#there was so much rain it caused huge landslides!!!

[bluastro-yellow]

YES companies are using climate change discourse to make profit and not really help the situation YES climate change is real and very dangerous. the two things can coexist

[meowmeowmeowmeow4x]

Dark Blue Moon and the Suffering Sun Chapter 28

>:D

mastapost

The Panama Canal was one of the greatest feats of 20th Century engineering. Originally, ships that wished to cross from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, or vice versa, were forced to make the long and arduous journey around South America, a trip that would take 20,000 kilometres, which would also mean our story would be much, much longer (or at least require more time skips).

It was not as simple as digging a ditch. Panama is a beautiful, but very rugged country, with hilly and mountainous terrain that halted the French in their tracks. That, and the copious mosquitoes. Landslides and rain beat back attempts to dig the canal in the 19th Century. But the dream did not end.

How did the Americans do it? All they needed was a bit of lateral thinking. Instead of digging the entire canal and attempting to conquer the mountains and hills, engineers built a dam to flood an artificial lake, leaving a 15km stretch of unflooded land. This is where they built the remaining canal. In order to raise ships into the canal’s lever, they build a system of locks. Each lock would funnel water into the one behind it, raising the ship until the water level was even on both sides, and so on.

The Canal was vital in the war effort in World War 2, and it was a target of the Japanese I-400 programme, until Okinawa fell, and it was decided that destroying the locks would have had no effect on the war.

This is where the story takes Danny and Damian.

“Land ho!” Danny cried out at the first patch of land. At last, after however many thousands of miles travelling (Danny had lost count) they were here.

“We are not sailors.” Damian grumbled. Maybe he was getting excited too. Danny could feel the way the kid’s fin’s thumped on Danny’s scales, like a puppy wagging its tail.

“Right, we’re just borrowing one of man kind’s most impressive engineering accomplishments for sailing.”

Damian huffed. “As sea creatures infamous for attacking sailors. Be glad we are not in the olden days, or our presence would have caused national, or international panic.”

Danny felt the urge to riff on the kid’s comment, but he remembered the stinging silence from yesterday. He decided not to push boundaries this early back into their kind-of make-up. “As it is I’m sure the authorities don’t mind that much. Probably don’t even believe in sirens. I think they’d just be angry that we didn’t pay the fee.”

With the canal in sight, Danny zoomed into the bay in minutes. The bay narrowed into a waterway leading inland underneath a huge bridge. Danny gasped at the size and scale of the thing. The boys continued up the bay. They dodged ship propellers, dove underneath hulking hulls. The water tinged with the smell of barnacles and metal. Nobody was out on the shoreline looking for sirens, which was a big plus, but Danny still kept a tight handle on his invisibility whenever they got close to the surface.

Soon, they reached the first lock.

“We gonna jump over or what?”

Damian trilled. “That would be an easy way to get spotted.”

“I can make us invisible, duh.”

“They would notice the splashes. We have not seen the GiW in some time, but I would prefer not to give them any ideas. We do not know who could be watching.”

With that, Danny found himself icing his body to the hull of some random cargo freighter. The ship approached the locks. They waited for painstaking minutes, watching the water level rise inch by inch. Once it reached the midway point up the next lock, the gates opened. Then the ship slowly inched forward. Then the water level inched upward again.

“This is gonna take for-freaking-ever.”

“Swimming around South America would have taken forever.”

“Uuggghhh.”

It would’ve been nice if there were some pretty landscapes to stare at for the next however many hours this would take. Sadly, their surroundings were all smooth concrete underwater, void of life and energy. Above water, it was the same, save for some small patches of grass and dirt lined the edges of the locks. Workers and vehicles milled about with their tasks on barren grey roads. The shipyard buzzed like persistent mosquitoes. Whirring machinery, shouted orders and gasping engines filled the air. He even felt a literal mosquito land on his nose when he surfaced to check. He was invisible! What the fuck!

So Danny dipped back underwater, hopefully drowning the little blood sucker. He didn’t want to know what a mosquito could do with his blood.

“What is the situation?” Damian asked.

“Boring. And normal, I guess. The stench is killing me though. God damn.”

Damian’s ear fins quirked. “Do sirens worship Christ?”.

“Uhh, not sure. I’m totally atheist though. Must be why the Fentons call me godless sometimes.”

The next lock finally finished opening. The ship continued inching painfully forward. The hum of its engine echoed back and forth in the ditch.

“Gahhh! Please. Move. Faster!” He banged the hull.

“Please stop complaining. You are contributing to the noise.”

Danny went to make another complaint, only for Damian to nip him in the ear.

“Yowch! What was that for!”

Damian went for the other ear.

That was when Danny sniffed a familiar scent. He slapped his hand over Damian’s mouth. “Wait. Something’s up.”

Damian froze. “What?”

The boys scanned the lock. They were alone in there, without a doubt. Danny’s lateral line only sensed Damian with him, and the scent of another sea creature would have been a beacon in the stale water.

Danny broke off from the ship. He melted his ice, just to be safe. The boy carried Damian above the surface invisibly.

“You see anything?”

“Just employees. And equipment.”

“Let’s look behind us.”

The water level had just about filled the up to the top of the gate behind them. There was little risk of being left behind by the next, seeing as Danny’s swimming speed would let them catch up with the boat in seconds. It took little effort for the boy to scale up the walls and peek overhead.

He was treated to a vast overhead view of the waterway. Danny hummed. All he could see was more machines dotting the side of the canal underneath tree cover, and beyond, the vast blue sea.

Damian squeezed his arm like a vice. “We have potential trouble.”

The older boy scrambled. “What? Where?”

“Down there.” Damian pushed the back of his head down.

Danny’s heartrate spiked. Just approaching the lock system was a familiar white boat. Nerves buzzed underneath his skin, like insects crawling into his scales. “I don’t understand. They have no reason to think we’d be here.”

“Perhaps they are just passing by. It could be a coincidence. Will they detect us?”

“Probably not. Radars to detect are expensive as hell, and only the Fentons know how to make them. They’d have to use sonar, and that can only happen if they’re in the same water as us.”

The boys dipped back into the water. Damian clenched his white shoulder. “We will be past these locks by the time they open for that boat.”

Danny nodded quickly. “Yeah. We’ll be fine.”

They returned to waiting.

His fins flipped back and forth in place. Back and forth. He counted the inches. He cheered every new inch the water level took. Why did it take so long just to move some freaking water?! His fins sped up, becoming a blur. They stirred up eddy currents and swirls. At some point he even felt eddies from Damian’s fins too.

Danny took a deep breath. Fear was the mind killer, or whatever they said. Even if his back scales felt like knives were raking over them, the rational part of his mind tried to insist it was all fine. They were probably just moving some assets to the Atlantic. A million and one different ships used this passage.

But it wasn’t right. His nose was good in this form, but not that good. That boat was over fifty meters away in a completely different body of water.

“Damian. There’s more to this. There’s gotta be.”

“Your nerves are contagious. Keep a handle on them.” Damian grumbled.

“I’m serious. I couldn’t have smelled that boat. It’s like a football field away on a different lock. It’s impossible.”

The swirls of water from the small siren’s fins ceased. Danny couldn’t see him, but he felt the weight distribution change a little, like Damian had just lifted his head. “This warrants further investigation.”

The boys resurfaced again. Danny climbed his way up the walls of the lock on the side. They peered over the edge, keeping their noses open. “I don’t see anything.”

Maybe he was overthinking it from stress…

Just then, Damian tugged his sail. “The other side!” He hissed.

Danny turned around. At the edge of the shipyard, his vision clipped onto two distinct white suits talking to some important look guy in a black suit and hard hat. The black suit guy pulled out a walkie talkie. Suddenly, Danny realised the water level had been still for some time.

His voice lowered to a whisper. “Damian, I don’t think they’re just passing by.”

“It cannot be. What reason would they have to suspect we would be here?”

“I don’t know.” Danny clenched his fists around the concrete wall they had been sticking to. “But this is getting bad.”

More men appeared on both sides now, carrying harpoons, hydroplasm guns, and water testing equipment. Quiet adrenaline fired into his fins. A warbling growl rumbled in his throat.

“What if we can swim ahead? You have the speed to outrun them.” Damian’s voice trembled unevenly. His hands shook.

“Damian, the water’s stopped raising. They’ve locked down the lock. If I jump, they’ll be on me in a second.”

“We cannot sit here and wait for them.”

“I know.”

Danny wasn’t doing much better. If he were in human form, his hands would be soaked in sweat by now. His head whirled. The agents seemed to be in every direction. The water still wasn’t moving. The gate was still shut tight. Danny could probably squeeze his body through some kind of gap, but Damian? He didn’t want to grind the kid’s bones into pulp.

“What if we fight them?”

“You don’t have any of your weapons, and I’ve barely had anything to eat.” No food meant no healing, and little energy to toss ice beams willy-nilly.

“Do we have no other option?”

He cursed the stupid freaking GiW. At least his parents had their moments. Nothing good ever happened when the goons in wetsuits showed up. The last time he and Damian saw them was in freaking Amity Bay! His head spun trying to figure out what had given them away. What could get them out of this situation?

There was one other option. The option Danny had desperately hoped would never have to be considered. But it wasn’t just Danny’s safety now. At least his parents had the decency not to dissect Damian (at least during their stay on the SAV). The GiW would be much less merciful.

Danny’s heart rate spiked. Do or die, then. Sink or swim. He gathered up every ounce of courage that still survived his parents.

“We do.”

“Do it now.”

Danny squared up his shoulders, acutely aware of how the scales on his arms touched those on his armpits. How the water touched his back with no clothes in the way. “Do you trust me?”

Damian hesitated. He could smell the kid’s reservation in the water. He counted the steps the GiW agents took, as if in slow motion. “I have no other person to rely on.”

“We won’t be able to cross Panama. We’ll have to go back the direction we came.” Guilt jumped into the party of stressors stomping on his nervous system.

Damian warbled, like a wounded animal. “I know.”

They were so fucking close. They’d just barely gotten into Panama, and it’s all been ruined and he didn’t even know why.

“Hang on to me. And whatever you do, be quiet.”

Danny placed one arm on the top surface of the lock. He used it to pull himself up and over the edge, pushing with his second arm. Slowly he pulled his entire body over the edge of the wall. Danny began wiping drops of water off his body. He could do it while still being completely wet, but it hurt like a bitch and took ages.

Slowly, invisibly, his scales receded into skin. His tail split open. Its bones reshaped into legs. His tailfin hardened into feet. Danny stood up, still clutching Damian to his chest. The boy gasped at the sudden increase in elevation. And despite being invisible, he could practically feel the boy’s judgement baring down on him.

The GiW agents were closing in.

Danny stuck to the dirt and grass. The asphalt would have fried his bare feet off. Not a pleasant sensation. A pair of agents approached the canal, guns in hand. Danny crept along the side, tiptoeing carefully so as to avoid making a sound and drawing attention.

As Danny slipped away, the pair of agents came up to where he’d just been standing. Thank god.

There was an issue though. The locks were obviously built uphill. That meant going along the canal would bring him through the treacherously steep terrain. Not a good look for a scrawny boy with no shoes who needed to be silent. One slip and the entire force would come down upon him.

Damian squeezed his hand. There had to be a way somehow.

Danny swallowed a thick lump. He formed a layer of ice. Despite it only being a few millimetres, it felt clunky and horrible to walk in, and would definitely make a sound, but it would have to do.

Just carefully. One foot over the other. Let the foot come down gently, like a bee’s landing. Danny walked out into the asphalt, just within earshot of the agents at the edge of the canal.

“Got anything?” The one crouching over it said. He was so tempted to shoot an ice beam and knock him into the water.

“Not yet. It could be hiding from the sensor. We’ll give it another five minutes.”

“It better be close. Sun’s killing me out here.”

One of the nice things about sirens is that they were quite sensitive to heat. Thanks to some nifty evolution, it meant that Danny’s invisibility extended into the infrared and ultraviolet range. That was the only reason he wasn’t getting sunburned out the wazoo, and the only reason Damian hadn’t dried out yet. The air was still very, very warm, but he didn’t need to worry about the radiation from the sun itself.

Danny managed to get out of earshot of those agents. His concentration was split between keeping this ice on his feet solid, and on keeping Damian from dying of heatstroke. The boy remained silent, as requested. Danny’s eyes snapped from one side of his vision to the other, hyper aware of his space, and of the dozen or so agents scattered around the perimeter.

Let it be known that he was no ninja. Probably the only saving grace he had was the fact that they were expecting an invisible fish in the water, and not a kid walking on land. One of the agents barked an order. The agents split into groups of two. The pairs scattered, probably making for the other parts of the canal. That meant two of them were coming his way. Danny’s breath hitched. Sweat dripped down his brow. He iced it over.

Damian’s fins hung low too. Their sharp tips brushed against his belly. He couldn’t stay out here long. He needed water and quick. The boy chirped quietly underneath Danny’s hand.

He ambled to the right of the matching pair. Best to get out of their way. For a bunch of guys in fancy suits, they walked quickly. But Danny couldn’t. His makeshift shoes would be too loud.

He was barely able to get out of their way, barely able to avoid brushing shoulders with the men who wanted him a lab rat. Relief cooled his system like his ice.

Then one of them stopped.

“Wait, G.” He turned around. Turned toward Danny. Hairs stood on end. Knees rattled. “Agent H!”

Danny was seconds away from bolting. Only Damian’s tight grip was able to ground him from doing something stupid.

The man pulled a bottle of sunscreen from his suit. “Agent H! You forgot your mandated sunblock!”

With the GiW agent breaking into a light jog, Danny had seconds to react. He threw his body to the side just as the agent rushed through. The motion pushed his upper body just an inch too far off base. Danny’s eyes widened. He flung his arms wildly, but he could not stop the descent.

He shifted gears. The boy twisted his body so it faced the ground. Damian clung tighter, his claws digging into Danny’s chest. He shoved his hands forward. No time to ice them over. Danny planted his fingers on the ground. Sunbaked pebbles seared his fingers. His tongue bled as he bit down the urge to cry out.

His scream was only muffled into a groan. The footsteps of the agent stopped.

“What?” The man whispered.

Danny became a statue. The man’s gaze crawled over his back like an ant colony. Danny’s pulse stomped around in his ears. In his burning fingers. Each millisecond a war between the urge to cry out, the emergency signals of heat and pain, and the adrenaline that he could not let out. Just hunched over, still.

“Agent F! I’m turning into sun-dried tomatoes here!”

At last, at long last, the aforementioned Agent F took off. “Sorry! Just got distracted by some mosquito buzzing.”

Fuck. That was close. Too close.

Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink.

Panama Canal.

What was that menace doing, heading for Panama Canal?

Maddie Fenton’s phone lay off to the side of the console. The new stream chattered. She paused from her work (really just staring at the radar) to refresh the news sites in English. Then whatever Spanish sites, translated by her browser. Nothing. A week ago she would have gone in guns blazing, ready to take out the pelagic punks and stop them from carrying out their dastardly plot.

With their engines busted, that plan wasn’t looking very good. After six hours of repairs, she and Jack had only managed to achieve a fraction of their original top speed. Enough to get them to Panama eventually, but not any time soon. They still had more repairs scheduled. It was only due to Jazz’s intervention that they sat down and took a break.

She wanted to work. She wanted to throw herself into metal and nuts and bolts. Anything to keep her mind from that face.

For years she had made it her mission to bring the sirens to justice for all they had done to her family and others. The few times she got up close to a siren they were vicious, snarling predators. She expected the same stubborn defiance from Phantom.

His resistance was token, at best. She could tell how scared he was even as he put up a tough face. Then he broke down, sobbing and incoherent. It was fake. It was all an act. It had to be. Phantom was stalling for time. He was manipulating her from the start. It had to be. It had to be.

How could it be?

She pulled off her gloves. She stared at the quivering hands, the hands that were a moment away from pulling the trigger. She was so sure she would have done it. He had to have known. He was an awful liar. Tried to misdirect and feign ignorance, and gave himself away every time. Who did he think he was fooling? And yet she could not steady her hands.

Maybe that was his con all along. Not even try to be convincing. Just babble whatever nonsense to lead them along like a string of helpless ducklings until help arrived.

Phantom had never worked with anyone else before. Not from his own kind, at least.

Maddie sipped a cold cup of tea. Maybe he had been migrating, and these were his original pod? If he were with his original pod, then there would be a lot more noise in Panama. The canals were narrow. Phantom was on the smaller side, but even two adults would have been noticed, right?

Did they even exist at all?! She had rebooted and reconfigured the radar, spending hours only for it to fail to detect any of Phantom’s pod. It was like they showed up for one moment, then vanished into thin water the next.

It wasn’t enough. The scientist in her demanded more evidence. Her hypotheses felt flimsy even to her, like there was something that was glaringly missing.

It all went back to that expression. That haunted anguish. Those streaming tears. The face that tore her vision away and replaced it with years of comfort. Years of holding Danny close. To that day when Danny showed up back home six months ago, the day a miracle came to her.

His face was the same back then. Maddie had rushed to hug the son she’d thought she’d lost. However, her baby boy flinched back, like she was going to strike him.

It broke her heart then.

“Mom?” Her daughter leaned into the door way.

“Jazz, I told you to take it easy.”

Jazz came inside, and sat down on the chair beside her. “I am taking it easy. Just getting some fresh air.”

She leaned to the side, her eyes discerning like they’d always been.

“Mom, are you ok?”

Dammit. Was it that obvious? Maddie shook her head. “You know me too well, Jazz.”

She pulled her daughter in. She held her and let herself be grateful that at least she was still here. That there was still hope, somehow. But that hope now clouded over with uncertainty.

“You know you can tell me anything, right?”

It shouldn’t be that way. Maddie was the mother here. It was her who was supposed to be comforting Jazz, but it was the other way around again.

“I just don’t know. Jazz. I thought I knew everything I needed to get the job done, but…”

But now she didn’t. Jazz nodded silently, letting her continue.

Maddie held her tighter. Her voice lowered to a whisper. “Sweetie, I’m not sure anymore. Jazz, I can’t get it of my head. The way he looked at us. The way he didn’t. And I’ve been thinking about it for hours and I can’t make heads or tails on it. None of my theories can make up any kind of framework that could explain what happened.”

“Maybe it’s time to find a new framework?”

Maddie pulled back in puzzlement. “What do you mean?”

“Find new evidence. If the current evidence contradicts established theories, then hunt for new evidence that could explain the discrepancies. And then establish a new more comprehensive theory.”

That… made a lot of sense. It was at times like these she marvelled at the brilliance of her daughter. But there was just one issue.

“But your father and I still haven’t finished repairs yet.”

“That’s ok, Mads!”

Her husband and Bruce leaned in to the bridge as well. Bruce Wayne’s head still sported a large bandage around it, but the man was looking much better for wear.

Jack continued. “It was obvious we weren’t as prepared as we could be. Otherwise the fishie little fiend wouldn’t have given us the slip. With the SAV busted, I say we take Jazzie’s advice and go on recon mode.”

Determination shined from Bruce’s squared shoulders. “Jack’s right. We can take the jet skis and catch up to Phantom easily. Then we can observe him ourselves or deploy a drone or two.”

That was surprisingly sensible. They needed more information. Then they could cross out the possibilities and the what ifs, and narrow down the truth.

More than anything, Maddie needed the truth.

Damian was beginning to get uncomfortable. The mucus coating his scales meant that they remained moist. However, he still lost water due to respiration. Not to mention the sweltering heat. Although he did not suffer the burning sunlight due to Danny’s invisibility, the humid air also contributed to his discomfort. As a fish out of water, Damian could tell he could not last much longer.

But his physical discomfort could only distract from the real questions in his mind for so long. Why did Danny hide this ability from him for so long? What was he so scared of? In hindsight it was logical that a siren with the ability to turn humans into their species could also turn themselves into humans. Damian felt the soft, human skin of Danny’s chest against his own scales. His cheeks just so happened to be laying where the teenager’s gills used to be. Now they were smooth. Damian numbly counted Danny’s ribs, which jutted out.

Why did he expect Damian to trust him when he still continued to hide things from him?

Danny walked into a clearing. He carried Damian far past the shipping yard that they had crawled out of, and into a building. It appeared to be some kind of administrative building. Damian nudged him with his chin. Where was he taking them? He walked through the glass sliding doors behind a member of staff. Cool air conditioning chilled Damian’s scales. Danny bee lined for the bathroom, finding it empty. He iced the door shut.

Damian found himself placed into the (thankfully clean) sink. Cool running water washed over his body, bringing much needed relief. Damian purred quietly underneath the cool tap. For a moment, the room contained only the sound of running water, and Danny’s heavy breathing.

Danny’s invisibility deactivated. Damian watched pallid skin appear out of thin air. Stickly legs shivering. The newly human teenager leaned against the war, panting. His chest had no gills, as he’d expected, and his skin was completely opaque. Black hair appeared where there was white. Eerie aquamarine was replaced with dull blue. A familiar face rendered bare of scales or fins was revealed. A very, very familiar face.

And instantly, everything clicked into place for Damian.

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt from this story from the BBC:

Atmospheric river storms have wreaked havoc on the West Coast, and are getting bigger. These scientists chase them in the sky to predict where they will strike.

In January 2024, Anna Wilson was sitting aboard a Gulfstream IV jet, observing a deceptively calm-looking sea of white clouds over the northern Pacific Ocean. Through her headphones, Wilson – an atmospheric scientist and extreme weather expert – could hear her colleague give a countdown. At the back of the plane, another colleague dropped slim, cylindrical instruments through a chute, into the brewing storm below them, to measure its strength as it approached the US West Coast.

The type of storm they were tracking is known as an atmospheric river – a weather phenomenon that has been attracting more and more attention in recent years, as scientists and the public race to understand its sometimes devastating impact. Research suggests that atmospheric rivers are getting bigger, more frequent and more extreme, due to climate change; and the damage they cause is getting worse.

Often described as rivers in the sky, atmospheric rivers are a huge, invisible ribbons of water vapour. Each can be several hundreds of kilometres wide, and transport 27 times as much water as the Mississippi River. They are born in warm oceans, as seawater evaporates, rises and moves to cooler latitudes. When the vapour reaches a coast, such as California, it flows up a mountain, cools, and comes down as rain or snow – enough to wash down hillsides causing landslides, and bring torrential rain, floods and deadly avalanches.

On the US West Coast, atmospheric rivers bring the heaviest rains, warmest storms, major floods, extreme coastal winds, and landslides. They can come in groups – known as "families" – with several of them striking a place within days. The brewing family of storms Wilson and her colleague were flying over was in fact formed by four atmospheric rivers, which later caused heavy snowfall in California and floods in Oregon in January 2024.

The basic questions remain the same for each atmospheric river, says Wilson, a field research manager at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. "Where is it going to make landfall? How strong will it be? How long will it last? And we continue to get better at [answering] that," she says.

The flight Wilson was on in January was part of Atmospheric River Reconnaissance, or AR Recon, a joint project with the US Air Force, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) and other partners. Using "hurricane hunter" aircraft normally deployed for observing hurricanes – the NOAA Gulfstream jet, as well as two or more Air Force aircraft – teams of scientists fly over atmospheric rivers, and drop instruments called dropsondes into them.

"Atmospheric rivers are interesting and cool but you can't see them, actually, because it's water vapour," Wilson says. "And they're really close to the surface, they are usually focused on the lowest few kilometres of the atmosphere."

Wilson points out that they tend to travel under cloud cover, which hides them from conventional weather observation tools like satellites. "It's really hard for the satellites to sort of see through that, to what's going on at the near-surface. So the point of flying the aircraft through them is to be able to drop our sensors, and get these foundational meteorological measurements – temperature, air pressure, wind and moisture," she says.

The atmospheric rivers Wilson and her team were monitoring in January were part of a series of 51 atmospheric rivers that hit Washington, Oregon and California between autumn 2023 and spring 2024, 13 more than the previous season. Knowing when and where such a storm will arrive, and how powerful it is, helps people on land prepare for what's coming, and for example, empty the right reservoirs in time. But Wilson and her colleagues' flights, which started in 2016, are also part of a wider scientific effort to better understand atmospheric rivers – including their surprising benefits.

[little-ligi]

Summer of Whump - No.6

No.6 - Buried Fandom - BBC Merlin Wordcount - 1188 @summer-of-whump

The rain was relentless, pounding down on them as they rode along the ridge of the valley. Elyan pulled his cloak up, covering his head and wishing he was wearing his old cowl hood and jacket instead of chainmail, which held onto the rainwater once it had soaked through into the thick gambeson underneath.

“You alright, Elyan?” Lancelot asked, pulling his horse up next to Elyan’s.

“I hate the rain,” Elyan grumbled. Lancelot chuckled, reaching over to clap Elyan on the shoulder sympathetically.

They continued on in silence for a while, the only sounds the rain pattering on the trees to their right and the squelching splats of their horses’ hooves on the wet ground.

“Just to the end of this ridge and we’ll stop for a rest,” Leon called up ahead of them, gesturing towards where their path widened and wove into the forest.

“At least we’ll be a little more sheltered once we’re in the trees,” Lancelot said in a consolatory tone. Elyan gave him a half-hearted smile.

He tightened his grip on his cloak as they plodded further on, the cold wind whipping at his face and trying to snatch his cloak away.

Continue reading on Ao3, fanfiction.net or below! 👇

Elyan’s horse gave a startled whinny and Elyan was jolted in the saddle as her hoof landed on an unstable bit of mud. The ground shifted underneath them, the waterlogged mud sliding and slipping and suddenly Elyan found himself tumbling from the saddle as the horse staggered to avoid falling down the valley wall.

The horse managed to lurch up to the ridge again, but Elyan, his foot coming loose from the stirrup, fell, caught in the now churned up mud that was cascading down into the valley below. He barely had time to yell and cover his face before he was plummeting down in a whirl of mud and rocks.

He hit the valley bottom with a thud, the side of his head smacking painfully into the ground. A torrent of rocks and debris covered him as the landslide raged down the slope. He had to move or he would be completely buried. Scrabbling at the loose earth beneath him, he tried to pull himself away from the valley side. But the weight of mud on top of him was too much. His desperate attempts to get free only caused more wet soil to shift down towards him.

Darkness crashed over him, flattening him to the ground, the roaring of the falling land thundering in his ears. His face was pushed down into the mud, his head covered. Panic soared in his chest. Grunting with the effort, and trying very hard not to whimper, he pushed his hands outwards, trying to dislodge some of the mud over his head. He fought against the weight of it frantically. It was no use; either the mud was too deep over him for his hands to break through it, or more shifted into place whenever he pushed any aside.

Trying to dig himself out was sapping all of his strength. He collapsed under the weight. Trapped. Unable to move. Unable to get free.

He tried to slow his breathing even as his heart raced. There was only a very small pocket of air by his face. How long before he suffocated under here, buried beneath who knew how much of the valley side?

Had the other knights been caught in the landslide as well? Lancelot had been riding right alongside Elyan. Had he managed to get clear in time?

His mind was getting foggy, panic and lack of air making his head pound furiously. He tried again to move, to get up, to push the dirt from on top of him. But the fall had taken all of the strength from him. There was too much earth crushing him down.

