#this is everything to me. may 4 2024 will go down in the history books for me xxx

[johnslittlespoon]

the boys <3 :'))

[itsaleiah]

Romancing Mr. Half-Devil

Summary:

Perhaps Vergil Sparda is much more human than he thought. After all, how could he care so deeply for Alessa Vera, a mere human? How could he risk everything and search for power just to ensure her safety? Was it because of their history together? Was it because they were childhood companions? Was it because she is the last thing he has alive? Or was it because his heart yearned and.. loved... like a human?

ROMANCING MR. HALF-DEVIL’S PLAYLIST

BOOK 1 (PRE DMC3 - DMC 3)

SPARDA’S HISTORY

PROLOGUE

Chapter One: Before The Nightmare, Vergil

Chapter Two: Traces Of The Future, Alessa

Chapter Three: The Crimson Feast, Vergil

BOOK 2 ( DMC - DMC 2)

BOOK 3 (DMC 4)

added chapters soon, will be published on wattpad and ao3..

WRITER’S NOTE:

This game is very special to me. It was actually the game that jumpstarted my Capcom Career! I remember playing DMC5 since I didn’t know what to play. (I was too scared to beat Resident Evil 7 at that time so I told my dad that I’ll play another Capcom game and if I finish it, i’ll continue with RE7. And guess what, I finished it!) I still remember the joy that I felt when I first finished 5, it felt really fulfilling and I couldn’t help but love the characters. After that, the DMC trilogy went on sale and I told my Dad that I wanted this and luckily for me, he bought it! And then - I started writing stories about the characters and the storyline and how to further/enhance the lore and that’s when Alessa was created!

It wasn’t until 2024, that my love for this game (as well as for video games) came back. Summer Break things you can say. I started reading, playing and watching videos about DMC again and thought: “What if I finally wrote my old ideas about Devil May Cry, this time better and much more refined?”

So here you go - the story of Alessa Vera, definitive version. (And please forgive - since I’ve written this when I was on the precipes of getting better mentally or falling down the trail as well as slow updates as I’m busy with schoolworks.)

[bumblebeedrizzzle]

Go to Sleep, Rozemyne!

Maketism Tickletober 2024

Days 4-6: Go to sleep!!

This fic contains so so many MAJOR SPOLIERS for the ASCENDANCE OF A BOOKWORM light novel series. If you haven’t finished reading it, then please don’t read this!!! I don’t want to be responsible for spoilering anyone. I’m so sorry if this means you can’t read it yet, but please enjoy finishing the rest of that wonderful series <3

I’m not sure many people will be interested/caught up enough to read this one, but once I had the idea I just couldn’t stop writing! I thought it fit them perfectly. I also think this is what I’ll use as set-up for writing with these characters again!

Ferdinand was getting sick of Rozemyne staying up so late with her books. There had to be a way to get her to go to sleep…right?

Rozemyne had been locked up in her hidden room in the new library more and more often this week. It was likely a result of all the heavy responsibilities she’d just shouldered by becoming the first underage aub in Yurgenschmidt history. Her retainers had done everything they could to keep their lady from staying up too late, but it seemed tonight she had stopped responding completely. Ferdinand found himself walking from his laboratory over towards the library.

I wonder if she hasn’t made a quick trip down to see her lower family… hmmm. But she did promise not to do so without letting me know first.

Her retainers weren’t thrilled with the idea of him going in her hidden room since they were only engaged, but had begrudgingly accepted it when necessary. Tonight was certainly one of those nights.

I know some of it must be more cultural differences from her previous world but… truly. She defies all logic and any preparations I have.

It was with this thought that Ferdinand entered her hidden room in the library, rubbing his temples.

“Rozemyne? Do you have any idea how late it is?” he asked even before he’d laid eyes on her curled up on her reading sofa. He sighed inwardly in relief that she hadn’t broken her promise, but looked over again when he noticed the lack of response.

…

“Rozemyne.” he said, still softly but firmly.

“Ah!” she cried, her body turning just slightly away from the book cradled in her arms.

“Took you long enough to notice, you fool. Your retainers have been calling for you for ages. Think of all the people you are inconveniencing because of your position.” he scolded.

“F-Ferdinand…” she said, her eyes finally meeting his.

He inhaled sharply. She was…crying.

Sniff

“What time is it?” she asked, yawning a little.

“It’s well past 7th bell. But, I did not mean to scold you so harshly. I am…sorry. Please forgive me, and do not cry, Rozemyne.”

“Cry?” she said, “Am I crying?” She seemed to realize, for the first time, that she had tears dripping down her face.

“Oh. I suppose I am, haha!” she laughed. He thought her face looked strange as she smiled but the tears continued to flow.

“I didn’t mean to inconvenience anyone… it’s just that this book is so wonderful, I couldn’t put it down.”

Ah, there she goes again. It’s always about books. Good grief.

“If it is so wonderful, then why are you crying?” he asked, genuinely curious.

“Ah, well, the thing is, it’s about a family who are separated, and have to find their way back to each other. I think it struck a chord with me..”

“Fool,” he said affectionately, “you might have cried your way into a fever. How does your mana flow feel? I’ll need to check.”

“Well, alright,” she agreed.

“May Heilschmerz’s Blessing be granted,” he murmured, brushing his hand over her eyes.

He checked her health as usual; taking her pulse, temperature, and mana flow. Once he had determined her health was normal, he sighed quietly. He reached up to caress her cheek when his fingertips brushed her neck and his ears were greeted by a strange sound.

“Eep!”

“What… was that?” he asked slowly.

“Ngh, nothing at all Ferdinand! Don’t worry about it. Could you continue your check-up, please?” she replied.

He noticed that she looked flushed. Briefly, he worried that he might have hurt her somehow. But the more he studied her expression, the more he noticed she looked more embarrassed than anything. And it was odd for her to have asked him to continue the exam, instead of begging to go back to her books. Feeling both emboldened and curious, he reached out to brush against the same spot. Much like the first time, his ears were met with a high-pitched, and though he might not admit it out loud, cute sound.

“Eep! H-hey!” she said indignantly.

“It is not, in fact, nothing. You appear to be in good health. But I must investigate this new matter at once.” he said with a serious expression.

“N-no, w-wait! It isn’t a big deal and certainly nothing worth you looking into, Ferdinand.”

