#there is not a single bone in my body capable of drawing in a consistant style but it is wat it is innit

[awhooooga]

They’re literally my sons

[sinclarify]

yap session 2 : chiyo inoue the ultimate circus ringmaster

the spinny wheel of fate said it's chiyo's turn now!! hehehe im so happy i love her anyway let's GO yay chiyo!! first things first let's get up her official description... well. she doesnt have a proper official one just yet but this tells a bit about her character! "Chiyo's the newly appointed leader of the Inoue Travelling Circus (aka, the hottest tourist attraction in Japan, if she does say so herself!), and rightly deserves her title of Ultimate due to her unrelenting passion for the job and everything that comes along with it. Chiyo takes her duties extremely seriously, and always wants to provide an exceptional experience for both the audience watching her shows and the people she works with. As a result, she's developed high levels of emotional intelligence, compassion, and the ability to raise spirits and energy both inside and out of the circus tent. It's easy for her to make friends - she's got this aura that just pulls people in! She's nothing but a total sweetheart, always willing to be there for everybody and wants to make sure that, no matter what, energy is high and happiness is through the roof! You'd be a fool to mistake her kind nature for weakness and naivety, though - when she wants to be, she has the capability to be extremely firm, and if it were to ever come to it, she would never back down from a decision." yayayyyy my silly girl 4eva hehe <3 unlike a lot of my fanclass sillies she does not have TERRIBLE lore. she was brought up in a loving family consisting of her mother and father, and from a young age, she's always known that her passion lay with the family business. since she was little, she'd sit in that circus tent, eyes wide with total awe at all the feats that were on display, from the tightrope walkers to the rings of fire to the magicians... it was like being thrown into a fairytale, a fantasy plucked from her wildest imagination right in the palm of her hand; all due to the hard work from her parents. they're her biggest inspirations! after one show, she ran to them, tugging on her mother's skirt and pulling her father's hand and babbling almost incoherently about how mommy! daddy! i want to be just like you! i wanna run the circus pleasepleaseplease can you let me run the circus? of course, she was way too little then... but years later, and her dream finally came true!! the inoue travelling circus is chiyo's lifeblood, literally. she'd give anything to make sure it prospers, to keep the legacy her parents had created alive and burning. it's their greatest achievement, and it's chiyo's, too!! if it were to ever fail... she doesn't know what she'd do with herself. so really, being thrown into a killing game and forced away from her family and her livelihood isn't all that great! who would've thought? still, chiyo maintains her cheerfulness, trying not to let all of the fears, anxieties and uncertainty plague her mind - she's smiling, and that's enough. that's all she can do! smile, and push through it with conviction. it's gotten her through 20 years of life already, hasn't it? but... smiling alone is alright, sure, but it's much better when you're doing it with others, too!! chiyo quickly realises that making friends is what will keep her strength going, even when faced with everything that might be thrown at them. her positivity and easygoing demeanour means that most people are at least warmed up to her, but it's not too long before she especially draws the attention of two people in particular - natsu shimada and kozue kaneko! all three of them are quite similar. natsu's charismatic, with a magnetic personality and not a single mean bone in his body, and kozue's got enough energy to power an entire city. birds of a feather flock together, as the saying goes, and the three of them become pretty stuck-at-the-hip pretty quickly. much to chiyo and kozue's surprise, they even start to become friendly with kane. kane cooper. that's mainly due to natsu just dragging him along, but... he seems to be warming up to them. friendship blooms in even the harshest conditions, huh?

if only it were just friendship, though! chiyo's not exactly sure when it started, but she starts to find that she's not looking at natsu and kozue the same way anymore. she looks at natsu, and all she sees is a great guy that she's happy to be friends with! she looks at kozue... and it's much more than that. she finds herself utterly drawn to the other girl like a moth to a flame, endeared to her every quirk, no matter how obnoxious it may seem to the others. there's a fire in kozue's eyes that keeps the fire in chiyo's burning, a warmth that she can't help but indulge in, and god, those hands would feel so nice in hers, wouldn't they...? she's had silly crushes before, but somehow it feels different. somehow, kozue feels like a light shining through the suffocating darkness of the killing game, and chiyo finds herself wanting this so much more than anything else.

and lucky her! kozue wants it pretty badly, too. that's one hell of a meet-cute! they're not exactly together, per se... it's pretty hard to confirm your relationship status while in the midst of a killing game, but nonetheless, they're together. they have each other, and that's all they need.

even though they've faced death so many times that they think it won't sicken them anymore, only for the acid to burn their throats every single time without fail. even though neither of them can be sure whether they'll make it to the next morning... they'll lie together at night, their fingers intertwined and their breathing synced and they'll deal with tomorrow when it comes. it doesn't even have to be called love. it's just chiyo and kozue. those names side by side is love in itself. kozue and chiyo. chiyo and kozue. that's all they need. everything changes after quinn's trial and the execution of hideyo, though. god, it's like nothing they've ever seen before - kaori's death was an utter tragedy, and yeah, minori was a killer, but it's hard to not feel some sympathy for them... but quinn had to deal with the most gruesome of fates and hideyo was nothing but a monster. a vile, deplorable monster, and that's not something the ultimates can just shake off. the atmosphere has completely shifted... there's no sense of hope anymore. it's like they're all just waiting with bated breaths for another killing to happen, resigning themselves to utter despair. smile. smile, chiyo, and everything will be okay! that's what your parents told you. mommy and daddy weren't wrong, that's how they lived and it worked and you want to be just like them so smile and make everyone happy and everything will be okay and you can do this it's okay it's okay but no it's not because she isn't. kozue isn't. kozue's not okay, chiyo can see it in her jumpiness, the way she's constantly averting her eyes, the shakiness of her breaths and how she only ever seems to observe now. watching the other ultimates like some nervous young bird of prey. kozue's not been that great at hiding her emotions anyway, and chiyo's always been good at reading them, so she knows what this means. kozue's planning a kill. not out of malicious intent, no, she's not that kind of girl, but... pure, unadulterated, desperation. she's probably not even thinking clearly, her brain too clouded and her body too sick, and chiyo loves kozue to bits but she knows she's going to end up doing something stupid, so she'll have to intervene, for the good of everybody. she gets kozue alone one night and cuts right to the chase! she tells her that she knows she's planning to kill someone, and that she's not angry or upset, but she needs to know that she's making a bad decision! kozue, you could die! you will die. trust me. kane and junichiro are so smart, so, so smart, and you know they'll figure you out. just like minori and hideyo... and i can't do that. i can't watch you die, kozue. i can't. please.

kozue looks up at chiyo, her eyes puffy and her cheeks red, choking the words out of her throat: i need to.

just three little words, but chiyo knows immediately that kozue's never been so serious about anything before. it's such a far cry from how she had been just a couple days earlier, but even when faced with this kozue, the one that’s so utterly broken and scared and desperate, she can still see her soul shining through, glistening in her eyes as the tears that pool there. so she draws in a shaky breath and takes kozue's hand, no hesitation in the next words she speaks.

okay. kill me, then.

before kozue can protest, she tightens her grip on her hands, leaning forward and looking into her eyes with such conviction, despite the hammering of her own heart and the breathiness of her words that speak to her fears.

kozue, please. kill me. it'll be okay, yeah? we'll see each other soon, won't we? kill me, a-and...and in the trial, let them figure everything out. kill me, then we'll both be out of here. and we'll be together! forever, kozue, don't you want that? please don't cry. please... d-dont cry... you're okay. i'm okay, look, i'm smiling! you have the prettiest smile i've ever seen, kozue. you're so pretty. smile for me. it'll be okay. please. you'll do this, won't you? kozue... it's alright.

what happens after that is a blur.

chiyo and kozue. kozue and chiyo...

together, that's all they need! chiyo and kozue.

kozue and chiyo.

kozue and... chiyo's body. still smiling. that's all she could do, smile. it got her through 20 years of life... so how fitting is it that she died with a smile on her face, too?

a smile on her face and the thought in her mind that she had everything she ever wanted right here. she couldn't think of a better way to die, at the hands of the girl she loved so dearly.

soon they'd be able to meet.

chiyo and kozue, together.

that's all they need.

[bloodfromthethorn]

Sleep is the Best Cure

“Jack? What-” Mac blinked a few times, trying to clear his vision even as he automatically relaxed into his partner’s hold, trusting him to keep him up while he struggled his way back to the surface.

“Pretty sure you’re going on about 72 hours without sleep and you’ve had, what? Three? Separate traumatic situations in that time? Not much of a surprise you’re about to crash hard.”

Tag to 2x11 and 2x12. Also on AO3. 

..

Mac’s eyes surveyed the wreck of his living room with a building sense of dread. The last few days felt like little more than a blur in his memory and he didn’t think he’d had a chance to pause for breath during any of it. Now that he had a moment to himself, he couldn’t help but worry that the world was about to come crashing down yet again, with him standing right in the middle of it. 

Charlie’s attention had been drawn away by one of the team responsible for lifting the barrels out from beneath the floor, while all around them Phoenix personnel were cataloguing every item they could find just in case one of them might grant a clue as to the Ghost’s whereabouts. Mac considered moving to help them - or perhaps back Charlie up in what looked as though it might be descending into some kind of argument about proper procedure - but the instant he took a step to do so, sharp, blinding pain struck him right between the eyes like a lightning bolt. 

It was there and gone in a flash, but it left him so startled he staggered back a step in surprise. A hand snatched at his arm before he could do more than sway, tugging him carefully against a supportive warm body. “Easy there bud.”

“Jack? What-” Mac blinked a few times, trying to clear his vision even as he automatically relaxed into his partner’s hold, trusting him to keep him up while he struggled his way back to the surface. 

“Pretty sure you’re going on about 72 hours without sleep and you’ve had, what? Three? Separate traumatic situations in that time? Not much of a surprise you’re about to crash hard.”

“I’m- I’m okay.”

“Yeah man, ‘course you are. But maybe we should get you some sleep, yeah?”

Mac’s head still felt like it was floating some way above the rest of his body, foggy and distant, but he was still able to feel himself frown as the suggestion stuck a chime wrong somewhere. “Can’t,” he managed. “House is in clean up.”

“Matty’s got it covered,” Jack said, sure and steady. “And while she’s getting everything here sorted, you can crash at my place.”

That did admittedly sound amazing, but Mac forced himself to mumble a negative and reclaim some of his own weight, shaking his head in a vain attempt at clearing out the cobwebs taking root. “No, I need to help Charlie,” he said stubbornly. 

The arm Jack had around his shoulders turned to steel, not letting him move away. “Charlie is doing just fine. He knows what he’s doing and he’s not the one dead on his feet right now. It’s okay man, it’s over. You can hand the reins over to someone else for a bit.”

With his vision steadily clearing, Mac could finally make out Jack’s worried face at his shoulder, watching him closely for any sign he was about to take another nosedive. Beyond the concern though, it was clear as day that Jack was starting to flag just as badly as Mac was, with pale skin and deepening crow’s feet emphasising the slight squint he’d picked up to combat the dryness of his eyes. “You’ve not slept either,” he pointed out unnecessarily. 

Jack huffed something that might have been a laugh if he’d had the energy for it. “True enough, but I also wasn’t arrested and I haven’t spent the last twenty hours working on defusing two bombs simultaneously.” He gestured vaguely around the wreck of Mac’s living room with his free hand as though to encompass everything that had happened. “I’m good to drive us both back to mine and then I’m planning on passing out until at least tomorrow. That plan sound good with you?”

Honestly, now that Mac was aware of his own fatigue, the exhaustion felt like a physical weight on his body and the very thought of handing over his safety to Jack and drifting off for a couple of hours sounded like heaven, but he knew his job. Once an EOD tech, always an EOD tech, and there was still a lot of explosive material in his house that needed dealing with before anyone in a mile’s radius would be safe. He had work to do. 

The sentiment must have shown on his face, because Jack went right back to frowning. “No, man, cut that out. Even if there wasn’t a perfectly capable bomb tech right over there, you’re in no state to be handling explosives. You’re shaking.”

Mac glanced at his own hands to confirm that yes, his whole body was indeed wracked by fine tremors that he couldn’t seem to stop. That… didn’t seem right. Since joining the army he’d had countless sleepless nights, both intentional and unavoidable, and while he knew he must be getting close to his limit of endurance, he was usually steady handed. Sort of an occupational requirement, really. 

“Something’s wrong,” he murmured to himself, still looking at his trembling fingers. 

With a heavy sigh, Jack tugged on him until he was pushed, unresisting, onto one of the bar stools and propped up by Jack’s warm palms on both of his shoulders. “What’s wrong is that you’ve been running on nothing but adrenaline and coffee for two whole days. Just ‘cause you’ve not been dodging bullets doesn’t mean you haven’t been going through the wringer. You’re exhausted. That’s all it is, bud, promise.”

Well, if Jack promised then Mac would believe him. Jack would never lie to him and he always seemed to know Mac’s hurts even before the man himself did. Something about it still didn’t sit right with him though. “Was dodging bullets,” he corrected, slightly petulantly, as he remembered handcuffs around his wrists and the desperation of trying to find a solution using nothing but a bullet and a ballpoint pen. 

One of Jack’s hands drifted up his shoulder to cup the back of his head comfortingly in a move that Jack liked to use when he wanted to check Mac’s pulse without him knowing. “I’m okay,” he mumbled again in protest, but didn’t pull away. 

“Yeah, I know you are. You’re pretty out of it though bud. Reckon you’re not going to remember this conversation tomorrow, huh?”

That was probably a fair assessment, honestly. With no witty retort lined up and thoroughly lacking the energy to search for one, Mac just hummed agreeably, blinking at him as his vision went wobbly again. 

Jack sighed. “Okay, I’m calling it. I know you want to help out here, but you need rest and you’re not going to get it while there’s a Phoenix clean-up op happening in your living room. And since I’m not letting you out of my sight just yet, you’re coming home with me, yes? Good.”

He finally broke his attention off from Mac to cast a glance around the room at large and caught Matty’s eyes, gesturing to his semi-conscious partner with a small head tilt. “I’m taking this one home.” He didn’t leave any room in his tone for argument, but softened it by adding, “If you need us, call me.”

Thankfully, as much as Matty might be a hardass when her job needed her to be, she was also one of the most observant people Jack had ever met. Her eyes took them both in with a single look and recognised the exhaustion staring back at her. She nodded with a soft smile. “Take as long as you need. We’ve got this.”

He spared enough time to shoot her a deeply grateful look before his entire attention turned back to Mac, who appeared to have been trying unsuccessfully to use the brief pause to rally himself. Unfortunately for him, he was long since out of any reserves to draw off; the best his attempts got him was some slightly more aggressive blinking. 

“Okay hoss, think you can stand up for me?” From the way Jack was having to keep him steady, it was obvious that Mac’s balance had completely gone to shit, but he obediently pushed himself upright and managed to at least keep his knees locked to take his weight. “Alright man, you’re doing great. Let’s get outside and get you sitting down again, yeah?”

Getting Mac outside and into the car turned out to be an exercise in extreme patience. Out of it as he was, he seemed to consistently forget where they were going and why, and made several attempts to turn himself around to go and help Charlie even though he could not more obviously be beyond that particular task. Each time Jack would nudge him back in the right direction with a soft push and a string of gentle words that seemed to more or less do the trick. By the time Mac was carefully folding himself into the passenger seat, the kid was scarcely still conscious. 

“That’s right, you just sit there and let Jack get you home, yeah?”

That Mac didn’t even groan in protest at Jack referring to himself in third person said a lot for his mental state. Chuckling to himself, Jack rounded the car and nodded at Bozer who had appeared at the front door to see them off. 

“I’ll get the house sorted as soon as I can,” he promised. “Make sure everything’s nice and clean when he gets back.”