A sob worked its way up his throat, threatening to break free. As a lone wanderer and now as a knight, Elyan had always known his life was dangerous. The risks hung heavy over all knights. But he had never considered the possibility that being buried alive, alone and afraid, would be the way that fate would take him.

A scrabbling at his ankle snapped his focus back. And then a hand was grasping his calf, just above his boot. The hand moved up his leg, pushing the mud aside as it followed the line of his body upwards. Elyan could have wept. They’d found him. He let out a relieved whimper, gasping and trying to catch his breath in the tiny gap he had.

There were now more hands, digging around him, one set at his side, over his back. The other near his shoulders. One brushed over the back of his neck and he shifted his head.

“He moved!” he heard the muffled triumphant cry as more mud was dug away from him. “Elyan!”

Now that they had lifted most of the weight of earth from him, Elyan could get his arms free again. He pushed up onto his hands and knees. Two large hands grabbed his shoulders, hauling him out from under the rest of the mud. He gasped in a huge breath, immediately regretting it when it made him cough and choke on dirt, but Percival’s steady hand patted his back, and Gwaine was kneeling in front of him, grinning in relief.

“Are you alright?” Percival asked quietly, his eyes scanning across Elyan.

“I think so… Thank you,” he panted, trying to wipe the mud from his face with his equally dirty hand. Gwaine leant forwards and offered the sleeve of his gambeson. Letting Gwaine smear most of the dirt off of him, Elyan looked up at the side of the valley that had collapsed in the landslide. A large chunk of the slope was gone, along with the path up on the ridge that they had been riding on earlier.

“Are you… all… alright?” he asked worriedly, looking at the two of them.

“We’re fine,” Percival reassured, patting Elyan’s shoulder.

“None of you got caught in the slide? Lancelot…?” He glanced up at the ridge again, hoping to spot Lancelot or Leon looking down at them.

“Not in the slide,” Gwaine said. “His horse spooked and threw him” – Percival squeezed Elyan’s shoulder when Elyan’s eyes widened in panic – “but he’s fine,” Gwaine added quickly. “Just a little bruised. Leon had to practically hold him down to stop him running down here to help you.”

Elyan felt a small smile tugging his lips.

“Come on, can you stand?” Percival stood, one arm around Elyan’s back to help him up as well.

Gwaine scrambled to his own feet, slipping once in the churned up mud and started climbing up the slope, turning and reaching a hand to help pull Elyan up after him.

“We must be due that rest Leon promised by now,” he joked.

Rain splashed onto Elyan’s face and dribbled through the mud down his neck as they climbed back up the slope. But he didn’t care anymore. The rain on his face was refreshing, and as he turned his face up into it, he smiled.

[thekidultlife]

Through the Seasons | Seungcheol (COMPLETED)

Author’s Note: 

Please read this before continuing on to the fic! 😊 If you’ve read the first part of this story which I posted in a rush during my birthday, please. scrap. all. your. thoughts. about. it. Having completed it now, I truly regretted rushing to post it just to meet a deadline; that won’t happen again lol. 😂 I plan to write more slowly and carefully from now on because I want to be able to look back and read my stories without too much regret over how I could have written them better. I hope that you enjoy this one, and please look forward to this series! My plan is to alternate writing “The Return Of Superman”, “The And” and “Through The Seasons” during the coming weeks/months.

Birthday Greetings: This fic is one that I wrote as a gift, not only to our amazing SVT leader and my ultimate bias who deserves THE ENTIRE WORLD, Seungcheol (🥺❤), but also to my good friend, @peekabooseoksoon! Belated Happy Birthday! 🙆‍♀️ I hope you get to love this fic!!! 😄

Tags: I’d like to mention @coupsiekkuma, @minkwans, @eclvpe, @haven-cove​,  @nrhfzh, @iwalktheline97, @woozisnoots, @shoshishua, @toxicsocial, @elcie-chxn, @yslmingyux, @gostickywombat, @uglyratlmao, and @starlightshua!

Plot: Two people form memories, navigate through hardships and—most of all—learn to love each other more through the seasons of their relationship.

Warnings: Marked 18+ for suggestive content

Word Count: 10,386

1 | summer, as the night wind whispered

Bright lights flooded the town square through the colorful lanterns that hung in lines and swayed idly. The air was filled with the smell of mingling perfumes, food and beer. The cobbled streets were packed with people, of different ages, walking through the stalls that sold native handicrafts and trinkets. Tables that were laid out in the center of the square kept getting occupied as the twilight dissipated into a dark sky full of stars. Music from guitars, bagpipes and dulcimers wafted around, competing with the blare of jukeboxes playing songs from eras long past, classics that everyone still loved to sing and dance to.

One month ago, no one would have thought that this town would be celebrating like this.

A violent storm had hit and destroyed almost everything in its path, and a sense of despair had engulfed the people living there. The winds and the heavy rain had been bad, but the landslides really made things worse. Even at present, as the town held its celebration, helicopters could be seen hovering above the mountains that surrounded the town proper, their searchlights flashing here and there, aiding rescuers who made their way around the dark, slippery terrain, looking for missing people or houses that had vanished underneath mounds of trees, dark rock and soil.

Despite the tragedy and the uncertainty that hung in the air, however, the townspeople had been resilient. Pooling their resources, and seeking help from neighboring towns and cities, they managed to recover most of their losses and found cause to celebrate as houses, businesses and landmarks began to be restored.

Sitting on one of the tables, watching the merriment all around them, were three men, sipping on their beers, wearing jackets that identified them as university students hailing from a city five hours away. They, along with a group of other volunteer workers from their uni, had come to help and were now celebrating the last day of volunteer work. Just across the street, by the small parking lot of the town’s only hotel, vehicles were lined up, readied for the departure in the early morning. These three men expected to be on the first bus going home tomorrow.

The first two sitting across each other kept commenting idly about how hectic the day had been, but the third guy, nursing his drink close to his lips, was scanning the flow of people, his huge, sparkling eyes flitting to and fro. He could not process what his friends were talking about. He was too busy watching who came and went as the festivities rolled on.

“Choi Seungcheol, have you found her yet?” Yoon Jeonghan asked, lazily grinning. His dark brown hair fell down his eyes and he raked them back with his fingers. He glanced at his friend before turning back to the buoyant scenery. A crowd seated on the table next to them roared with laughter.

“I haven’t,” Seungcheol replied lightly, taking another swig. “But I will.”

Seungcheol’s seemingly dogged determination made the guy sitting across Jeonghan chuckle. “This will be a very interesting night,” Hong Jisoo said softly, smirking at Jeonghan’s direction. “Cheol won’t let up finding this mystery woman.”

“I, for one, think that we’ve had an interesting day already,” Jeonghan answered dryly, leaning back on his metal chair, “and an uncomfortable one at that. I didn’t like the fact that we had to follow someone for a whole day, all because some guy couldn’t just walk up to her and ask her out.”

At that, Seungcheol turned to Jeonghan and glared at him playfully. “Shut up.”

“Cheol is acting funny,” Jeonghan teased. “Isn’t he, Jisoo-ya?” Jisoo laughed and clinked bottles with Jeonghan in agreement.

“I have my reasons,” Seungcheol said defensively, turning back to the crowd. “I couldn’t find the right timing.”

“Oooh,” Jeonghan cooed. “The right timing.”

“I said shut your trap, Jeonghan. I think you’re drunk.”

“I will be if you still don’t find her.”

“You could dance with some of our other friends out there while we wait.”

“You know I’m too tired for that.”

Jisoo laughed again. “You could not find the right timing? After all the days you’ve spent here?”

“Complete bull.” Jeonghan grinned.

Suddenly Seungcheol stood, setting his beer bottle down so hard on the wooden table that Jisoo and Jeonghan could not help but complain in unison about the abrupt movement. However, they quieted down when they saw Seungcheol’s expression.

“That’s her.” Seungcheol pointed somewhere in the throng of people, his eyes wide, his countenance suddenly alight and stone-cold sober. The night breeze blew on his close-cropped hair as he looked on. 

His words were almost drowned out by the cacophony of voices and music all around them, but Jisoo and Jeonghan looked at each other knowingly, hearing his words perfectly.

`“Well?” Jisoo brought his drink to his lips, eyeing Seungcheol with a devious glint in his eyes.

A few moments passed, with Seungcheol simply standing there.

The right timing.

He broke off into a run.

He ran past tables and stalls and dancing couples, startling people along the way. His feet took him flying across the cobbled streets lined with lanterns, towards a spot by the exit of the square where stalls sold summer flowers. His heart pounded within his chest as he sprinted, his eyes never leaving what they had been watching for throughout the young night.

As he ran, he forgot how silly he had felt when, exactly five nights ago, he had hopped onto one of the buses leaving campus for the volunteer program. His only reason for joining had been his need for an adventure away from the city. He would have no other time for anything extracurricular in the months to come. The bar exam was looming over his mind, and before he poured himself solely to the task of preparing for it, he wanted to get away.

He remembered how you had stretched out a hand to greet him even before sitting down beside him.

Hi. You had smiled and he had felt like he was staring at the sun as you told him your name. Classical composition. You?

Non-music major, he had replied with a quick, albeit apologetic smile to return yours. I got on this bus by mistake.

Oh, that’s okay, you had said good-naturedly, winking at him, you don’t have to worry. We’re very good company. 

And you were.

As he ran, he forgot how tired he was. He had followed you and the other volunteers around all day, up and down the mountains, giving out boxes of food and clothing to the families that had been affected by the calamity. The first four days hadn’t been as grueling as this last one. But it had been worth it.

He forgot, too, how sorry he felt for his friends, who didn’t know what they had signed up for when they followed him to this town to check up on him.

All he could remember was the flush on his cheeks when he had watched as your fingers strummed at a guitar, and how he could not help but hang on to the sweet lilt of your voice when you opened your mouth to sing. 

"Deep breath and wipe those tears // Take heart and face those fears // We'll find a reason, // something to cling to; // We won't abandon // you. // There's hope in this season, // too."

All he could remember was the comfort that washed over the faces of the people who were listening, back at the orphanage in the mountains, where evacuees had taken up temporary residence.

He forgot about everything else and just ran, ran, and ran towards the only thing that mattered in his mind.

He had found you.

There you were—your hair rustling in the wind, wearing a billowing white dress that came down just beneath your knees and a knapsack that hung loosely on one shoulder, laughing with little children who were selling what looked like different sorts of flowers. You bent down to reach for a bouquet, and then lifted it to your nose, closing your eyes as you inhaled the scent.

Seungcheol drew to a stop as he neared you. His breaths slowed into pants, but his restless heart still fluttered faster than it would normally do.

Before he could lose his courage, he walked slowly to you.

He didn’t know what to say to you yet. After the bus ride, he only saw you every now and then, among the hundred volunteers that had joined. And all day long today, when he knew that he could not put off speaking to you anymore, he had been thinking about how he could approach you without scaring you off. There was one point this evening, after a little bit of beer, when he had felt like he could be brave enough to speak to you the moment he finds you.

But now, standing before you, he was tongue-tied, unable to say anything at all.

Sensing his presence, you turned, looking directly at him, still laughing, your hands holding a bouquet close to your face.

For precious brief seconds, the both of you just stood there, the night breeze beckoning as it made its sweeping touch upon both your clothes, trying to unchain you from where you both stood—whispering, it seemed, as it touched skin, Closer.

It was you who broke the ice.

“That was quite a run,” you commented humorously, your eyes filling with a gentle light. “Did I drop my wallet or something?”

Seungcheol laughed, blushing at the same time before scratching his head. He didn’t know that you had noticed him running. “Uh, no. Sorry. I must have startled you.”

“You told me during our bus ride that you came just to have some fun,” you said softly, your eyes taking in this handsome man before you and the jacket he wore. “But I saw how you worked hard, especially today. Thank you for coming with us.”

“And thank you for your songs,” Seungcheol replied, smiling. There was no flattery in his voice when he said this to you, only interest and admiration and another emotion that he himself could not clearly define at that moment.

Your eyes widened. “You listened?”

Seungcheol cocked his head to the side, hands in his pockets, still smiling. “All three songs, the whole afternoon.”

You grinned. “Ah. I didn’t know that I was in the presence of a fan. So…” one corner of your mouth turned up playfully, “…you ran all that way—” you motioned at the brilliant lights of the festival that was behind you both, “—not because I dropped my wallet somewhere around the bazaars and you picked it up by chance…but because—you loved my songs,” you grinned as you said this, “and you wanted my autograph. Was that it?”

He stifled a laugh, but it still bubbled out of his lips. “No. To be honest, I was going to ask you something else.” Seungcheol’s kind, hooded eyes smiled along with his lips. Courage surged inside him, just when he needed it. “Would you like to dance with me?”

Your slow smile answered his question before you even spoke.

“Yes.”

Closer, the wind whispered as you ran, laughing, with Seungcheol, back into the bright lights where the lanterns swayed, his hand not letting go of yours. And as Seungcheol pulled you close to him by the waist, your body arched up against him, and you threw your arms around his neck. You danced to the slow music, with Seungcheol’s eyes lighting up like the lanterns and his delighted laughter as melodious as the strings that strummed soulful tunes through the night.

Not far from where you danced, watching and making funny but adoring commentaries about how Seungcheol sucked at dancing, Jeonghan and Jisoo clinked bottles.

“It did become an interesting night.”

The town, in the morning, was greeted by blue skies and the young heat of summer. Business went back to normal, with the townsfolk reverting to their quiet, slow-paced lives in the fields and the mountains where their houses and livelihoods were nestled. The square held its usual number of regulars, some laying on the soft grass and others spreading colorful cloths around for picnics. Bicycles and occasional cars passed by.

There were no more buses that lined outside the tall, eighty-year-old hotel that was the pride of the town. No more guys wearing university jackets, no more stalls that lined the cobbled sidewalks.

Everything had gone back to how they were.

But traces of the festival night still popped up here and there in that sleepy old town.

High up the mountains, in the orphanage, children sang your songs and your words lingered on their lips. Some of them still had chocolates and candy from yesterday, leftovers from what their volunteer friends had given them as treats before heading back to the city. A plaque commemorating those who donated and came to help could be seen inside the town hall. And the gratitude people felt in their hearts as they watched their town being rebuilt made them remember their friends who had left in the early morning.

Some traces, too, weren’t just found in town. Some you brought home with you.

In that morning, you and Seungcheol were already five hours away, on a bus terminal, getting woken by the driver, who told you that you were now back in the city.

You had both missed the bus rides back to campus, but that was okay.

With your bags slung on your backs, you talked about Seungcheol’s upcoming bar exam, your major and getting breakfast somewhere. The impress of his touch on the small of your back as he gently guided you through the crowded streets reminded you of how you had felt when you danced with him all night. You blushed as he playfully protested about how his arms had gone numb when he woke up with you in his arms. Laughing with him as you both strolled along the hectic streets of the city, you found that you liked how Seungcheol’s voice sounded and how he would look you in the eyes intently whenever you would start to tell him something, no matter how interesting or uninteresting it would be. There was something intuitive and perceptive about him, something that you don’t normally see with guys that you had tried to get to know before. You liked that uniqueness in Seungcheol.

Sitting across him, eating your burger as you watched him type his number on your phone, you felt something new begin. And when he unconsciously reached out to take your hand while inside a cab that morning, you just knew, that you had both found in each other a memento from that summer night up in the mountains, in a town slowly recovering from a calamity, a town of cobbled streets and music and the wind that had teased and whispered, Closer.

2 | autumn, beneath the glowing streetlamps

Almost every sunset since the leaves started falling and the sky started to become painted in reddish-golden splendor, as people hurried along sidewalks or streets or in their bicycles and cars before rush hour set in, you would find yourself racing, racing and racing into Cheol’s waiting arms, warm and safe from the dropping temperatures and the cruel life of being an assistant producer for a crueler entertainment company.

There would be times when you would immediately look up from burying yourself in the warmth of Seungcheol’s embrace, smile sweetly up at his face and say in cute tones, “Hi, baby!”

There would be times when you would wrap your arms around his neck and stand on tiptoes to treat him with kisses as he laughed and whispered, “I missed you” in your ear.

And there would also be times when you would linger beneath his coat, shutting out all the bustling noises around you, eyes closed, and your words an almost unintelligible murmur on his chest. “Let’s stay like this for a while, please?” 

You would then feel him kiss your hair, nuzzle your face, replying softly, “Bad day?” before hugging you tighter and tilting your head up so he could give you one of his infamous pep talks. He would then be kissing you with a laugh when you would start to complain that he sounded like a lecturer you had back in your uni days.

It had been three years since you danced with the wind during that summer night, and your sunsets during this third autumn season with Seungcheol by your side usually consisted of these sweet embraces and small but meaningful whispers of affection.

But today, the sunset was different.

You are still racing through the streets, running, running and running, your coat and hair flying in the wind. But Choi Seungcheol—always standing out anywhere he went with his height and broad shoulders, huge coats and quick smiles—was nowhere among the crowd. And you now halted to a stop, catching your breath, eyes frantically searching for taxis as the dark blue and violet shades of the nighttime sky started to replace the golden sheen of the sunset.

Once you could get on one, you immediately gave out the address, telling the driver as nicely as possible to step on it. Then you leaned back on the plush leather seat, sighing loudly, looking through the car window as you sped past the city’s grey skyscrapers and its lights and the rush of commute. You listened to the noise of cars honking, of motorcycles zipping past your cab, and chatter from commuters as you sometimes halted at crosswalks. You observed these people rushing to and fro, eager to be where they needed to be. You engaged in pleasant talk with the driver, complimenting his choice of music, even confiding in him that you had helped make the second song that played.

Soon, you came to a place where the pulsing, white and yellow lights of the city softened into golden hue as the skyscrapers were replaced by townhouses and apartments, homey restaurants, little shops and an occasional clinic here and there. Passersby were not rushing in this part of the city. Rather, families were walking hand in hand, dads sometimes carrying their kids on their backs, laughing as they entered diners and restaurants. Old women in flowery dresses shuffled up the steps of their apartment, with their husbands or cats following closely. Lovers and students with their friends laughed softly as they quietly strolled down the sidewalks, amazed at the beauty of the coming night and the sighing of trees as their leaves fell. You smiled at a woman you knew as the cab slowed. And when it stopped, you got out, blinking as your eyes adjusted beneath the glowing light of the streetlamps, looking around.

This was your neighborhood. This was your world when five o'clock came and you were released from the pressure of work. This was your safety net when you felt like drowning. This was your home turf. 

And there he was, just as you knew he would be. He probably went straight home after court. He probably thought he could mask everything that had happened when he had rested enough. He probably didn’t want you to worry. 

Yes, there he was. Walking slowly to his car, shoulders slumped, his phone in his hand, probably going to shoot you a message that he was on his way to pick you up, he just ran a little late today. His head was bent down as he scrolled through his phone. His other hand was holding his briefcase, his most prized possession as a criminal lawyer. He didn’t see you coming towards him yet. But as he looked up from his phone to open the car door, his eye caught sight of you and he stopped, his hand on the door handle.

Immediately, Seungcheol’s despondent expression changed. His face lit up into a smile that almost didn’t look tired, his shoulders straightened up and he cocked his head to the side like he always does when he sees you looking at him, his now ash-blond hair touching his forehead. “Baby!” he called out endearingly, his free arm wide open.

There, beneath the glowing streetlamps, you ran up to him and wrapped him in a tight embrace, your feet on tiptoes, one of your hands raking through his hair, the other caressing his back, whispering his name over and over in relief. He’s here with me. Everything’s going to be alright.

“What’s the matter?” he asked, worried about you even at this time when you knew that he needed you more than you needed him now. “Did something happen at work?”

“No,” you whispered in his ear, still smoothing his hair, holding him close. “And let’s not talk about my work tonight.” You leaned back so you could look into his face. Your hands ran through the soft, ash-blond locks on his forehead. Now that you looked at him closely, you saw that he looked pale and drawn, utterly exhausted with his day. “Oh, baby.” You touched his face and he held your hand close to him like that, closing his eyes as he let out a huge breath.

Standing on tiptoes as the streetlamps glowed brighter and brighter in the night, as the trees shed red, gold and brown leaves and as people passed you by, each off to their respective evenings, you gave Choi Seungcheol a tender kiss.

He sighed shakily as your lips touched his. He trembled underneath your touch; it was as if all his carefully put-up defenses might fall apart in that moment.

And they did, right when you whispered against his lips, as gently as you could, “It’s not your fault.”

Tears fell from his closed eyes like the trees lining the sidewalk, weeping away their precious foliage. You felt his body heave into choking, unmanly sobs as he buried his face down your shoulder, his hold on you so tight that you felt just how much pain he was trying to release. The briefcase lay forgotten at your feet as his arms pulled you as close as he could to him.

Seungcheol couldn’t say anything, but you knew about everything already; the city may be vast and diverse, but news travels fast. There was no need for him to explain. You knew enough, and that was all you needed.

“Shhh,” you whispered, tears falling from your face as well, your chest aching at the sight of your man—this man who liked to look okay in front of you all the time—bent, broken, and crying. “You’ll be alright.” Your arms tightened around Seungcheol, and you closed your eyes. “You’ll be alright.”

There was a comforting lull as you both stayed that way for a while, not minding who saw you, not minding the time. Tonight, he needed you, and you wanted him to know that he could hold you for as long as he wanted. For as long as he needed. When you had felt like he had calmed a bit, you asked him, “Bad day?” Even though you already knew the answer, he wouldn’t be able to talk about it freely if you didn’t ask. 

You felt him smile sheepishly on your neck. “Yeah.” He sighed and buried his face onto your shoulder. “Bad day.” 

“Oh, baby.” You hugged him tighter.

“I’m sorry. I know that I’m not usually like this—”

“—I like it better when you lean on me, too.” You patted his back comfortingly, over and over. “I know that you don’t want to talk about it yet, at least, not right now, but I’ll always be ready to listen, okay?” 

“Okay.”

“No rush. But you can tell me everything when you feel ready.” You pulled away to stare into his puffy eyes. “I must say, though,” you commented with a bit of humor, “that red does not suit your eyes when it’s like that.” You smirked at him as his expression softened and his laughter came. You took out a handkerchief from your coat pocket and dabbed it underneath his eyes and his cheeks. “Doesn’t matter anyway,” you muttered lightly, knowing how much your nonsensical words would make him smile, “you still look good even when you cry.”

Seungcheol groaned. “Stop.” Then he kissed your forehead. “Thank you.” For making me feel better. You saw the words in his eyes, which began to sparkle again with a gentle light. He grinned at you, and a little bit of the sadness painted on his face seemed to dissipate. 

You grinned back at him, and you held out a hand. 

“Can we go home now?”

Seungcheol grasped your hand tightly and smiled. “Yes.”

The streetlamps glowed brighter as the dark ink of the night swallowed the brilliant colors of the dusk, and you both blended in with the people who were around you, walking towards whatever lay ahead for them in the coming night. 

Seungcheol didn’t tell you about what happened that day in court. He didn’t tell you about what had made him cry like that when you found him. He didn’t offer any explanation.

And you let it stay that way. You watched him from your perch on the duvet in your living room. He sat on the couch, poring over binders that held one-inch-thick documents and every now and then scribbling something on a legal pad. You watched him whisper to himself as he typed incessantly on his laptop. Paraphernalia from whatever he was working on was scattered on the floor in an order that only he could understand. You watched him for a time as he kept on working. This was how he was whenever something from his work would haunt him: he would meticulously go over where he went wrong (or where he thought he went wrong), and he would passionately redo that area until he was satisfied. He would anxiously (and sometimes even a bit obsessively) review each argument, each line, over and over again. 

Judging from his expression and from how he couldn't seem to stop doing this cycle of reading/writing/whispering, you knew that whatever piece of courtroom action he had brought home with him had truly gotten to him. 

You watched and watched, and then you gave up watching him. You hated seeing him become so immersed into a case because you've seen him like this before, and you hadn't liked how it affected him physically and mentally. 

You wondered about what you could do for him. Nothing came to mind. 

Sighing, you rose up from your seat, a bottle of beer in your hand. You padded softly towards the other side of the room, where an unvarnished upright piano was. 

You lifted the cover and you let your fingers run across the ivory keys. You sat down. As you stared down at the keys, a melody you’ve never sung before formed on your lips. You found the right key, and you began to play the melody that you hummed.

Slowly, scenery came to life in your mind, along with the words that painted its description beautifully.

“Autumn days of glory // autumn days of peace // red and golden splendor // in the sky and trees…”

You didn’t know where the words would lead, but you let your hands and your heart take flight. You let them come straight home where they needed to be. You let them express what you couldn't do in any other way.

“Fall is often like // a season of pure bliss // But fall is also when // change happens to things.”      

You remembered the moment you shared with Seungcheol a few hours ago, outside. You let your hands play on as more lines went out of your lips, giving voice to the emotions you had felt and painted the picture in your mind with.

“Let me touch your face // let me dry those tears // let me help you brace // for the colder winds…”

You heard footsteps behind you, but the song still flowed out of your lips as your heart poured out what it wanted to say through the music's timeless language.

“Autumn days of glory // autumn days of peace // let me stand on tiptoes // let me give you a kiss…”

You felt his arms around you, and you felt the touch of his lips on your neck. 

You found the last chord, and you leaned against him. 

You stayed like that for a long time.

Your hand caressed one of his arms as you sang softly, “I will hold you close // I will dry your tears // I will help you brace // for the colder winds…”

You felt him breathe deeply, and you felt his arms tighten around you. And when he turned your face to him to give you his most tender kiss, you knew that he had chosen to leave his books and legal pads and that case that haunted him. You knew that he had chosen, no matter how hard it was, to put the bad day behind him.

As he carried you up from that hard, unvarnished piano bench where you sat and onto the soft satin comfort of your bedroom sheets, you just knew. You just knew that no matter how bad days in the future might get, as long as you had each other, there would always be peace at the end. That both of you would always choose peace at the end.

That night, as the last of the leaves on the trees fell, and as Seungcheol's bare skin cleaved to yours, he bared his thoughts to you. You both stared at the naked truth of his anxiety, his worries. Hesitantly, at first, he let you in on his deepest fears.

That night was the beginning of honesty at its purest between you two. That night, you treated each other like the Bible where you had seen Seungcheol swear the truth and nothing but the truth countless times. That night, you both found safety in each other as you unmasked the pretenses that you both still put up for the sake of looking brave. 

That night, too, you both decided that there was no other way to overcome bad days, except to overcome it together.

When the streetlamps stopped burning brightly and another day came around, you both stepped out of the apartment, hand in hand, the warm glow on your faces obviously not coming from the sun, which had risen in a useless effort to bring warmth against the cold. 

You both went your separate ways, disappearing amongst the thousands of people who rushed about as the sleepless city burst with renewed life. 

Well, bad days, fire away, you thought to yourself as you tightened your scarf around your neck. After that night, the impending doom of a long day failed to break your spirit.

You had Seungcheol, and Seungcheol had you. Everything would be okay. You both just knew: everything would be okay.

Later that day, another golden dusk settled across the skyline. You raced down the busy sidewalks of the city again, looking out for a cab. The holiday season was almost upon you, and the air already had a festive spirit to it. As you glanced up and down the lanes of vehicles halting at the red light, your eye caught a figure to your left, among the crowds.