“I am quite interested in how such a light touch would cause you to jump back so quickly. Is it a defense mechanism?” he pondered. “And could it end up being a weakness?”

Her face turned red and her mouth flapped open and closed like a fish. Ferdinand continued his ruminations until she exclaimed:

“Sheesh, don’t you people know what being (ticklish) means?” she said, looking exasperated.

“If I did, do you think we’d be having this conversation?” he replied, raising his eyebrow.

“Ngh, fair point… but still. I find it hard to believe that no one in all of Yurgenschmidt would know what being (ticklish) meant.”

“It is never too late to learn,” he said smoothly.

“W-wait!” she cried, “aren’t I supposed to be getting to bed?”

“Well, are you planning on putting that book down and coming with me?”

At this, she puffed out her cheeks and looked away.

“I thought because I had no fever, that perhaps I could finish these last few chapters…?” she asked, looking both sheepish and hopeful.

“I suppose that settles the matter then,” he said.

“Ah, thank you Ferdinand, I really can’t believe you’d be so - “

He fluttered a few fingers experimentally on her neck.

“Eep! Hehehe…”

“Hmmm. A slight reaction here, quite interesting.”

“Hehey! S-stohop that!”

“Fascinating. It seems that lighter touch is much more effective.”

“H-how can you speak s-so calmly while - eep! - (tickling) me?!” she cried.

“I don’t see why I wouldn’t speak calmly?” he retorted.

“Plehease just a fehehew mohohore chapters!”

He cocked an eyebrow at her and continued his “research”. His fingers were becoming more calculated by the moment, and there was no one to come and save her.

“Ohohohokahahay hohohow abohohout juhuhst ohohne chahapter!”

“Rozemyne.” he said firmly, never relenting the ticklish sensations.

“Fihihihihive mohohohore minutes!!!”

“Don’t make me cast Schlaftraum’s blessing on you,” he warned.

He continued to flitter around until he reached the back of her neck and her giggles reached a new octave.

“EHEHEHEHE!” she squealed.

“Hmm, this appears to be quite sensitive for you. I suppose we should alert your guard knights.”

“Wahahahahait plehehease dohohon’t tehehehellll thehem I’m (ticklish)!”

“I suppose I could hold off on sharing the information if you would oblige me and go to sleep.”

“Ihihi ahaham the aub! I shouldn’t - eep! - have to go to bed when you tehehell me to!” she countered, daring to look defiant.

“Ah, I see how it is then.”

And with that he brought his other hand to join the fray. The back of her neck still seemed the most sensitive, but he found that just below her chin also provided quite the response. She lasted for perhaps another minute, but eventually buckled under the pressure of having the two spots attacked at once. Ferdinand was quick to pick up new skills, after all.

“I gihihihive!! Ehehehe I gihihihive! I will go to sleheheheep!”

“Very well. It is quite late; I can investigate this matter more on a future date. Come now, your retainers are waiting.” and with that, he stood up briskly and offered her his hand.

She gulped at that, but still took his hand as he escorted her back into the library proper where everyone was waiting.

She looked slightly flushed, but nothing anyone was bound to notice. If anything, she looked happier than when he’d first come in. She stifled another yawn and he was glad to have pulled her out of her deep focus on the book. It would be there waiting for her tomorrow. For now, she apologized to the retainers who had been waiting on her today. Ferdinand tucked his new discovery away to explore later. He wondered, where else would make her giggle so openly and freely?

[millennialgrandma]

Wrangling the Words

I read a lot, and I love providing recommendations to other people. But I'm never going to be the person that maintains recommendation lists (and let's be honest, there are people out there that do this far better than I would). Instead, I maintain a massive database of everything I've read back to mid-2020 (weeps in a decade of lost reading history). This way, when someone says "hey, I'm looking for a fic that has xyz" I can say "babycakes, give a minute to set my filters and then I got you." Side note: if anyone is ever interested in talking fic tracking, hit me up. I'm your gorl.

As part of this elaborate system, I've been doing monthly wrap up posts (where I link to everything I've written, read, and am reading) to track my statistics for something like a year and a half now. This is meant to be a landing page for those posts. Partly so I can see some high-level data points side by side. Mostly because I'm tied of going on a little treasure hunt every time I want to track one of those old posts down for reference. All wrap up posts are linked below, separated out by month/year.

Monthly Posts

❄️January

2022

Read: 343.9k words (56 fics + 5 WIPs)

Written: 0.3k words (1 ficlet)

2023

Read: 135.1k words (29 fics + 2 WIPs)

Written: 1.9k words (1 fic)

2024

Read: 24.9k words (5 fics + 2 WIPs)

Written:

💌February

2022

Read: 546.9k words (42 fics + 9 WIPs)

Written: 4.9k words (2 fics)

2023

Read: 141.5k words (16 fics + 2 WIPs)

Written:

🍀March

2022

Read: 218.9k words (18 fics + 6 WIPs)

Written: 2.0k words (1 fic)

2023

Read: 123.5 words (18 fics + 1 WIP)

Written:

☔️April

2022

Read: 153.8k words (13 fics + 4 WIPs)

Written:

2023

Read: 862.6k words (7 books + 3 fics)

Written:

🌷May

2022

Read: 212.1k words (18 fics + 6 WIPs)

Written: 11.4k words (2 fics)

2023

Read: 110.4k words (11 fics + 3 WIPs)

Written: 0.5k words (1 ficlet)

🌞June

2022

Read: 453.3k words (27 fics + 8 WIPs)

Written: 1.1k words (1 fic)

2023

Read: 49.7k words (5 fics)

Written:

🎆July

2022

Read: 312.1k words (6 fics + 2 WIPs + 1 book)

Written: 5k (1 fic)

2023

Read: 105.2k (17 fics)

Written:

⛱️August

2021

Read: 538k words (31 fics + 3 WIPs)

Written:

2022

Read: 287.6k words (20 fics + 13 WIPs)

Written: 1.0k words (1 ficlet)

2023

Read: 288.1k words (1 book + 20 fics + 5 WIPs)

Written:

📚September

2021

Read: 494k words (28 fics + 5 WIPs)

Written: 0.3k words (1 ficlet)

2022

Read: 63.8k words (5 fics + 4 WIPs)

Written: 0.5k words (1 ficlet)

2023

Read: 190.7 words (1 book + 9 fics)

🎃October

2021

Read: 590.1k words (16 fics + 5 WIPs)

