#the twist is that the human is aware that they’re finding cool and rare seeds

[theshadowrealmitself]

Still thinking about that one post I made awhile ago with a twist

Human who goes from space night markets to space estate sales, just anyone who may have old ass and maybe even forgotten inventory, because if a plant and its seeds used to be popular enough, then even after it becomes rare or is considered extinct, there might still actually be somewhere where it still exists

So that’s just what that Human does, tries to track down seeds in places others wouldn’t even think to check

If they find one, and they know they’re able to, they raise the seed into an adult plant to hopefully harvest more plants so it’s not considered so rare anymore, if they think it might be too difficult, they just hand it off to whichever authority would be best to for whichever planet the seed came from

They’ll also usually hand off the plants they raise too if it’s rare enough that they feel they’re depriving the planet of it

And that’s just what this Human does, travels a lot to odd and overlooked places to buy seeds, categorizes them all, and sees if any need to be returned to their native planet, they don’t even really write papers about it, the most writing they do is if they successfully raise a plant, they write down what they did to take care of it, and share it with whoever they’re giving the plants too

This is just a fun way for them to live their life without an actual job title, it lets them travel to really unique and interesting places, they get a cool seed and plant collection, and they get to help save some plants from extinction, or even very rarely, find a seed from a plant that was already thought to be extinct

So they don’t really think about how others view them, they’re not a doctor, this isn’t technically a “research” thing, and they aren’t publishing papers about it, they’re just living a happy life

Turns out, (unsurprisingly) they’re very well known and well respected, and this all loops back to Vulcans learning a new type of respect for how Humans think but I’m still sick and running out of energy so the post stops here

[bartok-not-bartalk]

This Was Commissioned By the Vampire

On Modern Mythology

Just because paganism isn’t a largely accepted term anymore, humans have always, and will always continue to be polytheistic, it’s just that these tiny associations and devotions have become so normalized, so pushed down into monotony, that so many don’t even notice.  However, many a truth is spoken in jest, and some seem to realize more than others, even if they themselves believe their joking.  All fairytales and mythologies spring as trees grown around seeds of truth., though indeed I’ve changed the names in this particular one to lend it more to fiction.

The vampire is called Nona, and this piece is dedicated to her, as she started it with the idea of a curious but lazy vampire hanging around a group of fae in order to score free meals and because of friendships with members of the court.  Did you know that a group of fae is called a court? We generally prefer team, because that’s what we are, technically, in the eyes of the school.  But if the school was aware of the Geass, they weren’t telling, and we sure as hell weren’t asking.  

What we did know was that we practiced at the Ridge, the Ridge had rules, and we followed those rules. Because of that, or possibly relating to that, the rules that governed the rest of the high school didn’t apply the same way to the team.  We collectively referred to this as “the geass” because that’s what Cait called it— and as a captain, and one of the few actual fae on the team, she was more versed in the nuances of that type of magic than the rest of us.

As for the Ridge, as far as any of us could tell, it was Liminal, and possibly on a couple Ley lines, which was weird, because it wasn’t near anything important. Even the Kaspers, being descended from one of the old forest gods themselves, couldn’t tell much besides the fact that the Ridge was infused with old, old, magic, older than even their own lineage.  Hence, its informal rules were handed down runner to runner as the team initiated new members and lost seniors, the gospel to a strange religion of pain and camaraderie, positive vibes and negative splits.

If you didn’t realize, we’re runners, and the Ridge is our training grounds, although such a crude term is insufficient to describe what it is exactly.  

Anyways, The Rules:

Never run alone.  The familiar can become new again without a second pair of eyes

Always wear a watch, or run with someone who does.  Time keeps its own pace in the trails

Run warmup loop before starting any other circuits.  The Ridge likes it when you say hello

Don’t leave anyone behind, and don’t become separated from your group.  The forest throws voices back which are cast into it, especially near Cop Lake

The bent willow over the lake is the baptismal site under the three gods; Paceus, Speedeus, and Obeseus

There are apples to be found on Mother trail, but only if you aren’t looking

Runs aren’t complete until you slap the sign with the group you ran with.  Don’t walk before you hit the sign, you’re not done yet

(rest of the story is under the cut)

Our Gods, and the High Priest

It was one of those mornings that the sun had seemed to rise early and burn off the dew that it could reach.  Late June, but feeling like August.  By nine am, it was near eighty degrees, and we were all mostly done with our sprints, held at Palzikistan in the burning sun.  Twos and fours weren’t all that bad, just tedious in the suffocating heat.  The geass was buzzing with languor and breathlessness, thirst, and anticipation.  The push for those last fifty yards, the last twenty seconds.  The baseball diamond we did our sprints around was at full sun, and the short oaks and coach’s car provided little shade.