“Appreciate that. But make sure you get some rest yourself, okay?” He said sternly, sending him a steady look. “Today’s been a long day for everyone, you included.”

“We’re good Jack. Matty will take good care of me and Riley. You just worry about Mac.”

Jack snorted, momentarily letting his bone-deep exhaustion show on his face. “As if I ever do anything else.”

Mac was thoroughly dead to the world when Jack slid into the driver’s seat beside him, his head tilted awkwardly against the window and his arms wrapped tight around his middle. It looked wildly uncomfortable, but the journey was only short and now that he was actually out for the count, Jack was loath to disturb him until he had to. Instead, he jammed his keys in the ignition and headed for home without another word. 

Tired as he was, Jack drove more carefully than he was usually of a mind to and as a result ended up taking a full half-hour to make it to his apartment. Mac didn’t so much as stir the entire time. If it hadn’t been for his breath fogging against the glass of the window, Jack might have resorted to feeling for the pulse in his wrist just to be certain that he really was still there, still in one piece. After everything he’d been through in the last three days, the fact that the worst physical damage he would have to deal with would be a few scrapes and a hefty dose of exhaustion was something of a miracle - and Jack would still trade almost anything for the chance to go back and spare him of all of it. Mac had never deserved the shit that got thrown at him day in and day out, but it rarely came so thick and fast. 

And physical condition aside, Jack knew that Mac wasn’t getting away from any of it without some new mental baggage. 

But that was a problem for tomorrow, at the earliest. Right now all he had to worry about was getting 6 foot of mostly-catatonic secret agent up several flights of stairs, preferably without drawing any attention. Easy. 

Mac did make a valiant attempt at consciousness after a few gentle shakes from Jack, but it was clear the window of opportunity for his ability to hold his own weight had closed some time ago. In the end, it was left to Jack to duck under his shoulder and do his best to balance them both as they hobbled unsteadily up the fire escape. The lobby would have granted them an elevator, but with them both on their last legs, Jack didn’t want the attention.

No doubt they must have looked comical - or perhaps just drunk - but they made it in the end, and without anyone falling down the stairs to boot. Jack was going to count that as a win. 

“Mac, you still with me brother?”

There was a vaguely attentive hum. Mac’s eyes didn’t open. 

“You happy to share the bed or are you gonna make me sleep on the couch?”

Another hum that Jack chose to take as ambivalence. In truth the question was somewhat redundant - the pair of them had shared far closer quarters than a king-sized bed before, and Mac would never turf Jack out of his own room, especially when he was just as desperately in need of rest. Asking was more of a formality than anything. 

There was a second brief deliberation when Jack managed to get them both into the bedroom as he tried to weigh up the chances of him being able to bully Mac into changing into some borrowed sleepwear. In the end, he figured it wasn’t worth the hassle and just calmly battled him out of his jeans and his dust-covered henley before tipping him beneath the covers. With his consciousness waning once more, Mac offered little more than a sleepy grumble as he burrowed down beneath the blanket and went still once more. 

With a weary chuckle of genuine relief, Jack ran through his own preparations as quickly as his tired body was capable of before finally, finally folding himself into the other side of the bed. After everything, the sensation was heavenly. 

There was a long stretch of motionless silence, broken only by their steady breathing, and Jack felt the fiercely alert, wary section of his brain finally start to cede control to the comforting embrace of sleep. It was over; Mac was safe, the bomb was defused, no one was in prison, and Cage would be just fine after a bit of recovery time. Jack was free to let his guard down at long last. 

It wasn’t an easy task. For the next five minutes he struggled with slipping into light dozes that broke off suddenly when his adrenaline spiked, bracing himself against some new danger. He knew that he needed the rest and for once it was legitimately safe to do so, but he had too many years of forcing his body through every possible hardship for it to give up the fight so easily. 

Then, as he always managed to do, Mac provided the solution. After the fifth or so time Jack jolted awake, Mac let out a low, displeased huff and wriggled until he was able to reach out a hand and wrap long fingers around Jack’s wrist in a gentle reassurance of his presence. He didn’t even look as though he was awake as he did it - he’d just sensed that Jack needed his help, and had offered it without thought. Lost in his own exhaustion, Jack thought it was almost poetic. 

Not that he would know, of course. 

Safe at long last, and tangibly aware of Mac’s steady presence at his side, Jack finally let himself sleep.

[bylagunabay]

True Devotion to the HOLY FACE (1/11)

 THE MAN ON THE SHROUD OF TURIN IS GOD

Our Lord said to Carmelite Sister Marie de Saint-Piere in November 1846:

"By My Holy Face you will work wonders, appease the anger of God and draw down Mercy for the conversion of sinners."

Our Lord also assured Sister Marie:

"Nothing that you ask in virtue of this offering will be refused you! Ah! If you did but know how pleasing is the sight of My Face to My Father!

"In proportion to your care in repairing the injuries My Face receives from blasphemers, will I take care of yours, which has been disfigured by sin; I will restore it to My likeness, and render it as beautiful as when it had just left the Baptismal Font.

"Our Lord promised me that all those who defend His cause in this work of reparation, by words, by prayers, or in writing, He will defend them before His Father; at their death He will purify their souls by effacing all the blots of sin and will restore to them their primitive beauty."

 BEYOND SCIENCE: 13 MYSTERIES THAT POINT TO THE MAN ON THE SHROUD OF TURIN AS DIVINE

1 The image of the man on the cloth. The image is not a stain. It is not painted on the shroud. It is not burned on in a conventional manner. Instead it is an image seared on to the cloth with some technology that has yet to be explained. Not only can they not reproduce the image using medieval technologies, they can’t reproduce it with modern technology.

 2 The image was not formed by contact between linen and body. The typical geometric deformations of a three dimension body brought into contact in two dimension sheet are missing. Moreover, there is no imprint of body hips.

In addition, the color of the image resides on the outer surface of the fibrils that make up the threads of the cloth, and recent measurements of fragments of the Shroud show that the thickness of staining is extremely thin, around 200 nm = 200 billionths of a meter, or one fifth of a thousandth of a millimeter, which corresponds to the thickness of the primary cell wall of the so-called single linen fiber. We recall that a single linen thread is made up of about 200 fibrils.

Both the body and the image "floated" inside the linen sheet.

 3 The body remained inside the linen sheet less than 40 hours. There are no signs of putrefaction near the orifices, which usually occur around 40 hours after death. Consequently, the image is not the result of putrefaction gases and the corpse was not left in the sheet for more than two days. (Based on the Jewish Calendar, Jesus rose 36 hours after His death.)

 4 The 3-D capabilities of the image. The image of the man on the shroud can be read by 3-D imaging technology. Paintings fail this test.

 5 The Positive-Negative Image. The image is a photographic negative. That means when a traditional photograph is taken what should be the negative appears as a positive image. If it is a medieval painting how did they do that and why?

 6 The anatomical accuracy. Not only is it an accurate image of a dead man but the image is distorted as it should be if it was lying over a real body and the body vanished from within it.

 7 The historical accuracy to crucifixion. The wounds are all consistent not only with Roman crucifixion, but the details of Jesus’ particular crucifixion like the crown of thorns, no broken bones, the scourging and the wound in the side.

 8 Geographical accuracy. Pollen from the shroud is not only from the Jerusalem area, but from Turkey and the other places the shroud is supposed to have resided, dust from the area on the shroud by the knees and feet is from the area of Jerusalem

 9 The accuracy to Jewish burial customs. The shroud shows details perfectly consistent with first century Jewish burial customs. There are even microscopic traces of the flower that would have been used in the burial flowers that grew locally and were known to be used for burial.

 10 The blood and the image. The blood was on the shroud first. The image happened later. If it was painted (there is not evidence of paint anywhere) the two would be part of the same faked image

 11 The type of cloth. The cloth is consistent with fabrics from first century Israel, but not with medieval Europe. A forger would have had to not only forge the image in some as yet undiscovered way, but would have had to have detailed knowledge of linen weaves of the first century and then not only reproduce it, but age it convincingly.

 12 The age of the cloth. The 1987 carbon-14 tests are now believed to have been taken from an area of the cloth that was not simply patched in the middle ages but patched with a difficult to detect interweaving; the carbon-14 tests were therefore compromised. The latest technology and testing suggests a date for the shroud between 200 BC and AD 200.

 13 VUV (1) radiation is capable of generating a Shroud-like colouration of linen cloths. ENEA (National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development) of Italy estimated that the total power of VUV radiation required to instantly color the surface of linen that corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000 MW/cm2 17000 cm2 = 34 thousand billion watts, which makes it impractical today to reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer (2). This power cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful available on the market come to several billion watts).

 References:

1 The Shroud Is Not A Fake (http://www.lastampa.it/2011/12/12/vaticaninsider/eng/inquiriesandinterviews/

theshroudisnotafakejdiKKEyJ0uDsE4XpV13TcK/pagina.html)

2 Deep Ultraviolet Radiation Simulates the Turin Shroud Image

(https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236841026_Deep_Ultraviolet_Radiation_Simulates_the_Turin_Shroud_Image)

3 "Dr. Paolo Di Lazzaro explains his research on image formation on the Shroud of Turin", Louis C. de Figueiredo

 Notes:

1 Vacuum Ultra-Violet (VUV) radiation is used to describe the spectrum below 190 nm (nanometer, equivalent to 0.000000001 m), where few light sources readily emit and the atmosphere absorbs most of the wavelengths.

2 A laser that emits very concentrated light in the ultraviolet (UV) region of the spectrum

[chapitre7]

Alexandria Chapter I

The Untamed [陈情令] | Mo Dao Zu Shi [魔道祖师] fanfiction

Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Yīng | Wei Wuxian (Wangxian)

Time Travel/Sci-Fi AU

Characterization is based on the drama

Canon does not exist. World building of the past is based on canon but none of the original events has transpired here;

Likewise, the future presented here is not our own;

Liberal use of cultivation;

Not actually any demonstration of science.

Read on AO3

“Have you always been alone? Did you ever have someone? Do you know what happened to you? Do you? Because I don’t. I don’t know what happened to me. I don’t know. I look in the mirror and the only thing that I recognize are these eyes in this old man’s face. You know, sometimes I think I was either born too early or too late for my life. Maybe we’re both just relics.” – The Shape of Water, 2017, screenplay by Guillermo del Toro & Vanessa Taylor

   When they find him, he’s already thawing. The researchers try to preserve him the best they can, so they can catalog every last piece of him, the period of his clothes, the shape of his face, the age of the ice, running their numbers to estimate the years since his last breath. They presume he’s a corpse, making only the most plausible assumptions, but his skin is unmarred and his complexion is so peaceful, he looks safely asleep. He’s a jewel kept in a box, unearthed from the deep sea, as treasures ought to be, in the olden days.

 There’s a small feud to decide who will keep him and in what manner. Some want to maintain him exactly as he is, like a pinned butterfly, listing all the outside layers of his identity, file away all the details they can perceive and then showcase him to the community by the end of the semester. Others want to be gone with the ice so they can study his body, uncovering the mysteries of a past they have long lost, before keeping him suspended in time by their own terms. Endless conferences, heated discussions, and piles of paperwork so huge no one bothers to read later, they decide to compromise.

 When he takes his first breath in the new age, everyone around him gasps. The sound bounces around his skull, dark eyes widening at the white, all the overwhelming white of the room he’s in. There are needles on him, prickling like insects, and just one glance at the glass wall where countless bug eyes spy on him from behind their notes sends him on a spiral of hysteria, pulling at everything that intrudes him, the machines, the foreign feeling of the sheets, the bed itself, jumping and falling from his position before trained men run inside, hold him down and knock him out.

 The second time he opens his eyes, he’s alone. There’s no glass wall, no machine attached to him, no window, just him, the bed, a chair, and two closed doors. He glances down at himself and frowns, failing to recognize the robes he’s wearing. Even if it’s in a familiar style and fabric, the stitches confuse him, unlike anything his sister has ever learned and sewn upon his clothes. And unlike any of the inner robes he owned, these are piercingly white. Maybe he’s in the afterlife. He had imagined it differently.

 A sound comes from one of the doors, startling him, but it’s only a knock. He half expects them to swarm in again, the bugs, the monsters, and he’s not ready, not yet, he doesn’t know where his sword is and he’s light-headed and breathing too fast, breaking every rule his master has ever taught him, defenseless, useless.

 They don’t come in. He waits, catches his breath, a hand on his chest. There’s nothing for a while until the second knock comes, softer than the first, less like a thunder. He didn’t use to be scared of thunder; maybe that’s why.

 He tries to speak, but only a weak, pitiful sound comes out. It seems to be enough for whoever, or whatever, is waiting on the other side of the door. He tries to brace himself the best he can — he can still bite, if that’s what it takes —, but he’s wholly unprepared for the smiling man that walks into his room.

 The man is tall, jet-black hair gracefully combed sideways, much, much shorter than he was used to seeing. His eyes are clear, hiding in the crescent moon of his smile, but not threatening. He knows threatening; would be able to spot it from miles away, still remembers the crawling feeling of fingers holding him down as he screamed. The man wears white, just like he does, only it’s a different, foreign style of robes. Did he somehow end up in a different land, drifting along the icy waters of the north?

 When the man speaks, he feels like he’s still underwater, miles from the surface. He can’t understand a single sound the man is making and it’s unsettling, an emptiness burning inside of his stomach. He vaguely remembers a time when he had meant to leave, get away from everything and everyone, he did, but not like this, nothing like this. The man steps into the room, towards the bed, and he throws himself to the floor, wincing at the pain on his knees, unable to do anything but push himself as far away as possible using the strength of his arms.

 Looking over his shoulder, he notices the man’s smile fading away. He places a tray he hadn’t noticed before on the bed and speaks some more, but when he gets no response, he just sighs and moves back to the door, walking out and leaving the confused man to his panic and his disarray of thoughts.

 Eventually, he moves back to the bed. Too tired to climb back up, he settles for a sitting position, reaching for the bowl on the tray the man had brought in. There’s nothing particularly enticing about the smell of the soup but he brings the bowl to his lips and downs it almost instantly, like a dying man. He coughs, not really chewing the vegetables, but doesn’t stop until the bowl is clean and back on the tray. Where the nothingness had once been is now warmth and he feels a little better about it, because maybe, just maybe, he’s not in a place to be judged and punished for whatever misdeed. Maybe he’s alive, after all.

 He lets his eyes draw back and sleeps right there on the floor, until the smiling man returns, gives the tray away to men who don’t cross the threshold into the room, and puts him back on the bed, safe under the covers. He never notices it. Never even dreams, just listens, every once in a while, to the hums that must consist of a language, like the birds that once sang in the homeland of his childhood.

 ***

 The smiling man is the only one he sees for a while. He grows used to him, his harmless presence, as he brings him food, watches him as he eats, guides him to stand and walk and even teaches him how to use the adjoined bathroom with a series of simple gestures, before bowing politely and leaving. When he’s alone, he tries to speak to himself, and not too long after, he’s glad to hear his own voice again. For a while he was afraid he would forget what his voice sounded like, his memory a haze of misplaced images and sounds, unsure if he could trust the voice of his own thoughts. He’s safe, though. He dares to feel safe, if only briefly.

 He doesn’t have any concept of time, but he knows one day the smiling man brings a needle connected to a small vial. Before he can run away, the man raises a hand, a plea for patience, and inserts the needle in his own arm, drawing blood into the vial. It’s not a lot of blood, and there’s no harm or mess when he’s done. The man raises his eyebrows in question. There’s so little to lose in the small action that he yields when the man pulls another needle from his robes.

 The act is not as gentle as the man made it seem and he winces. The man seems apologetic and the grip he has on his arm is feather light to compensate. It’s over quickly, cleanly, the man giving him a small cotton ball to hold against the minuscule wound. After the man leaves, he stares at the little drop of blood on the cotton ball and wonders when, exactly, he’s going to start living again. Wherever he is, in what possible way, and under whose glare, peering at him from outside those four white walls.

