do you tell him that you cannot? That it is not your place but his to sit on the throne? That you’ll be okay sitting at the base of his feet, dusting off his shoes, making yourself as small as possible so that you’re insignificant. You’ll be a woman one day, learn to be quiet. 

But this is his house, and his word is the law. 

He pushes the seat in as you begun to sit before sitting back onto his chair. He waits until he sees you lift the spoon to your lips, silent but observant to your helping of the stew, and then he begins to eat. You sit with a bated breath, bracing yourself for the inevitable onslaught of criticism, how there is too much salt or there isn’t enough salt. Instead, he showers you with praise. “This tastes so delicious.” and “Thank you for making the meal.” and “I haven’t eaten this good in a long while.” 

Each compliment is like a fuel for your heart. You like how he says it so earnestly, his eyes wide and catching yours whenever you would dare to look at him, gleeful in how he would lick his spoon clean each bite, fascinated by how his tongue would curl around the metal. You feel your face burn, suddenly full from having watched Leon devour your cooking, soaking up every last drop on his plate with the bread slices.  

The warmth of his words wraps around you like a comforting blanket. “I’m glad you like it,” you reply, your voice soft. 

You make to get up, to take away his dishes, your own food remaining in your plate. But he is quicker than you, hands brushing against his, feeling the strong, hard calluses against your soft skin when he rises to his feet.  

Leon shakes his head at you, the gestures towards your unfinished meal. “Eat. I got this.”  

You practically shovel the food in your mouth, your blood running cold at the sound of him rinsing dishes while you finish your lunch. You make it a point to remember to finish before him next time either by lessening your portion further or simply eating fast. You’re up in a second, coughing to help move the food down faster, approaching the sink to relieve Leon from washing the dishes. 

But he doesn’t move, doesn’t let you come too close, choosing to simply take your empty dishes and add them to the pile of soapy water. You try to tell him to move, “Mr. Kennedy, please let-” 

He fixes you with a look that has you shut your mouth up in an instant. You stare at him unblinking, realising that you’re once again pulled into his gravity. The freckles on his face have freshened up, his long eyelashes fluttering against the sunlight. His stubble remains unchanged from yesterday and you’re suddenly gripped by the urge to run your hand across it, to feel it prickle against your palm.  

Leon is still staring at you, his eyes flickering between yours in search of something. There is a crease in his forehead, seemingly in deep thought. He slowly moves his head forward, forehead almost caressing yours, breathing in the same air as you, waiting for you to back away. But you don’t.  

“Leon,” He firmly says, “Always Leon to you. Try saying it.”  

You bite the tip of your tongue, regretting the slip up.  You expected more of an outburst, but he is patient with you. You can’t help but notice the speckles of green in his eyes unbothered by his musky scent that he has enclosed you in. You swallow thickly, and in a voice as low as a whisper that barely moves your husband’s bangs, you finally say, “Leon.”  

The smile he graces you with warms you to your toes, you growing bashful under it. Thankfully he doesn’t fixate on you too much, turning back to wash dishes. The two of you fall into a rhythm soon enough, him handing you wet plates and you wiping them dry and carefully placing them away. For the first time since you can remember, the silence isn’t overbearing. It doesn’t suffocate you, no sweat gathering in your hairline as you wait for the inevitable wailing that always follows.  

“Did Marla find you okay?” Leon asks in the low baritone of his voice, still focused on his task while the sunlight bathes him in gold. 

Marla? You wonder who he’s- Oh, he must he talking about the lady who helped you in the morning. You’ll have to remember to thank her later. And apologise for your stricken behaviour. “Yes, she was very helpful. Thank you.”  

The dishes are soon wiped away, kept back in their designated places and you stand at a distance from him, watching as he leans against the wooden counter. He seems to be in deep thought, glancing down to your shoe wear, scratching his stubble. “Do you have boots?”  

Boots? Why would you need boots? Does he plan on making you heave hay bales, working you to the bone under the sun? You can’t refuse, once again submitting at his mercy. “Yes, I have them upstairs.” 

Leon folds his arms, shirt straining across his chest at the action, looking at you through his eyelashes, “Go put them on.”  

You almost run, careful to hang the apron back in its place. The stairs creak under your quickened steps, kicking off your dainty shoes and struggling to lace your boots under the plaits of your skirts, mind afflicted with a dozen possibilities of what he could possibly have planned for you. 

By the time you return, he’s waiting for you by the door, his hat back on. You let go of your skirt when you near him, his hand holding the door open for you. You steal a glance towards him, biting the inside of your cheek, the glint bright in his blue eyes as he gestures with his head encouragingly.  

You step outside, the hot wind greeting you quick. You squint at the harsh light, hand coming up to shield your eyes. Leon chuckles as he brushes past you, a “come on” to make sure you follow him, taking off in the direction of the stables. Dust kicks up around your steps, trying your best to keep up. You take up your surroundings, the ranch hands working hard, tipping their hats to you as you walk past, sweat glistening down their forehead, their “Good day ma’am” making your stomach lurch, mumbling back a greeting to them, confounded at the sudden attention you’re receiving. 

Leon greets the stable boy, heading inside and glancing over your shoulder to see you haven’t strayed too far behind. It takes a while for your eyes to adjust, smiling meekly at the “Ma’am” offered to you by the young man. Your steps falter, breath hitching in your throat, eyes widening as you’re greeted with the sight of the same brilliant stallion that had brought you here yesterday. His brown coat shimmers, light moving as he trots his foot, digging into the dirt underneath. He’s beautiful, putting to shame all the horses you had seen on your father’s estate. He is  much bigger and muscular, a perfect picture of grace with beady eyes reflecting intelligence as he watches you. 

You feel a warm presence come up behind you as you donot dare to move, too enraptured by the sight in front of you. A hand comes round from your left, the golden ring glinting, palm facing towards you, holding out a sugar cube.  

“His name is Beauford,” Leon mumbles close to your ear, his silky husky voice smoothing out the edge in your system. “He’s quite fond of sweet things.” 

You can’t help but throw him an incredulous look over your shoulder, his hat tipped back a bit so you could see his whole face, eyes full of mirth, gliding between your eyes and lips. “Beauford?” 

He laughs at your tone, eyes crinkling at the corner, the sound thrilling you, surprised by how easily his features melt into softness. “Well, that would be my fault. I‘m not so good at naming gorgeous things. Now you’re here so I can leave that up to you.” 

The back of your neck burns, gaze falling immediately to the sugar cube he’s holding out to you. Hesitantly you reach out, taking note of the cracks in his palms, silvery ribbons of what you imagine to be old scars. You think about your fathers' hands, his palm soft but never holding out any love for you, only knowing them for the cruelties that he would distribute so enthusiastically. You stare hard at the cube before picking it up, your fingers lingering against his. And he moves away, taking the warmth with him. 

You step towards Beauford, his watchful gaze fixed to you holding out the sugar cube. Once you’re close enough, he steps forward, lapping up your offering. Your heart swells in glee, an easy smile breaking out on your face, hands immediately set on patting his neck, nuzzling your nose into him.  

Leon smiles as you do, hands gripping his belt buckle as he watches the scene unfold, chucking slightly when you grow bashful upon realising he’s watching you. His saddle is on, you notice, wondering if Leon would allow you to take a small trot around the stable. As you build up the courage to ask, the sound of stirrups clicking snaps your head back to see Leon gracefully climbing on another horse, it’s black mane glossy.  

You stare dumbfounded, question dead on your lips, throat drying up. He’s leans forward on his saddle, quirking an eyebrow at you. “You don’t know how to get on a horse?”  

You nod dumbly. Of course you do. It’s second nature to you.  

Leon fixes his hat on his head, a mischievous look flashing on his face. He pulls on his reigns, setting off in a gentle trot, brushing past you. The pink of his lips are upturned at the corner when he calls back out to you, “Let’s see you keep up!”  

Adrenaline begins to pump in your system, making your heart race, a light shake in your hands but this time out of excitement. You pick your skirt up and haul yourself onto Beauford’s back, patting his neck, “Let’s be friends now.” And instincts take over.  

Beauford feels strong under you, feeling his muscles contort as he takes off bursting into the midday sun. You squint again, following the dust trail to see Leon galloping in the distance, but not too far away for you to not catch up to him. You spur him on, racing after Leon, your anxieties melting away, unable to fight off the smile that stretches your cheeks.  

You don’t see the way Leon grins, turning his attention forward and tearing into a full run. The vibrations of Beauford’s gallop thunders through your body, uncaring at how your hair is loosening from their tight hold, whipping against the wind. Laughter echoes as you bask under the hot sun, gleeful at the sensation of leather gripped tightly in your hands, taking deep lungful of unrestricted air.  

Leon begins to slow after a while, the ranch distant behind the two of you, guiding you up the small rocky hills, carefully bypassing cacti and thorny shrubbery. You fall into step next to him, feeling hot under the sun, sharing small smiles with Leon. He halts to a stop near the edge of a cliff, fixing the reigns of his horse onto a rock before coming to stand next to you, patting Beauford’s head.  

You still, watching him take the reins forward. Leon holds out his hands and you hesitate. It’s a little higher than what you’re used to, you can manage by yourself, the little voice in your head scoffing at you becoming a nuisance. His gaze halts that voice, making it disappear and you lean into him. You steady yourself on his shoulders, his hands coming to hold you by the waist, bearing your weight without a complaint, lifting you off the saddle and gently placing you on the ground.  

Leon is strong and unwavering in his motions, no betrayals of faltering, eyes fixated on the flush of your cheeks, taking note of your heaving chest. He feels strong pressed against yours, marvelling at how you feel secure in his grip, your thumbs brushing the hair on the back of his neck.  

One of his hand travels up to your face, rough fingers feather light against your cheek as he tucks your hair behind your ears. He releases you with a deep sigh, stepping away and making you miss his touch already. You shake your head, meekly following him as he comes to sit on a bench shaped rock on the edge of the hill.  

A gasp involuntarily escapes from your lips when you see the view; it’s the whole of his ranch. It's gorgeous in the deep orange hues of the sunset, the whole land visible and easy to track by the white fences, ranch hands moving about like tiny ants. The house sits on the edge, looking like a doll’s complete with a swing set that you had never noticed before. The whole land stands in the middle of tall cliffs surrounding it as if in embrace, protecting it from threats unknown.  

“I come here sometimes by myself,” Leon says, seated next to you, “It’s nice to take it all in from here.”  

“It’s gorgeous,” You whisper in wonderment. You didn’t think you’d find it so, a strong contrast to what you had seen growing up.  

Leon hums in agreement, his eyes stuck to your face as you stare at the view, your eyes wide and bulging, his heart fluttering at seeing the sparkle return to your otherwise dead gaze. He likes it, wants to keep it there. “Yeah, it is.”  

He reaches out for your hand making you jump at the unexpected contact. But you relent, allow him to pull it in his lap and intertwine it with his, your paired rings resting against one another. “I know this is far from what you’re used to but if you’ll let me...I’ll do everything in my power to never make you feel misplaced again. This all belongs to you and I hope it is enough.”  

Your heart seizes, vision getting blurry at the thought of simply being considered for. You stare at your intertwined hands, marvel at how delicately he holds you, yearning to feel more. Maybe you will learn to love this place. “This is more than I deserve.” 

Leon grips your hand tighter, giving you a serious look. “Don’t say that. You deserve everything.”  

You grow weak under his watchful gaze, his jaw locked, his dislike apparent at your words. It’s okay, he decides, you two have a whole lifetime for him to make you understand, to make you see that there is nothing more precious than you. He will bear the burden, shower you with his patience and love, slow and steady like you should have always received. He will make you understand, make you his priority, his wife never to long for anything ever again.  

He sighs, bringing your hand up to his face and gently places a kiss over your shared wedding rings. “Welcome home, my love.” 

And as the sun dips in the horizon, an unfamiliar warmth settles in your chest, quenching the longing in your heart. You realize that this is home – not the land or the house but the man who’s promises are etched in your heart.  

[moo-blogging]

some stuff about canon levi confessing? I picture he wouldn’t confess in words or something like that, but i’d really like to hear what you think. loved the pda story about him btw. thank u so much

Canon Levi is seen as cold, quiet, stoic, but very observant and caring toward others when you least expected it.

Nobody could tell that the infamously strict Captain Levi was in love. I mean, who had the guts to stare at his face as his eyes lingered on you slightly longer as you marched past him, or questioned that the Captain insisted you to make tea for the entire team and gave minimal comments on how you could improve your tea brewing skills. Not a single living soul saw Captain Levi in his office rehearsing the conversation he wanted to have with you before he sent Eren to get you. But in the end, he only asked you to carry the reports to Commander Erwin's office because he stuttered.

Levi didn't care about what he was wearing. He had his uniform jacket on most of the time anyway. But it caught his eyes whenever you wore a new shirt or a pair of new pants. His brows frowned when other guy cadets complimented your new clothes, but he couldn't bring himself to tell you you looked better in the old light blue shirt you got months ago.

So he did what he did best. He trained you hard. Only when you were dangling on the maneuver gear with your legs lifted from the ground, Levi could bark orders to you freely.

Go faster! Please survive.

Take sharp turns, pull back your strings and push yourself with the gas pressure! Come back with me.

Make sure you check your gas level before you get on your horse. Come back to me. Please.

Levi studied your postures, your fighting habits, and your careless mistakes. His tongue spitted the most venomous words, but his eyes pouring the deepest worries and concerns he had for you.

No, Levi couldn't say those words to you. He couldn't tell you how much he wanted to touch your skin, or hold your hands, or pull you into his arms. But when the nights got extra difficult to go through alone, Levi sat with you in silence. The fire crackling softly. Your mind somewhere else in the skies. Your body felt too heavy to move. Levi sat there, quietly replacing cold tea with warm ones, waiting patiently for you to drink it. And when you did, the warm tea flowed through your chest, and you exhaled deeply. Your shoulders finally dropped and you were ready to take on another day. Levi's heart eased too. How could you realise that he too held a breath for so long and let it go the moment you let yours go too? You wouldn't see how his brows softened when you told him you felt better and his tea soothed your soul. He said "clean up the table before breakfast, brat" but he meant "don't go where i can't follow".

It wasn't until Eren came back and awakened all the titans in the wall, Paradise Island went into a chaotic state. The Yeagerists took over the military HQ and declared that Hange and Levi had died. Heartbroken and shocked from the news, you hid away as they celebrated the beginning of a new era. You wandered into Levi's office, quietly going through his things before those untamed young cadets destroy it for no reason.

Beneath a stack of death certificates of the cadets who used to be in the same tea with Levi, you found a photograph you took in Marley. It was a group photo that Hange insisted on getting. But you noticed that there was a heart shaped hole on where your face was supposed to be. And then it hit you. Levi kept you in a locket and brought it with him to war.

Tears streamed down your face. Your heart ached and you struggled to breath. Grabbing on the edges of the photograph, you blinked the tears away, trying your best to look at Levi in the photograph. His brows were not frown, he seemed relaxed, like he had planned to keep you in the locket all this while. As if he was saying, "you found my secret, brat."

.

When it was all over, and the night sky was bright with stars, you sat next to Levi with his tea brewing by the side. Levi pulled the locket from his breast pocket and gently dropped it in your palm. You knew what was inside, but you were still surprised to see your face untouched even touch the locket was dented. Stuttering, Levi asked "may I..?" He needed to ask. He was a gentleman. "Yes," you needed to tell him because he deserved a clear confirmation. He rested his rough palm on yours. You leaned against his shoulder, and you both exhaled in relief.

The stars had finally aligned.

[alexilulu]

Books I Read in 2024 #15: Slow Horses (Mick Herron, Soho Crime, 2010)

River Cartwright is an up-and-coming MI5 agent on the rise, until he flubs a terrorist bombing training exercise due to a case of mistaken identity. For his crimes, he is banished to Slough House, a remote London clandestine ops site that the 'slow horses' are banished to, consigned to endless drudgery until they quit rather than force them out. When a young second-generation Pakistani immigrant is kidnapped by far-right British nationalists planning to execute him, and River identifies one of the drudgery jobs he's been placed on as connected to the kidnapping, drawing all the Slow Horses into a tangled web of mistaken identity, murder and foul play.

I've already talked about how much affection I have for the British spy novel, so I won't belabor that point here. I like em, and Shannon's mom recommended the show to us and watched the first episode with her during a brief visit in town, so I grabbed the book and ended up finishing it before we finished Season 1.

Slow Horses is an interesting novel. Reckoning with the advent of modern British racial politics in the pre-Brexit era is a hell of a topic, and...It does alright. It's fine.

Slow Horses strengths are in its use of voice and feeling to build rapport with the cast, as it spends a fair bit of the story bopping around between Hassan, River, and the other Slow Horses. They're all very strong voices of their own, and they all rule in their own right. Every one of them has a good, fairly straightforward reason to have been relegated to the back of the pack, so to speak; River's botched exercise that caused MI5 to take a publicity hit due to everything that went down, Min forgetting a Top Secret document on the tube and finding out on the radio, Ho being just so genuinely unpleasant that he had bounced around 10 times before landing in the Horses. It's all good, well thought out characterization, and it's the meat on this bone for me.

