#then let catastrophe befall us both

[bfpnola]

IMAGE DESCRIPTION ADDED. REBLOG THIS VERSION AND THANK YOU @lab-labrava FOR WRITING IT!

ID: An infographic from the Instagram account @letstalkpalestine consisting of 10 slides. Image 1: The title page of the infographic. The text says: "Let's talk Anti-Zionist Jewish History." A smaller subtitle underneath the title says: "Jewish solidarity with Palestine until today." End ID.

Image 2: The infographic continues to the next panel. The text says, "As long as Zionism has existed, so has Jewish resistance to it. While today the majority of Jewish people and communities worldwide still have a Zionist connection, more and more Jewish people, especially from the younger generation, are unlearning Zionism & speaking out. Swipe to learn more about just part of anti-Zionist Jewish history - since there's more than we can fit in 10 slides." A semi-transparent image is overlayed in the background, of someone holding up a sign that reads: Jews for Palestine! #Free Sheik Jarrah. End ID.

Image 3: Icon of a location tag next to the words Eastern Europe. In large, blue text is the word "The Bund" and the subtitle describing what it is, "A Jewish Socialist movement, established in 1987." The following paragraph says, "Opposing Zionism from the start, its 50-year tenure saw hundred of thousands of members across Eastern Europe advocate for workers' rights and cultivate a Yiddish culture." Location tag and the title, "North America." The paragraph says, "After mass immigration to the US in the early 20th century, [American Jewish Labor groups] (highlighted in chalky blue and bold white text) criticized Zionism for its colonial, nationalist, and bourgeois nature." Next to this text, is a circle with women protestors holding up signs. End ID.

Image 4: The title, "Middle East and North Africa." The paragraph states, "In 1945 a group of Iraqi Jews founded the Anti-Zionist League. They recognized Zionism as a form of colonialism linked to Western Interests. They hosted events and published pamphlets throughout the Middle East about the difference between Zionism & Judaism. They warned that Zionism is dangerous to Arab Jews, forcing them to split their Arab and Jewish identities, and urged the UN to create a unified Palestinian state.

Image 5: The panel is titled, "Anti-Zionist Jewish figures." A faded image of Hannah Arendt's visage is in the background. Overlayed on top, the following paragraphs discuss her. "Before 1948, several prominent Jewish leaders and scholars came out in opposition to political Zionism. Writers like Hannah Arendt turned against the Zionist movement and opposed a Jewish state. They correctly predicted a dark future if Zionism continued on the same path in Palestine. End ID.

Image 6: The day after the Deir Yassin Massacre in 1948, when Zionist militants wiped out the Deir Yassin village & its inhabitants, Albert Einstein wrote: "When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organizations built up from our own ranks. I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people." The former paragraphs are imposed against a tan, parchment fragment, in typewriter font, and the letter ends with Sincerely yourn, Albert Einstein, both his signature and typed name. End ID.

Image 7: Titled "Anti Zionism Today." Blue sketchy image of someone's hand gripping jail bars breaks up the following paragraphs which say: Jewish solidarity with Palestinians is growing around the world, including even some Israelis who take the basic step of refusing Israeli military service. As punishment, Israel imprisons these conscientious objectors — but unlike Palestininas, they have a fair trial & often severe relatively short sentences of a few months . This is a first step towards solidarity and has the real consequence of depriving the occupation state of its soldiers. End ID.

Image 8: Titled "Israel's Crackdown on Jewish Anti-Zionism" Behind this text are a picture of handcuffs. In the corner is a picture of Jonathan Pollak. The following text says: Jonathan Pollak is a Jewish Israeli and long-time anti-Zionist activist. Israel has detained him several times, most recetly in January as he protested with Palestinians in Beita, (a Palestinian village) for allegedly throwing stones. Jonathan has been violently attacked for his activism. In 2018, Jonathan was slashed across the face by settlers who ambushed him outside his workplace. Earlier, in 2005, Israeli soldiers shot a tear gas canister. directly at him, causing internal bleeding in his brain." End ID.

Image 9: Semi-transparent image of an umbrella behind the title text is "Jewish Anti-Zionism isn’t one ideology. It’s an umbrella movement that encapsulates multiple communities and beliefs towards decolonizing Palestine. Some motivations or Jewish anti-Zionism include: 1. Pursuing millenia of Jewish tradition as a diasporic community 2, Detachibng religious and cultural tradition from political nationalism. 3. Socialist visions of a Jewish Society. 4. Believing in the right to self-determination for Palestinians Standing up to Zionism is: 1. Standing up to apartheid and colonization. 2. Standing up for a liberated, equal, and just Palestine from the river to the sea.

Image 10: An ending quote, and call to action, by the Anti-Zionist League. It says: "Jewish Men! Jewish Women! Zionism wants to throw us into a dangerous & hopeless adventure. Zionism contributes to making Palestine uninhabitable. Zionism wants to isolate us from the Egyptian people. Zionism is the enemy of the Jewish people. Down with Zionism! Long live the brotherhood of Jews and Arabs!" --The Anti-Zionist League. End ID.

[feroluce]

So I adore time loops and I think Sampo would be very fun in a time loop AU. Because despite having so many onscreen interactions with so many characters, he almost always seems to hold people at a certain careful distance, so it's fun to imagine what or who he's willing to use a time loop for, how far he's willing to go, how much he actually does care.

At the end of the Masquerade Duet companion quest, Sparkle mentions a catastrophe soon to befall Jarilo-VI. And some players have interpreted this as a past event (the catastrophe being the story quests we took part in there), but other players have speculated this as an upcoming disaster that Sampo is trying to mitigate.

And so, Gepard finds Sampo in Belobog, right after he was supposed to return from Penacony...or whatever it was called, Gepard had almost been too relieved to remember the name after Natasha assured him that Sampo was fine and not missing or dead, just on a trip since the planet was finally open for travel.

He had assumed this was some kind of vacation, or some shady business endeavor (valid), but when he sees him, Sampo looks. Exhausted.

His usual smirk is there, but there's something horribly off about it that Gepard can't put into words. His voice doesn't have the usual bounce in it. His gait slightly off. There are bags under his eyes, his hair is just the slightest bit out of place. Sampo looks exhausted.

His feet move without him really thinking, he goes up to Sampo to say...something. Maybe just ask him if he's ok. But he can't leave this alone and not do anything, because Gepard can feel it, something is wrong.

And that feeling sticks with him, like the persistent cold, like frostbite, all day. Gepard can't seem to shake it. There is a collective unease seeping through Belobog, sinking deep, tangling around their bones. And the only one who seems to be reacting truly different to it is Sampo.

Gepard tries to tail the guy a few times, anything he can do to learn about what's going on and ease this devouring dread, but Sampo seems to know where he's hiding and calls him out every single time.

He dodges every question (normal), slips out of every grab and grasp (normal), barely even looks at Gepard (decidedly NOT normal).

And maybe it's the darkness that seems to hover over them. The way the air feels like it is pressing down and smothering the breath out of his lungs. But Gepard's patience finally snaps, much sooner than he ever would have thought it would, and he finally grabs Sampo by the collar, hauls him up and forces his back against the brick wall of the alleyway. Because maybe Sampo makes his living double crossing and stabbing backs and he wouldn't understand this, but Gepard has a family, he has people he wants to protect, and so he needs to know what the fuck is going on.

And he knows he's crossed a line the moment he says it. He knows it's not true. Gepard has seen the way Sampo and Caelus sneak around in the Fragmentum or meander down the alleys, snickering with their arms slung around each other. He's seen the way Sampo lets Hook climb up his back onto his shoulders while he takes the moles on little adventures. He's seen the way he and Serval rib each other like it was natural, easy, and the way he goes out of his way for Natasha like he wouldn't any other client, had even trusted her with the knowledge that he was leaving off-planet.

Sampo has people he wants to protect, too, and Gepard shouldn't have accused him otherwise.

But before he can even apologize, Sampo does something stranger still.

Instead of telling him off, or taking a swing at him- both things Gepard would admit he deserved- Sampo just. Lifts one hand, lays it over Gepard's fists still balled in his jacket. Like he's keeping him there. Even through his gloves, his hand is warm.

And Sampo doesn't even really look at him, he leaves his head hung low as he quietly tells Gepard to just go home. Stay in with his family. Don't come out. Please. Please.

But eventually, the catastrophe strikes.

And Gepard can't. He can't stay safe inside his home while this is happening. He can't ignore this. He tells Serval and Lynx to stay in. Don't come out. And he dons his armor and marches out to protect as many people as he can.

When it's all said and done, all Gepard can see is rubble piled around him and a blackened sky. He can hear fire crackling. He can hear a voice he recognizes as Serval's wailing and screaming his name, and he knows she's not going to find him in time. She shouldn't even be out here.

A bloodied face swims into view, bright green eyes looking hollowed and haunted, posture weary and defeated. Gepard reaches out a shaking arm, trying to grab at Sampo's pantleg, trying to make any sound other than gurgling the blood filling his throat, because he knows it for certain now, he knew, Sampo knew.

"Not this time either, huh...?" The sigh he heaves isn't theatrical, for once. Somewhere, rubble groans and loudly collapses. Sampo doesn't even startle or turn to look at it. "I'll figure it out soon, I promise. There has to be a way to pull you through this alive. There has to be."

Something materializes in his hand, something red. Gepard's vision dims at the edges as he watches Sampo hold the mask over his face, as it seemingly attaches itself directly to his skin.

"See you on the next go around, Captain."

[dolasach]

She followed him to the rock and took a seat where he'd urged her to, still somewhat observing Rafayel as he placed the rocks to keep the scroll open. Now that they were back on solid land, she finally let go of his hand and placed hers in fists on her lap as she tried to get a better look at the scroll in its entirety.

The Lemurian script was impossible for her to understand, but she could read Eolchaire's small additions to whatever Caspian wrote. They were... Curious comments, seemingly small notes of support and agreement with whatever he'd written. Dolasach couldn't help but furrow her brows at them--Eolchaire, intentionally or not, kept her annotations vague enough that Dolasach couldn't figure out what the message was about.

Though now that she thought about it, the fact that they could both annotate each others' writing meant that they must've somehow taken the time to teach each other their respective tongues. She couldn't recall if Eolchaire had mentioned anything about it, or if it was a detail Dolasach had forgotten about because she never thought it to be particularly important to her.

She turned her attention to the main body of what Eolchaire had written. Without the fear of possibly falling into the water distracting her, she could read through the message with ease--though it didn't escape her notice that it was a long one.

To my cute little successor--I hope the name the forest gives you is as lovely as the sunrise. I know that the day that you're able to finally really this message, the successor to the Sea God would have finally found you, and you would've finally given him a moment of your time. Perhaps he asked about us? I deeply hope that Caspian's efforts to lead him to you through talking about us were not in vain. Do you hate him? Whatever your answer, I hope that they fact that the two of you were able to unseal this scroll means that the feelings between you aren't entirely negative. However... Despite that, I understand that you may have your own reservations about him. It would be impossible for you not to--I can't go back to change all the records I've kept of my thoughts and feelings to prevent that, nor do I truly want to. Your opinion of him needs to truly be your own, made with the most informed mind that I could bestow upon you even long after my passing. But as your predecessor, I must ask of you to give him a chance. Even if you may hate him, or think you do, please give the God of the Tides a chance. If he fails you, then you may turn him away and banish him from your domain--but don't make any rash decisions. Despite how things weren't easy with Caspian, I've been the happiest I've ever been with him. And that happiness... I want you to experience it too. It won't be easy. I'm sure you'll know that much from all the writing I've left behind. There is a cycle of tragedy that befalls each pair of gods, always beginning with the sea meeting the forest, and ending with one or both having conceded to catastrophe. I know you'll want to avoid it--I know you want to live. But trust me, and trust the remnants of us that Caspian and I will leave behind. We want the two of you to live, too.

Dolasach stared at the message for a long time with her mouth agape and brows deeply knit together, only snapping out of her daze when Rafayel cleared his throat. She turned to him and saw, to her surprise, that his ears had turned the brightest red and a pink tinge colored his cheeks.

What in the world did Caspian's message contain? Because there certainly wasn't anything in Eolchaire's message that got that kind of reaction from her. She looked between him and the text he was pointing at.

"Are you alright?" she asked, more concerned (and confused) about him than curious about the text. Without any hesitation or hint of shyness, she reached over and pressed the cool back of her hand to his cheek.

"Why do you look like you're about to come down with a fever?"

₊❏❜ ⋮ i'll chase you to the ends of the earth. ⚬𓂂

@dolasach

He is used to it; however, that didn't mean he accepted it.

Rafayel sighed as he let his head rest against his palm, the same thing being drilled into his mind by the endless sea of words spewing the history of Lemuria and the world on the surface repeated like a broken record from the elders. He seemed to be falling asleep and was immediately scolded for not paying attention.

Evidently, something came up that had the elders leave the vicinity for the time being and this served as an opportunity for Rafayel to escape. He had attempted in doing so a few times, but he was sure that this time he would be able to be successful. 

A blue fish swam around him and held his hand out, allowing the fish to swim over his palm. 

"Shall we head to the surface? It's a little boring right now and I'm tired of hearing the elders saying the same thing over and over again." 

The fish continued swimming over his palm before seemingly directing him toward an opening to which he was able to squeeze through. It was then he realized that he was out of the city walls of Whalefall City and was able to swim to the surface.

He thanked the fish before it disappeared back through the city walls and Rafayel didn't have to think twice as he turned away from Whalefall City to swim up to the surface; however, before he allowed himself to fully come out, he swam slowly as the damn words from the elders rang in his head. 

"The world on the surface is dangerous, even if those people worship our Sea God, there is a chance that someone will try to capture him."

"As the previous Lemurians have..." 

"Rafayel, you must never venture out to the surface world. Your people are here, that is all that should concern you." 

And the annoying part of all. "The Sea God will one day meet the Goddess of the Forest, and when that day comes, should he fall in love with her, it will be the beginning of the downfall of Lemuria."

Rafayel always thought it to be those stories to be something a parent would tell to their child to make them listen. And besides, Rafayel had always been, not only a rebellious soul, but one of sheer curiosity. 

Once he peeked out from the water, he spotted a woman by the shore. And he had seen a few other humans before, but something about her was different and he couldn't help but to swim towards the shore, closer to her. Who could she be? For some reason... he needed to know and while he doesn't know why he needs to, he simply just has to try; in a way, it felt as though there were residual feelings, feelings that weren't from him and that in itself baffled him.

So without thinking, his mouth opened to speak.

"Who might you be? You don't seem... human to me, although you do appear to be." He tilted his head briefly before letting out a laugh. "Ah, apologies. This is bold of me, I will admit."

[argumate]

dudes will be like oh I suffered a disfiguring injury but luckily I can hide it and skulk in a cave while letting another man who I've trained in secret since he was a boy take my place in public as he closely resembles me and somehow remains unbowed from the abuse he received at my hands in fact he's clearly my superior both physically and morally as my wife has noticed and she treats him with a kindness that is now the only thing that keeps him tied to the twisted path that I have devised for him, now as the day of his final sacrifice grows near the only possible catastrophe that could befall us all is if the two of them were to fall in love,

[narkik]

get to know me: [8/∞] favorite pairings ⇢ vanessa ives & alexander sweet dracula (penny dreadful)

“There’s one monster who loves you for who you really are, and here he stands. I don’t want to make you good. I don’t want you to be normal. I don’t want you to be anything but who you truly are.”

[todoscript]

10, Tamaki Amajiki, fluff or smut

Support

prompt: 10. “You really shouldn’t touch that… I told you.” genre: fluff.  pairing: amajiki tamaki x fem!reader word count: 2.0k+ warnings: mentions of insecurities.

author’s note: This is longer than a drabble should be but I couldn’t control myself. Also, this is my first time writing for Tamaki so I hope I did well portraying him. Big thank you to @burnedbyshoto for being my beta reader as well as recommending the title for this work!

Tamaki Amajiki has experienced an extraordinary amount of circumstances in his life so far that not many boys his age could even imagine to go through. He’s fought crooks, robots, supervillains, hell even the yakuza, and has managed to come out in one piece every time and claim victory. Of course, he has his training and studies from a prestigious hero school to thank for equipping him with the tools he needs to combat such peril. However, no amount of training or experience could truly prepare him for this new, menacing adversary.

A classroom full of school children.

Being a trio backed up by the honorable title of The Big 3, Mirio, Nejire, and Tamaki were given the opportunity to represent U.A. High School as they speak to classrooms of elementary students next week. This was a chance to talk with the younger generation and encourage them to think about a possible career as a crime fighter, while also ensuring that their futures were in safe hands thanks to heroes like them.

As a shy, introverted person whose solution in these social situations is to envisage everyone in the form of vegetables, Tamaki was not keen on this idea. Kids were boisterous and contained way too much energy in their little bodies to handle, making it much harder to conjure them as potatoes in his head. Not only that, but these days they’ve grown judgemental and full of themselves. They boast about their newly developed quirks amongst each other at playgrounds, already comparing their abilities at such an early age. All in all, his fragile spirit cannot handle interacting with these miniature monsters.

Nejire and Mirio seemed much better suited for this task. They glowed with charisma, and their energetic personalities naturally drew people to them. No doubt, the kids will especially be fond of how receptive they are to their young and frisky attitudes. Tamaki felt he just paled in comparison behind their light; however, his two friends would not allow him to deem himself that way.

“C’mon Tamaki, you have so many things going for you!” assures an optimistic Mirio during lunch as Tamaki sulks in the thought of meeting the kids. “You have an amazing quirk! I bet if you show it off, the kids will love it.”