Written:

2022

Read: 23.4k words (2 fics + 1 WIP)

Written: 5.9k words (1 WIP + 3 fics)

2023

Read: 82.9k (24 fics + 3 WIPs)

Written:

🍂November

2021

Read: 280k words (25 fics + 6 WIPs)

Written: 1.3k words (1 fic)

2022

Read: 123k words (1 fic + 1 WIP + 1 book)

Written:

2023

Read: 364k words (2 fics + 3 WIPs + 1 book)

Written:

🎄December

2021

Read: 510.8k words (55 fics + 4 WIPs)

Written: 0.1k words (1 drabble)

2022

Read: 424.5k words (23 fics + 1 WIP)

Written:

2023

Read: 435.2k words (3 fics + 1 WIP + 3 books)

Written:

Annual Wrap Up & Stats

2021 Wrap Up Post

18 books (word count unknown)

616 fics (7.013 million words)

14 WIPs (823k words)

2022 Wrap Up Post

2 books (165k words)

231 fics (2.173 million words)

23 WIPs (836k words)

2023 Wrap Up Post

13 books (1.539 million words)

147 fics (1.308 million words)

7 WIPs (86k words)

[xtruss]

The English Apple 🍎 Is Disappearing

As The Country Loses Its Local Cultivars, an Orchard Owner and a Group of Biologists are Working to Record and Map Every Variety of Apple Tree They Can Find in the West of England.

— By Sam Knight | May 4, 2024

Illustration By Nicholas Konrad/The New Yorker

In June, 1899, Sabine Baring-Gould, an English rector, collector of folk songs, and author of a truly prodigious quantity of prose, was putting the finishing touches on “A Book of the West,” a two-volume study of Devon and Cornwall. Baring-Gould, who had fifteen children and kept a tame bat, wrote more than a thousand literary works, including some thirty novels, a biography of Napoleon, and an influential study of werewolves. In the preface to his latest, he wrote that it was neither a guide book nor a history of the counties, which would have made it too heavy to carry. Instead, Baring-Gould had chosen to “pick out some incident, or some biography” to elucidate the places that he described. The town of Honiton was notable for its lace; Torquay for its caves; Tiverton for Old Snow, a kindly male witch who had died a few years earlier.

Baring-Gould devoted thirteen pages of his description of Crediton, a “curious, sleepy place” on the banks of the river Creedy, in the heart of Devon, to its apples. For months of the year, the town was awash in fruit and cider. The soil all around was red. In the orchards, trees were heavy with everything from “griggles” (small, stunted apples left over for children) to storied cider-making varieties, such as Kingston Black and Cherry Pearmain. In the fall, Baring-Gould wrote, “The grass of the orchard is bright with crimson and gold as though it were studded with jewels.” Life in the Creedy valley was dense with ancient apple lore, such as “S. Frankin’s Days,” in May, when the Devil might bring a late frost; the firing of blank charges into the bare branches of apple trees on Old Christmas Day, to bring good luck; and “wassailing” the trees, or singing to their health. There had been tough times for apple growers earlier in the century, with the rise of beer and imports from America. But those threats were on the wane. “The trees are having their good times again,” Baring-Gould wrote.

The Trees Are Not Having Good Times Now. On a blustery morning a few weeks ago, I drove to Crediton to visit Sandford Orchards, the largest remaining cider mill in town. The factory was cut into the side of a steep hill so that it could stay cool all year round. One of its oak vats, the General, dates from 1903 and holds ten thousand gallons of fermenting apple juice. When I arrived, the proprietor, Barny Butterfield, was in conversation with a colleague about the flavor profile of the latest batch of Devon Dry, one of the company’s ciders. “There’s no recipe!” Butterfield told me, a little giddily.

Butterfield reopened the ciderworks in 2014. (The original occupant, Creedy Valley Cider, closed in 1967.) Since then, he has become a prominent—and occasionally isolated—advocate for Britain’s encyclopedic variety of apples, of which there are more than two and a half thousand cultivars. The Romans, most likely, brought the first rootstocks. The Saxons inscribed the fruit into land and myth. (Avalon, the Arthurian paradise, means “land of apples.”) The Victorians went melanzane for them. (“Melanzana,” Italian for “eggplant,” comes from “mala insana,” or “mad apple.”) Apples are now the national fruit. But the British apple industry is deep in crisis. Most people agree that the market, which divides into dessert—or eating—apples and cider apples, is broken in one way or another. Butterfield, who is forty-seven, took me upstairs to his office, which was dotted with old stoneware jugs and scientific papers from the nineteen-fifties detailing the juice composition of cider-apple varieties, and sat down at his desk. “We’re going into the crater,” he said.

When Baring-Gould wrote about Crediton, Devon had twenty-six thousand acres of apple orchards. Ninety per cent of those are thought to be gone. And the growers who are left are losing money fast. According to British Apples & Pears Limited (B.A.P.L.), a trade organization that represents three hundred apple and pear farmers in the country, the cost of producing apples in the U.K. has increased by thirty per cent since 2021—an uptick driven mainly by rising energy prices and labor costs. During the same period, retail prices have risen by only a quarter of that. “So there’s a big gap,” Ali Capper, the executive chair of B.A.P.L., told me last week. “Mind the gap, I’ve started to say.”

Capper grows cider and dessert apples overlooking the Malvern Hills, by the border between Worcestershire and Herefordshire. She said that the cost of producing a pack of six Gala apples, a cultivar first developed in New Zealand in the nineteen-thirties, which is one of Britain’s most popular apples, was currently one pound and six pence. But the supermarkets weren’t paying that. “I would be surprised if there’s any retailer in the U.K that is paying a pound,” Capper said.

The British grocery market is an oligopoly. Eight retailers control ninety-two per cent of sales. A recent report by the House of Lords Horticultural Sector Committee described their power as “behemothic.” They can source cold-stored Galas from all over the world. (About sixty per cent of apples sold in the U.K. are imported.) For cultural, possibly griggle-related, reasons, British consumers like a small apple, one that fits easily in the hand. The U.S. and Asian markets prefer larger fruit, so foreign farmers can often sell smaller apples that have been rejected by their own retailers to British grocers at a discount. “It’s very difficult to compete with that,” Capper said.