What this novel does not do great with is acting as a mystery, or a story you can solve (I know, this again). There are several points during the novel in which it cuts away key information for you to build suspense. It's a crime thriller by way of the security services, that's just how it is. I enjoyed it, and it gives a good cinematic feeling, but it's a little bit like the spy thriller by way of modern James Bond; it's got a lot of handwavery involved to get where it's going.

The real star of the novel is Jackson Lamb, a Cold War MI6 relic who made it home and was the founding member of the Slow Horses for unknown reasons. Lamb is odious, cruel, callous and a habitual liar, a man who conceals hidden depths behind a mask of lazy slobbery, which is quickly put paid to by some slightly hack-y dialogue time and again. He's a man who takes care of his people, even if he seems to be acting to the contrary. He's a bit like if George Smiley were a piece of shit.

Ultimately, it's a perfectly serviceable novel, with only a light bit of movie hacker shit to move the plot forward

All that said, the TV adaptation (streaming on apple TV+ and available anywhere you can run a VPN and type 'torrent television' into your search bar') is actually great. Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb and a bevy of british TV and movie talent have been cast in breezy 6-episode miniseries seasons adapting the (at the time of this post) first 3 Slow Horse novels, and there are a great deal of adaptational moves for the series that is flat out just better decisions than the novel made, both as a story and as a means of adapting the broad strokes of the story. It's just straight up good.

All of that said, I did get the second book, more out of a desire to get more Lamb than anything else. We'll see if I regret that or not. But we're definitely watching the TV series.

[dorianwolfforest]

I dont really know anything about your ocs so I would love to hear all about them if you so wish 👀

You fool, you activated my trap card! Now I will never shut up

Dorian! Is baby. Raised in cult that worshipped aideen. Incredibly sheltered from the rest of humanity. Very sweet and innocent and doesn’t believe people can be mean just for the sake of being mean. Witch on the downlow. Escaped to the circus when he turned 18 and is currently living with ydris as an acrobat.

Rebeca! Is actually a demon from the void your character goes to when all assets disappear and everything is black. Wants chaos and destruction. Doesn’t create chaos and destruction because they spend all their energy on keeping Dorian alive. Torments people when they have a teeny bit of time left in the day. Has no eyes! Alternatively has many eyes, just not where they’re meant to be.

Sienna! Rich girl vibes. Mom energy (because she is a mom. And also because she needs to take care of the other two). The voice of reason. Probably most likely to actually be a soul rider, does not pursue it because she has got a lot on her plate, ok. One of two people in this mess that actively want to spend time with horses.

Percy! Is an e-girl. Streams minecraft. Also likes horses. Not much to tell. Had the worst teenage dirtbag era and then glowed up. Boxdyes her hair black.

Rose! Is actively dying probably. Works for dark core by building their drones and machinery. Hates the MC for always destroying their drones. Is the type of person to upload his consciousness to an AI and spend the next hundreds of years reminiscing on how food used to taste and what a curse immortality is, like a moron.

[bananaofswifts]

Taylor Swift Turns on a Facsimile Machine for the Ingenious Recreations of ‘Fearless (Taylor’s Version)’: Album Review

Swift recreates her entire 2008 album literally down to the last note, then gives herself room for stylistic latitude on six never-before-recorded "vault" tracks.

By Chris Willman

Swift recreates her entire 2008 album literally down to the last note, then gives herself room for stylistic latitude on six never-before-recorded "vault" tracks.

There is no “best actress” award at the Grammys, perhaps for obvious reasons, but maybe there should be this coming year. And the Grammy would go to… Taylor Swift, for so persuasively playing her 18-year-old self in “Fearless (Taylor’s Version),” her beyond-meticulous recreation of the 2008 recording that did win her her first album of the year trophy back in the day. It’s impossible to overstate just how thoroughly the new version is intended as an exact replica of the old — all the way down to her startling ability to recapture an untrained teen singing voice she’s long matured and moved on from. It’s a stunt, to be sure, but a stunt for the ages — mastering the guile it takes to go back to sounding this guileless.

There are two different, very solid reasons to pick up or stream “Taylor’s Version,” regardless of whether you share her ire for the Big Machine label, whose loose ways with her nine-figure catalog precipitated this, the first in a six-album series of remakes where she’ll be turning on the facsimile machine. One is to marvel at her gift for self-mimicry on the album’s original tracks, where she sounds as possessed by her younger self as Regan ever was by Pazuzu. The other reason is, of course, to check out the six “vault” numbers that Swift wrote during that time frame but has never released before in any form, which dispenses with stylistic fealty to the late 2000s and frames her “Fearless”-era discards in production and arrangements closer to “Folklore.” Those half-dozen (kind of) new tracks really do sound like modern Taylor Swift covering her old stuff.

But those original lucky 13? It’s the same damn record… which is kind of hilarious and marvelous and the kind of meta-ness that will inspire a thousand more think-pieces than it already has, along with possibly efforts at forensic analysis to figure out how she did it.

It would not be surprising if, as we speak, Big Machine was putting a combined team of scientists and lawyers on the case of the new album’s waveform readouts, to make sure it’s not just the original album, remixed. Honestly, it’s that close. The timings of the songs are all within a few seconds of the original tracks, if not coming in at exactly the same length. The duplication effort doesn’t allow any detours. If “Forever and Always” had a cold open then, it’s going to have a cold open now. If the 2008 “That’s the Way I Love You” had slamming rock guitars with an almost subliminal banjo being plucked beneath the racket, so will the 2021 “That’s the Way I Loved You.” A drum roll to end the old “Change”? A drum roll to end its body-snatcher doppelganger. And if she chuckled before the final chorus of “Hey Stephen” 13 years ago, so will that moment be cause for a delighted giggle now.

Of course, much analysis will be put into whether the new laugh is a more knowing-sounding laugh. And that will be part of the fun for a certain segment of audiophile Swifties who will go looking for the slightest change as evidence of something meaningful. When “Love Story (Taylor’s Version)” first came out weeks back to preview the album, there were reviews written that swore she’d subtly changed up her phrasing to put a contemporary spin on the song. And maybe they were right, but, having done a fair amount of A/B testing of the two versions of the album, I found myself feeling like I do when vinyl buffs insist there are significant sonic differences between the first stamper version of an LP and one that was pressed a year later. If you can spot those very, very, very modest tweaks, go for it.

But my suspicion is that if Swift has decided to turn a phrase a little differently here or there on this album, or done anything too differently aside from brighten the sound, she’s doing it more as an Easter egg, for the people who are on that kind of hunt, than anything really designed as reinterpretation. Because the last thing Swift wants most of her fans doing is A/B-ing the two versions, the way I did. The whole point is to have folks retire the OG “Fearless” from their Spotify playlists, right? The Swift faithful were already threatening to rain down damnation on anyone caught sneaking an audio peek at the old version after midnight. What she intended was to come up with a rendering so faithful that you would never have a need to spin the vintage album again. In that, she has succeeded beyond what could have been imagined even in the dreams of the few self-forgers who’ve tried this before, like a Jeff Lynne.

Is there any reason to find value in the new versions if you couldn’t care less about the issues of masters and contracts and respect in business deals that made all this strangely possible? Yes, with the first one being that the new album just sounds like a terrific remastering of the old — the same notes, and you’d swear the same performances, but sounding brighter and punchier just on a surface level. But on a more philosophical one, it’s not just a case of Swift playing with her back catalog like Andy Warhol played with his soup can. It’s really a triumph of self-knowledge and self-awareness, in the way that Swift is so hyper-conscious of the ways she’s matured that she has the ability to un-mature before our very ears. With her vocals, it’s virtuosic, in a way, how she’s made herself return to her unvirtuosic upstart self.

On Swift’s earliest albums and in those seminal live shows — at the time when she was famously being told she “can’t sing,” to quote a song from the follow-up album — there was a slight shrillness around the edges of her voice that, if you lacked faith, you might’ve imaged would be there forever. It wasn’t. That was partly youth, and partly just the sheer earnestness with which she wanted to convey the honesty of the songs. She’s advanced so much since then — into one of pop’s most gifted modern singers, really — that the woman of “Folklore” and “Evermore” seems like a completely different human being than the one who made the self-titled debut and “Fearless,” never mind just a woman versus girl. It wouldn’t have seemed possible that she could go back to her old way of singing at the accomplished age of 31, but she found and recreated that nervous, sincere, pleading voice of yesteryear. And maybe it was just a technical feat, of temporarily unlearning what she’s learned since then, but you can sense that maybe she had to go there internally, too, to the place where she was counseling other girls to guard their sexual virtue in “Fifteen,” or wondering whether to believe the fairy tale of “Love Story” or the wakeup call of “White Horse,” or proving with “Forever & Always” that writing a song telling off Joe Jonas for his 27-second breakup call was better than revenge.

If at first you’re not inclined to notice that Swift has re-adopted a completely different singing voice for the “Fearless” remakes, the realization may kick in when those “vault” tracks start appearing in the later stretch of this hour-and-50-minute album. The writing on the six songs that have been pulled up from the 2008 cutting room floor seems primitive, even a little bit by the standards of the “Fearless” album; there are great lines and couplets throughout the rescued tracks, but you can see why she left them as works-in-progress. But she doesn’t use her youthful voice on these resurrections, nor does she employ the actual style of “Fearless” very strictly. Of course, she feels more freedom on these, because there are no predecessors in the Big Machine catalog she’s asking you to leave behind. Her current collaborators of choice, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, divided the co-producing work on these fresher songs, as they did for the two all-new albums she released in the last year. (The “Fearless” recreations are co-produced by Swift with Christopher Rowe, someone who worked on remixes for Swift back in that era.) They co-produce the vault songs in a style that sounds somewhere between “Fearless” and Folklore”… a more spectral brand of country-pop, with flutes and synths and ringing 12-string guitars and a modicum of drum programming replacing some (but not all) of the acoustic stringed instruments you’d expect to be carried over from “Fearless” proper.

Of the previously unheard tracks, Swift was right — she’s always been her own best self-editor — in putting out “You All Over Me” first, in advance of the album. With its imagery of half-muddy stones being upturned on the road, this song has advanced lyrical conceits more of a piece with the level of writing she’s doing now than some of the slightly less precocious songs that follow. Still, there’s something to be said for the sheer zippiness with which Swift conveys teen heartbreak in “Mr. Perfectly Fine,” which has a lyric that shows Swift had long since absorbed the lessons Nashville had to offer about how to come up with a high-concept song — the concept, in this case, being just to stick the word “mister” in front of a lot of phrases relating to her shallow ex, as if they were honorary titles to be conferred for being a shit, while she employs the “miss” for herself more sparingly.

Some of the remaining outtake songs go back more toward the sedate side of “Fearless”-style material; she didn’t leave any real bangers in the can. “We Were Happy,” the first of two successive tracks to bring in Keith Urban (but only for backgrounds on this one), employs fake strings and real cello as Swift waxes nostalgic for a time when “you threw your arms around my neck, back when I deserved it.” It’s funny, in a good way, to hear Swift at 31 recreating a song she wrote at 17 or 18 that pined for long-past better times. The next song, “That’s When,” brings Urban in for a proper duet where he gets a whole second verse and featured status on half a chorus, and it’s lovely to hear them together. But, as a make-up song, it doesn’t feel as real or lived-in as the more personal things she was writing at the time — and the fact that its chords are pretty close to a slightly more balladic version of the superior “You Belong With Me” was probably a pretty good reason for dropping it at the time.

the 18-year-old Taylor Swift is a great place to visit, but “Folklore” and “Evermore” are the place you’ll want to return to and live, unless you have an especially strong sentimental attachment to “Fearless”… which, sure, half of young America does. It’s not irreconcilable to say that the two albums she issued in the last year represent a daring pinnacle of her career, but that “Fearless” deserved to win album of the year in 2008. Has there been a greater pop single in the 20th century than “You Belong With Me”? Probably not. Did the album also have lesser moments you probably haven’t thought about in a while, like the just-okay “Breathe”? Yes. (I looked up to see whether Swift had ever played that little remarked upon number in concert, and according to setlists.fm, she did, exactly once… in 2018. Because she’s Taylor Swift, and of course she did.) It’s not certain that her duet with Colbie Caillat really needed to be resurrected, except it’s fun, because hey, she even roped former duet partners back into her time warp. But there are so many number that have stood the test of time, like “The Way I Love You,” an early song that really got at the complicated feelings about passion and fidelity that she would come to explore more as she grew into her 20s… and just kind of a headbanger, too, on an album that does love its fiddles and mandolins.

It doesn’t take much to wonder why Swift put up “Fearless” first in this six-album exercise; it’s one of her two biggest albums, along with “1989,” and it’s 13 years old, which does mean something superstitious in the Taylor-verse. In a way, it’ll be more interesting to see what happens when she gets to more complicated productions, like “1989” or “Reputation.” But maybe “Fearless” did present the opportunity for the grandest experiment out of the gate: to recreate something that pure and heartfelt, with all the meticulousness a studio master like Swift can put to that process now, without having it seem like she’s faking sincerity. Let the think-pieces proceed — because this is about six hundred different shades of meta. But, all craftiness and calculation aside, there’s a sweetness to the regression that’s not inconsequential. It harks back to a time when she only wondered if she could be fearless, before she learned it the harder way for sure. What they say about actors “disappearing into the role”? That really applies to Taylor Swift, playing herself.

[iricathel]

-> L o c a t i o n s 📍

[These are the most important and famous places in Cephalonia (Owl Clan), obviously there are many more locations in the clan]

-> Lefkó Paláti [White Palace] - Royal Principal Residence

The White Palace is the most important place in the entire territory since it is the residence of the royal family, where the King and Queen manage all the movement that is done politically, socially and economically; in addition to attending to complaints and requests from their subjects from their throne room.

The palace, as its name indicates, is completely made of bone white due to the limestone and marble of its construction. Its architecture is a mix between romantic gothic and baroque, due to its arches, huge rosebushes with striking colorful stained glass windows, pillars, thin towers and its elongated structure with pointed roofs. Inside, the floors remain white, except for special rooms that are decorated with tinted marble and hand-upholstered rugs; many of the ceilings and walls contain small chiseled patterns to give it a more sophisticated and less minimalist touch, as well as decorating the beautiful portraits of royalty with golden touches to highlight their fortune for anyone who visits the great architecture. Needless to say, it contains an air conditioner that heats the inside of the palace when the snowstorm hits the Wise Mountain.

To reach the entrance of the great doors, you must cross a wide marble bridge that is surrounded by cherry, apple and pine trees, cleaning the oxygen as you pass them; contains two large living rooms (one for families and one for visitors), a dance room, an entertainment room with all kinds of games and pastimes, a meeting room (for debates with the High Court), a large library with books of all genres and a transparent dome roof to see the stars, a throne room and thousands of of rooms with their respective private bathrooms and changing rooms. It has a main kitchen where a single Head Chef works with his apprentices to prepare the royals' food whenever they are told; there are general quarters for the slaves and rooms specially reserved for the palace staff. On the outskirts of the palace, a small forest was cultivated surrounding small streams and hidden lagoons, while a large garden protected from the intense cold with a glass dome was planted and cared for; on the outskirts there are also some private hot springs, and going down the tunnels dug under the Palace there is a small dungeon and a heated pool, on different levels of course, but that does not prevent the echo of the howls of pain of the tortured resonate until they reach pool level.

Finally, it is only necessary to highlight the stable for the horses of the royal family.

-> Chlorina - National Garden

It is an exotic botanic garden that anyone can visit, but as long as its nature is respected, since above all it is sacred.

It is hidden inside the Wise Mountain and extends to Sánkar's mouth; At one extreme, his plantation isn't too out of the ordinary for what you might see in the Human Realm, but the closer you get to Sánkar, the vegetation takes on a more fanciful appearance like luminous plants, giant toadstools and fungi, rivers of blood or of Sankar's own blessed water, just as it can have several zones with different climates and its own ecosystem (bugs, animals, reptiles, etc), you can even see pink, greenish, purple, orange skies like sunrise or even completely black. Care should be taken because there are some dangerous species such as giant carnivorous plants and the famous mandrake.

Outside of nature, there are several ancient structures from the past Owl clan that are still maintained to commemorate the bygone era, in addition, the portal to move to the Human Realm is located here.

Its name is dedicated to Chlorina, goddess of flowers and also the first queen of the ancient era of the Owl clan.

-> Néa Ávyssos [New Abyss] - Dungeon

This is a general dungeon, located inside the Wise Mountain and it is a place that, apart from being extensive, is dangerous due to its labyrinths, deadly traps, lava pits, burrows with cave beasts or simply abysses that are curiously decorated with beautiful falls.

There is a great door protected with a spell that only the guards and members of the royalty know how to undo, areas decorated with enormous sculptures dedicated to justice, a portal to reach the other clans and of course, cells and torture rooms stained with both fresh and old blood.

In this place, any member who has broken the law is imprisoned and, after being judged (in the same dungeon or in front of the kings in the throne room if they are someone of high class) it is decided if they will be an entertainment in the coliseum ( where you will die) or they will give them an execution either public or private, this depends on the preferences of the ruler. The dungeon is also used to punish for lighter crimes or to torture in order to obtain information or simply for revenge or fun.

