#this is btw the least difficult task tomorrow

[l00katthesky]

——-

[unicyclehippo]

prompt: beau is *brilliant* but is flippant and hesitant to show it. sometimes the nein forget until they're reminded of this. aka beau is more than an athletic prodigy & it shows (i absolutely adore your writing btw & im so so grateful you share it with us)

human feat: prodigy—you have a knack for learning new things

//

it’s blazing hot, the blue sky burned nearly white, and the whole world smells like sulphur and iron and grass. it smells hot, like the world is one careless spark away from bursting into flame.

beau is eight and follows behind the new carpenter from the main house down to the woodshed, where she definitely isn’t supposed to be, and certainly not in the pretty dress she’s been dragged into. she flits from tree to tree, crawls on hands and knees behind the low brick wall that leads down to fields left and the stables and sheds to the right.

‘afternoon, miss beauregard,’ odwin calls to her as she contemplates how to sneak to the next portion of the wall. ‘you feel like standing upright or d’you prefer to wander with a new perspective?’

beau sighs. stands, brushing dust off her hands onto her dress. she frowns over at odwin. ‘how did you know i was there? i thought i hid really well.’

‘aye, you did. didn’t see you once.’

‘then,’

‘my deaf mum would’ve heard you coming, though.’

‘oh.’ beau crinkles her nose. ‘alright. i’ll work on that. what are you doing today?’

‘taking you back up to the house, i imagine.’

‘don’t bother, i’ll just leave again.’

‘i have t’take you back, miss beauregard...’

‘no you don’t. i’ll tell them i made you entertain me. if they even ask, which they won’t. are you doing anything fun?’

‘fun? aye, i suppose so. i’m using the oak wood we got in the last shipment to put together more casks. to put your fathers wine in, see.’

‘i thought the wine was bottled.’

‘it is. eventually. first though, well, after the brewing and fermenting, however that’s all figured, the wine sits nice and tight in the casks for, oh, at least a year. down in the cellars, nice and cool and dark. then he bottles ‘em and sends ‘em out.’

‘huh. and you make the barrels?’

‘aye, some of them.’

‘can i help?’

odwin sucks thoughtfully on his teeth, eyeing the girl for a moment. her dress—pretty as it once was—is already ruined from crawling in the dirt, a tear or two where she’s snagged it in the fence. it isn’t his place to say it but the girl isn’t suited to the indoors. it certainly isn’t his place to say it, but the girl isn’t suited to the parents she has.

he should say no.

‘you’ll be careful,’ he tells her, fuzzy brows settling sternly over dark eyes. ‘my tools aren’t play things, you realise.’ she nods quickly. ‘and you’ll stay put and just watch. i’m not having you lose a finger because of me.’

‘is that likely?’ she asks, intrigued.

such a strange child, he thinks, not for the first time.

‘well, no, not with what i’m doing today,’ he admits.

she steps up right beside him, eight years old and already nearly taller than him. she seemed to grow like a weed—tall and haphazard, all knees and elbows, and all of a sudden. he could’ve sworn she had been a half foot shorter only last week.

‘it’ll be fine then,’ she tells him, and smiles wide enough to show off the gap in her teeth, off to the right where she’d lost the last of her baby teeth.

odwin sighs. hopes this won’t lose him his position. so long as no one sees, it should be fine, right?

the woodshed is large, made for the human who had held the position before him. half-finished barrels, lids, and piles of the untreated wood have been placed around the outskirts of the room. to one side is a table and shelves with his tools and aprons; he ties his around his waist and points to a low stool.

‘you can sit there. don’t—‘ he pulls a bullhead hammer from her hands. ‘don’t touch anything.’

beau sighs. sits.

he endeavours to ignore her, working slowly at the task at hand, but it proves rather difficult. the girl has a pair of eyes on her like nothing else, crystal clear blue and intent on everything around her. for the first few minutes, she had scoured the inside of the shed, noting everything and its place, and then her attention had settled on him and never shifted.

‘how come you’re not bending the planks?’

‘staves.’

‘what?’