True, the ability to manifest certain animal attributes depending on whatever he digests could tide the youngsters into liking him. But at the same time, would they really be captivated that easily? Aren’t kids at that age more into flashy things like lasers and explosions? No one wants to see him with cow hooves and clam hands, not with Nejire spiraling concussive vitality from her palms and Mirio shooting right up out of solid ground.

“I… I don’t know if the kids would be into my quirk…” he murmurs, eyes averting to his twiddling thumbs beneath the table.

“Amajiki, if you’re aiming to be a Pro Hero, you can’t let a bunch of ten-year-olds deter you!” chides Nejire. She forks a bit of her strewn pasta.

“Easy for you to say, Hadou. You’re bubbly and approachable. Everyone always comes to you. Meanwhile, the freshmen were intimidated by me before I even spoke a word.” Tamaki broods at his plate of food that grows colder during the conversation, but he can’t muster an appetite to eat it. “I can’t imagine how the kids would feel.”

Nejire chews on her noodles with a pitched hum. The trill ceases the moment her eyes light up, an idea flickering in her head.

“Say, how about you visit ____ at support during hero training today? I bet she can hook you up with some flashy gear that they’ll like.”

The utter of your name sends Tamaki’s body rigid.

“Oop, I think you touched something you shouldn’t have, Nejire,” Mirio gestures to the steely expression written over their friend’s face.

Dealing with children was one thing, but you were another matter entirely.

Being enrolled at U.A. since their very first year, the senior students of the hero and support departments coincided together. They drew out each other’s potentials—whether it was fighting on the battlefield or producing new innovative gadgets in workshops. Naturally, within that time, Tamaki developed a fondness for you.

You were a spirited individual driven by your passion for creating and bringing out the very best out of everyone you worked with, which included himself. With him, you were patient, never one to discourage or berate him despite his nervous and awkward nature that he viewed as probably a displeasure to work with. You took all his strengths and weaknesses to heart, and created the right tools to make him shine in triumph.

If Tamaki is the dead night, then you are the moon and stars that lit up his dark twilight, enlightening the world with his true potential.

However, the boy has never brought up his feelings to you, driven back by the thought you didn’t reciprocate, or wanted to focus more on your future as a craftswoman rather than prattle with romance. To bring you up in his dilemma of having to interact with mere elementary school kids is the last thing he wants to do.

“I don’t—”

“C’mon Tamaki! This is the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone!” Nejire enthusiastically waves a finger ready to describe her expertly thought-out plan. “You come to ____ asking for some of her gear, the ordeal brings you closer together, and then boom, you naturally confess your feelings and then impress those kids next week!” She sits with a proud, lifted head and hands on her hips after explaining her master proposal.

“Hm that’s quite an ambitious plan, Nejire,” chuckles Mirio.

“Way too ambitious if you ask me,” Tamaki scowls, uncertainty forming in his features.

“Confessing to someone you’ve liked for so long doesn’t come that easily…”

Nejire pouts, spinning the last remnants of her pasta around her fork. “Well I say you should still think it over! If anything, the new gear could help.”

And so he does. Lunch soon passes in the next flutter of an eyelash. During an academic class, Tamaki ponders the idea a bit more until it’s eventually time for their hero training course.

Lo and behold, he’s standing right outside the development studio with wickedly narrow brows and contemplating eyes, acting like if he glared at the door hard enough, all his problems would be solved. With his feet cemented into the ground, he doesn’t budge for the next couple of minutes. His mind bounces between his predicament and the possible solutions at hand, reaching to a standstill. Ultimately, he knows nothing will come out of not making a decision, so after another second of thought, he decides to progress.

The steel door jars open at a slide of the handle and Tamaki ganders at the messy workspace before him. He navigates through a mess of gizmos and gadgets with careful hesitant steps.

“____? Are you in here? I, um, need your help with something,” he calls, tentative voice drawing out across the room.

“Tamaki? Is that you?” He hears the distance between your voices, “Sorry, I’ll be with you in just a minute…”

He nods to no one in particular, standing in place as his fingers play with the hem of his white, hooded cape. Too late to turn back now, he thinks. While he dawdles, he can’t help but let his eyes wander around the room, eyeing the vast amounts of meticulously crafted contraptions and accessories all developed in a high school workshop.

The support course sure is something else, Tamaki regards the creativity such students have, being able to construct so many complicated gadgets. He doesn’t know how you do it, but supposes that was another charm about you that he admired so much.

Suddenly, a whirring noise catches his attention, and he turns in its direction. He spots a device flaring in place on a table across from him, the widget shifting and flashing into an assortment of colors that isn’t comfortable for his liking.

“Uh… ____… C-Can you come out real quick? I think there’s something wrong with this thing,” he warns, tone rising with every dissonant sound the device continues to resonate.

“OK Tamaki, I’m done. What do you need— Whoa!”

Your words are cut off by Tamaki, pulling you to him using vines sprouted from his fingers, thanks to the vegetables he managed to eat today. Confused, you brace against his chest as the evident droning whir increases in volume. Tamaki holds a wavering hand over the device.

“Ah wait, Tamaki, you really shouldn’t touch that!” you cautioned. However, Tamaki’s entire hand transforms into a giant clam that quickly envelopes the contraption just as it flares and reaches its peak. He contains the small burst of energy within his shell with a wince, preventing any catastrophe from befalling on both of you and the work studio.

“Hehe, told you,” you shakily laugh off which makes him sigh as he releases you from his steady grasp.

“____, you could’ve gotten severely hurt,” he chides.

“But I didn’t because of you, so thank you very much, Suneater,” you say with a grin. Tamaki slightly tugs his hood down to obscure the growing blush on his cheeks that threaten to expose his flustered reaction to your gratitude.

“It... It was nothing,” he manages. You nod in response before approaching the faulty contraption, shifting your gaze side-to-side to inspect the damage.

“Sorry about that, I think this is one of Hatsume’s inventions from Class 1-F.”

You toss it into a pile of other defective equipment, relaying in your mind to reprimand your junior later.

“Anyways, is there anything I can do for you, Tamaki? You said something about needing my help?” Ah, right, he nearly forgot. He slowly nods.

“I need some new gear…” he admits. A light of passion infused with curiosity dazzles in your eyes.

“What for? Going to face a new powerhouse crime organization next week? Ooh, maybe another gangster threat in the criminal underground? Or perhaps you need something to combat a future natural disaster?” you surmise, but Tamaki only avoids your gaze at all your grand guesses when comparing it to the true reason:

“I need something to impress these kids I’ll be talking to next week…” he mutters under his breath, as if embarrassed.

“Huh?” You knit your eyebrows, muddled by the answer. Tamaki’s head imbues with self-conscious, anxious thoughts about what you must be thinking. However, your response to his predicament is one that leaves him more perplexed than you are.

“Why? You don’t need any gear to impress anyone. You’re fine the way you are,” you say without a single pause or hint of doubt in your tone. Tamaki pauses, grabbing his bearings at your statement before eyeing his spread out hands, unsure.

“But I’m so plain, not flashy or charismatic like Mirio and Hadou… Would kids like me the way I am?” he urges the question with uncertainty, keeping his stare on his calloused palms.

Would you like me the way I am?

You reach out for his hands, holding your own over them and bringing his wavering gaze to peer into yours.

“Tamaki, the kids will like you for who you are as long as you’re passionate about what you’re aiming to do. And that’s to save everyone and become a hero, right?” you assure, slightly tilting your head.

“You protected me without even a thought in your mind just now. That makes you heroic and courageous,” you continue, “Your nervous and shy personality are just small little quirks about you that make you who you are. You don’t need to change that.”

A smile of pure adoration forms on your lips. “Plus it’s what I like so much about you.”

Tamaki’s eyes lift in realization at your statement, his hands slowly gripping yours from below like he may not have heard you correctly.

“You like me?” he repeats, and you nod your head.

“I’ve liked you since our first year, silly.” You giggle at the stunned look etched on his face.

“I…” his words are caught in his throat for a second over the growing developments, but with every ounce of his being, he musters them out, his tone laced in only warmth and affection for you.

“I’ve liked you too, ___, I-I always have. You were so dazzling that I couldn’t help but let these feelings for you grow, and now, I’m glad I got to say them to you.” He finally admits to all the emotions stirred inside him for the past three years, and your smile widens. You inch forward, planting a small peck on his cheek that renders him a flustered mess from the surprise.

“Alright, go show those kids who Suneater is next week!”

Nejire’s plan was a success, after all.

[dreamii-yume]

Not a request! ( ´ ∀ `)ノ～ ♡  Just Yume trying to dive into darker topics and kinks, that’s all lol Just a heads up in case the whole concept becomes a little too uncomfortable~  (b ᵔ▽ᵔ)b

♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎

Lilia had been watching over his Darling for a very longtime, from beginning and all the way until the end. He had seen both her tears and her smiles, heard every cries and laughter, everything. He was with her throughout the thick and thins of her life. Yet, his Darling had always been a bar that he could never seem to reach no matter how high he could jump. She wouldn't let him, the world wouldn't let him, even a part of himself is preventing him from doing so.

He's sick of it all.

♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎

It happened in the darkest of the night, in the middle of nowhere, in a no-named town.

Lilia stood high at the top of a bell tower as his menacing red eyes looked down on the chaos that was erupting before him. A gentle breeze blew on his hair so peacefully in contrast of the horrors that was happening from beneath. A mischievous smirk forms on his lips as he watched the flames engulf the houses of the unfortunate villagers, all running for their lives. Green flames roared intensely with no sign of stopping, destroying everything in its way. Bodies soon laying down on the ground one by one, quickly losing what little strength they have left either from a severe injury or the flames that caught up to them.

It was a heart-breaking sight, truly. Lucky for our protagonist though, it takes a lot more than disruption of harmony to break his heart.

Satisfied with view he got, the ancient fae jumped down from the tower, only to land ever so gracefully on the ground, his cloth having not a single wrinkle in them. Lilia looked around, the nonchalant smirk remaining on his face as his eyes observed every single thing around him. He found the green flames swallowing the poor humans' home pretty, like a sight of a bonfire in a camping trip. He walked around without the slightest bit of concern for the screams of anguish the people around him was letting out. Lilia even had the nerve to skip ever so cheerfully, humming as if he was walking around in wonderland.

Until, his sharp ears had heard it. A different kind of sound, buried deep within the terror around him.

Lilia stopped to look around, eventually following where he thinks the sound was coming from. It was quite the walk, he had to go through the corners of many burning houses with all its twists and turns, not to mention avoiding any flaming debris coming down at him. He couldn't really fathom it himself why exactly he was following this sound even after realizing what it could be. Perhaps it was the boredom finally getting to him that a single cry was enough to make him this curious? Even if he knew that he was risking the possibility of disappointment in the end, Lilia always thought of how it wouldn't hurt to try.

Finally, he reached a place far back from the center of the town, a cute little isolated house that was also unfortunately destroyed by the green flames. It had become quite the ruin, deteriorating far quicker than the other houses in the town, sparks of flames still remained to decorate the edges. Lilia approached the wreck of a house, finally coming into terms with a large of debris standing in his way. There was no doubt about it, this was where the sound of an adorable blabbing nonsense was coming from, or rather, underneath this material. With almost no effort at all, Lilia lifted up the debris like that of a window shutter and the price revealing itself to him.

Lilia blinked. It was just what he thought it would be.

A baby tucked neatly in a basket, covered ever so lovingly with a warm blanket. The creature sucked their own thumb as they stared at him curiously with big doe eyes.

Unlike other children in this size he's seen before though, this one smiled innocently upon seeing him, blissfully ignorant of their current situation and their once called home. They laughed, an adorable squeal coming out of them as they must've thought that Lilia was the seeker of a game of hide and seek. The fae was actually astonished on what kind of miracle had befallen on this one human baby to be able to survive such catastrophe. What incredible luck, the universe must've really wanted this poor child to keep on living, even if it's just for a few more minutes. Lilia couldn't help but to return to his usual, laid-back smile as he placed his free hand on his hips, careful to keep the heavy concrete from falling onto the baby.

At least he wasn't disappointed.

"It's unfortunate, isn't it? For us to have met like this." Lilia said, even if he knew that children at this age wouldn't understand any words he'll say. Finally, his hand grew tired of the debris' weight and eventually just threw it in the other direction. The tremors of it falling on the ground reached the child, causing them to laugh once more. Lilia stepped forward and crouched down to have a closer look at the baby who was reaching out for him with their cute, little hands. He chuckled and let them hold one of his fingers as some sort of entertainment.

The baby was very cute, with large (E/C) eyes staring back at him and plum rosy cheeks. Lilia also had come to the realization that the child was most likely a female considering how she was wearing such a cute, puffy dress and headband around her head. Her hair was already a bit longer, giving Lilia the conclusion that she must be at least close to a year old by now. Lilia also paid attention her little basket, it serves as her bed as a few toys were just laying around. Finally, Lilia noticed words written in the hem of her blanket, most notably, her name.

" '(Y/N)', huh..." Lilia read, looking back at the child, who actually responded well at the sound of her given name. He chuckled and brushed his hand on her puffy cheeks. "That's a wonderful name."

Suddenly, Lilia's ears perked as heavy footsteps were heard behind him but the fae did nothing but continue on playing with the giggling child. He didn't need to turn around to know whose presence was looming over him. "Malleus." Lilia called, closing his eyes as he unfortunately has to pull away his hand from the baby, earning a disappointed gurgle. He stood up from his spot before turning around and sure enough, it was the same horned fae that he expected it to be. "Have you had your fun? Are you ready to head back home?"

Malleus silently crossed his arms, not saying anything but his body language was enough for Lilia to understand his response. He then turned his attention towards the cradle of sunshine that his supervisor was so focused on. "A human child...?" Malleus exclaimed, blinking as he raised an eyebrow at the older fae. "Don't tell me that you're going to bring home another one?"

"Well...What can I say?" Lilia shrugged as he gently carried the baby in his arms, removing her from the basket. He smiled widely, his fangs shining under the moonlight as he joyfully spun the child. Lilia looked at Malleus with a cunning look in his eyes, something that the horned fellow had to sigh at. He brought the child close to his face, nuzzling in her warmth before giving her a slight tickle in the tummy, making the child laugh whole heartedly. "You know how much of a soft spot I have for children."

Lilia then brought the child close to Malleus, as if he was flaunting her to him. "See how adorable she is~? I found her under the rubble here and isn't it a mystery on how she survived this long?" He said, excitedly as the child matched his enthusiasm. Malleus merely grunted at his supervisor's behavior, watching him play with the kid in his arms. "I've always wanted to know how it's like to raise a girl, you know~? Like my very own little princess~!

"Besides, wouldn't Silver be delighted to have a sibling this cute?" Lilia said, listening to the child's gentle laughter, like that of bells ringing. "I personally think it'll be fantastic."

Lilia stared brightly at the child, like an angel given to him by God himself. She was certainly worth keeping, worth raising.

A child desperately spared by the universe, only to befall in the hands of someone like him.

No one was quite sure whether it was a blessing or a curse.

♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎

Lilia raised you in a strange but ever-loving manner.

You were placed in a castle so grand, deep within the Valley of Thorns. You were protected, cherished, and loved by not only Lilia, but Malleus and Silver as well. Malleus soon grew fond of you like how Lilia had been the first time and had found himself unable to refuse your invitation to play with him. Silver had treated you like how a brother would, much like what Lilia instructed him to do so. You had no one to fill up the mother role in your very circle but when you already have three eccentric members in your family, what more could you ask for?

Lilia admits that he may have spoiled you a little more than he did with Silver. He would give you anything you would ask him for, even things that you never explicitly asked him about but still somehow, he knew you wanted. It was a bad habit he got from parenting you, but he couldn't help himself especially whenever you would give him those irresistible pleading eyes of yours. To his surprise however, you grew up just fine, you didn't hold any spoiled traits that he was dreading to see. You grew up wonderfully, having remembered all the kind manners and respect that Lilia had specifically engraved in your brain.

Lilia couldn't have been prouder.

"Me and Silver played Knights today! He was so cool! Swinging his sword with a swish and then, bam!" Your little mouth that had just learned how to talk, babbles on and on while making exaggerated hand movements. You were all tucked in your bed, completely dressed in your pajamas with Lilia beside you. He rests his cheeks on the palms of his hand, chuckling at your story. "You should come play with us too, Father! Malleus-sama said he would play as the dragon next time!"

It was already past your bed time but thankfully, Lilia wasn't that kind of overbearing parent that makes a fuss just because they're children aren't sleeping at the right time. Truth to be told, he loved the nights where he got to talk with you like this, hearing stories from you when he was away. "Oh my, that Malleus said that? How controversial~!" Lilia gasped, putting on a fake surprised expression just to entertain you. When he heard you giggled, that's when he returned to his usual, laid-back smile. "I'll come by when I get the chance, alright~? I'll make sure to be the knight who saves you, Princess~"

You giggled once again when Lilia playfully tapped your little nose. "Eh~? But Silver's already playing the knight! Father can't take over his role, silly~!" You said. "Father is better off just playing as Father!"

Lilia puffed his cheeks. "So you prefer Silver being your Knight over me~? How mean, I'm hurt~!" He faked a cry with no visible tears but still enough to pull on your heartstrings. "Did Silver finally became the replacement to the number one spot in my little Princess' heart, I wonder?"

Blinking, you quickly sat up and frantically shook your head in panic. "That's not true! Father is still number one in my heart!" You declared, eyes sparkling in innocence as you laid your head onto him, giving him a big hug. "Silver's a great knight, very cool and amazing, but that doesn't mean he can replace Father!

"I still love Father the most~!"

