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talkingpointsusa · 6 months ago

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Trump Ally Laura Loomer spins baseless conspiracy theories about Tim Walz having ties to ISIS

Laura Loomer is a person who sucks. She's essentially a self-described "proud Islamophobe" and white nationalist whose whole schtick is calling everybody she doesn't like ISIS. She believes that the Democrats can control the weather and has a bizarre obsession with Kamala Harris’ race.

Despite the fact that this person is clearly extremely fringe and has a belief system not that far out of step with the Neo-Nazi movement, she also has a scary amount of influence on the right having scored interviews with prominent GOP politicians and celebrities like Kari Lake, J,D. Vance, and Nancy Mace. As a result I think it is worth talking about who Loomer is, what she’s all about, and how pretty much everything she says is bullshit. Unfortunately for my sanity, that process involves me watching Laura Loomer. Oh well, lets see what deranged thing she's lying about this time.

TW: Loomer's whole "thing" is basically being an Islamophobe and that carries on in this episode. If you're not comfortable with that, I don't blame you, I'm not either which is why I'm debunking and countering this bullshit while also showing how close it truly is to the modern Republican Party.

21:25, Laura Loomer: "Good evening and welcome to episode 65 of Loomer Unleashed, I'm your host Laura Loomer. If you had any doubts that a Kamala Harris presidency would be anything but a total disaster for the United States of America than the past few days ought to set you free. Yesterday, stock markets all around the world posted one of their worst days ever as investors fear that America is headed for a recession."

On Monday the stock market plummeted after the release of a weaker than expected jobs report coupled with the Federal Reserves decision last week not to lower interest rates, a decision that has been panned by multiple economists who are now suggesting that the Fed make an emergency rate-cut. The current chair of the Federal Reserve is a man by the name of Jerome Powell who was appointed by the Trump Administration. So, while Trump and his sycophants want you to believe that the chaos on Monday was a Kamala crash it was more of a Donald drop.

This crash had nothing to do with Kamala Harris but that didn't stop key figures on the right like Donald Trump, Charlie Kirk, and now Laura Loomer from blaming the crash on the vice-president. In Loomer's case this is particularly embarrassing since she posted this episode on August 6th...the day that the stock market rebounded and investors started to regain some of their losses. Oops, bad timing there.

22:12, Laura Loomer: "Lets make one thing perfectly clear, even though Joe Biden is currently 'the president' (her quotes not mine) we all know that he has not really been in control of the government and the decision making if that couldn't be more obvious to all of you."

No proof, just vibes. Isn't it interesting how far-right media never offers up any concrete evidence outside of "Well, I saw this thing through my distorted worldview and here's the vibe I got!"

But she did put forward that absolutely ridiculous statement with a purpose. Here's where she's going with that line of thinking - this is really dumb and gets contradicted by her multiple times over the course of this episode.

22:30, Laura Loomer: "That means that for the past few years Kamala Harris has already been, in a large part, running our nation. That means that all of the problems over the past four years can be hung around her neck."

I love how they basically have to make fan-fiction up because they don't really have anything on Harris and Walz and got blindsided by Harris deciding to run in the first place. It's been absolutely hilarious to watch.

"Wait guys! Ignore everything that I've been saying for the past four years, Kamala Harris was actually the president this whole time which means all that stuff we made up about Biden actually applies to her! Yeah...that's it."

23:38, Laura Loomer: "Even though the market had been doing quite well prior and has now recovered slightly, just a little, well Monday's disaster is a sign of volatility. And what exactly does this volatility indicate? It indicates uncertainty, massive uncertainty, a lack of confidence, and underlying problems."

Interesting way to try and reconcile that. "Oh yeah, the stock market was doing really well before Monday and has recovered now but uh....the Democrats are still responsible for this." It's almost like there's something that caused such a sudden reaction on the market that Laura isn't telling her audience.

In case you're wondering, she never brings up the Fed or the jobs report in this episode because why would she? It goes against her bizarre narrative that Kamala Harris, who isn't even the president yet, was somehow responsible for a global stock market downturn.

25:12, Laura Loomer: "If this is how Harris's economy has been while she's VP imagine how much worse its going to be when she has full control of the reigns as president, god forbid."

Wait, isn't Harris already the president? You know, back during that long since passed wistful period of three minutes ago when Biden had dementia and Kamala was secretly running the country.

There's a certain level of turning your brain off required to uncritically consume shows like Charlie Kirk and Laura Loomer. If you pay attention to them you'll start to notice that these guys contradict themselves constantly. They have a spread of talking points and they just say shit for two hours without actually thinking about what they're saying beyond "This thing can piss off my audience at this exact moment". If you don't notice these direct contradiction when watching this kind of media, you aren't paying attention.

25:50, Laura Loomer: "The same is true of the immigration crisis which has been at all time lows when President Trump left office partly as a result of COVID."

During the pandemic, undocumented immigrants crossing the border dropped significantly because, well there was a pandemic. However, in the last four months of the Trump presidency encounters at the Southern Border were 14.7% higher than the first month he was in office. This pandemic number was also not an all time low, that would be in April 2017 shortly after Trump took office and before another large spike.

The notion that the Biden-Administration has some sort of "shadowy open border policy" is a total myth that's deeply rooted in white nationalism, as we'll see later on in this post when Loomer starts peddling white nationalism. As a matter of fact, the Biden Administration has increased spending on the border from Donald Trump's $20.9 billion to $23.5 billion. Unfortunately, this also means that many of the human rights abuses at the border that were carried out in the Trump years also carried on during the Biden years which is policy that I obviously don't support.

When people like Laura Loomer talk about "the open boarder" they are essentially admitting that they don't want anybody coming in whether illegally or legally. That is because these people want a white nation, something which Loomer has literally admitted out loud in the past. It's a very thinly disguised dog whistle that you see on every spectrum of the right-wing media ecosystem, from more fringe outlets like Laura Loomer and Infowars all the way to more "mainstream" ones like Daily Wire and FOX News.

26:19, Laura Loomer: "Once here, the Biden/Harris Administration has resorting to simply letting these invaders go free or worse, they have been shipping them to small towns across the country."

Fear-mongering against "the other" is a hallmark of fascist propaganda and it's no exception here. This is all just great replacement theory shit that has nothing backing it up. Notice how nobody ever shows a picture or video of these Biden Harris vehicles shipping migrants to small towns.

This isn't just about migrants at the Southern Border, it's about legal immigration too. The Laura Loomers of the world don't want any immigration unless the people immigrating are white and even then only white heterosexual Christians. Don't believe me? Here's Loomer going on a bigoted tirade against Somali immigrants in Minnesota.

26:30, Laura Loomer: "In fact, Minnesota the state where Kamala's VP pick Tim Walz is governor is a perfect example of how this invader resettlement has gone terribly wrong. A lot of people refer to Minnesota as Little Mogadishu, a little spin-off off of Somalia because of the massive population of Somali Muslims who refuse to assimilate in Minnesota."

What she's essentially saying is that Islamic communities that consist of Somali-American's who are here legally, some even second generation immigrants as the Somali immigration into Minnesota began during the beginning of the Somali Civil War in the 1990's that led to thousands of refugees leaving Somalia and immigrating to the United States, are still invaders. This is because in Loomer's eyes anybody who isn't white is inherently an "invader". It's naked racism in its purest form.

You would think that this kind of rhetoric is fringe on the right but one of the reasons that I'm covering Loomer here is that it really isn't. Touch this up a little, put a bit of a mask on it, and it could easily be the opening monologue on something like The Matt Walsh Show or The Charlie Kirk Show.

And you know what? Mainstream Republicans have embraced Loomer despite this clear white-nationalist rhetoric. Before he was vice-president, J.D. Vance appeared on Loomers show to raise campaign funds. Loomer was a white nationalist and extremist back then too, nothings changed. Donald Trump himself has also embraced Loomer, referring to her as "great Laura Loomer" in a speech and Loomer has rode with Trump aboard his private jet in the past. Donald Trump Jr has also floated Loomer for a spot in the Trump administration if Trump gets elected for a second term. So, when I show you this next quote about Somali Muslims let it be known that this is what the Trump Administration explicitly endorses through their continued association and praise of Loomer.

26:55, Laura Loomer: "There, these people leech off the system, they breed like rabbits, they disrupt the natural communities and they commit violent crimes without contributing anything of value to our society."

I hope J.D. Vance and Donald Trump are proud of what they're endorsing when they associate with this woman. Don't get it twisted, this talk of breeding wouldn't be out of place in a Neo-Nazi pamphlet and it's being peddled by a key ally of the current person that the GOP is running for president. This is not fringe anymore, it's what the GOP explicitly endorses and that should be scary as fuck to you!

If you are a more moderate Trump supporter, you know someone who maybe catches FOX News from time to time and is concerned about the economy and whatnot, first of all welcome to the blog! I actively welcome you to read my back catalogue and see how the stuff you've been consuming is total bunk consisting of half-baked lies. But second of all, your candidate endorses this! Take a look at this stuff, compare it to what Nazi's say on a regular basis, look at your candidate embracing this person, and ask yourself; is this the kind of thing that I support?

27:47, Laura Loomer: "Governor Walz has been in office since 2019. While BLM ran rampant in his state burning entire sections of Minneapolis to the ground following the overdose death of career criminal thug George Floyd, Walz didn't just sit idly by, he actively encouraged it."

As we saw when mainstream right-wing commentators like Matt Walsh and Tucker Carlson, more proof that these guys are all peddling the same rhetoric by the way, pushed this exact same lie about George Floyd, it's complete bullshit.

The autopsy report released by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner, while it did show that Floyd hand fentanyl in his system, ruled that Floyd died from “cardiopulmonary arrest from law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression."

We literally saw Floyd get murdered on camera and there are mountains of testimonies from the Chauvin trial showing that it was absolutely Chauvin's fault that Floyd was killed. Not that it matters when you're a racist who's overly concerned with breeding that's also actively using racist dog-whistles like calling a black man a "thug".

29:04, Laura Loomer: "This guy is clearly a loony left-wing radical dressed up as an old white grandpa. He wants you to think that he's your typical old-white grandpa and he's very dangerous. He's basically a less senile and more radical Joe Biden."

While it is definitely important to point out how extreme Loomer is, it's also important to point out that she's also a complete dumbass.

Ah yes, famous left-wing radical *checks notes* Joe Biden. We've lived through four years of the Democrats and none of the stuff that Loomer said would happen happened. She's just somebody who's good at drumming up fear and rage in racists without providing actual evidence.

29:47, Laura Loomer: "He certainly isn't going to be driving anybody to go vote. Really, lets just think about this for a second. What young voter or minority is looking at Tim Walz, an old white man, and is saying 'yes, that's our guy. I'm in. He's going to represent me.'"

The polls say that voters like Tim Walz more the J.D. Vance but I guess if you want to live in fantasyland go right ahead.

30:16, Laura Loomer: "And so, as the election approaches President Trump needs to be asking himself 'How would a Kamala Harris presidency be any different from the past four years?' She's been running the White House already."

Kamala Harris: She's more extreme than Biden and will turn America into a communist hellhole....also she's been running the White House already and if she wins it'll just be more of the same. None of this makes any sense, even internally.

Laura does an ad that's basically her playing clips of Alex Jones praising her and some clips of her dumb attention starved PR stunt bullshit like running around in a stereotypical "Mexican" outfit to protest immigration. You know, for someone who is pretending to be a journalist that has this breaking proof that the Democrats have ties to ISIS, Laura is really just stretching to waste time here. She comes back, talks more about the stock market, and contradicts herself again.

33:52, Laura Loomer: "We can look at some of these posts, him calling this crash yesterday the Kamala crash and that's what exactly everybody needs to be referring to it as because this is exactly what we're going to see if Kamala Harris gets into the White House for another four years and she is just as much involved with our policies in this country as he is."

Is Kamala the president right now or isn't she? Make up your mind Laura!

The thing with Laura Loomer's show is that half of it is just the "Riffing About Trump's Truth Social Posts and Twitter Show". She continues down this route of riffing on Trump's Truth Social posts and I decided to open up the stopwatch app on my phone and time it.

Laura's Truth Social commentary clocks in at around a minute and fifty five seconds give or take the few seconds it took me to open up her Rumble page after I hit go on the stopwatch. It's just two whole minutes of reading tweets and "The Kamala crash, Trump called it the Kamala crash!" with absolutely no substance to it.

So, she goes on to talk about the guy from Pakistan who got arrested for plotting to assassinate key government officials and honestly covering this wasn't a smart move on her part at all. I'll explain why in a minute but lets hear her out.

40:46, Laura Loomer: "And just today actually, we saw how grave the national security issue is when the DOJ announced that a Pakistani national has been arrested and charged for plotting to assassinate president Trump."

This story is about a Pakistani man named Asif Merchant with alleged ties to Iran who was arrested last month for plotting to carry out the assassinations of key government figures including potentially Donald Trump. Court documents actually did not specify who this guy was planning to assassinate however a threat on Trump's life from Iran due to the killing of Qassem Soleimani in 2020 led to many people speculating that the person that this guy had in mind was Trump.

First of all, we just don't know a lot about this story. While it is likely that Merchant might have had Trump on his list and many sources have backed that claim up, those same sources are saying that this guy had targets from both sides of the political aisle in mind. There's a lot of unknown here and its all very messy meaning that it's Loomers responsibility as somebody calling herself a journalist to be really careful about what she says while covering this. In that respect she absolutely failed.

Second of all, the fact that Merchant was arrested and charged blows everything that Loomer was saying earlier out of the water. I thought that the Biden Administration was just letting criminals run rampant and not charging anybody. Guess that's no longer something that's happening. I also thought that the Democrats wanted to kill Trump. Dumbasses like Laura Loomer have been speculating that the Democrats intentionally let the Trump shooting in Butler PA happen for weeks. But I guess the evil Biden DOJ that I've been hearing about for months now just arrested and convicted this guy that may have been planning to assassinate Trump, thus foiling their evil plot, for....reasons I guess.

Laura Loomer absolutely should not have covered this story. I get that it's low-hanging fruit in MAGA-world right now but its very existence messes up this narrative that MAGA media has been pushing for what feels like centuries now about Biden just letting people run rampant and the Democrats allowing the Trump assassination attempt to happen.

So, Loomer finds out that Merchant contacted a confidential informant for the FBI and of course gets the story completely wrong. What actually happened was that Merchant landed in the states and contacted a person who he felt would help him carry out his plans. After Merchant contacted this guy, his contact immediately called law enforcement and became a confidential informant for the FBI that helped the authorities eventually bring Merchant in.

The way that Loomer seems to interpret this part of the story is "Oh, the FBI contacted Merchant and was giving him his marching orders" which doesn't even make any sense with the facts that Loomer presented! If the FBI wanted this guy to kill Trump and was giving him his marching orders, why would they then arrest and charge this guy for doing what they wanted him to do in the first place? It makes absolutely zero sense whatsoever.

42:15, Laura Loomer: "Ok, so the FBI was in touch with Iranian hitmen to kill President Trump. Don't tell me for one second to that this attack that we saw in Butler Pennsylvania, probably, what are they going to say? 'Oh, this was just a mentally disturbed kid'. When's it gonna come out that he was also talking to confidential informants in the FBI."

This is just complete nonsense that is completely devoid from reality. This is somebody who calls themself an "investigative journalist" messing up basic details about this big news story to push a political agenda. It's embarrassing behavior and anybody calling themself a "journalist" who acts like this should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.

42:38, Laura Loomer: "So, you see how dangerous our intelligence agencies are because they intentionally lead people to these positions. They allow this guy to travel to New York where he was planning on killing president Trump and we just saw that somebody got very close. We know that this Thomas Matthew Crooks individual, they're not saying that there's ties between this guy and Thomas Matthew Crooks but Thomas Matthew Crooks had overseas encrypted bank accounts."

They also arrested him after getting the appropriate evidence needed to convict. This conspiracy theory makes zero sense in the real world.

Thomas Matthew Crooks didn't have overseas bank accounts. That claim was spread by an Instagram post made after the assassination attempt and nobody provided evidence to back this claim up. The FBI has came out and stated that Crooks didn't have overseas bank accounts and until somebody provides actual evidence proving them wrong I'm inclined to believe them.

As any regular listener of Knowledge Fight (hello, fellow wonks) will tell you, guys like Laura Loomer and Alex Jones mainly get their "news" from shitheads on Twitter and Instagram without actually looking into it and this is an excellent example of that.

I figured this out in five seconds and I'm just some university student with a blog. I don't run a massive produced show and hobnob with key government figures, I'm just a guy with a laptop sitting at a desk in my home debunking bullshit. Yeah, I'm majoring in journalism but you don't just magically gain the ability to verify stuff the day you step into a journalism lecture, Google is a thing that exists and it's a really easy tool for journalists to use! The minute that people like Laura Loomer start calling themselves "journalists" becomes the minute that they become responsible to vet the stuff they're saying and whether or not it's accurate. Loomer has failed her audience and on a broader level her basic duties as a journalist.

So, Laura decides that Tim Walz has ties to ISIS because at this point we're openly playing make em' ups. What's her proof of this absolutely damning claim?

45:16, Laura Loomer: "So, Tim Walz of course is the governor of Minnesota and that's who Kamala Harris decided to pick today as her vice-presidential pick. He is openly tied to Ilhan Omar, Keith Ellison, a lot of these very dangerous radical Muslim politicians."

Surprise surprise, it's just more disgusting bigotry. Naturally, Loomer sees two Islamic progressive politicians and thinks "They must be tied to ISIS" without having any evidence tying them to ISIS. There used to be a word for that, I remember that it started with an R and ended with ACISM. Not that this critique matters much when it comes to Laura who doesn't try to deny her racism but it's still absolutely worth pointing out just so that it's on the record.

45:32, Laura Loomer: "But probably the most radical situation of all is the fact that Tim Walz advocated for an ISIS affiliated Islamic centre called the Dar-Al Farooq Islamic Centre which I have personally visited by the way in Minnesota."

There is absolutely no proof that the Dar-Al Farooq Centre is tied to ISIS and what Loomer is doing here is disgusting for a bunch of reasons.

The thing that got the ball rolling about this mosque being "ISIS affiliated" is an incident in 2016 where three youths who attended this mosque tried to flee the country and join ISIS. While this was obviously an extremely bad thing and it's a good thing that these kids got caught, there's no proof that mosque leadership knew about this nor is there proof that anybody else at the mosque knew about what these kids were planning. However, that didn't stop far-right media from starting a targeted smear campaign against this mosque. Congregants reported far-right social media figures showing up to the mosque and filming their children.

This eventually reached its apex when in 2017 three white males traveled eight hours from their home state in Illinois in order to plant a pipe bomb inside the Dar-Al Farooq Centre, thankfully nobody was hurt in the attack. According to the bomber his motive was to scare Muslim's into leaving the US and that he heard that Dar-Al Farooq was "training ISIS members". Now, look at the fact that Laura Loomer is pushing the exact same kind of rhetoric that nearly got innocent people killed....yeah. I cannot stress this enough, fuck! this! shit!

There's absolutely zero reason for Loomer to not know that far-right disinformation like her show played a huge part in children being harassed and actual terrorism and yet here she is spreading this crap about this mosque anyway despite everything that it's caused. It's easy to laugh at how dumb these people are and how they have no idea what they're talking about but I cannot stress this enough, this shit has the potential to get people killed.

On that happy note, Laura starts interviewing a man named John Guandolo and I really don't care. For those who don't know, John Guandolo is a former FBI Agent who runs the SPLC registered extremist group "Understanding The Threat". Guandolo left the FBI in 2008 while he was being investigated by the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility over having an affair with a confidential source and soliciting $75,000 dollars for an "anti-terrorism group" that he was working on creating at the time. Real cool and trustworthy guy. John's "coolness" only continued after he left the FBI and formed Understanding the Threat which basically runs bizarre "counterterrorism training" sessions for law enforcement officials and civilians alike that are basically just seminars devoted to islamophobic conspiracy theories. Guandolo also has a long track record of assaulting people and then promptly getting has ass sued. In 2023, Understanding the Threat shut down in part because John kept doing dumb shit that got his ass sued (although the exact details of why they shut down are kind of murky at best).

Essentially, he's one of these ex-military/FBI "counterterrorism" grifters that were a dime a dozen after 9/11, he's cut from the same cloth as guys like Jack Idema. I don't have enough time to go into all the specific nuances of how much of a loser John Guandolo is but suffice it to say this guy really fucking sucks. We're not going to look at too much of his interview because it's just boring and dumb islamophobic conspiracy theories but there is some stuff in there that we should talk about.

50:03, Laura Loomer: "I was just explaining prior to you coming on that we spent a lot of time together in Minnesota doing counter-terrorism and also investigating on the ground with other counter-Jihad experts. People like Ilhan Omar, Keith Ellison and their radical networks which includes Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and also ISIS."

"And by on the ground doing counterterrorism I mean us running around doing dumb stuff on the internet."

Neither of these guys have presented evidence to back up what they're saying outside of "we don't like Muslims". I couldn't find what kind of "counter-terrorism" these guys were up to in 2018 but given Loomers past track record I'm sure it was just running around being a public nuisance and acting like an absolute drain on society in front of mosques.

50:43, Laura Loomer: "Obviously it's all factual and you can confirm it."

This show is just Islamophobic LARPing at this point.

51:32, John Guandolo: "Number one, Dar-Al Farooq is an -- and it's not a secret. That's a jihadi mosque. The leadership of the mosque, those are jihadi's running it. And you mentioned something a moment ago that I think is important to put a real fine point on for your audience, Shayk Idris at Dar Al-Farooq is the chairman of the Islamic University of Minnesota, the first of its kind in America, and its built to teach sharia to a wide variety of folks but its really to train people that are looking to be scholars and the way it fits into the broader Jihadi movement in the United States is the Brotherhood is very interested in raising up Jihadi's here that are American's so they needed to build the Islamic university here and they chose Minnesota."

The Islamic University of Minnesota is basically the Muslim equivalent of a bible college. They aren't "training Jihadi's" and if they were the FBI would be all over them in eleven seconds. This is just conspiracy theory nonsense from two people who have built their careers around pushing islamophobia and like I said before, this shits dangerous and could very easily lead to violence in the real world.

53:14, John Guandolo: "That entire culture there is in bed with and I mean protecting and defending the Jihadi's in the Twin Cities and it's why when my team came through prior to the 2016 election and I wrote that article, it was entitled 'In This War: The Twin Cities and Minnesota' and I still believe today more than I did then it will take literal military intervention to liberate Minneapolis/St Paul."

Not much to say other than this guys calling for the military to come in and kill civilians because they're immigrants. I hate these two so much. By the way, as stated previously in my last post on the Walz nomination, crime has been down in Minneapolis recently.

The entire interview is like this so we don't have to spend a lot of time on it. Just two bigots lying to each other and potentially inciting violence. We have one last quote, here's Loomer saying that the Democrats want to form an "Islamic Caliphate". Never heard that one before except for when Obama was elected, or during Hillary's campaign, or....

01:39:36, Laura Loomer: "We are literally in the middle of an Islamo-fascist communist takeover of the Western world and the United States of America. Make no mistake, you see these videos right now in the United Kingdom where people are setting fire to cars, they're raping women, they're stabbing people, they're attacking white people in the streets. We're gonna have Muslim gains like that here in the United States of America. We already do, in cities like Dearborn, Michigan and Minneapolis, Minnesota and New York City. We've seen these pro-Hamas riots where we have these people waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags. So I'll tell you right now, if Kamala Harris gets elected as president of the United States, we are, we are going to have an Islamic caliphate in this country."

She said about the UK during a period where the UK is dealing with extremist anti-immigrant rioters setting fire to buildings but that's honestly a topic for its own post. This is just a bizarre slew of Islamophobic talking points that make zero sense, a fitting way to end a post full of Islamophobic talking points that make zero sense.

Conclusion:

That was a particularly gross thing to watch. The thing that freaks me out about Laura Loomer is the fact that this woman has influence. In a reasonable society folks like Laura Loomer and John Guandolo would be guys yelling on street corners with little to no influence but instead here they are spreading hate to a massive audience full of people that unquestionably believe it. The only thing you can really do is call it what it is: hateful bullshit.

Quite frankly, there's very little separating stuff like this and some of the more "mainstream" organizations on the right like The Daily Wire. Just ask Matt Walsh who's very concerned about the white birth-rate or Michael Knowles who believes in the Great Replacement Theory. The difference between them and Laura Loomer is that Loomer doesn't really try to hide her naked bigotry whereas FOX and the Daily Wire try to couch it in double speak and dog-whistles.

On the bright side, it says a lot about Tim Walz' record that they have so little to go with that they have to just up and make shit up about him. While there's very little you can do to win over extremists, Walz' record can do a lot to win over moderates and watching people like Laura Loomer flail around trying to find new ways to smear him gives me some hope for the election.

Original Video:

“EP65: SUMMER of JIHAD: Kamala’s vp Pick EXPOSED for ISIS Ties!” Rumble, 6 Aug. 2024

Sources Cited:

Dorn, Sara. ““Kamala Crash”: Trump Tries to Pin Stock Market Downturn on Harris.” Forbes, 6 Aug. 2024.

Picciotto, Rebecca. “Trump Quiet on Markets after Stock Rebound Robs Him of “Kamala Crash” Attack Line.” CNBC, CNBC, 6 Aug. 2024.

Farley, Robert. “Trump’s Misleading Chart on Illegal Immigration.” FactCheck.org, 4 Apr. 2024

Miller, Todd. “Biden’s Supposed “Open-Border Policy” Does Not Exist.” Www.thenation.com, 22 Nov. 2023

Smith, Allan, et al. “Trump’s Embrace of Far-Right Activist Laura Loomer Worries His Allies.” Nbcnews.com, NBC News, 14 Jan. 2024.