Waving his hand, his eyes alight, his smile as bright as it was during those first few days that leaves fell from trees, there was Seungcheol, wearing his huge coat, holding his briefcase and waiting, as he had always done, for you.

Smiling jubilantly, you ran to him, pushing against crowds of people, eager to become enveloped into his safe, warm embrace.

You were tired. It had been a very busy day: meetings, songwriting sessions, planning music video sets with other staff, and doing final checks on a concert stage took up most of your energy. But in Seungcheol’s arms, the fatigue you felt slowly washed away. 

"Baby," you whispered, closing your eyes as you leaned against his chest. You felt his kisses on your hair and you smiled. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but does that smile mean that you helped save the world today?"

At your words, you felt Seungcheol drew in a sharp breath. You felt his teeth sink into your shoulder playfully as his body reverberated with giggles.

"Please stop making me blush in public, babe!"

The forecast had said that temperatures would be at its lowest yet, but as you kept making jokes while basking in the music of Seungcheol’s laughter, you never felt the cold during that last sunset of autumn.

3 | winter, by the hearth

“And everything in time and under heaven finally falls asleep // Wrapped in blankets white, all creation shivers underneath.”

Like magic, the words you sang out perfectly described the hushed, dreamy landscape that unfurled before Seungcheol's eyes. Snowflakes in their different designs fell softly on the ground and on your nose as you walked, hand in hand, wrapped in your warmest, heaviest winter clothing. You were walking towards the huge family house that belonged to your maternal grandparents, and you were both enchanted by the frozen beauty of the vast garden you were walking through. And as if the sight of imposing life-sized statues and the creaking, barren trees lining the footpath wasn't enough, the series of mountains to the left of the property also peeked out from the stone walls, revealing their snow-covered peaks and adding a magical feeling to the scenery.

It was the first time that you would bring Seungcheol to a dinner with all of your extended family, and Seungcheol knew from the way that you smiled at him a lot that you were excited.

Excited, and something else. 

Despite the mixed expressions on your face that he could not quickly decipher to get a clear understanding of, Seungcheol returned your smiles. “How long has it been since you came here?” he asked, stepping over a mound of ice and snow that had formed along the pavement.

“Years." You looked up at him again, and you smiled wider. "It shows on my face that much, huh? How thrilled I am at having my whole family meet you?"

Seungcheol smirked. "I don't know how to get my family together like this. Do your grandparents hold gatherings like this often?"

"Not really. But they've been missing their children and us grandchildren, so…" you cleared your throat and paused. "Baby, do I look like Christmas lights are strung up on my face? Because my cousins tease me about my smile whenever I get excited.”

The brightness in your voice had dropped a notch, and Seungcheol examined your face again. “Well you do look excited, but I wouldn't worry about your face. You always look beautiful…"

You probably did not hear him, because you had let go of his hand to run ahead, towards the widespread arms of a very handsome old man who seemed to have the same light like yours in his eyes and the same humor on his smile like yours. 

Seungcheol hurried towards you and your grandfather, and he bowed respectfully. 

"So this is the lucky man," your grandfather commented humorously, shaking Seungcheol's hand heartily. "Come in, come in! Best to get out of the cold." Your grandfather shivered animatedly, and you laughed, leaning against him as you walked in. 

You seemed fine. Seungcheol smiled and entered the double doors after you.

The house was spacious and welcoming, designed with warm wood tones and bursting to life with patches of greenery here and there. The wooden beams and pillars that supported doorways were intricately carved with floral swirls and patterns, and the furniture style accentuated the vibrant yet homey tones. The smell of food and wine and the sound of logs being thrown into a fireplace filled Seungcheol's senses. Holiday music played in the background, and soft laughter from one of the rooms to the far right of the hall made Seungcheol guess that some family members have already arrived before you did. 

As he walked on, straightening his clothes, he ran smack-dab into a woman who looked a lot like you but was very much unlike you either. Seungcheol would never see you wearing a power suit in bold colors like this woman. The man behind her smiled at Seungcheol and offered a hand.

"Oooh, so this is my cousin Y/N's boyfriend!" The woman grinned. She held out a well-manicured hand. "I'm Sana, and this is my husband, Minhyuk. You’re Seungcheol, right?"

"Yes. Very nice to meet you," Seungcheol answered, his face lighting up when he saw you with a smile on your face, walking towards Sana. Sana is one of my favorite cousins, you had told him earlier. She's the loudest among all of us, but she's a really good person who took care of me a lot when I was younger.

Sana leaned close to Seungcheol, and he was once again struck by how her brown eyes looked a lot like yours. But hers, he observed, had a mischievous glint, while yours always had a gentle light in them. 

"You'd better be prepared for this family dinner," Sana whispered conspiratorially, "and don't let your guard down. Watch your manners--"

"--oh, come on, Sana," you groaned, pulling Seungcheol away, laughter in your voice. "It won't be that bad!"

"Don't say I didn't warn you! And sit beside me during dinner!" Sana's red-lipped smile made Seungcheol suddenly wonder what you both were talking about. You were both inside the parlor now, where drinks were being served and the people inside were more formal: quieter and older members of the family were either seated or standing around, wine glasses in their hands, conversing as they studied the portraits that hung around the room. A young man sat by one of the massive floor-to-ceiling windows of the parlor, his fingers flying across the ivory keys of the grand piano. The fire crackled as a man added more logs. Your grandfather was nowhere in sight.

Seungcheol wondered why your smile did not reach your eyes once these people started to come and greet you with their hugs and kisses. He wanted to ask if you were okay because you had grown quieter. Occasionally glancing at you as he introduced himself to members of the family, he noticed that your whole countenance had changed. 

The smiles and the laughter coming from you still rang true in his ears, but as your hands clasped before you as you engaged in conversation with an aunt of yours, you showed him a side of you that he had never seen before: very composed, very somber, very careful. The only relief that seemed to show on your face was when your parents finally came in, and Seungcheol was glad for the respite from your strained expressions and gestures. Your smile at them as they embraced you warmly was the only smile that reached your eyes throughout the whole introductory phase of the gathering.

"I'm so glad you're here, Seungcheol!" your mother said cheerfully, adding a warmth that Seungcheol hadn't felt in the room since you had both walked in. In fact, of all the people he had greeted today, nobody he'd met in this side of your family eased the tension he had been feeling since your voice changed on the way in. "My family has been waiting to see you for ages!"

Seungcheol kissed your mother's cheek and shook your father's hand, engaging in pleasant small talk with them. He had spent a lot of holidays and vacations with your parents, and they had been very enjoyable ones. In this fifth year of your relationship, though, you had quietly asked him if he wanted to go see your grandparents with you. He had known from the expression on your face that seeing your grandparents was an important family affair; and he knew now, too, why you had looked so anxious. 

Everyone walked into the dining room once the clock in the parlor struck six o'clock. A long table heaped with food and beverages on glassware greeted all of you. Seating yourselves, Seungcheol held your hand underneath the table, squeezing it reassuringly. You squeezed his back.

Seungcheol's eyes caught Sana's on the far side of the room. She was sitting on the opposite end of the table with Minhyuk, and she cocked her head to the side, mouthing words that looked like, "Sit here, you two!", gesturing at a couple of seats beside them that soon got taken by another cousin and his parents. Sana made a face, and Seungcheol grinned. You were busy talking with another cousin, Samuel, who had also brought his partner with him. Seated at the far end of the table, near the empty seat of your grandfather, Seungcheol waited for dinner to begin.

Clinks of glasses and forks and knives slicing through meat and spoons ladling soup were the background music to the words that this huge family exchanged. Laughter rippled through the room, and slowly, the tension and formality that shaped conversations a while ago stopped.

"Is that Counselor Choi from the City Prosecutor’s Office?"

The matronly voice made everyone's heads turn, and all laughter died down.

Seungcheol saw your grandmother for the first time. 

Dinner had long since started, but the way she gracefully sat down and the way her shoulders were set back made everyone excuse her for being late. Your grandfather silently took his place beside you, and you exchanged sweet smiles with him. Seungcheol watched as your grandfather leaned towards you, and he heard words like, “…talk to her…” come from his lips. Nervous energy engulfed the dinner table, and Seungcheol's ears must have been fooling him, because every clink and scrape of knives, and even the music, seemed to stop. 

Your grandmother, beautiful despite her age, laid her eyes upon Seungcheol. Her eyes were neither kind nor cruel. The aloofness there could have thrown any stranger off, but the spark of interest that lit up her eyes compelled Seungcheol to return her gaze and to answer.

"Yes, ma'am." He could have called her something else, but this aura she exuded seemed to ask for something that formal. "Thank you for inviting me."

When she smiled, her expression was guarded as well. "My granddaughter is very fortunate to have met you. And you're welcome. Please, eat."

After greeting the other girlfriends, boyfriends, husbands and wives seated around, the rest of the conversation was directed at other members of the family. Seungcheol learned that this side of your family was involved in medical and tourism careers. You were the only one he knew that had a different path from the rest of them. This hadn’t been obvious when he spent time with your parents, but on this table, careers and what you are doing to succeed in that career seemed to be very important. Careers steered the conversation.

"Ahyoung is planning on setting up a pediatric practice, Mother,” one aunt said as she set down her spoon. “She wasn't able to come because she had to tie up some loose ends with the clinic renovation."

"Working through the holidays? Ahyoung must be wanting to surpass my record as a workaholic." Chuckles around the table could be heard at this amusing remark from Grandmother. "The president of the hospital in that town is a friend of mine who could help her establish her practice. Tell her to give me a call so I can help her get in touch with him. How about you, Jaemin? I saw you on TV a week ago. You announced the opening of a...what was that...a museum?"

"A shrine recreation, Grandmother. We're currently in the process of recreating an entire temple from the Silla era. My archaeology team hit a huge find down south when they found the remains of what we initially thought was a hidden metropolis in the mountains. Turns out that was this temple where priestesses tried to read the stars—”

“—if you need a priestess to make your shrine look more realistic, you can hire me." Sana broke in as she winked at Jaemin, who immediately looked flustered. Younger cousins of yours immediately began doing their best to hold back their laughter and Seungcheol felt you giggle quietly beside him, too, as you drank your glass of wine. 

"Sana, instead of ridiculing your older brother, why don't you tell us about the latest findings of your research? And congratulations, darling. My former colleagues in Gynecology have been telling me that your research will be of a huge benefit to their practice.”

"Well, we are still working on developing this fertility treatment, as you know already, and we have the goal of obtaining a much higher success rate than in vitro fertilization. So, for example, if the success rate of a thirty-five-year-old woman is only at thirty-nine-point-five per cent, we would try to raise that bar by giving her a fifty per cent threshold of success. It’s still at a very experimental stage at this point, Grandmother, but the labs have been working on it incessantly...” 

Seungcheol stopped listening at that point. He focused on his food and on not letting go of your hand. Their topics were interesting and he would occasionally get roped into the conversation, but Seungcheol couldn't help but despair about the fact that there wasn’t talk about anything else except work and their different professions and future plans for their businesses or companies. It was the holidays, for goodness’ sake. There weren't many other stories shared aside from work life. Everyone seemed to be comfortable with that kind of setting, but it cut through Seungcheol deeply. Especially when he noticed that the questions didn’t get to you. 

The dinner passed like that.

Grandmother rose from her seat, her height, willowy frame and white dress making her look even more imposing. Silence once again reigned, and she spoke.

“Y/N, may I speak to you in private for a moment?” It wasn’t a question. She spun on her heel and left.

Seungcheol knew that she expected you to follow. And you did, whispering, “I’ll be back” before rushing out of the dining room. When his eyes roamed around the table, he saw that everyone was looking at him, and he put his fork down. He didn’t know what to think of what just happened. Your mother followed you out soon after.

"Don't worry," Samuel said reassuringly. "Grandmother may look like a very hard woman, but she's actually soft on the inside--"

"--and she has the softest spot for Y/N." Sana smiled. "She would never admit to playing favorites, but we all know in this table that she loves Y/N the most."

At a later time, while relishing dessert, your history with your grandmother began to unfold from the table, where only your closest cousins remained, and Seungcheol listened to them intently.

They told him the story about a grandmother who wanted nothing but the best of life for her family. A grandmother who had done her best to live a life that she knew would become a good example to everyone who followed her. Despite her stern appearance, she wasn’t the rich and evil grandmother who forced everyone to do things her way. Surprisingly, she was one who encouraged her family members to pursue what they loved to do.

“You see, even though most of us work in the medical field, we didn’t get these jobs because someone told us to, or because the woman we look up to in this family. We became doctors and businessmen because we wanted these jobs. Our paths turned out this way, and we’re enjoying ourselves.” Sana paused, letting her words sink first. “All our parents and our grandparents asked of us was that we pursue our dreams intending to succeed. And that was where she and Y/N took a bad turn.”

“Everyone in this family had turned out to be exactly who they wanted to be.” The unspoken words after that sentence held weight. All except one: you.

“Grandmother just couldn’t understand why Y/N did not choose to become the singer that she wanted to be. And what made her more furious was the fact that she doesn’t see how good she could be.”

Music from the piano drifted into the dining hall. Someone was singing carols, and Seungcheol was jolted from his reverie when he heard soft laughter coming from the parlor as well. It was then that he realized that most of the family had gone back to the parlor, where it was evident that they all loved to spend time together.

“Only one person plays beautifully like that,” Jaemin remarked. Seungcheol noted the ring of envy and admiration on his voice as you all listened to the strains of a piano. “You’re a very lucky man. My cousin isn’t just someone you meet out there.”

“Which is why she’s the favorite,” Hyorin, another cousin of yours, commented. “In a family of doctors and business magnates, she stands out.” Hyorin stood up, bringing her glass of wine with her. “I’m going there to listen.”

Sitting on the piano, fingers making music in a way that spoke to the soul, was you. It was one thing to just play music. It was another thing when that music communicates with its listeners, making them feel something. People were humming the carols that you played, but you didn’t pay heed to them. Seungcheol knew that once you were seated on that bench, you were in another world entirely. You smiled at your relatives as they all sang out songs and gave her requests. Music tied you all together and brought out the beauty of the human inside. Work was forgotten as you sang together. From the corner of his eye, as he joined the men in belting out “Smile Flower” by a classic boy group from more than fifty years ago, Seungcheol saw your grandmother smiling—genuinely—and nodding with your parents, who were also looking at you.

A change of key quieted the room, and everyone tried to figure out what the song you were playing. But nobody could tell what it was, only that it was in A minor. They waited for you to sing.

And when you did, a song they’ve never heard before, a song Seungcheol had never heard before from you, rose from your lips.

“Tossing out the lines that were never truly mine // Throwing to the fire what was never truly fine // I am in a place where no doubt and fears can get me // I am safe tonight with lover and family // by the firelight // by the firelight // I could be me.”

Later, when you and Seungcheol had gone home and you were both staring into the hearth which served as the only light in the living room and warmed you both from the cold of the night, Seungcheol mustered the courage to ask you what your grandmother had told you when she pulled you aside right after dinner.

You smiled and said simply, “She doesn’t want me to become an assistant producer anymore.” Your hand laced with Seungcheol’s underneath the pale blue quilt wrapped around you both. “She wants me to get my music out there to the world. She said she wanted me to stop hesitating about my future.”

“And what do you think about her advice?”

You turned to him, and your eyes were moist, your lips trembling with emotion as you smiled. “Baby,” you said gently, leaning on his shoulder, “it’s not that simple.” You sighed. “And I know I might sound like such a coward to you, but I have a reason for not pursuing a singing career. Besides, I think I’m already too old for that kind of life.”

“Yeah,” Seungcheol playfully acknowledged, “twenty-seven is too old for that kind of life.”

You laughed, but your eyes remained sad. “Consider that a sub-reason as to why I don’t want to be a singer. I know that I’m breaking my family’s heart by choosing not to become one because they want to see me actually doing something that I love. But you see, I’m not really in that bad a position. I’m doing something close to what I truly love. And for me, that is enough.”

Seungcheol held you closer with his one arm. “But what is the reason why you don’t want to be a singer? I’ve always wondered why, too. I didn’t ask you before about this because I didn’t want you—”

“—I don’t want a life where my most beautiful escape—my music—will most likely end up being my darkest prison.” You weren’t looking at him, but Seungcheol knew from your voice that you meant your words, and you wanted him to understand. “I’ve seen it happen. Every day, I work with talented people who were brave enough to let the world see their lives and listen to their music. I help them shine like the stars they are, but I always witness them burn too brightly and die out too fast in the end. And I don’t want that kind of life for myself. I want my music to be mine alone and to whoever I want to give it to. I don’t want my art to be pressured by people’s expectations and desires. I don’t want that kind of life.”

“Tossing out the lines that were never truly mine,” he sang. “Throwing to the fire what was never truly fine. I am in a place where no doubt and fears can get me. I am safe tonight with lover and family. By the firelight, I could be me.” Seungcheol looked at you. “Is that why you sang this to your family? So that they won’t worry about you being miserable because you haven’t fulfilled your ultimate dream?”

You looked at him humorously. “My ultimate dream is to be your wife and the mother of your children, dummy.”

“Oh.” Seungcheol blushed. “I forgot about that part.”

You let out a huge breath. “But you’re right. I just wanted them to know that I’m okay with my life. At the same time, though, I can’t stop wondering if I am missing out on something that I know I want to try deep in my heart.”

“So try doing it.”

It was when you hesitated when he said those words that Seungcheol knew.

He kissed your temple gently. “Baby, I think you should at least try.” Seungcheol stared at you as you pondered what he said in your mind. He knew that a million thoughts, pros and cons and other factors were probably racing around in your head at this point, and he didn’t want you to do that. “Come on. On the count of three, answer my question: do you want to sing your songs out there in the world or not? One.” You didn’t budge. “Two.” You gripped his hand tighter. “Thr—”

“—yes.” You wrapped your arms around his neck and you looked at him, staring deeply into his eyes. “But I’m afraid of the cost it would ask of me.”

“The greater the risk, the greater the joy,” Seungcheol commented casually as he laid you down on the couch, smiling as he kissed you. “Try it.”

“Don’t you think I’m too old? Or that I look too—”

“—This is not about what I want. This is about what you want. Your life. Your future. Your dreams.” He gazed at you again, and he felt the same flush that had crept on his face when he first heard you sing, up in the mountains, in an orphanage. So many things had happened since then. And he pictured you in his head, living your dream, casting the same spell that you had enchanted him with on thousands of people.

A performer, not a producer. That’s who my granddaughter is. Your grandmother’s last words before you both went home lingered on his head as he kissed you. Making music and performing that music is what she does best, and what she has always wanted. Help her get to her dreams. Don’t let her give in to her fears.

By the hearth, as he made love to you—his hands planted on your hips, his painfully delicious rhythm bringing tears to your eyes—he could not get over the truth that, with or without the spotlight on you, you were an amazing woman already. And he knew that he would continue seeing you grow into someone he will always be proud to love and to be with. But in his mind, he could not shake off the image he saw of you, of who you could be if you just became brave enough to.

“What does your heart say?” he asked you, his hand running up and down your bare skin, your limbs tangled together. The fire in the hearth had gone down into sizzling embers and the quilt barely covered you both, but your skin pressed against each other was warm with the afterglow of your lovemaking. “What do you truly want to do?”

You looked up at him with no hesitation, his heart stopped to beat for a moment that felt like forever: because there, in the sparks of light that burst to life in your eyes, he could see the woman you are, and the woman you could be, evolving into one.

“Baby, I want to try.”                

 4 | spring, and through the seasons after

The train of your dress fanned around you in its lacy magnificence, and the sun could not help itself but touch the beautiful, delicate material with its glorious beams. The soft grass underneath your feet sighed as you passed, and bursts of color from the petals strewn by your nieces gave a beautiful contrast to the peaceful green of the grass and the muted white tones of your dress. You hear people’s voices as you pass them by, their whispers of congratulations and the flashes of cameras. You looked to the horizon, on the sleeping waters of the early morning ocean, which reflected the rosy blush of the first dawn of spring.

You heard the piano start its music, and you hear the viola and the cello in their sweet duet. You smiled at your friends and your family as you passed them by. The crown of flowers in your hair rustled as the wind blew, and your veil flowed along with your hair as that touch of breeze passed.

One more step until you reach him.

When your eyes locked with the man that you will vow to love and to cherish and to be with forevermore, flashes of seasons past appeared in your mind: summers where drops of sun would scorch your skin, and where the smell of petrichor would linger after brief showers of rain; the crunch of leaves beneath your boots, and the colder winds that you would brace against during autumn; the calming hush when everything falls asleep and shivers under blankets of ice and snow; and the first days of spring, like this one, wherein what was frozen through would turn back to healthy shades of green, awakening with a new purpose.

As more memories came to your mind, a song formed in your heart and became written on your mind as you took in Seungcheol’s smiling eyes, brimming with tears as your hand touched his.

“Hold me close, darling // never let go // make this feeling last forever and a day // let’s stay.” These words, for that one summer night, in an old town, where you slow-danced to guitar and dulcimer strings as lanterns swayed with the wind. “Run your fingers through my hair // say you won’t care // if this feeling lasts forever and a day // let’s stay...”

“I love you so much // that I couldn’t keep it in anymore. // I need you so // like the air I breathe to live one more day, so stay…” These words, for that time when you remembered yourself frantically running across sidewalks as the golden glow of streetlights blended with the colors of an autumn dusk, and crashing into the safe, strong arms that will continue to hold you for as long as this life lasts and after.

“You keep setting my soul on fire // you make everything worthwhile…” These words, for that winter night when you felt the blazing sparks of the fire by the hearth of your house, where you decided to take the risk of burning brightly like the stars with your music. “You’re the sun that made me shine like this, // you’re the love that I just can’t resist, so please stay…” These words, for all the moments that you had doubted and he had believed in you as you made your dreams come true. These words, because from the privacy of the firelight by the hearth to the adulation of thousands as you stood beneath spotlights, he had been there.

“Love, let’s stay…Stay this way.”

Each memory and each turn of the seasons that passed through your mind evoked a variety of emotions within you. And you know in your heart that the reason why you could recall them so vividly and feel them so profoundly is that you did not create them alone.

Your eyes take in the man whose companionship had completed the scenes in your head. Through the seasons, he had been with you. He had laughed with you. He had cried with you. He had grown with you. And unlike the seasons which come and go, he stayed.

And he never left.

As you said your vows and exchanged rings and as you sealed the promises made with a kiss, you knew: through the seasons, he had truly, and sincerely, loved you.

- Super-Late Leanne.  ⏰

[yukiwrites]

Unconditional Love for Them

For Corrianderweek, day 5: Nohrian Summer / Beach Time. This is a sequel to the mini-series I started back when I was doing the weekly Xandersday writings! Now with baby Katie’s first time at the beach!

________________________

By the time Katerina was born, the Sealing Rites of Valla had been mostly finished, which meant that the youngest princess of Nohr would not know nor experience the ethereal beauty of the Forgotten Kingdom. To make up for it, the Royal couple wanted to let her travel through as many Deeprealms as possible, since quite a few of them emulated the vallite aesthetic.

Well, since the princess was still too young to retain much information, and considering she was around the same Siegbert had been when they first took him to the Hotrealm, Kamui and Xander decided to bring the children to the beach once summer hit the dark kingdom.

Well, apart from a larger amount of rain along with its consequential landslides around the foot of the mountains, the nohrian summer was nothing to write home about, especially compared to their hoshidan counterpart. Because of that, to allow the children to experience a fulfilling family time at the beach, the King and Queen could only open the portal to the Hotrealm.

Kana led the way, pulling the tiny Katerina by the hand as they walked towards the nearest Dragon Vein. “It’s so bright! And so hot! And the water is wooshing wooshing!” The young prince excitedly gestured, receiving his little sister’s undivided attention. The toddler widened her bright, red eyes -- a trait shared with all of her siblings and mother -- gapping her mouth just enough to allow her to coo and yapper in response.

“Woosh woosh!!” She turned to Kamui as they stopped in front of the Dragon Vein, right before Xander started reciting the words to open up the portal to their desired Deeprealm. “Mama! Kana said water goes woosh woosh!”

The Queen smiled fondly, placing a lock of curly hair behind the little girl’s pointy ear. “It really does! And it’s reaaaaaly big, so you shouldn’t run off on your own without us, okay?” She booped Katerina’s nose with her index, grinning just as the little girl did.

“Wight!” She puffed up her chest in response, squeezing Kana’s hand.

“Good girl.” Kamui nodded, then turned to her eldest son. “Are you okay, Sieggy? You can hold my hand if you want.”

Siegbert, now a 12-year-old, jumped in surprise with the concern, blushing as he thought that he didn’t want to behave like a child and worry his parents. “I-I am alright, Mother! There’s no need to hold my hand.”

Observing the situation, just as Xander finished chanting the words, the King directed his gaze to the Crown Prince. “Then what about holding MY hand, Siegbert?” He smiled softly to the young boy, clearly remembering how their first time at the beach was.

Fidgeting, the boy’s cheeks flashed in a bright red as he slipped his hand into his Father’s, mumbling a quiet ‘thank you’ as they walked into the light pouring out of the Portal.

“When we cross, it’s gonna be FWOOMP!” Kana pulled Katerina, trying to emulate the sound one makes when they jump on soft sand, though Katie actually understood it and started hopping as they crossed the light.

“Don’t run to the water, you two!” Kamui warned as the world turned white around her, already used to jumping between Deeprealms like that. Once her sense of self was back, she was greeted by the bright sun, hot weather and glittering waters of the sea as the warm sands engulfed her feet.

“Uwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!” Katerina yelled at the top of her lungs, startling both King and Queen and their Crown Prince as well. “SO PWETTY! PWEETTY!” She slipped her hand away from Kana’s hold, running ahead of him to roll around in the sand.

“Ah, your dress- Katieee, let me take off your dress first, pumpkin!” Kamui ran towards the two youngest children, “Kana, catch her! Catch, catch, catch!” She pulled her own dress up, discarding it on the wind, hoping Xander would get it from wherever he was behind her.

Chuckling, the King all but needed to extend his arm upwards to catch the flying dress, still not letting go of Siegbert’s hand as the both of them carried the bags with their beach supplies for their stay. “Is it still scary, Son?” Xander gestured with his chin towards the sea, understanding Siegbert’s concerns deeply as a fellow non-swimmer.

“Oh, not at all, Father!” Siegbert replied with sincerity. “Kana is an apt swimmer and his enthusiasm over the years shaved away my fear of the sea. It IS still rather overwhelming, though…” The prince looked down, sheepish.

Xander let go of their handhold to pat his son’s shoulder. “Why don’t you go have fun with your brother and sister? I shall set up our luggage here for the time being.”

Siegbert peeked at his siblings, gasping in surprise as he watched Kana sprint right at him.

“Here, Papa, our clothes!” Kana dumped the clothes he and Katerina had been using on Xander’s arms. “C’mon, Big Bro! The water’s super warm and Katie’s super excited to start swimming!”

“Swimming?! Isn’t she too small to start?” Siegbert held Kana’s hand as he followed the young prince towards their little sister, overly concerned about the tiny, excitable toddler.