 He falls asleep with his gaze fixed on the wall across from his bed, knowing they’re still there. Waiting for him, crushing him with their expectations.

 ***

 The man who walks into his room next is not smiling. And although his eyes are just as clear as the other’s, the bangs that frame his face are longer, and his features are softer, with a less striking bone structure. He’s definitely younger, but the resemblance is so strong that there’s no way the two men aren’t related.

 “Ah,” he says from the bed, apprehensive that there’s nothing in the man’s hands but a small notebook, and he’s not sure what to expect when he sits on the chair by the bed. The unknown, in that white world, is nothing but white fear.

 “How do you feel?”

 He perks up immediately, leaning forward, causing the man to lean back on instinct.

 “I can understand you!”

 The man nods, crossing his legs.

 “And you can understand me?”

 The man gives a shorter nod.

 “Yes, I speak your language.”

 “Oh, thank the heavens, I was afraid I was going to be lost in here forever.”

 He lets out a laugh that sounds as weak as it feels, but he’s speaking again just as the man is opening his mouth.

 “I’m Wei Ying! What’s your name?”

 “I’m...”

  He pauses, as if he’s been questioned about the meaning of the breaking dawn and the fall of dusk. Wei Ying waits, expectantly, because he can understand, at last, and maybe the world isn’t going to be so white anymore.

 “I’m Lan Zhan,” the man finally answers, after what couldn’t have been more than a few seconds.

 “Lan Zhan,” Wei Ying repeats, testing, tasting the name.

 “Your turn.”

 “Huh?”

 “To answer. How do you feel?”

 “If I answer your questions, will you answer mine?”

 Lan Zhan looks up from his notes and Wei Ying feels like himself for the first time in what seems like a lifetime. Not scared, not cornered, not useless, but capable of speech again, something he had always been so naturally good at, and finally, finally he can attempt to turn the game board around, gain some ground, escape that terrifying prison of whispers.

 Only a noncommittal noise comes from Lan Zhan’s throat, and Wei Ying takes what he can get.

 “I feel well. I can finally walk, but not for long.”

 The man makes some notes, and Wei Ying, with fidgety fingers, adds, “It’d help if the food tasted better.”

 Lan Zhan’s strange brush seems to pause. In different circumstances, where he didn’t feel uneasy all the time, Wei Ying might have grinned.

 “What—”

 “No, it’s my turn. Where am I?”

  And when can I get out? is at the tip of his tongue.

 “You’re in a research facility.”

 Wei Ying frowns, fingers grasping at the sheets on his lap.

 “Why am I in a place of research? Why? Did something happen to me?”

 “Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan calls, and the cadence of his voice when he calls his name grounds him where he would otherwise fall. But he’s at the edge of the precipice, and hanging by a thread. “What do you remember?”

 “What...?”

 He remembers the cold. He remembers wandering far and leaving people behind, cities, villages, everyone. He doesn’t remember why. His head hurts. He remembers desolation, and a plethora of knowledge that had no outlet and no meaning. He remembers leaping. And the cold, taking over, surrounding, pulling him deep.

 “Wei Ying,” Lan Zhan calls again, and he can hear himself, his own shallow breaths. “It’s okay. Ca—”

 Wei Ying snaps, slaps away the hand that he sees coming in his direction. Lan Zhan, who sported a professional look ever since he came through the door, has the grace to look taken aback.

 “Tell me,” Wei Ying speaks, and it’s a voice he didn’t know he still possessed. He wishes he had left it behind, wherever those memories were from. “What happened to me?”

 Lan Zhan straightens his jaw, leans back against his chair.

 “You’ve been asleep for over a thousand years.”

[riddleriddle3-blog]

Why Endurance Athletes Necessity Toughness Instruction (And.

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[matthewshaley1996]

Reiki Learn Free Jaw-Dropping Cool Tips

After all, the massage table is the result will be different from one thing that should be pulled upward against the hand so that everyone should have some of the Reiki afterward that shows whether they are used by Reiki are pronounced differently but have not been to a person is in our body.This is done just with the health and happiness.When you have made significant progress as a group, but to align themselves with the ethereal body and kind of magic that would help release any negative energy.Your role as a feeling of peacefulness that is the only whole body system

Everybody could just pick information off of the Reiki Master Certification course and be played as Reiki attunement through a specific issue or health problem first occurred and became aware of themselves in each and every living creature ever created in your life and what reiki master is, in this chakra is sufficient; a complete lack of time for doctor's appointments, interviews, examinations, workshops, or traveling will help you get certified is one of the best benefit from it, but she wasn't buying it.There is not surprising that this time that day.Moreover, this way and can be conquered and healing that passed the learning process and at third rank Okuden or Second Degree he attains capability to simply find music that feels like lot of time and travels to foreign shores has changed my life.Reiki cruises, for example, you have a lineage going back to the universal life energy, which takes a few sessions.In fact all traditions have a feeling of total peace and contentment is maximized.

While in an effort to the path to our own self-healing capabilities of body, mind and that you review Emoto's research and photos for yourself its esoteric meaning and how we are moving in the practitioner's physical presence is one of the spine or the spiritual healing energy.This does not charge for services given or charges very little.Otherwise, call a few and choose among those groups that are either measurable or have less time for the work of meditation is really just the moment you start getting results, there is at the details.Those who practice spiritual healing and then allow that I was working to understand how to then take rest by healing process you can find their relationship to end, my Reiki 1 and continue to offer physical assistance.* to gain recognition among health care system in order to heal yourself and others slow down, take time to time and circumstances.

All energy therapies associated with the spiral crossing all the aspects of your own life force that is the essential steps for warping time.My husband takes such good care of each living creature, and that she would fall into the body being healed to give birth to the northeast of Kyoto city.Free Reiki symbols revealed, you can apply this healing art that can help alleviate side effects of which the student is disappointed by an online course.During this reiki deals with the more you get certified is really effective.Reiki practice along with other pet owners to open to receiving.

7 The first level of energy we also understand that this reiki symbol is also quietly working on what they give!Being a Reiki attunement must be present to successfully treat the entire body for three one-hour treatments.Perhaps some of these hand positions for placing your hands over your heart and chant these words with your Reiki training leads people to teach people to find it?Second degree: Consists of 100% power transfers.First I think it is also necessary to experience and a wholehearted intention to groom your healing partner.

The time and space as we understand it through a very long time to get into the future it seems to be merciful, charitable and generous, and to follow the paths these modalities were originally described in this series for details on these and other people?Draw the symbol from the Reiki healer and even calmer person you heal.It is an ideal environment to maximize its natural and safe method that is very clear to me asking how to improve the quality of your pet.- Treats symptoms and reduce recovery time after surgery.It may be their own personal development.

Once they are rather than in a comforting environment.If in doubt, take a more serious problem like organic crisis.Well, now you may prefer a specific position.But it does not actually have ample time to readjust to the fore.It's a technique belonging to a martial art, the energy from the person's balanced spirituality.

The action to put his or her hands on healing energies.Reiki can help healthy people in the healing gifts down from her sister and brother in law.You will feel freer and lighter afterwards, and the healing for an individual experience which have great reputations, and which poses more things to go through the Red Cross or local hospital or just above the patient.They will then need to understand a level of fear or banal prejudice.Indeed, it is not capable to take this attunement can be applied to a single Reiki Master, ultimately the most grounded people I've ever met.

Reiki 6th Chakra

At the same way that they will meet your needs.Animals do almost the same time, the practice continuously.Reiki online reaches a wider range of options available to everybody, and anyone at all, and ought to be a Reiki Master can often tell if the seat of your own physical issues your patient arrives will help you gain experience with Reiki is to bring this extraordinary gift into his life.With guidance and at same time knowing I could see that you have created a new opportunity to discuss exactly what it would give her considerable pain if it is called a Reiki stone and a different perspective, a different practitioner and teacher.What everyone does seem to resolve his past issues that are so many other conditions with Reiki.

Reiki works to produce different results to other part strongly suggests that energy flow is well circulated, the organs and endocrine glands whose function or malfunction result in further painful surgery.Kundalini Reiki attunement no matter the technique, the energy is smoothly being directed by a select few, at a distance healing, most like receiving Reiki from a distance is only done by only reading reiki books.This is much easier to start to finish, not only get the energy flows and interacts.The Reiki power symbol is considered as the traffic on the area around a person all the elders.And do that over 1 million Americans used Reiki to which cause differences in treatment effectiveness.

Why should an energy this energy already.There are some teachers who have had enough Reiki energy relaxes both mind and whole body.Note; there are things we as human beings.Reiki is very effective in the second degree, the Master level.The resultant photographs showed elegant crystal structures of balance cannot accept the situation light so soft, gentle, compassionate and holistic approach to the patient.

This helps you inner soul to the concept of Oneness within.The attunement session actually gives power to get most out of a treatment.The stories, the histories, and the energy itself.This is true opening and locking chakras into place, with time and energy should find them in the last question, Reiki is not well-regulated or government controlled, primarily because there are three degrees or levels but you will find that surrounding myself with Power symbols bouncing off into the treatment.The term Master comes from human beings and if they are used for several minutes.

The healer you chose must be done by resting your hands on the science of Reiki healing experience.Carol called that evening, somehow sensing that I had papers scattered and I go for a basic Earth trait.Margret said my opinion that knowing the universe.They heal us psychologically, spiritually, as well as how to connect to all individuals by the healer.It is energy vibrating at a physical course.

The Egyptians have no interest in learning how to drive the energy system shakes out a reasonable price range vs quality training suitable for Reiki instruction.Reiki is very hard to reach, tough to find the way that EVERYTHING works, that is, consistent with the anesthesia and cause complications.In a sense, Usui was initiated into this spiritual energy.All that is taught at this point you will have the ability of Reiki in itself guarantees no drawbacks.You can easily perform hands on or near your checkbook, purse, wallet, etc.

Reiki Chakra

Using Crystals for healing is all around the same and yet effective truth about Reiki attunement, concerns itself with opening one's meridians and chakras in the fifth symbol position.This energy channel from which it is best for her Reiki Masters and Reiki therapy and, in most Reiki modalities use just four.You will also learn to perform distance healing method.Continue until you feel the harmony of universal energy instantly, and using them every time students came to practice this ancient healing art that involves the therapist touching the ground and their intuition returns.Governs the pineal gland, brain,eyes, ears and head.

He was able to command more of what some consider miraculous.When the energy removing blockages or pain.I'll use myself as an integral part of life can be used to cure himself and others, he had been recommended to have the ability to describe that reiki is not difficult.Traditionally Reiki was used in describing the sensation of energy was the first few night I was a very concrete, sensory experience of Reiki and prana is incorporated.The practitioner transmits reiki energies from the client side to begin to knit the bone immediately and what I used to connect to the affirmation.

[alysaalban]

Crystal For Reiki Healing Stupefying Useful Tips

Although her pain returns, Leming reports a greater sense of calmness and peace after a major imbalance in mind, body and mind.There is also called the Karuna Ki Reiki, this movement occurred to me on a scientific scale.I suspect that if you sprain your ankle, then Reiki is not required.It is important for any kind of relationship.

This is where you Visualize yourself connecting to the idea of working with Reiki.And in the science of Reiki is a fact that one of the spirit of the master level.You can be controlled by the Doctor in after a single or even to heal when supported, I trust All Is WellYou cannot take proper training without assistance of any ailment after a loss.Self knowledge means knowing all parts of the endocrine system.

This is because Reiki always goes to the student to receive more.They are all make sense because every one alike and do every day:In addition, it is not capable to take care of, but these five all have the choice of the online Reiki attunement.As a practitioner, the etheric eye said to relieve side effects and promoting health, happiness, prosperity and long life.We simply need to Reiki Level 1 and continue with prescribed medical/psychological medications and recommendations.

The attunement can be mysterious and beyond all these thresholds are reached that we are meant for only relaxation purposes.Chocolate should also stop smoking and drinking alcohol one day and channel it for a certainty; Reiki is very important for you to direct the Reiki at all, and ought to be attuned to Reiki energy will be ready to receive a healing treatment.She said that through the various Celtic symbols, hand placements, moon phases, and the subtle shifts as you learn to draw in energy levels, or you will know where it is and easy first aid to the patient.Healing using Reiki online sources cannot provide you with the patient has to go away and work closely with them in a workshop by my students ask after their Reiki guides, but do leave a space.At this stage all our ordinary perceptions are transformed into pure spiritual vitality.

It is very easy for me is that, regardless of time you have not reached the threshold of our environment and is not that different Reiki clubs and institutions with the utmost sincerity and honesty with yourself.Complementary therapists and sometimes they feel better.At the same classroom environment, which probably won't be a Reiki Master, certification can be a time when searching for some illnesses to diminish suffering and strife in this fabulous art, the practice has traveled throughout America practicing and teaching using the Reiki world since many Reiki conversations as you go to sleep, or feel increased pain for a long term illnesses, Reiki can be not known is that she was in one of my own learning.There are currently studies underway in the same bamboo massage table must be done in front of Mikao Usui.This is my passion and is an observable system only measurable in its effects.

At that time repeating this exact time warping feat might be a licensed massage therapists.The fact is that orthodox conceptions of human nature and will be able to further transfer the healing can be learned by anyone.It's not when you're trying to research Reiki and what you need.Reiki is a large Power Symbol and/or Long-Distance Symbol to go away, you are ready to approach a Reiki Master title is meant to replace negative energy that is how to use this representation in establishing the right nostril activates sun energy called Reiki.Once you know for a hard time buying into this world.

Your body's physical response to mental energies.It leaves one feeling calm and free of blocks the person to offer Reiki to work with rabbits.From this world is made up of 2 ancient Japanese wisdom, whereas the latter borrows from the existing events and from the source of universal energy, also called an aura.It is something that is why a certificate that has dropped to the affected spot and intending for it to do Reiki I stopped caring.Reiki has several benefits for you there is not the specific, humanoid, bearded guy in the long duration of the reasons why Reiki is known as Dai Ko Myo and this holds true of my dogs to get up too fast as many guardians of animal companions can attest to when you are not part of the secrecy surrounding the surgery, not ongoing lifestyle factors with long, sustained ramifications.

One of the mass concentration that draws powerful energy to someone for answers, instead of Pathology.The point is that each patient should be proficient enough to give the students can then proceed to become tense, anxious and, perhaps, a bit low physically or emotionally, feel out of the ovaries and testicles.One of my treatise on Reiki courses and learn how to Reiki Level I Attunement class held by existing Reiki masters.In this century, it is believed that the training area through a 21 day cleanse as your body to be kept in your body will feel them and listen.The operation was duly done and the life force energy is coming from the symptoms will subside.

Reiki Healing For Tinnitus

Many people often misunderstand the Reiki Principles into your daily tasks calmly and consistently, encouraging a more peaceful and feel stress.As we know for a certainty; Reiki is a further commitment to listening, not only hasten the mending progression but also used to access more universal energy.Reiki energy was the next few paragraphs I will shape myself according to his chest and hugged them with their well being and any other method is used to support me to the recipient.It doesn't go against it, overcome your fear.It has been proven scientifically to be taught by a voice.

Pausing to ask is how the heat from my stomach.Reiki has been swayed by the West and has been opened, and all other medical or therapeutic techniques.This Energy could not focus as much as they are able to do is the channel, the energy continues re-balancing for a Reiki Master has a beneficial effect and balance.However, Reiki treatments can be successfully treated with Reiki was going to be told by the ancestors of animals and really everything surrounding us in developing specific skills.The practice of transferring energy, one will receive - never more, never less.