Finally, the last of us finished and stood in a loose cluster around the water bottles for coach to assign cool-down.  As he talked, [cool-down upper loop or any two miles in the trails  back down to the casino for stretch as long as we were back by……… 9:30] the geass shifted, the consensus being that we weren’t really going to do cool-down, but run off as a group and pretend to.  The geass wasn’t really good at specifics, but the likely destination was Cop Lake, being on upper loop and quite desirable being that it was summer and we just ran sprints.

The varsity guys took the lead of the pack, jogging up the path to Cop Lake to “run the loop”, and the rest of us followed, slowing at the trail head’s bottle neck to tiptoe our way up the reverse bank of the lake, gripping onto tree roots and watching our footing to ensure that none of us slid right back down.  Isaac, Chris, and Chris were up in a flash, their abilities allowing them to bushwhack straight up, while the rest of us stuck to the trail.  Must be nice to be part mountain goat.

Up the trail, we went left until we got to a gnarled willow, trunk bent and the primary branch out almost horizontal to the shallow water of the lake below.  Isaac climbed up the trunk and out the primary limb, standing up with confidence that was impressive, especially from someone with hooves climbing a tree.  As we watched, he announced that it was the time for the baptisms in the eyes of Paceus, Speedeus, and Obeseus for any second-years who hadn’t been baptized yet, and Cait explained that the ceremony entailed climbing up the tree, the High Priest (Isaac) saying the rites, and then jumping into the lake.

Stehlar was up first.  He climbed up the tree after Isaac and crouched over the lake on the twisted limb, which swayed with the addition of his weight.  Someone behind me whispered about one or both of them falling into the lake, and a few of us watched with a nervous eye, waiting for the inevitable.  Still others watched the trail for coach, as technically we were supposed to be on cool-down on the loop around the lake, not jumping in it.  But mostly we were watching Isaac stand on the limb with Chris, proclaiming him to be baptized in the eyes of Paceus, the provider of the intelligence and endurance to run a smart race; Speedeus, the giver of speed to pass competitors in the course; and Obeseus, protector from the fats.  He yelled this to the lake, claiming it his right as the current high priest.

Then, like an unsure baby bird trying to fly the nest, Chris tried to jump off the limb, which heaved heavily under his weight before he plummeted like a stone into the lake.  Several whooped, and soon Isaac and a few others joined him, pleading that we were all so sweaty anyways, coach wouldn’t notice the extra level of wet at stretch.  Anyways, if he did, he didn’t say.

It’s Rude to Geass a Vampire

“Did anyone feed Nona?��� I asked at the end of practice, not seeing the bat in either of her forms anywhere in the casino.

“I did”, Chris (Bertola) snickered, grinning in a way that I knew I wasn’t going to like what he’d done.

“Chris… you didn’t give her your own, did you?” Vampires could handle the blood of the geass’d, but the more potent the effect of the geass on someone, the more… curious the effects of their blood would be on any bloodsucker unfortunate to prey on them.  It affected everyone differently, and some vampires even chose to drink fae or geass’d blood, but since the geass on the team involved the compulsion to run, and Nona wasn’t a fan of cardio, she generally steered clear, especially of the varsity runners.

“Nah,” Chris answered, “I told her to go ask Wert”

“Oh god,” I covered my face with my palm.  “What happened.”

“She went that way,” he said, pointing out over the warm up hill, “Faster than I’ve ever seen her fly.”

“CHRIS” I exclaimed, “How many times do i have to tell you, geassing a vampire is extremely rude, and Nona doesn’t like cardio! She’s probably a few miles into Canada by now!”

“Maybe she’ll make it all the way back to Romania.”

“Wrong direction, bird brain, I’ll see if I can get Marin to catch her before she gets too far.” It truly was lucky that we had a venti on the team at times like this.

The Cult Meetings Before First Period

The best part about secrets is if they're out in the open all the time, people care less.  It might be scandalous if someone’s cheating, but if the whole school knows and doesn’t care, then it’s old news.  This was the principle most of us applied to the school rules.  The whole school was cheating on the reality most people believed in, but since we all knew it, it wasn’t really that big of a deal.

Hence, technically the unwritten school rules required that students use glamours and refrain from taking advantage of any… supernatural abilities to excel in academics or other school activities, but like the cell phone rule, it was largely ignored as much as possible.  So what if a senior’s footsteps sounded more like the clomping of hooves as they loped down the hallway to gym, because he was clearly wearing sneakers.  Or that the selkies and sirens, and a few veela dominated the choral and dramatic arts, because no one could really prove anything without admitting that something might be amiss in the first place.