Forgotten and full of luggage, Xander simply snorted to himself and placed the bags under a tree so he, too, could remove his formal clothing and join his family by the water.

“Papa!! Papa!!!!” Katerina huffed, tired from paddling, but too excited to care, “water is whooshy! WOOSHY!” She opened both arms to ask for upsies, not realizing she was in the middle of trying to swim from Kamui to Siegbert.

There was no cause to worry, however, since Kamui was still holding the toddler’s waist, so the little girl herself didn’t realize what she was doing. Frowning in concern, Xander took his daughter in his arms, sitting by the shallow water they’ve all gathered to introduce Katie to the sea. “It really does, does it not? However, be more careful, hm? The sea is as beautiful as it is dangerous.”

“Mhm, mhm!” Katie nodded, retaining absolutely no information whatsoever, as she wriggled herself out of Xander’s arms so she could try to paddle to her bibig bro instead.

“Awawa,” still unsure about how to properly hold his sister, Siegbert fidgeted once she was safely in his arms. “There, Katie, you’re with Big Brother now.” He smiled shyly, receiving her bright grin in response.

“Bibig bro is best!”

“Hey, I’m also your big bro! Aren’t I also the best?” Kana shoved his head in their midst, splashing water everywhere with his erratic hair.

“Bibig bro best!” Katerina puffed her cheeks, squeezing Siegbert’s neck in a too-tight embrace.

“Oh yeah? I’m gonna show you!” Kana wriggled his fingers towards Katerina, and, by the look in the little girl’s eyes, she knew what was coming. “Tickle tickle tickle!!”

“Nooo! Heeheehe!” Katie kicked water and brothers alike in her flailing, letting out that loud, adorable and absolutely fulfilling laughter only a toddler can make.

Covering her mouth with both hands to hide her huge grin, Kamui couldn’t tear her eyes away from the heartwarming scene she and Xander’s children were portraying, her chest suddenly being overcome with emotion.

Likewise, Xander slipped his hand into his Queen’s under the water, transmitting the thoughts and feelings they never tired of admitting to one another, no matter how long they’ve been married for: That they loved each other.

That they were overjoyed to have nurtured a family as loving and complete as this one.

That there was nothing they would’ve changed in their past, knowing that this was the future that awaited them.

At last, that they simply, truly, wholly and unconditionally love one another.

[florrickandassociates]

TGF Thoughts: 4x01-- The Gang Deals with Alternate Reality

I had a lot to say about this one, guys. 

Welcome back! I see this season TGF has decided to be It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Is this some sort of joke about how last season it was always raining? Is every title going to be like this? And where are the numbers!? There is no counting of any kind in this episode title! 

When you think about it, the central argument of this episode-- that 45’s election brought new life to resistance movements that would’ve otherwise laid dormant-- is also my central argument about why TGF is a good show instead of a passable one. Remember how in season one the point of the show was supposed to be a fake scandal about Maia? 

So it’s fitting that we begin season four by going back to the show’s pilot: Inauguration Day. Only this time, Diane is happily watching Hillary Clinton’s inauguration. Did I say happily? I meant ecstatically. 

As Diane pops champagne, the TV goes to static-- something’s off-- and the credits begin. Same credits as season 3 but with one key difference: things are coming together rather than exploding. I see what you did there. (The TVs still explode, though, and they still have the real 45 on them.)

Yeah I didn’t need to see the credits to know the Kings wrote this one. 

I think the notes the Kings left in the script for this episode for Brooke Kennedy just said, “Make Diane look like a glamorous badass.” I’m like one minute in and she’s already popped champagne and worn trendy sunglasses.

Brooke’s directing in this episode is so stylish and it might be my favorite ep she’s ever done? The showiness (and sometimes campy performances) REALLY work for the tone of this episode. 

Diane takes the elevator to work and looks quizzical. One may be tempted to ask how Diane knows to go to RBL if it’s the day after inauguration and she’s still at Lockhart Deckler whatever (one may then snark that RBL is in the LG space so she’d go there no matter what). The answer is: dream logic! 

(But really, little disorienting moments like that-- and yes, I know this was probably only disorienting for me and one other person-- help the episode work long before we know this isn’t a true alternate universe.)

Marissa is waiting at reception to inform Diane that HRC’s press secretary is in her office. Diane then asks Marissa who the president is, and Marissa asks Diane if she’s microdosing again. Ha! Also, that’s another clear clue that something’s up-- Diane wouldn’t have already microdosed right after inauguration. And why would Diane have microdosed in this AltVerse? Again-- dream logic. And I love it. In episodes like this, when things don’t add up, it’s wonderfully disorienting instead of frustrating. (Plus, this line is a knowing wink at fans about the absurdity of the microdosing storyline.)

Marissa confirms that it’s 2020 in show time. Diane has a flash of a selection of horrific images that have come out of these last few years, then says, ”God, have you ever had a dream that is so real that it takes you a long time to wake up?” I wish.

Diane wants to know how Hillary won, and Marissa says she won in a landslide-- 3 million votes. “Same as in my dream,” Diane says. Marissa thinks she means the other candidate had 3 million more votes, and wonders how he won if he had fewer votes. On one hand, Marissa totally knows about the electoral college. On the other hand, would “3 million votes” and hating the electoral college be cliched and top of mind enough to work as the joke in this scene if those votes had actually mattered? Probably not. I doubt many people would be talking about abolishing the electoral college, or that Marissa or even Diane would be SO quick to understand how one could win the popular vote and not the election, if we hadn’t all lived through the past three years. Also dream logic. It’s a great way of explaining things that are out of character.

“Whatever, it’s a dream, it doesn’t have to make sense,” says Marissa, making my point for me.

Oh hello there Lucca, your jacket is very bright. Lucca asks to sit in on Diane’s meeting with the press secretary. Lucca was up for a partnership in 3x10 but in this episode she’s very obviously an underling (and honestly seems a bit lower ranking and hesitant than usual-- I’ll need another episode or two to understand if this is how the writers are writing Lucca, how Diane views Lucca, or just what was easiest for the plot). 

The White House is now asking Diane to take on cases. Way to dream big, Diane!

And Diane will be arguing in front of the Supreme Court! 

In the alternate universe, Liz’s wonderful bathroom belongs to Diane.

Diane gets to do so many things she wouldn’t usually do in this ep, like furiously shake her head to prove to herself she’s not dreaming! 

Diane still has that Girl With Flower As Head painting and I do not believe she would have that painting if HRC were president because it’s too friggin weird. Also has it always had a US flag in the background?

In the alternate universe, Garland and Warren (as in Elizabeth) are both on the court. It’s a good laughline precisely because it’s so plausible. (Well, idk about the Warren part, but she’s a recognizable name.)

Diane looks so happy she could cry when she learns Warren is on the Supreme Court. 

There is a shot of Lucca that is so very clearly from Diane’s POV and I like it. I read a review of this episode that said it didn’t have enough character development. To that I say, one, this isn’t TGW-- this show has always been more about tone and theme, and two, there’s PLENTY here that’s about Diane’s POV and how she views others and thinks of herself. Because it’s dream logic I can’t make nearly as much out of it as I can make out of an episode like A Few Words, but there are little touches here and there. Even this shot of Lucca, where Lucca’s in the center of the frame shot from a high angle, grounds me in Diane’s POV. You could even make an argument about hierarchy based on the angle. 

“Who’s that?” Lucca whispers when Diane asks about Kavanaugh. Diane is elated at that response. 

Somehow we leave Diane’s POV (whatever, it’s a dream so I won’t be as brutal to this choice as I was to a similar but more subtle one in Don’t Fail) and follow Lucca into Adrian’s office. She immediately tells Liz and Adrian she’s concerned about Diane. That sounds like Lucca alright. 

Diane is DANCING in her office as she watches news coverage that isn’t a garbage fire.

I’m curious y’all-- are people in your area cheering at a certain time? Hearing cheers every night during this pandemic is one of the few things I like about this awful moment in time. (My recap writing was just interrupted by cheering, if you couldn’t guess the reason for this abrupt digression.) 

News stories in alternate reality: Cancer has been cured, there is polar bear overpopulation, the rainforest has been saved, 45 is REDUCING the amount of content he’s putting out into the world, and $35,000 is missing from some government agency. Ha. All that and people are hung up on $35,000? Sounds about right, actually.

Diane hugs Liz and Adrian because she feels like a weight has been lifted off of her. I appreciate that Diane acts without restraint or concern for what other people think in this episode. This is central to why I think this episode is actually a pretty good character study: this is who Diane imagines herself to be, more or less. Real Diane, no matter how bizarre things are, probably would handle herself more professionally in a work meeting and probably wouldn’t let feelings like this show. Dream Diane has no reason to double check herself. This is just how she thinks she’d react if there were absolutely no constraints. Not that she’s actively thinking- she’s just doing. 

Diane is very excited to be watching the news, and Adrian thinks she’s nuts-- there are scandals! Like the missing $35k and THE EMAILS. The GODDAMN EMAILS. Even a fictional joke about how they’d still be a scandal makes me mad. Twenty years from now it will still be too soon to remind me of the emails. (And to play Fight Song, that song is cancelled.)

A haircut is also a scandal because sexism.

I admire this show for calling attention to problems on both sides without ever screaming BOTH SIDES ARE EQUALLY BAD. This episode may call out some of the good things that have happened as a result of the 2016 election, but the whole premise of this joke rests on the fact that only one of the two potential administrations could run through a year’s worth of scandals in a day. 

Might circle back to this later on-- btw I write these after watching the whole episode, so I do know what’s going to happen next-- but I don’t think the show is trying to make the case that it’s good 45 was elected. I think they’re trying to ask questions about how the world has changed and cause and effect so we can understand the moment we’re in. Above, I said I liked hearing my neighbors cheer every night. And I could write a lot of words on how that collective activity inspires me, makes me feel connected even when I’ve been stuck inside for a month, etc, how I’ve gotten better about keeping in touch with old friends, whatever, and NONE of that would mean that a global pandemic is a good thing. It just means that like any huge societal phenomenon, its implications are complex. 

TGF and TGW have always, always, always been shows about understanding where we are in time. That’s what this episode does. And it makes sense to do a thought experiment like this now, at the start of season 4, in a season opener. We’ve had enough time living in this world that we can reflect on it.

Diane laughs, because what Diane dream sequence would be complete without a glorious laugh?

Adrian’s kinda suspicious of Hillary. Sure, cancer’s been cured, but it’s not public how or when! 

God it’s weird to hear some of the most absurd happenings of the last three years as punchlines. 

The line about the Obama’s overall deal at Netflix is fire. 

Diane laughs AGAIN. 

Oh right, Harriet Tubman was going to be on the $20 bill. (Is it obvious yet that I am the exact right target for this episode?)

Julius is VERY mad about Hillary’s $500 haircut. Heh. He’s also publicly supporting Trump which is interesting (and probably a dream logic thing; Diane knows he supported Trump therefore in her dream he isn’t ever hesitant to share that he voted for Trump.)

“Only Hillary could cure cancer and turn it into a scandal,” someone else adds. I’m loving all these jokes. He is mad cancer wasn’t cured earlier and that it’s been cured in an election year. This joke is funny because it’s exactly what would happen in this scenario.

I wonder if Julius would be more likely to speak up about his political affiliation if the stakes were lower. If 45 lost, then is supporting him as much of a thing to hide in a place like RBL? People would be mad but they probably would get over their moral opposition to his views a lot faster when it isn’t a real threat.

Diane’s brought in a huge client, which is news to her. And that client is none other than Harvey Weinstein, which… my God this is an interesting thought experiment. 

“I’m amazed you got him away from Lisa Bloom,” Adrian says. YIKES!!!! (If y’all haven’t read Catch and Kill yet, pick up a copy ASAP.)

No one’s heard of Weinstein’s sexual assault issues. I believe it. I mean, I think some women in power might have known before 2017-- I still vividly recall how many journalists reacted to the release of the story not with “Oh my God, how has this been going on for so long?” but with “Holy shit, someone managed to publish a story about this?!”-- but I’ll believe that the general consensus in elite liberal circles was to set the rumors aside and not share them widely.

I can’t watch this episode without thinking about VIP Treatment (2x05 of TGW). That episode, which raises the question of what happens when someone accuses a liberal legend of sexual assault, feels so ahead of its time. It aired in 2010. And I just, right this moment, learned that it was ripped from the headlines about accusations a masseuse made against Al Gore. Guys. I didn’t know there were allegations in 2010 about Al Gore. Is that because I was 16 in 2010 and just never heard of (or forgot about) the story? Is it because he had less power? Is it because of something specific about the reporting or the allegations? Or is it because we as a culture swept it under the rug since it was (allow me to be the millionth person to make this awful joke) an inconvenient truth? 

I don’t know the answers to the above. What I do know is that this episode is making me ask those questions.

In Marissa’s world (“you mean reality?”), 45 bragged about grabbing women by the pussy and then lost the election. And the story ended there. There was no women’s march, no #MeToo.

Sarah Steele gets to react to a lot of things in this episode and it is very delightful to see her say things like, “what are pussy hats?”

Diane looks so angry and stunned when she realizes that Weinstein is still “a thing” in the world. 

He won the Presidential Medal of Freedom because of course he did. 

His wikipedia page says his only controversies are about his managerial style. Yikes.

Marissa’s reaction to the phrase “masturbating into plants” is one of the best things about this episode. I love that she gets so hung up on it. 

Charlie Rose is the first name other than Weinstein that comes to mind for Diane when Marissa asks what other men were serial harassers. I’ve got to think that Rose gets the most attention here in no small part because he was part of the CBS family-- he was even on TGW. 

I’ve seen Annaleigh Ashford in so many things recently. 

Diane handles the meeting with Team Weinstein VERY poorly (she also does not care to handle it well), while Adrian covers with the “all options are open to us” gibberish that Diane absolutely would be able to convincingly deploy in a meeting she couldn’t follow. I point this out because it shows that 1) Diane isn’t behaving the way she would in reality and 2) Diane does not give a fuck. 

If this were reality, would Diane push so hard in this meeting? I don’t know. This situation is so far removed from reality it’s hard to tell. But my sense is that Diane would like to think of herself as someone who would never waver in her commitment to Doing The Right Thing, but she’d probably be a lot more diplomatic-- even in real 2020-- in initial meetings. It’s a bit dated at this point, but in VIP Treatment Diane was hesitant to believe the victim because the man accused of assault was a high profile liberal. To her credit, she does eventually choose the victim over her own politics. But I could totally see Diane-- with no knowledge of the real timeline-- behaving like her friend/HRC’s press secretary Zoe does in this episode.

All that to say: personally, I don’t think #MeToo would’ve caught on to the extent it did if women weren’t already angry. I believe there could have been a hashtag and some stories (maybe even the Weinstein story). But I also believe women felt an urgent need to speak out and organize. And I believe that more women were inclined to believe victims and get angry. And I believe that it was only because of the world in general that #MeToo spread outside of a few online circles. To put it another way, you know how there are sometimes cases of the week on this show where you might know the reference in detail, but if you ask a co-worker or friend about it they’ll know either nothing or only the very basics? I think all of #MeToo could’ve ended up like one of those cases if it hadn’t played out with 2017 in the background.

Dreams aren’t subtle: Weinstein’s publicity tour includes appearances with Charlie Rose and Matt Lauer. (This joke also serves as a reminder that sexual harassment is a systemic problem.)

Diane is SO confrontational in this meeting. Also, the woman they’re meeting with is SO FRIGGIN COMPLICIT. 

Weinstein’s team frames sexual assault allegations-- which are still floating around even in alt2020-- as a Republican conspiracy. I have no doubt they would have used this approach if given the chance. 

I’m on page six and fifteen minutes in, damn.

Adrian, or Diane’s version of Adrian, does not believe women and seems to hate Hillary Clinton a little bit too. An accurate portrayal of Adrian? Lines that betray Diane’s suspicion of where Adrian stands on women’s issues? Or just that Adrian is there to be the person pushing back and it could’ve been anyone? (I think it’s somewhere between the first two, personally. If this could’ve been anyone, why not Liz?) 

In this alternate universe NBC’s refusal to broadcast Ronan Farrow’s investigation is proof of Weinstein’s innocence, because in the alt universe we still apparently have faith in the corporate culture at NBC. (Perhaps the most surprising thing to me about Catch and Kill is that a LOT of it is dedicated to exposing the shit that went down within NBC. It’s fascinating and also makes it crystal clear how assault is a systemic problem and not just a few bad apples you should avoid being alone with.)

Adrian’s reaction when Diane mentions Reddick (Adrian knows nothing of the accusations in this universe) changes the tone of this scene in an instant and it’s breathtaking. This is the one moment in the episode where she knows she has to shut up. 

The one thing about this ep I am not sure I buy is that the firm is struggling because of the rise in corporate taxes. But I know so little about this issue I don’t care if it’s right or wrong. 

After Diane leaves Adrian’s office, Liz asks, “What about my dad?” meaning she somehow heard the conversation through the wall. (The door was definitely closed so either their office design is worse than I thought or it’s just dream logic.) Diane doesn’t share the rumor with Liz.

Lucca is for some reason on this case, and they are for some reason in court on the same day they learned about the case. And the best part is that I don’t have to worry about whether or not this is plausible BECAUSE IT’S ALL A DREAM

Another thing I’ll say about this ep-- it’s pace remarkably well. The opening previews what’s to come, there’s just enough happy liberal utopia with funny jokes at the start, the Weinstein twist comes at the right moment, and the shift to the more dark, character focused scenes that wrap up the episode come exactly when the writers have gotten as much mileage as they can out of this premise. I knew this episode would be fantastic the moment I saw it was only 41 minutes long.

The judge keeps saying the opposing counsel’s full name, Ann Howard. Is this supposed to be a familiar name to me? I am not getting the reference. 

The judge’s ruling is basically that no one would take the risk involved in assaulting someone at work these days so the case must be bogus. And then we see, immediately (because, dream) that the judge is totally corrupt and just wants to get his daughter an internship with Weinstein. 

“Justice is an equation. Justice equals the law times the zeitgeist. The law on its own doesn’t stand up. You need the mood of the times on your side,” Diane eloquently explains. That’s basically what this episode is saying. To put it more simply: Context matters and nothing happens in a vacuum. (TGF and TGW were always about the context-- you simply couldn’t do a show about a woman standing by her cheating politician husband and being REVERED for it in 2020. That’s not about the law, but the same principle applies.)

Lucca says they won, so the zeitgeist worked for them-- and how could it be against women when the president is a woman? Remember how the Kings used to say that TGF was going to be about Diane retiring because she thought the glass ceiling had been shattered? I always thought that sounded wrong, but this episode is helping me understand what they were thinking a little bit. 

Lucca calls out Diane, a bit abruptly, on how only the woman partners probably would get to say “no more” if there were to be a women’s movement because the associates can’t risk it. Lucca’s right and she’s wrong-- her words underestimate how mainstream and trendy it’s become to publicly talk about sexual harassment, but she’s 100% right that there are still underlying power dynamics.

Diane’s Lucca is V V V V V V V concerned with power dynamics and VERY much wants to be higher ranking. On the one hand, actual Lucca wants to rank higher too. On the other, is there a piece of Diane that sees Lucca as power hungry? 

Lucca’s asked to take documents to Weinstein, and she’s flattered. Diane, like every viewer, sees this as a car crash in slow motion. She knows exactly what will happen when Lucca gets to his hotel with the documents. But Lucca, who’s in the dark, only knows it’s a good opportunity to impress a huge client.

Diane tells Weinstein’s… whatever she is? That she is “Harvey’s pimp” and she is not wrong. Also since I don’t actually know this woman’s job title I’ll just refer to her that way moving forward.

(See what I mean about Diane just saying things that are totally unprofessional bc this is a dream Diane who does what she wants and not actual Diane making tough decisions?)

Lucca is REALLY bitter about how Diane is always taking opportunities away from her. They’re definitely trying to do something with Lucca in this episode but as I said earlier, I think I need to see what they have planned for the rest of the season before I can fully understand what they’re going for. 

Diane tells Lucca exactly what is going to happen when she goes to drop off the papers. Lucca won’t hear it, so Diane asks Marissa to keep an eye on her.

Another possibility for what they’re trying to do with Lucca (and Adrian): Maybe it’s supposed to be about how different Types would react-- the powerful man who benefits from not questioning things and has some latent sexism issues; the ambitious young woman who gets caught in a bad situation because she’s trying to move her career forward. The more I think about it, the more I think this is what they’re going for-- and the question I should be asking is what does it mean about Adrian and Lucca (in terms of how the writers see them, in terms of how Diane sees them) that they can take on these roles so easily?

(It may say nothing about Diane because… idk, do YOU do thoughtful character analysis in your sleep? Because I don’t!)

Marissa is still stuck on the plants and I love it.

Lucca catches Marissa right away, but all that accomplishes is that both of them clearly see that Diane is right. These scenes feel a little unnecessary (they’re also not in Diane’s POV, though surely dreams can have tangents) and I think they’re only here to illustrate how the system works. I can’t imagine this scene is teaching many people new information.

Also there’s… just not another scene with Lucca in this episode? And I don’t know if I feel like that’s a bad thing or like it’s part of dream logic? I think it’s probably just bad plotting that the unnecessary sequence ends abruptly and doesn’t return.

“With the presidency, women can do whatever they want,” says one of Diane’s liberal friends at a women’s event. I’m… not 100% sure anyone would say this. If this were true why would they even be having a gala for a women’s charity? But point taken. People love this type of statement.

So Diane’s extremely low cut dress like has a mesh thing covering her exposed chest??I can’t figure it out. 

Weinstein is also a hero to everyone at the feminist charity. When Diane hears this, she gives an interview to a reporter about having a long way to go, which I 100% believe would be the message no matter reality we’re in what because literally no one is going to say please donate to my cause we have no battles left to fight BUT I DIGRESS. Diane tries to ignite #MeToo (and even name checks Tarana Burke, so that’s awesome) and is quickly cut off.

Then, after giving the interview, she has Jay (hello!) set her up on Twitter. Dream Diane is revealing just how little she understands how social media works. She also wants to link to a “Me Too Site” which is… not how any of this works, Diane.

Diane sees herself on the news-- she’s mostly cut from the piece and her words are taken out of context. 

Adrian and Liz stare Diane down for calling Weinstein’s pimp a pimp and Diane defends herself. Liz doesn’t believe this either. Diane is asked to sign a VERY RIDICULOUS (like it sounds like 45 more than anything else) apology letter and laughs. 

Liz reminds her that they’re close to bankruptcy and that they’ve defended killers before (oh, and, most relevant-- the assholes to avoid case, I can’t believe I went to 205 to think about how Diane would react in a more nuanced present day situation when I had that example!), why would Diane draw the line here? “Everyone deserves a defense. Just not everyone deserves MY defense,” Diane says. You know it’s a dream when a character on this show actually says that. Do you know how many times (if you’re still reading this you probably do know) I have written something to the effect of “SAYING EVERYONE DESERVES REPRESENTATION IS NOT THE SAME AS REPRESENTING THEM YOURSELF, LIZ/DIANE/ADRIAN/WILL/ALICIA/CARY/LUCCA/WHOEVER”? It’s been a lot. 

(Here is something I wrote in a case in which Diane, at the height of #MeToo, defended some assholes for money: “‘I wouldn’t say hate. We’re obligated,’ Diane says. Ohhh yes this is a new pet peeve. Y’all are not obligated. You were not assigned this case. You chose to take it for the money.”)

Idk what my point is here, maybe that this feels like a dream because the characters are never this principled in reality.

Zoe, the press secretary, wants Diane to shut down #MeToo. Lucca’s there too, but she says nothing (despite the experience she may have just had, because dream). Zoe doesn’t want women to get angry about abuse because “that’s not the message that helps us in 2020.” Ooof. But I buy it. I am not sure if it’s ACCURATE that anger wouldn’t help but I can completely see campaign staffers being afraid it would hurt, especially given that Bill Clinton has… more than a few issues. 

This scene veers into Diane’s POV. The camera gets closer and closer to her as she feels boxed in, and Liz, Adrian, and the pimp stare accusingly at her. Suddenly she realizes she doesn’t know where Kurt is because she’s spent the last few days at work. I think the most dream-like thing about this is the way Kurt just suddenly pops into the dream and shifts the tone of the whole thing. 

She runs off. Liz and Adrian ask Diane to step back from the firm for Weinstein and she’s like, okay, I’m going home, “I don’t know how I changed my clothes, I went to that event last night and I have different clothes on now and I don’t know where Kurt is.” I LOVE watching this whole episode twist into something this weird.

When Diane gets home, there’s a man fixing her door. He’s watching Trump TV, which is currently airing Felix Staples singing “This Wall is Your Wall” and honestly this is the best use of Felix Staples in the show so far.

The man fixing Diane’s door also remembers reality. He doesn’t know why he’s fixing Diane’s door. It’s disorienting. 

Diane gets a beer with the man fixing her door and wonders about if she even likes this world where HRC is president (or if the problem is just that she doesn’t believe it). (I think she’d like it just fine if she experienced it linearly, tbh.)

Sexy gun lady from a previous episode is back, and Kurt’s guns are missing because he didn’t want them to be confiscated (I do not believe this would ever be a policy but this is a full on illogical dream right now) and now Diane is talking to the TV.

“I’m in the car, right?” Diane says while standing in her bedroom and pretending to grab a steering wheel. Heh. 

Diane drives to a cabin in the woods (the way this is shot is SO atmospheric) and finds Kurt, in shadow, in the woods. So THIS is what Robert King was going for in Mind’s Eye in the clumsily directed scene with fake Will in shadow. Gotta say, the whole “person you love and can’t quite picture” thing works a ton better when it is obvious it’s an intentional style choice.

This scene is so weird because suddenly politics doesn’t matter and Diane only cares about Kurt and also Kurt might be dead? I am not sure I understand what this is saying. And I’m pretty sure I spent the entirety of this scene the first time through alternating between thinking “ooh pretty”, “this is what 614 wanted to be,” and “please don’t kill Kurt!!”

Kurt pulls Diane to reality and gets her to recap where we left off. She wakes up on the floor of her bedroom. She and Kurt have both, thankfully, survived Book Club’s SWATting. 

HA the first thing Diane says when she wakes up is “What happened?” which… that HAS to be intentional right???? 

To check that Diane is of sound mind, one of the agents asks her how many fingers he’s holding up and who’s president. She laughs. 

This episode is UNDER 40 minutes if you exclude the credits and promo.

Guess we’re not doing recap songs.

Had a lot to say about this one. I’ve liked TGW’s mind-y episodes more, but that’s not really a fair comparison since the point of this wasn’t character study… it was tone setting.

What this episode does NOT give me is a sense of what season 4 will be about, other than the usual absurdity. 

[a-man-for-hire-and-his-archives]

In The Daily Telegraph, Save the Children's Ambassador Luke Arnold talks about his recent trip to Nepal and reveals what life is really like for children three months since earthquakes devastated the country.

In the mountains of Nepal, children welcome me into their class to sing, dance and play. This is Sindhupalchowk and it is the most picturesque location for a school I have ever seen.

Surrounded by misty valleys and lush rainforests, we take shelter from the rain in a temporary classroom built by Save the Children.