Hananoki, Eric. “Laura Loomer Helped JD Vance Raise Funds While He Appeared on Her Show.” Media Matters for America, 29 July 2024.

TUCKER, ERIC. “Pakistani Man with Ties to Iran Charged in Plot to Carry out Political Assassinations.” AP News, AP News, 6 Aug. 2024.

Thrush, Glenn. “Justice Dept. Charges Pakistani Man in Alleged Plot to Kill U.S. Leaders.” The New York Times, 6 Aug. 2024.

“Understanding the Threat.” Southern Poverty Law Center

Montemayor, Stephen, and Stephen Montemayor. “3 Illinois Men Charged in Bloomington Mosque Bombing.” Startribune.com, 14 Mar. 2018.

Riham Feshir. “Twin Cities Mosque on Edge after Opponents Start Pointing the Cameras at Children.” MPR News, MPR News, 4 Oct. 2019.

#right wing bullshit #conservative bullshit #fact checking #journalism #bad takes #conservatives #disinformation #politics #debunking #laura loomer #2024 presidential election #kamala harris #tim walz #election 2024 #fuck racism #fuck white supremacy #islamphobia #john guandolo

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breadly-art · 1 year ago

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In the summer of 2020, I decided to conduct a long experiment. Even, rather, a challenge to myself. I've been preparing for this for quite a long time, but in the end I was sure I could handle it. I wanted to raise a wild bird and release it with the expectation that it would be able to survive on its own.

The choice fell on wood pigeon (Columba palumbus). These birds are quite common in the forests of my country, moreover, this species of pigeon is considered one of the largest here.

So, at the very beginning of summer, I already had a chick no more than 10 days old. A silly, ugly "penguin" covered with yellow fluff. He had to be fed from 4 a.m. to 8 p.m. every 2 hours, and oh my God, it was difficult. But I coped! And a couple of days later, the pigeon was given a name - Rudy.

We spent a lot of time together, and not in the house, but in the garden. Rudy should have remembered this place before he learned to fly. After a few weeks, by the way, he began to stretch his wings. And a week later he took off (in an attempt to escape from my grandfather, who just wanted to move his nest to another place). Cool!

Soon Rudy was already sitting in the aviary, getting used to the terrain for the last time - I released him into free flight after a while. It was the first time he spent the night in the forest. And in the morning, when I went out into the garden - he, demanding food, sat on my head. This is a success, he is used to the terrain and will not get lost!

So Rudy began to fly after me all over the site, simultaneously learning to pick berries and seeds on his own. He even responded to the name, flying out of the forest at my call. Everything was great, until one day an adult Rudy disappeared without a trace for 2 weeks. I thought he was caught by cats or shot by hunters (because this kind of bird is game in my area). However, Rudy returned, cooing in my direction, and immediately went to eat grains from his feeder. I don't know where he disappeared, but since then he has become less likely to appear on the site.

Among all my family, Rudy allowed only me to come to him. He pinched cats and beat them with his wing, he was just afraid of dogs, like other people. In general, he was afraid of everything unfamiliar. It was a good sign. It meant I was doing a good job raising him as an independent bird.

Summer was ending, the days were getting colder, autumn soon came. Rudy spent more time in the woods than he did with me. This is good, because wood pigeon is a migratory bird. In autumn, they flock together and migrate to the south. Apparently, Rudy found his relatives, because by the end of September he finally flew away. I was sad, but I knew I'd done it.

With the onset of spring, these birds return. Rudy is back too! True, feral. He sat on my mom's head when she was in a country house and went outside. We are similar, apparently, he was confused. However, our dog habitually barked at him because she was chasing magpies from the site. As a result, Rudy got scared and flew away.

Yes, I didn't see him again, but I was sure that he was alive and had coped well with the migration. That's the experiment I conducted that year. In the future I plan to link my career with ornithology, so it was a great test of my skills.

#breadly posts #wood pigeon #pigeon #birds

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noxmachinimafr · 1 year ago

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Minecraft - Fort Panda - Part 2

This is a follow-up to my previous Minecraft post. If you read the previous one, you may already know that I spent part of my New Year's Eve on Minecraft with my friends and my brother. And we found two Pandas near an ancient temple in the jungle, around which we built a new colony. A week later, how is the colony going?... Pretty well! Except for a slight problem of Panda overcrowding! :D

In brief, what happened: I told my friends that the baby sick pandas can drop slime, so, when I was not there, they fed my pandas to increase the slime drop. The number of pandas was already high, so I decided to increase the farm and renovate a bit their area, so they would have more space to move around. But it was very difficult to navigate and build within a "panda super packed wave". Especially because of this guy:

An aggressive panda (born in the colony) that would kick me out anytime I would hit a panda (by mistake!) with my tools or a bamboo stick, while working in the area. Look at this face! He's so mad at me! My brother was back from an exploration. So I asked him to distract the pandas with bamboo, so I could work on the terrace. But you know, there is no good sibling without trolling... Of course, he helped me first, but he ended up Feeding all the pandas he had in charge! Doubling the number, again!! It took thus some extra effort, but now my lovely fluffy friends have a very large and secure terrace. Next time, I will work on their shelter. I know it looks like they live on wood, but no worries, they are fed with many bamboo, and I start planting some all around.

Then, I tried to resume my planned quest: Finding a brown panda. In short, this one failed. But I found a few more pandas, so it was not completely wasted time! I found back the second colony I previously fed in the wilds. And I started having "happy" pandas there!

Our little town in the jungle is the best we had so far! We had tons of resources on-site, and many exotic pet animals.

Next week, I will try again to find a brown panda. Regarding the machinima, I have been working on a set of illustrations in ukiyo-e style. A few more, and the last scene of Episode 2 will be ready. I have started the pre-rendering. It should go quite smoothly, with a release in February as expected.

#panda #minecraft #minecraft diaries #digital fanart #pandaren

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hillbillyoracle · 6 months ago

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This reminds me of a story/joke Ajahn Brahm tells that basically changed my brain chemistry when I heard it.

I can't tell it as well as he does but I can't remember which talk I last heard it in to link it so I'll give it a go.

There's a king. He has a very accomplished doctor who he takes on his hunting trips with him.

One day, while hunting, the king injures his hand and as the doctor is treating it and wrapping it up, he asks, "How does it look? What will happen with it?"

And the doctor responds, "Good? Bad? Who knows?"

The king is annoyed but moves on. That week the injure starts to swell and causes him more pain. He summons the doctor who performs a more intense treatment in the hand. Again he asks, "How does it look? What will happen with it?"

And again the doctor replies, "Good? Bad? Who knows?"

The king tells him off but carries on. The injury gets even worse. The king can no longer sleep and the doctor determines that they'll have to amputate a finger from his hand to save him. The king is furious with him. After the amputation is finished he asks the doctor, "How is it now? Will I be good now?"

The doctor replies, "Good? Bad? Who knows?"

The king is fed up and has the doctor put in jail.

Eventually he feels better and decides to go on another hunt. He doesn't have his doctor this time but he figures he didn't save him last time so he can make do. So he rides deeper and deeper into the forest, so focused on hunting prey that he misses the fact he's crossed over into another groups territory.

They capture him and tell him that this is clearly a sign from their gods for there is a grand feast and sacrifice to be had tonight. What better offering to their gods than an enemy king?

So they tie him up before the whole village gathered and the music plays. The executioner raises the knife to strike him dead but at the last second drops it.

"Look!" he says to the others as he catches sight of the king's hands, "He's missing a finger! Our sacrifices must be whole. We cannot offer him tonight."

They let him go and tell him to stay away which the king is only to happy to oblige. He rides home and immediately goes to release the doctor.

"Oh doctor," he says, after telling him what happened, "I see what you were saying now. The very thing I hated saved me. I never should have imprisoned you. What horrible thing I did to you!"

And the doctor replies, "No it was a good thing. If you hadn't, I'd have been with you that night."

And the king says, "I don't follow."

The doctor replies, "I still have all my fingers."

And I don't know why but that joke gets me every time. There've been so many times over the last couple months inbetween infuriating doctors visits and waves of pain that I've just turned to my partner and said "Good? Bad? Who knows?"

And everything is a little lighter.

one of the best ways i’ve found to combat that inherent depressive pessimism without veering into toxic positivity territory is simply the phrase “i’m open to the possibility”

this particularly works with anything negative i’ve forecasted. “i woke up feeling like shit today, so my day is gonna suck” isn’t a particularly helpful thought, but “it’s a great day to be alive!!!!!” feels hollow and insincere when i have a pounding headache & am running on three hours of sleep

instead i’ll tell myself, “i really don’t feel good right now, but i’m open to the possibility that coffee and breakfast might perk me up a bit.” or “i’m in a lot of pain today, but i’m open to the possibility that my workday might still have fun parts despite that”

sometimes, when your impulse is to slam the door on anything good, but you’re not exactly up to going out & hunting it down yourself, leaving the door open just a crack makes all the difference

#just responding to posts #like writing prompts #since im stuck in bed again

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anonthefold · 3 months ago

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I mentioned somewhere last week that I was back on my kpop phase and I would like to expand on that just a little because it is very silly why I got there.

It started with Arcane's Act II being released. See... whenever I watch Arcane my brain goes "Ohhh, I should listen to KD/A" then after that happens it just falls into this whirlpool of kpop (while recently also leading me to install LoL).

But... this is something that I think Riot does very very well that I wish Blizzard would model as well. All these media projects between shows, fake bands, comics, all off it has the goal of getting the viewer to interact with their IP. They don't necessarily have to play LoL to maybe dive a little deeper into this world that was created. And that is saying a lot because:

-KD/A and HEARTSTEEL are not canon.

-Arcane is not canon.

It really is a unique phenomenon. One thing that has previously been tossed around with Overwatch or any Blizzard IP has been "Blizzard polish" and Riot kind of had the same care put into their IPs as well between Valorant and LoL. Except for Act II of Arcane.

*Forgive me as I am about to have a spoiler free rant about my disappointment of Act II. I understand what the writers were going for. Act II is intended to be a crossroads season that merges the themes of Act I and (presumably) Act III. The problem is that they should have made it longer if that was the goal because the pacing is absolutely horrendous. There are moments that are just like "Ohhh you really just slapped a band-aid on that interaction and decided to move on ever though the plot is bleeding out?" as well as foreshadowing events that a casual viewer would have absolutely NO FUCKING idea what is going on without having some knowledge on the world outside of Arcane, which i would like to reiterate is not actual canon but borrows heavily from canon. It has these intense moments that deserve more care and attention but you are just jerked into another direction so quickly and then fed some other piece of story that it leaves no time to process the last scene properly. It turns into this chaotic mess of opening and closing doors on the plot to an egregious amount. It is like there was no real Direction! It is a shame because the animation is absolutely stellar.... the color, the framing, it is very rich and stimulating. I also get that the shows thing is to have a music video vibe to it and as much as I like that I feel like that this season might be just pushing it a little too much with how many other things they are trying to do as well. It does create these feelings during those scenes but it felt artificial and kind of forced this time around. All this to say the story is rushed, and compressed into a time frame that does it a disservice at the expense of having a series of music videos and trying to cram answers while starting new stories in the same breath. It is bad... just really bad.

But... it made me play LoL. It made me watch KD/A videos. I read some stories about the Void. It served its purpose.

youtube

#white noise #the bats in my brain are stimulated #personal #Youtube

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thecameronchronicles · 2 years ago

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Camera! Lights! Tension!

TW: Smut. Angst.

SUMMARY: Filming a scene with Drew leads to raised tension.

WORD COUNT:

*Requested*

Camera! Lights! Tension!

You could never really explain why, but you just never seemed to get along with Drew. As everyone else couldn’t seem to control a smile when in his presence, you had to fight a roll of your eyes. Which was why when the producers decided to set your characters in a sensual exchange for the sake of appeasing fans who could apparently pick up on your tension, you were anything but excited. And yet professional enough to show up without anything but silent indifference.

But you just wanted it over and done with so you could move on with your life. It didn't help that you'd already endured the teasing from other cast members, which worsened your mood that much more, always drawing a smirk from his lips when he'd overhear. Which was often.

"Ready?" Drew asked as you'd ignored him and stepped before the camera, romantic ambiance at the ready as you felt anything but. Yet despite your lack of camaraderie, he didn’t drop his smile until getting into the role of the sociopathic Rafe Cameron. It was a persona that couldn’t be farther from in contrast to the lighthearted yet affectionate man he was beneath the facade portrayed.

“Action!” The director spoke from behind the series of cameras trained on this section of the ‘Tannyhill’ house.

For the scene, you were supposed to slam the door in front of him, to which he’d catch it and an argument would ensue. He’d pull you to him and surprise you with a kiss, you’d slap him, and he’d pin you down, flipping you onto your knees and undressing as the camera panned away. But there was something within the devious excitement of his eyes that made you well aware he was about to go off script. Yet, you kept to the lines you’d learned in the last few weeks.

“I don’t want to talk to you, Rafe!” He caught the door, slamming it behind him, just as scripted. What wasn’t however, was the way he followed you around the room as you delivered your lines. It fed into the angst-filled moment between your characters that had built to this moment in previous episodes, with your character having offered a type of redemption arc through the love your role had given him. But at this moment, you just wanted to distance yourself as far away from him as possible-both Rafe and Drew.

“It’s not MY fault-”

“It never is, is it?” Your eyes narrowed at him as he took hold of you before you were ready, making you release a genuine gasp, before taking you to the edge of the bed, hands tightening as he spoke.

“Please don’t be mad at me, Lacey…” He called your character’s name as he wore those signature tortured eyes that was a staple for the eldest Cameron sibling.

“Everything I do is for you-for us-”

“Don’t put this on me!” You rivaled him, pushing him hard against his chest as he remained unmoved.

“I never wanted any of this…ANY of it! And definitely not like this-” He cut off your line, taking his set of full lips to silence your own.

Everything suddenly shifted.

The way he kissed you wasn’t without emotion or tension, it encompassed it completely, consuming you both as you felt him glide his tongue on the bottom of your lip, forcing them wider. As if breathing you in, he inhaled your kiss, before wrapping his fingers through your hair as you fingered desperately at his jacket, needing more of him-needing him closer.

He grinned, aware you’d become lost in your role and using it as an excuse, but basking in being the source of your outlet. He carried you onto the bed, lifting you by the back of your thigh until you raised against him just enough to be made mobile, your body colliding onto the mattress with a thud as he was quick to pin you.

“You still hate me?” He asked, a line unscripted that could have been used just as much between your characters as your personal lives.

“Always.” You finally answered as a smirk came across his lips before he carried your hands softly over your head, holding down your wrists with a single grasp as he took the other one to your skirt, tracing the lines of your waist.

“I know it’s only because you want me…” He teased, taking you back to reality as you were apparently more stubborn than seduced. Because of this, you pushed hard against his torso, forcing him to fall just far enough so you could move to your feet, and march off set, not caring of the comments of your ‘diva exit’.

You managed to make it outside in seconds, the door swinging closed at your back as you ran your fingers through your hair. Your frustrations laid more in yourself than anyone else as you had allowed him to get to you-something you’d been able to avoid until now. But more than this, the way he always seemed to affect you and linger beneath your skin, annoying and plaguing your thoughts, making you fumble lines and focus on anything but being professional.

The sound of your name called at your back drove your eyes into a roll as he’d followed you. Of course he followed you. That was the type of guy Drew was, making sure you were alright and that he hadn’t crossed any form of line. And this was the reason you loathed him the most-because as hard as you tried, you couldn’t actually hate him. Far from it…and it was so goddamn distracting that it was infuriating.

“I was just messing around…I’m sorry if-”

“Can you just…go! Please?!”

“Did I do something? I mean, you seem to get along with everyone else BUT me, so…”

“I just want to be alone…Just for a minute and then I’ll go back inside and finish the scene, okay?” You snapped, hoping that turning away from him would be enough to make him return to set. But instead, he rounded in front of you, the sight making you roll your eyes in pure annoyance.

“No. Okay…I want to make sure you’re alright and I’m not going back unless its WITH you-”

“You REALLY want to know?” Whether it was your overall frustration boiling to its apex or the memory of his kiss and the need for an encore, the words fell from your lips following the validation of his nod.

“I need you to fuck me.” To this, he belted out a cackle, taking his finger as if to say ‘you got me’, before realizing from the lack of change in your expression that you were speaking from sincerity.

“You want me to-”

“Fuck me. Yeah.” You agreed, nodding in remaining steadfast, watching his eyes dart around as if to verify his reality before finally taking a step towards you.

“You’re screwing with me…Right? Chase or Rudy-JD put you up to this? One of the girls?”

“It’s a one time offer, Drew…Either way, I’m going back in there, filming those scenes, and then it will be like it never happened. So..take your pick-” He rushed you, hands to your cheeks as he took you against the wall of the back of the house. Your fingers were quick to reach his belt and reveal him to you, the outline of an erection you’d felt a minute prior, that excited you in a way you’d never quite felt before.

But his touch was quick to apprehend you by your wrists and taking them above your head in one grip, just as he had done on set.

“If I touch you, it’s because you want me…because you’re gonna finally acknowledge there’s something between us. After all I’ve done is BE nice to you-”

You would interrupt his attempts at chivalry. “I don’t WANT nice, Drew. I WANT you to fuck me…” You leaned to him, brushing his lips with your own as you watched him clench his jaw from your motions, “Right here. Right now.” A deep breath from his parted mouth, left agape in anticipation, fell into a scoff before you were suddenly released.

“You want to fuck someone? Have it cheap and quick? I’m sure there are thousands of guys who would be down for it.” He released your hands.

“You deserve better than that…So maybe I was wrong…Because the things I want to do to you aren’t something that can be done between scenes…I’m thorough…” The sudden absence of his touch drove you into a silent whine of regret that only came through your eyes in a heavy pause void of any other rivaling emotion.

“Drew…” You took a step closer to him, his eyes pulling into a roll before your fingers pushed him against the wall now at his back.

“I don’t like you, because of how you get under my skin…” His eyes fixated on you as you carried your touch to his belt, his hands fighting to intercept you, but failing once you made contact with his seam, the firm outline of his cock working as a guideline for your hand to follow as he breathed deeply beneath you.

“You make it hard to focus…and all I can think about is you kissing me…touching me…” You continued to stroke him, clenched teeth shielding moans of approval as your reasons were interrupted.

“Fuck…it’s all I’ve thought about since I met you.” His eyes crept open to notice the smile across your face, a snicker rising across his own, before he took your hand and led you completely against him.

“I know I said I wouldn’t fuck you quickly, but we are expected back on set within the hour, but I’m not going another fucking second without being inside of you…” You pressed your lips together in a victorious grin as he led you into a rear exit of this shooting location.

Since you shot the Tannyhill shots within an venue, there were sections and rooms kept off limits and therefore away from prying ears and eyes. Yet even if they were set throughout the estate, none seemed close enough as you were torn through the corridors, evading cast and crew, before coming to one of these rooms keeping the likes of you at bay by a single sign speaking of how it was prohibited.

Tearing through the exclusion, Drew pulled you inside and forced the door closed with a slam before you pulled him into you by the collar of his shirt.

“Careful, any crinkle and they’ll know how you just couldn’t keep your hands off of me-” You rolled your eyes as his fingers made their way down your skirt.

“Well, looks like they’ll already know-” You were taken into a deep kiss, calves coming to rest against a vintage chaise colored in a red and silver damask fabric, where you focused solely on him.

“I’ll make you come, sweetheart, okay?” He explained, guiding his fingers beneath your skirt to remove your panties, before they fell in a crumbled and soiled mess at your ankles, before he set you before him to sit.

“But you gotta be quiet for me or I’ll have to stop-” You nodded, understanding why, as he suddenly knelt in front of you. Your eyes rolled to how he lifted your leg over his shoulder, the abrupt presence of his lips to your thigh having made you react pitifully roused by him.

“Shit, I haven’t even done anything yet and you’re already whimpering for me-”

“Please Drew…Please…”

He licked his lips for a moment before gliding his parted lips along your thigh and stationing them to your core.

“You still hate me?” He teased the lines from before as you nodded, whispering, ‘always’, before he suddenly attacked your pussy in focused sucks made of your clit. Immediately, your hips began to drive against him as your fingers ran over the short cut of his hair to scratch lightly on what tickled your hand.

“Drew-Drew-Drew!” You spoke his name quickly as he pulled up from you, glistening with your slick and illuminating with a smile all too devious for you to keep focus.

“It’s too much-”

“We don’t have much time…”

“Then fuck me…just-just fuck me, then!” He rose to you just enough to kiss you before retracting and shaking his head.

“I need to make sure you’re wet enough-”

“God, I’m drowning you!”

“For how hard and deep I’m gonna pound you, I need you to be even more than you are…” Your eyes rolled as he returned to his focus, your nails finding those familiar lines within his hair until he pulled you closer into him.

“Come for me, sweetheart-”

“I want-I want to come on you-”

“Yes. On my face. Right now…come on…” Your fingers clawed at his wrists that were wrapped around your thighs, thumbs pulling your clitoral hood wide so he could deepen his tongue to your most sensitive nerves.

“Good girl, so close, aren’t you?” You nodded as he broke his motions to endorse you, both pleasure and pain left in this absence, before you felt him remain with devotion. Fingers teasing your entrance as his tongue flicked in such repetition that stars began to form behind your eyes.

“Anyone see her or Drew?” One of the producer's voices came through the door as Drew quickly wrapped his hand around your mouth, but did nothing to stop his motions that would force you louder. You gripped tightly onto his hand, rising your hips against his mouth, before feeling yourself spill against him. The most intense of orgasms taking over you completely before you were taken over his lap.

“You wanted me to fuck you?” You nodded, still in need of more as he pulled you over his lap, one arm wrapping around your back as the other came to your neck.

“Then ride me so I can, six feet from where your desperate little pussy could get us both fired-” Your motions synchronized almost immediately, a desperate need for another release taking over your body as his own continued to climb.

“Be fuckin’ quiet for me so I can make you come-cause they find us, I’m not stopping-”

“Oh Fuck…Fuck, Drew-”

“Keep going baby. Shit, you feel so damn good-SO good.” You nodded as his thumb moved back to your clit. “You need to come again for me-I know you can, you’re SUCH a good girl-”

“DREW!” You belted into his palm, capturing his fingers between your lips in silencing yourself to suck on them.

“You’re so sexy-oh my God!” To this, he rooted up into you, eyes locked deeply to yours as yours threatened to pull closed.

“Look at me-look at me when you come. I want to memorize it so I can remember when you do it on camera that I got to see the real thing…come on baby-you’re so close I can feel it-” You nodded, eyes trained to him, as requested, as you felt the claw of his grip set stability against you for his own release as yours was quick to follow, acting off each other’s pulsations for a mutual climax that left you both in tremors.

“Holy shit…” You pressed a final kiss to his lips before climbing off of him, a nod validating his reaction.

“Yeah…”

“How am I supposed to focus now?” You chuckled, fixing your clothes as he caught glances of your body left marked by him.

“Seems like a ‘you’ problem, Drew…Me? Got what I needed-” You winked as he suddenly caught your wrist.

“I’m not done…” Your brows raised. “It’s not enough…” He pulled a strand of your hair behind your ear. “Any time you feel that…You come to me…yeah?”

“Maybe…or maybe I’ll go to JD or Chase-” He silenced you by pulling you harder against his chest as you gasped,a smile cresting over your face to showcase how you truly enjoyed the way he treated you.

“I am the one who has had to deal with the glacial iciness between us…so I am the one who gets to reap the benefits, sweetheart. Go ahead and try to you it, I’ll fuck you on camera next time-Just call it method acting.” You scoffed as he gave one final kiss before leaving you a rush of quelled embarrassment and buzzing satisfaction, making you eager to finally finish this scene.

Taglist: @hopebaker @iovdrew @penny4yourthoughts @magnificantmermaid @pickingviolets

#drew starkey x reader #drew starkey smut #drew starkey #outer banks smut #obx

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torawro · 1 year ago

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i haven’t done one of these in eons so thank you so much for tagging me babe 🥹🌟🩵✨🫧 very excited to do this but it also took me literally an hour and a half to decide and cause i couldn’t even remember who i talked about last year….there were a lot i just completely blanked. and then if we went by fandom omg we’d be here all night so here we are :3

yes i cheated and finessed bc im indecisive ;3 i wish i could have added others i seldom talk about but alas.

sasuke uchiha, y’all already KNEW good and well that this man was gonna be on the list. he’s a nonnegotiable. i’ll probably never stop talking about him, i hold him very close. i wish i could have added the rest of his clansmen tho ;(

suguru getou, i increasingly became obsessed w him in late ‘22 but it reached an all time high last year. oh my goodness i kinda resonate with him in a way and gives me comfort y’know? i feel terribly guilty i chose him over satoru cause i had crippling obsession with him once upon a time.

toji fushiguro, ive always thought he was really cool and really hot obvi but after revisiting the manga last year (before gege ruined that) in addition to s2 premiere i really looked deeper into his character and the poor deadbeat dad jokes and what he had been through and started to appreciate and sympathize with him more than just big pecs and a nonexistent waist

alucard (hellsing), OH MY GOSHHHHHHH THE FIXATION I HAVE FOR THIS MAN was all consuming like. for weeks my pinterest fed me nothing but this man. randomly decided to revisit the original hellsing only to have my brain rewired and think only about him for months. what a time.

dio, i think my current url and the tag i use to reblog things tells you all you need to know. love him loads and loads :3 i was torn between adding him or jotaro………

sousuke aizen, y’know what i always say (since like last year or 2 years ago) i LOVE having a bleach brain rot 😋 ive always been attracted to this man and i just love the fact he’s shrouded in mystery and am fascinated by him in general. i read a fic that really opened my eyes to his character and broke down some panels in the manga i glossed over and well…..

kento nanami, oh dear………HESJWJWJE DO YALL REMEMBER THOSE ICONIC FEW WEEKS ALL I WOULD POST ABOUT WAS NANAMIN😭😭😭😭 that one episode changed my life. like i said ive always loved him but i have had an epiphany. im in love with him. sonami supremacy 🥰

ichigo kurosaki, my back arches a lil whenever i say his name 😩 i’ll never forget the mootie who paired me with him in an appearance/personality matchup like that altered my brain chemistry. he’s so cute and sooo green flag coded he’s the bestest boyfie husband ever

byakuya kuchiki, again the bleach brain rot never ends. do i have to elaborate on mr. kuchiki ? i think he speaks for himself (i need him to breed me)☺️☺️☺️

trevor belmont + alucard (castlevania), nocturne releasing last september reminded me why i adore castlevania so much like the storytelling and the characters— especially these two— are so compelling and it reignited my obsession with them i rewatched the entire show from the beginning…..for a 4th (or 5th????) time.

no pressure (#) — @hellavile @marimogf @renjisinterlude @6gumi @antizenin @blkjupiters @tvgals @valentineluvu @mysugu & anyone else that wants to participate is welcome !!!!!

putting this in its own post bc long -

2023 CHARACTER WRAPPED

thank u @ricecrispiebirb for tagging! I present 9 characters I loved in 2023

1-3: reiner. yes he takes up 3 spaces I will not be taking questions

4: jeanbo horseface kirschtein

5. ezekiel jaeger I remain hateful of how highly you place and yet……….here u are

6. onyankopon giant balls I LOVE u

7. choso…….my little emo wet kitten man

8. satoru gojo, the strongest, the most petulant, the most beautiful

9. geto suguru babe what happened. I still love u tho

no ob tagging @pisspope @fromriches-tosin @oxygenbefore1775 @marenalee @nanamikentoseyebags @strawberrystepmom @pinkmirth @forest-hashira and anyone else who’d like!