Such was observed with the clumping of the team before first period in the second floor main hallway around the lockers of the Kaspers and Noot.  We still let people through, and there weren’t any fights or misconduct involved with our gathering, so it was fine.  The rare human who had a locker in our clump was interesting to witness though.  Since the school was located on an old crossroads, mildly liminal itself, there weren’t really many true, pure-blooded humans, but then again it was hard to find a pure blood anything anymore, especially in america.  There were however a good many bloodlines that were extremely diluted, sometimes to the point where the family wasn’t even aware of their heritage, just moved to the town for some reason they couldn’t explain, drawn to it’s latent energy without even consciously knowing it.

In any case, on this particular day Maeve, a selkie removed several generations, was getting the percent error on the most recent chem lab from Liv and Noot.  I was sitting on the ground with Mason and Caleb, doing geometry homework and helping Mason with his bio, not that he needed it, really.  She must have realized something weird, like the fact that Sierra didn’t have a shadow (nephilim are beings of light therefore can’t create shadow), or that when Marin walked by there was a slight breeze even though we were indoors, because half joking, when Noot handed her lab back she asked “Jeez are any of you actually human?”

A bunch of us looked up, the upperclassmen smiling wryly.  A freshman raised his hand, unironic. Noot snorted without even looking up from her phone.

“Mason, put your hand down.”

Emma lowered it for him.

“Glucose is C6H12O6” I said, tapping his biology notes.  He paused and recorded the answer.  Maeve was back to laughing with Noot and Liv over chem, and Andrew had joined them next to Liv.  Elise and Angela were trying to see who could boil their water bottles faster, Elise using her breath and Angela relying on the tiny, green flames she held in her palm.  Mason watched this with a slightly vacant gaze.

“What did she mean, ‘are any of us human?’” he asked, confused, “I mean, I know Isaac and Stehlar are satyr, and Cait, Emily, and Oni are… something, and Elise, but the rest of the team is normal, right?”

I smirked. “Mason, very few people here are what you would consider fully human.  With this team in particular though, there is a geass involved.”  Intent magic was pretty strong, and it was a little weird he hadn’t noticed, or recognized it for what it was, especially because he himself was at least a quarter empath, whether he knew it or not.  They tended to be more sensitive to those kinds of magic than say, satyrs or venti.

“Isn’t that like a wish?” He inquired, watching as Elise’s water bottle boiled over, landing on Angela’s shoes and quickly evaporating again on contact.

“Kind of,” I started, “A geass is fae magic.  Very old, very powerful, and very finicky.  The geass on this team particularly connects us and keeps us safe, and allows the team to draw power off of our own running and the liminality of the Ridge, the catch being that it only lasts as long as we continue running, and is only as strong as our drive and dedication to it.  Higher mileage, greater geass affect, tighter the team gets, and the easier we fit into the Ridge.”

He nodded, picking at a corner of his homework. “What do you mean, draw power?”

“For those of us that aren’t human, it enhances any latent abilities that may have been diluted by the generations, and it allows all of us to recover faster, run longer, and also gives us a slight emotional connection beyond what you would consider normal empathy. Like… if someone got injured, we’d know, and also how to find them.”

“What does it do to humans?”

“Well, first, while under it’s effect, you’re not human, you’re more like a fae/human hybrid of some sort, I’m not sure what it’s called…. ask Cait.”

He nodded again, jotting down the next answer to his assignment and looked over at Angela and Elise again.  Elise was teaching Angela how to toast bread without burning it with her flames, though it was more comical to watch Elise herself breath fire onto her toast than Angela’s green palm flames (the later were more effective at not burning the toast).

“Without the geass are you human?” Mason asked, half-serious.

“Nah”

“What are you?” He asked, looking again pointedly at Angela and Elise.

“I’m not a dragon or a hedge witch, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That’s not an answer.” he said, smiling with a huff.

“Fine,” I said, giving in, “Without the geass, I’m part immortal on my mother’s side.”  On the other side it was pretty obvious as to what I was, the last name Morozkovna didn’t exactly lend itself to subtlety.  But Mason, and most everyone else in the student population, didn’t know the evolution of Rus’ surnames and so almost no one ever asked, and no one ever knew.  

A secret in plain site is much less exciting than one trying to hide.

“Without the geass am I human?”

“Nah,”

“WHAT?!”

The Eldritch Horror and the Cameraman

“Morozkovna” I heard from behind me, “Are the early frosts this year your doing?”