‘they’re called staves,’ odwin tells her. pauses a moment to wipe his brow. glancing over at his bare furnace, he can see it’s almost ready for him to begin softening one of the more complete barrels. ‘if i set ‘em in a second hoop, they’d crack. or splinter, and we don’t want that, no miss.’

beau just hums. adjusts her position—seated now upon a small barrel instead of the top-low foot stool—and settles still once more.

it goes on for some time, her asking the occasional question and him answering as best he can—sometimes with little more than a simple, this is how i was taught to do it, and she seems satisfied with that.

finally, when he rolls his shoulders out from their hunch, hammering the staves into alignment, he casts a look over at the girl. pretty layered dress all a mess, a healing scratch on her cheek from an old adventure, scuffed boots and loose laces peeking out from beneath the hem of her skirts. he reverses his hold on the hammer, holds it out to her.

‘care to give it a go?’

blue eyes light up, lightning in a bottle. she doesn’t take a moment to leap up, doesn’t question it for a second.

before too long, with surprisingly few corrections, beau has helped him to put together the first half of a functional barrel. they set it over the low fire, allowing it to soak and soften and eventually to toast, and he draws her back, offers her a cup of water. the jug is warm, almost hot from having sat on his work table all afternoon, and he thinks to apologise for it but the girl doesn’t seem to mind.

strange, curious girl.

‘you did very well today,’ he tells her. ‘you’ve a knack.’

‘what’s a knack?’ she asks, eyes narrowed and lips all a scowl like she expects it to be bad.

‘natural skill. my wife calls it a quickness. somethin’ you pick up real fast. maybe,’ he says, corners of his eyes crinkling with a smile, ‘you were a cooper in a past life.’

beau smiles, a mightily awkward expression on her face. ‘i like making stuff,’ she tells him, and odwin watches her relax into a real smile, big and unrestrained, when he simply nods.

//

‘learning a language is something that will require your full attention, miss lionette. tardiness will not be permitted, and a reluctance to practice will not earn you a reprieve—just more work. am i understood?’

her teacher is a strict woman and reminds beau of a spider. short sleek black bair clings tight to her scalp, and her dowdy grey school marm attire is made of some material that seems fuzzy and sharp all at once. a pair of glass lenses sit at the end of a barely there nose and she looks down at beau through them.

‘am i understood, miss lionette?’

‘huh? oh, yeah.’

‘you will speak in proper sentences in my classroom,’ the spider tells her, before launching into her first lesson.

beauregard is ten and school-bound. it had taken a full decade, apparently, for her dad to reluctantly agree that yup, she’s the one he’s got, and he should make the most of it by actually letting her learn things he would’ve taught the son of his dreams. bookkeeping, mathematics, finances, whatever. all beau takes from it is that the wood shed, the lake, the stables are now all well outside of her reach , locked as she is under the spider’s attention, and so she has to resort actually learning things to keep herself occupied.

the days pass in piles of paper and scratched tally marks on the lid of her desk.

she holds up a hand, ink splattered as usual. she can’t seem to get the grip right, an ache building in the fleshy bit of her palm after only a short while.

‘miss lionette,’ the spider says after a moment, making her wait. ‘you have a question?’

‘i’m done. can i leave?’

‘done?’ the spider coughs a laugh. ‘you had twenty problems, miss lio—‘

‘i’ve done ‘em. can i go now? please?’ she tacks on, remembering that sometimes helps.

the spider’s brows tug high on her forehead. she waves a hand. ‘bring them here.’

beau pushes back. her chair scrapes on the stone floor and the spider winces, an admonishment on her lips that beau ignores in favour of the hopeful flutter in her belly that she’ll actually get to go outside today. maybe even make it to the lake before the sun sets! catch that toad she saw in the reeds last time. she hands the papers over, watches the spider’s mouth pinch in distaste, examining the ink splotched pages. then, little by little, the distaste fades, and her brows crawl even higher.

beau fidgets with the tight collar of this stupid dress she’s in and flicks her eyes to the window.

‘these are well done, miss lionette,’ she hears the spider say.

darts a look up into magnified eyes, a yellow green the same colour of the lake reeds. ‘so i can go?’

‘do you enjoy learning halfling?’

beau huffs a sigh. ‘it’s fine.’ she bites her tongue so she doesn’t ask again. she never gets things when she asks for them too many times; it’s rude, or whatever.