Lilia couldn't help but smile, feeling genuine warmth in his chest as he stared lovingly at your innocent self. He stroked your hair before leaning down and hugging your small frame in return. You grinned, prompting him to give you a light peck on the forehead, a symbol of deep love between father and daughter.

"I love you too, sweetheart."

This was your daily life. Comfortable, sweet, and wholesome, being well-taken care off by Lilia himself. You and Lilia built your relationship together as family until it grew so strong that things like being unrelated by blood does not matter anymore. He was your beloved father and you were his precious treasure, a jewel hidden away from the public's eye. You thought of how lucky you are, how your relation to one another would forever bloom as that of a parent and a child.

Lilia thought of the same thing as well.

…Until he, the wise ancient fae, who lived for who-knows how long, had made a grave mistake.

♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎♥︎

Continue the spice~?

I hate how unnecessarily long this got...It probably got boring right at the end so, I’m very regretful about that.  <(￣ ﹌ ￣)> I didn’t know how to save it aaa- This drained me all of my creative energy way too much lol I’m currently working on three Sinfics at once and the next one is requested so, don’t worry~!  (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

[ahkaahshi]

the life of your dreams [ushijima wakatoshi x reader]

pairing: ushijima wakatoshi x fem reader

genre: fluff with angst if you look under a microscope; modern day royal au

warning(s): suggestive themes, like two swear words if I counted right pfft

word count: 2.4k

overview: everyone would kill to be in your position: set to be married into a royal family and become the new princess of a faraway kingdom. well, everyone but you, that is.

notes: a special piece for ushiwaka on his birthday, but he deserves love all the time :)

The sounds of laughter and chatter, lilting ballroom music, and endless congratulations ring in your ears like a distant memory. Sitting outside in the humid air, you let the hum of cicadas overtake you and silence your mind. Underneath the heel of your sleek, black stiletto, you roll a small piece of gravel back and forth with a crunch. Your hands covered with silky, black gloves absentmindedly clutch onto one another tightly--a nervous habit of yours that your mother had warned made you appear standoffish at times.

Sitting outside of a regal estate, filled to the brim with luxurious furniture, prized artifacts, and countless paintings of quaint things--like the countryside on a sunny day or women picking flowers in fields--you couldn’t be unhappier with your situation. In the warm glow of the lanterns dotting the path nearby, the large diamond perched atop your left ring finger made itself known once again. You’re surprised you’ve gone this long without noticing it, seeing as it adores being the center of attention.

You want nothing more than to shun it. To throw it into the fountain less than twenty feet away and be done with it all. But the uproar that would create would be catastrophic, and you’d find yourself the subject of many scathing articles questioning the integrity of your engagement to your royal fiancé and the righteousness of your morals.

It was all too much. The constant attention. The schedule packed with a different, public appearance or frivolous event every hour, it seemed. The disgustingly sweet lies you barely choked out in response to those fed to you by your soon-to-be husband.

You could no longer stand to listen to anyone murmur their feelings of anguish and envy, saying how much they wished that they were living in your dream of a life. But, little did they know that their dream is your nightmare.

How can you possibly be happy when you wake up beside someone in the mornings you don’t love? How can you be content knowing all the acts of affection between the two of you are staged? Knowing that you’re nothing more than a charity case to this entire royal family? Realizing that nothing you’ve done for the past four months has been done of your own, free will?

Taking a deep breath, you reluctantly rise from the bench you’d spent the last half hour sitting on, pulling yourself together. Your (e/c) eyes wander over the posh exterior of the extravagant estate before your feet slowly bring you down the path back to the door.

The sound of your heels clicking against the marble flooring feels deafening, given the stark silence that has befallen the house. Nobody's around save for a few maids lightly dusting the precious treasures the royal family owns. It’s late at night, so you expect everyone to be asleep aside from the seemingly restless crew of butlers and servants.

When you make your way back to the quarters you share with your fiancé, however, you remember that many things can happen under the cover of the night. Your hand freezes in its journey towards the handle when you hear loud, muffled moans echoing from behind the polished, wooden door. Clear as day, you hear your prince murmuring praises, presumably while performing acts that are reaping sounds of pleasure from a woman’s mouth--probably the one you'd noticed him ogling at your event earlier whenever the two of you weren’t flocked by family or other attendees interested in all the fleshy details of your engagement.

As the realization that your future husband is cheating on you right under your nose sets in, your blood starts to boil. Heat courses through your entire body as your emotions start to take hold.

You’re not feeling upset. Or betrayed. You’re livid.

It’s not the infidelity that brings you over the edge. No. It’s the fact that while you’re here, suffering beneath the burdens of having an impending wedding to a man you are far from loving, he’s still getting what he wants.

That's when you snap and everything that’s been holding you back shatters. The opinions of high society that have kept you bound to him. The refusal of your parents to let you break off the engagement because of their own selfish wishes to be rich and famous. The feeling that you could maybe, possibly love him after years of being worn down and living overseas.

In an instant, it’s all gone; and the only thought in your mind now is, Damn it, I want to be happy.

Your first act of unshackling the chains that had been trapping you is reaching down to slide off your beautiful, but wickedly uncomfortable, stilettos. Once they’re off, you’re able sneak away in silence to find a butler who’s willing to fetch you a coat and keys to your car. It’s not a bad-looking vehicle by any means, but it’s been shoved away in the garage, you find, to avoid being spotted by any of the rich and pretentious who only arrive in limos filled with champagne and drive a Rolls Royce whenever they absolutely must shoulder the burden of driving themselves.

The butler asked no questions and swore himself to secrecy--though you’re sure the hundred-dollar bill you’d slapped in his hand had zipped his mouth right shut. Tossing your shoes onto the passenger seat and sticking the key in the ignition, you drive away from your sickening life with the royals to find the only person you’ve ever wanted and need now more than ever.

You’re not in the most inconspicuous of outfits, so you tie the belt of your long coat tightly around your form as you exit your car once you reach your destination. The arch of your foot throbs with indignation as you step into your heels once more, but you’re able to ignore it knowing that you’re at the only place you could ever ask to be. Pale, fluorescent lighting beats down on your form from above as you walk through the hallways of the apartment complex.

With no hesitation, you knock on one of the doors and wait with bated breath. The lock clicks and the door opens moments later to reveal a tall man whose familiar, olive eyes set on your figure with an intense stare. His silence reveals his shock at seeing you--the woman he was forced to give up, but whose heart he still held.

“Wakatoshi...” you utter softly, (e/c) eyes finding his gaze as your heart begins racing in your chest, “I won’t do it anymore.”

He wordlessly steps aside, allowing you into his apartment so you can talk in a more private setting. The last thing he wants is for a nosy neighbor to see a future princess visiting a man who isn’t her fiancé at such a late hour and tip off the press.

“(F/n), what are you saying?” he asks, his fingers raking through his slightly messy, dark hair. His eyebrows are furrowed ever so slightly in an emotion that could be confusion, irritation, or both, for that matter.

You untie the belt of your coat, which he slides off your shoulders for you, revealing the beautiful, evening dress you wore beneath. Its shimmering material composed of green and blue hues cascade down every curve of your body, into a pool of emerald at your feet. It takes every fiber of his being not to reach out and touch you to make sure you’re not just a manifestation of his yearning for you.

Tears quickly spring to your eyes as you answer, “I refuse to do it. I won’t marry him. I can’t.”

He shakes his head. “Your family won’t be happy if you back out.”

“Fuck that!” you cry as you kick off your shoes, bringing yourself a few inches further away from his face, “I want to be happy! This is my life, and I'm not going to spend it with some cheating prince who doesn’t even give a shit about me just to keep the peace!”

Silence befalls the apartment that’s only broken by your loud sniffle. You lift your hands to your face to wipe away your tears, but he soon takes over the job for you. Tenderly, he cups the side of your face in his hand, immersing his fingers in your (h/c) locks of hair and using his thumb to collect the droplets that travel down your cheek.

Your breath hitches in your throat at that touch of his that you’d never forgotten and that you’d imagined for the past four months to keep yourself sane. “I never loved him,” you confess, voice strained from the emotions that were overwhelming you all at once, “It’s always been you, Wakatoshi. I’ve only ever loved you this entire time.”

The coldness to his demeanor softens and he moves his face close enough to yours for you to feel his warm breath fanning across your skin. There’s a long moment of silence as you gaze into his dark eyes, in which you see a recognizable flicker of longing. In yours, watery but wide with hope and searing with desire, he sees every moment in his life that he’s ever promised you his love.

He hates asking unnecessary questions, and the strength of your will is enough to keep him from wondering if you’re sure of your decision.

“I’m giving him back the ring tomorrow. After that, I want to be yours.” You press your forehead against his and add, “Can I come over tomorrow evening, so we can go away for a bit?” as you absentmindedly take to tracing the handsome features on his face with your silk-covered fingers.

Your noses are touching now, bringing your lips dangerously close. “There’s no going back from that, you know,” he whispers. You notice the way his fingers press against the back of your head, as if he wants more than anything to lose himself in your affection.

“I know, baby,” you coo, “All this time I’ve spent separated from you has been hell, Wakatoshi. I don’t wanna go back.”

Your words are enough to crumble his resolve, and all thoughts of keeping his feelings hidden in an effort not to meddle in your relationship with the prince leave his mind in an instant.

“I love you, (f/n),” he breathes, closing the gap between your mouths without any hesitation.

The feeling of his lips on yours reminds you of what kisses should feel like. That no matter how soft and gentle, or rough and lustful they are, they should always be meaningful and filled with love. After months of being forced to share performative but empty displays of affection--if you could even call it that--with a prince whom you felt nothing but contempt towards, having Ushijima’s lips against your own felt heavenly.

His other hand moves to your waist, sliding along the sleek fabric of your dress before snaking around your back to pull you closer to him. The sensation of your body flush against his sends tingles down your spine and encourages you to wrap your arms around his neck. You feel weightless, like you’re falling for him all over again, and it’s better than anything you’d experienced since before you’d met your soon-to-be ex-fiancé.

It’s not long before his fingers find the zipper of your dress so that his hands can roam the familiar expanse of your body, free of inhibitions. Your heart flutters in your chest at the softness in his tone as he affirms, “I’ll always love you.”

It’s a promise he presses into every inch of your skin while your back is pressed against the plush comforter of his bed that night, and one he’s clearly intent on keeping.

A blissful visit and a vow to meet the next evening so you can finally be together gives you each enough peace and security to withstand one more day apart. In the yellow light of a lamp on a bedside table in one of the estate’s guest rooms, you stay awake an hour longer to compile your feelings into a letter for the prince. While he’s out and about the next day, completely unbothered by the fact that you hadn’t returned to bed the night before, you enlist the help of the butler you’d bribed in packing up your things.

When night falls once more, and your fiancé is sound asleep after having far too many drinks with his friends, you place your neatly folded letter on his nightstand. Your eyes linger on the glittering diamond once more when you set it gently atop your note. You’d gotten so used to its presence on your finger that it now felt bare without it. But, what was more important was that your heart felt full knowing where you were going from here.

Silently, you leave your chambers for the last time and sneak out to the garage, where your very average chariot awaits, nestled between the wall and the first in a legacy of luxury vehicles that are too outdated to see the sun. In a matter of twenty minutes, you’re back at Ushijima’s front door, filled to the brim with anticipation.

When he opens the door and sees you standing in the hallway, life neatly packed up into nothing more than a suitcase and a duffle bag like you’d never had a home at the estate to begin with, he realizes how much he wants to give you a place where you can finally feel comfortable and secure. Though your face is devoid of any makeup, and you’re wearing a much humbler outfit comprised of a sweater and yoga pants, he still thinks you look just as gorgeous as you did the night before.

“It’s done,” you announce, holding up your left hand to show him your empty finger.

In response, he presses one of those kisses that you could never grow tired of against your lips. After sliding his own duffel bag onto his shoulder, he locks up the apartment and leads you to the garage. Once you’ve moved your car inside, out of public view, you load up his car and sit in the passenger seat with a grin spread across your mouth.

“You ready?” he wonders. You notice him pause in his act of starting up the car to look over at you for approval.

Your hands slide around the sides of his face and you give him another, affectionate peck.

“I’ve been ready for a long time now.”

A smile graces his features as he adds, “So have I.”

As the engine of his car comes to life, so does the excitement in your heart, since you’re finally starting the life of your dreams, rather than that of everyone else’s.

[dwellordream]

“This brings us to the most fundamental fact of rural life in the pre-modern world: the grain is harvested once a year, but the family eats every day. Of course that means the grain must be stored and only slowly consumed over the entire year (with some left over to be used as seed-grain in the following planting). That creates the first cycle in agricultural life: after the harvest, food is generally plentiful and prices for it are low (we’ll deal with the impact this has on trade and markets a little later). As the year goes on, food becomes scarcer and the prices for it rise as each family ‘eats down’ their stockpile.

That has more than just economic impacts because the family unit becomes more vulnerable as that food stockpile dwindles. Malnutrition brings on a host of other threats: elevated risk of death from injury or disease most notably. Repeated malnutrition also has devastating long-term effects on young children (a point we’ll come back to). Consequently, we see seasonal mortality patterns in agricultural communities which tend to follow harvest cycles; when the harvest is poor, the family starts to run low on food before the next harvest, which leads to rationing the remaining food, which leads to malnutrition. That malnutrition is not evenly distributed though: the working age adults need to be strong enough to bring in the next harvest when it comes (or to be doing additional non-farming labor to supplement the family), so the short rations are going to go to the children and the elderly.

Which in turn means that ‘lean’ years are marked by increased mortality especially among the children and the elderly, the former of which is how the rural population ‘regulates’ to its food production in the absence of modern birth control (but, as an aside: this doesn’t lead to pure Malthusian dynamics – a lot more influences the food production ceiling than just available land. You can have low-equilibrium or high-equilibrium systems, especially when looking at the availability of certain sorts of farming capital or access to trade at distance. I cannot stress this enough: Malthus was wrong; yes, interestingly, usefully wrong – but still wrong. The big plagues sometimes pointed to as evidence of Malthusian crises have as much if not more to do with rising trade interconnectedness than declining nutritional standards). This creates yearly cycles of plenty and vulnerability; we’ll talk about the strategies these fellows employ to avoid that problem in just a moment.

Next to that little cycle, we also have a ‘big’ cycle of generations. The ratio of labor-to-food-requirements varies as generations are born, age and die; it isn’t constant. The family is at its peak labor effectiveness at the point when the youngest generation is physically mature but hasn’t yet begun having children (the exact age-range there is going to vary by nuptial patterns, see below) and at its most vulnerable when the youngest generation is immature. By way of example, let’s imagine a family (I’m going to use Roman names because they make gender very clear, but this is a completely made-up family): we have Gaius (M, 45), his wife, Cornelia (39, F), his mother Tullia (64, F) and their children Gaius (21, M), Secundus (19, M), Julia1 (16, F) and Julia2 (14, F). That family has three male laborers, three female laborers (Tullia being in her twilight years, we don’t count), all effectively adults in that sense, against 7 mouths to feed.

But let’s fast-forward fifteen years. Gaius is now 60 and slowing down, Cornelia is 54; Tullia, we may assume has passed. But Gaius now 36 is married to Clodia (20, F; welcome to Roman marriage patterns), with two children Gaius (3, M) and Julia3 (1, F); Julia1 and Julia2 are married and now in different households and Secundus, recognizing that the family’s financial situation is never going to allow him to marry and set up a household has left for the Big City. So we now have the labor of two women and a man-and-a-half (since Gaius the Elder is quite old) against six mouths and the situation is likely to get worse in the following years as Gaius-the-Younger and Clodia have more children and Gaius-the-Elder gets older. The point of all of this is to note that just as risk and vulnerability peak and subside on a yearly basis in cycles, they also do this on a generational basis in cycles.

...Most modern folks think in terms of profit maximization; we take for granted that we will still be alive tomorrow and instead ask how we can maximize how much money we have then (this is, admittedly, a lot less true for the least fortunate among us). We thus tend to favor efficient systems, even if they are vulnerable. From this perspective, ancient farmers – as we’ll see – look very silly, but this is a trap, albeit one that even some very august ancient scholars have fallen into. These are not irrational, unthinking people; they are poor, not stupid – those are not the same things.

But because these households wobble on the edge of disaster continually, that changes the calculus. These small subsistence farmers generally seek to minimize risk, rather than maximize profits. After all, improving yields by 5% doesn’t mean much if everyone starves to death in the third year because of a tail-risk that wasn’t mitigated. Moreover, for most of these farmers, working harder and farming more generally doesn’t offer a route out of the small farming class – these societies typically lack that kind of mobility (and also generally lack the massive wealth-creation potential of industrial power which powers that kind of mobility). Consequently, there is little gain to taking risks and much to lose. So as we’ll see, these farmers generally sacrifice efficiency for greater margins of safety, every time.

Modern farms are built for efficiency – they typically focus on a single major crop (whatever brings the best returns for the land and market situation) because focusing on a single crop lets you maximize the value of equipment and minimize other costs. They rely on other businesses to provide everything else. Such farms tend to be geographically concentrated – all the fields together – to minimize transit time.

Subsistence farmers generally do not do this. Remember, the goal is not to maximize profit, but to avoid family destruction through starvation. If you only farm one crop (the ‘best’ one) and you get too little rain or too much, or the temperature is wrong – that crop fails and the family starves. But if you farm several different crops, that mitigates the risk of any particular crop failing due to climate conditions, or blight (for the Romans, the standard combination seems to have been a mix of wheat, barley and beans, often with grapes or olives besides; there might also be a small garden space. Orchards might double as grazing-space for a small herd of animals, like pigs). By switching up crops like this and farming a bit of everything, the family is less profitable (and less engaged with markets, more on that in a bit), but much safer because the climate conditions that cause one crop to fail may not impact the others.