The structures of this dungeon are the same as in the old era, basically reopening the past dungeon to be used again with the wandering souls of those executed in the first era.

-> Adamantinos [Adamantine] - Bar-Restaurant

This place is special for its extravagant neon design, with entertaining places using optical illusions or some exotic design to entertain the public and advertise the place by encouraging souvenir photos with these curious designs.

It has a dance floor, an academy game room, a bowling alley, a liquor or alcohol bar both belonging to the Human Realm and the Makai if you want something strong and that really affects your demonic existence. The music here is retro, disco or pop, some rhythm that encourages and cheers the spirits; meanwhile, the seats are low circular armchairs decorated with an iron dome simulating a cage with a roof.

But the most important thing about this hidden place in the infrastructure of Golden City is that it is only the shell that hides the entrance to a huge casino, both owned by the Avenel family.

-> Megali Periousia [Great Fortune] - Casino

Being the entrance decorated as if they were the very gates of heaven, once you pass through it really seems that you descend to hell in a quick slide to burn in the flames of gambling, vice, despair or exploitation of the ego, the bitter flavor of extremist ambition and heaps, millions of gambling games tempting you to spend your money or even put your very life on the line.

Although it also has a bar with "space" liquors, this section is not particularly the most frequented in the place or at least not the most relevant.

Indeed, these games are not only very active due to the adrenaline addiction, enormous ambition, competitiveness and pride of the Owls, but also in this place crazy bets are made, without any limit. Therefore, in this place you can see many members of the other clans as well.

In this place there are all kinds of games, from the classics such as poker and the wheel of fortune or solitaire, to normal games that are transformed to accommodate them and make bets such as rock, paper and scissors or Mahjong. It is even allowed to invent new games. However, keep in mind that once you run out of money, you will be forced to sign a contract with the winner:

1. You would be indebted to them, but this could not only be about money, but about any type of favor or claim that you are obliged to fulfill without any objection because otherwise, they have the right to kill you without receiving criminal charges.

2. They may decide to make you their slave if they don't see any use in you.

-> Ntaïána [Diana] - Coliseum

Dedicating the name to Diana, the goddess of hunting and archery, this coliseum was rebuilt and repaired from the past foundations of the collapsed coliseum of the first era because there was no longer anyone to maintain it.

Located in Ameyalí, the cultural zone of the clan, it was created to be able to entertain the population of the clan and relieve their frustration and internal rage by giving them different shows: Comedy acts with buffoons, acrobatics along with other types of political sports, combats, games with animals and beasts and also, live punishments for the condemned. [In the style of Ancient Rome]

Its architecture is romantic-Roman and oval in shape, built with limestone and slate.Its sections are: The combat arena; general public seating separate from invited or VIP audiences; royal chamber, where members observe at a great comfortable height to see the entire arena effortlessly and with the protection of the shade thanks to its roof and curtains; dungeons, animal cages, artillery, and staff staging rooms are located in the underground base just below the arena.

As for the condemned, the coliseum can also serve as a trial to give the final verdict after verifying the value of the condemned.

-> Mávro Aidóni [Black Nightingale] - Opera

This construction has a structure with a more Greek orientation, with double domes in a colorful turquoise color, white foundation walls and gold details; however, inside it is like a classic baroque opera.

Inside, a semicircular shape is maintained for a better resonance of the music coming out of both the instruments and the voices of the singers, having a large semicircular stage made of fir wood and long red curtains suspended on a high ceiling that allows the accommodation of up to four floors of seats, in which the exclusive seats for special guests are located on the sides. The burgundy red velvet seats contrast perfectly with the gold paint of its structure, just above the base for the musical group; in addition, the golden lighting paints a more comfortable, warm, familiar and relaxing environment.

-> Filí Paparoúnas [Poppy's Kiss] - Art Gallery

Reusing an old palace belonging to the Grand Prince, brother of King Aloïs, all the paintings found from the past are exhibited here, but also the most modern of the new artists and also sculptures trying to represent the faces of ancient important figures.

The name of this place is dedicated to the poppy garden that the Great Prince ordered to plant as a gift to his wife, however, she died in childbirth without being able to see the poppies bloom. The prince after her death, cremated the body of his wife to be able to bury her ashes in the garden and make the most beautiful poppies grow from her, kissing each petal of these once they bloomed as if it were the back of the hand of his deceased wife.

It is said that if a couple kisses the petals of these poppies, they will be blessed with fortune, prosperity and great flourishing of the relationship since the Great Prince at the moment of kissing the petals, whispered incantations and sweetening spells.

-> Nefrítis [Jade] - Historical and archaeological museum

As you can guess, this museum exhibits pieces and sculptures rescued from the rubble of the First Era in order to preserve the history of the clan and to continue in the memories of the new members.

The old castle of the royal family was used, remodeling it to keep it as new. Inside, apart from the statues, curious abstract sculptures that represent the thoughts or emotions of its former owner and the important pieces collected such as diaries, ancient magical artifacts, swords and others, something that stands out in this museum is a small section of aquarium that they have built in the basement of the castle, with the unique marine species belonging to the territory that were also about to become extinct.

There are even some corridors that function as resting places but the most beautiful thing is that they are connected under the ocean Koralli in glass tunnels to be able to see the current marine fauna.

-> Enastri nýchta [Starry Night] - Planetary

Another establishment located in Ameyalí. This place is the most profitable of the entire clan since it not only serves as a planetarium, which offers the luxury of being able to observe the stars and the heavenly bodies in greater detail, but also contains a huge library that contains books dealing with both astronomy, history and rocket science, but also learning books of all the existing magic in the clan and more.

It serves as a laboratory and library during the day, sometimes offering nights to be able to enter an illustrative room to show on a large cinematic screen the same content offered in books, thus being like an educational cinema.

It has sections of themed sculptures scattered throughout the property and a rotating dome that works like a lunar calendar.

In addition, it has a small cafeteria at the top of its architecture to rest with the most beautiful views of Cephalonia.

[legend-collection]

Pixie

Akin to the Irish and Scottish Aos Sí also spelt Aos Sidhe, pixies are believed to inhabit ancient underground ancestor sites such as stone circles, barrows, dolmens, ringforts or menhirs. In traditional regional lore, pixies are generally benign, mischievous, short of stature and childlike; they are fond of dancing and gather outdoors in huge numbers to dance or sometimes wrestle, through the night, demonstrating parallels with the Cornish plen-an-gwary and Breton Fest Noz  folk celebrations originating in the medieval period.

In the modern era, they are usually depicted with pointed ears, and often wearing a green outfit and pointed hat. Traditional stories describe them as wearing dirty ragged bundles of rags, which they happily discard for gifts of new clothes.

Pixies are variously described in folklore and fiction.

They are often described as ill-clothed or naked. In 1890, William Crossing noted a pixie's preference for bits of finery: "Indeed, a sort of weakness for finery exists among them, and a piece of ribbon appears to be... highly prized by them."

Some pixies are said to steal children or to lead travellers astray. This seems to be a cross-over from fairy mythology and not originally attached to pixies; in 1850, Thomas Keightley observed that much of Devon pixie mythology may have originated from fairy myth. Pixies are said to reward consideration and punish neglect on the part of larger humans, for which Keightley gives examples. By their presence they bring blessings to those who are fond of them.

Pixies are drawn to horses, riding them for pleasure and making tangled ringlets in the manes of those horses they ride. They are "great explorers familiar with the caves of the ocean, the hidden sources of the streams and the recesses of the land."

Some find pixies to have a human origin or to "partake of human nature", in distinction to fairies whose mythology is traced to immaterial and malignant spirit forces. In some discussions pixies are presented as wingless, pygmy-like creatures, however this is probably a later accretion to the mythology.

One British scholar stated his belief that "Pixies were evidently a smaller race, and, from the greater obscurity of the ... tales about them, I believe them to have been an earlier race."

Many Victorian-era poets saw them as magical beings. An example is Samuel Minturn Peck; in his poem The Pixies he writes:

‘Tis said their forms are tiny, yet All human ills they can subdue, Or with a wand or amulet Can win a maiden’s heart for you; And many a blessing know to stew To make to wedlock bright; Give honour to the dainty crew, The Pixies are abroad tonight.

The late 19th-century English poet Nora Chesson summarised pixie mythology fairly well in a poem entitled The Pixies. She gathered all the speculations and myths into verse:

Have e’er you seen the Pixies, the fold not blest or banned?

They walk upon the waters; they sail upon the land,

They make the green grass greener where’er their footsteps fall,

The wildest hind in the forest comes at their call.

They steal from bolted linneys, they milk the key at grass,

The maids are kissed a-milking, and no one hears them pass.

They flit from byre to stable and ride unbroken foals,

They seek out human lovers to win them souls.

The Pixies know no sorrow, the Pixies feel no fear,

They take no care for harvest or seedtime of the year;

Age lays no finger on them, the reaper time goes by

The Pixies, they who change not, nor grow old or die.

The Pixies though they love us, behold us pass away,

And are not sad for flowers they gathered yesterday,

To-day has crimson foxglove.

If purple hose-in-hose withered last night

To-morrow will have its rose.

She touches on all the essentials, including even more modern accretions. Pixies are "in-between", not cursed by God or especially blessed. They do the unexpected, they bless the land, and are forest creatures whom other wild creatures find alluring and non-threatening. They love humans, taking some for mates, and are nearly ageless. They are winged, flitting from place to place.

The Pixie Day tradition in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s hometown of Ottery St Mary in East Devon was the inspiration for his poem Song of the Pixies.

The Victorian-era writer Mary Elizabeth Whitcombe divided pixies into tribes according to personality and deeds. The novelist Anna Eliza Bray suggested that pixies and fairies were distinct species.

Pic by Tony DiTerlizzi

[corpsentry]

ao3 link

fandom: botw pairing: zelda/link rating: g notes: established relationship, post-canon, (pensive) holidays

Zelda stares at him. “What are you, a poet?”

“No,” Link leans against the table like a portrait of god splattered against an average household surface. “I’m Link.”

Hope runs a sharp course in a village like this.            

He tries to eat the icing before they’ve started decorating the cookies like a dog jumping into a pile of leaves before there are leaves to jump into.

“It looked sweet,” he explains when Zelda asks him what in the name of Hylia he’s doing. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a blue streak the size of a scar on his face. Zelda frowns.

“Sorry.” He looks up at her from under his lashes, blinking innocently.

She contemplates pouring the entire bowl of icing on his head, then decides that it’s too much effort and returns to her berries. “It’s not my hand that’s dirty.”

The clock on the wall says it’s fifteen minutes past four. There’s a poisonous spider attached to the ceiling lamp. The berries she purchased from a passing merchant (one of the donkey variety, not the horse; the donkey merchants offer better prices and funnier jokes) are not the freshest, which says less about the merchant and more about the distance between Hebra and Hateno, but they’re sweet. Sour-ish, tangy, with bite. Zelda is very big on the culinary arts. Restoration is a holistic effort, after all.

Link seems to have finished having a long and very serious conversation with himself in his head. He emerges from his wintry stupor with a stupid look on his face while she continues to grind the berries into a pulp.

“But my hands are your hands?” he says, honest as the day he was born. The second time.

“What are you, a poet?”

He takes offense at this. “No,” Link leans against the table like a portrait of god splattered against an average household surface. “I’m Link.”

Zelda stops grinding the berries for long enough to realize she has outdone herself. The berries are not a pulp. They are not a paste. They are not the perfect texture for combining with three times the amount of white icing so that one can make a perfect batch of cookies dripping in blood-red sugar. They are a liquid.

She licks the mortar thoughtfully. Link makes an expression at the oven that suggests he wants to climb inside of it and see what it does. Zelda walks him into the table until he’s leaning back over the bowls and the berries and she’s staring at the underside of his chin.

“Yes,” she confirms, more for herself than the vaguely human-shaped disaster trapped in front of her. “You’re Link.”

::

Christmas in Hyrule is not a celebration of anything in particular. It probably was, at the beginning, but in the years since their ancestors’ civilizations rose and fell and rose and fell and then gave up on the rising and decided to stay in the earth until they sprouted into new trees with new names, the meaning has been lost. This seems like a fair thing to give up in exchange for the festivities themselves, which are silly and full of minor contrivances like turkeys filled with smaller turkeys and children running in blood-red clothing to the highest point in their village.

Christmas in Hyrule is not a celebration of anything in particular, but when Link wanders over to the table with a kitchen knife in one hand and asks her what she’s going to do to all these cookies, Zelda feels abruptly and inexplicably like it should be. It’ll be the harvest season again soon, but that’s not for a few months. No one’s birthday happens to be on the twenty-fifth, though her father’s is close. She stares at the table and tries to come up with a prophecy on the fly, something that will impress the boy with the sky stuck under his eyelids, but draws a blank.

“I’m going to eat them,” she says stupidly, feeling stupid, feeling suddenly like she might cry.

He puts down the knife and picks up a rolling pin. She loves him more than all the horses in the world combined.

“Sounds good. Can I help?”

::

Here’s what Link remembers. First of all, he remembers waking up in a blue box as the blue slowly drained out of the box and the ceiling wilted into view. He remembers meeting her dead father and thinking he was a hoot and stealing all of his shit regardless of whether it was useful shit or not-useful shit. He remembers having his own death narrated to him, atop the ruins of a temple that someone erected to time, while the land whose name he had forgotten reached towards the heavens (him) (he was heaven, at least for a while).

“Wasn’t that traumatizing?” Zelda asked him when he described it to her the first time.

Link thought about this. As he did so his hands in her hair stilled, her braids still half-done, his fingers clasped loosely around a few strands of gold. “It was,” he finally said. “But so was everything else.”

Second of all, he remembers the events of the calamity in thirteen fucked-up pieces. Twelve of these were given to him by Zelda, who had gone out of her way to document their demise in the hopes that one day someone might take notice and pull the shivering ghost out of the water. The last one was a gift from Impa, who had gone out of her way to make sure that he would be suitably guilted into wanting to save the world, and therefore, at the end of the times and in spite of all of his personal wants and needs, do so.

“That one was traumatizing.” She didn’t have to ask this time. He had figured out by this point that she cared very much about his mental health despite him not knowing the first thing about self care (he had a tendency to launch himself from high places, which was perfectly fine until he realized he had left the paraglider at home) and was going to unpack all the dirty dishes in his head even if he was fairly content with letting them pile up.

This made her sad. Both Link’s response and the fact that his survival mechanism for the first three months had been to pretend he was not, in fact, sleeping in a burning building.

“I’m sorry,” she said, touching the side of his face. He turned into the palm of her hand, his eyes closed.

Conversely, here’s what Link doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember the first time he swam in the lake near Hateno (not the one with the frogs, the one with long reeds growing at the bottom that tickle your feet when you swim past), though he swears it must have happened. He doesn’t remember what his worst childhood fear is (his list of things to be constantly terrified of was overwritten when he woke up in the blue box; they’re still working on overwriting that new list now). He doesn’t remember how Hyrule celebrates Christmas, how they stuff the turkeys full of smaller turkeys and the children go diving from high places, and he doesn’t remember that they do all this for no reason other than that their ancestors did it, and their ancestors’ ancestors did it, and that their ancestors’ ancestors worshiped a legend, not a god.

“I’d like to deliver a batch to Kakariko,” Zelda sighs, looking out the window at the long shadow of the sun on the fields.

Link shuts off the water in the sink. “And I’d like to kiss you,” he says simply. “Is gift-giving part of tradition too?”

Zelda blinks at him. “Yes, but, how do you know that?”

He shrugs. “Magic.” He gestures at the poisonous spider in the ceiling who they’ve named Bartholomew. “A mistake.” She walks over to the kitchen sink and wipes her dirty hands on his shirt and then pulls him closer, smelling the cinnamon in his hair. “A miracle.”

::

They hold the annual Christmas dinner under Uma’s tree, between the bridge above the stream cutting perpendicularly through the village and the house that used to stand occupied, but now houses a respectable flower arrangement and several candles. It’s an intensely traditional affair, with the turkey emerging from the butcher’s at eight o’clock sharp to enormous fanfare and the children running up the hill a little after that to harass Purah and ask her for spare machine parts that they can use to build water guns. There’s dancing, because Hyrule has not and likely never will shake off the habit of celebrating anything it is given the chance to celebrate (mourning is a habit they will not let themselves sink into), but it’s slow and syrupy, the apple cider warm, the lights shimmering.

Zelda talks to everyone she can talk to. She never got the chance to do so a hundred years ago between the empty cycles of prayer and the long-standing never-quite-resolved feud she had with her father, and now the war is over and the Hateno of a hundred years ago is gone. It’s a name on a long list of regrets she can do nothing about, except this.

“I love your hair,” she says.

“Thanks.” Nebb sucks audaciously on a leg. “I hate it.”