‘you have grasped the basics of it very quickly.’

she shrugs. ‘it’s easy. there’s only four more letters than in common, and they always go with the same other letters. and the grammar is basically the same, except for questions.’

‘ah—yes. that’s very true.’ the spider taps beau’s pages of work into something more regular and sets them aside. then, folding her hands on the desk in front of her, she smiles. ‘you may go play. but i will see you here again promptly, miss lionette,’

‘after lunch tomorrow, i know,’ beau agrees, already breathless with excitement, and she ignores the spider’s reprimand as she tears from the room to her bedroom, struggling out of her dress and into better clothes, things no one minds if she gets them muddied or torn.

//

the monastery is grim and too much like the prison she was just bought out of for beau’s liking. the only thing it has going for it is the whole learning how to punch people thing, and that beau is fine with throwing her whole self into.

she stands rigid as a statue on the borders of the training room, which echoes with shouts of exertion and pain from the other monks. trainees, all with new crisp vestments like the ones she’s wearing, all with their heads shaved too. beau’s eyes are the only part of her that aren’t still, swivelling nearly out of her head as she sees the monks aren’t all human or elven—she sees halflings, half orcs, tieflings even among the intake.

‘here.’ a rough hand shoves a staff into her hands. smooth wood, about six feet. there’s a sudden stabbing pain as she holds it—the wood is white and all too familiar: oak. her trainer doesn’t notice or doesn’t care and she sweeps her own staff down to crack painfully against beau’s ankle, making her jump to the left.

‘hey, watch it,’

‘you watch it, greenstick,’ she retorts, face wide and stoic as a fucking brick. ‘guard.’

she doesn’t tell beau how to do that, but beau has never needed anyone to tell her how to do anything.

for that first day, beau earns bruises and smarting fingers. the day after that, she earns perhaps one less. on the third day, she realises that she can hit them back. a moment after she thinks it finds her trainer reeling back, catching beau’s staff in one hand. she rubs at her sore jaw with the other.

her trainer grins. tosses beau her staff back. ‘usually takes greensticks longer ‘n that. good work. guard.’

//

‘what are you working on?’

‘ah.’ caleb slips a hand over the spines of the books he clutches to his chest. beau doesn’t read too much into it, especially not when he immediately then offers them to her to look at. it’s a protective thing. she gets it.

‘algorithum’s of natural entropy and evolution, transmutation theorem’s, grades three and four, the power of herbalism in ritual—this is for nott’s thing?’

‘ah,’ caleb says again. she obviously had interrupted a train of thought, bursting in on his wandering through the stacks like this. ‘y-yes, yes in a way. and research, always.’

‘cool.’

he takes back his books. blinks owlishly at her.

fuck. she misses owl frumpkin.

‘need any help?’

‘certainly,’ he agrees, more readily now that he has the precious books back where they belong—in his hands, that is, not in their home on the shelves—and he waves to the place at his side for her to join him.

‘wanna tell me what you’re thinking about? maybe i just happen to know some shit about it. at least i can keep an eye out later.’

‘hmm? oh. well, there is—there is a spell, i believe, that halas has... ah... redesigned? it is an advanced form of polymorph—‘

‘polymorph two.’

caleb chuckles. ‘true polymorph, it is called. in some circles. i do not - i am not capable of casting it, but i can recognise it’s...equation. in what i have seen.’

‘mhm.’

‘i believe that if i am able to - to blend it in some way with another spell, perhaps an illusion or...’ caleb trails off, drags a finger over his chin thoughtfully. the scratch, scratch, scratch of his nail over stubble is the only accompaniment to their journey, other than their quiet steps. the library is not busy so late in the evening. not tonight.

‘what about a clerics spell?’ beau suggests. ‘it’d be crossed, ah, spell work—i dunno what you call that—but if you found a way to mix a revivify maybe? or resurrection?’

she stops when she realises caleb has stopped. his eyes—blue, like her own, but so often cool, glacial almost, are nearly white with the fire sparked in them.

‘beauregard,’

‘is that stupid?’