...Likewise – as that example implies – our small farmers want to spread out their plots. And indeed, when you look at land-use maps of villages of subsistence farmers, what you often find is that each household farms many small plots which are geographically distributed (this is somewhat less true of the Romans, by the by). Farming, especially in the Mediterranean (but more generally as well) is very much a matter of micro-climates, especially when it comes to rainfall and moisture conditions (something that is less true on the vast flat of the American Great Plains, by the by). It is frequently the case that this side of the hill is dry while that side of the hill gets plenty of rain in a year and so on. Consequently, spreading plots out so that each family has say, a little bit of the valley, a little bit of the flat ground, a little bit of the hilly area, and so on shields each family from catastrophe is one of those micro-climates should completely fail (say, the valley floods, or the rain doesn’t fall and the hills are too dry for anything to grow).

...While some high-risk disasters are likely to strike an entire village at once (like a large raid or a general drought), most of the disasters that might befall one farming family (an essential worker being conscripted, harvest failure, robbery and so on) would just strike that one household. So farmers tended to build these reciprocal relationships with each other: I help you when things are bad for you, so you help me when things are bad for me. But those relationships don’t stop merely when there is a disaster, because – for the relationship to work – both parties need to spend the good times signalling their commitment to the relationship, so that they can trust that the social safety net will be there when they need it.

So what do our farmers do during a good harvest to prepare for a bad one? They banquet their neighbors, contribute to village festivals, marry off their sons and daughters with the best dowry they can manage, and try to pay back any favors they called in from friends recently. I stress these not merely because they are survival strategies (though they are) but because these sorts of activities end up (along with market days and the seasonal cycles) defining a great deal of life in these villages. But these events also built that social capital which can be ‘cashed out’ in an emergency. And they are a good survival strategy. Grain rots and money can be stolen, but your neighbor is far likelier to still be your neighbor in a year, especially because these relationships are (if maintained) almost always heritable and apply to entire households rather than individuals, making them able to endure deaths and the cycles of generations.”

- Bret Devereaux, “Bread, How Did They Make It? Part I: Farmers!”

[goldenornstein]

@yellowfingcr​ said: ❝ there’s so much to discover before the world ends. ❞  || ACCEPTING.

The Dragon Slayer, kin of the Gods and born in the Age of the Ancients, feels tempted to protest: the world harbours no secrets to the likes of him.

And yet... this quiet night in the swamp, spent sitting by the fire with a human, does make him feel humble.

His body’s waning strength mellows his temper, too, weakened by time and the decline of his own soul. No longer he carries his spear, nor dons his armour. Both are just too heavy for his now slighter physique, thus hidden elsewhere in case he ever regains the ability to use them. (He doubts it.)

“Indeed. I have seen myriad abominations spawn from the rot of this dying world during the last years. Yet also plenty of wholesome creatures and trees and flowers... all of them adapting to the diminishing light.” A change in the making, despite the inevitable catastrophe about to befall upon every land. 

Ornstein stares at the bonfire; a dying light doomed to fade away. Like himself. He smiles at it with absolute resignation. Let it die.

“I must say, though,” he turns to the scholar, his smile small and lopsided. “I could do without those gigantic crustaceans that terrorise this swamp.”  

[thefifthclown]

Part 2, Chapter 3-Gods and Demons, and Her Last Moments; Scene 4

Fifth, Pierrot, pages 260-271

Levia pulled away from Gumillia, and approached the enormous fountain pen in the center of the square.

“How nostalgic—the ark, ‘Sin’. …But this isn’t the real thing, is it?”

Irina answered that question.

“You’re correct. This place is your mental world. This is a place made real by the memories and feelings that have slept deep within your mind. It is for that reason that everyone here can be as their real self.”

Gumillia walked up to the ark as well. Its surface was as glassy as a mirror, and her face was faintly reflected back to her.

--Standing there was a woman she didn’t recognize.

Did that mean that this was Gumillia’s true face? As a spirit…or rather, from before that.

Levia rapped on the surface of the ark several times with her fist.

“A mental world with actual substance--Seth’s quite ingenious, to be able to create such a structure inside of a person. If he hadn’t been an ‘HER’ it wouldn’t have been out of line for him to become a fifth god.” She then turned to Irina. “Irina…You figured it out. That I wasn’t ‘Elluka’.”

“…I obtained proof only recently. Thinking on it now there were a lot of things that didn’t add up. After the ‘Leviantan Catastrophe’, you went to your friend, the ‘Great Land God Held’, and received from him a request to gather the ‘Vessels of Deadly Sin’—isn’t that right?”

“Yeah.”

“But I never heard anything about that from Elluka when she was alive. There were rumors that Elluka was in league with Held, but I knew that they weren’t true. …She had never once left the Magic Kingdom since birth.”

“A Lighwatch priestess must spend her whole life in the Magic Kingdom—So there’s no way she could have met Held in Elphegort.”

“Even supposing they had met, it was hard to imagine that Held would warm to friendship with a human. They wouldn’t even be able to talk. A friend of a god—that would have had to be either another god himself, or one of his kin.”

Gumillia and the other two people present simply listened to Levia and Irina’s conversation in silence.

Levia continued on, pulling away from the ark a little. “I had some faint scraps of memory left from Levia. That is what told me I was friends with Held. –That in itself was the truth. And so Held evidently decided to play along with this peculiar sorceress who insisted that she was his friend.”

“He realized it right away, that it was you inside Elluka’s body. …If I were Held, I would have misgivings about you regaining your memories. He saw you as a hostile figure, so much so that he’d conspired with the sun god to change you and your brother into a dragon, and sealed you inside the ‘Sin’.”

“Yes. That’s why he put me under his observation, under the pretext of this ‘search for the deadly sins’. And for a time that worked. But five hundred years later his life in this world began to run out…And there he assigned a new watchdog to me.” Levia once more approached Gumillia, and put a hand on her shoulder. “That was—you, Gumillia.”

“…Yeah, it was.” Gumillia nodded. “Lord Held decided to use, the fact that the ‘Eternal Sorceress’ wanted an apprentice. He ordered me to keep an eye on Levia, under the guise of an apprentice. To make sure that she never, suspected anything. And…if Levia ever seemed like she would get her memories, back—”

“—With Michaela’s help, you were to seal me once more?”

“Yes…But…But, I--!” Gumillia cried out, her eyes welling with tears.

Seeing that, Levia kindly patted her head.

“I know…I know, Gumillia. You—were such a superb apprentice.”

“…Sob”

Gumillia couldn’t stop the tears flowing down her face.

Still, she tightly threw her arms around Levia.

--I am not Levia’s watchdog.

--I am Elluka Clockworker’s apprentice, Gumillia.

“—Gumillia. There’s one thing that I don’t get. People who have been ‘reincarnated’ lose their memories. Just like me, and you when you were reincarnated into a chipmunk. But when I had you and Michaela reincarnate from being animals, you still had your old memories. …Why was that?”

“…We had lost our memories. But, Lord Held had a copy of our old memories, made in advance. He overwrote us with them right after, we were reborn. So that you wouldn’t find out.”

“That’s quite a lot of work there. Who’d have thought…that old goat was such a hypocrite.”

“There were side effects. Shortly after Michaela reincarnated, she told me she collapsed from fever. That was probably, a side effect. I was fine, though.”

Levia gradually released Gumillia, and then moved back towards Irina.

“Was that the only reason you started having doubts about me, Irina?”

“Let me pose a question to you. Prim Marlon was one of your friends during your time as one of the Three Heroes in Lucifenia. –Did you never realize that she was an ‘HER’?”

“…No.”

“That would be impossible, if you were a Lighwatch priestess. Elluka Chirclatia was able to cure ‘HER’. –If you had used that power, you might have been able to avert the kingdom of Lucifenia’s destruction. Elluka Clockworker had lost the ability to use a technique that she should have been able to, and had conversely also become able to use one that she couldn’t have.”

“…The Swap Technique.”

“It was simple enough to think that it was just the influence of having been revived through the ark. But a much simpler explanation would be that there was someone else entirely inside of Elluka Clockworker—”

“—Your powers of deduction are a bit too strong, Irina. Long-lived though you may be, I doubt that you could have arrived at such an answer that easily.”

Irina’s face twisted slightly, and then shifted to a light smile.

“…It was Seth. Surprisingly enough he had become the ‘Demon of Wrath’. He must have skillfully slipped in with the others when the Twins of God created the ‘Vessels of Deadly Sin’, after he had died as a human—Or maybe the other demons were made at his suggestion… After I got my hands on the golden key and met with him again, I pressed him with my many years of suspicions. Seth readily told me everything. About gods, and the existence of their kin…that the true nature of the ‘Demons of Sin’ was that they were mere shadows of those kin… I came to know the workings of the world. And it was because of that that I was able to arrive at your true nature—And so here we are.”

Irina, and Levia. The two of them had arrived at various truths.

Gumillia wiped her tears, and gazed at the two of them as they faced each other.

The Elluka that had been the target of Irina’s hatred wasn’t the real one. What sort of feelings did she have towards her now?

--She didn’t need to think about it. Irina had sent them a duel invitation.

Despite knowing the truth.

Irina, who had been standing before the ark this whole time, began to walk.

She was headed for the “Sleep Princess”, Eve.

Irina circled behind Eve, and gripped her shoulders with both hands.

“The ‘Clockworker’s Doll’. She and I have a long partnership. I tried to grant her a certain power as an experiment. The end of the world will come someday—and when that comes, it must become a utopia for me. Hers is a power I need for that purpose. And through my experimentation I finally succeeded, fifty years ago. …Though I hadn’t thought that I would end up using it here.”

Eve hadn’t said a word since arriving at the square. Even as everyone else had talked, she had just stood there in place, expressionless.

Just like a doll.

And Irina whispered into Eve’s ear:

.

“Awaken—Master of the Court.”

.

In that moment, the scenery around them completely changed.

The temple that Gumillia and the others were standing in crumbled away, except for the base. The pillars, the sculptures, everything fell down into eternity. What was left then was a pitch-black space. There were white gridlines running over it.

There were platforms floating in the dark space. The temple vanished, save only for the circular platform that the five of them stood on, and the ark in the center.

“Welcome to the ‘Court’, everyone,” Irina boldly sneered. “The Master of the Court is impartial. All shall be reset equally, and then judged. Levia, your regaining your memories was because you took her into yourself. In this world that Eve has created…this world where all are equal—death can befall even a god.”

So saying, Irina spread her arms wide.

Blue flame appeared in her hands. She had regained the magical power that she should have expended already.

“Come, let’s renew the duel! Levia, and—” Irina looked…not at Gumillia, but at the woman in the maid uniform. “—I’ll destroy you as well, Behemo!”

Upon hearing those words, Gumillia was taken by some shock.

“That’s Behemo? But I thought, Behemo was a man—”

Levia replied with an uncomfortable expression, scratching her head, “There’s no mistake, that’s my younger twin brother. We’re fraternal twins. …He’s a real pervert, Behemo.”

“’Pervert’ is so harsh, sister. What’s so bad about a man dressing up like a woman?”

Gumillia didn’t have time to waste. Irina was trying to kill her teacher and the pervert. She needed to ask her why.

“Irina, why are you after Levia? It’s true she killed you, and ruined your country. But that was, long ago now. Nothing will come back, by exacting revenge on her.”

“…You don’t understand, Gumillia. These two—and you too, I suppose. The world that the gods once lived in was destroyed by the existence of ‘HER’. They abandoned the world polluted by HER and built this world anew. …But they made a grave mistake. They failed to account for Seth—that ‘HER’ had slipped in with their comrades.”

Irina seemed to be amassing magical power. The flames in her hands increased in energy, and began to change to large pillar of fire.

“’HER’ is a pathogen. And that pathogen is ‘programmed’ to destroy everything related to the gods. They themselves, and—the world that they made. …Though it seems Seth has forgotten that, now that he’s a demon. But I haven’t. I must pass down ‘punishment’. For that…is the mission given to an HER.”

“That’s nonsense. Programming, missions…Do you have your own will in there?”

“Shut up! Once I’ve destroyed Levia and Behemo, next will be your turn. Then the remaining spirits living carefree in the forest, and the ‘Demons of Deadly Sin’—I’ll destroy them all!” Irina cried.

As she did, she lifted her arms higher.

The flames were coming—

.

“—What an interesting thing you’re doing, ‘Red Cat Mage’.”

.

Gumillia couldn’t immediately discern whose voice that was.

It wasn’t Irina, Levia, Behemo, or Eve. Naturally it wasn’t Gumillia herself.

The sixth entity descended from above them.

The woman looked like Julia—like Germaine.

Irina cried up at her, “It’s you!—‘Demon of Gluttony’! What are you doing here…What in the world did you come here for!?”

“I want to destroy the gods too. That’s why I planned to watch this most entertaining scene. But if you’ve gone and taken possession of the ‘Master of the Court’...that’s a different story. There’s a chance you’ll become a threat to me. So—I’m going to play you all against each other. Right here, alongside the gods and their kin…I will erase you too, Irina Clockworker!”

The demon lifted her right hand.

With that as the cue, something appeared from further up.

A skeleton monster much, much larger than the floating platforms was heading toward them, enormous mouth open.

“My ultimate dead soldier, the ‘Worldeater’--Come, eat them all up!”

Irina harshly clicked her tongue as she watched.

“Don’t get in my way!”

The blue flames shot towards the “Worldeater”.

Not just them. The flames were joined by a bolt of lightning. Levia had fired it.

“I’m not going to just stand by and let you kill me,” Levia muttered, holding out her right hand.

.

A sorceress, a god, and a demon.

The powerful energies being fired off from each of them all collided in one place.

And then—

In the court, destruction and fusion both occurred in succession.

<<prev------directory------next>>

[indomitablemegnolia]

I have been dragging this coffin around, like Django, for a while now, and for some reason American politics has to just keep poking at a seeping infected wound; as a psychologist I know that the best way to deal with certain emotions and PTSD is to talk it out, if you can talk past the ragged breaths.  Now I am not much of a talker but I do write; I was thinking that maybe letting this out into the world might help someone or perhaps not fatally wound them by reading. I just know I have been  keeping all of this way too close for way too long. I am going to try to do this so those who don’t want to know can avoid. I do add a bit of fantasy into it as my own default coping mechanism; so it is not just a barrage of horror. There are triggers... physical pain, blood, rape, and political triggers...this is me screaming into the void. If anyone reads this, I would hope that I could inspire a kind word.

Good god, what fresh hell is this? I swear that sometimes I have to just kick this evil darkness, beat it back, strike out with every weapon I have until it bleeds sunlight; oh, and when that first drop of sun falls I have to keep fighting until I am bathed in that healing glow, smearing it over my face, rubbing it in to my soul; reveling in the warmth of the end of a battle well fought and valiantly one worth the effort.  This is always a rough two weeks for me every year for well 19 years now… the tenth falls and it seems some note really minor catastrophe befalls me; there has not been a skip year, a stand out or a delayed year; I will not whine about the past, but for the past three years it has been a political horror show on top of the menial financial, health, or personal failing; I focus on the possible and look up, which usually lands me down a manhole but I can’t change my stripes. In these last three years the shit-show of a congress (and congress is both houses equally guilty) put on these shows of caring and disdain, evil in its fake almost after thought of un-electability. Kavanaugh sent me into a bottomless tailspin; something about a Judge rapist being put on the highest court in the land on the anniversary of my own…attack; not that I think it sits any better in the pit of my stomach any other time of the year, but now… again… and I just can’t breathe, they had made my life all of the things I still struggle to live through… a joke, a pawn, something to leverage each other with… I am sick; politics making life, again, not worth living; nothing mattered, the truth did not matter, their ignorance, their lies did not matter. I find myself feeling rather Wilde; I was left feeling, broken, forgotten, as if I do not belong anywhere; there was nothing to lose myself in and no escape even if there were.

This country, this world, has become such a small, terrible place; I cheat, and I excuse myself, as I escape only by avoiding reality, I love the world that I create; but once there was a moment, out of time, such a terribly long time ago that I bring the memory to life often; for a time I had sunshine, and flowers, mud under my nails and rich coffee and I apologized to no one for who and how and what I am; I live with no thought regularly to why I should not be here and who I should be; yes, I do know that eventually I will die here, being banished to that other world where indeed I know because of the impermanence of life it will be as if I never did exist; every broken molecule of me will parish, every inch, every thought, but one. That molecule, that inch, that thought, its small, its infinitesimal, its worthless if you asked most, but in this world of whit and worry it is the only thing worth having; it is worth all the worlds in all the universes.  I cannot lose it; I can not barter it or sell it and above it all it should never be given away. This world must get better, it must stop getting lost in all the things that are not real, such as money, race, all the false differences we draw between us; there is only one true thing about this world, there is no escape, so make your difference here and now.  I must tell you, now that you see me, you know part of my life, my story and because of that I hope you understand that I Love you.  I love you, despite never knowing your story, we may never meet, never laugh or cry together and I will never kiss or hug you, but I love you as dearly as my universe, as closely as a flesh and blood friend.

I love you.

It has been so many years, I hardly talk about it, but I warn you now this gets a bit graphic, but it is my story; this story is not being told for anyone else's campaign; it is not a #metoo. This is me taking a psychological victory, screaming my pain into this void like echo chamber; I know no one may hear me, and that is fine. This is one of Dante's hells I live in, wrapped deliciously in my favourite personal coping mechanism a piece of detached fiction that reads like a conversation between my super ego and my Id....