Pruce, who runs the general store, is sitting in the grass with his guitar the way he was the last time Zelda distracted a trio of musicians and disrupted the flow of the universe. He’s playing a song which he says, when asked, was passed down to him from his great-great-grandparents, who in turn received it from their parents, who lived before the calamity. The notes are soft and melancholy, but it’s the kind of song you can dance to if you try hard enough. The residents of Hateno have been trying all their lives. Through the aftermath of the calamity, when the boy fell but the fort stayed standing and soldiers came limping up through the hills to ask for water; through the winter years, when the harvests were bad and they had to bury happiness in an unmarked grave; through an era of hope, when the boy woke up on the plateau, and wandered back to them with a sword in his hand and a legend on his tongue. The residents of Hateno know resilience like most people know to wash their face when they wake up. Give us this day our daily bread. Give us strength, and water, and miracles. Give us what it takes to keep going.

Merry Christmas, says Sophie from the clothing boutique, and Zelda is trying very hard to remember who is who and mostly succeeding but she wants to ask Sophie if she celebrates Christmas for a reason. Has she had a slice of turkey yet, does she like turkey? Has she ever been in love? The questions prick her skin like needles. Her grip on the stem of her wine glass tightens.

She says Merry Christmas back. The average Hylian does not live long enough to see a hundred. It is a blessing, then, that someone was willing to wait that long for her.

“I haven’t seen, uh, Link around,” Sophie continues, her hands knotted behind her back. “Is he okay?”

“Oh no, I mean, yes, I mean probably—”

Which is when it dawns on Zelda like a horse emerging from the brown earth that most of her anxieties have a name: his.

::

She checks the roof of the house in Hateno first because it seems like the obvious answer. When it turns out the obvious answer is wrong she checks the pond in the backyard, and then the pond slightly further away, outside of the village but close enough to be a scenic spot for sad people who need a place to go on Sundays. After walking around in circles for a while it occurs to her that she hasn’t looked inside the house, only around and above it, as if Link were a bird that can only be found in high, fast, free places. Strange. That doesn’t seem right.

She finds him on the second floor, with his knees drawn up to his chest and his face hidden. He might appear to be sleeping if not for the fact that his shoulders are too close to his ears and the interior of the house is shining. Someone went on a cleaning spree. Someone had something they wanted to hide.

Zelda feels her stomach turn sharply.

“Link.”

He looks up.

“Is it over already?” He turns to peer out the window above his head. “That was fast.” He looks back towards her, arranging his limbs so he looks less tense, so the tension bleeds into the floor and stays there. “I thought it’d take longer.”

“Link.”

Link blinks at her in the warm syrupy darkness like a stray cat in a town full of ghosts, tail upright, poised to run. Good, Zelda thinks. Be on edge. Think about things. She sets the wine glass she hadn’t realized she had brought with her on the bedside table. She sits down in front of him.

“You didn’t want to be there, did you?”

Silence unfurls between them. There’s not much space for it to move around. He’s close enough that she can track the precise trajectory guilt takes across his face. It starts in his eyes and slides down his cheeks and ends in the way he brings his hands together and begins to fiddle absently with his gauntlets. He bites his lip.

“I wanted you to be happy.”

Zelda groans and hides her face in her hands and then curls up on the floor and dies. Just kidding! She doesn’t do any of these things. She’s too busy staring at heaven’s imprint on his face.

There are a lot of things Link remembers. He has told her about a large number of them, in part because she always asks and in part because he seems to have a lot more to say now that everyone who placed the sky on his shoulders is dead. He remembers the important things, like how to swing a sword and how to defeat evil. He remembers the awful things, like dying.

Link’s head is a balloon with an infinite number of hallways. The inside is reliable and steady and whatever lives in there stays in there, but the exterior is frightening in the way that watching a child heave a snowman over the edge of a cliff is. What happens when the inside of the balloon and the outside of the balloon meet? What strange chemical reactions; what magic?

There are a lot of things Link remembers. To the detriment of Zelda and the world that she represents, he remembers how to die for people. Since the calamity ended he has had less cause to do this, which is a good thing, which is the only reason she can sleep at night, but the habit is a ghost on his left shoulder. He turns down things people give him in exchange for a higher purpose.

She sighs.

“Look.”

You wake up in a room full of strange blue light. Someone is speaking to you for the first time in your life. In that singular emerging moment in this new world, they have defined beauty for you.

She reaches for his hands. “You see, right, Link.”

You wake up and there is a voice in your head. She calls you Link. That must be your name. You must be real.

He doesn’t want her to touch him, not in this moment, not with Christmas hanging over their heads like a big bad moon which is going to crash into the earth, killing everyone instantly. He’s on edge and he doesn’t know why. He’s walked back into the burning building and he doesn’t know why. Maybe solitude contains fewer reminders of happiness. Maybe he’ll never get used to waking up beside the sun.

You wake up and you are afraid of everything. You wake up and you are everything. You wake up and everything is yours to save, or abandon, or leave to ruin.

Zelda holds his hands with gently herculean force. She leans into him, her eyes shining with bitterness and frustration and anger. “You can’t just decide what’ll make me happy, Link.” Glitter, stars, the voices of angels in his ears. “Your hands are my hands. Get it?”

He clears his throat. “That doesn’t seem like a very healthy relationship.”

Zelda doesn’t flinch. “I waited a hundred years for you to come back from the dead.”

“That’s true.”

When do they get to the part where the war is over and it starts to feel like it? When does the transition end and the aftermath become its own story, separate from the hundred-year-corpse of conflict, from the misery it birthed in its absence? She’s said all that there is to say. The rest has to be done, has to be acted out with blood and bone, rebuilt like the castle they rode away from on that second first day of her life as Hyrule stepped shakily off of the cold balcony of twilight. Zelda doesn’t know what it’s like to cry anymore, but she can tell you a thousand stories about sadness. She’s lived in it for so much of her life. For so much of the time since, she’s kept it pinned up on the kitchen wall.

“You’re a mess,” she says miserably. “Merry Christmas. There is no Christ. We made him up a long time ago to feel better about ourselves.”

He laughs.

“I figured.”

Figured what? Figured I couldn’t make up a prophecy about Santa? Figured the kids were all joking about the cliff? Figured I wanted you to like this country despite everything it’s taken from you, despite everything it made you give up?

Zelda exhales.

“Can I kiss you?”

“Have I ever said no?”

She frames his face with her hands. Idiot sandwich. Idiot boy. Idiot miracle. “Have you ever said yes?”

“Yes?” He looks confused for a moment and she has never wanted happiness for him more. “I think so?” He frowns nicely and she considers carving his heart out and hanging it on the wall. “Yes.”

She kisses him. Merry Christmas. Dress up in red and climb a cliff near the house you grew up in. Take a boy home and build him an altar. Go to a party and leave early and spend the rest of the night talking about how you’ll never get over the body in the attic, and then point at it and laugh. There will always be a body in the attic. There will always be wisdom, courage, and grief. But the first time he sees a pile of leaves and jumps headfirst into it with his eyes squeezed shut and his knees tucked to his chest, you will forget for a moment that you watched the world end from a tower in the sky, you will forget that hurt is the least dignified part of history, and you will think, instead, of the weightlessness of angels.

[atruththatyoudeny]

Monthly Reads | November 2020

Happy 28th! Here are all the fics I read this month and the one I’m (still) currently reading - a whooping 365k fic! And as always: all my love for all the amazingly talented authors this fandom has ♥

❖ Hang there like fruit, my soul/Till the tree die | louloubaby92 | a/b/o - past sexual abuse - angst - 111k ''You still want me?'' he asks, voice thick. ''Yes,'' Harry's answer is absolute, almost defiant. ''But my hands are empty,'' Louis shakes his head. ''I've got nothing to offer you.'' ''I don't care about that. Do you see my hands?'' Harry asks before he cups Louis' face. His touch is gentle. He's always gentle when it comes to Louis. ''When I'm not holding you, I feel empty, but like this,'' he presses closer until their faces are inches apart. He caresses the apple of Louis' cheeks and that's when Louis realizes that he's spilled tears and Harry's wiping them. He didn't even notice; too busy looking into Harry's kind, kind, kind alpha eyes. ''I feel like I'm holding the world and I don't feel empty anymore,'' Louis knows he's a defective omega. He knows its also not his fault but it is what it is. He takes the world head on even when the world is unkind to him. Not Harry though; stubborn as he is, he doesn't back down, not when it comes to Louis.

❖ an island without waves | tofiveohfive | getting back together - angst - post friends with benefits - 5k Louis feels unreasonable. Less than a month ago, his consciousness was clean, not a hitch in his step. However, since the day the smallest seed of doubt planted itself in his mind, Louis keeps second-guessing himself and his choices. Every time he turns a corner, there’s some variation of Harry’s essence waiting to haunt him. A smell, a sound, a flavor, a color. Something Harry had mindlessly left behind. Something Louis is certain Harry would love if he could show him. Harry is in everything. He’s everywhere. An AU inspired by Niall Horan's songs: Everywhere | San Francisco | Still

❖ can't believe i captured your heart | millsx | break up - implied/referenced charcater death - domestic fluff - toxic relationship - 22k Harry wants Louis to teach him how to ride a horse for a date. Louis wants Harry to break up with said date. Or, the one where Harry is in a toxic relationship and Louis is there to get him out of it.

❖ Want It Flowing Through My Streams | screwstyles | Tennis AU - a/b/o - strangers to friends to lovers - 30k Wimbledon ABO AU: Harry has just qualified for his first Grand Slam, and he’s prepared to make the most of it – that is, until his heat unexpectedly hits him only a few days before his first match. And it’s just his luck that Louis Tomlinson, the resident bad boy of British tennis, is the only person around to help him.

❖ pull me back together again (the way you cut me in half) | 28sunflowers | post-break up strangers to lovers to exes to lovers - cheating - angst - 26k When trying to figure out who the love of his life is, Harry’s brain brings back a specific name from his past. That’s why, a decade after a messy divorce, Louis opens his door to find his ex-husband standing on the other side, asking for a second chance. Or a This Is Us AU starring Harry as Kevin and Louis as Sophie, but I selectively choose to use only some parts of what's cannon on the show.

❖ Pride and Peace | BrklynVan | canon compliant - hurt/comfort - fluff - angst - The X Factor era - 4k Louis stays off of social media and mostly out of the public eye as much as he can. So, when his publicist calls him at 7 AM to tell him that Harry Styles is releasing a Rolling Stone article in which his name appears many times he doesn't know what he is supposed to feel. “I got an email from Harry Styles’ team today about a piece in Rolling Stone. You are mentioned a few times and Mr. Styles wants your approval.” Louis can feel his heart drop and sudden panic makes his head feel heavy. He is quick to calm himself down and realize it could just be about their time in One Direction. “Ah, like music-related and shit?” He asks in hopes she will confirm it’s only about One Direction and he can go back to sleep. “Some parts, yes. I have sent it over to your email. Just to get an idea, It’s a..- its dropping for Pride Month.”

❖ sunflowers, sunshine, and you | soldouthaz | enemies to lovers - slight angst - 28k Sunshine county is small but mighty and Harry takes pride in knowing nearly each and every person that lives inside of it. For nearly eleven years now he’s been sheriff, and not one of them he’s ever regretted settling down here. He knows the road names like the back of his hand, knows the people and the animals and the way the world works here. In all of the time he’s been here, not a thing has changed. So, all things considered, when he starts seeing a beat up pickup truck roaming through town with plates he’s never seen before, Harry, to be frank, jumps on that like a fly on fresh dog shit.

❖ wake the morn and greet the dawn (with hearts entwined and free) | mixedfandomfics | selkies - mysthical - scottish folklore - implied/referenced homophobia - attempted kidnapping - ableist language - 21k It was a great storm that sent Harry ashore. Grandmothers professed they had not seen its like in a generation, and fathers lost their sons to the sea.

❖ Gimme Some Sugar | nonsensedarling | mutual pining - fluff - humor - no smut - 14k Louis is scheduled to work an overnight shift with Harry, the hot new pastry chef, to complete a special order. Into the late hours of the night, they bond over music and the ability to make each other laugh like no one else... which makes it harder and harder for Louis to hide his crush. Maybe it won't be so bad if he can't. * Or an AU inspired entirely by a manip of Harry with highlights.

❖ Meant To Be (Arse First) | Anonymous | soulmates - soulmate-identifying marks - fluff - meet-cute - bad jokes - humor - 5k Zayn groans in response, and Louis can hear the slow rustle of his bed sheets in the background. “Is it another ‘you woke up in the back parking lot of a Tesco’s with no pants and I need to come get you before the cops do’ panic or more of a 'I can stay in my bed and lend you an ear’ kind of panic, because I drank a lot more than you did last night, Lou.” “Uhh,” Louis replies eloquently, “more like an 'I have two giant, blood red handprints on my naked arse, and no, they aren't from a good shag’ kind of panic.” ------ Or the one where your soulmate mark appears on your body where they first touch you and stays there until they touch you for the first time. Aka the one where Louis's soulmate must like bums.

♦ Hiding Place | alivingfire | friends to lovers - soulmates - soul bond - canon compliant - mutual pining - slow burn - slow build - The X Factor era - 365k Louis never wanted a soulmate, didn’t really care for the whole Bonding thing at all, really. Enter Harry Styles, who’s wanted to be Bonded for as long as he could remember. With one fateful meeting in an X Factor bathroom, Louis gets a dagger on his arm and the realization that just because Harry is his soulmate doesn’t mean it’s mutual. From the X Factor house to Madison Square Garden, from the Fountain Studios stage to stadiums across the world, Louis has to learn to love without losing himself completely, because someday his best friend will Bond to someone and replace Louis as the center of his universe. Meanwhile, Harry begins to think that maybe fate doesn’t actually know what it’s doing after all, because his other half has clearly been right in front of him the whole time. All he has to do now is convince Louis to give them a chance. Or, the canon compliant Harry and Louis love story from the very beginning, where the only difference is that the love between them is literally written on their skin, and there’s only so much they can hide.

[n-ugg]

I didn't expect to get tagged but here we are. As you all will be able to tell in a bit, I am a massive Quackity fan

Thank you for tagging me @skeetlehands!

who is your favourite member on the smp?

Look, I love them all but these have a special place in my heart.

Quackity, Slimecicle (I am fully aware he just joined but I still love him), Schlatt, Tubbo, Eret, AweSamdude, and Ponk.

They're just great in and out of character and just have comforting vibes.

when did you first start watching the smp and what made you get into it?

I gotten in during the Pogtopia era since it took me a while to get access to the streams.

I mainly gotten in with the Sad-ist War animatics along with me trying to catch up on Quackity's VODS. Just someone that I was already familiar with being an easier shift into story and learning others through him

what is your favourite part about watching the smp?

Just watching everyone interact with other and just seeing the plot progress in real time. Its literally just dnd but with extra steps but I enjoy it so much

The improv that they all do is amazing and how everyone have different approaches to their characters makes my writer's side so happy with dissecting everything.

What piece of cursed lore is your favourite

That Wilbur canonically fucked a fish and Philza canonically fucked a Samasung fridge and just seeing the fanbase try to change into something that will at least make a bit more sense.

Im included in this, I basically joined the side that has Sally being a mermaid shapeshifting pirate. Mainly because of pirate Fundy

Who is your favorite duo on the smp

Slimecicle and Ranboo: They're the same person but in different fonts, you can convince me otherwise

Schlatt and Quackity: They managed to be super funny together with all of the jokes and balanced with making a very realistic abusive relationship work. It was always fun seeing them flirt with each other for a joke then get hit with whiplash when canon comes in to remind me that this isnt healthy

Tubbo and Tommy: They're two dumbasses who share the same braincell but then they constantly lose it and Tubbo mainly has custody of it

Wilbur and Schlatt: I just enjoy seeing Schlatt messing with Wilbur and occasionally flirts with him to get Wilbur more pissed off

Who are your comfort streamers

Quackity and Slimecicle are comfort streamers

Eret, Fundy, and AweSamdude are my comfort people (meaning I dont watch them as much but I find comfort in their presence. And the other two are also under this category)

Who is your favorite character

Quackity due to how complex his character is and yet how it looks so simple

Schlatt because is just a villian who knows how to play the game without getting caught

Tubbo, watching him trying to be hopeful with everything destroy around him and he just slowly become used to everything going wrong

AweSamdude because he is just trying his best to be a father figure others and I just got family issues

Who do you think the best actor(s) on the smp

Imma skip over the ones that we all already said and get into the ones that dont get enough praise

Quackity: Just how he managed to make his character seem so basic but in reality its really complex. And just seeing the shift from him being a chaotic force of nature to being a serious character that is trying his best to reach something that has been hanging over his head is just *chefs kiss* and he always delivers amazing lines on the spot.

BadBoyHalo: He is doing great right now, even though he is a bit rusty with starting he still manages to get into character and stay in character the entire time. When slowly easing in, you can tell its a bit forced but once he finds his footing, he knows how to deliver his lines.

AweSamdude: His entire bit where he was getting rescued from the egg fucking hurt. How he sounded weak from the entire thing and tired to where he just wanted to rest was so well. And I know he can act more energetic when he was accidentally dragged into playing a cop during Quackity's and Bad's date

Fundy: You guys need to give him more praise for his acting because he is fucking amazing at it. The little touches to how he voice when speaks is so good along with his body language in game. He knows what he's fucking doing and I love him for that. And when he snapped, it made complete sense if you payed attention to his character

I didnt add Ranboo because he's automatically at the top section due to him being a dnd player. Same goes to Slimecicle even though he hasnt acted yet. I dont make the rules. You play dnd, you know how to act

What are your favorite quotes

I dont have favorite quotes, just dialog heavy scenes.