The former school is a pile of rubble. Every permanent structure has been flattened, or is marked with a large red circle meaning "unsafe".

On April 25, a catastrophic earthquake rocked this beautiful country causing landslides, avalanches, buildings to collapse and roads to split. Weeks later a second devastating quake followed.

The quakes killed over 8,600 people. The impact, however, has been felt by 8 million people including 3.2 million children.

More than 750,000 homes were destroyed or damaged, including 66,000 in the Sindhupalchowk district alone – equivalent to about 75 per cent of homes in the City of Sydney.

Since then, the Nepali people have come a long way in rebuilding their spirits, if not their livelihoods.

I visited a number of Save the Children's "Child Friendly Spaces" – havens where kids can feel safe to play, share their stories and begin the journey to normal life.

Here I learned the children were quiet and nervous after the earthquake, scared that at any moment the world could crash down around them again.

Over the weeks they have begun to open up about their experiences and find some solace in each other's company. They are beginning to smile, laugh, and feel like children again.

Sadly when they leave this safe space and return home, the devastation is still an everyday reality. Menita, a mother with two-year-old twins, told me that a loud noise or strong breeze can revive terrible fear in her children, scared of the disaster's return.

Most families in the district now live in temporary tarpaulin shelters. This inadequate shelter won't protect them from the current monsoon rains, nor the harsh winter ahead when the need for assistance will be even greater.

Beneath the rubble of their homes are all their belongings. A young girl told me her school materials – bag, textbooks, stationery – are all gone. Like most children in the community she relies on outside assistance to continue her education.

The tourism industry, a major source of income for the economy, has taken a battering too and this hinders the pace of recovery.

Meanwhile, in the large cities as well as hard to reach villages, Save the Children works tirelessly to help children and families rebuild their lives.

The beautiful people of Nepal are so hospitable, sociable and full of smiles that they often belie how serious their situation still is.

Emergency assistance from the international community so far has made a huge difference in meeting the immediate needs of those affected.

But the sad truth is that we have only been able to provide enough for the next three to six months and more must be done to get Nepal back on its feet.

As a wealthy nation, Australia must increase its comparatively paltry assistance in the wake of this terrible disaster.

Compared to other countries we are falling behind in our responsibilities – little wonder when Australia has slashed its aid budget by $1 billion this year alone.

For example, Canada, whose economy is similar in size to Australia's, has pledged almost four times as much as our government.

With continued aftershocks, landslides, floods and winter just around the corner, we must all pledge our continued support to these brave and beautiful people in a truly horrific time.

Luke Arnold is an Australian actor and ambassador of Save the Children. An edited version of this opinion piece was published in The Daily Telegraph on 24 July 2015.

[funkymeihem-fiction]

My Lovely Assistant - The Revenge of Dr. Junkenstein (NSFW)

“Oh, Dr. Junkenstein! There you are!” A voice chimed from above, a soft orange glow descending from the dark skies. The Witch’s curled slippers made no sound as she alighted on the cobbles, wet with rain and blood and scattered with ash from the charred corpse that lay half-curled near the wall.

His labcoat was in tatters, burnt to a crisp and spattered with black where it had once been clean white. The man’s skinny form had gone fetal in a hopeless attempt to defend himself at the very last, but he was peppered with arrows and bullets, and covered in alchemical fluids that had burned him all the faster when his own grenades had exploded as he’d fallen. A pair of blue glass goggles lay in a puddle nearby, the left lens cracked.

The Witch of the Wilds leaned down over the gruesome thing with surprising tenderness, her gloved fingertips reaching out and gently touching the burnt locks of ashen hair. Her eyes closed, she said the correct words, and focused…as a bright light lit the world for half a moment, and the charred husk was a man once more. Dr. Junkenstein uncurled from the ground, coughing up a mouthful of ash and wiping his lips on a thick rubber glove. Understandably, he seemed more disoriented than anything, dragged back to the world of the living yet again.

“Wuugh…” Sitting up, his eyes rolled in two different directions, swaying slightly. “You never think that fire is going to hurt as much as it does, y’know?”

“Welcome back, Dr. Junkenstein,” the Witch said smoothly. “Although I fear that you were bested yet again. Where the Lord of this Castle keeps summoning these new allies from, I’ve no idea. I wonder if I too should seek allies elsewhere…Dr. Junkenstein, please pay attention. That was a veiled threat and you’ve just missed it.”

“Huh? Oh, right. What?”

The mad doctor looked around him, spying the crumpled and exploded scrap metal of his zomnics littering the castle grounds. Scarecrow, too, had been utterly mangled, and his erstwhile creation was little more than piles of moldering cloth and scattered straw. And past that, he spied a familiar lunk of rotted meat… With a wail, Dr. Junkenstein clambered through the cold puddles, carelessly tossing aside Scarecrow’s mask and picking up a huge severed shoe with part of a leg still attached.

“Nooo! My Monster! My creations!” He clutched the leg in a mad embrace, seemingly caring nothing for the smears it left on his coat. He even gave it a sobbing little smooch, not noticing the severely disgusted look the Witch was giving him. “What have they done to you! Not to worry, not to worry, Dr. Junkenstein will fix you right up. Mei, sweetie dumpling, get the needle and thread! Mei, hurry with the…Wait a minute…Mei! Where’s my Mei!”

His loyal jiangshi was nowhere in sight. With the rest of his army in ruins, had they managed to destroy her as well? Could that untidy rabble truly destroy a creature like his faithful Chinese vampire? There was no trace that his undead assistant had ever been there at all; not a bloodstain or scrap of cloth or even the feather from her cap. Now frantic, he tossed the Monster’s severed leg aside and began digging through the wreckage with both hands, metal bits going flying.

“Don’t worry, lovey, I’ll find you!”

The Witch drifted forward and cast him into shadow, primly adjusting her hat and dodging a piece of zomnic scrap that went hurtling by her. “Calm down, Dr. Junkenstein. Mei-Ling is…Well, she’s still alive in a sense of the word. Although I fear she’s had a bit of a complication that I’m unable to assist with.”

“Wot? Then where is she?” Junkenstein breathed out, then scoffed. So Mei was still ‘alive’, at least. But he had a hard time imagining anything beyond the scope of the Witch’s power. He himself had just been violently risen from the dead again, an occurence that was starting to become all too familiar. “Er, whaddaya mean, even you can’t help her? What complication can’t you fix?”

The Witch cleared her throat, perhaps a little awkward for the first time that the Doctor had ever seen. Her lips pursed, gaze darting almost imperceptibly while he busied himself with replacing his goggles. The comforting shield of blue glass settled over his vision once more, turning about with his hands on his bony hips. For once, he was the one doing the confronting, as the Witch busied herself with the sudden need to inspect her broomstick.

“I have helped her to the best of my ability, but it seems that we have hit a…shall we say, impasse?” she said. “It’s all a rather silly matter, really. And she’s terribly embarrassed about the whole thing, so we’d appreciate you stepping in and taking care of this quickly. I’ll take care of the rest of your servants in the meanwhile. Mei-Ling, dear, you can come out.”

There was still no answer, and Dr. Junkenstein frowned as he peered into the darkness past the Witch’s unearthly glow. “Aw, Mei. Where are you, my l’il pudding pie? There’s naught to worry over now, the magnificent Dr. Junkenstein, the Master of Life and Death himself—” He paused at the Witch’s warning cough. “Er, the Doctor is in, and you know there’s no reason at all to be sheepish. No secrets here. You and I’ve been through so much alrea—”

Something moved in the shadows. A very small hunched figure, seeming smaller than ever, shuffled out of the night. Like a very shy vampiric schoolgirl on her first day, Mei took small little hops forward, scooting slightly to the side to hide behind the Witch’s grandeur. Despite the violent battled beforehand, she seemed to be in relatively good shape. There was a splash or two of blood on her robes, marring the white crane on her chest. One of her slippers had torn and would need to be mended. A visible cut had ruined the cuff of her sleeves, and her hat was missing…although the missing hat was easily explained.

Mei was sporting a severed stump of a neck, and her head was completely gone. Cold, blue-tinted meat was all that was left, with the white vertebrae of bone and the tubes of the esophagus stuck within, their edges too clean to have been anything than the swift single cut of a very sharp blade.

Dr. Junkenstein frowned, rubbing his stubbled chin. “Aw, pookie bear, is that the problem! Nothing to be ashamed of, darl, we’ve all lost our heads now and again. Which way did it go? Who did that to you, anyway? Oh, they’re gonna be in for it now! You just tell me who’s the perpetrator, I’ll show them a thing or two about a thing or two! So, first let’s just find that pretty little skull of yours before we…Hm?”

What was left of the jiangshi’s corpse seemed very upset about the matter indeed, hunching down behind the Witch again. When questioned on her head’s whereabouts, she waved both metallic claws and started making very strange gestures. But with no way to verbalize, she was left to an elaborate game of charades, and the doctor could only squint at her in growing consternation. After a moment, she smacked one fist into the other and held up her taloned fingers.

“Hmmm,” the doctor mused aloud, squinting behind his goggles. “Okay, two words. First word. Okay. Big. Giant. Tall. No, movement? Forward, up…Over. Over!” He cackled in delight as Mei gave him the thumbs up. “Okay second word. Shape. Triangle. Wave. Slope. Mountain. Mountain! Right, right, over the mountain.”

She waved her confirmation and pointed towards a large and rocky peak just outside the castle’s territory, then began gesturing again.

“Squeakies. Bats. Spooky, dark, in the dark. Oh! Right you are, darling! I see, they’re on the other side of that mountain, just outside the mouth of a cave with a bat population, on a rather narrow ledge with a crumbled pile of landslide boulders on one side.” He nodded, then turned and started walking. “All right, let’s go!”

The Witch gave him a startled look. “You got all that from charades?”

“You didn’t? Thought she made it pretty obvious,” he scoffed. “Can’t forget, when I first found her, we spent weeks together with her unable to speak even a lick of the language. And don’t tell them I told you this, but my Monster and Scarecrow have never exactly been much for scintillating conversation either, if you catch my drift. So I spent months and months in that tower, perfecting my beautiful creations and perfecting the art of supernatural language interpretation because none of them could talk to me!”

The Witch slowly lifted one brow. “Dr. Junkenstein, yet again I find myself simultaneously impressed and depressed by your personage.”

The good doctor only busied himself with fussing over his headless jiangshi, puckering his lips and leaning down to plant a kiss right on the ice-cold meat of her open neck. “Not to worry, smoochie. The Good Lady and I aren’t going to let my most ghoulish girl go without her parts for too long. Now a stray foot or arm is one thing, got plenty of replacements for those. But well, awfully hard to replace a head, and yours is the prettiest head in the world. Plus all the things we use it for, ehehehe…” His pale cheeks lit up pink at the thought.

The decapitated corpse placed both claws over her heart as if touched by his words, then waved abashedly at him in a ‘Oh, you!’ sort of gesture before wrapping herself up in his gangly embrace.

Unable to entirely hide her disgust this time, the Witch sighed and rubbed two fingers against her temples. “This would all be so much easier if I could simply resurrect you myself, Mei-Ling. But as it stands, your standing with death was made long before we met. Oh, and Doctor? This is really more of a quick recovery sort of thing. Please simply get the skull back and try not to cause trouble. I…have my eye on the one who did this to her. And I do not want him badly harmed.”

“Like hell!” The doctor’s temper flared, even while Mei tugged fretfully at his sleeve. “Resurrect the rest of my minions and I’ll reactivate the zomnics! I’ll turn our whole damned army after this bloke!”

“Mind your tone, Dr. Junkenstein,” the Witch replied coldly, and something seemed to curdle inside the man’s veins. His scrawny body shrunk and hunched down once more, still clutching covetously at his headless companion. She adjusted her skirts to smoothly lower and sit upon her hovering broom, narrowing her gaze at him. “I shall be tending to the remains of our cohorts. You are tasked with simply finding Miss Zhou’s missing head and bringing it back, with no harm coming to the perpetrator. Are my instructions clear?”

“Y-yes ma’am. Lady Ma’am. But…why wouldn’t—”

“Are. My instructions. Clear.”

“…Yes Ma’am.”

***

He was eager to leave the Witch to her duties, hurrying out of the dark castle grounds with Mei’s corpse hopping in step just behind him. She had always been more quiet and polite than him, but now her utter silence was unnerving. He really did miss her having a mouth…for lots of reasons, really, but if he thought too much about it, he’d get distracted. Best to stick to the task at hand. Limping forward along the muddy kingdom paths, they soon left the destruction behind them.

“I’m still not entirely clear on the physics at work here, darl. Can tell you’re able to see and hear me despite having no eyes or ears attached at the moment, but are you really sure you’re up for this? Er, we could always just ask for the Witch of the Wilds to bring back the Summoner. Now she’s not exactly the nicest, I know, but we could ask to have her teleport us right up to—” He tilted his white-tufted head as the jiangshi made more silent gestures, before he gasped and placed a gloved hand to his chest.

“Well! You don’t have to get so snitty, my dear. I know this is the most urgent of matters, but there’s no need to lose your head—” A black claw whapped him in the arm and he cackled aloud. Snagging her hand with his own, he lifted it upward and placed a few smacking wet kisses to the backs of her knuckles. “No, no, no, just a joke! Just lightening the mood! Just give us a laugh- Er…or a nod- Er…Wait.”

Mei waved both hands, gestured, slapped him in the other arm, and gestured again. But her admonishment seemed to be a playful one, headless or no. Especially when she made several more signs with her curled talons, then grasped onto the front of his labcoat, sliding a hand inside and then down his narrow chest.

Junkenstein gasped. “A reward? Mei! Blimey! You’re lucky the others aren’t around to hear you say all that. You’re a naughty girl, aren’t you? You know how the Witch feels about the PDA. But uh, I mean, we do kinda need your head to…Agghck!” His shriek faded into a reedy giggle as her claws slid a little lower, cheeks going from pink to neon red. “W-well! You know that just returning my lovely assistant’s head to her is plenty reward enough. But maybe, you know, since you’re already offering? Yeah, all right! That puts a pep in my step! C’mon!”

The jiangshi did not need to be told twice. She withdrew wordlessly from his skinny body and followed after him, with Dr. Junkenstein fussing and grumbling as he started looking for quicker paths up the towering black escarpment above them. His attempts to climb were a rather pathetic affair, his peg leg screeching against the rock and his flimsy build doing him no favors. Mei waited patiently to at least let him make the effort, before she outstretched her arms and hopped forward once more.

She scooped him up as one would a damsel in distress, claws hooking under his knees and back. He might have even swooned a little, as the headless corpse of a woman lifted him up and bent her knees…and her movements went from hopping to leaping. She bounded with an agility that she rarely showed openly, the scientist rattling against her chest and clinging onto her as up and up they went. Little pebbles went scattering away from her soft slippers, ricocheting off of boulders and scaling the cliffside as the jiangshi was finally boosted up by an unnatural whirl of white mist. With an artistic little spin, she landed with a soft noise amongst the debris of the struggling pines attached to the perilous mountainside.

Unfortunately, the decapitation had affected her a little more than her body was willing to admit. She landed gracefully, even posing with her charge in both arms…and then promptly tilted straight over with a rattling crash when she tried to take a step forward. Trying to navigate the world without her eyes and ears really attached was not the easiest. Like a felled tree, she just tilted right over and the doctor went with her, his shriek muffled as he landed on top of her in a spray of pine needles and dirt.

Dr. Junkenstein pulled his head out of her bosom, one eye opening warily behind his goggles. Groaning, he staggered upright as his assistant helpfully ushered him up again, swaying to one side and jamming his peg into the dirt. “Ooooh, hold on. Hold on. Too fast, just got resurrected here…Brrp. Okay. Nooot gonna chunder…Oh hell—” He bent double, making gagging noises while Mei apologetically patted him on the back. “Hggh. Hggghhh!”

Luckily, he hadn’t eaten anything on his freshly reformed stomach for him to vomit. The nausea soon passed, and he wiped at his chin and looked around blearily as the two found themselves on the other side of the mountain. The doctor composed himself as best he could, smoothing out his labcoat, and tilted his tufted head as he lowered into his favorite creeping hunch.

“You hear something, sweetie? Think that’s them?”

She did not respond, only hopping after her master as he crept along the dark rocks. Junkenstein soon spotted the faint glow of a campfire, and the shadowy figures lurking around it. Just as his jiangshi had ‘said’, the group of mercenaries and allies had made their camp at the mouth of a cave in the steep hillside. Junkenstein kept his distance, even though anger and hatred rankled inside his ribcage as he spied his hated foes that had just finished killing him and stealing his poor girl’s precious head. He was close enough that he could recognize a few of them; the Alchemist, the Gunslinger, the Swordsman, the Archer… Where the rest had gone, he couldn’t say. He was already outnumbered— and if the others were nearby, massively so.

Mei tugged urgently at his sleeve.

He waved her off and squinted, adjusting his goggles. “I know, it’s not looking good. Too many. Others might be close by, too. And she expects me not to blast them sky high? Really, why would the Witch make this a bloody stealth operation? She knows I’m no good for those!”

Another pull at his coat.

“Why wouldn’t she have sent the Reaper or even that useless Scarecrow for stealthy nonsense…Unless it was a trick and she wanted me to blow up this stealth operation? She’s always been a tricky one. This might be another one of her cunning plans, do you think? Like, maybe she was so adamant about not killing whoever stole your head, because she knew I was going to kill whoever stole your head. I mean, it’s not like I can do anything less. After what they did to you?”

There was a soft movement at his side, though he barely noticed.

He dug through his lab coat, pulling out handfuls of bombs and scrap. “I see it now! I’m onto her game! It’s actually a brilliant plan because it’s such a bad plan! Ohohoho, I’ve got it this time, that’s the rub. So it’s decided, then. We blow up this whole stealth mission, kill everyone as revenge, and then find your head! Nobody steals my pookie pie’s head! Except me! Because that’s different in a much more foreplay sort of way! Dunno which one took it, but we’re gonna find out real quick, we are. The Witch can sort through the piles afterward. Okay, Mei. You go in soft, and then I’m gonna go in real loud. You ready, darl?”

A finger tapped him on the shoulder.

He turned. “Darl…?”

A metallic face peered down to look at him, the metallic joints of its tentacled face clicking very softly below the slitted green gaze, glowing brightly in the shadow of its hood. Orbs bearing strange symbols floated around them. Its pointed fingertip withdrew from where it had politely hailed him, curling by its broken manacles. It was an omnic he had glimpsed only briefly, the ‘Monk’ that the Witch had reacted rather strangely to. And now it was poking him.

“Darkness and shadows be upon you,” the Monk said.

The noise that Dr. Junkenstein made next was not the most dignified one, and he had made a lot of undignified noises. But luckily for him, the ensuing sounds of explosions were quick to cover it up. He flung out both arms, detonating the bombs he’d been sorting through. White and yellow light exploded in a spray of heat and metal, catching both the Monk and the doctor in the blast and sending them both hurtling away from each other as they were flung upward.

To his credit, Junkenstein was very well-versed in explosives. He recovered mid-air, already pulling more mines and his grenade gun from the void of his labcoat. With a scream that was half laugh and half warcry, he sent volley after volley raining down upon the startled group of adventurers. He caught both the Archer and the Gunslinger unawares, engulfing them in a series of blasts as their little drinking session was interrupted in the harshest way. The Swordsman was swifter, pulling his blade in a hiss of steel…but not swift enough, forced into a fire-covered retreat as he leapt away.

Beneath the blue glass of his goggles, Junkenstein’s wild eyes darted to and fro amongst the chaos. Which one of them had Mei’s head? It wasn’t immediately clear. Probably best he just kill them all as planned, then. They deserved it for beheading his girl, killing him, and his Monster, and even Scarecrow. They deserved it for laughing at him. They deserved it for kicking dirt in his face all these years.They deserved it for—

A dart sang through the air, sinking into his chest even as his grenade launcher lifted for another round. His limbs suddenly went limp, body unresponsive as the last of his bombs went bouncing along the ground, sending more caustic smoke and dust into the air. Even through the haze, he saw her…The Alchemist stood with her arm raised and her face grim, her wrist-launcher now emptied of the dart that had buried itself into him.

With another crash, he fell into a twisted heap of tangled limbs and mechanical parts, twitching madly as he tried to force himself to move. He managed to snarl, lips curling around bared teeth, drool practically foaming with his efforts. Oh, the curses he longed to spit at them, but he was unable to do anything but utter a distressed wheeze.

The clanking of weaponry all around him belied his situation to be a dire one. As a group they advanced, no doubt ready to send him to his death yet again. He scraped a glove in the dust and waited for the hail of bullets, blades, and arrows to take him: his mission failed.

There was a whooshing noise as a purple blur hurtled through the air, clipping the Alchemist right off her feet and sending her spinning into the darkness beyond the campfire. Mei landed with more of a stumble than usual, her headless body scrambling to Junkenstein’s aid. Placing her body between him and the mercenaries, she swung both claws in a silent warning.

“Fffhgh mmn nnnnn,” Junkenstein slurred from the dirt, helpfully translating her threat.

“All right, this is getting outta hand,” the Gunslinger grumbled, raising a hand over his weapon’s hammer. “Ain’t we killed y’all enough for one night? We better get paid extra for this bull.”

“What could possibly have possessed you to even attempt to follow us?” the Archer sneered. “You’re both weakened…and one of you is not even whole.”

The Swordsman said nothing, narrowing his eyes suspiciously at the decapitated jiangshi.

The doctor was finally starting to twitch back to life behind her, dragging himself up to one knee and reaching for his grenade gun. Mei signed something, desperately swerving back and forth in front of the downed scientist to keep their foes at a distance. He lifted his head, frowning severely as he watched her urgent game of charades.

“What do you mean you don’t want to fight, schmooples? They got what’s yours! And I’ll take it back from—” He started to reach for his mines, but jolted back a moment later when another wave of nausea and exhaustion overtook him all at once. It was different from the dart, and when he looked up he saw its source. A single shining orb hovered around him, shining with a sinister looking rune that seemed to drain his energy with a poisonous purple glow. “What the hell! Damnit, lay off!”

“Let us all take a calming breath,” the Monk said, hovering in from the darkness. “I believe there has been a misunderstanding. Perhaps if we allow them to explain.”

“Mish mumkin!” The Alchemist joined his side, holding her ribs and looking none too pleased. “I am not entirely sure what explanations we can expect from a madman and a headless vampire.”

Mei waved hurriedly, hopping in the Monk’s direction, and then hopping right back again when the Swordsman advanced upon her with his sword still drawn. He positioned himself in front of his master just as she had positioned herself in front of hers, his blade held at the ready.

“I have already relieved you of your head once tonight, little leech. Rest assured, I will relieve you of your other parts as well if you—”

The Swordsman was not able to finish his threat. Mei was already moving but not towards him, slamming both hands into the Doctor’s chest to keep him back as he tried to lunge forward. Such was his anger that even the jiangshi was faced with a struggle to hold him at bay, her slippers sliding in the dirt as he surged against her efforts. His voice rose once more into demented screeching.

“YOU’RE THE ONE WHO HURT MY LOVELY ASSISTANT?! YOU TOOK HER HEAD, THEN I’LL TAKE YOURS! I’LL BLOODY GO YA! I’LL—”

The Alchemist narrowed her eye at him, catching his gaze and very pointedly loading another dart into place. “Dr. Junkenstein, you’ve been given a rare chance. Have sense for once in your life…lives…and make use of this time. If not for yourself, then to at least translate whatever this poor creature is trying to say.”

The Archer curled his lip. “A waste of our time. Whatever excuse this lunatic and his vampire has concocted to attack us, it matters not. We should do away with them both.”

“I believe that the Doctor is of the genuine belief that we have taken something important,” the eerie omnic Monk said, folding his spindly fingers where he hovered nearby. “I cannot condone dispatching him…this time. While his methods remain enigmatic at best, this time his motive seems to be a pure one.”

Dr. Junkenstein grit his teeth and snarled, but wrapped one arm around Mei and halted in his struggles to get past her. The other snapped up to point viciously in the Swordsman’s direction. “You got a lot of nerve! Now it’s one thing to kill a gentle and innocent girl like my assistant. But stealing from her is entirely another!”

The Swordsman only seemed more baffled and angry than before. “What are you babbling about? I feel no shame in dispatching your vampire, but I have stolen nothing!”

“Explain this then!” The Doctor gestured to the jiangshi’s extremely missing cranium. “Where is it! Stealing a lady’s head while she’s still using it, that’s absolutely low!”

“What? Why should I know where her head went?” The other man scoffed, but slid his blade back into its sheath in another frustrated motion, if only to gesticulate in an equally affronted way. Their pointing grew more aggressive over the campfire separating them. “Likely it fell into your moat or into a ditch during the battle. Go look for it there and cease troubling us.”

The Gunslinger opened his mouth, then shut it again. The Archer gave him a strange look, then turned back to where the Swordsman and the Doctor were still trading barbs.

“Liar! I know you’ve got it! She says it’s here!” Junkenstein looked down to Mei, who made an affirmative motion.

“Then she is wrong! I said I do not have it!”

The Monk tilted his head to the side, tentacled face writhing in subtle consternation. “My student speaks truly. It is not in our possession. Perhaps the jiangshi is mistaken somehow? Though…It is strange that she has not yet been able to find it.”

“She’s gonna find it when you lot finally give it up! Can’t even believe this. I expected better of you.”

“And I expected nothing from you. I say again, we do not have it!”

The Alchemist knitted her brows. “I am reluctant to even say this, but this seems to have been a simple misunderstanding. As a gesture of good faith, perhaps we can simply let you leave to search elsewhere? We are honorable people and have taken nothing from you—”

The Gunslinger coughed loudly, his gaze swerving skyward. All eyes moved to him, and the argument abruptly stopped. Somewhere out in the darkness, an owl hooted just to interrupt the sudden silence.

The Alchemist slowly lifted a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose, cursing softly. “Please tell me you did not.”

The Gunslinger pasted a leery smile on his face, chewing down on his cigar. Lifting both hands in a placating motion, he sidled backward and away from the fire. “So, listen…”

“Please tell me you did not.”

“Well Ma’am, you know how these things go,” he wheedled, leaning down to his bulging supply pack. “I figured, we went to a whole lot of trouble for a pretty damn paltry reward from His Lordship, all things considered. Now I ain’t entirely sure what to make of all these particular…Monsters, and Pumpkinheads, Dragons, Scarecrows—”

“Yeah, well. Not much to make of the Scarecrow, frankly,” Junkenstein snorted, then grumbled when Mei slapped his arm again.

“Uh, so, ya see. I was moseying along after the bloodshed and all, and I thought I saw somethin’ in the bushes there. And I thought to myself,” He unstrapped something inside his pack, holding up a round burlap-bound bundle. “Er, well I thought to myself, I might know some folks who would pay a pretty penny or two for a bona fide trophy from a real Chinese vampire, and she was already dead and all so I thought maybe…”

The straps and burlap fell away, draping open. Mei’s missing head sat like a heavy stone in his palm, her eyes opening and blinking owlishly in the sudden firelight. She brightened visibly at the sight of her body nearby, fanged jaws opening and closing. She mouthed silent words, noiseless except for the faintest little mute gasps from an open throat that was no longer attached to any vocal chords. Her body released its grip upon the Doctor, lifting both arms and starting to hop forward to reclaim her missing piece.