#ask games :)#also #kogami shinya im thinking of you always #aki hayakawa i love you #spike spiegel i am yours forever #reiner i want to have your last name #jason todd ill love you relentlessly #zhongli my adoration for you runs as deep ad your fondness for osmanthus wine #ginoza nobuchika you have my heart #miguelito o’hara i love you deeply and haven’t forgotten about you #mr yamada asaemon shion you are everything and more to me #monsieur neuvillette im in love with you and wish to dive deep into the depths of your soul and find the treasure that hides beneath there #ok im done (not really but for now)

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earlgreydream · 4 years ago

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brat.

| Bucky Barnes x reader | smut |

warnings: smut, mild degradation (not meant seriously), spanking, dom/sub dynamic, general chaos

a/n: I can’t deal with the pressure of my life, I need James Buchanan Barnes to make me let it go

Bucky had been agitated since you had sent him naughty photos of yourself while he was in the middle of a meeting. He had glanced at his phone and immediately turned it face down and continued speaking. After the meeting, he sat at his desk, looking at the photos you’d sent. His favorite was one where you had your tits out, wearing just little black panties, along with a black ribbon tied around your neck.

He’d originally been the one to tie the ribbon around your neck, about a year ago. He’d hooked his fingers in the satin and dragged you forward like it was a collar, making you blush and shy.

Now, you wore the ribbon around your neck whenever you were in the particular mood for Bucky to make you feel owned.

You were always under constant stress and pressure to perform well, having to control and manage everything, both at work and school. The only place where you could let it go, relinquish all control, was in the bedroom with Bucky... or on the kitchen counters, the bathroom of a club, his desk at work, and anywhere else he could get his hands on you.

When you were alone with Bucky, you became playful, soft, and sweet, and it turned him on to no end. Bucky truly thought you were the most gorgeous and hottest girl in the universe, and he practically worshipped you.

That is, except when you were being a needy brat, like today. Sending him naughty photos at work (unprompted) was strictly against your rules, and you knew you played a dangerous game with him. Bucky wasn’t one to play around when it came to testing the boundaries.

Secretly, that was why you did it. You wanted Bucky riled up, to come home and be rough with you. You wanted him hard and unrelenting, to have you screaming and writhing for him. You were tense from your stressful week, and he was too, and there was no better solution in your mind to release that built up tension.

He shut off his phone as his boss walked in, asking him about a project, and Bucky struggled to focus on what he was being told, too distracted by the image of your soft tits swirling in his mind.

“Thanks, Barnes.”

“Yeah, sure.” He called back half-heartedly, picking his phone back up once he was alone.

~you’re going to fucking regret that, baby~

~I doubt it. X~

He was practically seething at your response, ideas of how to get you in line already forming. He was fed up with your bratty attitude, and his annoyance just built over the course of the afternoon.

When he was finally finished with work, he drove home faster than normal. The door smacked loudly against the wall when he entered, alerting you he was mad. Your heart jumped in your chest, and you felt a pang of regret at your insolence.

“Y/N!” Bucky’s voice echoed, and you nervously walked down the hallway in one of his oversized button downs.

He stopped for a moment, taking in the sight of you. You looked small and meek, innocent in his big shirt. Ribbon was tied around the base of your neck, and your eyes were shining as you gazed up at him.

“Hi, daddy”

He almost melted at the sweet sound of your voice, at the utter innocence you seemed to hold. He dropped his keys in the dish by the door, snapping out of it. He stared at you with a hard gaze, entirely unamused by your earlier behavior. You sank into yourself, taking a step back. He stepped forward, and you continued until he had backed you against the wall outside of your guest bedroom at the end of the hall.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Bucky asked you, waiting for an apology.

I’m sorry daddy, is what you should have said, attempting to win over the last bit of forgiveness he was willing to give you. Instead, you decided to dig yourself into deeper trouble, unable to resist the temptation to goad him by being a brat.

“I could’ve gotten myself off in the time it took you to get home, maybe even more than-” you didn’t even get to finish your sentence before he was on you.

He hooked his fingers into the ribbon, jerking your small body against his. His silver eyes blazed, threatening you to struggle.

“Do you think you’re fucking funny?” He growled, and you stared back at him, suppressing your fear.

“A little, actually.”

That did it.

“Get on your fucking knees, you insolent brat!” He snapped, jerking you downwards so you were kneeling in front of him.

Your knees bit into the hardwood floor, and the ribbon left a faint red ring around your neck from him dragging you by it. His hand went up your neck to your cheek, and you flinched as he sharply tapped your face. It wasn’t enough to be a slap, Bucky would never hit you in a way you didn’t like, but the sharp smack made arousal drip from your core.

You wanted him to run his fingers through your hair to guide you, like he did when he was feeling softer, but you knew that you’d pushed him too far to receive any sort of help.

He grabbed your jaw and forced your mouth open before burying himself in your throat. He did it in one quick movement that had you gagging, choking on his length. Bucky didn’t care about your fight to breathe, snapping his hips at a brutal pace, stretching your throat. You did your best to open for him, but tears slid down your cheeks from your lack of oxygen.

“Y/N, look at you, letting me fuck your throat like a little whore.” His words dripped with condescension and you looked up at him with glassy eyes.

You moaned around him, sending vibrations that pushed him closer to the edge.

“You’re going to swallow, got it?” He ordered and you made a noise of approval, feeling his cock twitch in your mouth. He came in thick spurts, his cock deep in your throat. You swallowed his seed as well as possible, gasping as he pulled out of you. You lost your balance and put a hand on his thigh to steady you. He stepped back, letting you fall forward, barely catching yourself.

You whined in protest, and he grabbed you by the hair and jerked your head back to look up at him. Your chest was heaving as you drew in oxygen, your face was sticky with tears, and your mouth was salty with his taste.

"You look so pretty on your knees for me," Bucky's tone was mocking, a slight Russian accent hanging off his words, a silent threat hanging in the air.

"I did so good, sucking you off like you wanted-" you were about to ask if he'd take care of you now, and he just let out a short laugh.

"You think you're getting off?" He spoke as if it were completely ridiculous.

"Yes?" You tried, and he shook his head.

"Then you shouldn't have been such a little brat. Brats don't get to come."

"But daddy-!" You whined in protest.

Your mouth snapped shut when he dragged you up to your feet and tore his button down off of you. You shivered in the cold air, and his fingers hooked into your panties, pulling them down your legs.

"You're fucking soaked, Y/N. Is this just from sucking me off?" He embarrassed you.

"Y/N!" He snapped when you didn't answer, fed up with your disobedience.

"Yes," you breathed, blinking back fresh tears of anxiety.

"I'll give you something to cry about." He threatened and you bit your lip, knowing it wasn't an empty threat.

"Safeword?" he asked, making sure you were able to communicate with him if it was too much.

"Falcon," you answered obediently and he nodded. He took your wrists in his hands, noticing the way your hands were trembling. He kissed your smooth skin, though his gaze didn't soften.

"On the bed. Now." He pointed, and you bent over the edge of the bed, your ass on display for him. You hid your face in your arms, hiding the embarrassment visible on your cheeks from being so exposed.

A shaky whine escaped as you heard his belt snap, fear prickling up your spine. He watched you squirm on the bed. He knew you hated being smacked with the belt, and he leaned against the wall, watching you nearly lose your mind in anticipation. He was curious to see if you'd continue the bratty behavior, or if this was what would finally cause you to break, and his fingers twitched as he ached to turn your ass pink.

As soon as the tension began to leave your body, and you settled on the mattress, he landed the first blow with the leather on your ass. You screamed both from shock, and the welcome pain that blossomed across your skin.

His dark laughter echoed in your guest bedroom, and chills made your body shudder. You were getting what you wanted, this had been your goal from the beginning. You also knew that you were completely safe, that Bucky loved you dearly, and this was just a bedroom scene, not meant to truly hurt you. Despite both of those facts, the fear was very much real. Bucky was incredibly intimidating, especially when he was mad.

"Four more, alright?"

"Yes, daddy."

Dry sobs burned your throat as he spanked you quickly, leaving pink stripes across your fair skin, but light enough they'd disappear by morning. It was more psychological than physical, and it was causing you to nearly shake with arousal. It was dripping down your legs, and Bucky noticed, adding to the shame of just being spanked. He took a step toward you, squeezing your ass in his large hands, making you whimper in discomfort. He slapped your skin, and you struggled to contain your pained yelps. It wasn’t near as bad as the belt, but the sting spread through your skin as he continued your punishment.

You sighed in relief when he finally finished, wrapping his hand around your throat and pulling you up so your back was against his chest. He gave your throat a squeeze, making your eyes roll back. He kissed your shoulder before biting down into your smooth skin. You squirmed in his grip, mewling softly.

“I’m sorry,” you breathed, looking up and meeting his gaze.

“I know you are, baby,” He kissed your mouth for the first time, and you melted into his hold, ignoring your soreness.

“Hands and knees for me, doll.”

He released his grip on you, lightly tapping your thigh to get you to climb up on the bed. You moved onto the bed, but your arms were unsteady, so you dropped down to your elbows, letting your back arch.

“Can’t hold myself up,” you murmured apologetically, not wanting him to think that you were being bratty. He kissed your bum, and you sighed quietly at the tender action.

“I want to come, daddy,” you begged, hoping he had softened.

“I’m sure you do.”

You squeezed your eyes shut, knowing that you weren’t going to get what you want. Bucky’s hands wrapped around your hips, holding you steady as he stood behind you. You squirmed as he rubbed the head of his cock through your folds, a choked noise leaving your throat as he brushed your clit. You were on edge, but you knew if you spilled over, he would spank you until you were bleeding.

He noticed the shudder it caused, and his voice came deep and threatening.

“Don’t you fucking dare.”

“I won’t!” you promised, wanting to be good for him.

“Better not.”

He thrusted forward, rolling his hips until he was buried all the way in you, making you yell and grip the sheets in front of you. The stretch burned, your body never quite getting used to his size. Usually he eased into you, but he clearly didn’t care about your pleasure right now.

He began to snap his hips against yours, using your body to chase his own release. His hands slipped off of your hips and snaked around to your front, going up to your breasts. He squeezed roughly and pinched your nipples, pulling them between his fingers, making your vision spark. You shrieked at the sensation, and you tightened around him. You held back your orgasm, fighting against the urge to release.

“Your cunt feels so good around me, doll. If you keep squeezing me like that, I’m going to lose my mind,” Bucky murmured, his words getting lost in your mind.

You tightened around him purposely, feeling him twitch before painting your insides with his release. He groaned deeply, continuing with shallow thrusts as he emptied himself into your heat. When he pulled out, he stared at your swollen sex, his release dripping out, and down your thighs. You screamed as he slapped the sensitive area, arching your back. You whimpered out a beg to ease up on you, and he moved you to lay on your back. You were barely there, whimpering out apologies pathetically, and he kissed a line from your belly up to your lips.

“You’re forgiven, doll.” He said, kissing you sweetly.

“Please, I’ll be so good.” You were desperate, throbbing around nothing, and you wanted to release the tension your body held so bad.

Bucky watched you beg, almost inclined to put his head back between your legs.

“Fine.” He sat on the bed, pulling you to straddle his thigh. You looked at him in confusion as he held your hips down.

“You can ride my thigh and get off that way, or you can quit complaining.”

Your eyes widened, and your face burned in humiliation. You hesitated for a moment before giving into your needs, rolling your hips and dragging your core over his thigh. You squeezed your eyes shut, burying your face in his shoulder as he quietly mocked you and how desperate you were. Your thighs started to shake, and he bounced his leg, making you come with a scream as you bit down lightly on his shoulder.

“Daddy, no,” you complained as his hand snaked down to pinch your clit, sending shocks through you.

“Watch your mouth.” He ordered, grabbing your jaw in his free hand, disapproving of your protests. He overstimulated you, turning your pleasure into torture. You struggled to catch your breath as you writhed on his lap, begging him to let you ease up. You swore at him, and he smacked your already stinging core. You yelped at the pain, letting him have his way, too exhausted to protest further.

You could’ve cried again as he finally eased up, deciding you had adequately paid for your misbehavior. After, he spent the entire evening showering you with attention, showing his soft side and loving on you.

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internalsealpanic · 4 years ago

Text

Sealing the Deal part 1

Summary: Always, always be nice to sea creatures but never ever accept their pelt.

A/n: A fic I’ve been meaning to write since forever. My contribution to mermay.

warning: Disgusting fluff and bad decisions

Main Masterlist

part 2

You look like you're gonna die from boredom in your little fishing boat.

Dick rolls over to where Jason was sprawled and used his momentum to push the larger seal into the water. Jason gives an undignified squawk of outrage. Dick just preens and looks smug.

You cup your hand over your mouth as you begin to laugh.

Jason glares even harder at Dick. Dick... couldn't care even less if he tried. All he can focus on is the wrinkle in the corners of your eyes. They'd been gone for so long these past few months. It felt like the first ray of sun after a long storm.

Dick claps his fins in excitement even as Jason snuffs and rolls his eyes. You clap in return but accidentally drop your fishing pole into the sea. Reaching for it, you fall into the water. Dick feels a little bad for laughing but you manage to get yourself back up into the boat safely. You sigh in defeat as your fishing pole drifts away. Dick notices for the first time that your face has grown gaunt from the last few weeks. Are you eating enough? Are you even taking care of yourself? Dick swims over to your boat as it rocks back and forth on the waves. He hops in easily and plops onto your stomach. You laugh and pet his head. It was a weak laugh so he croons at you in question.

“Sorry pup, I don’t have any food for you today. I mean I don’t even have any for me.” Despite the sweet timbre of your voice, Dick can still taste the bitter hopelessness in the statement.

He nuzzles his face into your chest. He can feel just how thin you’ve gotten. He has to do something about this.

To say Dick had been afraid of humans would be a monumental understatement. It had been around 200 years since humans had left the island and the first thing they did when they came back was hunt down selkies. Dick's parents had been two of the unlucky few who'd been hunted down.

So when Dick found himself stranded onshore because of a fin tangled in a fishing line, he thought he was a goner. And when he saw you approaching; well, he still thought he was fucked but he thought you'd at least be nicer than the adults.

Maybe if he acts cute enough you'll spare him.

Dick whimpered and he gave you the big innocent look.

You shushed him harshly. Dick flinched then you flinched and muttered apologies.

You approached him slowly. You looked around before crouching and fiddling with the line Dick had managed to get himself caught in. Carefully, you began to disentangle him. It hurt, especially when you took the hook out, but once he was free. He clapped and trilled before you shushed him again.

Dick thought that it was all over and he could just roll back into the sea until you scoop him up and swaddle him in your shirt.

After 10 minutes of your father screaming at you, he agreed to treat Dick who knew better than to snap at him. Your father was kind with gentle hands. He worked on Dick while you fed him fish. It wasn't the best fish but Dick can't complain.

After an hour or so, Dick started to wriggle and you pull him closer to your chest.

"Dad, can we keep him for a few days? He might still be sick." You plead with big eyes.

Your father glared at you then sighed. "No more than two. His wounds just need to close up, understand?"

You squealed a little. Hugging Dick tighter, you thanked your father before scampering off to find you a basin to put Dick in. You, thankfully, had the good sense to fill it with lukewarm water.

Dick lived like a king in those two days. You fed him a lot of fish much to your dad's exasperation. You kept him warm. You even read to him and sang songs to him.

Dick wanted to stay but he missed Bruce, Alfred, Damian, and maybe that new kid Jason.

On the fourth day (one of the wounds was deeper than expected), Dick was released back into the sea but he never did manage to stay away after that

Dick sets the odd little trinket down in front of Jason's sleeping form. It was something you'd caught in your net days before along with the meager amount of fish you'd managed to net. You'd busied yourself with it for days before throwing it out. Dick wasn't sure what it was; all he knew was that it was something Jason would like.

He waits semi patiently for Jason to notice it, nudging it forward a little until it touches Jason's snout and the larger seal is forced to pay attention to Dick.

"I know when I'm being bribed, Dickface." Jason says, glaring.

Dick volleys it with a wide-eyed hopeful look. He nudges the little trinket forward again. This time, instead of ignoring him, Jason rises to his full height, teeth bared. This... does not faze Dick.

"C'mon Jaaaaaaay," Dick says as if the prolonging of syllables would whittle down Jason's irritation. Jason suspects if he were less inclined to tell Dick to fuck off, it would have worked. Probably. But as it stands, Dick is responsible for ruining a very good, very rare nap for Jason and so he's on the shit list and has lost any favor privileges until further notice.

"I said no. Go away or ask Bruce."

"But Jaaaaaaay, it's just a teensy tiny favor. It won't even take an hour. Not with your skill at least."

"That kind of flattery may work on Harper and it may even work on West but I'm not an idiot about to get involved with whatever shenanigans you have planned with the human."

Dick lets out a long-suffering sigh. Jason isn't stupid enough to think that Dick has actually given up. No, the stubborn little fuck is worse than a barnacle. "You've left me no choice-"

"I have given you plenty of choices. Most of them involve minding your own goddamn business." Jason says with a little snuff.

"-I'm calling it in."

Jason narrows his eyes at Dick.

"Don't you dare. That was 5 years ago."

Dick smiles, evilly. "Unless you want the rest of the family to know about-"

"Fine! What do you want?"

Dick looks smug. Jason wants to bite his face off.

"I need you to help me catch fish."

Jason looks at him, incredulous. "Did you hit your head or something?"

"Not recently. Look, I just need you to help me catch fish for the human." Dick explains like it's the most obvious thing in the world. Contrary to what Dick seems to think, Jason really isn't concerned with the one human on the island. Most of the selkies on the island have barely even interacted with you outside of staring at you.

"You're insane."

"I think we reserve that term for Bruce."

Jason raises his head from the ground. "You're not wrong."

You think you hear the light pitter-patter of raindrops. You sigh. You would be lying if you say you aren't the least bit thankful for the excuse to stay indoors today. You... don't exactly like foraging for food. You had avoided it for as long as you had food in the lighthouse. You thought it would at least last you 'til the ships came in but whatever is going on in the mainland has kept the ships from your shores. You don't mind. You never did find the sailors all that pleasant on the rare occasions that you did have to interact with them.

You like your island the way it is but... you're not exactly the most skilled at hunting... or fishing. You have no idea how your father did it. You chucked it up to the miracles of loaves and fishes. You miss him.

You curl around your pillow in a vain attempt to chase the wakefulness away but the sun in your eyes was too bright. You flutter your eyes open. The sun had the audacity to be there. Still the splushing sound continued.

You strain your ears to listen, trying to make heads or tails of it. It was a squishy sound, the sound of putty hitting stone over and over again. You scramble to the front door. In hindsight, you probably should have grabbed a weapon before running towards the strange sound.

Opening the door, you're greeted with the sight of a familiar seal caught red-handed with a fish in his mouth.

You stare at each other for a long moment before your eyes wander down to a pile of fish. A large amount of fish. Laughter rolls from your lips, musical and manic as you bury your face in your hands.

You think the seal furrows his brow at you, dropping the fish in its mouth before plopping towards you. Plop. Plop. Plop. He looks at you with big dark eyes. Your mouth twitches between curling down into a frown and a smile that spread across your face. On one hand, you are confused. On the other hand, you were gonna be able eat some meat.

A concerned croon comes from the pup and your face decides that it would rather smile at the moment. You throw your arms around him, not at all caring about the seawater getting on your nightclothes.

"Thank you." You whisper and the seal answers with a happy trill.

Dick is over the moon.

He can't even help how loud his trills get. It's ok you don't seem to mind either. He's just happy that you get to eat now.... but you don't.

Dick's a little frustrated when you don't immediately start digging in. Instead, you go back inside your home, swear, shout in delight then come back out with a basin and a jar of white powder. You then run around to fill the basin with seawater then add what Dick finds out is salt into the seawater.

Dick is... concerned.

You go back inside the house. When you come out again, you have a knife in your hand. Dick waddles back a bit. He knows you won't hurt him but it's a habit. You develop these kinds of habits around Bruce.

You settle yourself onto the ground cross-legged and grab a fish. Dick looks on with mild curiosity. You begin to dismember the fish by cutting off it's head, cutting it up in the middle then removing the bones and stomach. That kind of makes sense, Dick thinks. The bones are kind of annoying. Dick nods his head agreeably until you toss the fish into the basin.

Dick looks on in utter confusion as you repeat the process with most of the fish he's brought you.

You turn to him looking equally befuddled before your eyes soften. You look sheepish. "Sorry pup, I can't eat all of this today so I'm salting them so I can eat them the next few..." You count the fish in the basin. "... weeks."

Dick tilts his head but doesn't say anything. You really should just eat more. Dick can get you more if you need it. You just need to ask but you seem content with what you're doing.

Dick is about to rest his head on your lap when you shoot up and scuttle back inside. You return with a line and a smile. Dick watches you string the fish up like laundry. He could probably help you but he has no clue if he should. Just eat the fish damn it.

Finally after what felt like forever, you start preparing the fish and actually eat. You offer Dick some and Dick has to admit cooking the fish does taste odd but not unpleasant. It's totally different from eating it raw (the better way) but it's not horrible. Or maybe it just tastes good because you've got the biggest grin on your face while eating.

Maybe.

Probably, Dick thinks as he munches on his fish, pressed to your side.

___

You sing at the top of your voice. It's a cheerful song but Dick can't quite make out the words. He knows it's human but he's not quite familiar with it. The tune is nice though. Dick rests his head on your lap closing his eyes.

He croons happily when you being to pet him.

You stop midway through the song dissolving into a fit, of what Dick can only describe as, giggles snorts. It was a despicably adorable sound that was engineered to make Dick feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside.

He looks up at you with big curious black eyes. He's not complaining but he hasn't heard you laugh this much before and he may or may not want to know how to make you laugh like this again.

When you don't answer his questioning gaze, Dick nudges against your chest. Your shoulders are still shaking but you manage to stop laughing for a moment.

"Sorry pup," you say wiping a tear from your eye, "I must look crazy to you. "

A little but not as bad as Bruce, Dick thinks. Bruce thinks you humans still don't know there are selkies on the island. Dick snorts at the idea. Everyone knows that all you humans know about selkies. That's why those men keep coming here trying to trap them.

You squish his face affectionately with your hands. "My dad taught me that song and I just realized..." Your mouth turns into a curved line of held back laughter. "...It's a sea shanty about missing being between a woman's legs." The last few words come out more as giggles than proper syllables but Dick can't enjoy that because he can feel his face warm up from the thought. He hides his face in his flippers.

You squeal, absolutely delighted with his mortification. Smiling down at him, you say: "Yanno pup, sometimes I think you understand me."

Thought process-wise, no.

Dick snuggles up to you again, blowing air out of his nose to voice his ascent. You can't just say things like that but again, you just simply seem amused by his suffering when you bend down to press a kiss to the top of his head.

Dick looks up when you pull away. No! Give him more!

Dick stretches up to return the favor, having to partially climb on your lap but only managing to boop your nose with his snout. You nuzzle your nose against his and Dick makes the happiest noise in the back of his throat.

Sometimes after wandering around you had a habit of falling asleep on the shore which Dick thought was fine until he found out that you couldn't swim. Dick being the only with brains in this duo always nudges you awake when the tide starts getting too close. Dick doubts the lapping water will wake you up before sweeping you away. After all, you managed to sleep through Tim, Kon, and Bart's rock piling contest on top of you. Dick shooed them away but even after cleaning up, you didn't wake up.

Dick sees the sailors on the shore and nudges you. You... don't even blink. You hum, content to bask in the sun as you wrap your arms around Dick. Dick huffs. He likes this but he really would prefer it if you move. Dick considers slipping from your grip and grabbing a fish to slap you with like last time.

Dick cranes his head to look at the ship again. It was far too close now, too close for you to get away without being seen by the sailors.