The combination of steeply rising costs and being undercut by cheaper, similar apples from overseas is proving unmanageable. “It’s happened very quickly,” Capper told me. “We’ve had businesses going from profitable and able to cope with volatility to losing money.” As a rule, British apple growers tend to plant between eight hundred thousand and a million and a half new trees each year to refresh their orchards and keep up with changing tastes. In recent years, the total has been closer to four hundred thousand. “If you don’t reinvest as a sector, you don’t stay with the market,” Capper said. “And if you can’t stay with the market, then you go out of business.” Last fall, a survey of a hundred fruit and vegetable farmers found that forty-nine were expecting to go bankrupt in the next twelve months.

While all British apple growers are suffering, they don’t see the crisis the same way. Capper struck me as phlegmatic about the power of the supermarkets. “Loyalty is gone,” she said. “It’s all about buying cheap.” She was also unsentimental about the rise of generic, global apple varieties—often characterized by white flesh, a crisp bite, and an ability to store well, or hold their “pressures,” for months at a time—many of which have been developed by apple breeders in Australasia. The tastiest apple at Britain’s National Fruit Show for eight of the past ten years has been the Jazz, the marketing name for the Scifresh cultivar—a cross between Gala and Braeburn, two New Zealand varieties—which was first developed in 1985.

Capper told me that the sector was going through a moment comparable to one it experienced in the late seventies, when French farmers started exporting the Golden Delicious to the U.K. under the slogan “Le Crunch.” “It nearly killed the British industry,” she said. “There was obviously the loss of an awful lot of orchards. And then what happened was that there was a refocus by the industry on varieties that could compete.” Of the twenty-five or so varieties of eating apple now grown commercially in Britain, only nine originated here. “There is a lot of hand-wringing about that,” Capper said. “But the truth is that those traditional varieties were actually very hard to grow.” Yields were unpredictable and shelf lives short. Between 2015 and 2020, the annual crop of Cox’s Orange Pippin—the sharp, tangy taste of English autumns since it first went on sale in the eighteen-fifties—fell by more than fifty per cent.

For Butterfield, this is a counsel of despair. “The Cox, the Egremont Russet,” he said, with feeling, referring to a rusty-looking but delicious apple raised on the estate of the Earl of Egremont, in Petworth, in the late nineteenth century. “I mean, the Egremont Russet—what a fucking apple.” In his view, global supply chains and a few standardized cultivars have separated Britain’s population from the apple of its eye. “One of the problems that we’ve got is, What are we saving? We’re saving dreary red fruit that tastes of absolute nothing,” Butterfield told me. “There’s nothing to say. If you could put an Egremont Russet back into someone’s hands—put it back into their lunchbox—for a moment they are transported, because the amount of flavor and richness, you could get excited about that. . . . The problem is that the great British public are not exposed to this.”

To remind us of what was here, Butterfield and a group of biologists at the University of Bristol have been working to record and map every variety of apple tree they can find in the West of England. The project started in 2017, when Liz Copas—the last pomologist at the Long Ashton Research Station, a now defunct government fruit-and-cider research institute—revealed that the breeding records of a group of novel cider-apple cultivars known as the Girls had been lost. Three crop scientists—Keith Edwards, Amanda Burridge, and Mark Winfield—adapted a form of DNA technology, which they had used to identify different strains of wheat, to take a genomic “fingerprint” from the Girls’ leaves.

Since then, the apple-tree database has grown to incorporate every cultivar held in the National Fruit Collection, at Brogdale, in Kent, and hundreds more, from the West Country. When Edwards and I met, he told me, “I worry about these kinds of interviews because one of the things it does is initiate an avalanche of e-mails from people who have an interesting apple tree in their garden.” In 2020, he and the team received around eight hundred tree samples—including entire branches—at their laboratory in Bristol. “The majority of them were Cox’s or Bramleys,” Edwards said. (Bramleys are the country’s best-loved cooking apples.) “That’s fine.”

In his office in Crediton, Butterfield pulled up the database on his computer and started reading off the local varieties, most of them cider-apple trees, many of which he had sampled, logged, and pruned himself: “Harvest Lemon, Reinette d’Obry, Michelin, Chisel Jersey, Crimson Newton, Tremlett’s Bitter, Crimson King, Fair Maid of Devon, Tan Harvey.” Every chance seedling—a core thrown from a car window—has its own DNA and is highly unlikely to produce decent apples. But cultivars, which have been selected at one time or another for their fruit, yield, or hardiness, are clones. (Apple-tree grafting was established by the time of Alexander the Great.) The trees that Butterfield and the crop scientists are most interested in are lost cultivars, occasional trees with matching DNA, whose potential was once seen but is now forgotten. “Group 1, Group 7, Group 15,” Butterfield read out. “These are unique. They’re in no collection anywhere.” He went on, “But they’re in Cross Barton, and they’re in Uppincott, and then they’re in Whiteways.” Whiteways, fifteen miles east of Butterfield’s ciderworks, was once the largest apple orchard in the world.

Butterfield blends the juices of between forty to seventy apple varieties to make his ciders. He dreams of finding a lost cultivar that will top them all. “Where are these shit-hot, really interesting apples that are gonna make great drinks?” he said. In the seventeen-twenties, the fruit of a single tree, named Royal Wilding, which grew next to the old port road to Exeter, was the talk of the county. There is no known surviving graft. Butterfield is also on the hunt for what he calls “natural survivors.” Climate change is altering Britain’s apple harvests. The Dabinett, the mainstay of the cider-apple crop, requires cold winters, especially as a young tree, in order to flower properly in the spring—a process known as vernalization. But frost and snow are becoming ever rarer in the U.K. (Butterfield’s best-performing orchard is in a north-facing valley.) The industry will need to find a successor apple—to go back to its library of cultivars—at some point. “We have funnelled our genetics . . . we have picked favorites,” Butterfield said. “If we don’t keep the broader, ancient DNA in existence, then it’s gone.”

The real spirit of the project is both nostalgic and utopian. The records of costermongers (originally apple sellers) from the nineteenth century show that English apples were sold from September to May, without chemicals or cold storage or cargo ships to carry them around the world. “What fucking apples were they, that weren’t stored in a giant refrigerator and gassed?” Butterfield said. He told me about Ironsides, which became soft enough to eat only after Christmas, after a few months in a cellar, and were edible all year round. Perhaps there is a future in which local, low-carbon farming and centuries of apple-growing knowledge become necessary, or even desirable, again. Perhaps there isn’t. Just in case, Butterfield wants supermarkets to consider devoting ten per cent of their apples to “heritage varieties,” to give the country’s traditional cultivars a chance. “They’re never going to agree to anything that moves the dial,” he acknowledged. “But if we can keep these apples alive and remind ourselves . . .”