Before Doomsday, Quackity going to take his horse far away from L'Manberg, it being the one thing he cares about. It was just so good

The entire Schlatt and Quackity argument in front of the white house

The meeting between Schlatt and Quackity with Schlatt yelling out to him in a taunting way to where Tommy and Quackity are trying to figure out what happened to the tnt. I constantly rewatch it to feel the adrinaline pumping to feel something

Wilbur's slow descend into insanity and talking to Tommy. Just showing his paranoia and fears consuming him, him projecting his fears into Tommy as an attempt of manipulation, and his hero complex shift into villian one

Schlatt's winning speech of him projecting it as something that was bound to happen no matter what. The amount of charisma and confidence that was in his voice as I was watching Tommy hiding underground in fear was just a perfect scene

Tommy's argument with Dream when everyone is protecting Tommy. Its the small details of Tommy taunting Dream to kill him, knowing he wont no matter what. Him telling everyone to protect Tubbo and everyone listening without hesitation.

The debate that Quackity and Dream had for like 11 or 14 minutes. All of that was completely unprompted unscripted, it was just so satisfying seeing someone stand up against Dream for the first time and actually beating him. Sure it was in a verble conflict but it still counts as a defeat

Be honest, who do you simp for? (Ayo if anyone says Tommy or Tubbo I will🗡)

Schlatt, Quackity, and Slimecicle

Its pretty obvious, I dont really try to hide it

Whats your favorite stream

Uhhhh I dont exactly have one so none I guess

Whats your least favorite streams

Im sorry, but all of the Jackbox stream. You need a specific group of people to play together in order to actually make it funny and keeping the energy throughout the entire thing.

After a bit later, everyone has a tendency of pandering to the audience and repeat jokes. They managed to beat jokes to the ground faster than Tiktok AND Twitter.

Dont get me started with DreamTeam being in there. They're funny in thier own rights but the shipping jokes get so unfunny so quick and they dont know how bounce off of others well. The only exception to this is when Quackity, Velvet, and Ant were playing with Sapnap and Dream. And thats because they decided to mess with the straight white guys into accidently saying offensive shit and seeing those two suffer with trying tiptoe around was so amusing

Whats something about the smp fandom thay makes you sad

This doesnt get me sad, just frustrated and its mostly towards dsmptok and dsmptwt but sometimes this fandom doesnt fucking know how to analyze characters. Like when everyone jumped on Tubbo on being the bad guy when he was a kid trying to use old tatics that knows that worked before and stand up for himself

How when one person decides to do something that they believe is right, everyone just throws the term villian arc around

When one person does one good thing the suddenly everyone accepts into them being good and not ever looking into it.

For fucks sakes, I saw people keep saying that Quackity was turning into Dream or Wilbur and I just sat there being confused on how they conntected those dots that were in different books.

Its so frustrating to read through. But here on dsmpblr, you guys actually understand character analysis, are able to critique them and able to love whoever you enjoy.

Another thing is how this fanbase really puts everyone on a pedestal or objectify them. Just completely forgetting that they're human and treat the streamer as a character. Like, yeah they're playing up a persona whenever they're making content but theres a difference and you shouldn't hold them up like that.

You cant use the argument of "They're young, they dont know any better", when I first entered my first fandom (I was like 11/12), I fully understood that theres a boundary between me and the creator. What they are on screen is a persona but they're still human and I should treat them as such. Its just something that bugs me and its unnerving to see whenever people start getting wierd about it

Final bit is just how the twitch chat acts. They all force the streamer to follow the 'main' plot of it being Tommy or Techno or whoever the fandom chooses to have a favorite, completely ignoring the fact that they are their own character. No one wants to meta game because where is the fun in that but the fucking chat gets so annoying when the streamer goes against fanfavorite of the week. It drains the fun of it being multiple pov's and different characters.

When Slimecicle was barely starting stream I saw so many people spam "Go with Ranboo" and not let him even get into lore first. I hated that I knew it was coming but it was still so fucking frustrating seeing them try to boss him around. Please just let people live outside of the 'main' plot, not everything revolves around your favorites. Now shut the fuck up and let them play

What about the smp fandom that makes you happy?

The people that create art, animatics, theories, playlist, or write oneshots

All of you creators are great and deserve so much more respect then what the fandom gives you because jesus fucking christ they're all so fucking rude. You guys are the ones that are carrying this fandom on your backs and I fucking respect yall for that

________________

Time for da spead: @nixavia @dambette404 and @mocha-is-lost yall dont need to join.....unless😳😳😳

[silverdragon-imagines-blog]

Four and Flowers - Fluffy One-shot

[This was for the LU gift exchange back in the Spring. It was a self-imposed challenge that I’m not gonna do again... probably. I hope you enjoy ^u^]

Read it on AO3

Four often caught themself looking at the various flowering plants the group passed. Maybe it was because of all the varieties they had found, a warm red filling their chest as they saw new plants they had never seen before, most not being found in their own era, but they soon found a want- no, a strong need to see all of them.

It was late one night, the heroes electing to make camp in a secluded area they found themselves in, a more mountainous region of who knows whose era when Four spotted a small glimmering blue flower that shone by the light of the moon. They were on watch and with everyone sound asleep, Four didn’t see the harm in slipping away quietly for a moment or two.

Only once they were a sufficient distance away did they draw their sword, holding it up and letting the white light engulf their body. And one became four.

“Okay, Red, what is it with you and flowers all of a sudden?” Blue crossed his arms, eyebrow raised.

“This may sound weird, but… I was thinking… what if when we get back home, we planted a garden?”

“I don’t mind the idea, Red,” Blue spoke again, “I just want to know what started this idea.”

Red fidgeted in place, glancing between the other three nervously, despite the non-judgemental looks they had, obvious curiosity on each of their faces.

“Well… I liked the ones we saw for one thing, and then I was thinking about... when this adventure was over…”

“You want something to remember the others by,” Vio finished, Red nodding at the end.

“That’s not a bad idea at all, though… how are we gonna do it? And what plants?” Green asked, causing them all to grow quiet in thought.

“I could do research when the others aren’t watching,” Vio offered, “I’m sure we could easily find which flowers or plants would be able to survive in our era.”

“Guess I’ll start by asking about what sort of plants-- er flowers the others like,” Green spoke up.

When they all turned to Blue, he shrunk under their gaze, the tips of his ears turning red.

“I’ll… help you plant them I guess… help you pick them out-- er somethin’,” Blue mumbled, Red beaming at him with giddy happiness.

With the plan made, smiles lighting up each face, they raised up their blades returning to one, then heading back to the camp and finishing off their watch shift.

When they woke the next hero for their shift, settling themself down to sleep, swirling colors of excitement barely let them drift off, thoughts and plans filling their head with vibrant hues, but they found that they didn’t mind tonight.

They figured out whose era they were in quickly enough. Wild practically jumped to his feet when the slate registered the map of his home. Four listened in on the older heroes’ conversation, talk of heading to the nearest village, which apparently they were in luck since Wild said he knew a shortcut to Hateno.

With the decision made, they all packed up their belongings, following behind Wild and Hyrule as they made to run straight down the mountain. Four laughed as the two adventurous heroes were yelled at by their predecessors, though seeing as that was truly the only way down the mountain, the group reluctantly agreed to follow their path. Thankfully, Wild only needed to be told once not to shield surf down the mountain.

It wasn’t long until they arrived on flat ground, a small fenced-in house near where they stood with a brilliant blue horse standing in a stall, a small pond next to it surrounded by a rainbow of flowers.

“Everyone, welcome to Hateno! This here is my house,” Wild beamed, running over to the stall to greet the animal standing inside, “and this is my horse, Safflina.”

Four could see how the old man’s expression seemed to soften slightly at the sight of the mare. Twilight even approached the horse to offer her pets at her muzzle.

“She’s beautiful,” Time spoke, Wild grinning wide in response.

“I’m glad you think so, it’s been a while since I’ve been back, so—“

“Link, is that you over there?”

The group froze at the new voice, though Wild’s grin only seemed to grow upon hearing it. A man soon stepped into view from the other side of the stall, dressed in blue save for a pink headband around his head. He smiled once he caught sight of Wild, placing a hand on his hip.

“Glad to see you back with us, Link,” he spoke, “I took care of Safflina for ya, my treat this time. And I see you’ve brought some friends of yours. My name’s Bolson.”

Four could hear Legend and Warriors whispering to each other, and it took a bit of restraint to not call them out on it. Bolson seemed nice enough, listening as Wild introduced everyone and smiling once it was over.

“Actually, Bolson, do you know if Zelda is still here?”

“You’re in luck, she got here yesterday and has been up in that weird Tech Lab ever since.”

The Champion brightened at that.

“Well, it was nice meeting all of you. If you need anything, Link here knows where I’ll be,” Bolson spoke, smiling as he walked back the way he came.

Wild led them all around the side of his house, Four taking in the view of the field spread out over the cliff separating the Champion’s house from the rest of the town.

“Hey Four, ya coming?”

They startled from their thoughts, turning towards the house and breaking into a run to join the group.

“We may as well split up and resupply. I need to get some stuff to make a meal anyway,” the Champion swiped through his slate as he spoke, “and if there’s time, I need to go to the Tech Lab and talk with Zelda before she leaves.”

No one argued with that, so Four found themself in a group with the Champion and Traveller, off to find ingredients for dinner later that night. As they passed over the bridge that connected the house with the rest of the village, Four marveled at the landscape below them, taking in the sight of the far-off mountains that seemed to stretch on for miles. They passed a few strangely shaped houses, the colors reminding them of their own quad-colored tunic. The thought made a rush of blue rest behind their eyes as they continued to look, annoyance or anger causing pressure to grow.

“Hey, Four! Hurry up!” Wild called out, tearing their gaze from the houses and dispelling the headache, “You’re lagging behind!”

“Sorry,” they called back, hurrying down the hill, “got distracted.”

“It’s not a big deal, just didn’t want to get too separated.”

The steadily growing chatter let them know they were in the village proper, people milling about completing daily tasks or talking to each other. Hyrule seemed to have the same look of curiosity as Four was sure rested on their face. Wild chuckled, leading them into the shop they were next to. Four only caught a glimpse of the odd building on the far off hill behind the village, but it was enough to catch their attention.

“Hey, Wild, what’s that building behind the village?”

“The Ancient Tech Lab,” he replied, though he didn’t look towards them, “I think once I get everything I need here, we could head up there for a bit. I needed to talk to Zelda and Purah while we’re still in my era anyway, may as well do it today.”

Four nodded and stood closer to the Traveller hero who was eyeing the bulb-tipped arrows on display, the sign nearby listing them as bomb arrows.

“D’you think we’ll need these?”

“Not sure… but I wouldn’t touch them. Just in case.”

Hyrule shrugged, looking away from the arrows. Four could see Wild finishing up paying for ingredients, thanking the man at the counter with a grin as he gestured for them to follow him out.

“That didn’t take long at all,” he grinned, storing the items away in his slate, “now that that’s over, I think the others are still wandering around here…”

“It’s your era, they won’t be worried, trust me.”

Wild seemed to agree with their words, leading the way through the crowd, past the other shops. Four could see Twilight watching the kids run around the middle of the village with Wind, an amused smile on the elder hero’s face. Legend and Warriors were outside a different shop, conversing with a woman leaning against the entrance. They had to be betting on something stupid, especially considering how Legend seemed to be goading the Captain into doing something or other.

The Champion led the way over a small stream, past a large Inn and up a path lined with blue-flamed torches. Their pace was hurried despite the steep incline, and they made it to the top within minutes. Four could see the entire village from this vantage point, the view easily taking their breath away. They entered the Lab to find Wild already deep in a conversation with his Zelda while Hyrule was eyeing the several gadgets scattered about. Four, however, was only focused on the bookshelf in the far corner.

Their mind was already alight with violet-red excitement, their feet leading them instantly to the white-haired man standing near it.

“Um, excuse me,” they spoke, gaining the attention and easy smile of the man, “Do you happen to have any books on flowers or plants that I could look through?”

The man simply nodded, grabbing a thick tome from a higher shelf and passing it down. Four smiled wide, turning to settle down against the wall nearby.

“Thank you.”

“No need. Just give it to Link when you’re done with it,” he smiled, turning back to his own book.

Four started leafing through their own book, and as they read, their thoughts began to split.

‘What if we planted Daisies? Don’t they kind of remind you of the Sailor?’

‘I don’t disagree with you, Red, but I’m not sure they fit as well as you think. They aren’t really a sea plant-’

‘You don’t really expect us to be able to take care of a sea plant, do you Vio? We literally couldn’t be further from the sea.’

‘Guys, focus. We’re here to figure out which plants we can even get to our era.’

‘Duh, Green, but we still need to--’

“What’re you looking at Four?”

Their conversation cut off, becoming one once again, leaving a headache behind. They clutched at their head, looking to see Hyrule peering at their book curiously.

“I’m thinking of starting a garden back in my era…"

“Why do I get the feeling there’s a but in there.”

Four groaned.

“Okay, so I want to get flowers or plants from everyone’s era so that I have something to remember everyone by I guess? But how the heck am I supposed to even take care of some of these plants?”

“You’re talking about the Sailor’s era, aren’t you,” Hyrule stated.

Four nodded, sighing tiredly. Hyrule took a seat next to him, peering over the small hero’s shoulder.

“You know, I bet I know someone who could figure out how to get this to work out how you want it to.”

Four only watched with barely concealed amazement as the princess and Wild walked over and started discussing ways to get plants to thrive in Four’s era where they wouldn’t otherwise survive. Wild showed off his slate, pages upon pages of pictures, and the flowers they depicted themselves taking place there. It seemed that they weren’t the only ones with this idea. They smiled wide, a warm red spreading through them as they listened to the others talk. Things were working out for them it seemed.

It wasn’t long until they arrived at Four’s era, close by the forge the smith ran. By now, the group was aware of the plan they had, to make a garden with a variety of plants from every era. Wild had gotten tools and pots that were made with Sheikah tech, they would easily keep the more difficult to care for plants alive, even while Four was on their current quest.

Once the group had gotten settled in Four’s home, the smallest hero started finding a nice spot outside and near the house. One by one, the rest followed, sleeves pushed up and armor long since put away, watching the excitement on the young smith’s face. Four took a moment to watch as the area got cleared of weeds and the dirt turned over to make room for the plants. They decided now was as good a time as ever, and besides, they all agreed that they wanted to help plant the garden anyway.

Four ran back inside, pulling their sword out and raising it up. A flash of white light, four grinning faces, and the four boys ran outside to help plant. No questions were asked, the group only glancing at the newcomers for a moment before returning to what they were doing. Soon, Wild started pulling the plants from his Slate. Hawk grass and Hibiscuses, Silent Princesses and Goddess Flowers, Daisies, Tulips, Swift Violets, and Geranium flowers. When they were all put in place, the heroes tired and dirty but satisfied with their work, they saw the four colorful boys smiling wide.

“Guess it all worked out, huh?” Blue spoke, Red turning to the other heroes beaming.

“Thanks so much for doing this!”

“No need to thank us,” Hyrule smiled back, “though, out of curiosity, who planted that other flower?”

The four looked confused until Vio spotted what the Traveller was referring to. There, next to the violets was a small patch of dark-colored forget-me-nots. Vio said nothing, only looking at them, smiling sadly. He could hear Red asking Wild, but the Champion seemed just as confused by their appearance as the rest of them.

“Just leave them there,” Green said, a small smile on his own face as he watched Vio, “I think they fit in perfectly.”

[quakerjoe]

It is important to remember that, because, as New York’s Sarah Jones writes: “Tara Reade is difficult to dismiss.”

Since she publicly accused her former boss, Joe Biden, of sexual assault, multiple outlets reported corroborative evidence that supports her account. She says she told her brother; The New York Times and The Washington Post confirmed that she did. She says she told an anonymous friend; reporters confirmed that too. She told the Intercept that her mother, distraught over her treatment in Biden’s office, called into Larry King Live to ask for advice around the time of the attack, and the clip emerged. On Monday, Business Insider reported the most significant piece of circumstantial evidence to date: A former neighbor and a former co-worker of Reade’s both told the outlet that Reade disclosed a traumatic event to them in the mid-’90s.

The news cycle moves at a breakneck pace in the Trump era, and time passes oddly in lockdown, but Joe Biden’s coronation and the third-party support for Tara Reade’s assault allegation (which Biden denies) are both very recent developments. Pete Buttigieg, Beto O’Rourke, and Amy Klobuchar all endorsed Biden at the beginning of March; Reade’s interview with Katie Halper, containing her new, more serious accusations, came at the end of that month; The Intercept and Business Insider partially corroborated her story over the last week.

It is, as I mentioned, now the start of May. Thus far, the Biden campaign and Democratic Party organizations have, for the most part, dismissed the story. As The New York Times reports, “progressive activists and women’s rights advocates” have spent weeks urging the Biden campaign to “address the allegation” more thoroughly. They drafted a letter pushing him “to model how to take serious allegations seriously.”