Dick turns you back over to your back and proceeds to body slam you with all his blubber. He winces when you make a choked noise. Dick can give you apology fish later.

"Pup, what the fuck?"

You see the ship. Your eyes widen then flicker to his injured fin. Dick had injured it when he’d been swimming by the docks and got caught in one of the old traps. You’ve done your best to help it heal but you only know so much. You’re still reading up on herbs in case it happens again.

You try in vain to push him off but he's a big loveable sack of blubber and he refuses to move. “C’mon pup, you need to move. They’ll try to catch you if they see you.” You grunt but the sack of blubber refuses to move.

You and Dick stay still as the ship draws near, neither of your chests rises or fall as the ship rocks back and forth.

The ship passes and you let your head fall back with a sigh.

Dick nuzzles his snout against your face, his whiskers tickling your face. You giggle and try to push him off. It’s useless so you let him stay there.

You both decide to take a nap on the shore with Dick huffing in your face once in a while as he snores.

You curl up on the floor in front of the fire, watching the embers flicker, flash, and fade. It's the best thing you can do to calm your fraying nerves. The storm rages outside violently as if it was trying to tear the lighthouse down brick by brick. The whole building shakes with another boom of thunder. You close your eyes and burrow under the thick blanket.

In the back of your mind, your father is chuckling. The absence of a hand on your head is disconcerting. You remind yourself that it won't come, that you'll have to learn to weather the storm alone. You sigh then tighten the blanket around you.

Tok. Tok. Tok.

You blink. The fire was dying. When had you fallen asleep?

Tok, tok, tok.

Blinking, you rub the sleep from your eyes, but the haze doesn’t lift, only growing as you watch the firelight.

Tok tok tok.

You shoot up and barrel towards the door with the frantic knocking growing louder and louder as your feet pound against the stone floor.

You run into the door in your haste. The loud thud of your body against the door causes the frantic knocks to turn into muffled shouting.

Prying yourself from the door, you open it and you don't know what you expected but this wasn't it.

Standing in front of you was a man soaked like a wet rat. You blink in confusion before pulling him inside. You run to grab him a blanket. Wait. You should probably get him a towel. No, wait. You should have gotten his name first. Fuck.

You shuffle back into the room with a towel, spare clothes, and an extra blanket. You.. what can generously be called a heart attack.

For the first time, in the soft glow of the fire, you can fully admire your guest. Not see, admire because there was a lot to admire.

The light of the fire flicking over the planes of his chest, with a light dusting of chest hair, the amber glow highlighting all the muscles of his body, framing the ripples of his toned figure. Swallowing any good sense you have, you watch the rainwater turn golden as it drips down his perfectly bronzed skin. The water cuts through valleys of muscle that could have only been handcrafted by gods. Your eyes follow the flow until... Oh.

You flush furiously, your face glowing brighter than the fire. He's- He's- Oh my god, he's naked.

You reign your eyes in. Ok, you let it linger down there a bit. Not long enough for your guest to notice. You concentrate on his face which wasn't hard to do. The man pushes his raven hair out of his face letting you fully appreciate his face. In keeping with his body, his fine boned face looked like Pygmalion himself spent hours shaping it, not satisfied until he's made the perfect face. It's handsome in an adorable way. Not intimidating. It's the kind of face you'd like to pepper with kisses. You try not to focus on his lips in case of any sinful thoughts. You just met the man. The only thing you will note is that yes, his lips do look absolutely kissable and it aggravates you.

The most striking feature however are his deep blue eyes. The kind of deep that you feel like you could drown in. The kind of depth that looked too pretty to agonize over the fact that your lungs are burning. You stare, trying to carve a perfect replica of those eyes into your mind. Those eyes... that are currently staring at you... as he steps closer... at an alarming speed.

You hold the stack of fabric in front of you like a shield. Your guest stops, looking at the stack. His face goes from concern to confusion to blinding enthusiasm. He was probably freezing.

A smile spreads on his face, the cutest dimples you've ever seen forming on his cheeks, as he accepts the stack. He thanks you and your heart leaps from your chest. Whatever chill you were experiencing from the storm was completely gone. You turn away from him, rubbing the back of your neck and mumbling a halfway point between 'no problem' and 'you're welcome'. You hope it came out as 'no welcome' instead of 'your problem'.

The man snorts and you are pretty sure which one came out. To save yourself the embarrassment, you walk to the kitchen and start preparing tea. The man thankfully occupies himself by looking at the assortment of knick-knacks you've hoarded gathered over the years. It gives you ample time to breathe.

"Do you like sugar in your tea?"

The man nods enthusiastically. You can't help but smile a little.

You sit next to him in front of the fireplace as you hand him his mug. He leans his head against your shoulder. You can feel his body radiating a comforting heat.

You two sit in silence, sipping tea and watching the fire flicker. You wanna scold him for slurping his tea. You're not exactly his mother. You don't even know his name.

You turn to him, face scrunched and about to ask him for his name when he surges forward. His lips brush against your lips as he nudges his nose against yours. You fall backward in shock and the stranger falls on top of you, his eyes still glowing bright and cool against the amber light.

There's a thrill working up your spine or is it fear? You squeeze your eyes shut and throw your arms over your face.

"Please don't hurt me." You plead barely above a whisper.

You feel the body above you lower itself on top of you. He chuckles and shakes his head. "(Y/n), you're being silly."

You open your eyes. The man is laying his body on top of you keeping you pinned down and he's... pouting at you?

"I- I don't know who you are. You can take what you want but please don't hurt me."

The pout deepens into a frown.

"(Y/n), I'm not gonna hurt you. Don't you recognize me?"

You blink. You would definitely remember someone this eye-catching. "You always sing that sea shanty to me. The one about the sailor who misses his wife's..." The stranger flushes and makes a hand gesture. Your face scrunches again. The only person you've sung that to aside from your dad is...

"Pup?!"

His frown morphs back into a pout. "I'm not even that little."

You squish his face with your hands before you let your mind wander. You think back to the scars crisscrossing his limbs and chest. "How is this possible?"

He laughs, prying your hands from his face. "I'm a selkie," He says as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. "My name is also Dick, not pup."

You stare up at him wide-eyed and stupefied. Dick snuggles against you like he always does. Somehow snuggling you in this form is better. He can hold you closer like this. You run your hand through his hair, fingers lacing through the tangles in his hair. He lets out an excited trill.

Dick might just be in heaven right now.

"I dunno how but you're somehow even prettier when I look at you in this form," Dick breathes contently. "I'm so lucky to have such a pretty wife."

You stiffen. Dick looks up at you and the confusion in your face wrenches a knife in his heart. He swallows. "That is what you meant with this, right?" Dick asks, tugging at the collar of his shirt.

Your mouth turns into various shapes trying to piece together a coherent response. It settles on the simplest one. "No."

Dick looks stricken like you'd taken a club to his head.

You reel back. "I just- I- I thought you were cold and you-"

Dick's heartaches. It's a dull ache. He thought this kind of thing would be sharp like having a hook pierce your heart.

His insides twist as he peels of you.

Your stomach sinks as you feel the cold fill your body once more. You don’t want him to go. The thought of being alone right now makes your stomach curdle. Your hands grip his shirt without meaning to. The look on his face hurts but the idea of him leaving felt unbearable. You know it's selfish but here you are begging him not to leave.

"Dick, I'm sorry... I didn't know... I-"

Thunder booms. You squeak and bury your face in his chest. You can't stand storms.

Dick smiles down at you softly. It's still pained but it's bearable.

He lays on his side and pulls you closer. He slots your face into his neck. You're still shivering even when he uses his body to shield you from the rest of the world.

You whisper another apology.

Dick shushes you, pressing a kiss to your forehead.

The sunlight floods into the room like it does every morning but the room is still cold. Your mind works to understand what's wrong with this picture. Your hand pads beside you. The space next to you is empty save for the blanket left behind.

You sniffle, gripping the sheet in your hand. You messed up, you think, pulling it to your face. For the first time in months, the tears come easily. You lay there all day because the tears won't stop.

"If you sigh one more time, I am going to rip your throat out." Jason growls not bothering to open his eyes. Why would he? Dick has been flat and mopey for the past two weeks and Jason is really starting to miss his hyperactivity.

Dick lets out another mopey sigh. Jason. Is. Going. To. Scream.

"Can't you be depressing in Roy's direction? Or Bruce's?"

Dick sighs even louder at the mention of Bruce and Jason, for once, is considering murder or at least maiming.

"She doesn't love me back."Dick sniffles and Jason really should have known this had something to do with you.

He turns to Dick. "I'm going to regret asking but how do you know that?" The sooner he sorts Dick out, the sooner he gets to sleep. "Did she tell you to go away and never come back?"

"Well no-"

It's Jason's turn to sigh. "You fucking moron, What did she even say?"

"She said she didn't know." Dick lowers his head to the sand and Jason wants to slap him with his tail.

Jason is now fully awake and very ready to throttle Dick. Or he's just cranky. "Are you telling me Bruce was right?! This day just keeps getting worse."

Something seems to click in Dick's brain. "Oh, crap Bruce is right." He mutters stupidly.

Jason will take whatever consolation he can get out of this. "She probably thought you were just some random pervert flashing her then." Jason snickers. It's petty and childish but so is interrupting a well-deserved nap.

"What?"

Jason lets out an exasperated huff through his snout. He twists his body to look at Dick with minimal effort to lift his head. "Let's see, you turned up naked at her door and then you called her your wife and nearly kissed her in what? The space of 15 minutes?"

"I got confused." Dick sputters.

"Geez, I thought West was bad but you're just a disaster," Jason chuckles, "Oh! And you made the brilliant decision to leave without explanation," Jason is having far too much fun rubbing salt in the wound. "She probably feels terrible”.

"Are you guilt-tripping me?"

"Is it working?"

"What-" Dick growls. "Well, what do you want me to do?"

"Hmmmmm, have you tried talking? Yanno the thing Bruce never does. But seriously, I can’t believe you call her your wife and then abandon her." Jason shakes his head. "And you have the audacity to call yourself the smart one."

Dick strips out of his skin and begins running towards the lighthouse... naked.

Jason debates on letting him.... he probably shouldn't.

"Dickface!" Jason calls out.

Dick doesn't stop, face crumpled in determination and his little Richard swinging wildly as he walks.

Jason is gonna die of second-hand embarrassment.

"DICKFACE!"

"What?!" Dick asks turning around his hands on his hips. Like usual, his hip tilts to the side and his foot taps as he waits expectantly for Jason to gather a mildly coherent response.

"Your little Richard..." Jason says pointing with his fin.

Dick looks down and the look of mortification on his face is satisfactory. ".... Right. Shit."

"Just steal some from her laundry."

"But she'll be pissed."

"Ok, so you would rather flash her then?"

Dick sighs and this time Jason doesn't have the urge to throttle him only because Dick is already beating his own ego into a pulp. "I hate it when you make sense."

Jason raises a brow, setting his head back down to the warm sand. "I always make sense."

Dick just cackles in response as he heads to the lighthouse.

Dick shifts his weight on the balls of his feet. He feels sick like he'd eaten one of those pickled fish you made him one time. Maybe this was a bad idea. Why did he even listen to Jason? He flips onto his hands and begins to pace. His stomach feels like it's being tossed violently by ocean currents. It feels like a shapeless lump sitting in the pit of his abdomen. Maybe you're out or maybe you never wanna see him again.

Your face had been so blown wide with shock when he had called you wife that it looked almost foreign like the suggestion had been so audacious that your face had to reconstruct itself to accommodate the shock.

Dick puts a hand to his face trying to stem the flow of thought. He was such an idiot. Why did he assume you would love him like that and why did he just leave you? Dick closes his eyes and breathes. He'll knock just once more then leave if you don't answer.

Tok. Tok. Tok.

The knocks register just above a whisper. He thinks you don't hear it.

He lets out a breath and walks away. This was stupid. He should never have come back.

Jason was right. Fuck. Dick buries his face as he walks away.

Distantly, Dick hears the squeak of rusty hinges but it's lost in the tempest of thoughts plaguing his mind, in all the little hurts from that night.

"Pup?" The sound of your voice is followed by the pounding of your feet against stand. Dick's careening to the ground before he knows it as your body collides with his.

"Pup," you sniffle into his shirt, "it is you."

Dick twist in your grip so he's facing you. Your face is buried in his shirt. He strokes your hair, wrapping an arm around you, holding you tight. "Of course, it’s me. Who else would bug you at this hour?"

Dick feels his shirt grow warm. You mumble an apology.

You look up to face Dick with half your face still buried in his shirt. You've clearly been crying based on how red and puffy your eyes are. Dick's stomach churns at the dark circles under your eyes. He feels guilt stab him in the gut. All of that combined with your generally disheveled appearance. Dick can just tell that you haven't slept well the last few days.

"Let's go inside and talk." You say, peeling yourself off of him.

Dick shakes his head, not loosening his grip on your midsection. "Let's walk around you look like you need some sun."

You flushed and put a hand to your cheek. "Do I look that bad?" You ask absently, a shy smile creeping into your features.

Dick smiles at you and pushes your hair out of your face. "Never but the weather is sunny for once and we both need some air."

"So you really didn't know that the island was filled with selkies?" Dick asks, adjusting the infernal scarf you had forced him into. He insisted that he didn't need it. He could just cuddle up to you for warmth but you were equally stubborn about him wearing a coat and the wool monstrosity strangling him.

Your face scrunches up in confusion." I- I don't even know what that is."

Dick stops.

You slow down upon realizing he wasn't by your side anymore. "You... don't know what a selkie is?" He asks, his face the definition of dumbstruck.

You shrink into your coat." My dad wasn't interested in things like that," you shrug, "I dunno much about..." Your hand twists in a circle, reaching for the right words.

Dick tilts his head. That made sense. "You thought we were all just seals?"

You nod slowly, looking like you wanna shrivel up.

Dick starts laughing and you look like you're a second away from throwing yourself into the water.

"I'm sorry," he says, flailing. He's screwing this up again. He breathes to collect himself. "I just thought it's funny that we all thought my dad was wrong about you guys not knowing."

You rub the back of your neck. "Most of us mainlanders don't really believe in magic, yanno? It's just such a foreign concept. Kind of hard to wrap my head around it."

"I get that." The smile on his face makes your gut twist. You fiddle with your hands.

"So what are selkies?"

Dick tilts his head, not exactly sure of how to word it because how do you explain something that's been obvious to you since you can remember to someone who just found out about it a few weeks ago?

"We're fae, I guess-" Your face twists in confusion.

Dick needs to backtrack. "We're fae..." This is hard. "We have this human form and we have our seal forms. We switch between them using our pelt."

Your brow knits in confusion. "Which one is your true form then?"

Dick wraps his arm around your waist and holds you closer as you walk along the cliff tops. He hums as he thinks. "Both?"

You look up at him with a weary smile. “That makes sense in a way.” You hum. Swallowing thickly, you fiddle with your hands. "So what was with the... um..." You clear your throat. "What was with the wife thing?"

Dick’s mouth dries. “Well... when we want to ask someone to be our mate... we- we kind of give them our pelt and I thought it translated to human clothes…” He stammers out dumbly.

“Oh...oh!” Your eyes widen into a look of horror. You open and close your mouth trying to form words. “Dick, I didn’t realize , that must have - I’m sorry I hurt you.”

“Please don’t apologize,” Dick says and presses his lips to the top of your head. His lips are warm and comforting. “I’ve spent so long in love with you my brain just didn’t...” Dick’s mouth twists. “It just didn’t do what it was supposed to.”

You would definitely laugh at that last part but you’re still seeing stars from the startling confession he just hit you with. You snuggle tighter into his embrace as you look over the sea. You don’t know how to respond. You really don’t and it frustrates you. It was all just a lot to take in all at once like you’d been tossed into the sea and you’re flailing and grasping at water.

But if nothing else, you’re at least glad that Dick is still talking to you.

“If you don't mind…” Dick says carefully, the look in his eyes determined. “Would it be alright if I try and pursue you properly?” Dick braces for a no. He’s not dumb enough to be hopeful twice but he needs to ask.

Inevitably, you freeze. You pull his arm closer to your chest. Swallowing, you ask: “you mean like a human courtship?”

He nods closing his eyes. “Yes, I want to court you.” He coughs clearing his throat.

You’re silent for what felt like the longest 30 seconds of Dick’s life. Dick cracks one eye to see you fiddling with your hair. “Uh Dick, there’s this one problem that might make that difficult…” Dick raises a brow. It wasn’t an outright rejection but it wasn’t an answer.

“I don't know how that works either.” You laugh nervously, burying your face in his arm.

“Good - then we don’t know if I’m doing it badly.” Dick beams with a blinding smile.

You twist to look at him, the corners of your mouth twitching. “That sounds like cheating.”

Dick snorts, “would you rather I court you the selkie way?”

“I mean it depends. What's the selkie way?”

“Fish.”

Dick startles when you let out a loud bark of laughter. “Fish? You’ve already done that so many times.” You giggle. Dick tries to wrangle his mind away from the fact that he can feel your lips through the thin fabric of the sweater.

“I thought it worked.” Dick sighs. He really did, but alas, miscommunication is a cruel mistress.

You lower your gaze trying to concentrate on the fraying needlework of his sweater. “Maybe it has.” You mumble low enough for a human not to hear. How unfortunate it is then that you’re dealing with a selkie.

Dick is beaming when you look up again. He nuzzles his face against yours. Dick is once again insanely, stupidly, incredibly happy.

__________________________________________________________________________

Because neither of you knew what you were doing, Dick's attempts to court you ranged from ridiculous (a literal mountain of fish that you ended up drying, giving away to the other seals, and selling to passing ships.) to ridiculously sweet (finding you handful of pearls). Dick nudged a little shell overflowing with pearls and looked up at you with liquid eyes. He could have gotten you pebbles and it would have been endearing.

It wasn't always gifts though.

Sometimes Dick would just sit quietly with you on the beach, snuggling against your leg as you scratched his stomach. You love the ways his squish vibrated as he purred.

When summer passed and it became unbearable to watch the stars outside, Dick sometimes spent nights in your lighthouse, wrapped up in your sheets or wrapped around you. It was nice having him around the house even if he was kind of a slob. You love him but he is a mess.

You made the mistake of introducing him to tea cakes and got him addicted to November Cakes specifically. As it turns out, your cute pest has a sweet tooth and will nuzzle you into submission just for another bite.

If you ever doubted that Dick was evil before, you now have proof.

During the winter, Dick insisted on staying in the lighthouse to keep you warm. You wanted to point out that you had a fireplace for a reason but it was so hard to turn down hugs from him.

And because you hadn't had the heart to clean out your father's room yet and Dick clearly preferred it, you let Dick sleep next to you on your cot. You felt a bit bad but Dick was just so happy with the arrangement that you didn't want to make him go away. Besides, it was nice to wake up to his sleeping face in the morning, all sleep rumpled and drooling.

__________________________________________________________________________

"Hey Jay, do you have a book on selkies?" Dick asks, caterpillaring on the rock Jason is sunbathing on.

Jason takes the opportunity to roll down the rock and knock Dick into the sea before saying: "No." It shall be put on record that there are no drama queens in the Wayne family.

Dick shakes off the seawater, big puppy eyes staring at Jason.

Jason glares at him. He can't even let Jason have a second of smugness. "Ask Selina."

No one really knows where Selina came from or why she stayed (well, they had their suspicions), but if you need something you can't find easily, your best bet was to ask her and hope she doesn't ask you to do anything ridiculously hard.

Dick hasn't had first hand experience but from what Bruce tells him, they're mostly silly things like recite poems or do a flip. He could do both those things. Well, depending on the poem. He gets tongue twisted sometimes. Hmmm, maybe he should ask if he can avoid tongue twisters so he won't bite his tongue.

Sloughing off his coat, Dick walks towards the glowing cauldron.

"Still no clothes pup? You're going to give a poor girl a heart attack." Selina tsked, reappearing from one of the other cave entrances with a handful of things Dick can't recognize.

"Oh... I- I'm still not used to it." He says sheepishly.

Selina chuckles, dumping the handful of what Dick can assume is plant debris into the cauldron while before dusting her hands off.

Dick stares at the thick vat. A bubble rises and bursts emitting what sounded like a human voice. "What is that? Should I be worried?"

"Oh no, no, this? This is just a little soup for colds."

"It screamed."

"All soups scream."

"I- anyway, I came here to ask if you have a book on selkies."

Selina tilts her head to the side. "I believe I do-"

"Great!"

"Buuuut..."

Of course, the price.

"I brought pearls and some seashells." He says hopefully.

The angle of her head does not change. Though from the gleam in her eyes, she's clearly interested.

"Tell me why you need the book."

Dick's thoughts halt. Should he tell Selina about you? His eyes dart to the boiling cauldron. "... Why do you need to know?"

Selina flourishes her hand. The book appears out of thin air."Do you want the book or not, pup?"

Dick's nerves pinch. Why does everyone call him that? "I need it to teach someone Selkie customs." He manages.

"Oh! The little lighthouse keeper!"

"You know her?"

Selina shrugs. "Do you really think I wouldn't know something going on about the islands nearby?" She pinches his cheek. "Oh little pup, I know about your little crush. You spend more time on land than you do in the sea these days. Dami's been all huffy about it."

He has.

"I've told you my reason." Dick says holding his hand out.

"Hnnnn, you have I suppose." Selina sighs.

Dick takes the book, putting it into a waterproof pouch before gingerly putting his pelt back on. He happily caterpillars out of the cave with the pouch in his mouth. He really hopes you'll like this.

You really should just fix up another cot for Dick at this point and maybe buy him a set of clothes when you go to town.

"It's too cold to sleep outside." Dick whines, flattening himself against you on the bed.

You lift your book to look at him. Dick just gives you that wide-eyed look when he wants something. You roll your eyes, letting him snuggle up to you. "Dick, it is obviously summer and you're like 40% blubber." You snort.

Dick pouts. "You're still gonna let me sleep here."

You scrunch your face up and sigh. "I can't exactly let you brace the summer cold, can I?" You say, running a hand through his hair.

"Eeeeeexactly." Dick says happily as snuggles into you tightly. He nuzzles his face into your neck wrapping his arms around your waist. You hum helplessly, curling into his embrace.

"See." Dick trills with a happy grin.

"Are you going to be smug about it all night?" You huff, throwing a blanket over the two of you.

"No," he says, "you assume I can't keep being smug 'til sunrise."

"Dork," you snicker, setting the book down. It was a book on selkie traditions that Dick had gotten you a few days ago. You devoured it the same night but you're reading it again and subtly testing things while Dick was invading your house. You hum, running your hand through his hair, fingernails lightly scraping against his scalp. Dick purrs against your chest. "There was a one eyed seal on the beach the other day. He was a grumpy fellow but kind of cute. Seals really are a sleepy lot. The big lug started snoozing on my lap after like 5 minutes."

Dick tense under your touch. He looks up at you seriously.

"That was a selkie." Dick deadpans.

You stop your rambling. "What?!"

"That grumpy one-eyed seal was a selkie." He repeats carefully.

Your breath stutters. "Are all of the seals on this island selkies? ALL OF THEM?" Dick is pretty sure your eyes are mounting an escape.

"All of them, darling." Dick nods.

"Oh." You are so screwed. "Do you guys all talk to each other?!" You shouldn't have told that seal about your little crush. You want the mattress to swallow you up.

"Yes? Should I be concerned?" Dick asks, lifting his head.

"No! No reason!" You squeal, shaking your head.

Dick pouts at you with suspicion. It occurs to you with some amusement that Dick is actually glaring. You wisely decide to sidestep the conversation.

"You guys love taking naps on people, huh?" You say, absently twining your fingers into Dick's hair. He settles his head against your chest. "That's just cus we like you." He hums.

A snort rips out of you. "You're just biased."

Dick looks up at you seriously again. "We selkies like pretty things like any fae." Dick says, wrapping his arms around you more tightly. He's being petty but Dick has always been protective of you and he isn't about to stop now. Besides... he doesn't want anyone stealing you away.

You frown at him. "Dick, there are far prettier things on this island and sweet talking won’t magically make November cakes appear." You huff, kissing the top of his head before picking up the book and using it to hide the smile shaping your lips.

You feel Dick pick himself up off of you. You peek over your book to watch Dick. He scoots closer to your face until the only thing separating you is the far too thin book in your hands.

"You don't believe me, do you?"

"No." You say. You don't mean it but it's the easiest thing to conjure up when Dick is this close. Your lips prickle from imagining Dick's lips against yours.

You weren't paying attention. Dick has apparently been going on a two-minute diatribe on how pretty you are and in that two minutes, Dick has managed to scoot even closer. He gently takes the book out of your hands to make sure you're paying attention. He fails to take into account the fact that his face is in fact distracting. Your eyes zero in on his very plush and very kissable lips. If you just lean forward a fraction, you could...

Your lips feel warm and soft against Dick's, the rest of his diatribe dying in the back of his throat as his eyes flutter shut. His mind might just be melting out of his ears because the only thing he can think about is how soft you are and how perfectly your lips fit against his.

"I'm sorry." You whisper shyly. You should be sorry, Dick thinks. Who told you to pull away?

You touch your fingers to your lips. Fuck, what did you just do?

"You can do it again." Please, he almost adds.

You lick your lips. Dick perks up and leans closer. His heart is going to leap out of his chest. You lean closer. Dick can feel his heart pounding against his rib cage.

You kiss Dick on the nose and pull away, hiding your lips behind your hand as you snicker. Dick scrunches his nose and blows air out of it.

"You know perfectly well what I meant." He huffs.

You lean back into your pillow, grinning at him. "I have absolutely no clue what you're on about." You say slowly, smug.

"Let me remind you then,"A grin takes over his face. Dick leans in, pressing his lips against yours. You exchange breaths as you drink in the feeling of each other's lips. Dick caresses your sides. He feels you shiver and he smiles into your lips. "That ring any bells?"