The Gunslinger winced away when Mei’s head screwed her lips to the side and glared up at him. “To be fair, Missy, I didn’t know your head was still gonna be all…alive and whatnot. It didn’t respond when I picked it up or anything, or I never woulda assumed— I mean, all the other vampires I killed before, never had this particular problem.”

The Archer haughtily ran a hand through his hair, nose in the air. “Perhaps if you had actually read a book in your life and done studies on how Eastern vampires actually differentiate from their inferior garlic-fearing counterparts? I have killed more than enough of them to know.”

The Gunslinger bristled, turning upon his fellow mercenary. “Then you should know there’s a lot more to my vampire-hunting than garlic. Maybe you shouldn’t be so quick to brag when your Eastern vamps are afraid of duck eggs and rice. Eggs and rice! Maybe we didn’t even need the Swordsman’s blade, and I could have just chucked a to-go bag at her!”

Junkenstein uttered a shrill giggle from the other side of the camp. “Oh you don’t even know, mates! One time I tried to make her this stew—” He faltered again as Mei slanted her gaze at him. “Uh, nothing. Never mind. Now could you stop flirtin’ long enough to give my jiangshi her head back! Cretins.”

“W-we weren’t…uh…”

Mei snatched her head out of the stuttering Gunslinger’s grasp, hugging it covetously to her own chest in triumph before bounding back towards her Doctor. He flung open his long arms with a grin and she leapt into them, and he cackled and swung her in a circle before leaning down to kiss the top of her head as she lifted it up to him. He beamed down at her as she gently settled her head back into place, straightening it upon the stump of her neck. He only seemed more charmed by her than before. “There she is! Talk about a true beaut.”

The others watched with the usual disgusted curiosity that Junkenstein was so used to, although the Alchemist chanced a small smile.

“In a way it’s actually sort of sweet, how they—”

Dr. Junkenstein pulled a long needle and coarse thread out from his coat, roughly jamming it into the jiangshi’s cold flesh and pushing it harshly through the layers of meat and muscle beneath. Grinning maniacally, he tittered another shrieking laugh as he pulled it taut and began very aggressively sewing the two pieces of her throat back together. Meanwhile, the little vampire flailed and uttered horrid strangled gurgling noises as her head was forcibly strung back into place.

The Alchemist sighed. “Never mind.”

“Don’t listen to them. You look- Hrrrngh!” He pulled the string tight, the stitches sinking deep. “Amazing! There we are, that should help it heal all the faster. How do you feel, darl?”

Mei adjusted her head several times, rubbing at her throat. Her first attempts at words were useless little whistling noises like a distressed guinea pig, but as she finally seemed to line up which tubes went where inside her neck, and she managed a few more hoarse whispers in her native tongue before trying to speak. “C-can you hear me? Hello? Oh! It worked! Thank you, Doctor!”

“The most lovely assistant in all the world! What would I do without you? That’s all right, no answer needed, don��t you strain that pretty voice too hard.” His expression lit up all the more, fussing at the thread end and tying it off. He stepped back and caressed her hair and adjusted the spell paper on her forehead, leaning down over her to plant another kiss to the end of her nose. “Good to have you back proper.”

She uttered an adorable squeak and smiled up at him, dimples just below the dots painted on her cheeks. “It’s such a relief to be able to talk again.”

“Too right! Now, let’s finish blowing up these prats before we head back—!” He reached back to his coat, this time for his gun. But the rattle of weaponry all around him gave him pause, as did the jiangshi’s claws as she grabbed onto his arm to stop him.

“W-wait! It was just a mistake, that’s all. I’m sure none of them meant it. I was still stunned, and even the cowboy man probably just wasn’t thinking.”

The Archer smirked around his bow. “Not an uncommon occurance.”

“All right, I’m just about tired of you steamin’ my beans—”

Both the Doctor and The Gunslinger looked ready to ignite another battle that Mei was not at all prepared for. Her fanged smile wavered, and she clutched onto the lunatic scientist a little tighter, tugging at his arm to urge him back the way they came from. “Listen, it’s been a very long night for everybody, hasn’t it? And…And there’s such a lot of work we need to do back at your lab. And the…you know?”

Dr. Junkenstein was still trying to catch the eye of the Swordsman, who was pointedly not looking back at him. “But that one, the one the Witch was on about. He cut ya up!”

“It’s not the first time I’ve been cut up. And I’m fine now, see? I have my head back. Why don’t we head home! For…you know?”

“But…Huh?”

“Your reward?” She fluttered her eyelashes up at him. She tried what she hoped was a salacious whisper, but with her ragged throat it came out a little croakier than she’d hoped. Still, she tried. “You know? For being so, so good. At helping me.”

Realization hit him like a thunderbolt. His sallow skin went pink and almost as clammy as his vampire as he started to sweat, face twisting into a very particular and stupid grin. Puffing out his bony chest, he pointed at the group of baffled adventurers before him.

“You’re lucky, that’s what you all are. My girl has a soft and tender heart and…oh yeah, soft and tender everything, er…Uh, you’re all pardoned this one time! And only because you gave her back her head without too much trouble. Although you two,” He pointed to the glaring Archer and Gunslinger. “You two piss me right off. But not as much as the guy with the sword. And you,” He shifted to the Monk floating peacefully nearby. “You give me the skeevies, and you got no idea how hard that is to do. And the old lady, you…Well, you’re actually sort of scary too.”

“Charmed.”

He swallowed throatily, twitching. “We’re pissing off. And don’t you dare steal any of my creatures’ parts again, you don’t even appreciate them. Not like I’m gonna appreciate them. Ehehehe.” There was a unified groan from the mercenaries, but Junkenstein ignored them. Looping an arm about the much shorter woman beside him, he turned and began hobbling off towards the darkness. “Anyhow! Damn you all! Blow you all to hell next time, toodle-oo!”

“Have a good night, Dr. Junkenstein,” The Alchemist replied calmly, over the murmuring of the others.

Nobody moved to stop them, and the adventurers watched the strange pair gallavant away together. Once more, the night grew quiet save for the crackle of the campfire and the hush of the insects. Peace returned, and eventually conversation slowly returned after an uneasy silence. But the Doctor and his companion seemed to be gone, having found the strange prize they had pursued.

The Gunslinger chewed on his cigar and merely shook his head. “And they say I’m the oddity…”

The Swordsman said something about more firewood, skulking off into the forest. But he did not bend to scavenge wood from the forest floor, only finding a shadowed place in the already shadowed night. The darkness there could be just as comforting as the cheerful glow of the campfire. He was not the only one who found it to be so. A presence joined him there in the blackness, heralded by no footsteps, gliding through the void.

“My Student,” the Monk said. “What troubles you?”

“Nothing. Merely…the lunatic’s shrieking left me irritable. And I dislike the way the foul little jiangshi looked upon me.”

“The jiangshi was quite polite, considering the state of things.”

“The Doctor, then.”

“…Is it the Doctor’s presence that bothered you, or his words?”

“The man is so addled he can barely string them together. It is nothing.”

“It is not how the Doctor spoke, my Student. It is the truth of what he said. Her gaze has found that which is within you. Do you still carry such thoughts of vengeance and regret? Hers is an old and powerful magic, and she will come to offer you all that you—”

“Then I will deny her.”

“…Will you?”

The Swordsman was silent, gaze downward. After several long moments his head lifted, eyes glinting red even with no light to catch them. He turned away from the Monk, and stepped deeper into the forest.

“We still need to gather firewood.”

“Of course. I shall help you, my Student.”

They moved together into the dark.

***

Elsewhere in the dark, the jiangshi and a rather bedraggled Doctor Junkenstein finally returned to the outer fortifications of the castle. Half-ruined walls and crumbled stone towers were half sunken or in the process of sinking into the muck. The occasional flickering torch lit up the gloom, but the castle and the villages remained locked away and all was silent. The Doctor groaned, pausing to sit on the remains of a low wall, pounding pebbles out of his boot before thrusting it back upon his foot.

“Ooooh my dog is barking. Long walk back, even with you helping me down the steep bits. Not to complain, mind, it’s nothing compared to your troubles! How is everything? Head all right? Stitches holding? Are you sure we shouldn’t go back there and blow them to smithereens?”

“No, I’m sure. We got what we wanted, right? And I think the Witch wants something else from them and we shouldn’t cause her too much trouble. Especially after she was so nice enough as to resurrect you first so you could help me? Although it did take me a little bit to try and get across to her that I wanted you.“

His hairless brows lifted. “My little dumpling! You were the one to ask for me back?”

“Of course. I was so embarrassed when I woke up. Nobody’s ever stolen my entire head before, and I couldn’t even talk to her. She wanted to send the Reaper with me at first, but I said no thank you. Just you. She can understand my language, but…I don’t even need language with you. Nobody can understand me like you can.”

“Got real good at that, just like I said.”

“Plus, you’re a lot more fun than anyone else here. And…” She leaned down to loom over him for once, lips parting to reveal a fanged smile. “You taste a lot better, too.”

The Doctor’s face went heated again. “Aaaha…aaha-ha-ha-ha!” His gloved fingers immediately started groping at the high collar of his labcoat, fumbling with the snaps. He swallowed audibly, the lump in his throat bobbing up and down, and he saw the jiangshi’s keen gaze follow it. Licking at his chapped lips, he tugged the snap free and tilted his head to the side, baring the sweat-dampened pillar of his neck. “W-well! Speaking of! I know what’ll heal that mild case of decapitation quicker than stitches. Hot and fresh, right here!”

The little vampire practically purred, even as she slowly traced one curved claw to his neck, feeling the pulse thundering just below the surface of the straining flesh. “But Doctor…Aren’t you forgetting about your reward? Just for you?”

“P-part of it! This can be part of it!” he practically barked aloud, leaning into her touch. “After all, doesn’t my lovely assistant have to be in tip-top condition before she can assist me?!”

“I should have considered that. I guess…I really should be at my best for you? You make a good point, Doctor.” The very tip of her claw curled a little at the word, scratching at the skin and threatening to break through.

That was not the only thing threatening to break through. He wasn’t entirely sure if it was his love of horrible puns or how the jiangshi was teasing him or a combination of the two, but an erection was already forming a hard lump beneath his coat where he sat. He tried to drag her down on top of it, but she only giggled coyly and pulled away from him. Groaning, he pulled at her robes to tug her back, but she deftly avoided his grasp, hopping several steps towards the darkness of a ruined stairway tower.

Dr. Junkenstein practically somersaulted in his haste to follow, staggering upright and stumbling as he limped after her. She giggled, still just out of reach as she dodged his seeking hands, leaping into the yawning shadows of the tower’s arched doorway. Her laughter echoed around the cold stone walls left to rot so long ago, ringing strangely from the tower’s dark and empty bowels, and anyone else might have thought it eerie. The Doctor did not think so, only redoubling his efforts to chase her.

Something hit him as he ducked into the gloom, where the light was barely enough to see. Just as he was nearly going to trip upon a collapsed section of the stone, the little purple blur hurtled out of the shadows, snatching him up by the front of his coat and dragging him several steps with no effort. His back hit the wall and it nearly knocked the breath from his fragile ribs, but it only made his grin grow wider and his trousers grow tighter.

“My good Doctor…” she whispered in a voice he couldn’t even describe, and her grip on him could have crushed his bones and he wouldn’t have even cared.

“Mmmeiiieiingnh…” he tried to whisper her name as well, but it came out as an embarrassing gurgling moan when her lips pressed to his.

Up on the very tips of her slippered toes, the jiangshi kissed him. Her lips were cold but that hardly mattered, the tip of her spell paper tickling his cheek as she tilted her head. She also smelled a little like burlap, probably from her head being so rudely shoved into a bag for so long, but that hardly mattered either. At least she had her head back to even kiss him with…and to do other things as well.

Cool lips finally pulled away from his, and he choked down air where he’d been forgetting to breathe again. Claws caressed at the side of his face, undeterred by the scratch of his stubble, a five-o-clock shadow just as permanent as the dark circles under his eyes. Instead she scraped a kiss to the side of his jaw, adorable little nose urging his chin upward.

With utterly no hesitation he bared his throat again, and waited. He waited and waited for the bite, but it didn’t come. Instead she playfully tucked her head underneath his chin and just sat there, completely ignoring his irked little growls and whimpers of impatience. She leaned into his chest, still pinning him firmly with his back to the wall, her deft talons dragging up his chest to start plucking at the snap buttons of his labcoat. One by one they snapped open, her hand traveling lower and lower until they reached the belt strung around his scrawny waist. He practically vibrated in helpless excitement, fumbling to help her. But she batted away his attempts, taking her sweet time as buckles clicked and leather hissed through the straps. After a moment, the belt fell down around his legs with a clatter, and his labcoat fluttered down after it.

“Dr. Junkenstein, is something the matter?” she asked, far too innocently.

“Nnngh!” He realized that he was whining aloud and grabbing at her, and he couldn’t help it: his hips and then the rest of him surged forward towards her, stopped only by her grip pinning him to the wall. She giggled again at his misfortune, pressing her chest more firmly against his, but finally had some semblance of mercy as her other hand drifted down, finally gracing the straining bulge in his trousers.

He exhaled noisily as her fingers tickled across him, sliding the gentle pressure of her palm up and down. He grimaced and sweat even at the lightest touch, eyes rolling back beneath his goggles when he felt her unbutton his pants, the downward motion of the zipper seeming to last forever before he was at last freed. No matter how his ears pinkened, his cock was utterly shameless as it sprang loose of its confines, bobbing upward into the night’s chill and into her waiting hand.

His noises echoed strangely around the damp stone walls, little grunts and sighs as she worked him, his breathing already heavy save for when it hitched occasionally at a particularly good one. Eventually his noises were joined by the sounds of wet flesh, when she licked a pool of saliva into her palm to slick his path through. His gloved hand occasionally clawed at her robes, his metal one already sunk so deep into the wall for hold that the rock was threatening to crack. He panted into her hair, hips shifting as her wrist jerked steadily and tirelessly.

“Mmmh! Darl, darl, darl…Please! M-my…” His voice was hoarse, raspy with effort.

“Shhh, Doctor…Let me assist you…”

The pressure built quickly, leaving him slumped against the wall while her tongue lathed at his throat, finding the a pulsing vein and placing her lips there. But still she waited, with the good Doctor writhing under her care, with the patience of one who was not moved by his pleading, focused instead on the precise moment to best strike. And it would be coming soon, as his cock twitched in her hand and his spine ground into the wall and his breathing rasped once, twice—

Her fangs pierced his flesh, opening the vein against her lips. Hot red spurted against her tongue just as hot white coated her palm, turning sticky as she gave him a few final strokes, coaxing out the last drops: even though she knew he barely felt it, not compared to where she sucked on his neck, his body held upright only by her own strength. He was mouthing words, likely nonsense, and his eyes were so far back in their sockets that only the whites were showing, lost to everything in the world except this.

She measured out their pleasures slowly and carefully, pulling his blood and his essence out of his body and into hers. He tasted like unused potential and painful anger and unbridled curiosity, like electricity, as if she had placed the tip of her tongue against a still-hot wire. She liked it: a flavor unlike any she’d had before, before meeting him. His blood always ran too hot, and she took some of his heat as her own…her body radiating warmth where there had been none, skin flushing with new life.

But she knew when to stop, no matter how he begged for more. She wrenched her hungry mouth away from his neck, two thin trickles of red oozing down before she lapped them upward, licking and kissing scarlet-stained lips at the opened wound until it had closed. With the tender care she always gave him, the boneless Doctor was gently eased down onto a nearby pile of rubble where she had thoughtfully spread his labcoat, sitting slumped backward while he shuddered back to life.

“H-hell’s bells…” He awoke to his jiangshi sitting by his feet, arms folded atop his knees, where his trousers had been loosely pulled up around his thighs with her head resting on them. Large, dark eyes swerved up to him as he gasped, and she smiled up at him. He managed a weak grin in reply, head spinning. “Ooooh, that’s my dove. Was afraid you’d…gone? Or…was I?”

“Just stay a moment, Doctor. I’m here.”

“Ah…Yes, good. Just a moment to reflect, is all.” They sat together in the dark, until the haze had cleared and he had control over his faculties again…or at least, as much control as he usually had over those pesky faculties of his. He sighed aloud, shivering as the sweat started to dry on his brow. But the night’s chill was staved off at least a little, when the warmth of her arms wrapped around his waist, nuzzling into his skinny belly. There was still a fleck or two of dried blood by her lip, and it looked most fetching. He always did look good on her.

Sighing happily, he flopped back against the rock. “Does wonders for the mind and the body, all of that. And you’re looking grouse! Knew that blood would help.”

The jiangshi tightened her grip in another fond squeeze, kissing at his belly. “You were right again, Doctor.”

Another grin pulled his lips taut across teeth almost as sharp and shiny as his vampire’s. “Ah! What can I say, lovey? I’m an educated man and you just happen to be one of my favorite subjects.”

“But what about a repeated measures study? It’s just, now I feel so warm and…wouldn’t it just be wasted if we went back to the others and it simply wore off before I could share it? Maybe we have time for just a little more reward? Shall I check your schedule for you, Doctor Junkenstein?”

Mei could barely finish the sentence before he was trying to sit up straight again, jostling her head atop his thighs. “I checked! I checked, schedule’s cleared! Busy man, but I penciled you in. What sort of Doctor would I be if I couldn’t make time for further study, ay?”

“Very generous, Doctor.”

With an unnatural lightness, she rose from the floor and slid easily onto his lap, right into his open arms. They kissed again, but this time her lips were soft and warm with the borrowed life now surging through her. Were it not for the gruesome stitches in her neck, she might as well have been a human woman nestled atop him. But Mei was better than any human woman, better than all the humans in all the world. If it had been up to him, he would have killed them, killed them all, and left nothing but ashes and destruction: a world for his toys and his army and her. Then it would just be him and his jiangshi for the rest of eternity, with him gifting her his blood and her biting him, scratching him, telling him he was good—

The daydreams of bloodshed coupled with her subtle grinding was starting to reawaken him proper. Slyly angling his mechanical arm down her side and groping at her thigh, he pulled her down in a slow rhythm against his front. Dragging his tongue against her jaw and back to her lips, he rasped against her kisses. “Lovely, lovely…Yes, make it warm for me, my lovely.”

He growled when she pulled away, but leaned back when he felt her touches go lower. Her lips moved down his chin, his neck, across the bruises on his chest, his midriff… And then it was warm, all right. He was very well familiar with the eastern vampire’s tongue, how long and wet they could be when fully unwound, but with his absent-minded tendencies it was always a delightful reminder when she used it on him. It coiled about him like a serpent, delicate but strong, pulling his cock from up against his body and up against her open lips.

She kissed it a greeting, slathering that tongue up and down his length while her soft lips circled around the flared tip. Junkenstein was again left a panting mess in no time, leaning back to get a better view of her even though his nerves screamed to grab and take her. Slick with saliva, her tongue squeezed wetly around each inch of him, flesh bulging a little each time she tightened its hold, rivulets of spittle squelching as they dribbled down to his sack and stained the coat beneath him.

For a while he was content to watch her work, but never for too long. Eventually the urge grew too strong, and he reached out to take a hold of the top of her hair, pushing her downward. She moved easily with the motion, her lips opening fully, tongue withdrawing only to guide him into the heat of her mouth. Large, dark eyes gleamed up at him, watching how his expressions twitched madly while he tried to focus.

Warm. Blissful, wet, warm…Lovely! Lovely!

His hand remained draped atop her head, enjoying the leisurely start of a nice hot blowie. She closed and sealed her mouth around the tip of him, sucking gently before pushing him the rest of the way in. She was just as good at this as everything else she did, tongue playing along with soft sucking and the occasional exciting scrape of her teeth. Knelt between his gangly legs, the jiangshi sucked on his member just as expertly as she had sucked on his neck, occasionally toying with that wonderful tongue of hers.

Junkenstein’s tongue was nowhere near as impressive, lolling from his open mouth as he uttered another rattling groan. Chalk up another point for his jiangshi, but she really was superior to a human lady in every way. With no need for air and no need for food as such, she had no concept of things such as choking or gag reflex. Handy, that.

It didn’t mean he couldn’t try. His grip tightened atop her head, no longer resting but actively pushing her down. It urged her deeper, deeper, until her nose was mashed into his pelvis and he was nudging past her tongue, knocking against the back of her throat while she lapped at the sensitive underside of his shaft. And when she swallowed…even through her wounded throat, it squeezed hot and wet and tight and perfect, perfect!

He seized onto both her pigtails and let his dark urges rage. His hips pounded forward, pulling her until there was no more room at all— into her throat, again and again and again. There was no reprieve and no pause, her glasses knocked onto the ground with a clatter as she gripped nigh-painfully onto the insides of his thighs. She welcomed him on every brutal thrust, as he panted and snarled and bent over his undead companion covetously. Alternating between petting the back of her head and yanking on her braids, he groaned praise over the obscene sounds of his cock in her mouth.

“Y-you like it? You like it? It’s good? It’s so good! Yes?” It was simultaneously a demand, a question, and begging desperation: pausing only for half a heartbeat as he stared wild-eyed down at her.

She smiled and nodded, and swallowed him again, and he nearly died for the third or fourth time that night.

“Yes?! Yes yes, YES!”

***

The sounds they made were almost unnatural, together in the darkness of that ruined kingdom. The sounds were so unnatural, in fact, that they did not notice another unnatural sound come upon them. There was a low hiss, something foul and sibilant on a sudden breeze, as the swirling fog was displaced by a darker mist.

The Reaper heard the squawking of that damned irritating Doctor, no doubt busy with some toy or other. There was still work to be done, and the Lady had sent him hence. He would collect the scientist and his vampiric assistant, and they would begin to plan for the next time. Another night full of bloodshed and darkness, never ending and never enough to satisfy any of them: not even the strange human who had cast his lot in with monsters such as them.

“Doctor Junkenstein?”

There was no answer, only more noises from the debris of a tower nearby. It sounded violent. Perhaps one of the adventurers yet lived, and the Doctor was fighting for his pathetic life within? The Reaper would turn the tides, then, and finally finish this—

He solidified, yellow eyes and grinning mouth alight within the enchanted pumpkin that served as his head. Full sight returned to his senses. And he wished it had not.

Junkenstein was once again violating his vampiric servant, frenzied with lust. The jiangshi was knelt between his open legs, stroking up and down his legs while he facefucked her with not an ounce of mercy. Terrible noises were uttered from both their mouths, though his involved much creative cursing and she had no words at all. Neither of them noticed his presence until the Reaper bellowed in surprise and disgust from nearby.

“BY ALL LEVELS OF HELL, DR. JUNKENSTEIN.”

“AAAHH!”

Everyone involved either screamed, or tried to scream through an extremely full mouth. Reaper reeled back, dropping his guns to try and shield his eyes. Dr. Junkenstein fell backward against the stone, while Mei scrambled backward in the other direction. There was a loud ripping noise, and the stitches around her head and neck were popped and pulled apart, scraps of twine hanging loose from her decapitated head once more. Her body collapsed back onto the ground without its anchor, and alarmingly and silently groped at the empty top of her neck. Junkenstein was left holding her loose head, blinking at each other in shock.

Dr. Junkenstein turned with surprising ferocity upon this new interloper, teeth bared and insults at the ready. But he paused when he saw the Reaper already cringing back, still trying to shield himself from the sight of them.

“A little privacy, mate?! I’m in the middle of an extensive study session, here!”

Mei’s head rolled its eyes towards the Reaper helplessly, then opened her mouth a little wider while her body pulled itself to sit upright again nearby. For a moment it seemed that she was trying to decide on being mortified or not. But when Junkenstein only adjusted his grip on her head and continued thrusting, her lips tilted into a cheeky grin and she only wrapped her tongue around him to make him groan all the harder.

The Reaper made a noise of revulsion, his lower half dissolving back into mist as he beat a hasty retreat. “PDA, you two! You know what the Lady said about the PDA! This goes so beyond the rules of Public Displays of Affection, you’ll be sorry y—Auuugh!”

Emboldened, the mad Doctor only moaned in response and actually stood up as he continued driving into the head still attached to his lap, making a mocking display of it. The exhibition of it only heated his blood further, and the jiangshi uttered a muffled laugh even while her headless body sat back and shrugged in a ‘what are you going to do?’ sort of manner.

The Reaper was vanquished, fleeing with a fading roar as he vanished back into the gloom.

Cackling madly to himself, Dr. Junkenstein finally pulled Mei’s head off of him long enough to grin down at her apologetically, features still flushed and glistening with sweat. “Sorry about those stitches, loveykins. I’ll get the better thread for—Oh!”

Mei’s body offered him a little thumbs up, then scooted closer upon her knees. Down by his still-erect cock, Mei fluttered her eyelashes, then stretched her mouth wide open, bidding him welcome. The good Doctor’s expression slacked in surprise, then softened in genuine affection, then grew manic and grinning once again while he took her invitation…and slammed himself home once again.

He could die happy like this. Maybe he would get lucky and he would die like this. He’d die again and again, over and over. They both would, and he’d be happy so long as she was with him. So long as they were together, it would never end. He could think of nothing better.

“M-my lovely! My lovely assistant!”

[some-cookie-crumbz]

Roll the Dice

Roll the Dice - Kidge Month Day 15 and Day 17 Prompt Fill Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Pairing: Kidge Summary: Combining Day 15 and 17 since they were going to be connected either way. Just some fin involving games and  Standard Disclaimer: If you read and enjoy this, please give it a like/ reblog so I know if I should write more.

Days of travel had left all of them worn to the bone and ready for a bit of rest. She wasn’t normally one to complain about the idea of having to rough it in the woods, but even she had her limits. The need for a comfortable shelter only became more apparent as fat, dark clouds loomed over them ominously. When they reached the top of the path leading them along, the distant flickering of town lights felt so comforting that she would have wept. Beside her, she could feel Faylinn trembling with giddiness, the other young woman clearly just as giddy. “Oh, please tell me this town is on the map,” Block pleaded, reaching into one of the many pockets of his robes. He spread the map out and squealed. “Praise the ancients, it is!”

“What town is it?” Pike asked, peering over the other man’s shoulder.

“Alezxan,”

“Oh, I’ve heard of that place before,” Jiro chimed in. A small smile turned up on his lips. “They say it’s a well-known merchant’s town, with plenty of goods necessary for guilds.”

“I just can’t wait until I have a chance to rest,” Faylinn commented, carefully reach out for her long silver ponytail. Her fingers stroked mournfully over the very edges, which were charred black as night. “I need a night where I don’t smell like sulfur and stomach acid, and have a chance to fix this damage.”

“Such are the risks when dealing with dragons,” Jiro said with a small chuckle.

She pinned him with a fierce glare over her shoulder. “Which was why Block and I suggested we take on the escort assignment,” she groused. She then indicated the young caster with a nod of her head. “And have you seen what that beast did to his staff?”

His staff had a huge chunk taken out of the fine wood, with jagged claw and smaller scorch marks decorating what remained of the curve at the end. “Yeah, still not happy about that,” he commented quietly, rolling the map back up and tucking it away.