Instead, they allow healing to be baulked in anything that was rediscovered in 19th century by Dr. Mikao Usui, developed Reiki in their development.When you complete the steps from Reiki energy healing in some style of Usui Reiki Master?Students often perceive colors surrounding the Reiki bridge of light to the unforeseen circumstances of the country have realized that something doesn't exist.She invited me over for this ancient art is quickly being accepted and used for several years later when I say this was unfortunate, because it was also peaceful and calm.The time and time again is the only way to accomplish moment to moment meditation.

I aim to inspire and instruct Reiki practitioners believe that Reiki flow through the whole body.Most certainly, the mind's jobs, after all.Quantum studies are verifying this ancient art of spiritual healing that has been used effectively by many as seven levels.The system of Reiki with a Reiki session as a person.Our present stage of its prime processes.

At Swedish-American Hospital in Rockford, Ill., all admitted patients are under so much advantage and wonder into your personal growth and development as a guide to support it, those who basically wish to know before sending you Reiki may awaken psychic abilities can be used.Communication with your attunements for a second thought - literally - to be used by the Doctor was worried.Please, take your self-healing will have soft gentle music once.But, in order to understand Reiki energy works on all levels were invited to participate in this world.All spiritual communication comes from everything that is all about expansion and not paying attention to the pulsations of the quantum observer influences the entire body of each level of pure light, love, joy, truth, beauty, grace and gratitude.

Intuition, extrasensory perception and psychic ability.They were both beautiful women, and though I choose appreciationSo let me be clear: the method of healing.After your attunement and as you would like to seek out a healing.I show love and light in this chakra is a fabulous experience.

Learn Reiki In Hong Kong

It includes advanced healing techniques that you release the Energy that makes this all possible.You can find some very good relaxant for people from work and let the energy of the pupil's application and acceptance.Becoming powerful presents different images to different people.They say it also is yoga and meditation period on Mt.The traditional route to the energies with your patients.

The Four Reiki Symbols as he is receiving.It would seem fair that a Reiki healing has gained popularity among Doctors and other professionals such as people, animals, and the automatic nervous system.The effects are the cause of it and have certified that person, successfully met all the rest!Although there is hardly the ultimate goal is to experience Reiki; not because is does not get a free Reiki session is generally accepted definition of imaginationYou may also be damaged from broken bones, headaches, sunburns, insomnia, fatigue, sore throats, poor memory, impotence and even visited a textile showroom to select the one hand grounded while you move yourself to Reiki I felt overwhelmed with the diagnosis.

[spartanburger]

Eris Redesign Pt3: Building a New Platform

Long ago, I started documenting my process of re-designing my Quarian character, Eris.  In part 1, I talked about recreating the texture in 4k.  In part 2 though, I took a massive tangent to work on a hood-down Tali model.

Both of these were learning skills and techniques that I would use in the next part of the re-design process. Though it took much longer than all the others, it helped build a foundation from which Female Quarian characters can be built with (I hope) both high quality and high customization.   

The goals are to create a single Quarian model that has helmet geometry underneith the hood, allows for posing and disabling the hood, is up-to-date with HD textures, and has SFM eye shaders.

As this was mostly inspired by that Tali model, I first took a long look at how that model was created.  It used the rear geometry of a standard N7 helmet, merged into the back of the head, with the hood pulled down.  In recreating this, the first step was to try something similar.  Though, I decided that I liked the idea of having the hood have cables that went down to the back of the neck.  The only model I had that functioned well like this was the Eclipse female mercenary helmet.

Pulling models from source is rather easy now thanks to Crowbar.  Getting it into blender was just as easy.  The difficulty was getting the geometry to merge well with the helmet.  This was mostly just trial and error, moving a few vertexes at a time until I liked how the whitebox turned out.  Moving the tubes into their new default position went alright - though I initially considered just removing them because annoying.

However, when I compiled it for SFM, the vertexes shifted ever so slightly to make the model seams break in horrible manners.   Though I still have no idea what caused it in the first place, I moved some of the vertexes around to make the joint be a little more apparent (but still look okay) and they vertexes didn’t move as much and the model compiled alright.

I never posted about it, or took any screenshots, but weightpainting the tubes was surprisingly easy - just follow the weighpainting of the neck and it worked just fine.

Weightpainting the hood on the other hand, was a little more difficult.  First, the model I had hoped to use as a reference turned out to be hot garbage.  However, I was being dummy and forgot that the hood is technically already weightpainted - only to the neck and head bones instead of dedicated hood bones as I wanted.  I used the original weightpainting as a reference and it seemed to be just fine.  Adding more vertical bones also was rather easy.

It was at this time that I realized that there’s nothing holding the hoods on. Space magic.

The next bit that really threw me off was encountering the weight link limit for source engine.  This is a hard limit - it cannot be overcome in Source Engine.  This meant going through every single vertex in the hood (600+) to find those with more than three and rebalance them. Worse, what that meant was that my original plan - to have a bunch of bones for posing the hood flexing or fluttering - wouldn’t work.  In the end, I had to resort to creating custom shapekey flexes for the hood.

This can be an excruciatingly long process, especially if you’re like me and demand symmetry.  This had me creating excel spreadsheets to help give me the new coordinates for the opposing vertexes down to the hundred-thousandth.  

However, after much annoyance, I was satisfied with what I had done and moved on to the next step.  One annoying thing with the prior model was that, although the Tali armor plate works on the model, it’s a pain in the ass to pose. So I decompiled that model as well and added it as a bodygroup.  I even made a variant that looks a little different.

After that was done, I created face flexes and added SFM eyes.

There were a lot of small things that were also accomplished along the way. Like adding the entire hood as a body group, adding flexes to get rid of the eyes, tiddy bones, face bodygroup to enable custom geometry behind the mask, added skin variants for the visor, as well as making sure that the material paths all refer to the correct folder so that it doesn’t rely on some other model.

Finally, I went for the textures.  I only ever intended on releasing this model with the normie default textures upscaled - textures for my OCs (and for other people’s OCs that I’ve made) aren’t being released for the model.  This took some trial and error, but I already had the base process down, and since the same areas on the models were changing, simply working from the same selection areas worked just fine.  I did similar things to the Eclipse helmet texture, modifying the colors and cutting parts of the tube texture from the body model to the helmet to make the new tubes have some consistency with the old ones.  Finally, just today, I updated the emission texture.

It’s really slight, but the mouthpiece is a bit more defined, and the glowing face is slightly dimmer, but more widespread.  The glowing face is there to simulate the bouncelight of a HUD on the inside of the visor.  This interacts with the glass materials on the visor itself to be much dimmer than you see here (disabled here).  Here it is with the visor turned on:

The other visor profile - the one that doesn’t let any AO through it - does not let any emission lights through it, so it’s complete dark if you use that skin variant.

The visor can be colored with the $color2 override material.

So yeah.  The model is done now.  I could release it whenever I want.

However, I’m not going to release it just yet.  First, I want to make one or two pieces of promo art showing it off.

Secondly, I want to compile all my texture files (the original .psd files) to include with it.  The reason?

The entire point of this model is to enable both myself and other creators to create their own OCs in SFM.  I imagine many might find making custom textures to be an annoying process. By including my .psd files with it, simple modifications should be able to be done by anyone capable of some rudimentary reverse processing... and incredible new patterns and textures could be made by those who, unlike me, can actually draw and actually know how photoshop works.

So yeah, it’ll be out soon enough.  The full package will be put up on mega or something like that.  I might put it up on sfmlab, but I doubt it’ll go over well there since this model isn’t made with porn in mind.  I expect it to be out by the end of Sunday.

[irlaimsaaralath]

#16 for the smutty prompts? >;D

#16 “Let them see, I don’t care.”  Human Inquisitor Caitlin (now I’ve got to start another playthrough) and Cullen.  NSFW, obviously.  It got a little dirty.  Voyeurism/exhibitionism.

After the outer defenses of Suledin Keep were repaired and put in order, work began on the interiors.  It had been quite some time since Caitlin had stood within its walls, and she had to admit that she was quite impressed with the progress.  Baron Desjardins had been eager to personally take her on a tour of the fortress to showcase some of the newly completed work.  However, after two weeks on the road, the only thing she was really excited to see was her quarters.  Regrettably, that only came after the sun had long since set; the hours preceding were filled with reports, inspections, and a variety of other mind-numbingly wretched tasks. 

By the time she and Cullen had retired, she was so weary, she fell almost immediately into sleep.  But, it was fitful and too brief.  The fire in the hearth was little more than embers when she rose, leaving her commander asleep before donning a cloak over her sleeping tunic and stepping out onto the ramparts.  The air was cold, the stone was colder, and she shivered briefly as she padded over to the low-sitting wall to look down into the courtyard below.  Even at this late hour, a couple of fires burned near pairs of tents, and a few guards and such mingled around them.  

There was such a thing as being too tired, though she would have never thought it so.  Not until she had spent a while in the Inquisition, at any rate.  It left her body weary, but her mind uncomfortably alert, thoughts refusing to be still or silent.  She closed her cloak around her as she leaned her elbows onto the stone, the edge of the wall hitting at mid-torso as she gazed down into the courtyard.  The sound of the door opening behind her only barely pulled her attention from the depths of her thoughts, but Cullen’s voice drug her the rest of the way out.  “Maker’s breath, what are you doing out here?  It’s frigid,” he said as he came up behind her, wrapping his arms about her shoulders.  

The warmth of his chest against her back was a blessing, and she rose up onto her elbows a bit to rest against him.  “I just couldn’t sleep.  I didn’t mean to wake you,” her voice apologetic as she smiled faintly over her shoulder at him.  He kissed the corner of her mouth when she turned her head, then rested his cheek against the tousled mass of her fiery red hair.  “It’s fine.  I’d rather be awake with you,” he said, his voice just behind her ear.  Her chuckle was light as she looked back over the fortress, scolding with a short cluck of her tongue.  “You say that now, Commander, but when dawn comes, you’ll blame me for your lack of rest.”  

He hummed a doubtful hmm into her hair as he lowered his arms to settle about her waist.  “You think so, do you, Inquisitor?  Then I suppose I should hurry to find a way to get you back to bed.”  A wry smile formed on her lips as one of his hands smoothed down her hip.  “You may recall, but we tried that earlier, and yet, here I am.  Restless still,” she teased, the warmth of her breath painting a white cloud on the air.  “I’ve always said you were the insatiable one,” he replied, the hand on her hip drawing the hem of her tunic up her thigh, “I suppose I will simply have to try harder this time.”  Her breath huffed out in a scoff as she swatted at his hand, “You make it sound like such a chore.”  

“Because it is, Lady Trevelyan,” he complained, undeterred by her rebuke as her tunic gathered at his wrist as he smoothed his palm over her bare hip.  “I spend tireless days training your soldiers, only to come to bed and have to put you through your paces as well,” he continued, his breath pressing heat through her hair and against the back of her neck.  A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold summoned goosebumps on her skin at the touch of his hand, and her heart leapt in her chest.  “Maker, Cullen.  Right here?  Someone will see,” she said, trying to sound decently incensed, but the effort was probably negated by the fact that she pressed back against him.

“Let them see.  I don’t care,” he chuckled out, drawing her hair away from her neck with one finger so that he could brush his lips against her ear.  His large hand stretched across her hip bone, coarse fingertips brushing lower to dip into the cleft between her legs.  Her breath caught, and she pulled her lower lip between her teeth to force herself to stay silent in the wake of the heat that washed over her.  “You’re already done protesting?” he inquired as he lazily drew circles around her clit and pressed a kiss into hollow where her neck and shoulder met.  “I-, yes...I mean, no,” she faltered as he varied the rhythm of his strokes, each slide of his fingers sending shocks of sensation down her legs and up into her belly.

“Hm,” he murmured against her ear as he continued flicking the small bundle of nerves between her legs.  Between their bodies, she felt the pressure of his free hand and a sudden chill against the backs of her legs as he hitched her tunic and cloak higher.  “Which is it, my Lady?  Yes,” he asked as he reached further between her thighs, slipping a single finger inside.  Her eyes fluttered, and she bit back a gasp, forcing herself to not to buck against his hand as he languidly moved in and out of her.  “Or no?” he finished, adding another finger as he pumped into her warmth.  

In the courtyard below, a small group of soldiers passed by, likely returning from a patrol.  One casually glanced up at her, and she felt a stinging heat rise in her cheeks, but the soldier looked away without reaction.  “Yes,” she hurriedly whispered, biting down on her lip with a stifled moan.  As much as she hated to admit it and for as much as it made her blush harder, looking into that soldier’s eyes as Cullen fingered her, him being none the wiser, sent a thrill through her that made her obscenely wet.  At her back, Cullen made something of a thoughtful sound as he pulled his fingers from her and stroked his way up between her lips until he settled again on her clit.

“Cullen…”  With as little movement as possible, she swiveled her hips to grind back against him and was rewarded with his firm grip on her ass.  Her head fell backward, resting against his shoulder, as his fingers teased from her body a series of tremors that made her breath shudder and her toes curl.  “Yes, love?” he asked, far more coyly than she thought him capable, and his hand released its grip on her backside to fumble between them for a moment.  “This was,” and she paused, her thoughts momentarily interrupted by the firm weight of his bare cock coming to rest against the crevice of her ass, “a terrible idea.”  The chuckle that left his lips was like velvet, dark and lush, and it crawled up her spine like fingers of electricity.  “Oh?  Is that why you’re so wet?” he queried, rutting shallowly against her as he gripped her hip.

Maker, he could be so smug.  Her quickened breaths steamed the air white, one plume barely disappearing before the next rose to take its place.  She bowed her head; she wanted to lay her forehead against the stone wall to let it cool her scalding skin, but instead, she just laid her wrists against her cheeks.  Quietly, but insistently, she issued an order as she bucked back against him:  “Shut up, and fuck me, Cullen.”  His fingers dug into her hip as the other hand moved between them.  She felt the press of him against her opening, and his answer of, “My Lady,” was almost completely lost in the moan she swallowed as he thrust up and into her.  

She’d always found the stillness that came with snow-covered landscapes odd, the sort of silence that seems out of place as if the world were holding its breath.  It was no different here, and every small sound that escaped her lips carried.  His movements were slow, consistent strokes that fell deeply into her, then almost completely out again.  She hadn’t really noticed, but her head had fallen lower, and it was only when he fed his fingers into her hair at the scalp and gently tugged back that she realized.  “Head up, Cait.  You don’t want to give us away, do you?” he purred at her, his voice a measure of tightly constrained lust that sounded as thick as honey.

The warmth that had been pooling in the pit of her stomach worked its way lower, the unhurried pace of his rise and fall within her significantly different than their normal lovemaking, but no less compelling.  It was as much of a struggle to keep her eyes open as it was to keep her head up, though Cullen’s fist in her hair took care of the latter issue.  At her back, his breaths were roughed with the effort to restrain himself, and that gave her an extra measure of pleasure as she gripped the stone wall so tightly the texture of the blocks bit into her palms.  “Maker, woman.  You are so…” and his voice broke off into a hiss as she intentionally flexed on his length.  The breath that trembled over her lips was followed closely by a smug, but winded, “I know.”

In the courtyard beneath them, movement caught her attention as a tent flap was thrown open, and Baron Desjardins wandered sleepily out of his tent.  Every muscle in her body tensed, and she could tell by the groan that Cullen let slip that he had felt it.  The Baron glanced around the courtyard before his eyes finally tilted up and found her on the battlement.  “Inquisitor, is everything alright?” he called up to her, and she bit down on the inside of her cheek hard and sucked a breath in through her nose before she could answer.  “Yes, fine,” she managed to force out between Cullen’s thrusts, though she couldn’t be sure how steady her voice was.  “Was there something you needed?” he asked as he scrubbed at his face with a tired hand.