‘it’s brilliant! i don’t know if it will work, it would be mixing magics in a way i have never attempted, but if - the ritual could be prayer, or i have seen - for scrying and communing and the like, certainly rituals are not foreign to clerics,’ he mutters, accent thick as he grows more and more excited about the potential as he says several times. he shifts the stack of books into the crook of one arm and wraps the other around beau’s neck, pulling her in to plant a whiskery kiss to her forehead. ‘brilliant!’

‘ew.’

//

‘dorok! the undercommon is unfamiliar but the word is recognisable—halt!

the nein freeze, ice dripping down their spines as they consider being caught here in the shadow glade, far too close to the beacons for any deception to get them out of. turning, they take in the sight of the guards in their dark, jagged armour. the obvious mistrust on their faces. seeming holds over the nein’s forms, keeping them in their drow appearances, but it hadn’t hit until precisely this moment the drawback of not understanding the fucking language.

‘akarish iv’viosk na-doth rakki ishnau,’ beau calls back to them. her form is bulkier, typical of a drow warrior, and with proud angular features. her tone, though they cannot understand her words, drips with importance.

‘what the fuck is she doing?’

‘shh, shut up,’ jester hisses. ‘just nod when she nods.’

beau nods. the nein nod as well.

the guards narrow their eyes. speak quickly to beau, tone a little less strident, more conversational. she responds in kind and after a long, tense moment, the guards lift their spears and, with a nod, step away.

‘hey!’ drow fjord whispers when they’re gone. ‘what was that! that was fucking sick!’

‘very impressive,’ caleb agrees. ‘but let us keep moving.’

‘definitely. they won’t be gone forever,’ beau agrees. ‘thanks for the seeming, caleb, they can’t see that i’m fucking dripping with sweat. dude—‘ drow beau slaps a hand against fjord’s chest, her eyes wide with only slightly exaggerated fear, ‘they would’ve killed us. like, straight up.’

‘i know! that’s what we thought would happen!’

‘it would have! but you know undercommon now?’ jester says, and asks.

‘yeah, i picked up a couple books and talked to some people while we were in rex - uh - the capital,’ she says carefully, in case the name of the city might set off an alarm.

‘you learned undercommon?’ yasha interjects softly. ‘just like that?’ she clicks her fingers.

‘kinda? i’m a bit rusty,’

‘you’re obviously fine if you tricked those guards,’

‘i think i used the past tense for gardening—oh yeah, i told them we are gardeners so cad, you’d better tell me all you know about, i dunno, tubers.’

‘i’d love to!’

‘sweet. let’s move, people!’

[onemxreace-blog]

Katherine squinted at her phone screen. It was very bright and outside it was very dark so it hurt her eyes a bit to look at it. For a device she used every day, it was really difficult in this moment to remember how to use it. She got distracted twice in her quest by pictures of cute kittens; once she eventually got to her contact, she automatically brought up Jack’s number before hastily switching her whole phone off in her panicked bid to get it away. Even drunk, she knew that that was not a good idea.

After she had turned it back on, she took a deep breath to compose herself then started her task anew. Now that she knew how to find her contacts again, it went quicker and she scrolled all the way to the end of the alphabet to find Vlad. 

She thought long and hard about how to start the message. First impressions were very important to her (she conveniently seemed to forget that she and Vlad had known each other quite a long time now, enough for this rare situation to have happened at least once before). Unable to decide between beginning her message with ‘hello’ or ‘hey’ she decided to use both - ‘heylo’. Then she had a fit of giggles because it sounded so much like halo and, really, if there was anyone she knew who was positively angelic, it was Vlad. After a long time spent chuckling to herself over the image of him with a huge pair of feathery white wings, probably looking mad to anyone walking by, she composed herself once again and went back to her message.

heylo!!m i hope youre ok i ymself am a bit drunk so if its not terribly iconvinent please could you come get tme sincerely katherine

Satisfied, Katherine leaned back against the wall of the nightclub, trying not to look as light headed as she felt. She wasn’t exactly an exciting socialite, rarely making an appearance, but she knew there were a couple of paparazzi lurking around in case one of her ‘friends’ made a fool of themselves. People liked to see the rich and mighty acting like ‘normal’ people, completely unaware that they all were exactly that - albeit with a higher quality of living and the attitude to match in most cases. Even though it was her mother who had forced her to go to this event, she was not be happy if there were photos of her underage daughter drunk and asleep on the pavement splattered across the gossip rags tomorrow. 