“But the dragon mission ended up paying out way better,” she herself chimed in with a sly grin.

“Greedy little dwarf,” Faylinn muttered under her breath.

“Meklavar’s right, though! With how much of a profit we turned on besting that overgrown lizard, you can buy a new staff! A better staff!” Pike encouraged.

“I liked my old staff,” he grumbled with a small huff.

“But I’m sure you’d like a new staff with, say, a Gulonian crystal in it a whole lot too, right?” Meklavar suggested with a sly grin.

That gave Block pause. “Well, if it had a Gulonian crystal, I guess I could like a staff like that,”

“We could all use new equipment, honestly,” Jiro commented, casting a glance at the hilt of his sword, strung along his back. The leather of it was tattered and frayed, sticking out in various places. Inside its sheath, his sword was also rather beaten down from the battle, receiving a sizeable chink on one side. “Which, considering where we are, sounds like the perfect place to do that.”

“See, there ya go!” Pike hummed before a shudder coursed through him, causing his tail to fluff up. He stole a fervent glance up at the plump storm clouds before starting to hurry along the path, ears flattened against his head. “But for now, let’s get somewhere warm and dry before the storm starts up.”

“Aw, poor little kitty doesn’t like the idea of getting his feet wet?” Meklavar teased.

He scowled at her, tail lashing. “Oh, so you mean to tell me you actually want to spend a night waterlogged?” When her only answer was the faltering of her grin, his pout turned into an amused grin. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

With Pike taking the lead, they rushed down along the path and into town proper. They were able to find a reasonably priced inn just as the first few droplets of water fell, paying for two rooms and five meals. As they headed off to the bar attached to the inn, though, Meklavar noticed the young lady working the front desk cast a frantic glance out the window as the downpour really started up. She cast it off as perhaps her being worried about making the trek home in less than desirable conditions and followed her group along.

The meal was good not in taste, but simply in the fact that it was hot and fresh. They all had themselves a little too much ale, with Block and Jiro partaking so much they made complete fools of themselves. They danced and sang atop the tables, spurned on further by the cheers of the other bar patrons. When the festivities for the night ended, Pike and Meklavar had to lug a wobbling, babbling Block back up to their room, while Faylinn carried Jiro over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Once the settled the boys in their own room, she and Faylinn headed back to their own. They took turns using the adjacent washroom to clean up before bed, and as Meklavar slipped under the cover5s for the night, she stole a glance at her own axe, propped against the wall beside her bed. The blunt side of her axe was barely holding up the now-dulled blade, ready to give way and completely splinter from the weight at a moment’s notice. It would only last an incredibly small, incredibly simple mission, if she were lucky.

This, honestly, was the exact opposite of what they needed with their Guild just starting to develop a name for itself.

After their first grand adventure as a team, they decided to continue collaborating to assist one another with their aims. The most effective way, obviously, was to form a Guild and take on assignments as necessary. So, Sky Lion Guild was formed with the path of funding their respective missions as well. Thus far, their reputation was growing well, known for being rather skilled and successful for a tin class Guild. After that mission with the dragon, they’d been promoted to cinder class, which was a great honor, but came with its own host of new expectations. They would all need to step up their game, improve their skills and, obviously, replace their damaged equipment with ones of better quality.

She flopped over on her side, dozing off to the debate of what kind of mineral she’d like best in a new axe blade.

The next morning, Block and Jiro were slow and unpleasant to wake, feeling the backlash of their festive evening full force. They did perk up a bit when it was pointed out that they could hit the market and see what kind of wares the merchants had to offer. When they reached the lobby, however, they were greeted by the rain continuing on. The clerk informed them that, given the weather, it was unlikely any merchants would have set up shop in the bazaar, worried about the rain water ruining the quality of their goods. They waved it off, deciding they’d simply go the next morning, once the rain had let up, and instead headed to get themselves breakfast.

But the rain continued on the next day. And the day after that. And the day after. And the day after that.

“This is ridiculous,” Faylinn complained, arms crossed and pressed as far back against her seat at their table as she could get. “This weather is becoming rather bothersome.”

“Bothersome seems like a bit of an understatement. It’s keeping us from being able to purchase the goods we need,” Block chimed in before taking a small sip of his water-filled mug. After the theatrics of the other night, he had sworn of the ale cold turkey. “Plus, being trapped her is draining our funds much faster than we planned.”

“Well, why don’t we just move along to the next town, then? Surely they would have some merchants looking to sell,” Faylinn suggested.

“Can’t. The only logged path from here to the next town is through a road that cuts along the mountains, but it’s been closed down due to the risk of landslides. We could try to cut through the mountains outside of the designated path, but then we run the risk of getting lost without a guide. Also, our weapons aren’t in much of a state to defend us from much more than a disgruntled kitten,” Meklavar sighed.

“Well, it’s not like we can do anything about the weather,” Pike snorted, reclined in his own seat as if he owned the joint. His feet were propped up and crossed at the ankles atop the table, arms crossed behind his head to work as a makeshift pillow, and eyes closed as if he were merely napping. He peeked one open, the blue seeming brighter in his excitement, to look at their caster. “Unless you have some kind of trick up your sleeve that could help dispel this, pal?”

“With the state my staff is in? Hard pass,” he answered, shaking his head. Pike’s ears drooped and he heaved a loud sigh. “I mean, I could try, but it would most likely end with the spell backfiring directly on all of us. Which would be less than ideal.”

“Besides, we shouldn’t be using Block’s magic to resolve issues as mundane as some unfortunate weather,” Jiro added.

“Unless this is more than just a simple storm,” Meklavar pointed out, leaning in closer to her associates.

Block, Faylinn and Jiro all perked up and leaned closer as well, catching on to what she was hinting at. Pike, however, remained in his position, reclined and seemingly at ease. His ears, however, sat straight upright and his eyes were open just a slit, monitoring those around them for any suspicious behavior. “You think there’s more going on in this town that what it seems?” Faylinn asked quietly.

She nodded. “Do you remember the young woman who checked us in for our rooms? Something about her reaction to the storm seemed strange. It seemed as if she was afraid of the rain itself,” she explained.

“Ah, I noticed that. Broke my heart to see such a lovely young woman seem so unnerved,” Pike lamented lightly.

They all silently agreed to ignore his input and continue on.

“Couldn’t it just be a matter of storms being uncommon around here?” Block suggested.

“I considered that, but the reaction and what we know of this place don’t add up to that. I mean, if they rarely get storms,” she said, “then wouldn’t they be excited about the coming rains? To replenish their crops and water stores and such? Additionally, this place is a renowned trading hub! This implies they have to have a decent enough supply of foods and goods to warrant people stopping by, which wouldn’t make sense if they didn’t get enough storms to maintain their crops well enough to allow as many visitors as they undoubtedly see.”

“Maybe they bring in their crops using the money they make?”

“Then why would they have signs posted informing people of which farms can be located where along the edges of town?”  Silence followed her last point, their whole group exchanging looks. “I don’t have any damning proof of what I think is happening, but the idea that something else is causing this weather seems rather plausible.”

“You think they’ve had some kind of hex laid upon them?” Jiro asked.

“Maybe. Like I said, I’m not completely sure, but it seems plausible. We need more information from someone in town, though,”

Pike swept his legs of the table and let out a small sigh, pushing himself to stand. “Well, I guess I’ll go do some investigating then. It’s the same woman at the front today as when we first arrived. I’m sure that I can get her to let me know what’s going on with a little finesse,” he hummed, stretching and arching his back until he got a little pop.

“Pike,” Jiro trailed off strictly.

“Just… Be careful. The last thing we need is for your incredibly involved approach to interrogations getting us kicked out of a town,” Faylinn trailed, fists clenched on the tabletop, “again.”

He tensed a bit. “That was a fluke! And a learning experience! Now I know to only use a small fraction of my full charisma on the unsuspecting beauties of the world,” He said.

“That or at least be the one who actually takes it on the chin when your ‘unsuspecting beauty’ turns out to have a very angry ogre husband,” Jiro grumbled.

“In my defense, he didn’t tell me he had a husband! I would never flirt with someone who’s spoken for, regardless of how magnificent,” And, with that, he headed out of the bar and back towards the main lobby.

While they waited, they chatted about this or that, stories from their past and their goals for the future. At one point, Jiro and Faylinn broke off to play a rousing game of throwing knives with a few of the other patrons. She spent the time trying to sharpen her axe to a respectable cut, only to be sorely disappointed. The sooner the rain let up, the better.

It took far too long to be reasonable before Pike returned.

His headband and hair were disheveled, face screwed up in a look of goofy satisfaction. He fell into his seat with a contented sigh, tossing one arm along the back while the other dangled in the air beside him. For a moment he just stared at all of them. “Well?” Block asked after Pike said nothing immediately.

“Meklavar was right; the town’s been cursed,” he said loftily.

“Okay, but by what?” she asked with a small huff. She had to resist the urge to grab her axe and knock the legs out from under his chair. He was holding up their progress with his lax behavior.

“I guess there’s some crotchety old mage who lives in a tower up on the mountain,” he said, indicating out the window with a tip of his head. It was hard to see through the pouring rain and dark clouds, but she thought she could just make out the shape of a building far in the distance. “He came down to try and pedal some of his cursed goods in the bazaar a few days before we got here. When they turned him away, he threw a temper tantrum and said they’d pay, that he ruined their whole town for anyone who visited it. Pretty typical for those finicky caster types, though.”

“Hey!” Block squawked.

“You’re not a finicky caster type, dude!”

“That’s still rude of you to say!”

“Oh, whatever! You guys should just be grateful I was able to convince the mayor that our guild could handle it!” He huffed.

And, with that, Meklavar finally turned her axe around to slam the blunt side right against the leg, sending him toppling over in a graceless heap with an equally graceless yowl. “You’re a complete moron!” she shrieked.

“What part of you, exactly, thought signing us up for another mission was a good idea?” Faylinn joined in, slamming her hands down on the table and standing.

“Seriously, dude? That warlock will take us down in, like, two seconds flat! Did you forget about the sad state all of our equipment is in?” Block pointed out as well.

“Which is why I was able to negotiation the terms of our agreement with them, geez!” Pike snapped back as he hoisted himself back on to his feet. He dusted himself off as well. “You guys act like I have no idea what I’m doing here! In agreement for taking on the assignment without a formal request being submitted, they’re going to have us given the best equipment available to complete the task! They’ve also agreed that, assuming we succeed, they’ll refund us for two of the nights we stayed at the inn!”

“Not a full refund?” Meklavar commented.

Pike side-eyed her skeptically. “Greedy little dwarf,”

Jiro let out a long, drawn-out sigh. “Anyway, those negotiations are all well and good, but are they going to allow us passage through the blocked path? Or provide us with a guide who can?”

The other stopped at that, ears tipping downward. “Uh, no. See, the rain is coming down a lot worse closer to where the mage lives. Most likely as some kind of defense from any potential attacks by the village. As a result, the whole path is bogged down by mud and tree branches and such. No way we can get around that,”

“So we have no safe way of getting up there?” Block asked worriedly.

“Not quite, young warriors,” An old, withered voice chimed in. They were greeted by the sight of a well-dressed man with a long, braided beard and little reading glasses. His hair was mostly snow white, though there were traces of a fading orange hue to a few patches. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Rocan, the mayor of this fine town.”

Jiro rose and bowed politely. “It’s a great privilege to meet you, sir,” he began, “but I am afraid our friend may have agreed to your terms too hastily. Our equipment is far too damaged to take on such a task, and none of us are familiar with the terrain leading up to where the cruel mage rests.”

“The equipment matter is one we have offered to fix,” he answered, “and while I cannot guarantee it, there may be someone who can get you up to the mage’s keep.”

Faylinn and Meklavar exchanged glances. “What do you mean by that, exactly, sir?” Faylinn ponder cautiously.

“There is one who lives outside our village, on the first peak of the mountain range to the east,” he said. “He has lived there many years, living off the land and traveling how he sees fit. No one else in this area will know the uncharted paths anywhere near as well as he. If you can convince him to assist your brigade, I have no doubt he’ll be able to show you the way.”

“There’s a lot of ‘ifs’ in that statement,” Meklavar pointed out.

“He is a bit of a hermit, despite his young age. He rarely ever visits town, and when he does it is typically very briefly,”

“So he’s a recluse,” Jiro said.

“Meaning the likelihood of him helping is slim,” Block agreed.

“Well, it’s better than nothing!” Pike insisted. He then tossed his head back a bit, flashing them one of his smoldering grins. “And, if need be, I can always put some of the old charm to use.”

“Do us all a favor and don’t,” Meklavar scoffed, rising fully from her seat. “Though, I will admit that Pike has a point; we don’t know if they’ll help us unless we try asking.”

Faylinn nodded before looking over at the mayor again. “We will go seek them out once we have the equipment necessary, then,” she agreed.

They were guided through the wet, muddy streets of town up to town hall, where a few of the most prominent merchants in town were gathered. They were given a bit of time to test out a few options, select the ones they found most agreeable, and then they headed out. They had to take their time and be careful, even though the rain was just a bit less severe in the direction they were going. It was still a rather steep climb, but after a good few hours of travel, they could see the hermit’s lodge not too far off in the distance.

But that was when they heard the first cry of a lone wolf not far off in the distance.

Faylinn paused, slipping one hand up to carefully grab one of the silver-tipped arrows from her quiver. “You all heard how close that was, right?” There was a pause between her words, in which a responding howl echoed from somewhere behind them. She whipped around, pulling her arrow back partially in preparation.

“But the question then becomes is it just the two, or is there a whole pack waiting to strike?”  Jiro whispered back, hand clenched tight around the hilt of his new sword.

“Or, there’s also the risk they’re more than just normal wolves, but shifters,” Meklavar agreed, hefting her axe up to rest partially against her shoulder.

“Why can’t it ever be easy?” Block lamented quietly, the Gulonian crystal in the center of his new staff beginning to glow dimly, charging up some of his magic in preparation for an attack.

“Because that would be bo-! Ack!” Pike yowled before a large form slammed right into him. He growled, rummaging to get one of the paralysis balls he’d gotten, only for whatever was on top of him to jump back with a snarl. It hopped back until it stood beside another looming shape covered in a dark pelt. “Looks like it’s a shifter, guys!”

“Who are you mistaking for a shifter, miserable cat?” The larger figure spat, reaching up to carefully push back what seemed to be their head. Which, if they were, in fact, a shifter they shouldn’t have been able to do. When the hood slumped back, they were greeted by a pale face sporting two burgundy red marks along their cheeks, dark eyes with gleaming yellow pupils, and pointed ears.

A gasp left Faylinn. “A dark elf?”

“Half,” He answered brusquely. He paused to stare at each of them in turn. “Who are you, and what are you doing so close to my abode?”

“Your abode? So you’re the hermit of the hill?” Meklavar asked.

He scoffed. “Is that how they’re choosing to call me now? How impolite,” he then reached up to pull his hood back up. “My name is Yorak. And this is my companion, Gévaudan.”

The wolf beside his let out a small huff.

“No! Wait! Hold up!” Lance suddenly squawked, standing up and holding his arms up in an X in front of his chest.

Keith let out an annoyed look. “What’s your damage?”

“We aren’t seriously going to let your dog have a character in this, are we?” he asked, casting a glance at Coran.

The old Altean merely toyed with the end of his mustache thoughtfully. “Well, if no one else has a problem with it, and he can roll in situations... I don’t see why not,”

“I’m cool with it,” Pidge herself shrugged.

“Indeed. Keith seems rather adept at translating Kosmo’s desires, so it should be fine,” Allura agreed.

“Plus, look at this face! Such a sweet, lovable little guy!” Hunk crooned, gently smooshing the wolf’s fluffy face and booping his nose with his own.

Shiro sighed and shook his head. “Look, so long as Kosmo doesn’t get wild, it should be fun. But can we please get back to the game?”

Lance harrumped while Keith smirked at him, holding the dice out to the others. “Who wants to roll to see if you can coerce me into your group?” he teased.

Pidge smirked and took them from him. “Get ready to be our little slave, dweebo emo,”

[khiphop-discussions]

OK so usually I’d have a huge post explaining which KDA winners I agree with and disagree with and why but it seems like I agree with most of the choices and there’s not much of a reason for me to explain why since these are all so obvious. 

I’m only a bit confused by Best Diss. People voted for Yunhway vs Punchnello when ‘nello actually lost that battle lol. He won OVERWHELMINGLY in the KDA voting though lol. I’m guessing its because people saw Punchnello and just chose him cause really no diss was really that interesting this year. Still, I’d have expected Yun B vs Young B to have won. They got second place though but only got like 12% of the votes or something really small like that.

Small leftover thoughts: And yeah Mkit Rain KILLED it in 2019, they were definitely a sleeper hit. No one was expecting that. Also, Chillin Homie seems to have gotten a little cult following as well. He won 2 awards and people have asked about him specifically in my YouTube comments. So we gotta keep a close eye on him in these coming years. Leella Mars and Sokodomo have gotten a little following too. Fun Fact: in Best New Artist only TWO people were nominated: Sokodomo and Ash Island. Ash got the overwhelming win but around 15% of voters voted for Sokodomo. Also, he and Leella were also nominated and voted for in Slept on Artist of the Year as well as Up and Coming Artist of the Year. Up and Coming Artist was actually SUPER close between those three. Chillin Homie actually didn’t win by a landslide like the winners of the other awards.

[ultimavolatusrpg]

ACCEPTED // BIRCH PEMBROOKE

44 years old, 69th Hunger Games, FC: John Krasinski

Optimistic, Funny, Oblivious, Restless, Compassionate

tw: death, amputation

THE ARENA

Pompeii. It was a few days before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, an ancient volcano that has been mentioned in old books from times past. The tributes were raised into the middle of a clearing in a forest. A cornucopia did not lie in the middle of a circle of tributes this time, but lay beyond the forest and across a field on the outskirts of Pompeii. The tributes were lined up in a single line all of them facing their destination. It was about 2 kilometers away through rough forest and an open field. An announcer told the tributes this and the Games had begun.

The first day it was rather uneventful, not many tributes died except in the bloodbath and not all of them were in the city. At the end of the first day, the ground rumbled and a landslide was triggered outside of the city. Any tributes not in the city were either killed or driven to enter the city. The city had several buildings and roads and a tribute could hide or wander the streets as they wished.

At the beginning of the second day, another earthquake shook the buildings, causing a couple of them to collapse.  forcing some tributes out into the street. There were aqueducts, baths, and fountains that were filled with water, but if one were to drink it they would lose their mind temporarily and attack anyone around them. Mutt dogs also roamed the streets and would chase and attack any that stumbled towards them. The second day ended with another tremor, collapsing a few more buildings.

The third day broke and the tributes woke to ‘people’ celebrating a festival. The ‘people’ were celebrating the god of fire and sacrificing small beasts to the pyre in the middle of the town. Any tributes that attacked the ‘people’ had the crowd turn on them and rip them apart. When the bell tolled at noon, the 'people’ began to hunt tributes to sacrifice to the god of fire. Two sacrifices would make the townspeople stop hunting the tributes and retreat to their homes. At the end of the festival, a table with 7 backpacks sat on a table, signalling the feast. The third night fell with another strong tremor.

On the fourth day, an explosion was heard from the volcano that sat north of the city. Fiery rocks were ejected from the volcano and landed on the city. They rained down on the remaining tributes and they destroyed several parts of the city and tributes. A flow of lava entered the city, causing the tributes to climb to the highest building in the city. Then a cloud of ash, swept into the city and pushed some tributes into the lava. The final two were atop the temple and the ash swirled away to mark a battlefield with lava flowing around the bottom of the temple. This was the final showdown until the last tribute was left standing.

BIOGRAPHY

Birch’s childhood was like any who grew up in the poorer part of District 11. He had a wonderful family with three brothers and one sister. They lived in a small house at the end of a tree-lined street. Out of the back door he could see the fields and orchards sprawled to the left and a small creek with a grove of trees to the right. He could see the workers, trucks, horses, and dogs running around and was excited to join them. His arms were strong even as a young boy. He would help his family with chores including tending the chickens that they kept in the backyard and chopping wood for their kitchen stove.

Whenever Birch had the chance he would bound out of the back door and head for the small grove of trees that defied the rows of organized trees and fields of vegetables of most of District 11. He loved the shade and the feeling of being so small. He felt like the world couldn’t touch him among the branches of the birch and ash trees. He was insignificant and the world would leave him untouched. He reveled in the joy he felt in seeing life grow out of the dead logs and that a harsh winter could reveal small pink blossoms popping out of the grass. Birch understood the cyclical nature of life as a boy and as he grew it became his life’s tagline.

His family would have been okay if they only had two children, but with three extra mouths than what they could afford, the boys of the family all took tesserae when they turned 12. It meant that their family had a good life, even though they were stuck together in a small home.

Birch’s father was his hero. He toiled the soil out in the warm sunshine everyday and came home to see his family with hugs and love to go around. Terry loved his wife and family very much and encouraged his children to do what they loved even if they had to go to a tough job everyday. Birch wanted exactly what Terry had and to be that kind of person. He wanted to work in the orchards and with horses and use his body to feed his own family. He wanted to be happy in his own little world.

As a child, Birch saw the Hunger Games as a means to feed his family. His older brothers, Ansel, and Linden, had taken tesserae for years and he continued the tradition when he turned 12. He did not see glory in the games, but could care less that they happened. They did not affect him and he did not think he would ever get chosen from the pool. Even if Birch was chosen, his life would feed his family’s and that is all that mattered. Life would spring from his death, just as his little patch of trees showed him every year.

Birch was the middle child, stuck between two older brothers and his two younger siblings, his sister Iris and his brother Ember. To help out, just like his brothers, Birch left school around 13 and started to work in the orchards ferrying the loads of apples and pears to the store house during the day. He learned to ride fairly effectively and enjoyed talking to everyone as he rode his horse with a wagon filled with fruit through the trees.

Then Birch was in an accident. He lost his forearm. His world crashed down around him. Birch could not work in the orchards anymore. He had to spend a few months recovering in his home with few excursions into the sunshine. His family took care of him and had enough of a job that they were stable. The doctor who had seen him, kept checking in on him and gave him some options. He was a young doctor and said that he could build him a device to help him get some function out of his left arm. In the interim, Birch got stronger - maybe, just maybe that would get him his job back.

He was 17 at this point and had just gotten used to the prosthetic that his doctor had given him when the Reaping occurred. As always, Birch was nervous, but it would be over soon and he could let the tension recede from his body. But, his brother, Ember was reaped. At just 13, he would be at a huge disadvantage and Birch was the only one that could save him. He volunteered for his brother and headed off to the Capitol. He had no mentor, only an escort who was not very interested in him. He tried to make some allies and friends, but many did not want to interact with such a liability as him.

When he entered the Arena, Birch glanced for a second at the Cornucopia, but decided to head right into the forest and hopefully hang out for at least a day. He survived for most of the day, only seeing one other tribute - the District 12 boy. However, when the first tremor hit and triggered the landslide, Birch barely made it. He couldn’t believe it, but saw that the other tribute didn’t make it. The kid’s backpack had been taken with the landslide down to the outskirts of the town so Birch grabbed it, thanking him silently. There was a pack of nuts, a little bit of rope, and a small dagger in the bag.

The next day passed by in a blur, as he was attacked by a dog mutt - learning along the way that his prosthetic could be used as a shield - and killing the District 6 girl that had attacked him. The next morning, he skirted around the ‘people’ celebrating, hiding on the rooftops and fighting one other tribute he came across, managing to throw the tribute off the roof and killing him in the process. He was shaken at this point, but the day had only begun.

As the people mutts roamed around the streets looking for tributes, Birch stayed hidden on a rooftop. He was not attacked physically, but the stress of the past few days got to him and his demeanour cracked. The tributes he killed or lead to their deaths seemed to chase him as the mutts chased the screaming tributes around the town. Only when he saw the smoke rise from the pyre and the screams die down did he let himself out of his shell. It was a good time because he had to hop off of the building he was on to survive the tremor that tore down a couple more buildings.

He went into an uneasy sleep that night and awoke to something that sounded like a bomb. Several fiery rocks fell close to him and he bounded up to the rooftops to see where the rocks were falling. He continued to dodge and bounded from roof to roof, hearing rocks hit and cannons sound as tributes were killed. Lava flowed into the town and Birch’s mind couldn’t quite keep up with all of the things going on. There were a couple of times that his prosthetic almost slipped, but he managed to dodge and only get slightly burned by the rocks and get hit by some small stones.

He continued to climb to the highest point on the temple and reached the top to face the District 4 tribute, Coral. Birch dropped his backpack on the ground and pulled out the axe he had found at the feast and put the two daggers he had collected into his belt. There battle was long. By the end of it, Birch’s axe had fallen into the lava, but not before taking a chunk out of Coral’s leg. Coral had also embedded a dagger into his shoulder and a scratch along the side of his face. At this point, Coral was fatigued and Birch took the moment to pull off his prosthetic and throw it at her. She was so taken aback that Birch charged at her, pushing her backwards into the lava below. He had won, standing for a moment in triumph before collapsing due to exhaustion.

Birch had become the first Victor of 11 in years and years. He was thrust into the spotlight, but not before being fitted with the most state-of-the-art prosthetic the Capitol could make for him. A chip was implanted in his neck and technology was added to his amputated arm so that he had full use and mobility of his arm. Oblivious to the real reason that he received this ‘kindness’, Birch took it in stride, relishing the full movement in his arm that he hadn’t had in two years.

The hype around Birch kept him busy, but behind the smile and charm he put on for the crowds, was a growing loneliness. His family had decided to stay in Eleven, working on the orchard and transitioning into a house that Birch had offered to pay for when they told him they would rather stay. Birch didn’t blame them, but it still hurt when he packed up all of his belongings and had to say goodbye. He wouldn’t be able to visit them except for once a year for the Reaping.

But, his family was better off now and his price of freedom would feed his family and that was enough. So, Birch threw himself into being a Victor. He was young, handsome, and a compassionate guy. It made him very popular and was invited to many Capitolite functions. It was good to keep busy, especially because his only skills were physical, besides gardening.

A few years passed when Oakley Dressel won the 72nd Hunger Games. When she won, Birch made an effort to befriend her, not just because she was the first Victor from Eight in a long time, but because he understood what it was like to be faced with living a life with a disability. Granted, hers was much more debilitating, but Birch knew that a friendly face always helped.

He introduced himself with poorly-made brownies and the two of them became friends quickly. Birch was shocked at how easy it was to get along with Oakley, especially when it took him a little longer with some of the other Victors. They became very close as the years went by, spending a lot of time together, learning each other’s hobbies, and calling each other during the night.

It was when the Crownless Game happened that Birch faced his feelings head on. The Capitol felt unstable and dangerous. He didn’t want to regret not telling Oakley that he was very much in love with her and had been for over a year. Birch loved the moments he spent with her and wanted to tell her how he felt. The problem was that Birch didn’t think Oakley felt the same way and didn’t want to ever compromise the bond he had with her. He was scared that he would lose the person he felt connected to the most.