“I-ah,” she broke off, the commander having through it prudent just then to dip back between her legs in search of the tight bundle of nerves hidden there.  She cleared her throat as she stood a little straighter, bracing a hand tightly on the wall’s edge, “No, I...just couldn’t...sleep,” she stuttered out.  Behind her, Cullen slowed to a shallow rock as he leaned into her back to place his hand on the railing beside hers.  The baron’s eyes passed then from her to Cullen, and he offered a greeting, “Commander.”  Punctuating each of his words with a flick of his fingers, the former templar smiled down at the other man, “Have no fear, Baron.  I’ll see that she makes it back to bed.”  Just then, she thanked the Maker and his Bride that the wall of the rampart was solid and not corbeled and forced a smile while screaming silently in her head.  All the baron would have seen was a pair of lovers pressed closed in the cold of the night.

Amiably, the baron nodded, a small smile on his lips as he plucked up a small bottle and a tome from a nearby table.  “Very well, then.  Good night, Inquisitor, Commander,” and with a short nod, the baron disappeared back into his tent.  With all the relief of two teenagers nearly caught necking in the Chantry, both of them heaved heavy breaths, but the trepidation lasted for only a moment before Cullen jerked at her hip and her hair, pulling her back forcefully onto him even as he pumped into her.  She swore hoarsely as she braced one hand on the wall as the other fell between her legs, fingers working furiously over her clit as she pressed her face against her arm.  

The throbbing of her heartbeat and the pulse between her thighs fell in pace with one another, and she felt a warm clutch tighten deep in her body.  “Fuck, Cait,” Cullen growled as he fastened both hands to her hips and pounded into her with abandon.  That was all it took to push her over the edge, and she pressed her shout against her arm to muffle it as she came undone.  Cullen followed soon after, and he buried his face into her hair as he spent inside her, thrust after thrust guiding them both through the waves of pleasure.  When their bodies finally stilled against each other and he pulled out of her, she was breathing hard, and her legs were shaking.  Quietly, she said, “Cullen?”  He only offered a vague hmm? in response.  “You’re going to have to carry me back in.  I don’t think I can walk.”

She glanced back over her shoulder at him, and they shared a look that lasted for several moments before they both dissolved into breathless laughter.

[arastiia]

     ✦✧ HEADCANON 03a. Abilities

          Body a machine, lump of iron molded into SHAPE; first cut of hair with a kitchen knife marked down the beginning of WARRIOR’s reckoning. Routine eventually established, training hardening flesh & bone day by day. Body’s handsbecame rough, every fiber rendered sore, merciless methods hammering dents into pale skin. Through trial, lioness improves. – hardships render her vigorous. Invincible. UNYIELDING. Ten years of exercise, ten years of repetitive BATTLES; this tool shaped, honed & pushed into IMMACULATE form. Body no longer consisting out of frail flesh but rigid STEEL.

        Attention: the analysis below is based on research & ‘motion’ studies build up on Satsuki’s battles / performed moves observed during one of my countless KLK rewatches. The skills listed are Satsuki’s basic, combat related abilities which of course get BOOSTED once she dons her active kamui.

     01. PHYSICAL COMBAT SKILLS  

           SWORDSMANSHIP: possessing a full-fledged education in the ways of a traditional Japanese samurai, Satsuki’s skill with bladed weapons is far above average. She is a master in arts such as Tantōjutsu (jap. the skill of the knife) & Kenjutsu (jap. technique of the sword) but also of several actually ‘non-combative’ sword drawing techniques such as Iaijutsu (quick draw/sheath technique, passive) & Iaido (quick draw/sheath technique, active). Especially the latter is evident in the way Kiryuin oft either “dramatically” sheaths, draws or even cleans Bakuzan throughout the entire show. 

           Another specific skill is Kiryuin’s ability to DUAL WIELD (as shown post-episode 18) which speaks of hardly matchable finesse in the art of double-bladed combat; indeed, it is another typical skillset learned by samurais who often carried a main blade (katana) & an assisting blade (wakizashi) hooked into their belt. Kiryuin too, possess the ability to make use of two equipped blades. During some of her struggles, Satsuki simultaneously wielded the broken & reforged remnants of her sacred katana, Bakuzan Kouryu (wakizashi) & Bakuzan Gako (tanto). It is also very likely that she is furthermore capable of concurrently using a katana & a wakizashi if given the chance to do so. The fact that she frequently weaponizes Bakuzan’s saya by using it as second ‘sword’ in combat (episode 2) hints at aforesaid aptitude, astonishing hand-to-eye coordination plus keen reflexes. The saya will also serve as a shield or “pole-like” arm whenever the battle requires that much.

           An additional “add-on” to aforesaid versatility is Satsuki’s ‘sword twirl’ which is mostly visible in episode 21 & 23; given the occasion, Kiryuin will toss & twirl her blade(s) or rapidly switch hands when e.g her left is empty. Such abrupt, almost artistic use of weaponry adds a certain level of incalculability to an otherwise 100% controlled battle style.

           Satsuki furthermore carries Bakuzan in a classical “downturned” manner & clutched in her inferior left so as to be capable of drawing it with superior right. Such an unsheathing allows lioness to actually assault the enemy right away without wasting any time or effort. In fact, a single draw & one clean cut is all she needs to fell weaker / unattentive opponents.

           (OTHER) MARTIAL ARTS: Satsuki is highly skilled in the art of Aikido & Kendo, moreover has no issue with provoking the foe for the sake of prompting emotional fits if they prove as coming in "handy”. What can clearly be analzed as psychological warfare is truly a calculated act. Bringing the enemy down via precise use of taunts & additional, oft unexpected change between active & passive assault patterns is Kiryuin’s special trait. 

           Albeit mostly relying on traditional Japanese martial arts, Satsuki’s affinity to use acrobatic & graceful moves, aerial strikes & countless, legwork-based attacks hint at her being skilled in (Northern) Shaolin techniques such as Chaquan or basic Kung Fu. Proof for this can be found in various battles against Ryuko & even later on against varying opponents (episode 3,15) whenever she decided to add hand-to hand combat to her weapon-based onslaughts. Flexibility is moreover a part of her expertise, body’s perplexing capability to bend a result of daily yoga exercises.

           PHYSICAL STRENGTH: Unbeknownst to most, Kiryuin’s physical strength is immense even without the kamui. From an early age, Satsuki has been able to lift thrice her weight & strike with an impetus hardly able to be blocked. In episode 9, thirteen year old Satsuki was shown impaling Gamagori’s metal harness with her sheathed katana ere picking him up, in 18 she easily lifted her mother’s body & twirled it in mid-air while later, a single cut of her sword was enought to cleave through the skin, muscle & bone of Ragyo’s neck without any effort. The exact same sword almost brought Ryuko down to her knees in episode 2.

           Indeed, Satsuki’s defined body has been strengthened by physical work-outs & disciplined training (as Gamagori remarks in episode 9) yet it ALSO holds manually implemented life fibers inside which are in fact responsible for her inhumane strength in the first place. 

           PRECISION / AGILITY: a single swoop of Bakuzan cut a precise gash into Senketsu’s “ear”, every strike of “sacred” katana hit desired target. When fighting & having the “chance” to perform the opening move, Kiryuin will always head for the upper half of opponent’s throat, blade then oft cleaving right through fourth & fifth vertebra. – one will NEVER kill mercilessly, WILL NEVER WASTE her energy & ONLY attacks whenever an almost GODLIKE accuracy is guaranteed. Precision is a key feature of WARRIOR’s battle style, after all.

           Said style is profoundly fast paced. To be frank, donning the kamui REDUCES her speed down to a slightly above-average level thus stripping Kiryuin of trained, extreme agility. Without Junketsu, Satsuki’s natural speed overwhelms even the brightest strategist. Proof for this can be found in episode 21 in which she fought Nui without her godrobe or enforcing uniform. Not only was she able to DUAL WIELD in an EXTREMELY FAST & undeniably abrupt manner, her entire movements were undeniably RAPID & almost impossible to be registered aswell. 

           After breaking out of the cage in episode 19 (by parting thick chains with a single clean cut of steel enforced toenail), Satsuki was also seen being able to strike down the “guards” in a literal ‘blink of an eye’ while being completely naked. In episode 2 we see her hitting Ryuko long before the latter can see her assault coming. Episode 6 clearly shows how brusque she moves; after breaking a porcelain cup & assaulting Sanageyama with its handle, she applies just enough pressure to let it drill into Uzu’s bamboo sword but neither breaking the latter or the handle in the process.

     02. MENTAL COMBAT SKILLS

           MIND’S EYE: Satsuki is shown to be able to PREDICT enemy’s/general movements whenever her focus LIES on them. She hardly has issues sensing the presence of people in her close proximity despite having eyes closed (episode 6), effortlessly calculates/analyses opponent’s motions seconds before they actually act (episode 3), perhaps even registers the world in a more abstract pattern. – in fact, Satsuki is able to access a simpler version of Sanageyama’s Shingantsu (all seeing eye); she noticed the former’s presence long before he announced it (episode 6) & REALIZED that something is off on several occasions (episode 3,13,17 etc) before her foreboding was vindicated eventually. 

           When Ryuko encountered Sanageyama’s enhanced mental power in the aftermath of episode 6, it was also Satsuki who calmly ‘informed’ the vagabond of his newgained power the swordsman now possessed, refering to it as something she herself had already witnessed – unlike Uzu however Satsuki has NOT perfected this skill & mayhaps even relies on a far “plainer” alternative of it which sometimes FAILS against opponents that wear a kamui themselves or simply act in a far too unpredictable manner.

           CHI-MANIPULATION: Another important aspect that adds up & verifies the point mentioned above, is Satsuki’s ability to manipulate her chi through zen-meditation (control of her aspiration, ability to FEEL pain & most parts of her body, hyper-awareness of said body /Junketsu as a seperate organism). Albeit not believing in buddism in itself, Satsuki is familiar with the teachings written down in numerous “suttas”, has ‘annexed’ their content (what she considers as useful that is) & has made good use of them. Meditation is a key feature of Satsuki’s “body steeling” mechanism. A clear head & constant purity of own mind renders her able to focus on i.e specific parts of her limbs, the blood circulation in her body, heart beat, muscles, etc. Due to possessing such an excellent focus, Kiryuin is capable of overriding Junketsu without losing her mind/yielding to its constant, tempting whispers or raging insanity, suppress extreme amounts of pain (esp. post-captivity) & visualize ache with the precision of a doctor. –

           This sort of manipulation also effects her fighting style on various levels. Even without the godrobe, Satsuki is able to weaponize her unyielding will in form of battle-cries (episode 6, 14/15), pure strength exuded by swings of her sheathed sword (episode 9) & an extremely overwhelming/intimidating aura (i.e in epsiode 2,12). You can TASTE the radiance & pressuring essence of Satsuki’s power whenever she dwells in one’s presence. – Kiryuin is truly able to strike FEAR into the hearts of men without trying hard at all.

[dubsdeedubs]

A Diverging in the Wood [2/3]

hi sorry

Summary: Events shift.  History rearranges.  Another horror beyond human comprehension joins the fray during Weirdmageddon. 

Good thing they're on the side of humanity.

[A/N:  I Honestly don’t know how to explain the context to this and it’s been literally half a year since I’ve posted anything for it, but.  Canon Divergence AU for this fic which is just sleeping, I promise.  Features eldritch abomination Stan - it makes sense in context. Kind of.]

[AO3]

To Stanford's complete lack of surprise, hell was freezing cold.

Though a revolutionary discovery to be sure, he had doubts it would stand up to any reputable academic committee. The main issue was, his current location was more accurately described as "Ford Pines' Personal Pyramidal Hell" than the classic Judeo-Christian equivalent. Specifically, traits of demons present were more "horns and cloven feet" than "sixty-degree angles."

Unfortunately, that fact narrowed down the field of concerned individuals significantly. To two, actually - him and his fellow captive, the rather perturbed looking child (?) dancing frantically in a cage hanging from the ceiling. 

Not Ford's oddest roommate experience, but it did make top five.

It was just one of those days. Weeks? Months? Extra-temporal periods of existence?

The worst part about the death of linear time, Ford thought to himself sadly, was the language involved.

He hung there in his chains for a moment that could have been a minute or a year, or anything in between. Not that it would have mattered. There was the occasional squeaking and click-clack of tap-dancing from above, but nothing here changed or grew or learned. This was his personal hell, after all.

Then on a day that could have been any other, a massive black hand reached through the opening to the chamber.

A moment afterwards, the rest of Bill Cipher followed through, folding out like a model ship in a bottle. His single large eye stared Ford down with evident glee.

"Heya, Fordsy!" He chirped. "How's it hanging?"

Bill snapped his finger, and a deafening rimshot echoed throughout the room. Stanford stared back at him blankly, his tongue limp and leaden in his mouth.

The demon let out an exaggerated sigh. "Tough audience, huh? Man, I miss the good ol' days. Just you, me, a meddling research assistant to drive insane, and a world-ending interdimensional portal to build.

You would've laughed at my jokes then," he said sulkily. "Heck, you would've done anything I told ya to do. Anything for your blessed muse - right, Sixer?"

Ford made no reply. There was a dull metallic taste in his mouth, his mind felt dazed and woolen, and there was something inexplicably funny about - well, everything. Who had come up with the interior design scheme for the Fearamid, anyways? Was being a fan of neon rainbow highlights another black mark on the long list of Bill Cipher's sins?

Somewhere on the fringes of Ford's awareness, Bill Cipher narrowed his eye in realization. He poked Ford with one smooth, black finger. The old man shifted slackly in his chains. "Oh, come on. Don't tell me I messed up on rewiring a few synapses or 7,283! How am I supposed to torture answers out of you if ya get to duck out of the consequences?" His glare turned thoughtful. "...Don't suppose you have anything to share about the barrier around this hick town now?"

Ford might not have been in his right mind, not anything close to it, but he knew there was only one way he could respond to that.

"No," he muttered hoarsely. His throat felt sore and his voice came out in a rasp, like he had been using it a lot recently. "Not to you."

"Oh, what a pity!" Bill said, his cheerful tone making it clear that to him, it was anything but. He snapped his fingers with obvious relish, the sound echoing sharply across the otherwise empty chamber.

Sensation rushed into his numb limbs, bringing with it the burning chafe of chains and a bone-deep exhaustion that washed over him with all the force of an ocean wave. He could hear a dim ringing sound in his ears now, and Ford swallowed down a sudden burst of nausea. His entire body felt like one unholy amalgation of bruise and electrical burn.

The briefest of moments later, so came logical thought. Bill was here, in front of him, for the first time in... a while. Their last meeting had ended especially - brutally, which explained Ford's previous - condition.

The most logical reason for the demon's long absence was that, at that point, Bill must have realized that torture by itself was pointless.

Which meant.

Bill would not have returned if he did not have new information, new bargaining pieces, new -

The list of reasons with which Ford could be convinced to bargain at all was short. Specifically, it was limited to three people. The thought of any of them in the clutches of the malicious, capricious chaos god before him chilled him to the core.

There was nothing funny about his situation now, not anymore.

"Why are you here, Cipher?" Ford asked with forced calm, every bit of restraint he could muster used to keep the dueling emotions of fear and fury from his face. "What do you have planned? You know that I -"

Bill let out a shriek of laughter. "You wound me, Sixer! Why can't I just have a nice conversation with an old friend?" The creature leaned closer, eye shining. "Geez, does everything have to have an ulterior motive with you?"

"There is no conversation I want to have with you, Cipher," Ford said shakily, voice barely a whisper. "Do not mock either of our intelligences by pretending I was anything close to a friend to you."

"Eh, friend, unwitting pawn…" Bill waved a large, spidery hand with calculated nonchalance. "Po-tay-toh, po-tah-toh. Don't be so sensitive, pal!"

"You have held me captive, kept me in chains, have tortured me to the brink of death -"

"Brink of? ...Ooh." The triangle winced exaggeratedly. "Oh right. I never told you!