That thought reminded her that she hadn’t actually told Vlad where she was. It also reminded her she wasn’t entirely sure where she was. Squinting up at the neon sign, which blurred and doubled before her eyes, she typed in the letters she saw and hoped it was right.

im at plesure island btw which is a ridc ricd ridiclous dumb name for club righ????

Locking her phone once more, she rested her head back against the brick wall. Her fringe was stuck to her sticky forehead and she was fairly sure she had mascara smeared all under her eyes, but she figured, as none other than her new best friend Persephone crawled out of the entrance, vomited in the gutter then went whooping back inside, she really could look a lot worse.

When a familiar figure rounded the corner, she had a new found energy and despite being very unsteady on her heels, she all but flung herself into the arms she knew were waiting.

“Vlad!” She mumbled happily, sinking into him partially because of the big hug and also because she couldn’t actually stay upright alone. She sighed, comfortable for the first time that night. “Thank you for coming.”

[ismokeitsite]

HELP I ACCIDENTALLY GOT MY WHOLE OFFICE HIGH

HELP I ACCIDENTALLY GOT MY WHOLE OFFICE HIGH

Hey guys, long time lurker here. I want to preface this by saying it is (unfortunately for me) 100% true.

Seriously you can’t make this stuff up.

So I’m pretty sure I’m going to lose my job lmao. I'm currently house-sitting for a friend of mine, who left last week to go travelling around Europe for 6 weeks. Before he left he made me a huge batch of cookies as a ‘thanks for house-sitting’ gift. I’m not a big sweets person so they’ve been sat in the fridge all week untouched.

On Tuesday night I had an appointment at the oncologist. Long story short I’ve been battling PNET (a rare form of brain cancer) for just over a year now. I recently had a surgery to remove the tumor so Tuesday night I was going to find out if I was officially in remission or not. Thankfully the cancer hasn’t returned but I was told I’d need at least another 6 months of preventative chemotherapy. (Chemo is the worst btw) So that sucked to find out.

I woke up Wednesday morning feeling down about the news from the night before. Just before I was about to leave for work I got a text from a coworker, reminding me that there would be an office potluck that day and not to forget to bring a plate of food.

Crap, I completely forgot.

There was no time to get to the shops. In a hurry, I opened the fridge and low and behold, the huge stack of cookies caught my eye.

You can see where this is going.

I grabbed the cookies and jumped in my car. I got to work and placed them in the communal work fridge for later (the potluck wasn’t until later in the day). Around lunch-time, I started to get hungry. Now, like I said earlier, I’m not a big sweets eater. However, I was still upset about the night before and when I’m depressed I tend to eat everything and anything within a 150 mile radius.

So, like a hunter stalking its’ prey, I opened the work fridge and eyed the plate of chocolate chip cookies. Within moments, I opened the wrapping and ate one.

Yum.

Within moments the cookie was devoured. Then I decided to take another one for the road (back to my desk).

Cue an hour or so later. I’m feeling weird. Like, really weird. I’m finding it increasingly difficult to concentrate on my tasks (I work in a call center) and everything feels slow and bizarre. It’s a strangely familiar feeling.

Eventually my boss calls everyone into the break room for the potluck. We're all stood around the table while the food is spread out in platters. He makes a quick speech to thank us for our hard work over the last month. While I’m stood there, my hands suddenly begin to clam up and my heart starts racing.

Oh God, I think I’m having a panic attack.

Now, I’m the most awkward person in the world so the last thing I want is for people to know I’m having a panic attack. I desperately try to keep my composure and at least try to look normal. It seems to work.

After the longest 30 second speech ever we all head in to grab a plate. I’m convinced food will make me feel better so what do I do? You bet your ass I ate another cookie.

By the end of the break, the rest of the staff had finished off the cookies. We eventually head back to our desks and back to work. I can’t shake how I'm feeling but I soldier through anyway.