I sought freedom, the only freedom to be had in this world, music loud, the delicious truth of life’s simplicity; music is a true elixir, ideally it should be listened to at 60-80 decibels and 70 mph; everything can be made right if you just put the music on and the top down, drive 85 mph on a country road, as if you are trying to out run time itself. The sun low in the western sky; fat fluffy gray clouds float lazily over a layer of black, brooding, formidable clouds rolling in like the undaunting wall of night, mocking the artificial azure sky that lays at the last eighth of the sky, about to be swallowed up. Music playing too loud, I sang atonally along; the cool breeze of autumn playfully ruffled my hair as if I resided in a third visible universe in one place unattached to the storm or the artificial sunny day.  The little silver dream I drove was cutting through the country side; coming up on a slower moving rusted out pick-up truck I worked the gearshift, not laying off the gas, dropping to fourth to pass, galloping ahead hard and fast, leaving the truck behind.

Suddenly, for the first time in ages the world almost made sense, err, I suppose it is awkward saying that because the sense it made was tenuous and momentary at best. Escape possible only by way of ignoring the horrors; after a week like the last, a little sensical nonsense was called for.  I had to get away, I had to distance myself from the news and the bluster, the horrible reality; the reminders that weighed my heart, slammed my soul, obliterated my psyche; in my home, my home, the country I love, whose founding documents read of words like truth and justice; a vicious criminal is appointed to the highest court in the land; a man accused of raping three women; a charge that not so long ago would have precluded his admission; but that was then and this is now, basically more of a wild west, kangaroo, dumb-fuckery idea of conscience; we are now a people who allow the separation of children from parents, to be kept in cages. Now, because of this stupidity, people treating justice like a partisan football; horrible happenings from my past are brought front and center of my subconscious every night as I sleep. Yes, I have read books and listened to tapes as to how to guide dreams, none have prevailed.

Letting my mind wander, it was dangerous; and yes, it circled back to last night’s bout with Fate, Christ, she hit me hard and fast; for a figment of my imagination she really left me bruised, broken, bloody; I can still taste the sickly copper iron flavor of blood in my mouth, my soul limping.  First. she took me on a trek into the past; tiny, horrible, years ago; Jesus, I realize, if this nightmare I carry heavy in my mind were a child it would be graduating high school; oh god, the thought, the kind that should never be thought; after, I was sentenced to a more vile prison, to a sentence more than double theirs, I see no possibility of parole from this place. I feel as if I were slowly being eaten alive; Fate, she held my face to the fire, she made me watch and relive it, over and over and over again.  

I despise the fact something as delicious as this breeze can trigger panic, terror, horror; this feeling was, twice upon a time, in the valley of faded fears, my favourite season, now it sits heavy on me, like a box of babies tears. Though now, it is that recurring nightmare, I try to break free, but as he said in The Godfather ‘every time I think I am out, it drags me back in.’ I feel so pathetic, seriously, I earned my PhD in psychology, trying to outfit myself with all the tools; I should have been able to drown this demon long ago, but alas, I find the zombie bastard can swim; argh, and yes, I know that isn’t possible, no one can fight off all the memories, it's impossible to erase events, for anyone, most especially me.

Out of the blue it seems, a wonderful friend, a friend one which I didn’t know I still had; sadly I assume that I am always left behind, but she sent me in a tailspin of introspection; she asked me simply, 'are you okay?' A real flesh and blood human asked me, she noticed, she pointed out that I am not acting like myself; I have been tearing myself down, doubting the simplest things, I have even, in an odd way, seeking her approval; asking permission to hang my own pieces on my wall, my usual 'it's easier to ask forgiveness, than seek permission', attitude gone.  

Gods, she is right, I know she is right; I am acting weird, different, calling myself stupid, pathetic, worthless; at first it started just stupid, small, subtle... most people bought that I was fine, they never saw it... I think. Anyways, they never called me on it. This friend, this good friend called me on it; I wrote a piece out of my usual character, at first, I loved it; then the next day in a mercurial hissy fit, I ripped into it, then in another flip I apologized for it, I am acting like a kid caught lying, obvious, blatant, guilty. This friend, ah, this beautiful friend called me on all my shit; like that guilty child, my psyche tried to hide it, then I stopped, I looked, really, I am. Then this introspection brought me to the realization that at times, not always, very rarely, I get weird, almost puritanical about sex. Usually I have a very laissez faire attitude; bi, straight, whatever flavour of the lgbtq or any other spectrum, if you get off on it, if you like it, then it's beautiful; there are people I love on all levels of depravity. It may even seem to them that I am a touch prudish because I do not partake, that is fine. Because this friend, this wonderful friend, shined a light, I could again see the bruises fate had left.

Fate had asked me, "so, if it is all good, what gets you off?" With that I was lost, nothing; everything; how was I to know? Of known experiences I have rape (not awesome) and a failed relationship (asshole never understood a thing I said, then tried to recreate experience #1); yup, two times lose on those. I know what I need, no desire, no require; with all the horrible mediocrity in this world that we seem to accept as fair sacrifice, I will not let love be among those. I want epic love, mad, passionate, crazy, undying, span the universes kind of love; anything less will be a poor substitute, meaning I can not, I will not let her take that from me; this is just one of those turns where nothing goes well. She shook me, and god, I had let Fate affect me.

The moment she reared her ugly head was pain. I was lost in a soft dream of sweet remembered soft kisses. Suddenly, a hit to my face, my eye starting to swell; a doubled fist to the gut, air rushed out in a horrible half scream.  A hand wrapped in my hair slamming my head into a stony ground, again, that horrible haunting memory.  Her voice chilling in a predatory growl, she wanted blood. She taunted me, "I KNOW what you wrote, hmmm, I know what you enjoyed, I told you; you can admit it, just to me, no one else is listening;" She ground her hips into mine from behind, "I know that you liked it, you loved it; I wonder, did you reach orgasm? Was it earth shattering? Did you moan like a whore?"  Fate, that horrible bitch, licked up from my jaw to my temple, I stopped the urge to vomit, I felt my hate multiply, but in seconds I felt a turn inward, "You know that the hecklers are still right;" she raked her pelvis suggestively against me, three more thrusts.

"No, but it seems to get you off, dry humping me; hmm is the bitch in heat? So ya like my ass? I have been working out." She slammed my face down into the stone.

I let a painful groan escape, "You like the rough trade."

"Oh yeah," I ground out lifting my head turning to face her, "about as much as I like you."

She laughed cruelly, standing slamming her foot into my kidney. “Look at you, still so pathetic, still that laughing clown punching bag, you are always such fun; there is a lot to be said about consistency," slamming her boot into my jaw.  "If it was not the roughness, the pain, was it the team effort? Now, remind me how many was it that you liked? Four or five? How many holes were the putting it into?" She ground her heel onto my palm, I try to stop the noise, a near scream, "how many holes?"  

I smiled showing my blood outlined teeth, "This many." I held aloft a single middle finger.

Fate came to torture my soul time and again, with unlimited creativity; it has happened more than a few times in recent days; using more taunts, planting more doubts, inflicting more pain; cracking open my soul leaving it weeping and bereft. The more it happened the more I began to believe that she was right; yes, maybe I really enjoyed it; then I didn’t take the moment needed to breathe before I reacted this time out of emotion, gut check. She was right, they were all right; it was all I deserved; I asked for it, I had enjoyed it. Though that moment of introspection given to me by a gorgeous friend, gave me time to recognize this is actually an extreme rendition, interrogation tactic, the kind used in interviews at Gitmo; some good interrogators can even implant false memories, causing false confessions.

I woke from the nightmare; I gathered my own thoughts.  I had to run; I had to hide. I hated; I hated the world and all the people in it, I hated myself and most of all I hated all this wasted time. If I had known Life before would I blame him, hate him… yes, right now, in fact I do.

I drove faster, not even slowing at bends in the road; why was I running? What good could it do? I know can not escape when the horror is inside my own skull. The green leaves starting to turn gold, some starting to age red at the edges. I whisked through the countryside, far too fast; it was liberating. God, this is my favourite season; there is something so sultry and libidinous about fall; I let go of the wheel, raising my arms joyous in the air. The feeling, the smell, the look, it seems to get my heart racing and my mind reeling; in pure celebration of the seasons change, the bite to the wind and the trill of cinnamon to the air, senses that are so much Life, oh me, oh my, oh my favorite things. Dark chocolate, eaten slowly, savored and enjoyed; passionate literature read in a hot bath tub that requires an entry like bugs bunny getting into the boiling cauldron; music, so many lovely perfect kinds of music, hard hitting, rampaging, soothing and truly sensual all appreciated savored and enjoyed… Please, Life... I need you.  Why don't you come? I call to you, I miss you.

Before even fate showed the aphasia really affected my self-confidence; I no longer had my words, I constantly sounded either stupid or drunk or both, that had shaken me to my core; with both of those, it changed my own reactions. Then America, my home, is not helping, the president mocking a rape survivor, his little toadies backing him up. It just tore a hole in my psyche, in my soul, letting all these demons back. This is not me really... but what is me?

For me, after the attack, the police, they never doubted; the bruised and bloody the evidence abounded, they had no trouble even finding the culprits, but the faculty, the students... not so kind... I heard the whispers, they never looked at me, not the real me, I was just a disregarded scrap.

My lips hurt, they were cracked in two places, my ribs were bruised, all making me wonder if Fate was more than just my horrible subconscious. More than the conscience that makes a coward of me; makes me want to run for the shelter of a strong set of arms.  My foot slacks off the gas pedal; I was losing my will to run, I realized that I was not able to run from this kind of mountain.

"Why can't you hear me?!” I yelled at the building clouds so hard my throat ached; they were heavy with rain. I saw the edges of refracted rainbows as they slid slowly in front of the sun.

Soft, so close to my ear, I felt the breath of Life. "But I did."

I swerved, nearly off the road, I screamed, slamming in the clutch not touching the brake, cutting the wheel sharply, putting the car into a full 360 spin, it almost came to a rest.  "Jiminy Cripcity Roosevelt Christmas, man. You could have just killed me." I collected my galloping heart, letting the clutch out in 3rd gear screeching off the tires. He laughed, his words sunk in slowly, I understood his words and they angered me, I slid the gearshift into 4th, without the clutch; "Yeah, right, you heard me, sure.  So, what you are saying that as usual when the world begins using me for a toilet brush, I am on my own; lemme guess, all for character building I am sure. Just go, I do not need you anymore.  Just get out." I leaned into the gas, not caring the speed, anger making my eyes begin to run.

"What the hell was that?" He reached his hand over, gripping mine, "wound a little tight their honey; let’s get you relaxed” he started rubbing the inside of my wrist, my breathing slowed. "I wish, with every ounce of power I have, I wish I could have come when I heard your cries, they caused an ache in me so cutting so horrible, I cried. I don't know how I heard you or how I am here now."

"Yeah, yeah, sure." I jeered my hand waving him away. I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, his expression was so hurt, “God, I shouldn't have mocked... I’m just angry, but not at you,” I took a long breath, “I am sorry" I whispered, easing off the gas.

"Then just stop, pull off the road, talk to me."

I sighed seeking that cognitive reset.  "Okay." There was a wooded turn out just ahead.  I pulled the car over, stalling out, killing the engine. I rolled my eyes internally; it has been ages since I stalled out.  I swiped the little tears away. "So, what? What is it that you want?" My jaw set. "What?"

He sighed, seeing this was going to be an uphill battle; he reached for my hand bringing the palm to his lips; instantly my jaw slacked, and air rushed from my lips, "I missed you." He kissed the tender pad of my palm. "I know you have been in pain. Tell me what caused it; tell me haunts you." His fingers still softly drawing hypnotic circles on my wrist.

"Ah, pain, but where to start? We could do a chronological study into the beginning of pain; it might take a while."  I try to sound unbothered.

"Where this pain, your pain, the one that has had you screaming, where that pain started." His face so beautifully earnest, and there is an importance to being earnest.  “Please…” he breathed

"Words, it always begins with words, then those sticks and stones; they come hard."

He let one hitched chuckle out, "Wow, what a cop out." He dared.

I breathed again, then let it out slow, "Dammit really?” he nodded, “shit, with this whole 'legitimizing rape' floating around, taking even the one recourse for a victim of said crime has if it takes an unlucky turn. They have the audacity to mock and berate a survivor of a crime, I have seen them, mock hurricane victims, the disabled, they come just shy of saying that they want all of us defectives to die they put a rapist on the high court, now this monstrosity that will end my only piece of mind. My…" he held up his hand.

Clicking of his tongue stopped me. "No, not what I asked for Joan of arc, I was asking for the story, for this pain I see in your eyes, not a history of the worlds ills. I want your story."

"Eg, yeah, but that’s not important, it's really not even worth telling."

"Just stop; stop with the bullshit, stop deflecting; I want to hear your story, please, just tell me the goddamned story.” He gritted his teeth, “sorry, but I hate when you make light of yourself; you are making fun of my favourite person in the world, I am sorry just, please, just tell me."

"Cheese and crackers man, it is a horrid little pathetic thing. But fine." I take a breath, “Shit, my story…" I could not form the words. "hey, what’s better I could just tell you the tale of the little engine that should have known better, but still did it anyway.”

"No," he watched me closely, not letting his impatience show "I want to know your story, your pain, please."

"Shit, shit, shit, OK, shit... dammit," I hit the steering wheel, I pressed my forehead into the hard surface of the wheel, "but don't say I didn't warn ya. Shit” minutes passed, I said nothing.

He reached over holding my shoulders, "Honey, nothing that would make you too nervous to say, could be a waste of time, you are that fearless girl that never holds her tongue. Trust me, I think I can help." His thumb rubbed tenderly.

"I am neither fearless, nor am I a girl; I am a right old horrible spinster," I huffed, I fiddled with my fingers. I looked in his eyes; “I am" I stopped gathering my thoughts; "I don’t think you will like this as well as you think; I know what will happen after its all out, so, I must preface with a goodbye, you have been lovely. I know your opinion of me will slip; you won't want to know me after I finish, so thank you." He looked doubtful, but I knew, gods, I will miss him. "Before I start, I want to say, even if it means nothing to you, if no one ever tells you, I love you." A tear streaked from my eye, "What am I? Nothing," he shook his head vigorously, "look at me, I know most don’t think much of me, red round cheeks and usually a smile, no makeup and holes in my jeans; I have been told many, many, times after having conversations with people that my Naivety was endearing, but if I had ever encountered the real world my outlook would become as jaded as theirs. I may act like I have encountered nothing but sweetness and light in a noodle salad life, but that is far from the truth. I believe that you can encounter the worst that life has to offer and choose your reaction to it. You can stop believing in the world around you or you can continue to believe in kindness, understanding, and trust. Some say it is just denial, burying my head in the sand that allows me think that life is still what we make it… I Laugh and Laugh… If they knew what this girl, well, shit, here you go. Enough wasting time, I will get down to it. It's a shit story..." I wiped my hands down my face, the a swipe under my nose with the bad of my hand, then on my thighs, "shit," I sighed out, “Too many years ago it was a bright sunny day; a warm fall morning with a light breeze. I was worried about a calculus test; the biggest thing on my mind were cos A and sin B. I was on the phone ironing out a scheduling problem; I was talking to my internship mentor on the first cell phone in my family, dad got it for my safety because of my commute 90 miles to school. Jabbering on about what, I don’t even remember, I reached into the back seat for my bag. Sighing and hanging up the phone, preparing for the day ahead, or so I thought." I took a steadying breath, I had evaded long enough; I couldn’t meet his gaze, I just stared straight ahead out the windshield. "Suddenly, horribly brutality was introduced into my life; the surprise really isn’t as horrible as the feeling of helplessness; I was still bent closing the door with my hip I started to heft my book bag; my head caved in the rear door of my car; you should have seen it, truly impressive the damage a cranium can do." I remain in this protective tone, details curtailed "I was knocked out cold; I slowly came out of my haze I felt pain, searing horrible pain, but not my head, I heard ripping material;  I smelled blood my blood; flying back to reality and I know what is happening, the animal grunting and horrible rhythm; pain, it’s between my legs; no one had ever been there before;" I heard Life take a savage breath, it was nice to know someone cared, even if it was just for show.  I wiped the dampness from my face again.

"They raped me, I did not count or really anything." I tried to laugh it off, "they beat me, pulled my hair, god, one stood one foot on my head so I couldn’t move and urinated on my face as that other one finished, they called me whore, and cum bucket, and worse; every part of my body was used and abused; I lost, my hands blindly flail, I try to kick. I was savaged by animals I use the term loosely. They ransacked my car as they took turns, seeing my viola in the trunk and to punish me for fighting they crushed my left hand, they kicked me, beat my head into the pavement repeatedly. When they had finished with me and my car, the cruelest one of them, pulled the scarf wrapped around my neck and strangled me, they murdered me, and I do have to say part of me did die. As they did they laughed, god, they laughed, horrible laughs, they creep into my conscious when anything goes awry. I lost consciousness, I guess they assumed I died, I woke, I don’t know how much time passed, but I woke in a pool of blood and …err other, I got in my car and drove to the security station on the bottom level… yeah." I shook. He rubbed my hand; I pulled away quickly, I could have spit on him, but it was not him the anger belonged to. "What is madness but nobility of soul, at odds with circumstance?"  

"My god, I was expecting bad, but my… my heart, it is broken” ready to face the loss of him, I turned, I watched his face as the light died in the low, dark, rain swollen clouds; a delicate falling rain drank in the dusk; it felt like it swallowed my misery whole and for that I was grateful; shrouded in silence, the branches of the trees above wrapped me in their stoic peace. Shadows fell across us the boundaries lost their edges, as the borders were erased, once again the wonder if I had ever really existed. His presence was always so elegantly reassuring, and still I had to remind myself it was not him I was so mad at.