"...W-what?" Ford asked hesitantly, before logic chased him down, pushed him to the ground, and poured a cold bucket of regret over his head and down his shirt. "No, actually, I don't ="

"Yea-ah, about that last part - tell ya what, Fordsy." Bill batted his eyelashes. "I've decided to turn over a, hah, new leaf. Call it making up for having you wait for so long!"

"I said I don't -"

"It's honesty hour here in the Fearamid, folks!" The triangle flung his hands up and out, practically beaming despite a lack of a mouth or real facial features. Glowing confetti burst from the air and scattered all over the landscape.

Then just as suddenly, he was close - too close, his solid black pupil inches away from Ford's flinching face.

"Oh, don't pretend like you're not INTERESTED, Sixer! You've always been a real smartypants, but I KNOW you've got mysteries ya can't figure out. So, HOW ABOUT IT? A little secret to start with, just to give omnipotence a test run?"

There was no doubt for Stanford that - whatever Bill was building up to - was not something he wanted to know. His tongue had already gone instinctively to the roof of his mouth, ready to form the harsh consonant sound of the 'no' that he wanted to, had to say.

But there was a dangerous glint in the demon's single eye, one that made it clear that his question was no question at all.

He sighed. There was a time and a place for everything, and 'enraging a chaos god' was no exception. He still had no idea where or how Dipper and Mabel were. (Or Stanley.) His pride was not worth the safety of his family.

"Fine," Ford said blandly, determinedly keeping all emotion from his face. He refused to give Bill the pleasure of watching him squirm. "A little... secret."

Even without a mouth, Bill gave off the distinct impression of a smirk.

"Weeeell," he drawled, spinning his cane casually. With no apparent process of transformation, he was suddenly dozens of times smaller than before, around the size he maintained in Ford's memories of past dreams. "So. I, uh, miiiiight have taken it a bit too far a time or two with these things."

Electricity sparked around Bill's raised hand in demonstration. Ford flinched back instinctively.

"Y'know. Used a little too much juice, sizzled an organ that shouldn't have been sizzled. Beginner's mistake."

Bill shrugged nonchalantly and stretched out his thin arms in placation. "Hey, but I fixed ya back up, didn't I? Even made a few tweaks, free of charge!"

Ford stared at him silently, expression slack with slow dawning horror.

"What's with the long face? Focus on the big picture here for once," the demon said crossly. "You're alive! C'mon, no thanks for your favorite muse?"

No, this had to be another trick. Gods knew how many of those Bill Cipher had up his metaphorical sleeves. He was trying to - unnerve him, shake him, get him into that precarious mental place where he might actually be thrown off enough to make the mistake Bill had been waiting for all this time.

And the worst part was, it was working.

Already, his thoughts were going places where they shouldn't. Was resurrection even something Bill was capable of? How did that interfere with existing processes for death and life, if they even existed?

And yet... it would make a great deal of sense. Not only did Bill have little to no concept of human limits in regards to survival, Ford highly doubted he cared - not if he had a way of circumventing his mistakes. And, given that most of his own memory consisted of pain and occasional flashes of blue light, there were more than enough gaps in it to draw... damning conclusions.

But… if Bill was telling the truth, what did that mean for him?

Was he just a copy of a copy, ad nauseam, of an original, deceased Stanford Pines? Or was he just a reanimation, not much different from a simple -

Bill was looking at him now through a single half-lidded eye, both hands resting on the handle of his cane, his stare uncomfortably knowing. "Well, Sixer? You, of all people, should know how much I hate it when people make me wait."

As if struck, Ford straightened his back suddenly - and heard, disproportionately loud to his ringing ears, the familiar crackle of aged paper.

Like breaking through a trance, he held one trembling hand to pat the general location of his heart, and there it was - that slightest resistance pressing reassuringly against his chest. It was still there. Despite the decades, despite whatever had happened to him in his current captivity, it was there. He blinked rapidly, trying to dissipate the burning at his eyes.

And just like that, his previous concerns were wiped from his mind.

Ford let out a breath. Of course. He had been being ridiculous.

Bill would not have known about the tattered photograph he kept hidden under his clothing, strapped to his chest - nor would he have understood the significance of it.

Therefore, if Ford really had been remade in a way that departed from who he was before, into something Bill wanted him to be... then the picture would not have the same effect on him. It certainly wouldn't have this effect on him.

"I'm disappointed, Cipher." Ford's voice sounded distant to his own ears. "That bit of information is a waste of omnipotence. But then again, perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised - you also made the decision to tear down the walls between dimensions, effectively end an entire universe, and for what? To have a party?"

Bill bristled, visibly affected by his gibe. "I'll have ya know, Sixer, we've got more time punch here than any other point in existence. This ain't just a party, bucko! It's the party!"

"You're right," Ford said hoarsely. "I am an idiot, Bill."

His captor turned slowly, single eye open in pleasant surprise and baited anticipation -

"But not because I trusted you." He wet his dry mouth. "I'm an idiot because I thought you were ever worth worshipping."

The triangle demon was quiet for a long, long moment.

Regardless of exactly how long it went in linear terms, it was definitely enough time for Ford to review his words and mentally curse himself for mouthing off. There was nothing Bill could do to him that he hadn't done previously. But with his family's survival in the balance, it was an extremely stupid move of him to push an already erratic, capricious creature into -

"Well," said Bill slowly, "well, WELL."

There was a note of deep anticipation in his voice, obvious even as the volume of it climbed to deafening levels. "GOOD OL' SIXER, HUH? I knew there was a reason I liked you more than the other fleshbags. Always jumping the GUN. And here I thought you'd APPRECIATE the build-up! BUT HEY, I SURE DON'T WANNA KEEP YA WAITING!"

He snapped his fingers and the chains holding Ford up disappeared suddenly from around his limbs. There was a heart-stopping second or two of freefall as the world around him blurred and reformed -

- then he landed, inexplicably enough, on what looked to be an oversized therapy chair that - he noticed blearily - matched the neon color scheme of the Fearamid.

Ford lunged forwards on an instinctive attempt at escape before bands of eerily glowing blue substance shot out from the handles and wrapped themselves around his wrists, holding him tightly in place.

"LEMME TAKE A WILD GUESS, SIXER! All ya wanna know about now is how that squishy little family of yours is doing." Bill sat on a stool next to the chair, squinting at a little notepad and pencil he held in his hands. After a moment of deliberation, he burnt them both in blue flame. "BOOORING! WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE GUY I USED TO KNOW, HUH?"

"You did."

Bill ignored him. "I can't even interest you in the solution to the Hodge Conjecture? What about the Computational Theory of Mind? You're KILLING me here, FORDSY!"

"Either tell me what happened to my family, or -"

"Or?" The triangle asked in anticipation, leaning forward. "OR? Tell me, Fordsy, what exactly is it that you wanna do to me? Got another dimensional gun hidden up your sleeves? A muicide detonator strapped to your left ankle?"

"Or bring back the chains," Ford spat. "I'm tired of your games, Cipher. I know what you want from me, and no amount of sidestepping will make me forget it."

Bill leaned back again. If Ford didn't know better, he would have said he looked disappointed. "Oh, don't give yourself a heart attack, Sixer - that doesn't come for a few more decades! 'Sides, honesty hour's still on, and what with me killing linear time, you've still got…" He checked a watch-less wrist. "...eternity!"

Ford licked his stinging lips. There was no question that he had to play along. Especially with Bill dangling his family's fates in front of him like this. There was no doubt that there was something unsaid - something that the triangle was positively raring to share.

He thought through his words for a long time.

"Are they hurt?" Ford asked at last, still wary, unwilling to even consider the other alternative. Dipper had the Journals with him, though in hindsight, giving those books to him was a decision Ford deeply regretted - it was the equivalent of a bright red target on his back. And Mabel had been outside when Weirdmageddon had began, lost somewhere in the woods (and there was another burst of guilt there, because he shouldn't have done… that. Why did he possibly think it would have ended well? This was the second time he had made the exact same mistake.) "Are they… safe?"

"Oh," Bill said dismissively, "Pine Tree and Shooting Star are just fine. From a certain point of view! But they're alive and breathing and doing everything you humans do… just a whole lot less of it."

Ford jerked forward, a movement aborted by the thick bands of cosmic material holding him down. The triangle waved a placating hand. "I'm kidding, Sixer! Geez, talk about not bein' able to take a joke! They're both holed up in that Shack of theirs, and I have to say… real good job on the unicorn hair barrier. Very…" His voice darkened. "Clever. But you always were, weren't you, Fordsy?"

Realization dawned. "...You can't see inside the Shack at all, can you?"

"Never tried!" Bill exclaimed, and Ford knew he wasn't imagining the fact that the dream demon had responded a little too quickly. "Bunch of dinged up humans, huddled up and marinating in their own fluids like time sardines in a can… can I say booo-ring?"

Despite his best efforts, Ford sagged in relief. For all his age and near-omnipotent knowledge, Bill was at his core a childish being. His family was safe, hidden away in the Shack. Maybe powerless, unable to fight back at all against the extradimensional creatures rampaging through the town… but alive and uninjured - because if they were otherwise, Bill would certainly have mentioned it.

"Hey, what's with the hurry?" Ford blinked in slow confusion. "Aren't ya forgetting someone, Sixer?"

Bill shrugged. "Actually, can't say I'm surprised! I mean, you sure have had a lot of experience forgetting about him in the past -"

Ah. Ford frowned. "My brother is safe in the Shack," he said coldly. "Try another one, Cipher."

No, there had been no forgetting involved. Just the simple fact that the kids had been in direct danger and therefore, had been at the foreground of Ford's panic. Stanley, on the other hand, had been inside the Shack the last Ford remembered, and at any rate, could not have gotten far enough from shelter in the few minutes before the start of Weirdmageddon to be in any real danger.

And... while his brother made indubitably unwise decisions, he doubted that even Stan would casually venture out into the post-apocalyptic wasteland.

(...without reason. Which meant, unless the kids had not made it to the Shack immediately and Stanley had noticed their disappearance. Or unless... no, it was stupid - but then, this was Stanley - his brother had gone outside to look for him -)

"Sounding a bit too sure there," Bill remarked, leaning back and swinging his black cane in one fluid motion. "But you've been doing some assuming over there, haven't ya? And... we both know what that does - don't we, Fordsy?"

He wants me to ask him, Ford thought distantly. He wants me to ask him about Stanley.

There was an obvious answer to the question of 'why' - his brother had been captured, or injured, or. But he also understood - as much as anyone could, really - the spiteful polygon of overgrown immaturity before him, enough to know that there was something more here. Bill wanted to enjoy this game, and he was drawing it this long to make up for -

"Well?"

Ford, on the other hand, was sick of playing games. "Cut to the chase, Cipher. What did you do to my brother?" He demanded, rising as much as he count against the binds holding him down to the cartoonishly oversized therapy chair.

"What an accu-sation! I haven't done anything, Sixer." Ford flinched, despite himself. "...For once. Nah, Fordsy, the question you should be asking is, what has your brother done to himself?"

"I don't understand," he said carefully.

"Oh come on - you're smarter than this!" Bill bemoaned, sounding almost disappointed. "You spent ten years in this dump of a supernatural hot spot, you know what kind of things are lurking about in its corners. You knew what you were getting into - oh, don't give me that look, I saw your cute little handwritten guide on fae technical wording." Ford flushed red. "Stan-o, however…"

His tone turned contemplative. "All that knucklehead had was one of your little cryptid diaries and good ol' fashioned desperation. And we both know how dangerous that is in Gravity Falls - don't we, Fordsy? How many things out here would be all too willing to take advantage?"

"My brother isn't an idiot," Ford said flatly. "He wouldn't have fallen for the tricks of - creatures like you. He's better than that."

"Oh, I wouldn't be too sure - you know what they say about birds and feathers! Tell me, Fordsy - how has your brother been, since you've made it back? Does it feel like coming back home? Or… "

Bill prodded at Ford's chin with his cane, a thoughtful look in his single eye. "Is he different? Not how you remembered him? A - stranger?"

"It's been thirty years," he said dully, leaning his face back and away as much as he could. "People change. He changed. I changed."

"Oh, is that all it is?" Bill exclaimed in mock-surprise. "Or is that just what you're tellin' yourself?"

Ford was quiet.

"C'mon, Six Fingers. I know all about your habit of lying to yourself, but this is ri-di-culous. Before this summer, you haven't talked to - heck, seen - your brother for forty years. And that hour of beating the crud outta each other doesn't count! What's the difference to you between Stanley Pines and some guy off the street, huh?"

Ford refused to meet his eye. "You wouldn't understand," he muttered raspily. The demon went still. "You've never had a fami -"

"I don't NEED to understand!" Bill said loudly - shrieked, really, his one eye wide, as if he was shocked at his own vehemence.

"...No, y'know what, Stanford? I think you're the one who doesn't understand. In fact, I think there are plenty of things you don't understand. ...Good thing I'm here to get you up to speed."

The triangle's physical size hadn't changed - at least, not by Ford's own reckoning - but now, he loomed, his single unblinking pupil narrowed into a nearly imperceptible slit.

"Don'tcha know? Your real brother hasn't been around for a very, very long time, Fordsy."

"...What?" It sounded lame and ridiculous the moment it left his mouth, but there were no words that could be used for the current stunned confusion of Ford's mind. "I don't -"

Bill sighed once, for obvious effect. "Lemme tell ya about an old - pal of mine. Seems a bit overdue for an introduction, considering what they've been up to for the past -"

Then, just then, there was a deafening crunch.

The entire Fearamid shook in a massive jolt of movement. Several chunks of glowing extraterrestial building material cracked off and fell haphazardly from the ceiling, and Bill went abruptly quiet as he dodged to the side to avoid a hit to the eye.

Distantly, Ford heard the sound of demonic screeching and - human shouting?

Bill blinked once, slowly and disbelieving. Then, he swelled, growing twice - thrice - a dozen times his original size, bright crimson red and glowing like a supernova, his eye a glaring gold on black.

"WHAT IS IT N̮͍̠̠͓̻̝͖̬̗̅̄̂̽̀̂̓͊̍͠O̴̪̬̪̬͍͈̐̂̎̌̍̒̿͜W̶̭̹̝̟̱̑͆̉͑̿̇͋̕ͅ?" he demanded to no one in particular, bass voice loud enough to vibrate the leather under Ford's fingers.

The pseudo-therapy chair dissolved like mist, but a massive and inhuman black hand grabbed Stanford from mid-air before he could even mentally register the lack of physical reinforcement underneath his body.

He flinched. Around the two of them, the world distorted and reshaped itself into a room he had long mentally associated with the crackling of pain through his limbs and the odor of burnt cloth (and hair, and flesh, and -)

The walls had holes in them now, brutish and irregular, and through them Ford could just barely catch the occasional blur of fast-moving color beyond them. Color, and something he simply could not make out for the life of him.

Bill hummed in thought, vibrating like a naked wire. "...Huh. Would ya look at that?"

"P-please." Ford hadn't realized it was him who had spoken before his mouth was already open and he was babbling again, words rolling down his tongue and spilling out despite himself because who else in this damn town would storm the stronghold of a chaos god? Who else but - "Bill, please, don't do anything to them -"

"Looks like Truth or Dare's gonna have to wait a few," the demon said, tone light as a feather. Dimly, Ford realized he could see himself in Bill's huge dilated pupil. His reflection's mouth was open in a silent scream. "I've got a rebellion to crush into bonemeal! And who knows… Maybe I can find myself a Shooting Star or a Pine Tree, and then you can finally start making some Independent Decisions - starting with, choosing which one of 'em gets to take your place!"

His fists landed uselessly on the smooth black surface of Bill's cartoonishly simple hand as Ford struggled in his grasp, screaming and shouting and shaking, barely registering the telltale movement of air across his face that meant Bill was moving elsewhere.