Biden simply chose not to. The groups sat on the letter.

As the Times puts it, Biden’s aides have said they “remained unconcerned about any significant political blowback from Ms. Reade’s accusation.” They are “confident that the allegation will not shake voters’ perceptions of Mr. Biden’s character,” and they “believe that voters will view the allegation with great skepticism.”

All of that could be true. It is also answering a different question than the one those activists and organizations thought they were posing. They, ostensibly, should not be worried about whether Biden can win with a strategy of waiting for these allegations to go away on their own. But that is all the Biden campaign can offer them. (So far. Biden is scheduled to appear on Morning Joe today, and he is expected to answer some sort of question about Reade’s allegations.)

What his campaign is trying to imply is that Biden’s nomination is inevitable, instilling resignation in those who feel queasy about the allegations but who desperately want to beat Donald Trump in November. They want people who might, under normal circumstances, push a politician facing an accusation like this one to open up the Senate records that could shed light on the veracity of these claims to instead come up with reasons why Biden should keep them closed. (Biden has reportedly sent operatives to look through the records.) It is hard to ask the Biden campaign to “model how to take serious allegations seriously” when it seems more interested in following the old model—of having your fiercest partisans defend you in the press with blithe hypocrisy.

But instead of throwing up your arms at being forced to choose between either defending Biden or simply holding your nose and voting for a man you now suspect may have done something terrible, remember—it is only May 1.

Biden is the presumptive nominee in large part because the party leadership coalesced around him, signaling clearly to voters that he was the right man. The most respected and admired figures in the party could now coalesce around another path: Biden bowing out and the presidential contest continuing.

The 2020 Democratic primaries were notable for featuring a huge slate of candidates who were all broadly acceptable to the rank and file. The majority of Democratic voters regularly told pollsters they had favorable opinions of all of Biden’s closest competitors for the nomination. The candidates who couldn’t crack 50 percent were, for the most part, not unacceptable to Democrats but mainly unknown. Loyal Democrats paying the closest attention to the race bemoaned the early exits of numerous perfectly qualified candidates.

Guess what? They can return, if they want to.

The right circled the wagons around Brett Kavanaugh when he faced allegations of sexual assault that were hard to disprove, in large part because he was replaceable. To stick with him was an important display of power and dominance; to withdraw his name and advance an ideologically identical replacement would have made no difference to the right’s larger political project, but it would have been a demoralizing surrender to the forces they hate. There are now some on the Democratic side who feel even more tightly attached to nominee Biden because they, too, are determined not to surrender to the forces they hate, citing Bernie Sanders or Vladimir Putin or both.

But (among the commentariat, at least), there are more left-of-center voices responding with hopelessness or helplessness. I can’t believe male politicians, and the political establishment, are making me do this again threatens to become a common refrain. That reaction would be understandable if the bulk of the corroborating evidence had emerged in October (there is suggestive evidence that right-wing groups had had the Larry King Show tape filed away for just such time; suspiciously, they had it ready to post almost as soon as The Intercept published its story). But it is not October. It is May. Joe Biden is not the nominee. The primaries are still happening. It is within your power to demand an alternative.

The organizations that wasted weeks drafting a letter urging the Biden campaign to come up with an acceptable response to all this could now draft one instead urging Biden to step aside and let the primaries continue. Barack Obama could gently suggest that Biden do what he knows is right. Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, and Amy Klobuchar could unsuspend their campaigns. Or some of them could choose, just as they chose to throw their support to Biden, to endorse a well-qualified also-ran they believe deserves another shot, such as Jay Inslee or Julián Castro. And then the Democratic voters could decide. That’s how the system is supposed to work: 

Neither the Constitution nor the bylaws of the Democratic National Committee require that the guy leading the delegate count on May 1 win the nomination.

If Biden left now, on his own terms, perhaps with some polite fiction about his health or stamina, the rest of the primaries could play out as designed, in a civil, well-managed continuation of the contests, and the eventual Democratic nominee could emerge without being seriously wounded.

Based on how the Biden campaign has responded to the allegations so far, and on what they have asked the most principled and loyal Democratic partisans to do, or even to think, a Biden victory in November could be nearly as demoralizing (if not as existentially dangerous) as a Biden defeat. His campaign is run by some of the most cynical people in the Democratic Party apparatus, and unless today marks some sea change in the way they view these allegations, they will continue to believe that they can ignore and dismiss this story and still win. They may well be right. And if you are comfortable with that, there’s not much else to say. But no one is under any obligation to adopt that cynical argument and use it to excuse anything. They would like you to believe that the choice before you is-

All In With Biden or another four years of Trump. That is not remotely the case.

The alternative scenario is not some outlandish, unprecedented piece of political-junkie fan-fiction, in which backroom deals at a virtual convention produce an Andrew Cuomo–Stacy Abrams ticket. The elections already on the calendar would simply continue with an existing slate of perfectly qualified candidates.

That is possible. It’s not even unreasonable, nor would it necessarily hand the election to Trump. Barack Obama became the presumptive nominee in June 2008. He had plenty of time to unify the party, introduce himself to the rest of the nation, and win the November election.

But just because Biden could step aside and allow the primaries to continue without him doesn’t mean that he will. And it is worth reflecting on why that is. Democratic leadership would panic, obviously, at the thought of changing horses in what they already view as the middle of the stream. But they also seem to believe their die-hards won’t care and the people most vocal about wishing to change things won’t demand a reckoning. They are relying on people already fully invested in a Joe Biden campaign—not just the campaign operatives and donors and elected officials, but the outside organizations and the professional activists, and the think tanks and the media personalities, and even people who seem to do nothing but post all day—to entertain no possibility of disinvestment. But with months to go before the convention, there is plenty of time for people with power and platforms to use them.

[unanoceacaso]

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,            The night above the dingle starry,                        Time let me hail and climb            Golden in the heydays of his eyes, And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves                        Trail with daisies and barley            Down the rivers of the windfall light. And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,            In the sun that is young once only,                        Time let me play and be            Golden in the mercy of his means, And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,                        And the sabbath rang slowly            In the pebbles of the holy streams. All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air            And playing, lovely and watery                        And fire green as grass.            And nightly under the simple stars As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away, All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars            Flying with the ricks, and the horses                        Flashing into the dark. And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all            Shining, it was Adam and maiden                        The sky gathered again            And the sun grew round that very day. So it must have been after the birth of the simple light In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm            Out of the whinnying green stable                        On to the fields of praise. And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,            In the sun born over and over,                        I ran my heedless ways,            My wishes raced through the house high hay And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs            Before the children green and golden                        Follow him out of grace. Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me Up to swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,            In the moon that is always rising,                        Nor that riding to sleep            I should hear him fly with the high fields And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land. Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,                        Time held me green and dying            Though I sang in my chains like the sea. [Quando ero giovane e ingenuo sotto i rami del melo Presso la casa piena di canti e felice perché l’erba era verde, La notte alta sulla valletta stellata, Il tempo mi lasciava esultare e arrampicarmi Dorato nei bei giorni dei suoi occhi, E fra i carri ero il principe onorato delle città di mele, E una volta oltre il tempo sovranamente feci trascinare Alberi e foglie e orzo e margherite Lungo i fiumi di luci dei frutti abbattuti dal vento. E poiché ero verde e spensierato, famoso pei granai Intorno all’aia felice e cantavo perché il podere era a casa, Al sole che soltanto allora è giovane, Il tempo mi lasciava giocare tutto d’oro Nella misericordia dei suoi mezzi, e verde e d’oro Ero mandriano e cacciatore, i vitelli cantavano al mio corno, Sulle colline le volpi latravano, limpide e fredde, E la domenica lenta risonava Nei ciottoli dei sacri uccelli. Per tutto il sole era un correre, era bello, i campi Di fieno alti come la casa, le melodie dai camini, era aria E giuoco, allegro e fatto d’acqua, E il fuoco verde come erba. E a notte, sotto le semplici stelle, come io Incontro al sonno cavalcavo, i gufi si portavano via la fattoria, E per tutta la luna, beato fra le stalle, udivo il volo Dei caprimulgi e dei mucchi di fieno E i cavalli nel buio come lampi. E poi sveglio e la fattoria tornava, come un vagabondo Bianco di rugiada, col gallo sulla spalla; ogni cosa Splendeva, era Adamo e vergine, Il cielo s’addensava nuovamente E il sole tondo nasceva proprio in quel giorno. Così dev’essere stato, appena creata la luce, nel primo Spazio rotante, i cavalli incantati uscendo caldi Fuori dalla nitrente verde stalla Verso i campi di lode. E fra le volpi e i fagiani onorato presso la casa ridente, Sotto nuvole appena create e felice quanto il cuore durava, Al sole che più volte era già nato, Percorsi le mie strade sventate, i desideri Correvano tra il fieno alto una casa, Né mi curavo, nei miei azzurri traffici, che il tempo non concede, In tutti i suoi giri melodiosi, altro che pochi canti mattutini, Prima che i fanciulli verdi e d’oro Lo seguano fuori della grazia. Non mi curavo, ai giorni bianco-agnello, che il tempo m’avrebbe portato Nel solaio affollato di rondini con l’ombra della mia mano, Nella luna che sempre sta sorgendo, Né che nel sonno cavalcando l’avrei udito volare Insieme agli alti campi e mi sarei svegliato Nel podere fuggito per sempre dalla terra senza bambini. Oh, quando ero giovane e ingenuo nella misericordia dei suoi mezzi, Verde e morente mi trattenne il tempo Benché cantassi nelle mie catene come il mare.]

Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill [Colle delle felci]

[popculturebuffet]

Jingle Belle: A Very Special Jingle Belle Special or A goofy holiday comic and a long tired rant about the animation industry

Ho ho ho and merry Christmas as we reach the final stretch of Christmas reviews and it’s all Christmas all the time for the rest of the week for obvious reasons. So we’re starting off by wrapping up Jingle Belle for the season with one more comission. While it’s from my usual client, It’s via patreon as for 5 bucks a month you can get a review a month of your choice. But since that hasn’t taken hold just yet, and won’t till next month, he asked to swap it for this month and here we are.  Not much to cover though this is the very comic where Jing hopped publishers from Oni Press to Dark Horse. The whys I genuinely do not know and at the time, I just know it’s weird to talk about Dark Horse these days. Their not dead nor entirely irrelvant, Resident Alien, which I really want to check out as it has a really engaging premise, is getting a tv show that I also want to check out as while i’m not sure if it’ll be good, it’s still Alan Tudyk playing an alien who can barely pass for human and it hilariously shows. Whenever that streams i’m not missing a second of that and we all know it. And Umbrella Academy, started during bigger days for the company, is one of netflix’s hottest shows and one of many shows on my to do list I haven’t gotten to because I procastinate like no one else and as taking an entire month to get to the newest loud house shows to the point another one popped up, it bites me in the ass a lot. Point is their not GONE in relevance.. but at the same time they’ve lost the huge tide of liscences they road in on. Except for the Joss Whedon stuff, Marvel’s pretty much taken EVERYTHING from them via various deals: Star Wars, Conan and now Alien. Their still standing and makes good art books and clearly given Resident Alien good content, they’ve lasted this long their not going anywhere, it’s just really weird to think about. I will however give them huge credit for giving out tons of comics in early quarantine, and being easily the most generous company next to marvel. I.e. one of the few that actually gave out full collections. 

But yeah at the time this was probably a safe move as Dark Horse had a love of one shots and likely a larger budget. Hence why from here on out the stories are in living color, and have a slightly diffrent art style to boot. Granted the character would shift artists but now it’s got a clear more cartoony art style I like a lot better courtsey of Jose Garabaldi. So yeah with christmas on our heels, let’s ring a ding jing, it’s A Very Special Jingle Belle Special. 

We won’t be covering the backup for this one though it is quite good, it’s just not what kev asked or paid for. 

We open on a parade!

While batman foils the joker’s poisioning scheme, Santa rides on a float proudly and   Jing is hanging out on the back grumpy. It’s a great introduction for new readers showing Santa being big and jolly and what you expect while Jing grumps in the back with a “Sheesh, Daddy”. That’s how you establish a character well in only a few panels. IT’s really great is what i’m saying. Some teens pop up but don’t belivie her about being Santa’s daughter and when going to a christmas shop to try and find figures of her, the owner claims he dosen’t.. and well violence insues. You’ve met jing right?  Anyways Jing is understandably a wee bit absolutely livid the world dosen’t know about her. Her parents sure but her? Nope. And it’s easy to see why: She’s the daughter of the world’s most famous man.. but despite all the holiday lore and junk she’s just the part he likes to hide from people.. or that’s how it feels. While he ducks it, she even gives him a nice save fatty it’s clear that even if she brought it up to rile him a bit.. she does feel on some level like he likes to tuck her away and hide her because he’s ashamed and because she’s not perfect. Granted she does act out and stuff, but she’s still his kid and i’ts still gotta sting. Though she has the perfect idea to fix this: A christmas special. Santa suggests just doing good deeds but Jing is right: her idea is better. Mostly because, as cyncial as this is.. more people are going to pay attention to a good holiday special than a celebrity’s kid doing charity and for far longer. A good christmas special just sticks in the brain and sticks with you forever. It’s why Santa Claus is Coming to Town and A Charlie Brown Christmas have lasted decades or why my list of best chirstmas specials is pretty weighty. They just stick with you so while this can’t possibly end well.. her plan is actually a really good one this time. 

So Jing takes her friends off the line to help her animate it, stop motion styles and they remind her of her LAST christmas special. 

I mean I’m a sucker for any refrence to Star Wars Holiday Special. You’d think after several decades of jokes at it’s expense, with tons of youtubers, many of whom are dead to me but that’s besides the point, tackling the thing without it getting stale, that we’d eventually grow tired of mocking it but .. no. It’s a bottomless well of what they were thinking. The only question left is why isn’t it on Disney Plus.. I mean.. you made a second one as an affectionate parody and in lego. Kids are going to know about this now. Just put the thing up. Even edited down or just some clips. You put Rise of Skywalker up there, you’ve proven your threshold for shame when it comes to this franchise is vast. Just person up and do it.  But Jing’s learned her lesson.. stop motion only and to follow the bouncing formula to sucess. So in the special which sadly isn’t all stop motion and is just drawn to resemble the specials, probably for the best but still, Jing and her animal pals are sneaking into a town where christmas was banned! Meeting the chirstmas legion of doom.. well okay that’s what i’m calling them. Burgermeister Budweiser! Bungle the Abominable Snow Monster! Frost Master and Heat BLister! The Frost Fakir.. wait the what?

........

I mean where do I even begin? I know this was during the war on terror, I know that.. but still I expect better from Paul Dini for a crosses the line twice joke than “hey let’s just make bin laden into an ice wizard!”. I mean South Park made fun of him too, but they went all out with a looney tunes homage. Put effort in. And even years after he died the lonely island did this beautiful thing in the film pop star: never stop stoppin, which you should watch seriously watch it it’s underated. 

Point is you can do better and if you don’t have room to do better then just.. don’t. You could’ve put in a t-rex in a top hat and monocle.  That would’ve genuinely been better... because it’s better than everything ever btu that’s besides the point. There’s also one last addition to the rogue’s gallery thank god. 

He hates her too. Now that gag is actually reallyf ucking funny. What’s also funny is how she solves things. By singing a nice and frinedly song about friendship to reform the villians.. or rather lure them over a bridge to get eaten by her orca friend. 

So Jing after showing it to her dad heads to market it with him trying to warn her netoworks haven’t aired this kind of thing in years. But she faces the greatest threat to all of television: network executives, who keep offering advices and basically change the thing all together for stupid reasons and think cartoons should only be for kids despite it wokring in the past. Aka the hells animators STILL go through. I think Paul was projecting just a wee bit with this one. Given again IT HASN’T CHANGED since then, I can’t blame him. Seriously Harvey Beaks was canceled, among MANY ohter nick shows including rise of the tmnt just because it wasn’t an instant hit, Cartoon Network and warner keep trying to make dumbed down remakes of great shows, and Disney, among other networks, is fairly homophobic and while finally allowing some gay on the network this year had to be fought and outright refused it on ducktales for no adquate reason, caring more about monney and the bible belt than doing the right thing. So yeah as you can tell this bit got to me a bit and was hard to read because it. hasn’t. changed. 16 years and not a lot has changed other than more women are getting a chance. And granted the “kids are our only audiencce argument” isn’t as strong and several shows are powered by other demographics it’s still an issue and still the reason several good shows have gotten the boot and why the jeph loeb era of marvel animation was terrible. Because guys like him thought it should JUST be for kids and the lowest common demoninator of htem. You can be clever and be for kids dammit. 

I apologize slightly for that it’s just something that’s been on my mind as shows dwindle and with ducktales gone the standard forbearaers for children’s animation are all pretty fresh faced. It’s just a lot to take in and i’ts been on my mind a lot. 