A couple of weeks after I visited Crediton, I called Duncan Small, who has helped run Charlton Orchards in the village of Creech St. Michael, in Somerset, for the past thirty-five years. Small specializes in growing traditional English varieties, including Ashmead’s Kernel. “It looks rough, quite frankly. It often has cracks in it,” Small told me. “Not particularly appealing to the eye, but an absolutely delicious apple. Yeah. Really good. Quite popular during Victorian times.” Small is sixty-four. He and his wife, Sally, are closing the orchard. “It’s not viable anymore, unfortunately,” he said. Small was not sure that the wider public cared about English apples anymore. “I don’t think enough people think about it, more than just having a crunch and chuck it over their shoulder,” he said. “Where it comes from doesn’t really worry them.”

It has been a cold spring, but the first apple blossoms have started to appear. I asked Small if he enjoyed this time of year and he said that these were probably the most stressful weeks in the orchard. A late frost, or not enough pollinators, could wreck the harvest. Then he started talking about his father, Robin, who used to tend the trees before him. During cold, clear nights in the spring, when he feared a frost, or when the wind got up, in the fall, and the boughs were full of fruit, Small’s father would be too anxious to stay in the house. “He just couldn’t rest. He’d just have to be out,” Small said. His father would walk up and down among the trees in the dark. “He couldn’t do anything. But he just felt that if the apples were out there being exposed to it, he ought to be as well,” Small recalled. “So he’d go out and torture himself.” ♦

[yet-another-fan-girl9]

Inhuman (4)

Summary: All beings in the universe have a soulmate except for Midgardians. People can hear their soulmate in their heads. For almost five hundred and fifty years, Loki believed that he had no soulmate until 1513 when a Midgardian princess was born. Will fate be kind to them or will the universe tear them apart?

Warnings: violence, language, hella historical inaccuracies (I tried to do research but then got lazy), maybe some AOS season 3 spoilers(?)

Word Count: ~4000

“Captain.” Loki strode up to him. “I need to speak to you. Alone,” he added when he spotted his brother linger by the doorway. “It’s about (Y/N).”

The blond supersoldier turned to look at Loki. “How did you know her name?”

“I know everything about her. Or, I knew everything. She is— was my soulmate.”

“S-soulmate? Those things are real?”

“Midgardians are the only ones in the nine realms that don’t have soulmates. For a long time, I believed that I did not have a soulmate. It wasn’t until 1513 I felt the connection.”

“1513?” Steve stared at him. “So she’s even older than I thought.”

“Yes, she was the queen for a time. I thought she had died even before the date in the history books.”

“This is a lot of information,  Loki.” He sat down. “A queen? Queen… (Y/N)? You expect me to believe that Queen (Y/N), one of the infamous Tudors, Queen of England is still alive and became a hitman?”

“It’s hard for me to believe it as well. Trust me, when I came to the conclusion that it was her, that she was alive…” he drifted off.

“Thank you for telling me. This information will be important in trying to track this organization down. Maybe you should tell this to everyone else?”

“No, I would rather not participate in one of your little presentations.” Loki turned and strode out of the room, leaving Steve to process everything.

[New York, New York, May 2024]

It had been a couple of months since you had been to the Avengers compound and there had been no sign of the superheroes. You were getting bored, though it wasn’t the longest you had been on hitwoman hiatus. Surprisingly, Max wasn’t in the same mood as you. He and Liam were having a jolly good time galavanting around the city or whatever young couples did these days.

You sat at your kitchen counter reading your emails. There were plenty of job offers you could take. Should you resume taking them? What if one was a trap set by the Avengers? It wasn’t like you were going to run out of resources any time soon but you were bored goddamn it.

Alright, just a simple, quiet job. One that you could do on your own. This one seemed inconspicuous. Fifteen thousand for making a woman’s unfaithful, abusive husband look like he committed suicide. You always would help someone in a bad situation and she even offered a down payment of five thousand. Just in case of a worst-case situation, you sent Max your plan.

I’m going out on a small job. If I’m not back by tomorrow at noon, you know what to do.

After you had the little excursion at the Avenger’s compound, you had sent out a step by step list of what to do if someone was compromised by the heroes. You appreciated what they did, as long as they stayed away from you and your employees. You couldn’t let them dismantle your small empire after over a hundred years. Yes, you killed for a living, but sometimes it’s for good.

Like right now, you sat in your black Lambo by Mrs. Davis’ apartment, preparing to kill her husband. You got out and smoothed down your white blouse that was paired with some ripped jeans. Your boots sent soft echoes down the empty street. You made your way to the front door and rang the unpleasant sounding doorbell.

“Hello, are you Mr. Davis?” you asked when the door opened to reveal a tall, blond man. You leaned against the doorframe and looked up at him through your eyelashes.

“Yes, who’s asking?” Although the question was defensive, his tone was suggestive.

“Oh, I heard about you from my friend.” You twirled your hair around your finger. “I was wondering if your wife was home?”

“Fortunately, she is not. Come in, come in.”

You followed the man into the apartment, disgusted by how quickly he had let you in. You walked past a framed photo of the Davises at their wedding. Does the fucker make all of his mistresses walk past the photo? While you strode down the hallway, you slipped on a pair of leather gloves. He led you directly to the bedroom.

Well, no use in waiting. You pulled a gun out of your jeans and when the man turned around, you pressed it to his temple. A breath hitched in his throat and he raised his arms.

“I need you to write something for me,” you sneered. He nodded and grabbed a notepad from the bedside table. You stayed behind him, the threat of the gun always in the back of his mind. “You’re going to confess to everything. Hurting your wife. Cheating. Everything bad.” He complied and fortunately, his hand didn’t shake much. He was left handed, you noticed as you read the note from over his shoulder. “Tell them you feel guilty. So fucking guilty you couldn’t live with yourself.”

When he signed the note, you tore it off and put it somewhere blood wouldn’t stain it. Mr. Davis was shaking like a leaf while you stood to his left and raised your gun to his head again. At least he wasn’t pleading for his life. He wasn’t on his knees, groveling. Without warning, you pulled the trigger.