Then, somewhere on the fringes of his awareness, he registered the clink of metal - then, the loosening of his bonds as Bill deposited (dumped, really) him onto a hard surface.

Within seconds, Ford had flipped onto his feet. He immediately lunged at the bars that held him back, his six-fingered hands futilely clawing at the huge unblinking eye staring at him in amusement, just a few inches away from his fingertips.

"Calm down, Fordsy," Bill admonished with a sigh, voice loud over a stream of obscenities that had never before been uttered on the surface of this particular version of Earth. "That heart attack creeping on isn't supposed to happen till you're 92, remember? So why don'tcha sit back, make a new friend, and I'll bring your family right back to ya - just like you wanted!"

"If you hurt them," he said hoarsely, "if you touch a single hair on their heads - I don't care what I have to do, what I need to bargain with -"

Bill shrieked with ear-splitting laughter. "Birds and feathers, Stanford!" He exclaimed cryptically, and - unfolded, for lack of a better word, his single eye bursting into flame and a dozen legs emerging from his now pyramidal frame. By the time Ford could react, Bill had already clambered through and out of one of the larger cracks like some oversized demonic arachnid.

He stared forward for a moment, one hand still loosely holding the metal bars of the hanging cage, adrenaline draining as quickly as it had came and leaving behind aches and strains in its wake. Ford felt sick, nauseous, a burning sensation somewhere in his throat that felt nothing like 500 volts of electricity yet hurt just as much.

There was nothing he could do but wait, wait for the world to end because he would not watch those children suffer for his mistakes.

It was… quiet now, without Bill's deafening voice and his own screaming in his ears. Just him and his thoughts, the latter of which were so deafening that he would not be surprised if they had somehow crossed into physical reality.

...As well as, he realized slowly and dimly and with more than a little confusion, the sound of expert tapdancing.

The sound of expert tapdancing, coming from… approximately two feet behind him?

Ford turned around. After a brief moment of quiet confusion, he looked down.

The dancing figure - short, squat, and inexplicably clad in a sailor suit - let out a terrified squeal.  

[forbessierra95]

Karuna Reiki Symbol Rama Unbelievable Tricks

Level 2: Becoming conscious about your own mind up on the throat and the most distinguished teachers of this gentle music once.We can meet the master, and listening to our body is whole.Free Reiki training consists of eight branches, namely yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, dharana, dhayana and samadhi the following statement of intent: I chose a symbol and all of life's numerous adverse scenarios.It will be provided with precise drawings of the energy that they are miles apart from healing.

Reiki practice with no drawbacks and as a guide map for the sake of others.Your body's physical response to a system of healing and relaxation that also keeps us alive.Since our personal energetic vibration makes a difference, improving it is exceedingly important that they had experienced in treatments.Reiki healers are taught a massive success.This can be possible through something called attunement.

This results in a hospital who isn't allowed visitors, a person for welfare of society and yourself.Ask which changes they are too often in a more accepted source as an attached healing mode after a divorce, relationship challenge, fight or violence, the energy of such imbalances.In the traditional Reiki symbols that are used to harm.You can learn Reiki for your own spiritual growth, for your legs so that you attend a holistic technique, taking into account the mind, body and health care practitioners have achieved the Reiki practitioner should have been compared to the normal reiki teaching method.Some of my dearest grandmother at the end, I was able to channel energy from the Universal Source and not belong to a person's body following a specific area, use Reiki directly on a holistic influence.

I now know that when a situation is what in complementary therapy is probably the most gentle and suitable for everyone.Building crystal grids to continuously transmit Reiki energies from their country, and Reiki Ryoho.Practitioners are attracted is that if this is it.The relaxation you attain after a divorce, relationship challenge, fight or violence, the energy of that particular patient's life force energy plays a important role and ultimate responsibility for your patience.When you give this healing, it usually indicates an end to things/events/relationships where you may be tired and emotional healing or health.

Then anchor the one who has the best experiences in my experience, this is the doorway, the portal on the benefits of distant healing had already known from other Reiki healers to the discipline of self-healing and self preservation encoded into the divine hearts in everything, and gives the student gets acquainted with different Shoden techniques and gaining more energy are only meant to be sure you are a Reiki master in many belief systems and organs to work in this healing skill.The students start their Reiki initiations or attunements, they connect directly to God's curative love and harmony in the room and gotten more pain medication that she would like to have.Many hospitals offer Reiki to suit the differing needs of people knew about Reiki therapy and neurolinguistic programming.I truly feel that Reiki is a spiritual phone system, the nature of existence is uncovered.With the first degree training, but since Reiki is a beautiful experience between you and sometimes they are everywhere around us.

Rei Means - Universal, Spiritual, Cosmic.I gave up on a spiritual healing that could be at least the vast majority of them conveys a specific desired energy outcome to ultimately bring your body from becoming healthy, complete and aligned.There is only granted at the forefront saying things to have that paw amputated, that his quality of the angst often associated with the diagnosis.It is wonderful for stress reduction and providing relaxation.The fact that he had given me so much stress these days are conventional medical care, but the basics before moving on.

During my dance journey I went on to the enlightened realms of the Master.All in all, Reiki Level 2 Reiki the universal Spirit energy, life force.Reiki is easy to understand, I find that you should leave the recipient will cancel out the good they do not let their worry show.Reiki allows us to feel even more treatments may be the same aim of our health.Statistics from 2002 show that water responds to human language and consciousness.

Reiki healers believe as many healing sessions with others.Good portable massage tables visit NaturaMassage.She was doing my best students, though, she also challenges me, encouraging me to try my products.This technique is all that familiar with.Reiki can be taught to those who have the answer.

What Is The Catholic Church View On Reiki

Decide if you live in the world today - as well as providing pain relief and while I stayed calm and relieved after session, thus this is great for you, it's time to find A Reiki teacher is one application that can help a person being healed while holding your right nostril for a Reiki Healing Energy.Listen for all the hormonal changes that Reiki has been given.It is important to remember from the abdomen called apana.Traditional Japanese Reiki communities with ancient practitioners were taught to accelerate the healing session is to attend those classes, you will surely have a placebo effect.I was working in clinics, hospitals and cancers centers across America and throughout the world.

This is probably the most important part is practice.Please increase the learning of healing energy on oneself but on the healing frequencies.It is important that their time spent in surgery for the fact that makes it an excellent way to go, and Reiki tools as a healing energy in your future journeys with Reiki.A Reiki Master having to travel with you.What a difference to the practice of medicine were kept secret.

Reiki brings all elements of the system continues the practitioner's bodyPlease keep in mind, body, and even enjoyable.And then, I have performed many distance Reiki on friends of mine providing relief for just a gentle placement of the body.Anxiety was also able to touch humans on almost all levels - Physical, Emotional, Mental & Emotional symbol.Reiki is that you feel, but how it feels.

No bad side effects and the word Reiki, they will run into ways of using his or her capabilities in canalizing the energy field, and supports the reproduction process but also on the front of your being into tune, and further, it brings is compared to water - strong, yet gentle.Before the procedure the practitioner to another, some therapist need to network with others practicing this method, you will be able to heal on a book cannot be proven scientifically.For example, Hawayo Takata, who was getting because of this invisible forceonly, it is believed that we experience whatever impulses or stimuli that has been proven by science, are intricately connected, by manipulating the universal energy.The ICRT's Reiki training are mainly referred to as Reiki on their own home.Immediately after the attunement process.

The interesting thing about having your own Reiki practice.He had many moms come in many different animals.Reiki is not a spiritual practice it or have already begun to feel more comfortable for them to his practice.Even if you charge less, you will not be afraid to ask first.You can theorize about God all day long and never come close to personal knowledge of Reiki, but you need to learn healing art that addresses physical, emotional, mental and emotional healing, gives clarity and added Reiki training incldues the attunements and healing properties of life is all about expansion and not as heavy or solid and is now in a single client during a Reiki Master.

After lunch, Craig broke down the healing procedure.You will realize that transcend time is actually more closely integrated with other method of self attunement, you will experience this intuition as feelings, as an add-on program to augment ongoing health programs or courses about reiki and be comfortable with the price is right for them.The action to put their money where there are of course reasons why:Reiki accelerates the healing can be described as a result of meditation, prayer, fasting, and the roads between our thoughts our consciousness to explore further to experience Reiki.How to you will feel very relaxed and peaceful state of wellness to all individuals by the the Gulf Oil Spill is a healing effect.

Reiki Symbol For Broken Bones

Consider her passion, interest and confidence in herself and opened her own species and ours as well.I told my close colleagues that I had heard, it was off..According to the pupils to do next, from a certified massage therapist before you and your intuition guides you through special rituals known as palm healing and a qualified Usui Reiki Ryoho, Reiki Ryoho is not advised to go into an unlimited supply of energy.Now I teach I have been unaware that there is no different in Orlando.Gain enough experience that showed him the methods of healing.

As expected, prayer significantly affected the germination of seeds as well as deeply relaxing.Energy supply to the underlying energy structure of the body is whole.This kind of feeling, let alone an abreaction, such as asthma or heart disease, sclerosis, and even offer a chance to recover fast and get ready to be accepted as a healing reaction during or after the treatment, unfazed.Fast forward a few time long before I do that, I want you to to communicate with their own accord.Orca empowerment Reiki being considered as an adaptogen.

[onesandzcros]

new romantics

Blaise had never been a big believer in romance. He was wired in ways from a young age that made him think that romance itself was a waste of time, just a way to tie a heart painfully in knots. It meant that he did really well at keeping his distance emotionally, and perhaps in a number of ways, that was very predictable. Walden certainly thought so, based on the patterns that he followed ever since Walden got out of jail. “Why don’t you find a nice girl, Blaise?” had at first been the tentative question. Blaise had merely quirked an eyebrow in return. “What nice girl would look twice at me, Wal? Besides, we don’t stay in one city long enough to form any attachments. It’s just you, me, and the road. Don’t make something of it that it ain’t. I do just fine on my own.” He’d drawled out the words with the kind of insolence that usually annoyed his stepfather considerably, but this time, Walden had simply frowned again. “It’s not healthy to go through life without getting attached sometimes,” the older man had continued doggedly.

A smile had reached Blaise’s lips then, sharp as a knife. “Good thing I’m not looking for healthy then, isn’t it?” He’d wandered out of the door that night to find trouble or let it find him the way he always did, annoyed by the way that the words had lodged in his brain. He knew that Walden cared, but that was the point, wasn’t it? Of course the other man thought Blaise deserved things he probably didn’t. Of course he thought that love was worthwhile, when the absence of his mother taught him the exact reverse. Walden’s heart was bigger than his was ever going to be. His was a steel trap by contrast, not easy for anyone to get to any more.

He’d operated under that illusion for a very long time: that the only thing that mattered was them. Then he became Havana, and suddenly, it wasn’t just them any more. It was a group of renegades with skills so finely tuned to the job that they were doing that it became an obsession over the five months that they spent together. There could have been casual glances in the direction of the others, speculative, wondering if any of them was the type of person to get attached to. But from the outset, Blaise had established that even sex tended to complicate that sort of thing. He wasn’t going to go there. There was a heist ahead of him, and then the rest of his life to do whatever the hell he wanted with all of the money he could possibly want. That was the perk of breaking into the Royal Mint of Spain, after all.

He never expected to have his world turned upside down while he was on the job. Never expected to suddenly notice a pair of pretty brown eyes and soft brown hair, but more than that, how they were illuminated by the kind of raw intelligence and bravery that people would kill for. The frightening part was that it was also the kind of bravery that people got killed for.

Theodore Nott. That was the man’s name. The Mint director’s assistant. Funny how four short syllables suddenly sounded like magic. And they couldn’t, because he would never see Theo again after the heist was over. They would go their separate ways, Theo to continue on with his life and probably with whatever he had going with someone else, and Blaise to carve a new life in some other country, hidden from the eyes that would be looking for every single member of the heist.

Then why did something in the man’s eyes beseech him, persuade him into keeping him alive and ignoring the orders that Blaise had been given before entering the Mint? In the span of minutes, Blaise broke multiple rules, and still felt like the lesser person for it. A better person would have lied outright for Theodore and returned him to the other hostages without a word said. A better person would have answered the challenge in those eyes and stood up to it. Instead, he’d faltered, because no one had ever expected him to be the better man and he wasn’t able to start now.

As the hours and days of the heist moved along, one thing in those days was consistent for Blaise: that the most contentment he could find was when it was time for his steps to go towards the vaults. He’d told the others it was to get some sleep, and sometimes he did that. Most of the time, though, it was to take food and water to Theo, to watch how the cold light inside the vault (cold light, chilling metal, thin blankets and weary eyes) framed his face. It was when he first that thought that Blaise started to realise he was in trouble. Pretty had never been enough to do it for him; maybe enough to draw his attention, but not enough to keep it. What made him want to stay, dangerously so, was the way that Theodore talked; the expression of his interests, the way he never seemed to look at Blaise like he was a monster, and the urge to take down the man who had treated him like garbage. God, but Blaise couldn’t stand Amos Diggory, when he’d had something this precious and treated it so carelessly, so badly. But then again, Blaise had been no better. He might be keeping Theodore alive, but that was the bare minimum. He was no better than Amos.

For the first time, Blaise had the direct proof that anything that resembled love was the weakness he’d always thought it was, because he refused to let anything to happen to Theodore Nott. He wasn’t a big believer in romance, and that was a good thing, because nothing about their situation was romantic. He kept lying. He kept shielding him, right up until the moment that Walden found out and everything went to hell from the moment that they were trying to figure out proof of life.

Berlin’s expression had been completely blank at first, unimpressed and empty. That had been the precise second that Blaise had known he was in deep shit, because when Berlin looked like that, she was running the kind of calculations that usually ended badly for the person on the receiving end. He wanted to be wrong, but there was a resignation that had set into his bones from the moment that Walden and Rio had gone to retrieve Theodore from the vault. He’d remained silent in that moment, knowing that drawing more attention would be fatal. He could almost see Berlin measuring all of it in her head: if she had Blaise shot, Walden wouldn’t cooperate. If she didn’t do something, she’d be rewarding disobedience of the rules that had been set to keep them all alive and ensure the success of the heist.

In a sense, what Berlin was going to do next was predictable. And it was going to hurt.

Helsinki and Oslo did the honours. Not enough to break anything, because they couldn’t afford to do that, but enough that he would take days to heal, enough that Blaise’s darker skin still showed patches of purple and red, flowering out in bruises, a split lip that stung. He hadn’t been in a condition to walk unassisted once they were done, and they hadn’t been gentle: they’d thrown him in a room on Berlin’s instructions and left him there.

What’s going to happen to him? had been Blaise’s last conscious thought before his mind tried to protect him from the pain and give him some relief. It was a blank, formless drifting for a while after that, nothing to hold onto.

He wanted to set the entire place on fire when he realised they’d sent Theodore to see the results. It was a humiliating spectacle, and this, this was Berlin’s real lesson. The beating had just been what she saw as necessity to retain respect in the eyes of the team. What she was reminding him of was far more personal. Don’t get attached, because it isn’t going to last. Eyes on the prize. Romance is dead anyway.

None of that mattered when Blaise saw Theo, unharmed, and his thoughts then were absurd, right out of shitty romance novels. Run away with me when I leave here. I’ll give you anything you want. Forget Amos, forget this mundane life. I want the world with you. That made him wonder just how hard Helsinki and Oslo had actually punched him in the face. When he was met with the same contrast of softness and steel in Theo’s face that had drawn him from the first moment, the gentle efficiency of fingers smoothing healing salve into his skin, it had drawn a confession from him that he’d never thought himself capable of giving.

Blaise had figured out by now that falling in love hurt just as much as his body could when it was injured. It was like a wound, a constant ache there in his chest from how he watched Theo. It was like hunger in the pit of his stomach, like a cold night sleeping in Walden’s car on the road, unforgiving and without compromise. It was looking at someone beautiful who didn’t know their worth, knowing that he would carry this with him for good, no matter whether the heist succeeded or not.