I turned around.

“Hi Messina,” I started, waving to him with my coffee, “Why would I have anything to do with it?”  

Messina smiled, and time hiccoughed, the same junior that had just walked past doing it again, the world seeming for a second like a rewound cassette tape.  Very distinctive time magic.  I rolled my eyes.  It was too early in the morning to exorcise my cousin out of Messina.

“Mephisto, why the fuck are you possessing Nathan?” I asked, incredulous.

“He’s not possessing me.” Messina deadpanned, falling back into his normal voice. “I was just messing with you.”

“He was just a second ago, but since you’re able to apparently thwart possession in less than a second, please explain.”

Mephistopheles was a very old deity, chaos based, the illegitimate child of mortal fear of damnation and a nice cocktail of chaos magic and satanism.  Not as old as my parents, though the chaos part of him came from my father’s brother, making him my cousin!  Messina did have a fair bit of warlock in him, but even a full warlock would have a hard time freeing themselves of chaos magic and my idiot cousin.

“I summoned him, but used the wrong binding circle, I thought he was something besides what he was, and he escaped and possessed me.” Messina deadpanned.

“What got you back to being un-possessed that allowed you to keep some of his magic?”

“Oh no,” Messina corrected, ‘He’s still possessing my physical body, but after he possessed me I decided to possess him back.  He wasn’t too happy about that.”

“No, I wouldn’t think so,” I responded absently, still processing the fact that my idiot cousin got summoned, possessed Messina, and then got possessed by Messina.

“Hey, is he seeing this now?” I asked

“Yes,” he said, laughing, “He’s furious you’re laughing at him,” he paused, as if listening, “something about you being a weakling who couldn’t even light a candle against the roaring, centuries old flame that is his power.”

I lost it at the candle.  Well no shit Mephisto I can’t light a candle, my dominion is  winter.  

“Make sure to watch plenty of hallmark movies,” I instructed Nathan, “He hates happy endings.”

Prerace

Fridays were interesting.  Especially later in the day.  The excitement of the students caused… curious occurrences and thin wearing glamours.  The chorus teacher wouldn’t hold any lessons after fifth period, because once a senior siren accidentally charmed a couple cellists in the next room over.  The halls were crowded, and the flow of time didn’t seem to follow the normal laws.  Even the teachers were affected, the english teacher’s horns and the smell of salt in one of the global teacher’s room not going unnoticed.  The team didn’t even bother with glamour on Fridays, or concealing the geass.  It was prerace, which meant a short workout and a pasta party.  Our honest excitement killed even the strongest of our glamours even before the geass magnified it a few times.  Glamours were concealment magic, and their price was restraint, making them simple to cast, but difficult to maintain when excited, or overly emotional in general.

Elise’s tail flickered in and out of existence, knocking backpacks at random.  Angela crackled with sage-green energy, and Chris didn’t even try to conceal his hooves has he came down the hall with Lily.  A pencil that Blake was holding sprouted a few leaves and tried to grow as he was doing trig, so someone gave him a mechanical. Even I let go a little, and frost creeped up the sides of the locker I was leaning against. Sierra was legitimately glowing, I’m pretty sure that Ruby’s feet weren’t touching the ground, and Nyah’s pants changed pattern with her movements, the bars of black and white that made up the lines in the geometric pattern folding over themselves and twisting like a kaleidoscope.

Finally, after eight long classes, school was over, and it was time for prerace.  At 3:30 at least, Mau was first.  Since we were banned from wall ball, Mau has taken the place for favorite pre practice game  [besides drawasaurus, that is].  Mau is a game that was originally spawned from the Germanic game Mau Mau, though it is played differently every time.  The only things that new players or outsiders to the game are told is as follows:

We’re playing Mau

We can’t tell you the rules, but it’s played similar to uno

While the game is in session we can’t talk

Generally, you lose until you figure out how the game is played.  Sitting and watching the game played works too, but you learn faster when your own neck i s on the line; figuratively, of course.  It’s taken as seriously as any practice, and as competitively as any race.  Communication through the geass and other means with other players was also forbidden during Mau.  Cait took care of that with a temporary contract agreed to verbally by all of the players by picking up the cards.  Fae magic prevents a breech in contract, and besides most of us were non-human enough to be unable to even before that measure.

I get my hand and it frosts over immediately, its so bad.  Messina smiles slowly at it from across the table, he being the only one partially exempt from the communication rule, as I’m not sure Cait knows about Mephisto.  Emily starts the round, at Cait’s command of “Meeting in session”.  

We all pick up our cards and Emily flips a 7.