"Not really..." You say, flickering your eyes to him. "But if you try again... it might."

"Oh sweetheart, I can keep reminding you all night." Dick chuckles, winking.

Covering your face, you attempt to hide your embarrassment. You hate how easily he flusters you. "You can't just say stuff like that." You whimper.

"Why not? I'm supposed to be courting you and that includes buttering you up," Dick says, nuzzling your cheek. You're just too cute. Dick gently pries your hands away from your face. "Don't hide your face from me, Honey."

"Oh god, you're making me regret letting you court me."

"Never."

______________________________________________________________________

Dick's eyes are struggling to remain open as he watches the fire. He burrows further into the thick comforter you'd given him. It's not quite as warm as his pelt but the fabric is puffy and it has a sweet smell that makes his head swim.

Dick angles his head slightly to watch you. You've been toiling for hours and refuse to tell Dick what it is. Your back is still hunched over with your foot bouncing on the floor. Dick lets his eyes flutter shut, listening to the sound of your shuffling tools.

You glance down at the adorable mess dozing off on your sofa. You gently move his hair out of his face. He swats at you sleepily, face scrunched even as he sleeps. You sincerely wish you had Damian's talent for art or that you had one of those cameras. You really wish you could keep a picture of Dick's sleepy face. It's the cutest thing in the world.

"Hey Dickie," you whisper.

"Hmmmmm?" He groans.

"Could you hand me your pelt?"

"Sure," he moans, blindly padding around for it. You snort as he nearly falls off the sofa. After groping nearly every surface, he finally finds the pelt. "here you-"

The fur brushes your fingertips before Dick stops. Dick shoots up, nearly clipping your nose with his forehead. He's looking at you fully awake, drool still hanging off the corner of his lips."Are you sure?!"

"Hand it over coward." You smile gently at him. You try your best to fight off the excitement bubbling in your veins.

Dick is off the couch, his own excitement barely contained as his whole body vibrates with happiness. He sits up. You hold out your hand but instead of handing you his pelt, Dick drapes it over you like a wedding veil. It's thick and warm to the touch. You let your hands brush over the silken fur. You can feel magic thrumming from it. It feels like a minute current of electricity but it doesn't flow linearly. It ebbs and flows as it pleases, pulsing beneath your fingers. You burrow yourself in it.

Something warm spills in Dick's chest as he sees you wrapped up in his pelt. Dick kisses your nose. "You have now been wifed."

You twitch your nose. "You missed."

"Nope. Don't think so. Buuuuut if you show me where you want me to kiss you..."

You roll your eyes and surge forward, pressing your lips to his. Dick smiles into it, pulling you close and savoring the sensation of your lips melding together. He makes a happy trilling noise while you laugh against his lips.

"That clear enough, Dickie?" You ask, pressing your forehead against his.

"Yeah, I think I got it, wifey."

__________________________________________________________

THANKS FOR READING

Tag list: @batarella, @anothertimdrakestan, @lucy-roo, @multifandomgirl-us, @idkmanicantenglish , @birdy-bat-writes, @boosyboo9206, @americasmarauders , @l-inkage, @arestorationofbalance , @cloudie-skay, @wunderstell @hyp-oh-critical @glorified-red @ marshmallow12435 @vvipgot7be @jadedhillon

#dick grayson x reader #dick grayson imagine #dick grayson x you #dick grayson #dorks #seals #selkie x reader #selkie au

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atlantean-studies · 2 years ago

Text

Fox Lore #2 (Stories By Culture)

JAPANESE

Enough is Enough!

The foxes who infested the house and grounds of Major Counselor Yasumichi's old mansion were always making mischief, but since they never really did any harm, Yasumichi let the matter pass. They got naughtier and naughtier as the years went by, though, until one day he angrily decided that enough was enough. Those foxes would have to go.

He announced a grand fox hunt to his household, for the next day. The servants were to bring bows and arrows, sticks, or whatever weapons they could devise, and flush out every last one. They would surround the house, and men would be posted not only on the garden wall but on the roof as well, and even in the space between the ceiling of the rooms and the roof. Every fox that showed itself would be killed.

Near dawn on the fateful day Yasumichi had a dream. A white-haired old man, looking rather like an aged menial, was kneeling under the tangerine tree in the garden, bowing respectfully to him.

"Who are you?" asked Yasumichi.

"Someone who has lived here in the mansion for many years, sir," the old man answered nervously. "My father lived here before me, sire, and by now I have many children and grandchildren. They get into a lot of mischief, I'm afraid, and I'm always after them to stop, but they never listen. And now, sir, you're understandably fed up with us. I gather that you're going to kill us all. But I just want you to know, sir, how sorry I am that this is our last night of life. Won't you pardon us, one more time? If we ever make trouble again, then of course you must act as you think best. But the young ones, sir -- I'm sure they'll understand when I explain to them why you're so upset. We'll do everything we can to protect you from now on, if only you'll forgive us, and we'll be sure to let you know when anything good is going to happen!"

The old man bowed again and Yasumichi awoke. When the sky had lightened, he got up and looked outside. Under the tangerine tree sat a hairless old fox which, and the sight of him, slunk under the house.

The perplexed Yasumichi gave up his fox hunt. There was no more troublesome mischief, and every happy event around the house was announced by a fox's sharp bark.

Fox Arson

A retainer who served the governor of Kai was heading home one sundown from the governor's mansion when he saw a fox, gave chase and shot at it with the kind of noisemaker arrow used for scaring off dogs. He hit it in the back leg.

The fox yelped in pain, rolled over, and dove, limping into the brush. As the retainer went to retrieve his arrow the fox reappeared in front of him, and he was about to shoot at it again when it vanished.

A quarter of a mile from home he saw the fox running ahead of him carrying a flaming brand in its mouth. What could it be up to? He spurred his horse on. On reaching the house, the fox changed into a human being and set the house on fire. The retainer was ready to shoot as soon as he got within range, but the human changed right back into a fox and got away. The house burned down.

Beings like that exact swift vengeance. It's better to leave them alone.

The Fox In The Brothel

In a time of our honorable forefathers, there dwelt in a mean mountain village of Settsu Province a poor faggot-cutter who followed the way of Lord Buddha, taking no animal life for the solace of his belly and praying as a devout man should for the eternal welfare of his spirit.

One day in a ravine he came upon a vixen, caught by the paw in a trapper's snare, which with many a moan and with tears running down her muzzle para-para seemed to beseech him for succor, so that in pity he would have released her. But being minded to rob no honest man, he trudged a long ride down the mountain to his hut, and taking from a hiding place in the thatch a piece of silver, the fruit of weeks of toil, he returned to the ravine and set the vixen free, and wrapped the silver piece in a bit of cotton cloth, he tied it to the snare and went his way. The vixen, when he released her, fled not, but as thought understanding his heart, fawned upon his feet and licked his hands and followed him limping tobo-tobo to the mouth of the ravine, where she gave three sharp barks and sprang into the thicket.

Now on the third evening thereafter, as the man squatted in the mouth of his hut resting from the sweaty labor of the day, on a sudden there appeared before him a damsel, clad in a brown-silk robe, who called to him, and he, seeing her rare beauty and thinking her some great lady strayed from her cavalcade, prostrated himself before her and begged her pleasure.

Said she: "Abase not thyself. I am the fox which thy humanity set free the other night from the snare, and whose life thou didst purchase with thy silver piece. I have taken this form in order to request thy favor as I may, and I will serve thee with fealty so long as thou dost live."

At which he cried: "Esteemed mistress of magic! Not for my unparalleled worthlessness is thy high condescension! I am eight times rewarded by this thy visit. I am but a beggarly forester and thou a repository of all beauty. I pray to thee, make not sport of my low condition."

Then said she: "Thou art a poor man. Suffer me at least to set thee on the way to wealth."

Asked him "How may that be done?"

She replied "Tomorrow morning don thy best robe and thy stoutest sandals and come to the mouth of the ravine where thou didst rescue me. There thou shalt see me in my true form. Follow whither I lead and good fortune shall be thine. This I promise on the word of a fox." At that he prostrated himself before the damsel in gratitude, and when he lifted himself, she had vanished.

Next morning, when he came to the ravine, he found awaiting him the vixen, who barked thrice and turning, trotted before him, leading him by paths he knew not across the mountain.

So, they proceeded, she disappeared in the thicket whenever a chance traveler came in view, and he satisfying his hunger with fruits and berries and slaking his thirst from the rivulets, and at night sleeping under the stars. Thus, the reaches of the sun wound up the days till on fourth noontide they descended into a vale where lay a city.

At sundown they came to a grove hard by the city's outer barrier where there was a shrine to the fox deity, Inari. Before this, the vixen barked thrice, and bounded through its door. And presently the woodsman beheld the damsel issuing therefrom, robed now in rich garments and beauteous as a lover's dream leaping from the golden heart of a plum blossom.

Said she "Take me now - who am they daughter - to the richest brothel in yonder city, and sell me to its master for a godly price."

He answered: "Barter thee, to the red-hell hands of a conscienceless virgin-buyer? Never!" Then, with a laugh like the silver potari of a fountain, she said.

"Nay, but their soul shall be blameless. So soon as thou hast closed the bargain and departed, I shall take on my fox shape in the garden and get me gone, and thus the reward shall be thine and evil intent shall receive its just deserts."

So, as she bade him, he entered the city with her and inquiring the way to the quarter of houses of public women, came to its most splendid rendezvous, which was patronized only by brazen spendthrifts and purse-proud princes, where all night the painted drums went don-a-don and the samisen were never silent, and whose satiny corridors lisped with the shu-shu of the velvet foot-palms of scarlet-lipped courtesans.

So great was the damsel's beauty that a crowd trooped after them, and the master of the house, when he saw her, felt his back teeth itch with pleasure. The faggot-cutter told him his tale, as he had been prompted, averring that he was a man whose life had fallen on gloomy ways so that he who had been a man of substance was now constrained to sell his only daughter to bondage.

At which the proprietor, his mouth watering at her loveliness and bethinking him of his wealthy clientele, thrust ink-brush into his fist and planked before him a bill-of-agreement providing for her three years' service for a sum of thirty gold ryo paid that hour into his hand.

The woodsman would joyfully have signed, but the damsel put forth her hand and stopped him saying: "Nay, my august father! I joyfully obey thy will in this as in all else, yet I pray thee bring not reproach upon our unsullied house by esteeming me of so little value.” And, to the master of the place she said: "Me thinks thou saidst sixty ryo."

He answered: "Were I to give a rin more than forty, I would be robbing my children."

Said she: "The perfume I used in our brighter days cost me ten each month. Sixty!"

Cried he: "A thousand curses upon my beggarly poverty, which constraineth me. Have mercy and take fifty!"

At this she rose, saying: "Honorable parent, there is a house in a nearby street frequented, I hear, by a certain prince who may deem me not unattractive. Let us go thither, for this place seemeth of lesser standing and reputation than we had heard."

But the master ran and barred the door and, although groaning like an ox before the knacker, flung down the sixty gold ryo, and the woodsman set his name to the bill-of-agreement and farewelled her and went home rejoicing with the money.

Then the master, glad at the capture of such a peerless pearl of maidenhood, gave her into the care of his tire-woman to be robed in brocades and jewels, and set her on a balcony, where her beauty shone so dazzling that the halted palanquins made the street impassable, and the proprietor of the establishment across the way all but slit his throat in sheer envy. Moreover, the son of the daimyo of the province, hearing of the newcomer marvel, sent to the place a gift of gold, requesting her presence at a feast he was to give there that same evening.

Now this feast was held in an upper room overhanging the river, and among the damsels who attended the noble guests, the fox-woman was as the moon to a horde of broken paper lanterns, so that the princely host could not unhook his eyes from her and each and every one of his guests gave black looks to whoever touched her sleeve.

As the sake cup took its round, she turned her softest smile now to this one and now to that, beckoning to each to folly till his blood bubbled butsu-butsu with passion and all were balanced on the thin knife-edge of a quarrel.

Suddenly, then, the lights in the apartment flickered out and there was confusion, in the midst of which the damsel cried out in a loud voice: "O my Prince! One of thy guests hath fumbled me! Make a light quickly and thou shalt know this false friend, for he is the one whose hat-tassel I have torn off."

But cried the prince (for he was true-hearted and of generous mind): "Nay, do each one of you, my comrades, tear off his hat-tassel and put it on his sleeve. For we have all drunk overmuch, and ignorance is sometimes better than knowledge." Then after a moment he clapped his hands, and lights were brought, lo, there was no hat left with a tassel upon it. At this, one of the young blades, laughing at the success of the artifice, began to sing the ancient song which saith:

The hat thou lovedst, Reed-wove, tricked out with damask, Ah me, hath blown away, Into the Kamo River- Blown amidst the current. While I wandered seeking it, While I wandered searching it, Day-dawn cam, day-dawn came! Ah, the sawa-sawa Of that rustling night of autumn, There by the water, The spread-out, rustling water!

But the damsel, crying that with the affront unavenged she would not choose longer to live, ran into the next chamber and, stripping of her clothes, cast them from the window into the swift current, while she herself, taking on her fox form, leaped down and hid in a burrow under the riverbank. So, the party of the prince rushed in and, finding the window wide and her vanished and seeing the splendid robe borne away by the rushing water, deeming that she had indeed drowned herself, made outcry, and the master of the house plucked out his eyebrows, and his folk and the gallants put forth in many a boat, searching for her fair body all that night, but naught did they discover save only her loincloth.

Now on the fourth evening after that, as the faggot-cutter sat in his doorway, the damsel appeared before him, robed in a kimono of pine-and-bamboo pattern, with an obi of jeweled dragonflies tangled in a purple mist. Asked she: "Have I kept my fox-word?"

He answered. "Aye, eight times over. This morning I purchased a plot of rich rice land, and tomorrow the builders, with what remaineth, begin to erect my mansion."

Said she then: "Thou art no faggot-cutter henceforth, but a man of substance. Look upon me. Wouldst thou not have me to wife?" But he, seeing how her carriage was as graceful as the swaying of a willow branch, her flawless skin the texture of a magnolia petal, her eyebrows like sable rainbows, and her hair glossy as a sun-tinted crow's wing, and knowing himself for an untutored hind, knelt in abasement before her and spoke.

"Nay, wise one! Doth the smutty raven mate with the snow-white heron?"

Then she said, smiling: "Do my bidding once again. Tomorrow return to the city and to the brothel where thou didst leave me, and offer, as the bargain provided, to buy me back. Since the master of the house cannot produce me, he must need pay over to thee damage money, and see that thou accept not less than two hundred gold ryo." She saying, she became a fox and vanished in the bushes.

So next morning he took his purse and crammed it with copper pieces and betook himself across the mountain, and on the third day he arrived at the city. There he hastened to the brothel and demanded its master, to whom he said, jingling the purse beneath his nose: "Good fortune is mine. For, returning to my village three days since to pay my obligations with thy sixty ryo, I found that my elder brother had died suddenly in the next province, leaving to me (since he was without issue) all his wide estates. So, I am come to redeem my beloved daughter and to return thee thy gold plus the legal interest."

At that the master of the house felt his liver shrink and sought to put him off with all kinds of excuses, but the woodsman insisted the more, so that the other at length had no choice but to tell him that the girl had drowned herself.

When he heard this, the woodsman's lamentations filled all the place, and he beat his head upon the mats hata-to, crying out that naught but ill treatment had driven her to such a course, and swearing to denounce the proprietor to the magistrates for a bloody murderer, till from dread to see his establishment sunk in evil repute, the man ran to his strongbox and sought to offer the bereaved one golden solace.

Thus, with two hundred more ryo in gold (for mindful of the maiden's rede, he would take no less) the woodsman returned to his village, with an armed guard of ten men for an escort, where he rented a stout godown for the money's safekeeping.

The night of his return, as he sat on his doorstep, thanking all the deities for his good luck, the fox-maiden again appeared before him, this time clad only in the soft moon-whiteness of her adorable body, so that he turned away his face from the sight of it.

Asked she: "Have I kept my fox-word?"

And he answered, stammering: "Eight hundred times! Today I am the richest man in these parts."

Said she: "Look upon me. Wouldst thou not possess me as thy concubine?" Then, peeping despite himself betwixt his fingers, he beheld the clear and lovely luster of her satiny skin, her breasts like twin snow-hillocks, her bending waist, and the sweet hidden curves of her thighs, and all his senses clamored like bells, so that he covered his eyes with his sleeve.

And said he: "O generous bestower! Forgive the unspeakable meanness of this degraded nonentity. My descendants of the tenth generation shall burn the richest incense before the golden shrine which I shall presently erect to thee. But I am a man and thou art a fox, with whom I may not knowingly consort without deadly sin!"

Then suddenly he saw a radiance of the five colors shine rainbow-like around her, and she cried out in a voice of exceeding great joy, saying: "Blessing and benison upon thee, O incorruptible one! As a fox I have dwelt upon the earth for five hundred years, and never before have I found among humankind one whose merit had the power to set me free. Know that by the virtue of thy purity I may now quit this animal road for that of humankind." Then she vanished, and he built a shrine to her in the mouth of the mountain ravine, and it is said that his children's grandchildren worship before it to this day.

CHINESE

On Fox Spirits

All that I have learned about fox spirits is from magazine articles as well as stories from my grandparents, so this is by no way an authorative account. Anyone who knows more is welcome to contribute. -- Galen Jang

Fox spirits occupies the same mythological niche as the faerie in Western mythology. They are beautiful beyond endurance, elusive, powerful, mischievous and vindictive.

In Chinese mythology, the human form is the pinnacle of creation. All animals, and sometimes plants seek to achieve human form on their way to immortality. Of these animals, foxes seem to succeed the most.

They do this by absorbing the essence of the moon and the sun. Some folklores maintain that foxes achieve this by conducting rites of worship during full moons. After a few centuries, they will acquire the ability to change into human form.

Most fox spirits in stories are females.

They usually appear as an extremely beautiful woman. The male fox spirits, rare as they are, appear either as erudite and handsome men, or wise old men. You can tell a fox spirit from a human from their tails.

Some of them have not quite mastered the human form. While the body looks human enough, the tail remains. They solve the problem by tucking their tail inside their pants. The ones who do master the human form can be enticed to show their true form by getting them drunk. So, if your friend remains human after a good night of drinking, you can believe that he's human.

If they are killed, they revert back to their original form. It's the women who were dangerous. They usually seek to copulate with human males. They use the sexual act itself to absorb their partner's energy in order to add to their own powers. Such relationships, if prolonged, result in sickness and eventually death for the man. So, if you see a beautiful woman who wants to have sex with you for no reason, watch out!

Most fox spirits are not as brazen as that. The fox spirits ordinary people have experienced are much more elusive. They live in attics or some deserted room in a large house. You never see them. You know they're there because of the noises they make.

The difference between fox spirits noises and ghost noises is, of course, fox spirits make the noises day and night! Sometimes the fox spirits throw things, such as rocks and tiles, into the yard or against the door. You know people aren't responsible for the disturbance because you can't see anybody around the house.

When a family is haunted by a fox spirit, they set up a shrine in the abandoned attic. Incense sticks are burned regularly. Sometimes food is also offered. Things usually quiet down after that. Most of the time, the fox spirits leave their landlords alone if the landlords leave them alone. Sometimes, the fox spirits will even take care of any thief or burglar who is foolish to rob such a house.

Pu Sung-Lin said that the belief of fox spirits was limited mainly to northern China. In southern China, the main belief is in a much more malevolent sort of spirit called Wu Tong.

The spirit in the story "Story of Tseng Shi" may be a Wu Tong. However, the belief of Wu Tong seems to have died away in the south in the last two centuries. My grandparents grew up in Fujian which is definitely southern China, yet the only spirit they know about is the fox spirit. The malevolent Wu Tong lost the war for the belief of human beings. Will the fox spirits now lose the belief of the human beings as well?

King of the Nine Mountains

Translated from Liao Tsai Chi Yi

There was a man surnamed Li living in T'sao Chou. He possessed the greatest wealth in town. Behind his mansion, he had an empty lot which was going to waste. One day, an old man came to him and offered to rent the property with one hundred pieces of gold. Li refused on the ground that the lot had no house on it.

The old man said "Please accept the money and don't worry about the rest."

Li didn't understand, but he accepted the money just to see what would happen. After several days, the old man came to him and said "I already moved in, but we're so busy setting up our new household that we neglected good manners. Today, my children shall prepare a banquet for you, the landlord. We hope you will grace us with your presence." Li went to the lot and, to his surprise, discovered a brand-new mansion there.

As he entered, he saw that the inside was lavishly decorated and furnished. Jugs of wine lined the walkways and the scents of good tea wafted from the kitchen. As the banquet began, he was toasted by the old man. The wine tasted of the finest vintage. He saw and heard many men, women and children, maybe more than a hundred in total, living in the mansion.

He then knew they could not be ordinary human beings, but fox spirits. As he returned from the banquet, he returned with death in his heart. He bought sulfur and other flammable material from the city market and, with the help of his servants, secretly placed them all around the new mansion. When he was finished, he ignited it.

The fire blazed and sent black smoke upward toward the heavens like a black and evil mushroom. The smell of burning flesh and the screams of the dying filled the senses. When the fire died, he and his servants went into the wreckage. There they found the charred bodies of hundreds of dead foxes.

While he was inspecting the carnage, the old man entered the mansion. The old man's face was contorted with grief and anger. He said "I have never wronged you. I gave you hundreds of pieces of gold in good faith. That is not a niggardy amount of money. How can you bury your conscience and slaughter us! I must avenge the cruel deaths of my family."

Then the old man left. Li thought the old man would just try some supernatural tricks on his family, such as throwing bricks at his house, but years passed and nothing happened.

Then tens of thousands of bandits gathered in a nearby mountain. The local officials could not gather enough forces to suppress them. Li worried about the safety of his large family as well as his rather large fortune. Then an astrologer who called himself the Old Man of Southern Mountain arrived at the town.

The astrologer became famous because he seemed to know everything, and everything that he predicted had come true. Li invited the astrologer to his home and asked about his future fortunes. The astrologer stood up from his seat in respect and said "This is the true emperor!"

Li was both afraid and astonished. Then he accused the astrologer of lying. The astrologer said "Since ancient times, all the dynasties have been founded by emperors who came from common birth. Who among them is born emperor?" Li began to believe him. The astrologer offered to become Li's military advisor and asked him to prepare armor and weapons.

Li worried that no one would follow him. The astrologer said "I will go into the mountains and speak for the true emperor. I shall tell them of your grand destiny and the bandits will surely follow you."

Li became glad and sent the astrologer along. Li then began to prepare as the astrologer instructed. The astrologer returned a few days later and said "Your great prestige, plus my tongue has convinced all the bandits to follow you." Li looked outside and saw thousands ready to follow him, so he made the astrologer into his chief advisor.

He then made a great banner, proclaiming his own imperial status. He then fortified his positions in the mountains and the sound of his name shook the neighboring prefectures.

When the prefecture sent an army against Li's army, the astrologer led the defense and easily destroyed the small government army. The prefectural magistrate became sorely afraid and asked for help from the principality magistrate. The principality magistrate dispatched a larger and better equipped army.

That army went into an ambush prepared by the astrologer and was again destroyed. The prestige of Li became great and his army swelled. He then styled himself the King of Nine Mountains.

The astrologer told Li that the army needed horses. He told Li of a caravan transporting imperial horses from the capital. Li ambushed the caravan and took all the horses. His prestige swelled still more and so did his pride. Li now gave the astrologer the title of Lord Protector. As for himself, he believed that he would soon wear the dragon robe.

The provincial governor was very alarmed by his robbery of the imperial horses. He received reinforcement from the imperial government. He divided his army into six columns and attacked Tsao Chou. The banner of the imperial army filled the mountain valleys around the King's fortress.

The King of Nine Mountains became afraid and asked the astrologer for more advice, but his subordinates could not find the astrologer. The great king looked down on his enemies and said "I never realized how powerful the imperial government is."

Soon, his fortress was broken and he was captured. Because he committed the crime of attempted usurpation as well as banditry, Li and his entire family were executed. It was only then he realized that the astrologer was the old fox he betrayed.

KOREAN

The Salt Peddler and the White Fox

Long, long ago, there was a salt peddler who was very poor. One day, as he had been doing every day, he left his house early in the morning with a sack full of salt on his back. He travelled from one village to another, peddling salt to the villagers. After his last visit for the day to a remote village, he headed for home. He was virtually dragging his feet due to exhaustion from the day's work. He was still far away from his home when dusk settled in. It became completely dark in the middle of a rugged mountain with the dense growth of bushes and trees. Overwhelmed by fatigue and darkness, he could proceed any longer; so, he looked around to find some shelter for the night.

After a while, a huge rock caught his eye, He managed to reach the rock, whose top could be seen against the night sky. He put down his empty A-frame back carrier. He then noticed a cave-like hollow spot at a corner of the underside of the rock. The cave was large enough for him to crawl into and stretch himself; so, he settled in for the night. His eyelids became heavier and heavier. He was about to fall asleep, when he heard a strange sound. He became wide awake. So frightened was he that his hair stood on end. "What could it be?" With both jaws pressed against each other and holding his breath, he peered into the dark. He could not see anything unusual. He stuck out his head slightly. He could hear the sound more distinctly. it was a faint voice of a woman.

Since it was unmistakably a human voice, he felt a little relieved. "But what is she doing at this time of the night and on this rugged mountain?" Curious, he crawled out of the cave to look around. However, he could not see a woman or anything else unusual. So, he came back to his shelter and lay down, hoping to sleep.