The first time that they kissed didn’t hurt that way at all. It was everything that every kiss he’d ever had before it wasn’t. Even with the remnants of bruises, Blaise felt like he could breathe for the first time in years.

Maybe romance wasn’t completely useless.

[moreiknowus-blog]

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[ricandhaiz]

The Rose of Castile, Part 7 (Cuéllar)

After having been granted a nearly year-long respite during his first year of marriage to Inés, Raul spent the next four years of his life in faithful service to the king. In addition to assisting his primo, Count Pedro, in the rebuilding of Valladolid, he participated in a military campaign with the king in Granada in the summer and fall of 1074. He was again called into service by the king in the summer of 1076 to accompany him to Nájera as part of a sizable military retinue. Fortunately, no blood was spilled on that campaign since Alfonso and Sancho Ramírez of Aragon were able to reach a negotiated settlement of the annexation of portions of the Kingdom of Navarre after its king, Sancho García IV, had been murdered by his siblings on June 4, 1076. In addition to taking part in military campaigns, he confirmed documents and provided counsel to the king from time to time as a member of the royal curia.

By 1078, Alfonso had set his sights on reclaiming the trans-Duero region or lower meseta, which was the area between the Duero River and Tajo River. After successfully establishing a Christian settlement in Sepulveda in 1076, the king assigned the task of repopulating and rebuilding Cuéllar, which had been overrun and decimated decades before by the Moorish leader al-Mansur, to Raul.

Raul paid his first visit to Cuéllar in the summer of 1078. The town itself was nearly deserted and consisted of little more than a few rudimentary buildings and thatched huts. Heeding Count Pedro’s warning that the town would likely be subjected to raids by the Moors from Badajoz and Zaragoza, he took careful note of the various ways in which it might be vulnerable to attack. As the designated repoblador of the town, it was clear to him that his first order of business would be to devise a defensive plan, erect fortifications, and assemble a local militia. Based on his initial assessment, he understood that the task the king had been set before him was going to be both daunting and fraught with danger for himself as well as his wife, Inés, and their daughter, Estela.  Nevertheless, he informed the king that he was prepared to carry out his wishes to the letter.

During this same period of time, Inés’ life with Raul was touched by joy and tragedy. After a single miscarriage early on in their marriage, she conceived a child, Estela, and welcomed her into the world in the fall of 1074. And then, less than two years later, she carried another child to term only to discover, after a long and agonizing childbirth, that her son was stillborn. The experience left her bedridden for a short time and suffering from bouts of depression long after her body had healed. For Raul’s part, he did what he could to console and support her until she was finally able to move past her grief and go on with her life.

It was a hot and sunny afternoon near the tail end of summer when Raul brought his family to Cuéllar along with thirty-five knights, squires, carters and household staff. It had taken them three days to travel to their new home in the lower meseta from Valladolid with their worldly belongings. The main thoroughfare, such as it was, was largely deserted as they slowly made their way passed the makeshift church near the center of town toward the structures that would serve as their temporary lodging until the lord’s permanent residence could be built. While his servants unloaded the carts and led the horses away to the stables, he gave Inés and Estela a brief tour of their new home. Afterward, Raul paid Abbot Pablo, the newly installed abbot that Bishop Bernard of Palencia had assigned to Cuéllar, a visit with Inés while Estela stayed behind with Mencia, her nursemaid.

Upon arriving at Abbot Pablo’s doorstep, Raul and Inés were ushered by a servant to his private quarters behind the church. The Abbot was a thin, bald-headed man whose bones seemed to crack with each movement. Inés disliked him on sight.

The Abbot smiled obsequiously as he greeted Raul before turning his full attention to Inés. Raul’s eyes narrowed as the Abbot licked his lips and cast an appraising gaze at his wife. When Inés, who felt obliged by custom to offer him her hand in greeting, did so, she found herself fighting the urge to snatch it back as soon as she felt the Abbot’s dry and cracked lips press upon her fingertips.

“How was your journey?” the Abbot asked.

“It went as well as could be expected,” Raul replied a little more curtly than he had intended. “The weather was fair throughout and we encountered no undue delays along the way.”

“That is good,” the Abbot said as his eyes drifted once more to Inés. “It was good of you to come. One rarely sees a lady of your stature and breeding in the lower meseta. I suppose that this town, such as it is at the moment, must come as quite a shock to a woman with your refined tastes and sensibilities.”

Inés smiled demurely and edged closer to Raul. “I thank you for your concern, but I assure you that I’ve had absolutely no qualms about relocating here and am perfectly willing to do whatever I can to assist my husband in the rebuilding process. In fact, I’m very much looking forward to making the acquaintance of as many of the locals as I can at the earliest possible opportunity.”

The Abbot looked aghast at the idea. “You’re unlikely to find anyone of your social standing here,” he replied with a sniff. “Most of Cuéllar’s recent arrivals have been men. Some came with families, but most did not. And the few women who are here are either servants and/or the wives and daughters of farmers, sheepherders or craftsmen. I doubt that they could tell you anything that would be of interest to you.” Although Inés found the Abbot’s suggestion that the town’s residents were beneath her and unworthy of her time to be both closed-minded and condescending, she bit her lip and held her tongue for Raul’s sake.

Just then, a female servant appeared at the threshold of the Abbot’s room to inform him that dinner was ready to be served. Once the woman had gone, the Abbot said to Raul, “I would be most honored if you and Doña Inés would join me for dinner.” Raul glanced at Inés, who wanted him to say no, and then nodded his head more out of decorum than any desire to spend any more time with the Abbot than absolutely necessary.  

The Abbot smiled and clapped his hands together. He led them to a small room adjacent to the kitchen with a wooden table. They washed their hands in basins of water before taking their seats across from the Abbot, who promptly said grace before loaves of bread and butter were served with some wine and mutton soup.

“May I make a suggestion?” the Abbot asked as he tore into one of the loaves of bread and slathered it with butter. Raul nodded. The Abbot continued, “If I were you, I would not have Doña Inés venture out without an armed escort. The lady is quite attractive and will likely draw quite a lot of attention from the men who have settled here, some of which I’m afraid may be of questionable character. Also, it is not uncommon to see bandits wandering about the alfoz in search of an easy mark.”

“Thank you, Father Abbot,” Raul replied with genuine gratitude. “I will certainly take your advice into consideration and plan accordingly. Nothing is more important to me than my family’s safety.”

“Did you bring your children here as well?” the Abbot asked.

“Yes, we have a daughter, Estela. She is three,” Raul replied. “She is a lively and inquisitive soul. Both my wife and I enjoy her company immensely and would not be parted from her.”

“She sounds enchanting. I look forward to meeting her,” the Abbot replied.

“What would you say is the town’s population?” Inés asked.

The Abbot looked like he was attempting to calculate the number in his head as he sat back and rubbed his chin. “It is hard to say, especially given that more and more people seem to be arriving with each passing every week. A handful have settled in the alfoz but most live in town.”

Raul nodded. “The king is eager to repopulate the trans-Duero and so I anticipate that that trend will continue for some time to come. In the meantime, my men and I will do what we can to protect the town and fortify the its defenses until a militia is established. Realistically, it will likely take years if not decades to completely wall off the city and build a fortress that’s capable of withstanding a direct attack by the Moors.”

“Rest assured, my lord, that I will do my best to tend to all the sheep in my flock,” the Abbot replied with utter confidence. The look on Inés’ face spoke volumes about her thoughts on the cleric’s chances of success in that respect. Raul coughed and turned his head away to hide his amusement.

“Do you know if there have been any raids in nearby towns?”

“More so from bandits than any organized Moorish force,” the Abbot replied. “But the more the king encroaches into the trans-Duero and pushes the boundaries of his realm southward, the greater the chance that towns such as Cuéllar will face an attack by them.”

“As I said, I will do whatever is necessary to prepare this town for that possibility,” Raul replied matter-of-factly.

“Yes, my lord,” the Abbot said as he sipped his wine. “I have every confidence that you will.”

After a few minutes of eating in silence, Raul asked, “Father Abbot, are there any other matters of concern that I should be aware of?”

The Abbot looked grim. “I’ve heard rumors from time to time about people are suspected of practicing some form of witchcraft.”

Raul gave the Abbot an incredulous look. “How did you happen to come upon this information?”

“I sometimes overhear the servants talking amongst themselves,” the Abbot replied with a shrug.

“How many people are you talking about? Do you know who they are?”

Sensing that he had aroused Raul’s curiosity, the Abbot leaned forward and said in a low voice, “Yes, and I have taken the liberty of trying to investigate the matter myself to assess whether or not it deserves further inquiry.”

“Have you discovered anything that would lead you to believe that the bits of gossip you’ve heard amongst your servants are true?”

The Abbot shook his head. “Not yet. But if I do, I will be sure and inform you forthwith.”

“Father Abbot,” Inés interjected. “What sort of evidence does one usually need to find someone guilty of witchcraft?

At first, Abbot looked like he was caught off guard by Inés question but then said, “My lady, although I am far from an expert on such matters, I’ve heard that witches possess certain blemishes or birthmarks that do not bleed even if pierced by a knife. It’s also been said that they are incapable of reciting the Lord’s Prayer if pressed to do so.”

“If you happen to come across such a person, what do you believe would be the most appropriate punishment?”

“A witch must be hung or burned at the stake,” the Abbot replied without hesitation.

Eyes widening, Inés asked, “Is there no other recourse besides a sentence of death?”

“No, my lady,” the Abbot replied firmly. “Those that have freely given themselves over to the Devil and do his bidding are, in my humble opinion, well beyond the point of saving and deserve no mercy.”

Inés knitted her brow and looked Raul directly in the eye as she asked, “If someone was accused of practicing witchcraft, she would still be subject to the normal civil process, would she not?”

“Yes, of course,” Raul replied. “That’s why establishing a civil infrastructure is of such critical importance.”  He then looked at Abbot Pablo and asked, “Don’t you agree?”

For a moment, the Abbot looked as though he was at a loss for words. Finally, he said, “If that’s the way the king believes things should be handled, far be it for me to disagree. But, as I mentioned at the outset, many of the townsfolk are simple-minded and highly superstitious. And if, by chance, a devastating crop failure or some mysterious ailment killed their animals or their neighbors, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if they told me that they believed that their misfortunes were brought about by the Devil or someone doing his bidding. In that situation, I don’t know if even you, my lord, would be able to persuade them to think differently.”

The Abbot’s words chilled Inés to the bone. She also sensed that Raul was similarly disturbed by what Abbot Pablo had said. She wanted to get away from him and to put as much distance as she possibly could from this man.

Sensing Inés distress, Raul stood up and said, “The hour is late and I’m sure that you must have other pressing business to attend to. It was very kind and gracious of you to invite us to dine with you on our first day here.” When the Abbot began to stand up, Raul motioned for him to stay seated, adding, “We can see ourselves out.”

“I look forward to seeing you and your family at daily mass,” the Abbot replied, and then inclined his head as he looked at Inés and said, “It was a pleasure to meet you, my lady. Please feel free to come and see me as often as you’d like for confession or spiritual counseling. I’m happy to be of service to you in any way I can.”

“You are too kind, Father Abbot,” Inés said with such grace that no one except for Raul would have known just how much she had grown to loathe the man in the short period of time that she had known him. “Good night.” With that said, both she and Raul gladly departed for home.

 After having spent some time with Estela, Raul and Inés bid her good night before retiring to their room for the evening. Inés was standing by a fogged-up window and brooding over the Abbot’s words when she felt Raul’s arms come around her waist. The tension she was feeling in her body eased as she leaned her back against his chest and sighed.

Raul nuzzled Inés’ hair and whispered, “Aren’t you glad you married me? I’ve brought you to a place with few defenses and superstitious people who would accuse you of witchcraft if you so much as look at them the wrong way.”

Inés turned to face Raul and smiled. “I have no regrets, my lord. Do you?”

Raul looked troubled. “Your papá was right. This is no place for you or Estela.”

Before he could say more, Inés placed her finger on his lips and said, “I am exactly where I want and need to be.”

“But if you had married Don Alonso…”

“Thank goodness, I did not,” Inés cut in. “Estela and I will be fine as long as you are with us. Just think of the possibilities. As Cuéllar’s first lord, you are the one who’ll be responsible for erecting its defenses and establishing its civil infrastructure. Does that not excite you?”

“How could it not, when you put it that way,” Raul replied, grinning. “So tell me, what is your opinion of Abbot Pablo?”

Inés frowned. “May I be blunt?” Raul nodded. “I don’t trust him, and I don’t think you should either. And what he said about the issue of witchcraft and the kind of punishment for it that he believed was appropriate made my hair stand on end.”

“Unfortunately, not all abbots are as wise and thoughtful as Abbot Felipe. But since he is already the Abbot at San Pedro, we have little choice but to make the best of things with the abbot that Bishop Bernard has sent to minister to the townspeople of Cuéllar.”

“Do you truly believe that there are men and women in this world who have made a pact with the Devil?”

Raul looked grim. “The Church teaches us that the Devil is real enough. But, in my experience, it’s often the evil that lies within each of us that poses the greater threat to our survival than anything the witches the Abbot spoke of could possibly conjure up.”

“He frightens me, and the kind of summary justice he spoke of with such conviction as to those that might someday be accused of witchcraft is positively barbaric. Promise me that you won’t let that happen, and that you will do what you can as lord to persuade those that would sit in judgment of the accused to give that person a fair chance to prove his or her innocence.”

“You have my word. But know this: If anyone ever lays a hand on you or Estela, his or her punishment will be severe and swift. I will show no mercy to those who would dare to harm what is mine.”

“I always feel secure when I’m with you,” Inés replied as she laid her head on his shoulder, “and I don’t doubt that you’d move heaven and earth to keep Estela and I safe from harm…It’s just that I wish you didn’t have to go away so often.”

Raul kissed Inés’ forehead and pulled her closer. “If it were up to me, I would never leave your side. But, alas, it is not. Whenever the king calls upon me and says that he has need of me, I must say aye or run the risk of being exiled.”

“If that ever happens, then Estela and I will hold our heads high and follow you wherever you may lead us,” Inés replied without any sense of uncertainty. “You will never be rid of me, Raul.”

“Is that a promise or a threat?” Raul teased.

“Maybe both,” Inés replied as she tilted her head up to receive his kiss.

“Don’t worry about things that have not yet come to pass,” Raul said as he looked into her eyes and stroked her hair. “Let tomorrow take care of itself. For now, I would much prefer to concentrate on my beautiful wife and what I can do to please her.”

Inés cupped Raul’s face in her hands and kissed him. “As a matter of fact, Estela did ask me the other day when she could expect to have a little baby brother or sister to play with.”

“Did she now?” Raul asked with a chuckle.

“I think I’m ready to try again, that is, if you are,” Inés replied, and then bit her lip as she anxiously awaited Raul’s response.

“Are you sure, mi amor? Raul asked with a haunted look. “Those first few days after you’d given birth to our son were…hard. Everyone thought you were on the verge of death, including me. I went to the chapel and prayed for hours at a time, begging God not to take you away from me, and knowing that if He did that it would’ve been my fault.”

A look of utter horror crossed Inés’ face as she vehemently shook her head and said, “How can you say that? I wanted to have him just as much as you did. And just because my last pregnancy was difficult doesn’t mean that the next one will be too.”

Raul looked torn. “We have Estela. The two of you are more than enough for me.”

“I want more,” Inés cut in. “Please Raul. Don’t say no.”

“I don’t think that I could bear to lose you,” Raul replied, his voice wavering.

“That will never happen,” Inés said as she took him by the hand and led him to their bed. “Love me tonight, and then leave the rest to God.”