"Yeah, so, how was that for a hard luck story? The first time I have told anyone since I left the police station. Not exactly Disney Channel friendly, but I am waiting to hear back from lifetime." I laughed; the sound was hollow.  "Peachy side, I didn't end up knocked up or diseased; so, maybe the universe heard that plea."  I sniffed, my frustration returning.  He trailed his hand lightly down my damp cheek.  I flinched away, shy, stupid, embarrassed, "pretty pathetic, huh?"

He shook his head. "Shh, stop that please, you don’t have to mock yourself in that Cyrano de Bergerac style you always use; you are not beating me to a punch line, I was never going for one” he ran his hands over his face, “did you not hear your story? My heart is broken." I tried to look away; his gentle hands coaxed my gaze back.  "I heard a story of survival, those monsters tried to end you; here you are, fight intact, undaunted, truly indomitable, the rest just damaged facia."

I looked in his eyes, "Fate has been taunting, mocking me, whispering that I liked the assault,” I stopped, hesitating, “that has me doubting everything."

His face skeptical, eyebrow raised, "And you believe those taunts?" He shook his regal head.

Temper sparked, "kind of,” I stopped, feeling stupid, I bristled, “I do, okay. So what?"

"Why?" He cajoled. "Really, tell me why; the whole truth answer." He sat back like Cesar at the gladiator games, "hold nothing back, I can take it."

Apparently, he was satisfied that I was soundly kicking my own ass. "I wrote out, an imaginary tryst, you and I, we were on a boat, it was just delicious, an escape, there was a touch of rough to it... some of the details were... similar to... that." my voice stopped working.  "I liked it a lot, but then I got overwhelmed, confused; how can I like that, without liking the other.  The reality of that implication," I sniffed, fluttering my hands; that horrible weird guilt weighing my soul, I knew it was just my own psyche, but it was horrendously irresistible; I stopped I gave up; "shit, now you know; you know… everything why I am so deplorable... grotesque... disgusting." I rolled my eyes closed, I concentrated on my breathing, minutes clicked by finally I opened them, expecting that he had blew away on the breeze.

I met his gaze, I saw no pity, no disgust; I saw him, just Life.   Confused, I searched further, still none.

"You are not. You know better than most that feelings can be deception; sex, isn't just soft, isn't just rough, it is never one flavour; it is the connection, the intention." He ran his hands through my hair. Pressing it back behind my ear the way I like it.  "Honey, there is no equation between your rape and having a touch of rough in a fantasy. It does not mean you liked being helpless, beaten, or broken, the intention there was viciousness; there was no connection there, no trust" he sighed.

I gave a derisive chuckle, "right."

He dropped my hand, pulling away, gaining my full attention. "You apparently have made up your mind not just for you but also what I would think; you really must be magic; I think you would be surprised by what I think.”

I let a derisive chuckle out, “Sure because you are some kind of paragon.”

“I wouldn’t say paragon, but I heard every word you said. It made me so mad that you would think that way about you.”  I rolled my eyes.  He growled, and good god something in me was listening, something found the sound so delicious that it made me tingle; I scanned his eyes, there was still softness there. “Honey, look, I heard a story of an invasion, a horrible, massive invasion. I don't care if you were splayed naked on a table saying, 'come and get it big boy, give it to me hard,'” I let a snerk of laughter out at the idea. “if it was not the specific person you were talking to; that was an invasion. You cannot discount a rougher, needy kind of love making; accepting carnal love rougher more animal in its display requires trust in the intention of the other party, it is not simply the actions; Accepting love rougher, that act of trust is never more shameful or dirtier; it is a communication telling the other party, I trust you to be just this much, but no more; the instant you voice a dislike and it continues it becomes the other; it’s all up to you, whatever is pleasing to you, only you. There is no right, there is no wrong, no disgusting or dirty; sex is all about the feeling, expressing.” I understood what he was trying to say, but I really didn’t want to hear it, I knew he was trying to placate me, I tried to ignore him; “Don't be like a velvet glove cast in iron, dealing only in absolutes." I had to look away, “love is love, is love, is love, and it all matters” the storm gaining strength, he released the top and pulled it up; kissing the top of my head as he passed. "Sweeting, the space between absolutes..." he sighed, "remember, you said that is where you had chosen to live, you were right, it is the place where life happens." He ran his hands through his hair; his frustration evident, then a light hit his eyes; "I would really like to read this fantasy, curiosity leads me to wonder," he chuckled, "I just wonder if it would match up to any of mine." I shot him a skeptical look. “oh, honey; I have had so many fantasies since the first time you appeared.”

I had no words to say, I just sat watching him, waiting for the change.

He sat, looking at me, the storm began to rage, much like the maelstrom that had been inside me for so long; I pulled the piece up on my phone handing it to him. We were more than damp, I noticed I had been shivering; for how long, no one knows. I sat watching the storm split the sky; I started the car, flipping a bitch, starting back in the opposite direction; he was deeply ensconced in my words, he reached over with out looking up, turning on the heat, directing the vents at me.  

I shot him a look, just a glance; but what I saw. God, the power of a glance has been so much abused in love stories, that I had never believed in its power; no one now dares to say that two beings have fallen in love because they looked at each other. Yet, an unguarded look can tell you so much, love, despise, languor and fear; tenderly in his exquisite look, I saw the most gorgeous thing, understanding; an acceptance.  I was astonished, I was bewildered, dizzy, in a daze; I still did not understand, I began wondering what universe he was from... My stomach panged, rumbling as loud as the storm, I ignored it.

"Hey, can you pull in up there, you need something to eat." There was a neon sign in the distance, that advertised barbeque, I was surprise he could even see if as he didn’t look up from my words. I pulled in, reading the sign that promised barbecue and drinks, after all it was Texas, a bourbon sounded just right. I pulled in and parked; I was a numbed, near depressed but electrified, dumbfounded, impressed and slightly aroused; all the roiling emotions had my jaw clenched, I was disassociated, separated, on autopilot. My feet moving me through the rain, but I was a cloud of confused emotion; a stranger in a strange land; emotion was not my wheelhouse. Wandering idly toward the door; passing the columns, he gripped my shoulders almost punishingly. He spun me to face him, his face dark and serious, I began shivering, he pressed me to the wall. His face serious, but the passion burned; again, that growl, it hit the bottom of my stomach, warming, making my legs shake; he kissed me, suddenly, deeply, no warmup, no cuddling into my lips just immediately lips and tongue.  Tucking his knee between my legs pressing hard, soft mewling left my throat caught in his mouth.  He pinned my arms to my sides I tried to touch him, but he wouldn’t yield, he wanted to kiss me, his way; and yes, I liked it, he ran his tongue along the roof of my mouth, I moaned softly into his mouth, rocking gingerly against his knee; the visceral feeling. He started to deepen the kiss even more, his knee caressing, moving with intention. A quiet shudder rocked me.  He sucked in a deep controlling breath, resting his forehead against mine, staring deeply into my eyes; I shook like a leaf as we parted. Shaking I clung to his shoulders.

"Now, kitten, did you feel my intention, to bring you pleasure?" I nodded, "was there pleasure?" I bit my lip, a small smile creeped, I nodded. "You know, the fact that you know the horrible purity of absolute, pure despair; doesn’t mean that is all there is in this universe." He kissed me again, faintly. He passed his fingertips over my skin, almost without touching an experience that neither of us had expected or experienced before, the miracle of feeling myself in another body, "Now, did you feel that?"

"Yes," I whispered, I was shadow pinned against a sweating wall; needing more, my soul pleading for more, but I was frozen; "Oh there was a moment there; oh me, oh my; as you began a whisper of that kiss; clearer than any whispered words; god there was something there that makes it all worthwhile; that was the edge, hmm, the edge is what I have; truth of this fiction, it's the edge of flavour that makes the difference.” I giggled, “there was a time when I would speak words that made sense." I giggled.

"Yes. But what truth is there in sense?" He laced my fingers with his and pulled me after him; we walked in me confused actually wanting to go back to being pinned to that wall, we walked in.  The waitress took us to a booth; I slid in first, I gasped in surprise as he slid in next to me on the same bench. He ordered me a bourbon and an order of fries; I sat there blinking, he then turns me to face him, he leans in close whispering deep and low; his breath warm on my neck, "When we are young we felt we are invincible; as we age we find ourselves, second guessing, always thinking twice." As he spoke, he planted little kisses on my neck; “I am done with that, I thought I was done paying my dues, same for you; now, I find that I have something I do not want to lose. The day you came into my life I changed again, fear still there, but also a cacophony of joy, both at odds, now every day now is just a grateful roll of the dice." His hands skimmed over my arms as they draped around his neck, freely delicious. "I look at that, it is working; you are starting to hear me; I like you, feel powerless in the lonesome times, thinking to myself 'dear god what have I done?' But with you here..." biting the edge of my ear, "you can run baby, you can try to hide, but whatever comes it will find you. For us, there is now; yesterday is history, an hour from now, no one knows for sure; but baby right now it's just you and me and that kiss, it said a lot." He turned me to face him.

Our drinks and fries came and I took a long drought, I laughed cuddling close, I felt young, I felt alive, and I really had never felt that way, “Are we mad?" he looked wounded, "but the good madness, the change the world madness."

"I want to just hold you tight; right now, we can make this moment last; don't think about anything other than helping you forget about the past, for just a moment if needs be." His kissed me slow, long deep caresses with his tongue; I tried to match him, I was awkward at first, but he led me in a natural rhythmic motion.

I missed feeling him, tasting him, gods, it was like breathing. I kissed him with everything I had. "You know, your fantasy, it was gorgeous." He kissed me again, his hands cupping my cheeks, tilting my face for a new angle. He broke from my mouth kissing down my neck. "I have sailed a 20-foot catch; I have had some very similar thoughts, but I loved that very forward confident you that you wrote."

I fumbled with my hands trying to make him feel some of what I was. "Have you really imagined us together as well?"  My fingers sliding through his hair. He nodded, “I kind of assumed you were so out of my league."

He laughed, the sound rippled along my nerves; "oh, kitten, you have no idea who you actually are. Yes, I have, so many things I have fanaticized about."

I pulled away to see his eyes, they held no lie; "Even now?... after?"

He looked shocked, "Especially now." He said with conviction.

"Tell me one," I was breathless.

He held my had looking into my face, "Happily, but I would rather show you. I long to grab your hand and run to the motor inn across the parking lot, get a room." I looked out the window over his shoulder gnawing on my kiss swollen bottom lip.

"Mmm, story first," I stood firm.

"OK then, well, I suppose I could tell you about the one where you are the aggressor; holding me down using me as you will." He shook his head, "no, the one where I am the aggressor, holding you down? Kissing you slowly, teasing your nerves, dipping my fingers into you, feeling you shiver; nah, you don't look keen on that, eating chocolate ice cream off of your skin;” I really shivered, “maybe another time; I suppose, I could tell you about how I dreamt of kissing you, teasing you, then bend you over this table licking all the way up the back of you thigh and... no, no, not that one. Kitten, come here." He pulled my leg up so he could slide closer, fitting just between. "You have to use your imagination; I dream of laying you down, kissing you so hard, it takes your breath away; I want to make out with you like a teenager out passed curfew." He caressed my trembling bottom lip with his thumb. "I would get lost in your kisses; intoxicating, enticing, articulate, telling me exactly what you want, how you want it; using only the tip of your tongue you draft a treatise." He toyed with my hair idly, my eyelids began to sag half-mast; passion building in my body, "Wowzah, that scorching look in your eyes, so intent, you are so Wildely beautiful; why, oh why do you squash that want, fighting it like a foe, a weakness; please, just... let it free."

His hand began caressing my neck, I could not have stopped myself from rolling my head, so my neck was wide open for his lips. His tongue. "I love kissing your neck, licking, taking little bites, right here." His fingers wisping passed the place where neck meets shoulder, my bones melted; he smiled mischievously, shot me a naughty look wiggling get his brows. He slid his fingers along my neckline, his touch whisper soft; his voice low, rumbling, deep, "deliberately I descend along your succulent curves;" my body raising to meet his fingers, straining for attention. "I watch you arch your back, just like that; I can't take my time learning; your heaving breasts wanton for attention, nipples like diamonds," oh and they are, his two fingers caress along the crevice between my breasts. My breathing hitched, coming in soft pants, his eyes gorgeous reverent. "I reveal the state in which I see your nerves are in; rampaging, greedy, alive for just a whisper of a touch; oh, but I want more" he sunk in closer, enjoying the slight shake of my shoulders. His hot mouth kisses just behind my ear, his tongue licking along my skin; his lips playing with the cords in my neck as I let out a sighing moan, just a solitary note; his fingers toying with the area of my soft sweater, just over my the area of my nipple. "Your belly covered with barely visible downy hairs, soft, soft, so soft;" he slipped his fingers of his other hand up under the hem of my sweater, just above my waistband; his first hand dropping to my thigh, dipping between rubbing with soft curious fingers; the nail of his wide thumb, scraping along the seam between; "they are standing up because of the goose bumps I just made."  His fingers velvet soft over my skin, I try clamped my thighs together he keeps that from happening.  "Pushing passed the band of your jeans, I reach for what I crave the most." His second hand skimming a rougher scratching fingernail along the seam; his other fingers just trace along the skin along the edge of the bottom of my bra, his lips kissed along my neckline.  "I would make you moan," I squirmed, "I would form a symphony of your empassioned calls, all the delicious sounds of satisfaction; I will be ruthless in my intent, pleasure my only goal; releasing you from the past, my hope. I know you will want to run, to escape, but at the same time you will be wanting more;" he pulled back, "more; look at you, breathtaking, deliciously titillated. Your cheeks flushed, you lips slightly parted; eyes glossy, erotic, steamy, fervid, seductive, coaxing, shameless; saying every want your lips refuse." Pulling at the hem of my sweater, "I want to slip my hand under your panties, sliding my fingers across your damp skin.  God, I have wanted that for so long" His fingers ghost over my skin, reaching the edge of my satin bra; his lips crashed into mine, his kiss demanding, delicious, scalding; his hand enveloping my breast; his thumb rubbing delicately, I react honestly. I grabbed his wrist of his hand that was resting on my thigh, pulling his fingers to my mouth, sucking. The clench in my belly responding to his hand slipping under my bra. I pull away, gasping; I stand, dropping a ten on the table.

"Shit, I am sorry," his breath laboured, his face recalcitrant, "I pushed too far, too fast; I am sorry; so, where are we off to?" He looked disappointed, sad.

"Well, I decided, you are right," viciously, I let that hang in the air; “you should just show me.  Our direction, over there," I pointed out the window to the inn.

He looked like a child at Christmas, he grabbed my arm tossing me over his shoulder, I giggle and squeal, he moved quickly to the door. We were out and across the parking lot swiftly, he was running; the rain drenching us; he dropped me to my feet under the awning. "I'll be right back."

I watched him fill out the forms, pay the woman, and he bounded back.  "We will make, new experiences, giving you back all the power. Let’s roll." Pulling me over his shoulder again; I squealed, I laughed; he slapped my rump, I moaned.

And outside it was October Country . . . that country where it is late in the year and everyone is tired and waiting for that one good thing to break; country where the amber hills covered in fog, rivers are mist and ice; where noon shortly proceeds sundown, twilights linger, and mid-night’s stay; geese and dusks on their parade to the south; dilled carrots and jams are lined into cellars, sweaters, coats, jackets, are cycled to the front of closets, boots and gloves to the entry way, coffee and tea served hot and steamy with fresh cookies and it seems for a season everything faces away from the sun. October people, think October thoughts and wish that the Christmas stuff would remain hidden for another season, and passing nights, cool, bundled in warm socks and a large sweater walking or listening to the light rain on the tin roof hoping the winter doesn’t kill hope

[totallycorrectpmdquotes]

I'm on another PMD kick, and I stumbled across your Backfire fic on AO3, and it's super good so far! Even if it's a while to the next update, it was totally worth reading what you have so far-- so good job, and good luck with it if you ever continue!

Thank you so much! :DD

But speaking of updates...

(Chapter 1) (Chapter 2)

Uxie’s powers aren’t just limited to his lake, and affect all memories which could be traced back to the Time Gears. It’s easy to imagine the mental catastrophe this could cause in the mind of someone who’s spent nearly their entire life looking into them. In his defense, Uxie was really mad at Grovyle.

-

3.

For Chatot, it had been aparticularly frazzling evening. The Guildmaster had reorganized a storage roomwith a rather small window for Grovyle by throwing all its contents into thehall. Bidoof and Loudred carried out their orders to clear the mess away quicklyenough, although Chatot would not bethe first one to open the closets they had stuffed everything in. When OfficerMagnezone had led the secret transport of the still unconscious Grovyle,Dusknoir had followed. As Grovyle was deposited in his new bed – closer to theGuildmaster’s chamber than any of the apprentice’s, just to be safe – Dusknoirhad promptly positioned himself outside the door.

“Dusknoir, Sir,” Chatot had said,“we can have the apprentices take over that position. You don’t need to troubleyourself for us.” His intention had been to send Chimecho to take over, andmore importantly, have her make sure the Great Dusknoir was alright.

But Dusknoir had waved him offand refuted any further attempts to convince him that they could help. “I camehere to find him, I’ll guard him. It’s no trouble.”

A few minutes later, Dusknoirapparently caught sight of his reflection in one of the lower-level drinkingfountains and jumped in fright. No one dared to ask what startled him. Herefused to leave his post when dinner was ready as well, despite the fact thatGrovyle wasn’t due to wake for another several hours. And Chatot, well, mayhave reacted by bringing him a plate of leftovers sprinkled with a portion ofground sleep seeds.