The man’s blood and brains coated the bedroom wall as he crumpled to the ground. The loud bang of the gun rang in your ears. More blood spilled from the bullet holes in his skull and you watched it seep into the carpet. You placed the gun in Mr. Davis’ left hand and wrapped his fingers around the handle. Then you placed the note on the bed.

No white rose today, you were certain the Avengers were keeping an eye out for them, but you still took a picture to send to the newly widowed Mrs. Davis. You quickly left the apartment, people would have heard the gun go off, and made your way to your car. You could hear the sirens in the distance as you drove away.

🌹

“Something’s happening!”

Everyone rushed into the room to see all of the screens flashing. A typical radar screen with a large blinking dot. Stark had mimicked the technology from the ship Loki had stolen from the Grandmaster and combined it with his own. What resulted was a powerful, as well as specific, radar system.

“What the?” Thor mumbled and looked at the numbers on another screen. “I recognize these signatures but I just can’t place them.”

Brunnhilde and Loki pushed their way to the front.

“I suppose they do look a little familiar.” Loki shrugged and Brunnhilde nodded her agreement.

“Hey, for the idiots back here,” Barton said from the back, “you guys want to tell us what the fuck’s going on?”

“The radar is picking up a surge of energy,” Stark pointed at the dot. “A big surge of energy based on the numbers.”

“Shouldn’t we be doing something about them?” Steve asked.

“Here’s the thing.” Stark pushed his way through the small crowd and stopped at another screen. “This one is scanning up and it keeps picking up something. Never long enough to get a good reading. Most likely it’s a ship using a cloaking mechanism. Woah, what the fuck? Something’s coming down.”

“I remember now,” Thor cut in and everyone turned to him expectantly.

“Well, get on with it,” Steve prompted.

“Yeah, do we need to suit up?” Nat added.

“Yes.” Thor looked at Loki. “The Kree are here.”

🌹

You were about thirty minutes away from your penthouse, taking unpopulated back roads, when you noticed something in the night sky. It looked like a large meteor and it looked like it was headed right toward you. Fast.

“Shit,” you mumbled to yourself and stepped on the gas. Your head hit the head rest as your car was propelled forward.

Moments later, the meteor hit the spot your car had just vacated. The resounding explosion caused you to lose control of your car that was going very fast. Fortunately, it stopped quickly. Unfortunately, it was stopped by a brick wall.

“Motherfucker.”

Your head ached and when you gingerly felt around, your hand came away stained with red. More blood dripped from your nose onto the airbag and it felt like your upper arm was broken. You could already feel the small cuts from broken glass heal, and it wouldn’t take long for your bone to snap back in place, but definitely not fast enough.

You had heard that you shouldn’t get out of a crashed car unless it was going to blow but that advice was for normal people. You didn’t want to stay stuck in your car. Unbuckling your seatbelt was hardest, especially with your arm.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck. Shit. Motherfucker!”

Of fucking course the fucking door couldn’t fucking open all the way. You were able to do some maneuvering to pull yourself out of the hole in the wall but it included a lot more swearing. The fires from the meteor had settled and you realized that it wasn’t a meteor at all. It was some kind of pod that had fallen to Earth.

Two large figures emerged from the burning ship. In the light of the fires, you saw their metal staffs and blue skin. They wore gold on their dark cloaks and around their jaws. You were curious but you also knew that their intentions weren’t going to be good. The Avengers had probably been notified as well and you really couldn’t deal with them right now.

“INHUMAN!” one of them roared and they both pointed their weapons at you.

Then it all clicked. Blue angels that fell from the heavens to Earth. Called the Kree.

“Kree,” you responded much to their shock. “What do you want?”

“You. The Inhumans. We are here for our projects. Only the best will be brought back to Hala. The rest will be terminated.”

“Thanks for the warning.” You back up as inconspicuous as you could, cradling your arm. “How do you choose who lives and who dies?”

To answer your question, one of the Kree activated something on his metal vambrace. A holographic screen popped up and a bright yellow light scanned you.

“Species: Inhuman,” a male voice reached your ears. “Abilities: enhanced human body, strength, healing—”

“Yeah the list goes on and on,” you said. There should be an alley you could escape through somewhere.

“—combat, memory, and speed. Threat: high.”

“You’re coming with us.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

You reached the alley and ran down it as fast as you could. Everytime your arm moved strangely, you winced. You had no plan. No idea where to go once you got to the end of the alley.

But you didn’t have to worry about that because you never made it out. Your legs were swept out from under you and your back hit the pavement. While you struggled to get breath back into your lungs, one of the Kree appeared and loomed above you. He didn’t smile but his eyes held victory. Then he grabbed your leg and pulled you back towards the crash.

“W-where’s your pal?” you said once you could speak. He didn’t respond but he did drop your leg when you reached the pod.

Taking the chance, you struggled to your feet. Run or fight? You had already tried to run and he had reached you before you got far. Fighting was going to hurt but it was the only option you had left. You needed a plan. The glint of the Kree’s weapon caught your eye. It was a terrible plan, but it was a plan. Fuck it.

Your knife came out of your boot right as the Kree turned to face you. With your injured arm, you swung your knife at his face. It barely scratched his face and he tried to raise his own weapon but he discovered that your other arm held it down. You tried to stab the hand holding the weapon, which looked more like an axe than you realized, but he grabbed your broken arm.

You suppressed a scream, but dropped your knife. He pushed you hard and you stumbled backwards a few steps. The Kree swung his axe at you and the pointed tip cut through your blouse and grazed your chest. You moved forward, dodging the next swing with your eyes on your knife. When you got close enough, he grabbed your wrist and began to squeeze. You could feel the bones start to groan under his grasp.

He went to sweep your legs with his own leg again but this time you jumped forward and used his own momentum against him. He fell on his back with you over him. You grabbed your knife off of the ground and he growled when you brought it down on his wrist. The weapon clattered to the pavement.

The Kree flipped around and wrapped his thick hands around your neck. He lifted you off the ground a few inches before slamming your head back onto the hard ground. Combined with the head injury from the car crash and the lack of oxygen, black spots began to cloud your vision.

You brought your knee up to his crotch and his grip lessened but only slightly. You moved the knife around in his wrist and reached for the axe with the other. Your fingers wrapped around the cold metal and before the Kree could realize you were armed, you plunged the weapon into his side. You pushed him over and pulled out the axe. Its blade was stained blue instead of red.