But, he swallowed that in the midst of the chaos after the 74th Games. One night, he just said it, hoping for the best, his heart getting ready to either break or grow. Luckily, his heart didn’t break and him and Oakley had been together ever since.

At 24, Birch got down on one knee and asked the woman of his dreams to marry him. The two lovebirds got married, to the joy of their own families and to the joy of the Capitol. They could tout the two of them as a testament to what could happen to their Victors. It wasn’t always smooth, but they had the blessing of the Capitol, who did a lot for the two of them considering their disabilities.

In the years since their marriage, Oakley had become pregnant and gave birth to three kids. Oliver, loving called Ollie was the oldest. They had a scare with Ollie when he was young and then the new parents found out that Ollie had epilepsy. Together Oakley and Birch figured out how to make sure Ollie was taken care of, but still knew that he could do anything. He was not his disability.

Paisley was their second oldest, inheriting her mother’s propensity for art, with Clementine following a few years later. Oakley’s pregnancy with Clementine was rough, not just because of her age, but because of her back. With that in mind, they decided on no more biological children, even though they wanted a bigger family. To remedy that, the pair decided to adopt from Eleven.

Birch went to his home, meeting his family for the night before heading to the orphanage to figure out who to take home with him. They had wanted to choose a little boy, but Birch’s heart was taken by a rambunctious little girl by the name of Summer. She had followed him around, telling little jokes, and pointing out why she would be the best person to take home. Summer hadn’t known who he was and just wanted to be brought into a loving family. Falling in love with her almost immediately, Birch took Summer home to the Capitol, bringing her into their little family.

It had been four years since Birch brought Summer home and it was nearing Oakley and Birch’s twentieth anniversary. In the years since he won, Birch had never brought a tribute home and it has always been a burden he was ill-equipped to bear. In his garden, he has a little section where he keeps their names and pictures alive, hidden away from prying eyes. It still takes its toll every year and he finds himself leaning on Oakley more during the Games.

With the ramping tensions with the Rebellion, Birch is finding himself torn between the two sides. He knows which one is right, but he has no desire in the slightest to put his family in harm’s way. And there is so much that the Capitol has provided him with over the years. He couldn’t be expected to turn on that without consequences. If he could find a way to ensure his identity from being revealed, Birch would join in the Rebellion. He wants to be in it. But, he couldn’t put Ollie, Paisley, Clem, Summer, and most of all Oakley in a position of vulnerability. Even if it was the right thing to do. Right?

PENNED BY: CASSIE

[anundefinedwoman]

Lyrically Speaking

I love music. I think the older I’ve become the more transparent this has become for me. It’s always been a part of my life, but I remember during my childhood, college through part of my 30s, TV was where I would mostly lose myself . It was an escape. Of course there are iconic televisions series for me during my childhood, in college, or back in time that stand out. Certainly shows like The Walton’s, Eight is Enough, Little House on the Prairie, The Dukes of Hazzard, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, The Facts of Life, Family Ties, Growing Pains, Highway to Heaven, Dallas, Dynasty, 90210, A Different World, Friends and Melrose Place all stand out. Funny enough, even though I watched plenty of shows after college/ my very early 20s (Melrose, 90210, Friends), none really stand out for me like this. Maybe Everybody Loves Raymond, only for the fact that the dynamic in the marriage between Ray and Debra, is reminiscent of the dynamic in my own marriage.

I digress. The point is, sure these shows can evoke a memory or a general feeling for me. But they are all happy, fun memories. Even if my childhood and youth was filled with abuse and neglect. This was my escape. I don’t really remember much of the abuse or neglect. I feel its effects, but remember? No. Why would I subject myself to watching something weekly or daily if I didn’t get some sort of pleasure from it? The best memories are the ones where a group of us would gather collectively so we could watch with the anticipation as a room full of banshees shrieked and swooned over how hot Jake or Dylan was. Or screamed at the TV for Ross just to tell Rachel how he felt about her already because we were all in love with him!!! Or wondering who the fuck shot JR, and why Krystal and Alexis had such huge shoulder pads and fought like trashy twits? (Yes, Dallas & Dynasty came way before, I know.)

But music is different isn’t it? It doesn’t always evoke happy memories. Maybe for someone who had an ideally happy past it would, but for me it does not. I think it’s apparent by now from the television shows listed, I’m not a millennial. As a Gen X’er born right in the middle our of generation (1972), I think it’s safe to say I’ve reached middle age. As much as it pains me to say, I’m not the person who remembers everything anymore. Although I didn’t have all my past memories with me from the beginning due to trauma in childhood, the ones I do (did) have, I was the type that would not forget. Mommy brain turned into Man brain. Sorry guys, but we’ve heard the excuse thousands of times. “I forgot.” We would think, “Sure you did.”, and we would fucking remember that time you didn’t remember something again. Til it happens to us. I say to myself with a sense of humor this must be my form of in-this life-karma being served in a big slice of humble pie. But I’m smart or considerate enough to write things down, and have learned the hard way to back them up to the cloud so I don’t miss important appointments should my calendar crash. In all this talk about forgetting, I forget where I was going in another digression. Music. Songs. Getting old, yes...

I can hear a song from my childhood and it can take me back. I can immediately say 6th grade, 1984. I can probably still remember all the words to the songs too. I may be able to recall some happy memory, a memory in my room, hearing something...

 When I was a kid after I had outgrown Saturday morning cartoons, I remember that it had become the day I had to clean my room. I mean really clean it.  White glove inspection clean (seriously - my kids have it so easy) And I spent a lot of time in there. I remember having my moms old stereo in my room that was a record/LP player; a radio with an 8 track tape deck on it. This was before big boom boxes had made it to mainstream, but technology had already advanced to the cassette tape of the Walkman. But I remember listening every Saturday morning to Casey Kasem’s America’s Top 40. My favorite part of his show was The Long-Distance Dedication portion of his show where his listeners would write him poignant, heartfelt, or sweet letter about someone in their life or a hardship perhaps they themselves had been enduring. Casey would read these with such compassion where you felt like your soul was being touched through the airwaves by the velvet of his voice in the pain these people endured. And at the end of each letter they closed by asking him to play a certain song or would leave it to him. But they would send it out to someone. Maybe that’s where I learned to attach such memories, thoughts, and in times of sadness and need, turn to music. I don’t know. (You should listen to recordings of this online.)

I don’t know how long I’ve been doing it, but I “think in song “. It’s the only way I know how to describe it. Gosh, I wish they were my own songs. I wish I had that ability; that talent. But no. What I mean is somewhere in my memory I have a jukebox - a storage drive so to speak of songs I don’t even realize I remember - or sometimes I even know. Sometimes a situation I have with someone, and it could be very obvious like being out with my girlfriends having a girls night with lots of laughter, wine and the song “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” will be the song I hear in my mind. It isn’t usually the song title. It’s usually lyrics that speak to me. I think I equate or attach some sort of word association to the situation or feeling I am experiencing. We had a lot of rain recently. I start singing or rather thinking The Eurythmics,

 “Here comes the rain again,   falling on my head like a memory,    falling on my head like a new emotion...” 

Or since I hit 39-40, I would say my theme song has been Landslide, written by Stevie Nicks and performed by Fleetwood Mac.

Oh, mirror in the sky what is love? Can the child within my heart rise above? Can I sail through the changin’ ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life?

~These are questions I ask myself OFTEN.~

Well, I’ve been ‘fraid of changin’ ‘Cause I built my life around you But time makes you bolder Even children get older And I’m gettin’ older, too 

Ah, take my love, take it down Oh climb a mountain and turn around And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills Well, the landslide will bring it down 

This morning Heart’s song, “Alone” came to me. I was thinking in this song. Just because of what’s been going on in my life lately. 

Like I said in my “Sound of Silence” post, lyrics are so subjective. Music is an art form. Poetry is an art form. We take from it what we can relate in our own lives usually. Even though we may understand an artist may have meant X, our own interpretation can be different. That’s ok. They want to reach the masses. They want their work to resonate with you as much as it did them. We don’t have the same experiences, so why would our interpretations be the same?

If you feel color or think in song or taste experience, just let it happen. We evolve.

 Now it’s time for me to turn on some music. I’ve really been enjoying Post Malone lately.

[sunflowerstache]

The Tag Game

I was tagged by @emotionally-imbruised …. HELLO LOVE i hope you’re doing wonderful💛

Rules: Tag ten mutuals you want to know!

Name: the name’s Sarah(:

Star Sign: Capricorn

Height: honestly I have no idea lol, last time I got measured I was 5′4

Put your iTunes (or Spotify) on shuffle. What are the first 4 songs that popped up? :

1: get well soon - Ariana Grande

2: Dreams - Fleetwood Mac

3: Fortunate Son - Creedence Clearwater Revival

4: Naive - The Kooks

Ever have a poem or song written about you?: not to my knowledge):

When was the last time you played the guitar: I got a guitar from cousin years ad years ago and learned some stuff  -  the beginning of Landslide by Fleetwood Mac was the only song I learned lol - but then stopped learning and haven’t touched it in well over 10 years

Who is your celebrity crush: a shithead named Harry Styles… but also Ryan Reynolds, Chris Hemsworth, and Calum Hood could absolutely get it

What’s the sound you hate + a sound you love?: I HATE the sound of snow crunching under my shoes…. it gives me the chills and it makes me cringe so bad. other than the obvious of Harry’s voice, I love the sound of someone typing on a MacBook(thats weirdly specific I know), rain, the ocean, and honestly just anyone talking with a raspy voice

Do you believe in ghosts?: oh definitely

How about aliens?: 10000% I have no doubt… there’s no way we are alone in the universe… that shit’s HUGE

Do you drive?: I do, admittedly not very well and with a lead foot, but I do

What was the last book you read?: the sun and her flowers - rupi kaur

Do you like the smell of gasoline?: yes omg it’s so bad but I LOVE it so much - I watched a show called my strange addictions and this one lady kept water bottles filled halfway with gasoline around her cause so she could smell it all day cause she loved it that much……….. thats a little much, but I felt that

Whats the worst injury you’ve ever had?: I fell down the stairs at school 3 years ago and fractured my ankle and then proceeded to fall down the rest of the stairs (trying to get to the bottom for the ambulance) and sprained my other ankle…. both have never healed right so I occasionally have to wear a walking boot):

Do you have any obsessions right now?: I just finished binge watching Brooklyn Nine Nine and if you have never watched it, I’m telling you, it’s fucking amazing and one of the best shows on television ever… I also just started embroidery, and just art in general - drawing, painting, writing!

Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong?: I think it really depends on what happened. like I just went through a really big thing with my ex best friend and I definitely hold a grudge against her for it but most things I try to just move on… the past is the past!

In a relationship?: HAHAHAHA I’m so single I can’t even cry in a cool way

I’ll tag: honestly most of these aren’t mutuals but I love them and their accounts dearly and would love to know more about them! @meet-me-in-the-kitchen @kissiesforharry @fleeetwood @ofharrie @pendantstyles @nycharrie and I know y'all but theres so much more for me to learn about you! @floralshakespeare @crosstattooharry @customhucci @hes-a-rainbow

[tothewaterhq]

ACCEPTED // BIRCH PEMBROOKE

district 10 → victor of the 68th hunger games → aaron taylor johnson fc

positive traits: one-handed weaponry skill, charming, nature knowledge negative traits: empathetic, only one forearm, difficulty with crafting and fine motor skills

describe their arena:

Pompeii. It was a few days before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, an ancient volcano that has been mentioned in old books from times past. The tributes were raised into the middle of a clearing in a forest. A cornucopia did not lie in the middle of a circle of tributes this time, but lay beyond the forest and across a field on the outskirt of Pompeii. The tributes were lined up in a single line all of them facing their destination. It was about 2 kilometers away through rough forest and an open field. An announcer told the tributes this and the Games had begun.

The first day it was rather uneventful, not many tributes died except in the bloodbath and not all of them were in the city. At the end of the first day, the ground rumbled and a landslide was triggered outside of the city. Any tributes not in the city were either killed or driven to enter the city. The city had several buildings and roads and a tribute could hide or wander the streets as they wished.

At the beginning of the second day, another earthquake shook the buildings, causing a couple of them to collapse.  forcing some tributes out into the street. There were aqueducts, baths, and fountains that were filled with water, but if one were to drink it they would lose their mind temporarily and attack anyone around them. Mutt dogs also roamed the streets and would chase and attack any that stumbled towards them. The second day ended with another tremor, collapsing a few more buildings.

The third day broke and the tributes woke to ‘people’ celebrating a festival. The 'people’ were celebrating the god of fire and sacrificing small beasts to the pyre in the middle of the town. Any tributes that attacked the 'people’ had the crowd turn on them and rip them apart. When the bell tolled at noon, the 'people’ began to hunt tributes to sacrifice to the god of fire. Two sacrifices would make the townspeople stop hunting the tributes and retreat to their homes. At the end of the festival, a table with 7 backpacks sat on a table, signalling the feast. The third night fell with another strong tremor.

On the fourth day, an explosion was heard from the volcano that sat north of the city. Fiery rocks were ejected from the volcano and landed on the city. They rained down on the remaining tributes and they destroyed several parts of the city and tributes. A flow of lava entered the city, causing the tributes to climb to the highest building in the city (the Temple). Then a cloud of ash, swept into the city and pushed some tributes into the lava. The final two were atop the temple and the ash swirled away to mark a battlefield with lava flowing around the bottom of the temple. This was the final showdown until the last tribute was left standing.

biography:

Birch’s childhood was like any who grew up in the poorer part of District 10. He had a wonderful family with 3 brothers and 1 sister. They lived in a small house at the end of a tree-lined street. Out of the back door he could see the fields sprawled to the left and a small creek with a grove of trees to the right. He could see the workers and animals running around was excited to join them. His arms were strong even as a young boy. He would help his family with chores including tending the chickens that they kept in the backyard and chopping wood for their kitchen stove.

Whenever Birch had the chance he would bound out of the back door and head for the small grove of trees that defied the fields of most of District 10. He loved the shade and the feeling of being so small. He felt like the world couldn’t touch him among the branches of the birch and ash trees. He was insignificant and the world would leave him untouched. He reveled in the joy he felt in seeing life grow out of the dead logs and that a harsh winter could reveal small pink blossoms popping out of the grass. Birch understood the cyclical nature of life as a boy and as he grew it became his life’s tagline.

His family would have been okay if they only had two children, but with three extra mouths than what they could afford, the boys of the family all took tesserae when they turned 12. It meant that their family had a good life, even though they were stuck together in a small home.

Birch’s father was his hero. He toiled the soil out in the warm sunshine everyday and came home to see his family with hugs and love to go around. Terry loved his wife and family very much and encouraged his children to do what they loved even if they had to go to a tough job everyday.

Birch wanted exactly what Terry had and to be that kind of person. He wanted to work in the fields and use his body to feed his own family. He wanted to be happy in his own little world.

As a child, Birch saw the Hunger Games as a means to feed his family. His older brothers, Ansel, and Linden, had taken tesserae for years and he continued the tradition when he turned 12. He did not see glory in the games, but could care less that they happened. They did not affect him and he did not think he would ever get chosen from the pool. Even if Birch was chosen, his life would feed his family’s and that is all that mattered. Life would spring from his death, just as his little patch of trees showed him every year.

Birch was the middle child, stuck between two older brothers and his two younger siblings, his sister June and his brother Ember. To help out, just like his brothers, Birch left school around 15 and started to work on the fields with the horses, dogs, and cattle. He learned to ride fairly effectively and enjoyed helping transport cattle to other fields.

Then Birch was in an accident. He lost his forearm. His world crashed down around him. Birch could not work on the farm anymore. He had to spend a few months recovering in his home with few excursions into the sunshine. His family took care of him and had enough of a job that they were stable. The doctor who had seen him, kept checking in on him and gave him some options. He was a young doctor and said that he could build him a device to help him get some function out of his left arm. In the interim, Birch got stronger - maybe, just maybe that would get him his job back.

He was 18, at this point and had just gotten used to the prosthetic that his doctor had given him when the Reaping occurred. As always, Birch was nervous, but this would be his last one and he could let the tension recede from his body. But, his brother, Ember was reaped. At just 13, he would be at a huge disadvantage and Birch was the only one that could save him. He volunteered for his brother and headed off to the Capitol. He had no mentor, only an escort who was not very interested in him. He tried to make some allies and friends, but many did not want to interact with such a liability as him.

When he entered the Arena, Birch glanced for a second at the Cornucopia, but decided to head right into the forest and hopefully hang out for at least a day. He survived for most of the day, only seeing one other tribute - a District 12 boy - that also wanted to stay hidden. However, when the first tremor hit and triggered the landslide, Birch barely made it. He couldn’t believe it, but saw that the other tribute didn’t make it. The kid’s backpack had been taken with the landslide down to the outskirt of the town so Birch grabbed, thanking him silently. There was a pack of nuts, a little bit of rope, and a small dagger in the bag.

The next day goes by in a blur, as he was attacked by a dog mutt - learning along the way that his prosthetic could be used as a shield - killing the District 6 girl that had drank some of the fountain water and attacked him. He hunkered down in one of the buildings and tried to bandage up some of his wounds that he had gotten from his fights (a dog bite on his arm and a knife wound on his leg). In the night, after the tremor that scared him for a few moments, he received a box with some bandages and a large knife. Confused, he found out that it was from Lori, the trainer who had taken him under her wing. He was momentarily happy knowing someone was looking out for him.

In the morning, he skirted around the ‘people’ celebrating, hiding on the rooftops and fighting one other tribute he came across. Birch grappled with him before throwing him into the crowd below, triggering the crowds security measure and ripped the tribute apart. He was shaken at this point, but the day had only begun. As the ‘people’ roamed around the streets looking for tributes, Birch stayed hidden on a rooftop. He was not attacked physically, but the stress of the past few days got to him and his demeanour cracked. The tributes he killed or lead to their deaths seemed to chase him as the ‘people’ chased the screaming tributes around the town. Only when he saw the smoke rise from the pyre and the screams die down did he let himself out of his shell. It was a good time because he had to hop off of the building he was on to survive the tremor that tore down a couple more buildings. In a fit of impulsiveness, Birch rushed to the table where his backpack was sitting and ran to a far building. Inside his backpack there was a smaller two-handed axe and a sandwich. It was a little bit comforting.

He went into an uneasy sleep that night and awoke to something that sounded like a bomb. Several fiery rocks fell close to him and he bounded up to the rooftops to see where the rocks were falling. He continued to dodge and bounded from roof to roof, hearing rocks hit and cannons sound as tributes were killed. Lava flowed into the town and Birch’s mind couldn’t quite keep up with all of the things going on. There were a couple of times that his prosthetic almost slipped, but he managed to dodge and only get slightly burned by the rocks and get hit by some small stones. He continued to climb to the highest point on the temple and reached the top to face the District 4 tribute, Coral. Birch dropped his backpack on the ground and pulled out the axe and put the two daggers he had collected into his belt. There battle was epic and long. By the end of it, Birch’s axe had fallen into the lava, but not before taking a chunk out of Coral’s leg. Coral had also embedded a dagger into his shoulder and a scratch along the side of his face. At this point, Coral was a fatigued and Birch took the moment to pull off his prosthetic and threw it at her. She was so taken aback that Birch charged at her, pushing her backwards into the lava below. He had won. It was overwhelming, sad, and joyous.

Since then, his family had moved out of their small house and into one of the houses in Victor’s Village. His family was safe and they were prospering like never before. Birch kept their old home though, he liked coming back to it between Games and just enjoying a simple life for a few days.

He had been a Mentor coming on 7 years and he was content but tired. Birch hated the idea of him leading these kids to slaughter, but he enjoyed teaching them and becoming friends with them. It hurt much more when he lost them, but it was the right thing to do. Birch had a few friends in the Tower, but was otherwise single. He still wanted the life that his father had - full of love, a family and simplicity, but Birch wasn’t sure he would find it now.

PLAYED BY // CASSIE

[wealthiesthub]

The Most Dangerous Roads You Would Never Want To Drive On

Are you a fearless driver? Wait till you hear about roads that have been carved into the side of cliffs and are prone to natural disasters! Most of these roads are in the form of highways that can be found from North America to Asia. Do you have what it takes to drive on these dangerous roads? Especially since some of them are known to have caused countless deaths! In this video, we will go over the five most dangerous roads you would never want to drive on!

Zoji La

Number One. Zoji La. A high mountain pass, known as the Zoji La, is at an elevation of 11,575 feet above sea level! It is in the Kargil district of Ladakh, India. This strip of rock is said to be one of the most treacherous passes in the world! The road to the summit is unpaved, with steep drops and no barriers. It’s called National Highway 1. Despite being challenging to drive on, Zoji La is a spectacular mountain road pass with stunning views and heart-stopping moments. It overlooks snow-covered summits and dense strips of jungles. The pass sits on the way from Baltal and Matayen and provides an important link between Ladakh and Kashmir. However, this 25.8 km winding road is so narrow that cars and heavy vehicles find it difficult to maneuver. The Zoji La also experiences extreme weather conditions! During and after a storm, the road may be impassable, even with a four-wheel-drive vehicle, especially in winters when there are high chances of high winds and heavy snowfall. Vehicles can easily get muddy if it rains making it challenging to get through. Just recently, in October 2020, a conductor was killed on the spot after his truck skidded off the road and rolled down into a deep gorge at Zoji La Pass. Three persons, including the driver and two army personnel, were injured. The two army men had suffered injuries after a portion of the truck hit an army vehicle while rolling down the slope. Over 60 landslides have also been reported on this road. Zoji La is not a road for the faint-hearted! The good news is that India approved the Zoji La tunnel project in 2018, which involves the construction of an 8.5-mile tunnel under the pass. This will help to reduce the time to cross the Zoji La from more than three hours to just 15 minutes!

Atlantic Ocean Road

Number Two. Atlantic Ocean Road. Norway is one of the safest countries to drive in, having only 20 fatal car accidents per 1 million people. However, it is home to one of the most dangerous passageways, the Atlantic Ocean Road. This road is also known to be one of the most scenic drives in the world! The road is characterized by curves, with dips and arches over the Norwegian Sea. The Atlantic Ocean Road is part of the 36 km long Atlanterhavsveien, and its eight bridges are one of the country’s most popular tourist attractions! But the weather here is also unpredictable and harsh, with visibility disappearing quickly. There are sudden temperature drops as well. Major sea storms make the bridges extremely dangerous for drivers, and the raging waves of the Norwegian Sea regularly sweep over the pavement, accompanied by powerful gusts of wind! Fortunately, however, there are only a few serious accidents on record because local drivers and authorities tend to take precautions when storms hit. So if you ever want to drive on The Atlantic Ocean Road, pick a sunny day!

Dalton Highway

Number Three. Dalton Highway. If you can drive the Dalton Highway, you can pretty much drive anything. Alaska has some of the coldest roads on the planet, but this one is more extreme than the rest. The Dalton Highway is known to be the loneliest road on Earth! This road was initially built in 1974 as a supply route for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. It is named after James Dalton, the Alaska-born engineer, who directed and supervised its construction. Despite its isolated and remote setting, huge trucks are its main traffic. Many who have driven the Dalton Highway have called it "The Ultimate Road Trip". This two-lane gravel road stretches for 666 kilometers, which is equivalent to the distance between Washington DC and Boston! Anyone who drives on this road is encouraged to bring emergency supplies and survival gear! Driving in small cars or motorcycles is a bad idea since large rocks often fall off the monstrous supply vehicles, which can easily damage them. They also often kick up thick clouds of dust, mud, and gravel, which significantly reduces visibility. Extreme caution is taken on this road as fuel is only available at three places over the entire course of the route, and headlights must be switched on at all times! The speed limit is about 80 kilometers per hour. There is no cellphone coverage on the road, and some satellite phones do not work within the Brooks Range. There are no gas stations, restaurants, hotels, or any other basic services. A simple breakdown could leave you stranded for days! The Dalton Highway is essentially an isolated gravel road with enormous mammoth potholes, poor visibility, sudden 2-4 lane changes, and extreme Arctic weather that make avalanches a winter hazard. All of this has contributed to the many fatalities that have occurred on the highway! Very recently in March 2021, a 47-year-old Fairbanks man had a rollover accident. He died after a medical emergency caused him to drive a commercial vehicle off the Dalton Highway. Another rollover accident occurred back in 2018 when the only woman hauling fuel tanks went off a soft shoulder and down a steep embankment. The force of the impact caused the tanker to flip, which then flipped the tractor further into a swamp basin. The 50-year-old woman died at the scene.

Yungas Road

Number Four. Yungas Road. A gravel dirt track covering a 69 kilometer stretch between La Paz and Coroico, in the Yungas region of Bolivia, is the most famous road in the world as well as the most dangerous. It is estimated that yearly, 200 to 300 people traveling on the Yungas Road die, and 26 vehicles go off the road with vertical drops of up to 1000 meters over the edge! Therefore this road is also known as “Death Road” and was considered the “World’s Most Dangerous Road”. However, the Yungas Road lost this title in 2006, after the construction of a new highway close by, which directs most of the traffic away from its path. The thin road climbs the famous Bolivian mountain pass, La Cumbre, at an elevation of 15,260 feet above sea level, winding and turning all the while with nauseatingly deep canyons below. There are threats of landslides, and the cliff faces pose danger while traveling its slick and rocky path. The road is barely the width of one vehicle, with no guardrail to offer protection from falls of up to 2,000 feet. Rain can make the road muddy and slippery, and the fog reduces the driver’s visibility. One of the most serious accidents happened on 24th July 1983, when a bus veered off the Yungas Road into a canyon, killing more than 100 passengers. It is considered Bolivia's worst road accident. Then in December 1999, eight Israeli travelers were killed in a jeep accident on this road as well. Now that there is an alternative, however, the Yungas road has become a popular tourist destination. There are now many tour operators, providing information, guides, transport, and equipment for the risky journey.

Million Dollar Highway

Number Five. Million Dollar Highway. Stretching 40 kilometers on Colorado's Route 550, and despite being a highway, the Million Dollar Highway takes 42 minutes to drive. This is because it has a speed limit of 25 miles per hour! The road is carved into the side of the San Juan Mountains and reaches an elevation of 11,018 feet. It's one of the US’s most spectacular drives. However, it has no guardrails between the pavement and the cliffs. The road only gets narrower the further you go. Not to mention, the weather in the area is harsh and highly unpredictable as well. The Million Dollar Highway is kept open year-round, but the storms and heavy snowfall can make the road constantly at risk of rockslides and avalanches during the winter months. The origin of the name Million Dollar Highway is argued upon. There are several legends, some including that it cost a million dollars a mile to build the road, and some say that the highway’s fill dirt contains a million dollars in gold ore! Records give proof of how dangerous the Million Dollar Highway is as they show that from 2005 to 2015, there were 412 accidents and eight fatalities, most involving single-vehicle crashes! However, it was also reported that in December 2018, a car went 130 feet off of the Million Dollar Highway resulting in serious injuries to an unbelted passenger. The police report stated that the car landed upside down. The two people inside then had to wait hours in freezing temperatures for rescue! This was similar to what happened previously in the same month, except that it, unfortunately, resulted in the death of the driver.

So, what do you guys think? Are you brave enough to take the risk of driving on one of these roads? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.