He was concerned and had everyright to be! Dusknoir would surely be upset when he woke, and Chatot would takethe consequences of his actions in stride. He would apologize for hisdeception, but not for his actions. Dusknoir needed to rest – whatever ailmenthe was suffering from would not be treated if he ran himself ragged.

Night fell on the guild, andChatot enlisted Chimecho’s help to move the now fully asleep Dusknoir to theGuildmaster’s bed.

“And remember, this stays betweenus.” Chatot said, well aware that Chimecho already knew and wouldn’t say a wordabout Dusknoir’s condition. Nervousness kept him tittering about, though. “Areyou certain he has to be awake for you to examine him?”

“Sorry,” she said, and used herpsychic to gently set Dusknoir down. “If he’s against it, we could have someonetalk with him and I’ll examine him while he’s distracted.”

Chatot hesitated for a secondbefore he sighed. “You have better eyes for this than anyone in the guild. Ifyou think that would be enough for you to help him, then I trust yourjudgement.” He shrugged off Dusknoir’s bag and did his best not to look at thesleeping form. “You may take your leave and return to your quarters.” He was very aware she would not be doing that;the apprentices would be meeting in Team Relic’s room, where the two would bebombarded with questions about why they had decided to let Grovyle stay.

Chimecho nodded, and with a quietring of her bell, she left the room. Chatot watched her leave before he nudgedDusknoir’s bag closer to him. There was something strange about the bag,something that Chatot struggled to put a feather on, but it clicked when hefound a worn patch on the right side where a few rolled up pieces of parchmentwere visible. The bag was the same model as Grovyle’s.

Chatot allowed himself a momentof short, quiet laughter – he’d had such a horrifying feeling, and all it hadamounted to was that. How incrediblysimplistic. Those bags must be mass produced in the future with that samedefect. It was unfortunate that the Great Dusknoir had such a poor qualitytreasure bag.

With one long look at the piecesof parchment which, really, were none of Chatot’s business and were not something he’d be prying into,Chatot returned to his post outside of Grovyle’s room. The Guildmaster sat tothe left of the door, two crochet hooks in his hands and what looked like a half-finishedyarn apple in his lap.

“Hiya!” The Guildmaster said,loudly, but clearly trying to be quiet. “How’s Dusknoir? Is he having sweetdreams?”

“I’m sure he is,” Chatot said,and made himself comfortable to the right of the door. “And Grovyle?”

The Guildmaster put down his yarnand stared across the room. “…No,” he said, “he’s still having nightmares. Buthe’ll be awake soon. He’ll be happier then.”

Chatot glanced back, through thecurtain they’d draped over the doorway. The shadows were twisted around Grovyle,and in the dim light almost looked like they were standing over him.

Chatot pulled the curtain openfarther as Grovyle shuddered, and the illusion faded.

.-.

There was no vulpix named Breannain the Wigglytuff Guild. However, there was one who’d introduce herself by hernickname, Breeze.

She hadn’t known that Pokémon goby their species name unless interacting with their family until she was told.She was practically illiterate – everyone around wrote and read in footprintrunes, but she didn’t even know the alphabet. When asked where she was from, orwhy she had made her way to Treasure Town in the first place, all Breeze had tooffer was a shrug.

Honestly, it was impressive thatno one had figured out her secret yet. Well, they’d figured out about herDimensional Scream, but her secret of being a ‘human turned Pokémon withamnesia who couldn’t even remember her own real name’ was still safe.

Mostly.

Breeze sat beside her partner,Dusk, with their guildmates crowded into the room with them. They’d beenarguing for the past several minutes. Breeze had been reorganizing her treasurebag for most of them and left Dusk to deal with their friends’ questions.

At least Chimecho had taken pityand brought him a chalkboard so he wouldn’t strain his voice anymore.

“But I don’t understand,” Sunflora said, “he’s a bad Pokémon!”

Dusk dipped his paw in chalk duskand drew several footprints from various normal-types while Breeze triplechecked her stash of orans for any orens. She returned them to her bag as Duskgestured to his writing.

“I guess,” Sunflora hesitated,“but you can’t change nature.”

“We are still worried about youtwo,” Dugtrio said, “you may be confident in this second chance, but we wouldhate to see a horrible fate befall you.”

Breeze didn’t look at him (them?She really needed to find a chance to ask what Dugtrio preferred) and insteadgently dumped out her orbs. She started to sort them by function, thenalphabetically on top of that. Dusk used some grass and water-type footprintsthis time.

“We will not question yourdecision further,” Dugtrio said, “but know that you may fall back on us if thisfails.”

“WELL, I will!” Loudred announcedand was promptly shushed by the rest of the apprentices.

“Oh my gosh, do you want Chatot to come tell us off?”Sunflora said as she whacked him with one of her leaves. “Be quiet for once!”

“Fine!” Loudred said in whatcould barely be counted as an indoor voice. Breeze heard him stomp towards her,and kept her eyes focused on the orbs. “Vulpix, don’t do anything stupid.”

Breeze pawed categories of orbs alittle bit farther apart. “I won’t.”

“I mean it,” Loudred said, “Idon’t care if you think he’s cool,you get yourself or any of us killed we’re going to have a problem.”

Breeze licked her lips and didn’tlook up at him. “I won’t,” she repeated, “I know what I’m doing.”

“But that’s what we want toknow,” Chimecho pointed out, her voice gentle. “What is your plan? We know hewon’t remember you, and that you feel bad because of how much he’s missing, buthe nearly killed you both. Why are you putting so much faith in him?”

Dusk started to write somethingdown, but Corphish held up a claw to stop him.

“Hey-hey, no offense Riolu,” hesaid, “but I want to hear what Vulpix has to say about this. She’s been tooquiet.”

As an agreement rippled acrossthe guild, Breeze coaxed her orbs back towards her. “Uh,” she swallowed,“well…”

Breeze frowned. Why… why was she doing this? Yes, she felt badfor and identified with Grovyle, but she hadn’t been a bad person. She’d neverhurt anyone who hadn’t deserved it, and Grovyle had nearly destroyed the world.He’d tried to kill her, Dusk, Uxie, Mesprit, Azelf – everyone. What if she was looking at this all wrong? What if hestill remembered how much he wanted to hurt them, just not the why? What if she was being stupid, andputting so much trust in someone who was just going to hurt the guild?

“Come ON!” Loudred said, yellingright by her ear, “Spit it out!”

There was a muffled squawk beforea tremor knocked the apprentices off their feet.

.-.

Dusknoir sat on the edge of afrozen riverbank beside a man dressed in shades of gray. They had a pile ofrocks between them and sat in silence as they threw them into the river. Thesound of a splash was there, but the water didn’t move as it sucked the rocksdown. Dusknoir pulled out a rock, flat and circular with small protrusionsaround the edge, and handed it off to the human. Immediately after touching itthe human gasped and gripped his head. The rock fell from his hand and rolleddown the bank, bouncing twice before it finally settled in the shallows.Dusknoir stared at the man, and he stared back with blank, unseeing eyes.

Dusknoir blinked.

He was on a cliff face, a body infront of him and his hands stained a dark red. There was a loud, shrill noise.There had been for the past minute.

He turned around, and the imageof a small child with red-brown hair drifted away like smoke. The cliffblurred. The body faded.

He was in a blank but colourfulroom, and in front of him was an unfortunately familiar shadow form with a wispof white hair.

“Hello, Hope,” Darkrai said,absolutely smug, “are you having a nice nap?”

“Don’t call me that,” Dusknoirsnapped, immediately on guard. “What are you doing here?”

“What, you thought you were theonly one who followed those idiots when they fled back in time?” Darkrai said,“I knew you were dense, but I was hoping you weren’t stupid.” He sighed,overtly dramatic as Dusknoir scowled. “Of course that was too much to hope for.Tell me, what was your theory for why the brat doesn’t remember you anymore?The power of friendship between you and your minions?”

“You don’t need to act like achild,” Dusknoir growled, and continued to stare at Darkrai’s smug face. “You…did you do that to her?”

“If it’s any consolation, it wasa happy accident. I was aiming for the nuisance your friends have dumped in theother room – I planned on blasting him out of existence, but your little bratsaw me and took the hit.”

“She’s not mine,” Dusknoir corrected,“if you did this to her, why don’t you go finish the job?”

“What, and take all your glory? Please,” Darkrai grinned, “besides, Icould ask you the same thing. You’ve completed your mission. Why are you stillhere?”

Dusknoir narrowed his eye andspoke carefully. “There was an issue with creating the Dimensional Hole back.”

“Oh, why didn’t you say so?”Darkrai said, faux cheerful and still unbearably smug. He snapped his fingers,and the dream world shifted to hold a frozen Dimensional Hole. “I’ll just set thisdown right outside, and then you can finish your job.”

No! “That’s not necessary,” Dusknoir said quickly. “Besides,they’re both still far too entwined with the others in this time. I’ll needmore time to separate them so I can take them back without severely -”

“If you’re going to make excuses,at least put some effort into them.”

Dusknoir froze. Darkrai suddenlyseemed so much bigger than him. “E-excuse me?”

“I own dreams, you idiot. This is my realm.” He was barely the size ofDarkrai’s eye now. “I know you don’t want to leave. For all you try and protestyou want to stay here and enjoy this time before it’s gone, while still pretendingyou’re just doing your job. And who could blame you, especially with your history? I wonder what Dialga wouldthink of this after how much faith they put in you. I’m sure they’d be rathercross.”

“Don’t question my loyalties,”Dusknoir shouted back, and struggled to keep himself steady as Darkrai’s laughshook the dreamscape. “I’m just as loyal to Master Dialga as you are!”

The laugh grew louder. Thecolours got brighter, more saturated, and began to drip into each other.

“That’s not a very high bar,”Darkrai said. “Still, if you’re oh so convinced of your loyalties, then let memake the task simpler for you.” Dusknoir looked down and saw that his handwrapped around Chatot’s neck.

“Wait -” he couldn’t shout. Hisvoice wouldn’t get any louder than a whisper. The ground below him started toshake as the shadows morphed into Wigglytuff, and the colours dripped into thebackground of the Wigglytuff guild. Dusknoir tried to shout again, but no wordscame out.

“The Dimensional Hole will beatop Mt Bristle when you’re done,” Darkrai’s voice said, echoing fromeverywhere and nowhere at once. “Don’t take too long. Make sure you don’t needmy help again.”

A variety of faceless shadows ranin from down the hall, led by that same little girl with red-brown hair.

Dusknoir jolted, free from thenightmare. Breanna, who’d led the charge of apprentices through the guild’sshaking halls, was a vulpix again.

Dusknoir dropped Chatot and backedup as quickly as he could. The guild stopped shaking as Dusknoir raised hishands, and everyone ran over to help Chatot up. He had tiny flakes of ice inhis feathers, and Dusknoir glanced down at his hands in horror. There was norecovery from this. He would be run out – he needed to grab the two he had comefor and be done with it. He had no time to waste.

“I’m alright,” Chatot wheezed,and looked over at Dusknoir, halfway across the room. “Dusknoir, sir?”Wigglytuff grabbed Chatot and held him tight as the rest of the guild movedcloser. “Are you okay?”

Dusknoir swallowed and glanceddown at his hands. He scrambled to find the words, but his tongue was stillfrozen. He couldn’t think of what to say.

He looked up, at Chatot at first,then past him at Breanna’s horrified look. Then past her, at the green form inthe doorway he was supposed to be guarding.

Grovyle met his eyes before he ducked back, andDusknoir was confident he’d seen the whole thing.

[ramongparishnuttyprofessor]

The Roaring Twenties: Domestic Depressions, Rescue Workers and Radical Materiality in the New Decade- A rough Astrological Forecast of the 2020’s.

The  Millennium began with a grand trine in earth signs, symbolically revealing to us that the gates are open to work with the creative potential and fertility of the earth, of the material. The chart for the birth moment of the second decade of the of the Millennium is also turned toward the earth and earth signs. This time however the focus is on that part of the earth or earth nature that we as human beings have built up  variously called society, institution or infrastructure and the notions of authority that give life to them and direct them. In this reading I will attempt to work with this chart to respond to the question “ What energies and dynamics will be at play in the coming decade and how can we respond to them in ways that best further human liberation and planetary evolution”?  Big question. But this is always the question of evolutionary astrology. This chart will be drawn for the United States using Washington DC as the birthplace, so it will be most applicable to those living in the United States, but a great many dynamics relate to the earth as a whole. In future writings I will draw the chart of Denver on January 2020 and compare it to the DC chart to examine how our communities in the Front Range might relate to  the larger national dynamics. As a slight… word of caution, trying to prognosticate for a period, but especially for an entire decade is a risky, potentially misleading enterprise as an astrologer. You might think of it as a peek at the tapestry of forces at play at the birth of the new decade. Astrology always deals moments of origin. It holds that these moments are formative, and that all coming movements of time symbolized by the planets and signs are compared to and draw their significance from a particular the point of origin. It is fundamentally a way of making significance and meaning out of our experience of time. Finally I am a practicing amateur, so, take my words with a grain of salt and compare it to other astrologers who you trust. So on we go. On a collective level the most significance task, astrologically speaking, at this time is the completion of the work of the age of Pisces and the foundation setting for the age of Aquarius. Its like the end of a semester in school. The grades are due and assignments need evaluating, while you are simultaneously developing the syllabi for future classes (you can tell my day job). When interpreting charts for historical events and large scale entities like nations you always start with the outer planets. I am a going to begin with Pluto since it in a sense is a “stationary planet” against which all others are moving. It is also the most powerful factor in this chart. Over all what I see is this chart is that the decay and corruption of authority figures and in financial and political matters will be felt most by Americans at home. The social and potentially evolutionary crisis represented by the Pluto cluster will hit us where it hurts, in our personal finances, our property and in our actual living spaces. We will have to reach out to our friends and neighbors and develop functional small scale economic networks powered by our most idealistic even sacrificial sense of duty and service to get over. This desperate state will cause us to be receptive to innovative and revolutionary approaches to accessing land, food, water, clothing and wealth to ride out abrupt changes both to the climate and to our societal structure.

Let’s get into it more detail. Pluto ingressed into Capricorn in 2008 coinciding with the economic crash/down-turn, the housing bubble and the deception of Wall Streets’ Big Banks. So we already have experience with Pluto in Capricorn signaling the trembling or shakedown of structures that are too big to fail. Pluto represents what needs to fall apart, what needs to be composted. It also represents our individual and species will to survive, come what may. So it can show us in part where our tenacity is, and our ability to act in the face of despair. Saturn, ruled by Capricorn is conjunct Pluto in Capricorn (It goes exact  on January 12th 2020). The last time Pluto was in Capricorn occurred in 1982, in the Reagonomics era. The parallels are obvious. Saturn represents our individual relationship to systems, rules, boundaries and the various social instruments used to create order. Saturn is our ego structure, the limits we put around ourselves or that our socialization imposes on us. On the soul level Saturn (and to a lesser degree the moon) represent our karmic dues. The actions that we must take to balance the books. Cosmic Ma’at. In this way it has commonalities with Pluto, which represents those catastrophic events that befall an individual or a nation. The happenings that make you ask “is there a god (substitute your own name)”? The raw existential. The kinds of events that destroy what came before and force change. Do the mythmatics. You can feel where their conjunction might be going. On a deeper and more psychological level Pluto bring us into touch with our personal and species unconscious. It, like all of the trans-saturanian planets it represents the repressed, the shadow. Pluto reflects our fundamental drive to live and acquire and express power. If there is too much ego in the picture, we personally identify ourselves with the forces of life and evolution and we can become inflated and tyrannical. With too little ego we can give ourselves away to those same inflated individuals or allow our individuality to be swallowed  up by power hungry mobs or mechanisms. Because the plutonian energies can be so cataclysmic ,we resist them, push them down, disown them. We put them in prisons and ghettos. When they rise, they often do do with force.  We repress Plutonian energies because they disturb us so much, causing us to fear for our survival. The repressed then must express itself as shadow. Something that we treat as excrement, but is actually an intimate part of ourselves. In Capricorn this shows up as systems and their steersmen who seek an iron grip on wealth, influence, property, prestige and governance.

Pluto and Saturn are joined by the Sun, Mercury and Jupiter in Capricorn. Jupiter will also conjunct Saturn (Dec. 21 2020- aligned with the Winter Solstice) which astrologers have historically referred to as the Great Conjunction before they became aware of the outer planets. This conjunction only happens every 32 years and has been used to predict the fall and accession of rulers and the plotting of revolutions. It indicates the degree of faith that the popular mind (Jupiter) has in the institutions that govern it (Saturn).This exact conjunction will take place in Aquarius.  With Jupiter currently groups with Saturn in Capricorn the people will turn toward our institutions and decide to what extent we will give our assent to them. With Pluto in the background we will experience what parts need to crumble or be reborn. Do these institutions still act as the conduits for our traditional wisdom, or might it be the received wisdoms themselves that are corrupt and obsolete? Mercury will add a mental clarity to this collective revaluation.  Furthermore because both of Mercury and Jupiter are in the 3rd house of siblings, neighborhoods and short journeys, this revaluation of our financial and political institutions is sure to be a household (4th house) conversation.