“Inhuman scum,” he spat.

Movement in the sky caught your attention and you saw more pods falling in the distance.

“How many of you are there?” you asked and pointed the axe at his face.

“You will lose.”

Something pulled your attention away from the Kree. Sirens and shouts came from the next street over. You were able to feel Loki through your pain. You were able to pick out Steve Roger’s commanding voice in the noise. The Avengers have arrived to save the day. You raised the axe over your head and cleanly separated the Kree’s body from his head. You felt the now familiar tugging grow stronger.

You escaped away from the heroes and Loki with the axe grasped firmly in your hand. It took some pain to fish the burner phone out of your back pocket and despite it almost falling apart in your hand, you were able to call Max.

“Hello?”

“Max, thank God—”

“Hey, girl. Liam, it’s (Y/N).”

“Hi (Y/N).” Liam’s voice came through the phone.

“Hi. We have a problem. A really big fucking problem. I bet it’s on the news, but the fucking Kree are here.”

“Kree? Like from the stories? Blue angels and shit?”

“Yes, I need you to come pick me up at the Battery. Now, please. A couple of ‘em caused me to crash my car—”

“Not the black Lambo?” he whined.

“Yeah, the black Lambo. Anyways, have Liam spread the word to really get underground. Also if they stick to groups, it’ll be easier to take down the Kree.”

“Wait, what do they want?” You heard the couple moving around and keys jingling.

“To bring the strongest Inhumans back to their planet and kill the rest.”

“Damn, okay, we’ll be there soon.” The line went dead.

You stood on the sidewalk, watching the pods fall. The gash in your forehead from the crash was healed and the pain in your arm was definitely less intense than before. You looked at the cut on your chest and realized that it was still bleeding lightly. It was a thin cut, just a graze but it hadn’t healed yet.

Goddamn it, the Kree’s weapons were made from fucking vibranium.

🌹

He had felt her, but she was nowhere to be found. Loki surveyed the scene before him. The first thing he noticed was the Kree pod that had created a small crater in the middle of the street. Then there was the car halfway through a brick wall. A decapitated Kree lay on the ground. Oh, and it seemed like every fucking thing was on fire. At least there were no crowds.

“It looks like more pods are coming,” Steve looked at the sky. “We should cut them off before they get too far.”

“These are Kree Reapers.” Loki examined the armor. “Stronger than regular Kree. They’re savages. Hunters.” Which makes the fact that she was able to kill one that much more impressive.

“Alright.” Thor nodded and glared at the corpse. “Let’s get these guys out of the sky.” He and the others that could fly took off towards the pods.

“She was here,” Loki said to Steve, not letting the others hear. “But she was gone by the time we arrived.”

“You could… sense her?” Steve responded.

“Yes. We used to have another connection, a telepathic connection. All soulmates have them, but for some reason ours broke a long time ago.”

“Hey boys,” Romanoff called. “Doesn’t this knife look familiar?” She removed a knife that had been lodged into the Kree’s wrist.

“It looks like the one we found in the Senator’s bodyguard which means that she was here,” Barnes concluded.

“Where’s his weapon?” Brunnhilde looked around. “It was probably used to decapitate him.”

“Are there any cameras on this street?” Steve asked and checked the buildings.

“Nope,” Romanoff shrugged. “But Bucky and I can probably figure out what happened. We’ve been to a lot of scenes like this.”

“I’m guessing the crash of the pod caused her to crash her car into the wall,” Barnes guessed and walked over to the wrecked car. “There’s some blood on the airbag but I can’t tell the extent of the injuries.”

“The most common car accident injuries are broken bones in the legs and arms as well as whiplash and other head injuries,” Romanoff supplied.

“She was able to defeat a Kree Reaper even with the injuries she had sustained,” Loki pointed out. “And based on the fact that she disappeared before we arrived, her legs are uninjured.”

“It looks like the pods have room for two of these large shitheads,” Brunnhilde reported. “There’s only one dead bastard, so where’s the other one?”

“Are you guys done there?” Stark’s voice crackled in everyone’s ears. “We need some back up. Now!”

“On our way.”

🌹

“You look like shit,” Max said when you collapsed in his backseat.

“Yeah, fuck you too,” you groaned. Your back was bruised from the multiple times you were slammed to the ground and your head was throbbing.

“Need help patching yourself up?” Liam handed you a first aid kit from the front.

“I’ve got it.” You needed to get all of this blood off of you. “Thanks, though. Maybe I should replace Max with you.”

“You wouldn’t,” your right hand man gasped. “What’s with the… spear? Axe?”

“Both, kinda. It belonged to the Kree before I cut off its head.”

“So they want to kill us all?”

“Only the weak ones. The ones they find useful I guess they’ll turn us into warriors back on their home planet.”

“I wonder what I’d be classified as,” Max hummed.

“Trust me, you don’t want to be close enough where they can scan you because you’ll be close enough for them to kill you. Easily.”

When you finally pulled into the lot under your penthouse it felt like you released a breath you were holding. Your head injuries were gone and your arm should be back to normal in fifteen minutes. Even though you were physically healed, you were exhausted.

You made it through a soothing shower before you pulled on your favorite silk pajamas and collapsed into bed.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Yes.” It had been twenty days since your father had died and today he was going to be put to rest. “Are you sure?”

“You are my friend. I would do anything for you.” Agnes secured the jewels around your neck. “You are also my Queen. I have to do what you tell me.”

“Even if it means your death?”

Sunlight streamed through the curtains and you rubbed your eyes. Your phone told you that it was almost eleven thirty in the morning. You sat up in bed and stretched your arms over your head. Everything felt normal and you didn’t feel sore at all. You examined the thin cut on your chest. It had scabbed over and probably wouldn’t leave a scar.

The weight of last night’s events crashed down on you. The Kree were going to be a huge problem. You needed to keep your people safe. When Afterlife fell, your organization became the largest group of Inhumans. When you reached the kitchen it took you a moment to register the two men sitting at your counter.

“You’re still here.”

“Of course,” Max said and handed you a cup of coffee. “You were looking pretty rough last night.”

“We have a lot of work ahead of us.” You looked back and forth between Max and Liam to ensure they were willing to join you.

“You’ll need all the help you can get,” Liam confirmed.