The salt peddler tried to forget everything and was ready to sleep, when he heard something, again. It sounded even more strange coming from somewhere above. He crawled quietly out of the cave, again, and looked up at the top of the rock. And he almost screamed! He saw a white fox, with her long tail drooping, sitting on top of the rock and grinding a human skull against the surface of the rock. The peddler was all but petrified at the frightful sight. But with all the courage he could muster, he crawled ever quietly toward a big tree nearby and watched every move of the fox behind it. The fox apparently did not notice him. She kept grinding the skull, occasionally turning it and apparently making it into some kind of container.

After a while, the fox was trying the skull container on her head and, when it did not fit well, she muttered with an irritated voice. She kept grinding and then tried it on, again. She repeated these several times, until finally she was satisfied. "Now, it fits! It's perfect." She wore the skull container and made several tumbling feats like an accomplished acrobat.

The whole scene gave the peddler icy chills in his spine. Though scared and shaking, he was staring at the fox so that he would not miss anything she did. After several more tumbling feats, the white fox suddenly disappeared and, instead, there stood a stooped old woman. Tidying up her hair, she talked to herself: "Oh, dear me, I'm a little late; they must be waiting for me anxiously." Then, she jumped down and started walking toward the village the peddler visited last that day. The peddler soon became more curious than frightened, and decided to follow the old woman. Often, he had to run to catch up with her. When the granny finally reached the village, she went straight into the house of the wealthiest in the village. "Here I am, finally!" When she announced her arrival, there was a commotion in the house, people dashing out to meet and greet her and asking why she was so late. The old woman seemed to know why she was expected there. She went straight into the room reserved for the housewife and her guests. The peddler then approached the gate and asked for an overnight stay. Well known to the villagers, he was led to a male guest room across the women's living quarters. It was close to midnight. The peddler lay down on the floor, trying to listen to every sound coming from the women's room across a small courtyard. He could hear only indistinguishable noises. After a while, everything quieted down. Then, suddenly, there was a loud gong sound, followed by someone chanting incantations with intermittent interruptions by low, steady gong sounds.

The peddler could swear that the chanting voice he heard was that of the old fox-woman. He sensed that something terribly wrong was going on in that room. "Without knowing the real identity of that old woman, they are letting her chant spells. The old fox must be cursing on someone, pretending to be exorcising some evil spirit," he thought. He felt he must do something about it. Just then, a farmhand of the house came into the room to sleep. "What's going on there? Is anybody ill?" asked the peddler.

The farmhand casually said that because the old master of the household suddenly fell seriously ill, the family invited the granny, an old acquaintance who had the reputation of being the magic chanter in the vicinity, for her service. He hardly said that before he started snoring. Things were as the peddler had suspected. Except for occasional gong sounds, it was rather quiet. Perhaps, family members all fell asleep. The salt peddler came out of the guest room and tiptoed across the court yard toward the women's quarters. The old woman's chanting was almost imperceptivity low and mumbled. He stepped quietly up onto the wooden floor and sat in front of the paper-pasted sliding door of the room.

Wetting his forefinger and gently pushed it through the paper door. Then he peeped into the room through the hole. All but the old woman was sleeping. The old fox-woman was still chanting spells with her eyes closed and with a gong stick in her right hand. The peddler listened carefully to her chanting in order to discern what was being said. "...this is mine, my feast... if this old stock ... Dies.... Die...die...hurry up and die! After you are dead, your soul, too, will be mine. Die! Die! Hurry up and go to hell! The sooner..., the better...." This old witch must be smiling, too, though the peddler could not see it. The peddler felt indignation. It was upsetting to see the family members sleep without knowing what was really going on. He could not merely sit there doing nothing about it. He slipped down from the floor and went to a storage room. He came out with a wooden pestle and dashed into the family room. Everyone got up from sleep and looked at this midnight intruder with a pestle in his hand.

Without a single word, the peddler struck the old chanter hard on the head with the pestle. Everyone in the room jumped up and stepped aside, astonished and dumbfounded. And the old fox-woman fell flat with the barking sounds of a fox, and turned back into a white fox with a cracked human skull on its head. While all this was happening everyone in the whole house gathered in the room, looking at one another and at the blood-covered fox. The peddler then told them about what had happened since that evening in the mountain.

"How horrible! It was close! The master would have died...." Next morning, the old master recovered as suddenly as he had fallen ill. The salt peddler was richly rewarded by the master, and from that day on he lived happily without having to peddle salt any longer.

The Fox Girl

From Korean Folktales by James Riordan

There was once a wealthy man who had a son but no daughter. So badly did he want a daughter that he spent much of his time praying at temples and consulting fortune tellers. Finally, his prayers were answered and a girl was born: she was the apple of her father’s eye and could do no wrong.

When she was fifteen years old, the girl went mushrooming on the mountainside and was so engaged in her task that she did not notice the gathering shadows of dusk. Meanwhile, at home, her parents were becoming anxious, and they formed a search party to comb the hills. However, just as they reached the top of a ridge, they spotted the girl through the gloom in the valley below. Her father was much relieved.

“Where have you been, my dear?” asked her father “We were so worried for you; a wild beast could have killed you.”

"Forgive me, Father,” she replied. “I was so tired that I fell asleep beneath a bush; when I awoke the sun was already going down.”

The incident was soon forgotten. But a few days later a strange thing happened: one of the master’s cows died in the night. Next night another died, then another. The bodies showed no sign of wound or illness. The master was so concerned that he ordered the cowherd to keep watch all through the night to catch the culprit.

That night, the man hid behind some hay in the corner of the cowshed and waited patiently. At midnight he was astonished to see the master’s daughter creep into the shed and approach a cow. Anxiously he watched her oil her hands and arms with sesame oil; then to his horror, she slipped her arm into the cow’s belly and pulled out its liver. And she ate it.

The poor cow rolled over and died.

In the morning the cowherd went to the master and recounted all he had seen.

The father, who loved his daughter with all his heart, shouted angrily at the man, “How dare you invent such wicked stories against my daughter. You will pay for these lies.”

And the man was dismissed.

Next night a second cowherd was set up to guard the cows. He too hid behind some hay and witnessed the daughter’s odd conduct: she oiled her hands and arms, thrust one arm into the cow’s belly, pulled out the liver and ate it. And the cow rolled over and died.

Next morning, he went to the master and told him the story.

The father still would not believe such tales of his beloved daughter. So, the man was also dismissed.

A third herdsman spent the night in the cowshed and reported all he had seen. He too was sacked.

Thus, it continued: Each night a cow died. Then, when no cows were left, the pigs began to die, and then the horses all of the same mysterious ailment. In the end, all the cowherds, swineherds, and stable boys were dismissed and no one from the village would work for the rich man. All that was left of the once-mighty herd of cattle was a solitary old horse.

Next night, the master sent his only son to solve the mystery. The young man concealed himself behind some hay and kept watch. In the middle of the night, he heard footsteps and the barn door opened. It was his sister stealthily entering. In his relief, he was about to cry out to her. Yet something in her look stopped him: her eyes were sly and narrow, her thin lips cruelly curled, her face stony and stern.

He stared in disbelief as she greased her arms and thrust them into the horse’s belly, pulling out its liver. With blood dripping from her lips, she then chewed and swallowed the steaming meat.

He dared not breathe until she had returned to the house.

At dawn he called his father into the barn and showed him the dead horse.

“Father,” he said grimly, “you will not like what you hear; but I must tell you the truth. It is my sister. She it is who came in the night and ate the horse’s liver.”

His father stared at him with hurt and anger in his eyes. He was silent for a moment, then shouted at his son, “You must be madly jealous of your sister to make up such tales. No doubt you fell asleep and had a nightmare. Get out of my sight, I don’t want you in my house.”

Not knowing where to go, the disconsolate son wandered off into the hills. After several months he came upon an old monk struggling across a mountain stream. Having helped the monk to safety, he was invited to stay the night at a nearby temple. And there he told the story of this sister. The old man nodded sadly.

"Yes, I understand,” he said. “That night, when your sister was in the hills, she must have been eaten by a fox who took her form, the very likeness of your sister. So, it was really the fox who killed the animals.”

"Then I must return at once,” the lad exclaimed, “and warn my parents.”

"I fear it is too late,” said the old monk. “Morning is wiser than evening. Set out tomorrow.’

Next morning, the young man was given three small bottles: red, green, and blue.

"Take this horse,” said the monk, “and use the bottles as I have instructed.”

With that the boy thanked the monk and rode off down the mountain track. It was several days before he arrived home. Once there, he could hardly believe his eyes: the house and yard were overgrown with weeds. And there, in the middle of the yard, was his sister, sitting in the sun, catching lice and worms, and eating them.

"My dear brother,” she cried on seeing him. “Where have you been all these months? How I’ve missed you.”

She went to hug and kiss him, but he drew back in alarm.

"Where are Father and Mother?” he asked.

"They lie in their graves,” she replied, giving no explanation for their deaths.

Realizing that she had eaten them too, the young man knew he had to escape before she killed him as well but how? Suddenly he had an idea.

“Dear Sister, I have come a long way and I’m very hungry,” he said. “Could you prepare a meal?”

He thought he would escape while she was cooking. But the fox girl was cunning.

"Assuredly, dear Brother. But I shall tie a rope to your leg and the other end to my waist.”

She left him in the yard while she went to prepare some food; every now and then she tugged on the rope to make sure he had not run away. After some time, he managed to undo the knot, tie the rope to a gatepost and ride swiftly away on his horse. It was some time before the fox girl realized she had been tricked.

She rushed after him with the speed of a fox and it was not long before she was gaining on him. He glanced back and, to his horror, saw her rapidly catching up, reaching out her hand to grasp his horse’s tail. Recalling the old monk’s instructions, he swiftly took the little red bottle from his pocket and threw it behind him.

The bottle instantly burst into a ball of red fire, blocking the fox girl’s path. Although the flames singed her hair and clothes, she raced round the fire and was soon overtaking her brother again. This time he threw down the green bottle and straightaway a dense green bush of brambles sprang up, barring her way. Although she was scratched and bleeding from the thorns, she fought her way through and began to catch up with the fleeing brother.

Just as she was about to grab the horse’s tail, however, he took out the blue bottle and desperately cast it behind him. This time it formed a mighty blue lake that soon engulfed the fox girl who splashed and thrashed in the water before sinking below the waves.

As the brother watched from the shore, he saw the dead body of the fox float to the surface of the lake. At last, he had killed the fox who had taken his sister’s form.

NATIVE AMERICAN

Why the Fox has a Huge Mouth

One day many years ago, at a time when his mouth was still small and dainty, as in fact it used to be, the fox was out walking and happened to notice a huaychao singing on a hilltop. Fascinated by the bird's flute-like bill, he said politely, "What a lovely flute, friend Huaychao, and how well you play it! Could you let me try it? I'll give it back in a moment, I promise."

The bird refused. But the fox was so insistent that at last the huaychao lent him its bill, advising him to sew up his lips except for a tiny opening so that the 'flute' would fit just right.

Then the fox began to play. He played on and on without stopping. After a while the huaychao asked for its bill back, but still the fox kept on. The bird reminded him, "You promised. Besides, I only use it from time to time; you're playing it constantly." But the fox paid no attention and kept right on.

Awakened by the sound of the flute, skinks came out of their burrows and climbed up the hill in a bustling throng. When they saw the fox playing, they began to dance.

At the sight of the dancing skunks, the fox burst out laughing. As he laughed, his lips became unstitched. His mouth tore open and kept on tearing until he was grinning from ear to ear. Before the fox could regain his composure, the huaychao had picked up his bill and flown away. To this day the fox has a huge mouth - as punishment for breaking his promise.

The Dancing Fox

Foxes love to dance. They dance in the dark with young women who slip quietly from their beds and come running out into the night.

But the fox who dances must wear a disguise. He must hide his long, bushy tail. He must wrap it around him and stuff it inside his trousers, though when he does, he is really too warm. He perspires. Yet still he is able to dance.

Now, one of these foxes was young and amorous, and he never missed the nightly dancing. Toward morning, however, as the cock began to crow, he would always hurry away.

This fine fox was a subtle flatterer, a favorite with all the young women. Each of them wanted to dance with him. And as it happened, one or another would sometimes feel slighted and grow resentful.

One of them once, in a fit of pique, drew her companions aside and pointed out that the fox always left before dawn. Who was he? And why did he run away?

The young woman wondered. Then they made up their minds to catch him and hold him until it was daylight.

The next night, when it was dark, they made their circle and began to dance. Soon the fox appeared, as usual disguised as a young man in shirt and trousers. Suspecting nothing, he danced and sang. The girls made him heady with their caresses, and he became more spirited and more flattering than ever.

As soon as the cock crowed, he started to leave. "No, no," they all cried, "don't go! Not yet! The cock crows six times. You can stay till the fifth."

The dancing continued, and there were more caresses. The fox forgot that he had to leave, and at last the white light of dawn appeared. Frightened, he tried to flee. But the young women held him. They entangled him in their arms. Then suddenly, with a growl, he bit their hands, leaped over their heads, and ran.

As he leaped, his trousers ripped open and out flew his tail. The girls all shrieked with laughter. They called after him and mocked him as he ran out of sight, his long, bushy tail waving between his legs. Then he disappeared and was seen no more. He never came back again.

Kajortoq, the Red Fox

One Summer Day, Kajortoq, the red fox, left her brood of cubs in the den and went out in search of something to eat. On a vast plain she met Aklaq, the brown bear, and said: "Cousin, it has been a long time since I last saw you! What is the matter with you?"

"I am hungry," replied Aklaq.

"Me too. I really am," said Kajortoq. "Let’s hunt together. You go this way and I shall go that way."

"There is nothing this way but ptarmigan," complained Aklaq, "and they are afraid of me. Every time I get close to them, they fly away."

"It is easy for me to catch them," remarked the fox. "But," she added, "I am afraid of men."

"I am not afraid of men," said Aklaq, "but I am unable to catch ptarmigan."

"In that case," declared Kajortoq, "wait for me here; I shall go and get you some ptarmigan. I shall not be long."

Aklaq waited and Kajortoq soon returned with a few ptarmigans. The brown bear was full of joy and thanked his companion again and again. He was very hungry and ate the ptarmigan at once. When he had finished, he said, "You were very kind to bring me some ptarmigan. In return I shall now bring you a man. Wait for me here."

Kajortoq waited but the bear took a long time to return, and when he did arrive, he had no man. Instead, he staggered along; he was losing blood and behind him the ground was red. A man had shot an arrow at him and had wounded him in the side. The shaft of the arrow had broken and the point remained in the flesh.

Kajortoq sympathized: "Cousin, I feel sorry for you. Let me take care of you." Kajortoq built a stone fireplace, lit a fire, and heated some stones.

"Stretch out here," she told the bear. "Stretch your legs and even if I hurt you, do not move. If you stir, you will die because I shall not be able to remove the arrow."

The bear stretched on the ground. The fox took a red-hot stone from the fire and applied it to the wound pushing harder and harder on it. Aklaq moaned and howled with pain, but soon the howls stopped; he was dead.

Kajortoq stood on her hind legs and danced around the bear, laughing loudly: "I can brag to myself. No one could do this but I. I have had enough to eat for a long time." The fox did not return to her lair but remained at this place for the duration of the summer, feeding herself on the meat of the bear.

When winter came, she had run out of provisions. The bear had all been eaten; there was nothing left but the bones. She placed them in a pile and buried them under some boulders.

A while later she saw Amaroq, the wolf, coming toward her and went to meet him. "How are you, cousin?"

"Not too well," answered Amaroq, "I am very hungry."

"Have confidence in me," said Kajortoq. "I shall show you what you have to do to get some food. Do you see that river in front of us?" She pointed to a nearby river covered with a thin coating of ice. Here and there water could be seen through holes in the ice.

"Go over there," suggested Kajortoq. "Try to catch some trout. I am going to make you a fish hook. All you have to do is sit near the hole, tie the hook to your tail and let it sink to the bottom. Remain seated and do not move until the sun sets. At that time, you will pull in your hook. There will be a trout caught on it. Believe me, that is how I caught mine."

The wolf sat beside the hole without moving. Meanwhile, the red fox set out along the shore saying that she was going to look for something to eat. Instead, she hid behind a small hill to watch the wolf, but being careful that he did not see her.

Amaroq stayed where he was for the entire day, confidently awaiting the results of his fishing. By the time the sun had reached the west he realized he had caught nothing. He growled in anger, "Kajortoq lied to me. I am going to run after her and eat her!"

He tried to get up but his tail was stuck to the ice. He pulled on it again and again until all of a sudden it came free; his tail had broken. Frothing with rage and bleeding profusely, the wolf searched the plain for traces of Kajortoq. The fox, however, had slipped away to hide in her hole.

The wolf soon discovered her den and cried, "Come out of your hole so that I can eat you!"

"What are you saying?" answered Kajortoq, sticking her head out of her den to look. As she did so she bent her head to one side and kept one of her eyes closed. "I have never seen you before. What do you want?"

"You deceived me today and I have lost my tail. Now I am going to eat you!"

"I know nothing about that," replied Kajortoq emerging from her hole. "Did you ask that red fox over there? It must be him. I heard someone pass my door a little while ago."

Impatiently, the wolf left Kajortoq to run after the other red fox. Kajortoq saw him go and kept watching until the wolf fell from his wound. By the next morning, having lost all of his blood, Amaroq was dead. Kajortoq stood up on her hind legs and started dancing in circles around him. "I can boast to myself. No one could do this but I."

She lived on the wolf all of that winter. When she had eaten all his flesh, she made a pile of the bones and went elsewhere in search of food.

One day she saw coming toward her a brown female bear who looked larger and more terrifying than any bear Kajortoq had ever seen.

The bear addressed the fox angrily. "Did you know my son? He left last spring to hunt but he did not come back. I have found his bones near this hill."

“I know nothing about it," answered Kajortoq. "I did not see him. I shall follow you and you can show me where his bones are."

They left together. The fox recognized the place where she had killed Aklaq. Seeing that the female bear was crying Kajortoq pretended to be full of sorrow.

"Tears won’t help you," she told the mother bear. "I believe I know who killed your son. Wait here awhile for me."

Kajortoq climbed to the top of a hill. From this vantage point she looked in all directions and saw another brown bear. She returned in haste to the female bear and said, "The one who killed your son is over there. Go and attack him. He is big and strong but I shall help you."

While the bears fought Kajortoq jumped around pretending to help. In fact, she only spattered blood on her hair. At length the female bear killed the other bear. She turned to the fox and said gratefully, "You helped me, thank you. Take all this meat. I am tired and wounded and do not want any of it." The bear started homeward, but died of her wounds before she was out of sight.

Kajortoq once again danced for joy and was happy. The two bears would provide plenty of meat for a long time to come.

Coyote & The Rock

From Coyote & Native American Folk Tales retold by Joe Hayes, Maripose Publishing, 1983.

Once Coyote and Fox went walking together. They came to a big, smooth rock. Coyote spread his blanket over it and together they sat down on the rock and smoked their pipes.

When they stood up to go, Coyote looked down at the rock and said, "What a nice rock this is! I think I'll give it my blanket. My blanket will keep this good rock warm and dry."

Then Coyote walked off with Fox, leaving his blanket behind covering the rock. They walked down the hillside toward the river. But they hadn't gone far when dark clouds gathered above and a cold rain began to fall.

Coyote hugged himself and shivered. "Brrrrr! Now I wish I still had my blanket." And he told Fox, "Run back and tell Rock I want to borrow my blanket for a while."

Fox ran off up the hill, but he returned without the blanket. "Rock wouldn't let me have it," he told Coyote. "He says it's his and he wants to use it."

That made Coyote angry. "That selfish rock!" he muttered. And he ran back up the hill and jerked the blanket off Rock.

"Rock," Coyote growled, "you've been lying there in the sun and rain for a thousand summers and winters. It wouldn't hurt you to get a few more raindrops on you. I only wanted to borrow my blanket for a short time to keep dry. Now I'm taking my blanket back. You can lie here uncovered for the rest of time!"

Coyote threw his blanket around himself and Fox and they continued their walk down the hill.

Soon the sun came back out and Coyote and Fox sat down again to talk. But just when they sat down, they heard a strange noise above them -- a-thump-thump-thump-thump -- a-thump-thump-thump-thump.

"Fox," Coyote said, "run up the hill and see what is making that noise."

Fox disappeared over the crest of the hill, but he soon reappeared, running as fast as he could, with his tail stretched out behind him. "Coyote!" Fox barked, "Run for your life! The rock is after us!"

Fox dived into a badger hole, but his tail didn't quite make it out of the way. Rock rolled over the tip of Fox's tail and to this day it has been white.

Coyote turned and dashed toward the river. He leaped into the water and swam to the other side. Coyote shook himself and sat down on the bank to rest. He knew the rock would sink if it tried to cross the river after him.

Imagine Coyote's surprise when he saw the rock roll into the river and begin to swim across -- a-blub-blub-blub-blub -- a-blub-blub-blub-blub.

Coyote ran into a thick forest. Surely the trees would stop Rock. He reached the center of the forest and paused to catch his breath. Coyote heard a terrible crashing and thundering as Rock toppled the trees and knocked them to splinters. And on it came -- a-thump-thump-thump-thump -- a-thump-thump-thump-thump.

Coyote ran toward the prairie at the far side of the forest. When he reached the edge of the trees, he met Bear.

"Bear!" Coyote panted. "Please help me. A rock is after me!"

Bear roared, "Waaaahhh! I'll swat that rock with my paw!"

Bear sat down to wait, and when Rock came past, he swung his paw. "Aaaooouuuuu!" Bear rocked back clutching his broken paw against his chest.

The rock rolled on -- a-thump-thump-thump-thump -- a-thump-thump-thump-thump.

Coyote ran across the prairie, and he saw Buffalo grazing on some green grass. "Buffalo!" Coyote begged. "Please help me. A rock is after me."

Buffalo snorted, "I'll butt that rock with my head!" And Buffalo lowered his head and charged at the rock. They met -- Boom! Buffalo flew through the air. His horns were broken and his head split wide open.

And the rock rolled on -- a-thump-thump-thump-thump -- a-thump-thump-thump-thump.

Coyote ran and ran. Now the rock was right at his heels -- thump-thump-thump. He saw a lodge ahead of him, and standing near it were two old women with stone hatchets in their hands. The women called to him, "Run between us, Coyote. Run between us!"

Coyote did. And then the rock passed between the old women, they lowered their hatchets -- crack! The rock shattered into a thousand pieces.

Coyote lay on the ground with his heart pounding, panting for his breath. The old women walked to the other side of the lodge and whispered to each other. But Coyote could hear what they were saying.

"How nice and fat Coyote is," the old women whispered. "He'll make a fine meal for us."

Then Coyote knew the old women were witches. He'd better plan his escape. He saw some jugs of water beside the lodge and he crept over and dumped the water out.

When the old women returned, Coyote said, "I'm thirsty from that long run. Could I have a drink of water?"

They said, "Certainly. Drink from one of those jugs over there."

Coyote walked over to the jugs. "These are all empty," he told them. "But that's all right. I'll take one down to the river and fill it."

Coyote picked up a jug and walked off. As soon as he was sure the women couldn't see him, he threw the jug to the ground and ran off laughing to himself.

When coyote didn't come back, the witches realized that he had tricked them. They began to argue, each one accusing the other of letting Coyote escape.

Finally, they grew so angry they picked up their stone hatchets and hit one another over the head. And that was the end of those witches. And it's the end of the story too.

But not the end of Coyote. He had many more adventures.

FRENCH

The Fox and the Little Prince From Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's -- The Little Prince

The Little Prince was in a French countryside, and wandered through a field. He hadn't seen anyone for miles, and the last person he talked to was a grown-up that told him to go away, since he was so busy. So, the Little Prince is all alone in this meadow, in the middle of no place, lonely, bored, and sad. All of a sudden, a small tuft of gold and red fur peeks up behind the grass mounds, and the Little Prince asks the air....

"Who's there?" A very reluctant fox peeks his head up better for the Prince to see him. Of course, the Little Prince never saw a fox, and was curious. "What are you? You're pretty to look at."

The Fox was puzzled, and asked the boy: "You don't know what I am? You're not sent by the farmer to trick me?" the Little Prince looks confused now, and shakes his head. The fox continues "I'm a fox. Who are you?"

The fox maintains his distance...not going close to the Little Prince at all. The Prince tells the fox who he is, and where he is from; a small planet very-very far away. The fox looks at him as if he had just told him an ordinary fact. The fox asks "Are there any farmers where you live?"

The Prince says no.

The Fox asks: "Are there any guns?"

The Prince says no, "Just me, my little plants, my small volcanoes, and my Red Rose under glass."

The fox smiles, and says: "That sounds perfect. Are there any chickens?"

The Prince says no.

The fox says "Well, no place is perfect then."

The Little Prince gets restless, and asks if he can pet the fox. The fox tells him no. "I can't be petted or played with, and you can never be more than an acquaintance."

Sad, but not discouraged, the Little Prince asks the fox why, because he's lonely, and hasn't had anyone to talk with or play with him in ages. The fox shakes his head, and says: "I'm not tame. I can't trust anyone, and all I care about right now is hunting chickens, so I don't have time to be tamed."

The Little Prince asks what ‘tame’ means.

The fox smiles, and explains:" It takes a very long time. It can't be done in minutes. You'd have to invest a lot of your free time, and sacrifice your own wishes to succeed. You need to show you're trustworthy and special."

The Little Prince doesn't understand. He asks, " What do you mean special? What do you mean time, and trustworthy?" the fox continues.