We can also see that the struggle to transform our most intimate and large scale economic habits could take on treacherous and aggressive dimensions with Mars in Scorpio in the 2nd house. We might see protracted and violent disputes about property, money and debts. Rather than being the of kind sour international resource wars we have come to expect since the 1st Gulf War (though the recent assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani might prove my prediction wrong) if not since the end of the second world war, this chart indicates that these resources confrontations might be more internal- or civil. Many have commented on the shaky state of domestic affairs in the United States, and that political and social polarization could reach such a pitch as to ignite a second civil war. Some have even questioned whether the first ever ended- or rather has it gone covert, become ideological. Could it move from being a cold to a hot war? While these discussion are timely outright civil war is not indicated in this chart, partly because Mars is not significantly aspecting the Pluto-Saturn complex. More it seems to suggest that there could be a general possessiveness and hostility around resources and boundaries, such as national and state borders and personal property lines. It is possible that the 2nd house Mars In Scorpio trine with Neptune and the moon in house six could lead many Americans to be deluded by a cause and sent to war against perceived  external threats to the economic well-being. It will be important to keep an eye on Mars and its coming conjunction with Pluto et al in the coming months in this regard. In case you haven’t noticed the mood of the times and what is mirrored by this chart is conservative and authoritarian. People are bunkering down and the “we take care of our own” mentality is in ascendancy. The question of who is your own, depends on your social location,  ideological stance, or perhaps sense of empathy. It seems to be a smaller and smaller “own”. Turned toward beneficent ends this conservatism might also be a call to turn towards one’s community, toward one’s locality, towards one family, to become more individually and locally reliant. This could mean “buying black”, developing local currencies including of the crypto-sort, localized food and transport systems, and basically putting one’s own house in order. That is the call, the US needs to put its own house in order. This conservatism could be the kind spoken of by Winnoa LaDuke when she referenced the lifeways of indigenous peoples whose cultural and spiritual constructs instruct them to act as part of their environments, living sustainably in some cases for thousands of years. We might ask ourselves what is true conservatism? What is worth conserving? What must be saved? What do we depended on? What is the real source and use of wealth, earth, material? The whole focus of this chart is the disciplined and creative use of material culture.

Another key to this chart is that most of the activity is under the horizon of the ascendant/ descendant line. Nearly all of the planets are clustered around the IC- the deep subconscious roots of basic necessities and a sense of home. This is stuff we are used to dealing with in private, but we will need to go public with it. It was once said that feminism was women demanding space and power beyond the private sphere. In that sense and in one other I will describe below, this decade will witness is a feminist crisis/revolution. Before we go there two forces that counter balance and complicate this picture that need mentioning. The first is the influence of Neptune, which in its home in Pisces will continue to exert a subtle, almost imperceptible, yet ubiquitous influence up until the middle of the decade. Neptune rules dreams, imagination, fantasy, illusions, mental illness, utopias, addictions and our capacity to be open to the universe. At its best Neptune awakens our capacities for compassion. We’ve seen the influence of Neptune since 2011 in the legalization and mainstreaming of marijuana, the movements to decriminalize psilocybin, the rise of binge watching, the success of the MCU, the expansion of VR and the introduction of AR. We’ve also seen it in the fascination with a stereotyped occult in music videos and advertising. In art witness the explosion of fluid and gaseous stock images. In the medical world (it rules anesthetics and was discovered during the first of the Opium Wars) the spread of opioids is a now recognized, national crisis. At its worst  during this decade Neptune will have us spiritually bypassing, strapped into VR goggles while the real, material world of our communities and planet goes into chaos. At is best it can help us bring about the dream of the Piscean age: recognition that human beings of all types are family, and that we are part of one stream of life. From my reading the better part of Neptune is indicated by this chart. Neptune is conjunct with the moon in the sixth house of service, health and work. This placement could point to an increase in the existing widespread mental and emotional breakdown. But the moon is close to its first quarter. So potentially this is an active Neptune. A Neptune that works on behalf of others (6th house). A powerful symbol for this kind of Neptune is the rescue worker.  The firefighter. The EMT. Triage. You get out there and help. Practical and tactical humanitarianism (Neptune).

Neptune is in a sextile with Saturn which indicates that there is an opportunity to serve our fellow citizens to re-organize and create new practical structures to replace those that face the destruction wrought by Pluto. We won’t be able to look away. We will be haunted (Pisces) in our souls until we turn around and do something. The gritty need to survive will give us the kick in the ass needed to extend ourselves. I hold that asking your neighbor to borrow ketchup, sugar or tools is a radical act in these times.  

Also in the 6th house is Chiron. While I am still awakening into this archetype a few things are clear. Chiron is the planet of the wounded healer indicating how we regenerate ourselves after the individual and collective smackdown that can come from Pluto. Chiron while sharing the 6th house is distinct from the Moon/Neptune in Pisces conjunction. The healer in Aries, is beginning a new cycle. We could witness the rise of the radical healer, the warrior healer who brings imagination and fire to the work of healing communities! Chiron is also squared with the Sun- Mercury- Jupiter conjunction in Capricorn.  While in our desperation we will be willing (trine) to look at the earth care and infrastructural solutions projected by Uranus in Taurus, will have to forced by these revolutionary healers to confront our addictions to tech, legal and illegal drugs, and the comfortable lifestyle of the consumer class has enjoyed since the second world war and especially since the last Saturn-Pluto conjunction. Even more deeply these healers might force us to root out the images of white supremacy, nationalism, patriarchy, of the dominator that lives in our homes- in the mirror. We will have meet our internalized oppression and trauma, the collective shadow formation of the Piscean age. We are all Trump. And worse. This shadow formation is coiled around our IC roots. The returned dragon of the pre-civil rights era now set to make its (re)claim on the national narrative. A powerful stand-off could manifest this decade between that collected karmic stagnation of the waning age and the liberatory distillation of the Piscean era, the mystic-radical-warrior-healer archetype (think Jesus) that initiated it. If victorious this archetype can lead us into Aquarius.

“"Pleasure    Activism is the practice of actively engaging the God in people." -Adrienne    Maree Brown The other factor here, potentially the decisive factor is Uranus in Taurus. Uranus is the only planet in this chart above the horizon. In that sense it is the rising star, or the beacon! When people look outside of their own selves and activities (houses 1-6) this will be where the attention gathers. Uranus represents all things new, innovative, disruptive, shocking, radical. It represents our ability to create anew, to see an inspiring vision, to peer into the depths of cosmic night and envision the future. It also presents innovation, mass communication, electricity, non-linear time, technology and mass movements. Uranus is in Taurus, so this innovation is active in the slow moving element of earth. On the rough side this could mean sudden changes in the climate, drought, or excessive precipitation (also indicated by Neptune in Pisces) and forest fires. Basically check the IPCC reports. But this aspect is a trine, and this is an easy and flowing relationship as it relates to the economic and infrastructural crisis dominating the chart. So maybe, even in her upheaval momma nature will show us some mercy. Uranus trining the conjoined Sun, Mercury, and Jupiter in Capricorn also indicates that the people will be open to, inspired and influenced by innovations such a permaculture, community food security, community resilience and sustainability, environmental and food justice, localized carbon sequestration, regenerative practices, agro-ecology and so on. There may even be the possibilities of creating real and lasting jobs here. Uranus is in the 7th house of partnership and relationships. Social media will continue be a powerful force in the spread of innovative solutions, models and ideas, but this chart position also indicates that passing these ideas via our personal networks in person maybe more powerful, electric even. This is consistent with the focus on home and neighborhood in the Capricorn area of the chart.

Frontline Farmers- Majestic View Nature Center https://www.frontlinefarming.org/ One more planet worth mentioning is Venus in 5th house Aquarius. Venus is trining the ascendant in Libra and operating under Uranus’s ruler Aquarius. We could see a lot of creative activity- images, music, theater, streamed content, that exhorts the idealistic work of rebuilding the economic basis of homes and communities. The serving work of the sixth house. We could also see, in a subtler way, that many of the values of the coming age of Aquarius articulate and express themselves with a new florescence, becoming again, a romantic ideal. All of this is happening with one of critical factor of historic importance in the background. The position of Pluto is within orb of its location in the birth chart of the United States. Pluto has just completed a 247-ish year revolution and is now entering into a new cycle relative the US. This means it is time to review, renew or abandon the ways that we have used our financial position, our desire for dominance, and our covert geopolitical maneuvering for power. All of our karmic activity in this realm will come full circle. We can see it playing out strangely enough. You could cite the recent (in process?) impeachment and the endless scandals around sexuality (as expression of power and life urge) and questionable international alliances of 45. Many segments of the nation believe that the very soul of USA, our basic narrative and identity (Sun conjunct Pluto) are on the line. Are we a white nation that has an uneasy if not murderous relationship to outsiders? Or has this always been a nations of nations? Of many colors? Are we a capitalist nation or a socialist nation? Are we “men” or is gender fluid and contextual? Is oil our life blood or can we pump something cleaner? Are we a Christian nation or one that has a plurality of faiths or even non-faiths? Are we nationalists or globalists? Or might there be creative ways in-between and synthesis of these binaries? One this is clear. People are willing to die over these questions. Perhaps rightly so, since these are basic questions of how we shape an individual and collective life. This is how we bring forth worlds as human beings. What the wheel of time represented by astrology indicates is that the world of yesterday- of make American Great AGAIN is over in the sense that the is no going backward. But the conservative preponderance in this chart does ask us to look at what needs to be preserved from our last 244 years as a nation and even in the last 2150 years of Pisces. What traditions do we need to recover, revive? What intelligence did they hold? What did they protect? How do we do the Sankofa move and bring the past into the future? In closing I want to touch on the ascendant and the mid heaven. With Libra at the ascendant we feel our identity bound up with just relationships with our fellow citizens.  As the comforts that we have accrued fall apart, as our privileges become a check from bank that is closed, we will have to look deep into how we want to relate to one another. What kind of social and civic life do we want to cultivate? With this ascendant squaring the midheaven, north node in Cancer we struggling to find the right kind of leadership. The North node in Cancer indicates that the USA needs to move in the direction of leadership that embodies protective but loving,  sheltering yet welcoming, conventional yet deeply imaginative qualities.  We need a leadership that nurtures the best in its citizens. America is after all, a women. Lady Liberty. Lady Justice.  In the US birth chart the US’s sun is also in Cancer- a feminine sign traditionally. So there is a return to our origins, our basic identity, but the kind of return spoken of by T. S. Eliot. This returned feminine (not necessarily in body but in quality) is opposed to the grasping plutonian morass in Capricorn.  A dragon hoarding a treasure. Lady justice stands atop of the dragon, like the angel Michael, even reminiscent of the women crowned in stars (mid heaven) in the book of revelations “ And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars  Revelation 12:1 KJV

  Capricorn will continue to mirror for us the type of leadership that we have covertly accepted. The leadership and zeitgeist of the last 250 years. We know what we have. Will we look to the horizon,  into our hearts and into the sky and acknowledge what we need.

Time will tell. Anyway the best prophecy is enacted and embodied.

There is so much more to say. Way more to do and live into. This is one offering at the birth of a new decade. Please send comes thoughts, questions and corrections here.

Bless.

~Ramon

[narkik]

dracula: i love you

vanessa: *mocking voice* 'i love you'. what the fuck

[ruminativerabbi]

Pandemic Purim

Purim was a slightly melancholic experience at Shelter Rock this year: first we cancelled the dancing, then we cancelled the party, then we cancelled the whole evening so as best to conform to the advice we were getting indirectly from the CDC in Atlanta, less indirectly from the Nassau County Board of Health, and not at all indirectly from physicians in the community who felt we would be putting people—and particularly our seniors—at risk by bringing them together in large numbers in a confined space. I suppose some must have felt we were over-reacting. But can you really over-react when we are talking about the health and welfare of a whole community and specifically of its oldest and youngest members? Better safe than sorry!

And yet, even so, the whole experience left me feeling a bit despondent, a bit blue—but not specifically because I was or am suffering over the decision itself. When I analyzed my thinking, in fact, I realized that my mood had more to do with the way the decision—and the whole coronavirus outbreak—had somehow managed to shift the way I think about Purim itself, moving me along from considering it basically to be about the great success of the Jews of Persia in standing together to defend themselves to focusing instead on just how vulnerable those people were in the first place, how completely they would surely have been annihilated if Queen Esther hadn’t found the courage to enter the king’s throne room uninvited, if she hadn’t found the words to stir the king to action on her people’s behalf, if she hadn’t been the paragon of virtue and bravery as which we more than reasonably remember her. It all worked out well, of course. But it also could not have…and that sense of vulnerability is what I noted coming to the fore in me and displacing the raucous delight our happiest holiday generally elicits in me easily.

And then I read Meir Soloveitchik’s essay published in the New York Times on Purim day itself. Rabbi Soloveitchik, the rabbi of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue      on Central Park West, is one of my favorite essayists. (He is also only the synagogue’s tenth rabbi since the American Revolution, which detail seems impossible to believe and yet is apparently true.) He writes in several different forums, all of which I try to keep up with, but this Op-Ed piece for the Times (click here) made a special impression on me both because it both confirmed my mood but also because it helped me understand about the whole concept of vulnerability that had somehow come to the fore in my thinking about the holiday.

Rabbi Soloveitchik’s basic point is that there is something slightly both slightly self-serving and seriously strange about celebrating the happy end of the Purim story without pausing to contemplate the political instability that is, after all, at the heart of the tale. He cites a comment made by his uncle, the late Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s in the latter’s book, Days of Deliverance: Essays on Purim and Chanukah, which I would like also to quote. “If,” the elder Rabbi Soloveitchik wrote, “a Prime Minister who just yesterday enjoyed the full confidence and trust of the king was suddenly convicted and executed,” he reflected, “then who is wise and clairvoyant enough to assure us that the same unreasonable, absurd, neurotic change of mood and mind will not repeat itself?” And, of course, the answer is that none of us is: King Achashveirosh is depicted in the Megillah as the most terrifying political figure of all: the idiot-king possessed of immense and unchallengeable power who is so pathetically eager to please the world that he basically agrees to whatever proposal is put to him no matter how malign or barbaric, and no matter how reliable or unreliable the person putting it to him might be.

The younger Rabbi Soloveitchik, the essayist whose work I so admire, then goes on to ask the obvious question: if his uncle’s observation is correct, which it certainly is, then why exactly is Purim celebrated as a holiday at all? It’s a good question. And his answer is also a good one. Queen Esther, he writes, embodied precisely the character traits— and foremost among them initiative, bravery, and insight—that made it possible for the Jews to survive both the terrifying imbecility of an Achashveirosh and the malign savagery of a Haman. And so we celebrate, not the specific incident that gave rise to the holiday, but rather the possibility of heroism that constitutes its greatest lesson. That last phrase “the possibility of heroism,” comes directly from the final paragraph in Rabbi Soloveitchik’s essay, where he writes that, for all Purim “marks the fragility of Jewish security,” it also represents the possibility of heroism in the face of that vulnerability. And then the essay concludes with the thought that Purim “is therefore a holiday for our time. Around the world, and especially in a Europe that should know better, anti-Semitism has made itself manifest once again. As Esther’s example is celebrated, and Jews gather in synagogue to study her terrifying tale, we are reminded why, in the face of hate, we remain vigilant — and why we continue to joyously celebrate all the same.”

In my weekly letters, I have returned again and again to the topic of heroism and the specific question of what constitutes a true hero. (Click here or here for some examples.) Esther certain qualifies: untrained in diplomacy or in strategic negotiation techniques, she somehow nonetheless found a way to identify her people’s foes’ Achilles’ heels—Haman’s preening megalomania and Achashveirosh’s pathetic need to please—and bravely to use them artfully and cleverly in the defense of her people. And so Purim really is a holiday for our time. We all feel ever more vulnerable in the world than ever as the number of anti-Semitic incidents at home and abroad multiplies, as anti-Semitic tropes creep into public discourse in a way that even a few years ago would have felt unimaginable, and as the world’s eagerness to placate Iran, Israel’s most vicious foe, feels more and more ominous with every passing week. The obvious question is how to respond forcefully effectively. And to that specific question, Purim offers a very good answer: with cunning, with forthrightness, with intelligence rooted in an honest understanding of our enemies’ motives, with selflessness and singlemindedness, and with courage and bravery. And so, because Queen Esther was the embodiment of all of the above, we celebrate her success…even though, at the same time, we take note of just how precarious the security the Jews of old Persia surely felt before Haman came to office truly was. And that vulnerability can serve us well…if we can get over our skittishness in its regard to allow it to guide us an understanding of how things actually are in the world.

Of course, all Americans are feeling vulnerable this week as the coronavirus spreads unchecked throughout thirty-eight of the fifty states and 117 of the world’s countries including every nation in Europe. But is that sense of vulnerability a problem or an asset? Or is it just the right emotion for us all to bring to the table as we prepare to elect a new (or not new) president in November? Indeed, perhaps we should be coming to the New York State primary on April 19 or the general election on November 3 possessed not of our usual American sense of invincibility but rather of a sense of the vulnerability we are all facing…and demanding that those who would be our leaders respond to how things actually are not with bluster, let alone with unfulfillable empty promises, but with the same combination of intelligence, bravery, and chutzpah that Esther brought to the table when she risked everything to prevent a catastrophe of immense proportions from befalling her people.

Since neither major party has actually nominated a candidate for the presidency, the challenge facing the American people is not prematurely to decide who to vote for, but rather thoughtfully to decide what qualities we wish to characterize those who would be our leaders. Starting from a deep sense of our vulnerability, our national and international interconnectedness to other people and peoples, and our deep and abiding sense of our personal responsibility for the welfare of others sounds like the right approach to me! Even if Queen Esther were somehow to come back to life and become a naturalized American citizen, she still would not be eligible to run for the office of President. So we’re going to have to go with someone who embodies her finest qualities, someone possessed of the courage and the cleverness, the altruism and the cunning to lead us out of this mess we find ourselves in. And who will that person be? That, of course, remains to be seen!