“Yeah, we’ll need all the help we can get.”

“What are you hinting at, Max?” You raised an eyebrow.

“The Avengers!”

“No.”

“Come on. Just think about it.”

“So do you think we should gather everyone and fight or disperse and hide?” You ignored Max and looked at Liam.

“Maybe gather and hide like you said last night? We shouldn’t go looking for a fight. Especially with these guys.”

“(Y/N), the Avengers might be able to help.”

“You got the word out right? I want to hear from everyone periodically.”

“Yeah, the word’s out. I hope you don’t mind, but Izzy’s coming here to bunker down with us.”

“It’s fine I have plenty of space.”

Izzy arrived at two and settled into one of your guest rooms.

“So Max texted me and tried to make me make you go to the Avengers.”

“Of fucking course he did. You can just ignore him.”

The four of you ate Chinese takeout for dinner. The whole day, you had been contacting other Inhumans warning them of the Kree threat. According to the few contacts you had in Europe and Asia, only one pod landed in Russia. They had quickly taken care of that. None landed in Australia or Africa. You didn’t know how fast the Kree would move south, though.

“I think,” Max began. “That you and the Avengers can exchange information.”

“Max when will you drop this?”

“Never.”

“I think they can help too.”

“Izzy, not you.”

“Just hear me out.” She held up her hands. “I don’t know your history with them, but they did manage to eliminate a few of them last night. And a few of them know more about the Kree than we do.”

Max nodded and raised his eyebrows. You looked at Liam for backup but he just shrugged and then fed his boyfriend some orange chicken.

“It’s three against one,” Liam smirked.

“No.”

🌹

There was something in the room. The AI had called everyone to the living room for a meeting. Loki had thought it was a strange place to meet but at least the seating was more comfortable there. Something was close. He settled down on the chair that was distanced from the rest.

 Only two members of the team had gotten seriously injured during the fight with the Kree. Wilson had been knocked out of the sky which resulted in multiple broken bones. The Maximoff girl had been knocked unconscious after she had been hit by seemingly hundreds of lasers. She still hasn’t woken up.

Everyone was certainly still in rough condition, even twenty-four hours later. Morale wasn’t very high either. The majority of the Kree Reapers had escaped.

“Why the fuck are we meeting here?” Stark asked when he spread out on a couch.

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” Steve said. “I thought you called us here.”

“I thought you called us here.”

“You may be wondering why I summoned you all here.” Four figures emerged from the shadows.

*

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Tags: @kaithehero @liliannyah @andreasworlsboring101 @oatballsoffury @aberrant-annie @simplybree @adalina-perez @emage-king @yandereforyou @notactiveonmain @tvdplusriverdale

[pctmama]

It’s Calling Me

About 4 years ago, I found a book while I was working as a Children’s Librarian in Brookings, Oregon. It was almost pocket sized, blue, and thick. I can’t really say what drew me to pulling it off the shelf but during those days I had plenty of time to browse the stacks. I held it in my hands and flipped through the pages, knowing in that moment that everything had changed but not really understanding what I was getting myself into. 

This book opened my eyes to an epic feat I had no idea existed previously.

https://www.amazon.com/Pacific-Crest-Trail-Hiking-Mexico/dp/1852849207

After soaking in the book, reading the details and picking apart the various necessary requirements to finishing the PCT, I suppressed the little voice inside me that called me to the trail. When I spoke about it out loud, all I could say was, “Wow, this is crazy.” Never once sharing what had sparked inside me.

I checked the book back in and shelved it myself while also quietly shelving the entire idea away in the back of my mind.

No more than a few months later, I traveled back to Colorado, through Utah, and then up to Port Townsend, Washington. Over the course of the next year, I married my now husband and grew a new life inside me. We added our daughter to our team in 2019 and intended to grow our roots deep and strong there.

As plans often go, a different path emerged instead. After two years of trying to create our home in Port Townsend, Washington, events led us back to Utah to see our families and regroup.

After eight excruciating months there, my husband and I finally threw in the towel and made the move back to Oregon. Six months in the Willamette Valley, and I know we have finally found our place.

I feel the call to the mountains when I see them off in the distance across the valley. I always do and likely, always will. My history of growing up at 8,600ft probably has a lot to do with it. That’s another story for another time.

Somehow, somewhere, in the past month, the little idea resurfaced.

It started quiet, just as quiet as it had been four years ago when I put it to rest in Brookings. This quiet yearning for adventure never really stops, which is likely the reason I have moved so many times. As the days and weeks have passed, the idea of hiking the PCT has become different than my usual desire.

I don’t feel the need to uproot my life anymore, like I once did. I am in love with the Willamette Valley and the peace that comes with staying put. It’s just, the pull to the trail is so strong it’s all I think about. And it is accompanied by complicated feelings.

I have regrets for not honoring the idea years ago when I didn’t have a husband or young child to care for, wishing I had tried it when things could be more simple. I feel guilty knowing that when I hike it, I will be gone for months. I feel scared to bring my daughter yet scared to leave her too. I feel scared to wait any longer. I feel sick thinking about the logistics.

I finally spoke the idea out loud, about two week ago. My husband was not interested in joining the thru-hike but was supportive of my goal. He attempted to lay out logical ideas of how it will be difficult to make it happen.

All I can think about it: How can I make this happen? How soon can I make it happen? 

My current timeline seems to point to this: 

2022: Keep on, keepin’ on.  Take some shorter treks. Maybe section hike some of the PCT. Work towards finishing my BS Nova will turn 3.

2023: Finish my BS. Use a combination of money from sales of the camper and car for a work van.

Apply for a mortgage.  Start looking for a house. Nova will turn 4. Try to do a longer hike. Wonderland Trail? Oregon Coast Trail?

Get a remote/parttime/time job to start saving for what’s to come

2024: Buy a house/be moved in Nova will turn 5

Start the PCT in May 2024.

So, here’s to the next two years of preparing. Two necessary years, because I simply cannot fathom a world where I haven’t set my family up for success before I leave. 

I think my next steps are to buckle down on my degree and try to get it done sooner rather than later. The sooner I can finish that, the sooner I can look for part time work to help save up. Also, day hikes. Lots and lots of day hikes and walking. I am going to try to walk every day starting from now, even if it means Nova and I butt heads a bit on the way out of the house. 

Cheers, here’s to the PCT guiding me forward.