"It means, you have to make a promise. And keep it every day. It's a sacrifice, but I suppose hunting chickens will bore me soon, and you have free time to spare, so...I'll let you tame me. You must come here, to this meadow every day at the same time. Sit at the edge of that field at that same time, in the same spot. I will stay here, in my spot every day, at the same time. Soon, I will come closer. But you will stay in your spot, and will not move. One day, I'll be right in front of you. Then, perhaps the next day after that, I will talk with you. And every day after that, we will talk. Then, I will let you pet me. Then...one day...I will play with you." The Little Prince shakes his head. "Why would it take so long? I'm lonely now." The Fox answers, "You won't understand now. But if you keep your promise, and show up here every day, and sit there at the same time every day, I will one day have something to look forward to, as will you." The Little Prince reluctantly agrees, having nothing else to do, and being curious just the same. The next day, he comes to the field and sits in a spot. The fox shows up a little later, sitting far at the other end of the meadow, by the trees hidden from the Little Prince's gaze.

This continues for a week, then 2, finally after about a month or so, the Little Prince and the fox are playing, and good friends. They talk about everything and nothing...they run around and play tag and other games. The Little Prince tells the fox about his Red Rose on his tiny planet; he reveals how she is cruel to him, snobby, and selfish. She only opens her petals for him, and despite how rude she is sometimes, he still has to take care of her, and he still is overjoyed when he is by her.

He then tells of his anger when he realized she lied to him. She told him she was the only rose of her kind, that no other flower was as beautiful as her. But he saw a whole garden filled with red roses Just like her! He was hurt, and knows how sad she'll be to know she's not special at all.

The fox listens to all of this, and every day, when their visit is over, he leaves for his den.

Weeks pass... The next time they meet, the fox tells the Little Prince he can no longer come to the field and see him anymore. The Little Prince is frantic, afraid he said something to hurt the fox's feelings. The fox shakes his head.

"There is no use crying...or begging me to stay. You've tamed me, and now I have to return to the wild again. I won't ever be the same again, because out of all the humans, you have treated me the kindest. I promised you I would tell you why we had to take so long to tame me...Men have forgotten that 'what is essential to life, cannot be observed by the eye' Only what we feel in our hearts is what lasts, what's real. By taming me, you made this time special to me, on what would ordinarily be just another day, or you--just another human. You are now special to me, the way your Rose is special to you. No one can understand this, because over all the humans in the world, you are the only one I befriended, the only one I will remember. Now, every day at the same time I will think of you. And every day at the same time, you will think about me. Never let anyone tell you your rose is ordinary, for only she has tamed you, and only you are special to her, thus, she is unique to your heart."

The Little Prince cried and cried, not wanting to part with his new friend. He asked, "What is the meaning of making friends that you tame if you lose them?"

The Fox replied one last time, "It will always matter to me. Remember, 'what is essential in life cannot by observed by the eye.' " And then, the fox smiled, and ran off into the forest again, this time, not to return.... And the Little Prince left the field sadly...and for a few days, he returned, looking to see if the fox would be there again by chance. Finally, he moves on to the next place...and comes to the same garden of roses he found that day... He stands defiantly at them all: "All of you are useless, ugly, and ordinary! My rose is the most beautiful and unique flower in the universe, and she is special to me, and I to her!”

GERMAN

Reynard the Fox and Isengrin the Wolf Reynard the Fox wanted a drink.

It was hot and he had been running all day. It was night when he came across a well; there was a big moon in the sky. The Fox could see a bucket at the top of the well. But there was no water in the bucket. Reynard looked into the well and could see the water at the bottom. The Fox jumped into the bucket and down he went to the bottom of the well. And as the bucket went down into the well, the other bucket came up to the top of the well. The Fox drank all the water he wanted. Then he found that he could not get out of the well. The other bucket had gone to the top of the well. "If someone would only get into the bucket at the top of the well," said Reynard to himself, "that bucket would come down to the bottom of the well and the bucket that I am in would go to the top." It was while Reynard was talking to himself that Isengrim the Wolf looked over the edge of the well. "I thought I heard someone talking down there." said Isengrim. "Hello, my good friend," called Reynard. "What are you doing down in the well?" asked Isengrim. "I am having a great feast." called Reynard. "Can't you see the big cheese I am eating? It is so big that I cannot eat all of it." Isengrim the Wolf looked into the well. He saw the reflection of the big yellow moon and he thought it was a big cheese. "Get into the bucket and come down and have a feast with me," called Reynard. Reynard had played many tricks on Isengrim and the wolf did not trust him. He looked down into the well again. There he saw what he thought was a big yellow cheese. And he began to want some of that cheese very much. "On your way home," called Reynard, "stop at my house and send my wife and children to me. I would like them to have some of this cheese." "I would like to have some of that cheese, too," said Isengrim. And the wolf got into the bucket. Down went Isengrim to the bottom of the well. And as he went down to the bottom, the bucket with Reynard in it came to the top. "Have a good feast on the cheese!" called Reynard. When the bucket reached the top of the well the fox jumped out and ran home. Isengrim, at the bottom of the well, howled and howled. Some farmers came and threw stones down into the well. When morning came, Isengrim the Wolf was dead.

The Skinned Goat

There once lived a father and his son, and they had a goat. The boy had to drive her to the pasture every day. But this goat was an old hag. In the evening the father used to ask her if she had enough to eat and drink. But she always answered, "How can I have had enough to eat and to drink, if I have not even seen one stalk of grass and one drop of water?" Then the son always got a sound beating.

One day the father decided to find out for himself. He saw that after having eaten off three meadows and drunk up three ponds, she still pretended to be hungry. Now the old man decided to slaughter the goat.

He had already stuck and halfway skinned her, when he noticed his knife was getting blunt. He went into the house to sharpen it. No sooner had he gone than the goat got up and ran into the woods, where she hid in a foxhole.

When the fox came home and wanted to get into his hole, he was terribly frightened, for out of his hole there came a voice saying; "Halfway skinned and halfway killed, I am a piece of mutton. Come on in and I’ll eat you up!"

The fox was afraid and went right away to his brother-in-law, the bear, and told him about his grief. The bear went with him to the spot, got into the hole, but turned around immediately, when he heard the horrible words.

"I can’t do anything in this matter," he said and ran away.

In his distress the fox went to the panther, then to the tiger, and finally to the lion. But none of them could help him, and they all took to their heels.

At last, the fox met the bumblebee, to whom he poured out his complaints. The bumblebee said, "I will help you."

"Bigger ones have tried in vain to help me, and you think you can do it?" replied the fox. But he obediently led the bumblebee to the hole. It flew buzzing inside, sat down on one of the skinned parts, and started stinging vigorously. The goat soon felt the pain and ran bleating out of the hole, where she fell again into the hands of her master, who had been looking for her, and so she was killed completely.

The Fox and the Hare in Winter

The Hare is able to support himself even in the coldest winter. He is satisfied with the buds he finds in hedges and shrubs.

One cold winter, the hare me the fox. Surprised, the fox asked the hare, "How fine and well fed you look! What are you living on these days? I am so hungry and I cannot find anything to eat."

The hare replied, "I have been living on eggs of late."

"On eggs! How on earth do you get them?" the fox wondered.

The hare answered, "This is what I do. There are women coming along here with basketfuls of eggs that they are taking to market. When I see a woman coming, I let myself fall flat on the ground before her, as if I were wounded by a shot. Then the woman puts her basket down in order to catch me and to take me to the market. Just as she thinks she had caught me; I stagger on for about ten steps and let myself fall to the ground again. I repeat this several times, until I am far away from the basket. Then I hurry back to the basket and carry it into the wood, and there I have enough food for a whole week."

The fox replied, "I like that. Wouldn’t you help me get some eggs, too, in these hard times?"

"With great pleasure," replied the hare, "if you will be kind enough to let me have my share."

As agreed, they took their positions behind a bush on the road. The fox got a basketful of eggs in the described manner, and he hurried into the wood with it. The hare followed him in order to get his share. When he reached him, the fox had divided up the eggs into several little piles. The hare asked him with astonishment, "Why so many shares?"

Pointing to the different piles, the fox replied, "This one is for my father; this one for my mother; the other one is for my brother and my sister and the last one is mine."

"And where is my share?" asked the hare in surprise.

"There is nothing left for you," was the answer. Too weak to punish the fox, the hare left angrily. But I decided to watch for a chance to pay back the fox.

After some time, the hare and the fox met again. It was very cold, and the earth was covered with snow. Again, the fox wondered at the hare’s prosperous look, since he himself was suffering terribly from hunger. Thus, he asked, "What are you living on now?"

"On fish," the hare replied.

"Please," said the fox, "couldn’t you let me have some as well to appease my hunger?"

The hare answered, "I shall help you once more. Not far from here by the castle, there is a fishpond. The inhabitants have made a hole in the ice in order to catch fish. In the evening I go there; I stand on the ice and put my little tail into the hole, and after some time, I draw it out and there are plenty of fish hanging on it."

"Well," replied the fox, "this sounds all right to me. With my long tail, I should be able to catch a lot."

The hare said, "You will find me at the fishpond tonight."

At night they met at the appointed place, and the hare said, "Sit down by the hole, put your tail into the water, and remain like this until I come back. I shall go over to the garden to eat some cabbage."

The hare went away, and the fox remained there patiently, happily thinking of appeasing his gnawing hunger. After a while he tried pulling and found that his tail was getting heavy. But he continued to sit there, just as the hare had told him to do.

It was a long time before the hare came back and asked, "How are things going?"

The fox replied, "You have been away for a very long time. I have tried once, but my tail is so heavy that you will have to help me get it out."

The hare said, "Pull hard!"

But the fox could not get it out. He pulled as hard as he could, but the tail was frozen fast in the ice.

Now the hare approached with a stick, hit him over the head, crying, "This one is for my father; this one is for my mother; this one is for my brother and my sister; and the last one is for me!" He knocked him on the head from the right side and from the left, until the fox fell down dead.

The Fox and the Wolf

The fox and the wolf once divided the produce of their common work in a field. But the fox cheated the wolf when sifting the chaff from the corn: he kept the corn for himself and left the chaff for the wolf. The wolf was satisfied with this distribution, because his heap was bigger than that of the fox. Then they both went grinding. When the corn was being ground, the millstones noisily said, "cricks cracks," but when the chaff was being ground, they only said very softly, "climm clamm," so that the sound could barely be heard.

The wolf listened to this with astonishment. He could not explain it, and asked, "How is it that before the millstones said ‘cricks cracks’, whereas now they only whisper ‘climm clamm?’"

The sly fox gave him the advice, "Throw small stones and sand among it; then you can hear the grinding better!"

This is what the stupid wolf did. And hark! What a noise the millstones made now. They grated so loudly that one had to shut one’s ears. The wolf jumped for joy when he heard the millstones making more noise when grinding the chaff than when grinding the corn.

Fox Hill near Dodow

Karl Bartsch

In the village of Dodow near Wittenburg there lived an old woman who possessed a fox strap. With its help she could transform herself into a fox, and thus her table never lacked geese, ducks, and all kinds of poultry.

Her grandchild knew about it, and one day when the schoolmaster was talking about magic in the school, the child talked about the fox strap, and the next day brought it to school.

The schoolmaster took it into his hand and unintentionally approached his head with it. Suddenly he was standing before the children, transformed into a fox. They broke out with a deafening noise. This so frightened the little schoolmaster that he jumped out the window with a single leap.

He ran to the hill that lay near the village and there built himself a den.

One day a great hunt was organized, and our fox was among those pursued by the huntsmen. A bullet hit him, and suddenly a schoolmaster was lying there before the bewildered huntsman. The bullet had struck the fox strap and ripped it apart.

In memory of this event the people of Dodow gave the name Fox Hill to the place where their schoolmaster had lived.

ITALIAN

Giovannuzza the Fox

There was once a poor man who had an only son, and the boy was as simple-minded and ignorant as they come. When his father was about to die, he said to the youth, whose name was Joseph, "Son I am dying, and I have nothing to leave you but this cottage and the pear tree beside it."

The father died, and Joseph lived on in the cottage alone, selling the pears from the tree to provide for himself. But once the season for pears was over, it looked as though he would starve to death, since he was incapable of earning his bread any other way. Strangely enough, the season for pears ended, but not the pears. When they’d all been picked, others came out in their place, even in the middle of winter; it was a charming pear tree that bore fruit all year long, and so the youth was able to go on providing for himself.

On morning Joseph went out a usual to pick the ripe pears and discovered they’d already been picked by somebody else. "How will I manage now?" he wondered. "If people steal my pears, I’m done for. Tonight, I shall stay up and keep watch." When it grew dark, he stationed himself under the pear tree with his shotgun, but soon fell asleep; he woke up to find that all the ripe pears had been picked. The next night he resumed his watch, but fell asleep right in the middle of it, and the pears were stolen again. The third night, in addition to the shotgun, he carried along a shepherd’s pipe and proceeded to play it under the pear tree. Then he stopped playing, and Giovannuzza the fox, who was stealing the pears, thinking Joseph had fallen asleep, came running out and climbed the tree.

Joseph aimed his gun at her, and the fox spoke. "Don’t shoot, Joseph. If you give me a basket of pears, I will see to it that you prosper."

"But, Giovannuzza, if I let you have a basketful, what will I then eat myself?"

"Don’t worry, just do as I say, and you will prosper for sure."

So, the youth gave the fox a basket of his finest pears, which she then carried to the king.

"Sacred Crown," she said, "my master sends you this basket of pears and begs your gracious acceptance of them."

"Pears at this time of year?" exclaimed the king. "It will be the first time I’ve ever eaten any in this season! Who is your master?"

"Count Peartree," replied Giovannuzza.

"But how does he manage to have pears in this season?" asked the king.

"Oh, he has everything," replied the fox. "He’s the richest man in existence."

"Richer than I am?" asked the king.

"Yes, even richer than you, Sacred Crown."

The king was thoughtful. "What could I give him in return?" he asked.

"Don’t bother, Sacred Crown," said Giovannuzza. "Don’t give it a thought; he’s so rich that whatever present you gave him would look paltry."

"Well, in that case," said the king, very embarrassed, "tell Count Peartree I thank him for his wonderful pears."

When he saw the fox back, Joseph exclaimed, "But Giovannuzza, you’ve brought me nothing in return for the pears, and her I am starving to death!"

"Put your mind at rest," replied the fox. "Leave everything to me. Again, I tell you that you will prosper!"

A few days later, Giovannuzza said, "You must let me have another basket of pears."

"But, sister, what will I eat if you carry off all my pears?"

"Put your mind at rest and leave everything to me."

She took the basket to the king and said, "Sacred Crown, since you graciously accepted the first basket of pears, my master, Count Peartree, takes the liberty of offering you a second basket."

"I can’t believe it!" exclaimed the king. "Pears freshly picked at this time of year!"

"That’s nothing," replied the fox. "My master takes no account of the pears, he has so much else far more precious."

"But how can I repay his kindness?"

"Concerning that," said Giovannuzza, "he instructed me to convey his request to you for one thing in particular."

"Which is? If Count Peartree is so rich, I can’t imagine what I could do that would be fitting."

"Your daughter’s hand in marriage," said the fox.

The king opened his eyes wide. "But even that is too great an honor for me, since he is so much richer than I am."

"Sacred Crown, if it doesn’t him, why should it worry you? Count Peartree truly wants your daughter, and it makes no difference to him whether the dowry is large or not so large, since no matter how big it is, beside all his wealth it will only be a drop in the bucket."

"Very well, in that case, please ask him to come and dine here."

So Giovannuzza the fox went back to Joseph and said, "I told the king that you are Count Peartree and that you wish to marry his daughter."

"Sister, look at what you’ve done! When the king sees me, he will have me beheaded!"

"Leave everything to me, and don’t worry," replied the fox. She went to a tailor and said, "My master, Count Peartree, wants the finest outfit you have in stock. I will pay you in cash, another time."

The tailor gave her clothing fit for a great lord, and the fox then visited a horse dealer." Will you sell me, for Count Peartree, the finest horse in the lot? We won’t look at prices, payment will be made on the morrow."

Dressed as a great lord and seated in the saddle of a magnificent horse, Joseph rode to the palace, with the fox running ahead of him. "Giovannuzza," he cried, "when the king speaks to me, what shall I reply? I’m too scared to say a word in front of important people."

"Let me do the talking and don’t worry about a thing. All you need to say is, ‘Good day’ and ‘Sacred Crown,’ and I’ll fill in the rest."

They arrived at the palace, where the king hastened up to Count Peartree, greeting him with full honors. "Sacred Crown," said Joseph.

The king escorted him to the table, where his beautiful daughter was already seated. "Good day," said Count Peartree.

They sat down and began talking, but Count Peartree didn’t open his mouth. "Sister Giovannuzza," whispered the king to the fox, "has the cat got your master’s tongue?"

"Oh, you know, Sacred Crown, when a man has so much land and so much wealth to think about, he worries all the time."

So, throughout the visit, the king was careful not to disturb Count Peartree’s thoughts.

The next morning, Giovannuzza said to Joseph, "Give me one more basket of pears to take to the king."

"Do as you wish, sister," replied the youth, "but it will be my downfall, you will see."

"Put your mind at rest!" exclaimed the fox. "I assure you that you will prosper."

He therefore picked the pears, which the fox carried to the king, saying, "My master, Count Peartree, sends you this basket of pears, and would like an answer to his request."

"Tell the count that the wedding can take place whenever he likes," replied the king. Overjoyed, the fox returned to Joseph with the answer.

"But, sister Giovannuzza, where will I take this bride to live? I can hardly bring her here to this hovel!"

"Leave that up to me. What are you worried about? Haven’t I done all right so far?"

Thus, a grand wedding was performed, and Count Peartree took the king’s beautiful daughter to be his wife.

A few days later Giovannuzza the fox announced: "My master intends to carry the bride to his palace."

"Fine," said the king. "I will go along with them, so I can finally see all of Count Peartree’s possessions."

Everyone mounted horses, and the king was accompanied by a large body of knights. As they rode toward the plain, Giovannuzza said, "I shall run ahead and order preparations made for your arrival." As she raced onward, she met a flock of thousands upon thousands of sheep, and asked the shepherds, "Whose sheep are these?"

"Papa Ogre’s," they told her.

"Keep your voice down," whispered the fox. "Do you see that long cavalcade approaching? That’s the king who’s declared war on Papa Ogre. Tell him the sheep are Papa Ogre’s, and the knights will slay you."

"What are we to say, then?"

"I don’t know! Try, ‘They belong to Count Peartree!’ "

When the king came up to the flock, he asked, "Who owns this superb flock of sheep?"

"Count Peartree!" cried the shepherds.

"My heavens, the man really must be rich!" exclaimed the king, overjoyed.

A bit further on, the fox met a herd of thousands upon thousands of pigs. "Whose pigs are these?" she asked the swine herds.

"Papa Ogre’s."

"Shhhhhhhh, see all those soldiers coming down the road on horseback? Tell them they are Papa Ogre’s and they’ll kill you. You must say they are Count Peartree’s"

When the king approached and asked the swine herds whose pigs those were, they told him, "Count Peartree’s," and the king was quite glad to have a son-in-law so rich.

Next the king’s party met a vast herd of horses. "Whose horses are these?" asked the king. "Count Peartree’s." Then they saw a drove of cattle. "Whose cattle?" "Count Peartree’s." And the king felt ever happier over the fine match his daughter had made.

Finally, Giovannuzza reached the palace where Papa Ogre lived all alone with his wife, Mamma Ogress. Rushing inside, she exclaimed, "Oh, you poor things, if you only knew what a horrible destiny is in store for you!"

"What has happened?" asked Papa Ogre, scared to death.

"See that cloud of dust approaching? It’s a regiment of cavalry dispatched by the king to kill you!"

"Sister fox, sister fox, help us!" whimpered the couple.

"Know what I advise?" said Giovannuzza. "Go hide in the stove. I’ll give the signal when they’ve all gone."

Papa Ogre and Mamma Ogress obeyed. They crawled into the stove and, once inside, pleaded with Giovannuzza. "Giovannuzza dear, close up the mouth of the stove with tree branches, so they won’t see us." That was just what the fox had in mind, and she completely stopped up the opening with branches.

Then she went and stood on the doorstep, and when the king arrived, she curtseyed and said, "Sacred Crown, please deign to dismount; this is the palace of Count Peartree."

The king and the newlyweds dismounted, climbed the grand staircase, and beheld such wealth and magnificence as to leave the king speechless and pensive. "Not even my palace," he said to himself, "is half so beautiful." And Joseph, poor man, stood gaping beside him.

"Why," asked the king, "are there no servants around?"

In a flash, the fox answered, "They were all dismissed, since my master wanted to make no arrangements whatever before first knowing the wishes of his beautiful new wife. Now she can command what best suits her."

When they had scrutinized everything, the king returned to his own palace, while Count Peartree remained behind with the king’s daughter in Papa Ogre’s palace.

Meanwhile Papa Ogre and Mamma Ogress were still closed up in the stove. At night the fox went up to the stove and whispered, "Papa Ogre, Mamma Ogress, are you still there?"

"Yes," they answered in a weak voice.

"And there you will remain," replied the fox. She lit the branches, made a big fire, and Papa Ogre and Mamma Ogress burned up in the stove.

"Now you are rich and happy," said Giovannuzza to Count Peartree and his wife, "and must promise me one thing: when I die, you must lay me out in a beautiful coffin and bury me with full honors."

"Oh, sister Giovannuzza," said the king’s daughter, who had grown quite fond of the fox, "why do you talk about death?"

A little later, Giovannuzza decided to put the couple to the test. She played dead. When the king’s daughter saw her stretched out stiff, she exclaimed, "Oh, Giovannuzza is dead! Our poor dear friend! We must have a very beautiful coffin built at once for her."

"A coffin for an animal?" said Count Peartree. "We’ll just pitch her out the window!" And he grabbed her by the tail.

At that, the fox jumped up and cried, "Penniless man! Faithless, ungrateful wretch! Have you forgotten everything? Forgotten that your prosperity is due to me? You’d still be living on charity, if it hadn’t been for me! You stingy thing! Ungrateful, faithless wretch!"

"Fox," begged Count Peartree all flustered, "forgive me, dear friend, please forgive me. I meant no harm, the words just slipped out, I spoke without thinking…"

"This is the last you’ll see of me"—and she made for the door.

"Forgive me, Giovannuzza, please, remain with us…" But the fox ran off down the road, disappeared around the bend, and was never seen again

JEWISH

The Fox and the Fishes

In the morning of the world, says an old Jewish Legend, the vast seas were empty except for the huge bulk of the monster Leviathan, lurking at the bottom of the ocean. He was a king without subjects until the Angel of Death was sent to populate the seas by drowning one member of every species of land creature and transforming it into a fish.

The fox determined that he would outsmart the Angel of Death and cheat the Leviathan. As he sat on a bank beside the sea, contemplating his watery future and wondering how he could escape it, his reflection gave him his cue just as the shadow of Death fell upon him.

Instantly, the fox burst into tears and loud lamentations.

"Why do you cry, Fox?" asked the Angel, impatient to get on with his work.

"I am mourning my friend," said the fox, sobbing. "As your shadow passed over him, he threw himself into the sea in his haste to join the Leviathan's legions. There he is now." The fox waved sadly at the creature in the water who waved sadly back at him.

"Good, good," said the Angel, and flew away.

All went well for the fox until a year later when his deception was discovered by Leviathan himself. During the counting of the fish, he realized that there was no fox fish among them. Displeased, Leviathan lashed his dragon-tail through the waters, demanding to know why. The timid parrot fish told how the fox had tricked the Angel of Death.

"Bring me the fox alive," Leviathan commanded the catfish. "I wish to eat his heart and thereby gain his cleverness. Tell him that I am dying and wish to make him King of the Fish in my place."

The catfish soon found the fox, and told him Leviathan's story. Proud of the honor, the fox hurried onto the catfish's back.

On the long journey, the fox had time to reflect and wondered if he had not been tricked. "O Catfish, now that I can't escape, tell me what the real purpose of this trip is," said the fox. The catfish revealed Leviathan's plan with great satisfaction. Fox was not so clever after all, he thought.

"My heart!" cried the fox. "He wants to eat my heart! Now you are in trouble because I haven't got it with me. Why didn't you tell me while there was still time? Didn't you know that we foxes never carry our precious hearts with us? It is back home, safe in my burrow."

The fox suggested they return to shore to retrieve the heart. When they reached land, however, the fox jumped off and scampered away, jeering at the catfish's stupidity. The catfish hid beneath the bank, where he remained, afraid to face the wrath of Leviathan. The fox has never returned to the shore, which is why to this day there are no fox fish in the sea.

PAKISTANIS

The Five Little Foxes and the Tiger

Once upon a time, on the plains of East Pakistan, a fox and his wife lived in a little hole. They had five children who were too young to feed themselves, and so every evening Mr. and Mrs. Fox crept out of their hole and made their way to the bazaar or market place, which was full of roughly-made stalls.

But they didn’t go there to buy anything. They waited until all the people had gone home to their suppers, and then the two foxes crept amongst the stalls looking for scraps of food for their children.

Sometimes they found nothing but a few grains of rice or shreds of pumpkin but at other times they picked up quite large pieces of fish or meat which had been dropped unnoticed by a stall-holder.

Then the two foxes were overjoyed and would hurry home talking happily together. But no matter who had found the most food – and to be truthful it was nearly always Mrs. Fox who was the better scavenger – Mr. Fox was so full of pride at his cleverness that he could not stop boasting.

“How much sense have you got, my dear?” he would ask his wife as they hurried along between large tufts of brown grass and withered-looking bushes.

“About as much as would fill a small vegetable basket,” Mrs. Fox would reply modestly.

Then after a few minutes she would say, “And how much sense have you got, my good husband?”

“As much as would fill twelve large sacks, needing twelve strong oxen to carry them,” the conceited Mr. Fox would reply, time and time again.

Now one evening, when the two foxes were on their way home with food for their children, and Mr. Fox had just told his wife for the hundredth time how clever he was, a large tiger suddenly stepped out from behind a bush and barred their way.