Back to the actual story the result is a pretty purtrid cutesy special.. Jing reacts how you’d expect, destroying the tapes covertly with a herd of musk ox and destroying the tape. But they find the 70′s special and we end on that which is pretty funny. The only thing I really don’t like here is the ending. The rest of this special is really good: it’s clever , has some good satire and some really funny jokes especially that hook one. The ending just feels a bit weak.. like yes Jing wanted to be noticed but it’s not really an unsympathetic motive and while she does some shady stuff the villians still basically win by airing her terrible holiday special all over again. It’s just not satisfying.  But yeah overall another pretty decent holiday comic with some good jokes. I”ll probably see Jing again next year, and it was fun getting to dip into these comics. THeir not my faviorites, but their still pretty decent and if the complete collection ends up on sale on comixology or you see it in a bookstore and you think it’d be up your ally i’d buy it. Again not my faviorite thing ever, but still enjoyable enough. Coming up this week of holiday cheer: ducks, more ducks, superheroes, and a best of list. 

Until next time: Courage. 

[aboveallarescuer]

Dany longing for a home, people to belong to and peace and safety in general

As I was rereading ASOIAF, I made it my goal to compile all* the book passages demonstrating either certain key attributes of Daenerys Targaryen (e.g. that she's compassionate and smart) or aspects of hers that are usually overstated (e.g. that she's ambitious and prophecy-driven).  Doing such a task may seem exaggerated, but I'd argue it's not, for many, many misconceptions about Dany have become widespread in light of the show's final season's events (and even before).

It must be acknowledged that it can be tricky to reference, say, ADWD passages to counter-argument how she was depicted in season eight (which allegedly follows ADOS events). Dany will have had plenty of character development in the span of two books. However, whatever happens to Dany in the next two books, I would argue that there is more than enough material to conclude that her show counterpart was made to fall for flaws that she (for the most part) never had and actions that she (for the most part) would never take. (and that's not even considering the double standards and the contradictions with what had been shown from show!Dany up until then, but that's obviously out of the scope of these lists)

Another objection to the purpose of these lists is that Game of Thrones is different from A Song of Ice and Fire and should be analyzed on its own, which is a fair point. However, the show is also an adaptation of these books, which begs the questions: why did they change Dany's character? Why did they overfocus on negative traits of hers or depicted them as negative when they weren't supposed to be or gave her negative traits that were never hers to begin with? Another fact that undermines the show=/=books argument is that most people think that the show's ending will be the books', albeit only in broad strokes and in different circumstances. As a result, people's perception of Dany is inevitably influenced by the show, which is a shame.

I hope these lists can be useful for whoever wants to find book passages to defend (or even simply explore different facets of) Dany's character in metas or conversations.

 *Well, at least all the passages that I could find in her chapters, which is no guarantee that the effort was perfectly executed, but I did my best.

Also, people could interpret certain passages differently and then come up with a different collection of passages if they ever attempted to make one, so I'm not saying that this list is completely objective (nor that there could ever be one).

Also, some passages have been cut short according to whether they were, IMO, relevant to the specific topic of the list they're in, so the context surrounding them may not always be clear (always read the books and use asearchoficeandfire). Many of them appear in different lists, sometimes fully referenced, sometimes not.

I listed the passages back to front because I felt doing so highlighted Dany's evolution better.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To justify the existence of this list, let's see examples of widespread opinions that I feel misrepresent Daenerys Targaryen:

Power is what Daenerys wants and that's really all she wants. She lusts after the Iron Throne with a hunger that is truly baffling. She's not from Westeros, or at least she's never really lived there her entire life. (x)

~

Why does she want to be queen so badly? Is it to bring a more just era of rule to the land? [...]

Why? What will she do with this power? Will she be a good and just monarch or will she be more like her father, the Mad King? More and more I suspect that she will be a very bad queen, only interested in doing what is right only if it helps her secure the Iron Throne. (x)

~

Her ruthlessness can't just mean nothing. She's far too power-hungry and far too cold to end up as a good person, ruling magnanimously over a peaceful land. (x)

Never mind that demanding that Dany asks herself why she wants to be queen is not understanding how the Westerosi pseudofeudalistic system works (or that she outright states that "justice ... that’s what kings are for" in ASOS Dany III).

Is power really all Dany wants, to the point of "lust[ing] after the Iron Throne" (particularly gross wording)? Is Dany "only interested in doing what is right only if it helps her secure the Iron Throne"? Is Dany "far too power-hungry and far too cold to end up as a good person"?

I would argue these claims certainly cannot be made after reading the books (some can't even after watching the show's first 71 episodes, but the show can be all over the place and ... I digress), so take a look at these passages.

A Dance with Dragons

ADWD Daenerys X

The hill loomed larger down here. Dany had taken to calling it Dragonstone, after the ancient citadel where she’d been born. She had no memories of that Dragonstone, but she would not soon forget this one. Scrub grass and thorny bushes covered its lower slopes; higher up a jagged tangle of bare rock thrust steep and sudden into the sky. There, amidst broken boulders, razor-sharp ridges, and needle spires, Drogon made his lair inside a shallow cave. He had dwelt there for some time, Dany had realized when she first saw the hill. The air smelled of ash, every rock and tree in sight was scorched and blackened, the ground strewn with burned and broken bones, yet it had been home to him.

Dany knew the lure of home.

~

Daenerys Targaryen was no stranger to the Dothraki sea, the great ocean of grass that stretched from the forest of Qohor to the Mother of Mountains and the Womb of the World. She had seen it first when she was still a girl, newly wed to Khal Drogo and on her way to Vaes Dothrak to be presented to the crones of the dosh khaleen. The sight of all that grass stretching out before her had taken her breath away. The sky was blue, the grass was green, and I was full of hope. Ser Jorah had been with her then, her gruff old bear. She’d had Irri and Jhiqui and Doreah to care for her, her sun-and-stars to hold her in the night, his child growing inside her. Rhaego. I was going to name him Rhaego, and the dosh khaleen said he would be the Stallion Who Mounts the World. Not since those half-remembered days in Braavos when she lived in the house with the red door had she been as happy.

~

No, Dany told herself. If I look back I am lost. She might live for years amongst the sunbaked rocks of Dragonstone, riding Drogon by day and gnawing at his leavings every evenfall as the great grass sea turned from gold to orange, but that was not the life she had been born to. So once again she turned her back upon the distant hill and closed her ears to the song of flight and freedom that the wind sang as it played amongst the hill’s stony ridges. The stream was trickling south by southeast, as near as she could tell. She followed it. Take me to the river, that is all I ask of you. Take me to the river, and I will do the rest.

The hours passed slowly. The stream bent this way and that, and Dany followed, beating time upon her leg with the whip, trying not to think about how far she had to go, or the pounding in her head, or her empty belly. Take one step. Take the next. Another step. Another. What else could she do?

~

“Drogon killed a little girl. Her name was ... her name ...” Dany could not recall the child’s name. That made her so sad that she would have cried if all her tears had not been burned away. “I will never have a little girl. I was the Mother of Dragons.”

~

In the stream or out of it, I must keep walking. Water flows downhill. The stream will take me to the river, and the river will take me home.

Except it wouldn’t, not truly.

Meereen was not her home, and never would be. It was a city of strange men with strange gods and stranger hair, of slavers wrapped in fringed tokars, where grace was earned through whoring, butchery was art, and dog was a delicacy. Meereen would always be the Harpy’s city, and Daenerys could not be a harpy.

ADWD Daenerys IX

She pushed herself to her feet, splashing softly. Water ran down her legs and beaded on her breasts. The sun was climbing up the sky, and her people would soon be gathering. She would rather have drifted in the fragrant pool all day, eating iced fruit off silver trays and dreaming of a house with a red door, but a queen belongs to her people, not to herself.

~

Treachery on treachery, the queen thought wearily. Is there no end to it?

~

In Westeros the septons spoke of seven hells and seven heavens, but the Seven Kingdoms and their gods were far away. If she died here, Dany wondered, would the horse god of the Dothraki part the grass and claim her for his starry khalasar, so she might ride the nightlands beside her sun-and-stars? Or would the angry gods of Ghis send their harpies to seize her soul and drag her down to torment?

ADWD Daenerys VIII

Every child knows its mother, Dany thought. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves … “They call to me. Come.”

~

Dany slid her arms around him and let him have his way. Drunk as he was, she knew he would not be inside her long.

Nor was he. Afterward he nuzzled at her ear and whispered, “Gods grant that we have made a son tonight.”

The words of Mirri Maz Duur rang in her head. When the sun rises in the west and sets in the east. When the seas go dry and mountains blow in the wind like leaves. When your womb quickens again, and you bear a living child. Then he will return, and not before. The meaning was plain enough; Khal Drogo was as like to return from the dead as she was to bear a living child. But there are some secrets she could not bring herself to share, even with a husband, so she let Hizdahr zo Loraq keep his hopes.

Her noble husband was soon fast asleep. Daenerys could only twist and turn beside him. She wanted to shake him, wake him, make him hold her, kiss her, fuck her again, but even if he did, he would fall back to sleep again afterward, leaving her alone in the darkness. She wondered what Daario was doing. Was he restless as well? Was he thinking about her? Did he love her, truly? Did he hate her for marrying Hizdahr? I should never have taken him into my bed. He was only a sellsword, no fit consort for a queen, and yet …

I knew that all along, but I did it anyway.

“My queen?” said a soft voice in the darkness.

Dany flinched. “Who is there?”

“Only Missandei.” The Naathi scribe moved closer to the bed. “This one heard you crying.”

“Crying? I was not crying. Why would I cry? I have my peace, I have my king, I have everything a queen might wish for. You had a bad dream, that was all.”

“As you say, Your Grace.” She bowed and made to go.

“Stay,” said Dany. “I do not wish to be alone.”

“His Grace is with you,” Missandei pointed out.

“His Grace is dreaming, but I cannot sleep. On the morrow I must bathe in blood. The price of peace.” She smiled wanly and patted the bed. “Come. Sit. Talk with me.”

ADWD Daenerys VII

If she had been some ordinary woman, she would gladly have spent her whole life touching Daario, tracing his scars and making him tell her how he’d come by every one. I would give up my crown if he asked it of me, Dany thought … but he had not asked it, and never would.

~

Khal Drogo had been her sun-and-stars, but he had been dead so long that Daenerys had almost forgotten how it felt to love and be loved. Daario had helped her to remember. I was dead and he brought me back to life. I was asleep and he woke me. My brave captain.

~

“...Bring your frog to court tomorrow. The others too. The Westerosi.” It would be nice to hear the Common Tongue from someone besides Ser Barristan.

~

She went to the parapet and stood there gazing down upon the city as she had done a hundred times before. It will never be my city. It will never be my home.

~

It was close to sunset before Daario Naharis appeared with his new Stormcrows, the Westerosi who had come over to him from the Windblown. Dany found herself glancing at them as yet another petitioner droned on and on. These are my people. I am their rightful queen. They seemed a scruffy bunch, but that was only to be expected of sellswords. The youngest could not have been more than a year older than her; the oldest must have seen sixty namedays. A few sported signs of wealth: gold arm rings, silken tunics, silverstudded sword belts. Plunder. For the most part, their clothes were plainly made and showed signs of hard wear.

~

When she saw the name Ser Willem Darry, her heart beat a little faster.

~

This was done in Braavos, while we were living in the house with the red door. Why did that make her feel so strange?

ADWD Daenerys VI

Dany tried to speak and found no words. She remembered Ben’s face the last time she had seen it. It was a warm face, a face I trusted. Dark skin and white hair, the broken nose, the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. Even the dragons had been fond of old Brown Ben, who liked to boast that he had a drop of dragon blood himself. Three treasons will you know. Once for gold and once for blood and once for love. Was Plumm the third treason, or the second? And what did that make Ser Jorah, her gruff old bear? Would she never have a friend that she could trust? What good are prophecies if you cannot make sense of them? If I marry Hizdahr before the sun comes up, will all these armies melt away like morning dew and let me rule in peace? Daario’s announcement had sparked an uproar. [...] “Be quiet! I have heard enough.”

[...] She wanted to scream, to gnash her teeth and tear her clothes and beat upon the floor. Instead she said, “Close the gates. Will you make me say it thrice?” They were her children, but she could not help them now. “Leave me. Daario, remain. That cut should be washed, and I have more questions for you.”

[...] He kissed her.

[...] “I thought you would be the one to betray me. Once for blood and once for gold and once for love, the warlocks said. I thought … I never thought Brown Ben. Even my dragons seemed to trust him.” She clutched her captain by the shoulders. “Promise me that you will never turn against me. I could not bear that. Promise me.”

ADWD Daenerys III

Dany could feel the warmth of his fingers. He was warm in Qarth as well, she recalled, until the day he had no more use for me.

~

That only made him chuckle. “The Dothraki horselords call the Lhazarene the Lamb Men. When you shear them, all they do is bleat. They are not a martial people.”

Even a sheepish friend is better than none.

~

Dany had never known a home. In Braavos, there had been a house with a red door, but that was all.

~

Westeros. Home. But if she left, what would happen to her city?

~

The next morning Dany woke as full of hope as she had been since first she came to Slaver’s Bay. Daario would soon be at her side once more, and together they would sail for Westeros. For home.

~

Take these ships and sail away, or you will surely die screaming. You cannot know how many enemies you have made.”

I know one stands before me now, weeping mummer’s tears. The realization made her sad.

~

Dany seated herself upon her bench again to gaze across the blue silk sea, toward distant Westeros. One day, she promised herself.

ADWD Daenerys I

She had been dreaming of a house with a red door when Missandei woke her. There had been no time to dress.

A Storm of Swords

ASOS Daenerys VI

Up here in her garden Dany sometimes felt like a god, living atop the highest mountain in the world.

Do all gods feel so lonely? Some must, surely. Missandei had told her of the Lord of Harmony, worshiped by the Peaceful People of Naath; he was the only true god, her little scribe said, the god who always was and always would be, who made the moon and stars and earth, and all the creatures that dwelt upon them. Poor Lord of Harmony. Dany pitied him. It must be terrible to be alone for all time, attended by hordes of butterfly women you could make or unmake at a word. Westeros had seven gods at least, though Viserys had told her that some septons said the seven were only aspects of a single god, seven facets of a single crystal. That was just confusing. The red priests believed in two gods, she had heard, but two who were eternally at war. Dany liked that even less. She would not want to be eternally at war.

~

The dragon has three heads. There are two men in the world who I can trust, if I can find them. I will not be alone then. We will be three against the world, like Aegon and his sisters.

~

She looked away until she heard the doors open and close. Then she sank back onto the ebony bench. He’s gone, then. My father and my mother, my brothers, Ser Willem Darry, Drogo who was my sun-and-stars, his son who died inside me, and now Ser Jorah ...

~

She was Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, khaleesi and queen, Mother of Dragons, slayer of warlocks, breaker of chains, and there was no one in the world that she could trust.

ASOS Daenerys V

“Khaleesi, it was only at the start, before I came to know you ... before I came to love ...”

“Do not say that word!” She backed away from him. “How could you? What did the Usurper promise you? Gold, was it gold?” The Undying had said she would be betrayed twice more, once for gold and once for love. “Tell me what you were promised?”

“Varys said ... I might go home.” He bowed his head.

I was going to take you home! [...] Was there no one she could trust, no one to keep her safe?

ASOS Daenerys IV

Dany found herself wondering whether he was right about Daario. She felt very lonely all of a sudden. Mirri Maz Duur had promised that she would never bear a living child. House Targaryen will end with me. That made her sad. “You must be my children,” she told the dragons, “my three fierce children. Arstan says dragons live longer than men, so you will go on after I am dead.”

~

Dany looked at Missandei. “What are they shouting?”

“It is Ghiscari, the old pure tongue. It means ‘Mother.’”

Dany felt a lightness in her chest. I will never bear a living child, she remembered. Her hand trembled as she raised it. Perhaps she smiled. She must have, because the man grinned and shouted again, and others took up the cry. “Mhysa!” they called. “Mhysa! MHYSA!” They were all smiling at her, reaching for her, kneeling before her.

ASOS Daenerys I

Across the still blue water came the slow steady beat of drums and the soft swish of oars from the galleys. The great cog groaned in their wake, the heavy lines stretched taut between. Balerion’s sails hung limp, drooping forlorn from the masts. Yet even so, as she stood upon the forecastle watching her dragons chase each other across a cloudless blue sky, Daenerys Targaryen was as happy as she could ever remember being.

~

The narrow sea was often stormy, and Dany had crossed it half a hundred times as a girl, running from one Free City to the next half a step ahead of the Usurper’s hired knives. She loved the sea. She liked the sharp salty smell of the air, and the vastness of horizons bounded only by a vault of azure sky above. It made her feel small, but free as well. She liked the dolphins that sometimes swam along beside Balerion, slicing through the waves like silvery spears, and the flying fish they glimpsed now and again. She even liked the sailors, with all their songs and stories. Once on a voyage to Braavos, as she’d watched the crew wrestle down a great green sail in a rising gale, she had even thought how fine it would be to be a sailor.

~

They are my children, she told herself, and if the maegi spoke truly, they are the only children I am ever like to have.

A Clash of Kings

ACOK Daenerys V

It was not by choice that she sought the waterfront. She was fleeing again. Her whole life had been one long flight, it seemed. She had begun running in her mother’s womb, and never once stopped. How often had she and Viserys stolen away in the black of night, a bare step ahead of the Usurper’s hired knives? But it was run or die. Xaro had learned that Pyat Pree was gathering the surviving warlocks together to work ill on her.