One by one, my coworkers dropped like flies. Between 3 and 5pm, half the office had gone home sick. I’d never seen anything like it before. And worst of all, with the amount of time I’ve taken off due to my illness, I couldn’t afford to take any more time and go home. But thankfully, 5pm rolled around soon enough and it was my time to go home.

I got back to my friend’s house and instantly fell asleep. It was about 8pm when I woke up. I was feeling much better than earlier, if not a little groggy. Half an hour later my friend called me from overseas, to ask about how the appointment went. This is how our conversation went:

“Yeah just another six months of chemo then hopefully it’ll be over.”

“Damn, u/teecb1, that sucks. Hey, those cookies should be helpful then.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t they say that cannabis is good for cancer?”

It took me a moment.

Oh.

Oh.

OH.

OH NO.

I quickly ended the call and began to pace around the house. It explained so much. My symptoms, the panic attack, my coworkers going home… Yikes. I'm a fairly regular pot smoker, so I assume that's why I didn't feel the effects as severely as some of my coworkers. But still, I had THREE cookies. I'm surprised I wasn't dead haha.

In what seemed like pure coincidence, I received a text from my boss an hour later:

Hi all, for those of us who are well enough to come in tomorrow, there will be a whole office meeting in the main room at 9am.

Yeeeaaah, I’m screwed.

Obviously I’m going to tell my boss what has happened first thing. But yep, I’ve accepted the fact I’m probably going to lose my job over this. Cool cool cool cool cool cool cool

Will update this once I find out. If anyone has any words of advice please feel free to share D:

(Also sorry if this is all over the place it's 3am and I'm so stressed I can't sleep fml)

Submitted January 30, 2019 at 11:17AM by teecb1 via reddit

[never-to-be-homeless]

1|3 Hi Jody, it's Iris again. Thank you for your advice. I was trying to do one thing at a time before as well and it didn't really work bc I couldn't even motivate myself to do that one thing.. But somehow I did today? No idea why or how but I just went though the whole list of colleges. however now I'm lowkey freaking out bc I realized I need to make sort of a portfolio for my application plus a 2 months internship is required for most schools..

2|3 which is a lot since I also want to go traveling for like 2 months or so before the term starts.. It's doable but I really gotta work on that like NOW. At least I joined a sports club as well so that's good. Also I have a hairdressers appointment tomorrow so hopefully I'll feel a bit better about myself after that. Still gotta clean my room and paint (btw, I was talking about like art on canvases and not painting my room, which I'm really glad I don't have to do^^)

3|3 especially now that I actually need artwork for my college application and not just for me as a hobby.. But I talked to a friend on the phone today (she lives kinda far away) and way quite productive, so today was definitely a good day, even though new challenges have come up.. Still feeling overwhelmed with the stuff to do but yeah. Okay for now (let's see how long I can keep that up). Thanks for listening :) ~Iris

Hey again, Iris. Glad to hear from you again!

I’m proud of you for trying and for successfully completing a task! You can look back at what you’ve accomplished and use that as motivation to keep going if that might help you. If the “one task at a time” stops working for you, there are other methods to getting things done and I’m happy to suggest every single one of them until we find one that works for you. 

You’re doing a lot and fighting hard to do it and that’s something to be proud of, whether you get motivated by it or not. Look into what internships will allow you to travel a little while you’re working or what you can do and get done so you’re free to travel before school starts. 

New hair can feel like a fresh start and boost your confidence so I definitely hope that helps you! Try to find inspiration while you’re out and about, in the hair salon or on the road there or go on a walk, for your paintings. Don’t force it, let the inspiration hit and go from there (and I’m sure that as an artist you’ve you’ve heard that before but a gentle reminder may be helpful while you’re stressing about your portfolio.) Do you have artworks that you can add to the portfolio already? Go through your completed works and see what would be useful in a college portfolio. 

Again, I’m proud of you for accomplishing what you have. It’s difficult to get through hard times where you’re struggling to keep up with things you have to do vs things you’d rather do, but you’ll find a healthy balance with time. It’s hard to climb a steep slope, especially one as slippery as picking a college that you want to be at and successfully getting into said school, but you’ll get to the top and look down at what you’ve overcome with pride as you press forward with your new life.

Keep me updated, I’m always here to listen whenever you need, Iris.

Love,

Jody Mills