“At last, I’ve got you,” growled the tiger, showing them his sharp white teeth, which glistened in the moonlight.

Mr. Fox began to tremble and his legs gave way, so that he crumpled up into a heap and lost the power to speak.

But clever Mrs. Fox held her head high, and looking straight into the flashing eyes of the tiger, she said with a smile, “How glad we are to have met you, O Uncle! My husband and I have been having an argument, and since neither will give way to the other, we decided that we would ask the first superior animal who crossed our path to settle the matter for us.”

The tiger was surprised at being spoken to so politely, and also very flattered at being called ‘Uncle’, which is a term of great respect in Pakistan.

So, he did not spring at the foxes to kill and eat them, but replied, “Very well. I will help you if I can. Tell me what you were arguing about.”

“My husband and I have decided to part company,” said Mrs. Fox in a clear, calm voice, while her husband, who had closed his eyes in fear, now opened them wide in surprise. “But we have five children waiting at home for us, and we cannot decide how to divide them between us fairly. I think that I should have three, since I have had to spend more time looking after them than my husband, and that he should have only two. But my husband insists that I let him have the three boy cubs, and that I keep only the two girl cubs. Now, O wise Uncle, who do you think is right?”

When Mrs. Fox saw the tiger licking his lips, she knew that he was thinking that somehow, he must have the five fox cubs as well as their parents for his dinner. And this was exactly what she had hoped for.

“I must see the cubs for myself before I can make a decision,” said the tiger. “Will you take me to your home?”

“Certainly,” said Mrs. Fox. “We will lead the way, and you shall follow.”

Poor Mr. Fox was completely at a loss to know what his wife was doing, but thinking that anything would be better than being eaten alive by a tiger, he staggered to his feet and followed his wife along the rough track, until they reached their home.

“Wait here,” said Mrs. Fox to the tiger. “You are too big to get inside our hole, so we will bring the children outside for you to see.”

She turned to her husband to tell him to go in, but he, needing no encouragement to get away from the tiger, shot into the opening like a flash.

Mrs. Fox went in more slowly, talking all the time, saying that she would not keep him waiting more than a moment, and thanking him for being so gracious as to promise to judge their case for them.

Once inside their hole, the foxes gathered their children together as far away from the opening as possible, and in whispers told them what happened.

“Don’t make a sound,” said Mrs. Fox, “and presently the tiger will realize he has been tricked, and will go away.”

She was right. The tiger waited for hours, first patiently, then furiously, as it gradually dawned on him that the foxes had no intention of letting him see their children, and when the sun rose the next morning, he had to go hungrily away.

After this, Mr. and Mrs. Fox went by a different path to the bazaar, and kept a sharp look-out for tigers.

Mr. Fox never again asked his wife how much sense she had, but once or twice, when he showed signs of becoming proud again, she would say to him, “How much sense have you got, my dear?” and he would answer with an embarrassed laugh.

“Oh! About as much as would fill a small vegetable basket – a very small one, I’m afraid.”

PALESTINE

The Fox and the Sheepskin Jacket

Once upon a time a fox living in Palestine lifted his head from the undergrowth where he had been hiding, and saw an eagle.

‘Hallo!’ cried the eagle as it swooped down close to the fox. ‘How you can bear to live all your life down there on the ground, I do not know. You really are a most un-enterprising creature.’

Then the eagle soared up into the blue sky again, and as the fox watched it he half wished that he could fly too.

In a few moments the eagle was swooping down again, saying, ‘Did you hear what I said?’

‘Yes, I did,’ called the fox. ‘What does the world look like from so high?’

The eagle alighted beside him and replied, ‘Sometimes it is so far away this it is almost invisible.’

The fox laughed scornfully. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said.

This annoyed the eagle who had always hated the fox for his cunning underhanded ways, and now he suddenly thought of a plan to get rid of him.

‘Jump on my back and I’ll take you up to see for yourself,’ he said.

The fox hesitated for a moment and then he climbed on to the strong back of the eagle, settled himself among the feathers and cried: ‘I’m ready! Up you go!’

The eagle soared upwards and the fox closed his eyes in alarm, for he had never travelled as fast as this on the ground, let alone in the air.

‘How big does the earth look now?’ asked the eagle presently.

The fox opened his eyes and gasped as he peered downwards. ‘It looks about as big as one of those straw baskets they make at Lydda,’ he said.

‘Aha!’ said the eagle. ‘But it won’t look as big as that in a minute.’ Up and up they went, and then the eagle asked again, ‘How big does the earth look now?’

‘It looks about as big as an onion,’ replied the fox, hoping that the eagle would soon begin flying down again.

But the eagle continued to soar upwards, while the fox clung to its feathers, feeling very alarmed and still scarcely daring to open his eyes.

‘How big does it look now?’ asked the eagle at last.

Peering down through half-closed eyes, the fox could see nothing at all. Even when he opened his eyes wide in surprise, he could still not see the earth, as it was so far away below them.

‘I can’t see anything at all!’ he said. ‘How far away do you think the earth is now?’

‘That I can’t tell,’ replied the eagle. ‘But I leave it to you to find out.’ So, saying the eagle turned right over onto his back so that the fox was shaken off.

With a scream the fox began to fall down. Through the air he rushed, sometimes the right way up, sometimes the wrong, but all the time wondering what would happen to him when he hit the earth.

Suddenly he knew! He had landed on a ploughboy’s soft sheepskin coat, in the middle of a ploughed field, and because this had broken his fall, he was still alive.

Heaving a sigh of relief, the fox scrambled under the sheepskin jacket. Using this as a disguise in case anybody saw him and tried to kill him again, he ran swiftly into some woods to take cover.

But he was not safe here, for immediately he came face to face with a leopard. But instead of attacking the fox and eating him, the leopard was so surprised at the coat he was wearing that he asked, ‘Where did you get that warm coat, Fox? I’ve never seen you wearing one of those before.’

‘I’ve changed my way of living,’ replied the fox quickly. ‘No longer do I steal the farmers' chickens, because I have become furrier and have learned how to sew. Would you like me to make you a sheepskin jacket like mine?’

‘Yes, I would,’ said the leopard, thinking what good camouflage it would be when he was stalking game for his dinner.

‘Very well,’ said the fox, ‘You’re a much better hunter than I am, so if you can bring me six sheep, I will make you a jacket with their coats, and will eat their meat for my payment.’

The unsuspecting leopard went off to steal the sheep from a nearby hillside, while the fox lay down and laughed to himself, feeling very pleased at his own cleverness.

When the leopard came back with the six dead sheep, the fox persuaded him to help him to carry them close to his den. Then, promising the leopard that the jacket would be ready next week, he sent him away.

Now the fox had a wife and six little cubs, and when they saw all the meat that the leopard had provided for them, they were delighted. Never had they had such a feast before! For days they all ate as much as they could and each night they slept deeply and rested well, for there was no need to go hunting now.

But the leopard was not so happy. He kept coming back to the fox’s den and shouting: ‘Isn’t my jacket ready yet?’

The fox put him off with various excuses, until all the meat had gone, and then he said, ‘You are a much bigger animal than I am, Leopard, so I’m afraid I shall need more than six sheepskins for your coat. Will you bring me three more sheep tomorrow? Then I think I can finish making it.’

The leopard was getting a little suspicious by now, but off he went and killed three more sheep, and brought them back to the fox.

Now the family could eat their fill again, and they all feasted happily until the meat had gone. But the fox was beginning to regret his behavior, as he knew the leopard would want revenge when he found out that there was to be no sheepskin jacket after all, for he had no idea how to sew.

He began to go hunting in a different part of the country, and always looked around carefully to make sure the leopard was nowhere near when he went in or out of his hole. When he did meet the leopard he made excuses about the jacket, saying that he had run out of thread, or just broken his needle; he even pretended that he was not the fox who had eaten the sheep, and since all foxes are very much alike, the leopard could not be sure which was which.

But at last, the leopard knew that he had been tricked, and he decided that it was time to get even with the fox.

Hiding behind a boulder one night, he lay still, scarcely breathing, until he heard the sound of the fox returning from a hunting expedition. With a bound the leopard pounced on the fox, intending to kill him, but the fox was so quick in reaching his hole, that all the leopard managed to catch was the fox’s bushy tail.

‘All right! I’ve missed you this time,’ the leopard shouted. ‘But I shall know you from all the other foxes now, as you will be the only one without a tail.’

Then to make sure that the fox would suffer a few days’ starvation, the leopard took a hornet’s nest and put it on the ground beside the opening to the fox’s den. He knew that the humming sound the hornets made was very much like the noise of a leopard purring, and he hoped that the fox would stay inside, not daring to go hunting while he thought the leopard was waiting for him.

For almost a week, the fox family went hungry, until at last, the fox began to get suspicious, for he wondered how the leopard could stay in one place for so long without going away to get food.

Creeping close to the opening, the fox peered cautiously outside, and discovered the hornets’ nest.

He was furious that he had been tricked so easily, but he dared not show himself to the leopard, as he would easily recognize him now that he had lost his tail.

However, he had to take some risks if he were going to put into practice the plan which he had been working out, while listening to the hornets’ humming.

So, waiting until darkness fell, the fox rushed hither and thither, calling at the homes of all his friends and relations.

‘Come with me! I have found you a splendid vineyard full of ripe grapes. Come and feast with me, while it is dark and the owner is asleep at home.’

Soon dozens of foxes were following behind him and he led them to a secluded vineyard some way from his den. ‘What a feast! What juicy grapes!’ all the foxes exclaimed as they began to eat them hungrily.

‘Wait a minute,’ commanded the fox. ‘We mustn’t all eat from the same vine. I will show you each of your places, and then you can eat unhindered by anyone else, and we shall not have any quarrels.’

One by one, he led the foxes to a different vine, and said to each, ‘Now you must not mind if I tie your tail to your particular vine. This will show the others that the vine belongs to you, and it will prevent any greedy fox from straying to his brother’s place and eating his grapes.’

All the foxes agreed quite readily, until eventually nothing could be heard but the steady munching of grapes.

Silently the fox left the vineyard and made his way to the owner’s house, where he banged on the door and woke up the whole household, crying: ‘Go to your vineyard! The foxes are robbing it! Take up your sticks and drive them away.’

The people in the house were soon awake, and ran shouting towards the vineyard, waving their heavy sticks.

The foxes heard them coming and tried to run away, but their tails were tied so tightly to the vines that the only way they could escape was by tugging so hard that they left their tails behind them.

After this every fox in the district had a short tail, and so the leopard never found out which was the fox who had tricked him. He was so annoyed that he went away to live in a different part of the country, and then the fox, his wife and his six little cubs were able to roam about freely, and to hunt wherever they liked.

RUSSIAN

How the Fox Saved the Horse's Life

Once upon a time a bear was hiding behind some trees on the edge of a field in Russia, hungrily watching a peasant and his horse ploughing the soil.

The horse was old and tired, and presently the peasant shouted angrily: ‘I’m fed up with your slowness, old horse! You are no use to me at all. I shall let the bears have you!’

Now the peasant did not really mean what he said, and was thoroughly alarmed when the bear lumbered out from behind the trees and growled, ‘Very well! I will eat your horse for you. Give him to me.’

‘Oh no!’ gasped the man. ‘Don’t eat him yet, I beg you. Give me enough time to finish ploughing this field and then I will let you have him.’

Of course, the man had no intention of giving his horse to the bear, for he knew he would never find enough money to buy another one, but he hoped that by the end of the day he might have thought of a plan to outwit the bear.

‘Very well,’ said the bear. ‘I will wait until you have finished.’

The peasant went on with his ploughing, but his mind was not on his job. He kept wondering how he could get the horse home safely, for the bear was a big one who could kill both the horse and man with one blow.

Later in the day the peasant stopped work for a few moments’ rest, and sat down at the edge of the field to eat a crust of bread.

He heard a rustle in the nearby bushes and turning he saw the face of a fox peering at him.

‘Sh!’ said the fox. ‘Don’t call out! I heard what the bear said to you, and have worked out a plan that will save your horse. But you will have to reward me.’

‘I would give anything I have to save my poor old horse,’ said the old man. ‘What is your plan?’

‘First of all, we will decide on my reward,’ said the greedy fox. ‘I shall want twelve hens for my supper.’

‘Very well,’ said the peasant, who had only twelve hens and no more. ‘I will give them to you if your plan works.’

‘I have a small bell here, which I shall fasten round my neck,’ said the fox. ‘Then I shall go into the forest, creep behind the bear, and leap about so that the bell rings.’

‘But that will not frighten a bear!’ exclaimed the man.

‘Of course, it won’t,’ said the fox, impatiently. ‘But when the bear hears it and asks you what it is, you must tell him that the King’s son is bear-hunting with a number of his courtiers. That should frighten the bear away pretty quickly.’

Off went the fox among the trees, and up got the peasant and began to plough again. Presently the sound of a bell reached him, and he knew that the fox was leaping about in the forest, trying to make his bell sound like those the bear-hunters tied to their horses.

The bear came towards the peasant with his eyes full of fear. ‘What is that noise?’ he asked.

‘I heard that the King’s son was coming into the forest today, bear-hunting with his friends,’ replied the peasant. ‘I expect they have started the hunt and the bells are those on their horses.’

The bear had changed from a bully to a coward now, and he begged the peasant to save him. ‘Don’t betray me,’ he said, ‘and I promise not to eat your horse after all.’

‘I will not let the hunters get you,’ said the peasant, ‘but I will hold you to your promise afterwards.’

The bear crouched on the ground beside the cart on which the peasant had brought the plough to his field. Then the fox got as close to the bear as he could without being seen, and shouted: ‘We are hunting bears. What is that dark shape beside you, my man?’

‘That is a tree stump,’ called the peasant. ‘I have been cutting wood for my fire.’

‘If it’s a tree stump, why is it standing up? Are you sure it’s not a bear?’

‘Lie down,’ whispered the peasant, giving the terrified bear a push, and sending him under the cart. ‘It’s a tree stump all right,’ called the man. ‘I have cut it down now, and it’s on the ground.’

‘Well that’s a queer place to put it,’ shouted the fox, who was still well hidden by the trees. ‘Why don’t you load it on your cart, and tie it firmly with rope, so that it doesn’t fall off? That is what we do with logs as big as that.’

‘Very well,’ said the man, and the bear, needing no encouragement, scrambled up into the cart and allowed the peasant to tie him up firmly with rope.

‘You are a foolish fellow,’ called the fox. ‘Most people put an axe in the cart with the log, and then they can chop it up for firewood as soon as they get home.’

So the peasant took his axe, climbed into the cart, and killed the bear with one blow.

The horse neighed with happiness as the peasant harnessed him to the cart and prepared to go home, but the fox kept leaping and bounding around them as they went, crying: ‘Don’t forget my reward. Twenty hens you promised me.’

‘Not twenty! I have only twelve and that was the number we agreed on,’ said the poor peasant, wondering what his wife would say when he handed over her fine, plump laying hens to the fox.

As they neared the peasant’s cottage, his three dogs heard him coming, and leaping up from their place beside the hearth, they rushed out joyously to greet him.

‘Dogs!’ screamed the fox. ‘You didn’t tell me you kept dogs!’

He turned tail at once and rushed back towards the forest. The three dogs chased after him for several miles but he just managed to get into his hole before they caught up with him.

‘I shall never try to help a human being again,’ said the fox as he lay down to get back his breath in the safety of his home.

But the peasant was delighted that his dogs had saved him from giving up his wife’s precious hens, and when they returned, panting loudly and extremely hungry, he gave them an extra big supper.

Later on, he told his wife the whole story. But she did not believe him, so he took her outside in the darkness and showed her the dead bear, promising that he would skin it in the morning, and make her a fine, fur rug to go on her bed and keep her warm during the bitter, winter nights.

As for the horse, he said nothing, but he lived to a ripe old age, and never again did the peasant threaten to give him up to the bears.

LAPLANDER

The Fox, the Fish, and the Bear

Far away in the north of Lapland there once lived a fox who had been looking for food for days and days but had found none.

‘What shall I do?’ he asked himself as he lay on the hard packed snow. ‘If I cannot find food I shall die.’

Just then he heard the sound of dogs barking in the distance and he guessed that some sleighs were coming up from the sea towards the place where he lay.

Now most of the Laplanders in this part of the country were fishermen, and this fox loved eating fish. So, he stretched himself out on the snow in such a way that the sleigh-driver would think he was dead.

Sure enough, after a few moments a string of sleighs stopped right beside the fox.

‘What luck!’ said a man’s voice. ‘A dead fox! Now I can sell its fur.’

Then, picking up the fox, the man slung its body on to the front sleigh and continued on his way.

Cautiously the fox opened his eyes. He saw that the dogs were dragging four sleighs, and that they were all empty except for the last one, which was piled high with fish.

Presently, as the sleighs rode over some bumpy ground, the fox let himself fall off onto the snow, taking care to make a loud plop.

Immediately the man reined in the dogs, leapt off the front sleigh and slung the fox up on to the second sleigh. Then he continued his journey.

After a few more miles the fox again let himself fall off the sleigh, taking care to make an even louder plop as he dropped into the crisp snow.

Once again, the man stopped the sleighs, picked up the fox and slung him on to the third sleigh.

From here the fox could smell the fish so strongly that his stomach ached with hunger and his mouth watered profusely.

In no time at all he had dropped off the third sleigh and the man had stopped yet again and picked him up.

‘What a nuisance you are!’ said the Laplander, throwing him up on the top of all the fish on the fourth sleigh. ‘If you fall off here, I shan’t bother to stop again. I shall never get home at this rate.’ Then, climbing back and settling himself into the front sleigh, the man whipped up the dogs and hurried off.

Now the fox opened his eyes and began to get busy. The cunning animal gnawed the thin ropes which tied the fourth sleigh to the third, until at last, he separated the sleighs.

The man drove on, never realizing that he now had only three sleighs, and empty ones at that, while the fox seized the broken rope in his teeth and dragged the sleigh off the track, towards a big snowdrift where he could hide.

Never had he eaten such a splendid meal. Fish after fish went down the fox’s throat, until he began to think he could eat no more.

He was just taking hold of what he had decided must be the last fish of the day when the snapping of a nearby twig made him turn his head.

In horror, he saw a huge, long-tailed bear approaching through the trees.

‘Where did you get all that fish?’ growled the bear, looking at the sleigh which still held a good pile of fish.

‘I caught it myself,’ lied the fox. ‘It’s all mine and you are not to touch it.’

‘What did you catch it with?’ asked the bear.

‘I will show you if you like,’ said the fox. ‘Come down to the river and you will soon have a pile of fish even bigger than mine.’

So, the fox made his way through the trees towards the river, while the bear lumbered after him.

The river was covered with ice, so, taking a sharp stone, the fox knocked a hole through the ice until they could see the sluggish water flowing below.

‘Now,’ said the fox, ‘you have to sit on the bank with your back to the river and your tail hanging down through the hole into the water.’

The stupid bear did as he was told, and sitting down he gently eased his long tail into the hole in the ice.

‘How shall I know when I have caught a fish?’ he asked.

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ replied the fox. ‘You will feel a slight nip as the fish bites and then you must gently ease your tail up through the hole, eat the fish, and begin again.’

Then the fox dashed off to his sleigh, and, seizing the rope in his mouth, he dragged it as far away from the river as he could.

But the bear sat on and on, waiting for the slight nip which would tell him that he had caught a fish. It got colder and colder as night came on, and presently the bear began to realize that the fox had tricked him.

‘Wait till I catch him!’ he growled, trying to turn away from the river in the direction the fox had taken. But the ice had frozen tight around his long tail and he could not move.

He tugged and pulled for a long time in vain, until at last, his great strength triumphed and he found that he had freed himself from the ice.

But on looking behind, he also found that he had left most of his big, bushy tail in the frozen river, and all that remained was a little furry stump.

And that is the reason, say the Laplanders, why even today, all the bears have such short stumpy tails.

PERUVIAN

The Fox and the Gulls

Once upon a time a gull laid her eggs on the shore of Lake Titicaca in Peru. There were three eggs altogether and the whole day long the mother gull sat on them to keep them warm, only leaving the nest very occasionally to go and catch herself a fish from the lake.

At last, the eggs were ready and three little gulls pecked and chirped their way into the world.

Their mother was tremendously proud of them, for this was her first family, and she was kept very busy flying to the lake to catch small fish for her children, or up to the cliffs behind the nest, to search for insects.

As the little gulls grew bigger, the mother had to spend more and more time away from the nest, searching for food to satisfy their healthy appetites; and so, it happened that she did not notice her old enemy, the fox, hiding behind a small outcrop of rocks not far from the nest, watching her every moment.

The country around Lake Titicaca was almost all desert, so there were very few trees and bushes about and practically no smaller animals for the fox to feed on.

‘Be patient!’ the fox muttered to himself, for he was very hungry! ‘Don’t make a sound and you will soon have the best meal of your life.’

Waiting until the mother gull had flown high up the cliffs to search for insects, the fox crawled stealthily towards the young gulls in their nest.

On his way he noticed an old sack. Which had been blown by the wind from a nearby village, and picking it up he exclaimed:

‘Just what I wanted! Now I can put the gulls in this sack and carry them right away from their nest before I eat them. Then their mother will not hear their cries, and will not come and peck me to pieces.’

Closer and closer the fox crawled to the nest until suddenly he pounced upon the first gull and thrust it in his sack. The second and third gulls scarcely had time to utter more than a few surprised chirps when they too were seized by the fox, who slung the sack over his shoulder and hurried away as fast as he could go.

But the few weak cries of the gull-chicks had been heard by the mother as she was flying back with her mouth full of fish for her children.

Looking down she could see the fox running away from the lake towards some rocky hillocks where he hoped to hide while he ate his meal.

The cunning gull did not swoop down on the fox at once, but followed him at a distance so that he did not know she was there.

‘O my poor children!’ she cried to herself as she flew. ‘How can I get you away from that evil creature?’

The sun was hot and the earth was dry and dusty, and before long the fox was feeling very exhausted with all his running. Added to this his back was getting sore, for the young gulls had sharp beaks and they continually pecked at him through the sack as he ran.

Presently he stopped, and, giving the top of the sack an extra twist or two, he put it on the ground, placed a heavy stone on top of it and sank down nearby to have a rest.

‘I’m exhausted!’ he said. ‘I’ll just have a short nap and then make for that pile of rocks on the other side of the valley. Nobody will see or hear anything there!’

Closing his eyes, the fox was soon fast asleep, and then the mother gull, who had been silently flying above him for some time, glided down to the earth.

‘Hush, my children!’ she whispered with her beak close to the sack. ‘Don’t make a sound or you will wake the wicked fox. Just do exactly as I tell you and all will be well.’

The little gulls were delighted to hear their mother’s voice, and lay quietly while she pushed the heavy stone off the sack and untwisted the top.

‘Creep out now!’ she whispered, ‘and go and bring me some thorny twigs from that dead bush.’

The little gulls blinked from the sunlight for a moment of two, and then they staggered over to a shriveled bush nearby and picked as many thorny, prickly twigs as they could.

‘Push them in the sack quickly,’ said the mother gull, and as soon as they had done this, she twisted the neck of the sack up again and put the large stone back on top of it.

‘Now, follow me!’ she said softly, and the little gulls hopped and ran behind her until they had reached the safety of a small cave in the cliffs.

‘Now I shall take you home on my back, one by one,’ said the mother gull, for her children were not yet old enough to fly on their own. ‘But don’t make a sound while I am away, or the fox will hear you.’

So, the mother gull got her children safely home again. But she found a new place for her nest, right on the other side of the lake, where the fox would not be able to seize her children again once he found he had been tricked.

Now the fox had been very tired when he fell asleep, and it was not until an hour or two later that he woke.

Looking up at the sun and seeing how much of the day he had wasted; he slung the bag onto his back again and hurried off in the direction of the pile of rocks he had chosen for eating his meal.

He thought that the sack seemed a little lighter than before, but the thorns pricked his back in the same way that the little gulls’ beaks had done, and so he did not realize that the birds were not there.

At last, he reached the place where he thought he could eat them without anyone seeing or hearing, and cautiously he opened the sack, and reached in to take out the first bird.

With a cry he withdrew his front leg, covered with scratches and with a branch of the thorn entangled in his fur.

‘I have been tricked!’ he screamed. ‘Who put these thorns in my bag and let out the gulls?’

He knew the answer to this at once, for only the mother bird could have done it. So, leaving the bag on the ground he hurried back to the lakeside to the place where the gull had had her nest.

But of course, it was not there, and peering across the lake the fox saw what looked like the mother gull sweeping down to a nest with food for her chicks.

The fox was determined to have his revenge, but could see no way of getting across to the other side of the lake.

All night long he lay on the shore trying to decide on a plan to get the better of the gulls, and when morning came, he thought he had one.

‘I will drink and drink and drink,’ he said to himself, ‘until the lake is dry and then I can go across on the mud and seize those little gulls again.’

So, he lay down at the edge of the lake and began to drink swallowing the muddy water as fast as he could.

Gradually he began to swell and soon he was feeling most uncomfortable. Bigger and bigger grew his body and still he went on drinking.

‘There can’t be much water left now,’ he puffed, his eyes half closed, and body swollen to six times its normal size.

Gasping and gurgling, he swallowed a few more mouthfuls, and then ‘Crack!’, the sound of a loud explosion filled the air.

The fox had drunk so much water that he had burst, and now lay dead on the shore of the lake.

Across the water the gulls heard the strange noise, and the mother flew off to see what it was all about.

‘The fox is dead, my children,’ she cried happily when she returned. ‘Now we need have no fear that he will try to take you away again.’

So, the gulls lived happily and peacefully beside the lake until the children learned to fly and were able to go off and have families of their own.

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