~

Her bloodriders would sooner have returned to their great grass sea, even if it meant braving the red waste again. Dany herself had toyed with the idea of settling in Vaes Tolorro until her dragons grew great and strong.

~

It was good to hear men speaking Valyrian once more, and even the Common Tongue, Dany thought as they approached the first ship.

ACOK Daenerys III

Part of her would have liked nothing more than to lead her people back to Vaes Tolorro, and make the dead city bloom. No, that is defeat. I have something Viserys never had. I have the dragons. The dragons are all the difference.

~

“...The Qartheen have a curious wedding custom, my queen. On the day of their union, a wife may ask a token of love from her husband. Whatsoever she desires of his worldly goods, he must grant. And he may ask the same of her. One thing only may be asked, but whatever is named may not be denied.”

“One thing,” she repeated. “And it may not be denied?”

“With one dragon, Xaro Xhoan Daxos would rule this city, but one ship will further our cause but little.”

Dany nibbled at an onion and reflected ruefully on the faithlessness of men.

ACOK Daenerys II

She wondered whether Aegon’s Red Keep had a pool like this, and fragrant gardens full of lavender and mint. It must, surely. Viserys always said the Seven Kingdoms were more beautiful than any other place in the world.

The thought of home disquieted her. If her sun-and-stars had lived, he would have led his khalasar across the poison water and swept away her enemies, but his strength had left the world. Her bloodriders remained, sworn to her for life and skilled in slaughter, but only in the ways of the horselords. The Dothraki sacked cities and plundered kingdoms, they did not rule them. Dany had no wish to reduce King’s Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father.

But before she could do that she must conquer.

A Game of Thrones

AGOT Daenerys VIII

Dany did not want to go back to Vaes Dothrak and live the rest of her life among those terrible old women, yet she knew that the knight spoke the truth. Drogo had been more than her sun-and-stars; he had been the shield that kept her safe. “I will not leave him,” she said stubbornly, miserably. She took his hand again. “I will not.”

~

“All I can do now is ease the dark road before him, so he might ride painless to the night lands. He will be gone by morning.”

Her words were a knife through Dany’s breast. What had she ever done to make the gods so cruel? She had finally found a safe place, had finally tasted love and hope. She was finally going home. And now to lose it all ... “No,” she pleaded. “Save him, and I will free you, I swear it. You must know a way ... some magic, some ...”

AGOT Daenerys VI

“The stallion who mounts the world has no need of iron chairs.”

[...] “It was prophesied that the stallion will ride to the ends of the earth,” she said.

“The earth ends at the black salt sea,” Drogo answered at once. He wet a cloth in a basin of warm water to wipe the sweat and oil from his skin. “No horse can cross the poison water.”

“In the Free Cities, there are ships by the thousand,” Dany told him, as she had told him before. “Wooden horses with a hundred legs, that fly across the sea on wings full of wind.”

Khal Drogo did not want to hear it. “We will speak no more of wooden horses and iron chairs.” [...]

Savage beasts he did not fear, nor any man who had ever drawn breath, but the sea was a different matter. To the Dothraki, water that a horse could not drink was something foul; the heaving grey-green plains of the ocean filled them with superstitious loathing. Drogo was a bolder man than the other horselords in half a hundred ways, she had found ... but not in this. If only she could get him onto a ship ...

~

“My princess. How may I serve you?”

“You must talk to my lord husband,” Dany said. “Drogo says the stallion who mounts the world will have all the lands of the earth to rule, and no need to cross the poison water. He talks of leading his khalasar east after Rhaego is born, to plunder the lands around the Jade Sea.”

[...] “The khal has never seen the Seven Kingdoms,” he said. [...]

“But he must ride west,” Dany said, despairing. “Please, help me make him understand.” She had never seen the Seven Kingdoms either, no more than Drogo, yet she felt as though she knew them from all the tales her brother had told her. Viserys had promised her a thousand times that he would take her back one day, but he was dead now and his promises had died with him.

“The Dothraki do things in their own time, for their own reasons,” the knight answered. “Have patience, Princess. Do not make your brother’s mistake. We will go home, I promise you.”

Home? The word made her feel sad. Ser Jorah had his Bear Island, but what was home to her? A few tales, names recited as solemnly as the words of a prayer, the fading memory of a red door ... was Vaes Dothrak to be her home forever? When she looked at the crones of the dosh khaleen, was she looking at her future?

~

You could never tell what treasures the traders might bring this time, and it would be good to hear men speaking Valyrian again, as they did in the Free Cities.

~

If I were not the blood of the dragon, she thought wistfully, this could be my home. She was khaleesi, she had a strong man and a swift horse, handmaids to serve her, warriors to keep her safe, an honored place in the dosh khaleen awaiting her when she grew old ... and in her womb grew a son who would one day bestride the world. That should be enough for any woman ... but not for the dragon. With Viserys gone, Daenerys was the last, the very last. She was the seed of kings and conquerors, and so too the child inside her. She must not forget.

~

But the Western Market smelled of home.

As Irri and Jhiqui helped her from her litter, she sniffed, and recognized the sharp odors of garlic and pepper, scents that reminded Dany of days long gone in the alleys of Tyrosh and Myr and brought a fond smile to her face. Under that she smelled the heady sweet perfumes of Lys. She saw slaves carrying bolts of intricate Myrish lace and fine wools in a dozen rich colors. Caravan guards wandered among the aisles in copper helmets and knee-length tunics of quilted yellow cotton, empty scabbards swinging from their woven leather belts. Behind one stall an armorer displayed steel breastplates worked with gold and silver in ornate patterns, and helms hammered in the shapes of fanciful beasts. Next to him was a pretty young woman selling Lannisport goldwork, rings and brooches and torcs and exquisitely wrought medallions suitable for belting. A huge eunuch guarded her stall, mute and hairless, dressed in sweat-stained velvets and scowling at anyone who came close. Across the aisle, a fat cloth trader from Yi Ti was haggling with a Pentoshi over the price of some green dye, the monkey tail on his hat swaying back and forth as he shook his head.

“When I was a little girl, I loved to play in the bazaar,” Dany told Ser Jorah as they wandered down the shady aisle between the stalls. “It was so alive there, all the people shouting and laughing, so many wonderful things to look at ... though we seldom had enough coin to buy anything ... well, except for a sausage now and again, or honeyfingers ... do they have honeyfingers in the Seven Kingdoms, the kind they bake in Tyrosh?”

[...] Her handmaids trailed along as Dany resumed her stroll through the market. “Oh, look,” she exclaimed to Doreah, “those are the kind of sausages I meant.” She pointed to a stall where a wizened little woman was grilling meat and onions on a hot firestone. “They make them with lots of garlic and hot peppers.” Delighted with her discovery, Dany insisted the others join her for a sausage. Her handmaids wolfed theirs down giggling and grinning, though the men of her khas sniffed at the grilled meat suspiciously. “They taste different than I remember,” Dany said after her first few bites.

“In Pentos, I make them with pork,” the old woman said, “but all my pigs died on the Dothraki sea. These are made of horsemeat, Khaleesi, but I spice them the same.”

“Oh.” Dany felt disappointed, but Quaro liked his sausage so well he decided to have another one, and Rakharo had to outdo him and eat three more, belching loudly. Dany giggled.

“You have not laughed since your brother the Khal Rhaggat was crowned by Drogo,” said Irri. “It is good to see, Khaleesi.”

Dany smiled shyly. It was sweet to laugh. She felt half a girl again.

~

She did take a dozen flasks of scented oils, the perfumes of her childhood; she had only to close her eyes and sniff them and she could see the big house with the red door once more.

AGOT Daenerys IV

Every khal had his bloodriders. At first Dany had thought of them as a kind of Dothraki Kingsguard, sworn to protect their lord, but it went further than that. Jhiqui had taught her that a bloodrider was more than a guard; they were the khal’s brothers, his shadows, his fiercest friends. “Blood of my blood,” Drogo called them, and so it was; they shared a single life. The ancient traditions of the horselords demanded that when the khal died, his bloodriders died with him, to ride at his side in the night lands. If the khal died at the hands of some enemy, they lived only long enough to avenge him, and then followed him joyfully into the grave. In some khalasars, Jhiqui said, the bloodriders shared the khal’s wine, his tent, and even his wives, though never his horses. A man’s mount was his own.

Daenerys was glad that Khal Drogo did not hold to those ancient ways. She should not have liked being shared. And while old Cohollo treated her kindly enough, the others frightened her; Haggo, huge and silent, often glowered as if he had forgotten who she was, and Qotho had cruel eyes and quick hands that liked to hurt. He left bruises on Doreah’s soft white skin whenever he touched her, and sometimes made Irri sob in the night. Even his horses seemed to fear him.

Yet they were bound to Drogo for life and death, so Daenerys had no choice but to accept them. And sometimes she found herself wishing her father had been protected by such men. In the songs, the white knights of the Kingsguard were ever noble, valiant, and true, and yet King Aerys had been murdered by one of them, the handsome boy they now called the Kingslayer, and a second, Ser Barristan the Bold, had gone over to the Usurper. She wondered if all men were as false in the Seven Kingdoms. When her son sat the Iron Throne, she would see that he had bloodriders of his own to protect him against treachery in his Kingsguard. ~

“Please, bring me one of the dragon’s eggs.”

Irri fetched the egg with the deep green shell, bronze flecks shining amid its scales as she turned it in her small hands. Dany curled up on her side, pulling the sandsilk cloak across her and cradling the egg in the hollow between her swollen belly and small, tender breasts. She liked to hold them. They were so beautiful, and sometimes just being close to them made her feel stronger, braver, as if somehow she were drawing strength from the stone dragons locked inside.

She was lying there, holding the egg, when she felt the child move within her ... as if he were reaching out, brother to brother, blood to blood. “You are the dragon,” Dany whispered to him, “the true dragon. I know it. I know it.” And she smiled, and went to sleep dreaming of home.

AGOT Daenerys III

“Have you forgotten who you are? Look at you. Look at you!”

Dany did not need to look. She was barefoot, with oiled hair, wearing Dothraki riding leathers and a painted vest given her as a bride gift. She looked as though she belonged here. Viserys was soiled and stained in city silks and ringmail.

~

“What do you pray for, Ser Jorah?” she asked him.

“Home,” he said. His voice was thick with longing.

“I pray for home too,” she told him, believing it.

Ser Jorah laughed. “Look around you then, Khaleesi.”

But it was not the plains Dany saw then. It was King’s Landing and the great Red Keep that Aegon the Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had been born. In her mind’s eye they burned with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window. In her mind’s eye, all the doors were red.

AGOT Daenerys II

Dany had never felt so alone as she did seated in the midst of that vast horde. Her brother had told her to smile, and so she smiled until her face ached and the tears came unbidden to her eyes. She did her best to hide them, knowing how angry Viserys would be if he saw her crying, terrified of how Khal Drogo might react. Food was brought to her, steaming joints of meat and thick black sausages and Dothraki blood pies, and later fruits and sweetgrass stews and delicate pastries from the kitchens of Pentos, but she waved it all away. Her stomach was a roil, and she knew she could keep none of it down.

There was no one to talk to. Khal Drogo shouted commands and jests down to his bloodriders, and laughed at their replies, but he scarcely glanced at Dany beside him. They had no common language. Dothraki was incomprehensible to her, and the khal knew only a few words of the bastard Valyrian of the Free Cities, and none at all of the Common Tongue of the Seven Kingdoms. She would even have welcomed the conversation of Illyrio and her brother, but they were too far below to hear her.

So she sat in her wedding silks, nursing a cup of honeyed wine, afraid to eat, talking silently to herself.

AGOT Daenerys I

When he was gone, Dany went to her window and looked out wistfully on the waters of the bay. The square brick towers of Pentos were black silhouettes outlined against the setting sun. Dany could hear the singing of the red priests as they lit their night fires and the shouts of ragged children playing games beyond the walls of the estate. For a moment she wished she could be out there with them, barefoot and breathless and dressed in tatters, with no past and no future and no feast to attend at Khal Drogo’s manse.

Somewhere beyond the sunset, across the narrow sea, lay a land of green hills and flowered plains and great rushing rivers, where towers of dark stone rose amidst magnificent blue-grey mountains, and armored knights rode to battle beneath the banners of their lords. The Dothraki called that land Rhaesh Andahli, the land of the Andals. In the Free Cities, they talked of Westeros and the Sunset Kingdoms. Her brother had a simpler name. “Our land,” he called it. The words were like a prayer with him. If he said them enough, the gods were sure to hear. “Ours by blood right, taken from us by treachery, but ours still, ours forever. You do not steal from the dragon, oh, no. The dragon remembers.”

And perhaps the dragon did remember, but Dany could not. She had never seen this land her brother said was theirs, this realm beyond the narrow sea. These places he talked of, Casterly Rock and the Eyrie, Highgarden and the Vale of Arryn, Dorne and the Isle of Faces, they were just words to her. Viserys had been a boy of eight when they fled King’s Landing to escape the advancing armies of the Usurper, but Daenerys had been only a quickening in their mother’s womb.

Yet sometimes Dany would picture the way it had been, so often had her brother told her the stories. The midnight flight to Dragonstone, moonlight shimmering on the ship’s black sails. Her brother Rhaegar battling the Usurper in the bloody waters of the Trident and dying for the woman he loved. The sack of King’s Landing by the ones Viserys called the Usurper’s dogs, the lords Lannister and Stark. Princess Elia of Dorne pleading for mercy as Rhaegar’s heir was ripped from her breast and murdered before her eyes. The polished skulls of the last dragons staring down sightlessly from the walls of the throne room while the Kingslayer opened Father’s throat with a golden sword.

She had been born on Dragonstone nine moons after their flight, while a raging summer storm threatened to rip the island fastness apart. They said that storm was terrible. The Targaryen fleet was smashed while it lay at anchor, and huge stone blocks were ripped from the parapets and sent hurtling into the wild waters of the narrow sea. Her mother had died birthing her, and for that her brother Viserys had never forgiven her.

She did not remember Dragonstone either. They had run again, just before the Usurper’s brother set sail with his new-built fleet. By then only Dragonstone itself, the ancient seat of their House, had remained of the Seven Kingdoms that had once been theirs. It would not remain for long. The garrison had been prepared to sell them to the Usurper, but one night Ser Willem Darry and four loyal men had broken into the nursery and stolen them both, along with her wet nurse, and set sail under cover of darkness for the safety of the Braavosian coast.

She remembered Ser Willem dimly, a great grey bear of a man, half-blind, roaring and bellowing orders from his sickbed. The servants had lived in terror of him, but he had always been kind to Dany. He called her “Little Princess” and sometimes “My Lady,” and his hands were soft as old leather. He never left his bed, though, and the smell of sickness clung to him day and night, a hot, moist, sickly sweet odor. That was when they lived in Braavos, in the big house with the red door. Dany had her own room there, with a lemon tree outside her window. After Ser Willem had died, the servants had stolen what little money they had left, and soon after they had been put out of the big house. Dany had cried when the red door closed behind them forever.

 [...] “We will have it all back someday, sweet sister,” he would promise her. Sometimes his hands shook when he talked about it. “The jewels and the silks, Dragonstone and King’s Landing, the Iron Throne and the Seven Kingdoms, all they have taken from us, we will have it back.” Viserys lived for that day. All that Daenerys wanted back was the big house with the red door, the lemon tree outside her window, the childhood she had never known.

~

“Those three are Drogo’s bloodriders, there,” he said. “By the pillar is Khal Moro, with his son Rhogoro. The man with the green beard is brother to the Archon of Tyrosh, and the man behind him is Ser Jorah Mormont.”

The last name caught Daenerys. “A knight?”

“No less.” Illyrio smiled through his beard. “Anointed with the seven oils by the High Septon himself.”

“What is he doing here?” she blurted.

“The Usurper wanted his head,” Illyrio told them. “Some trifling affront. He sold some poachers to a Tyroshi slaver instead of giving them to the Night’s Watch. Absurd law. A man should be able to do as he likes with his own chattel.”

“I shall wish to speak with Ser Jorah before the night is done,” her brother said. Dany found herself looking at the knight curiously. He was an older man, past forty and balding, but still strong and fit. Instead of silks and cottons, he wore wool and leather. His tunic was a dark green, embroidered with the likeness of a black bear standing on two legs.

She was still looking at this strange man from the homeland she had never known when Magister Illyrio placed a moist hand on her bare shoulder.

~

“I don’t want to be his queen,” she heard herself say in a small, thin voice. “Please, please, Viserys, I don’t want to, I want to go home.”

“Home?” He kept his voice low, but she could hear the fury in his tone. “How are we to go home, sweet sister? They took our home from us!” He drew her into the shadows, out of sight, his fingers digging into her skin. “How are we to go home?” he repeated, meaning King’s Landing, and Dragonstone, and all the realm they had lost.

Dany had only meant their rooms in Illyrio’s estate, no true home surely, though all they had, but her brother did not want to hear that. There was no home there for him. Even the big house with the red door had not been home for him. His fingers dug hard into her arm, demanding an answer. “I don’t know ...” she said at last, her voice breaking. Tears welled in her eyes.