#this is why i love having a good university library at my disposal

[lgbtmi]

for both: 4, 10, 11, 19 :)

i'm assuming this is the meta oc questions post you're asking for! so here you go :> if you meant one of the other like two ask meme things i've reblogged yesterday, lmk, i'll edit!

4. Why did you give them the name they have? What is the in-universe reason for their name?

Willow got her name from a Taylor Swift-song, simply because her concept was sex worker in Amsterdam's red light district, and I thought it'd be so funny if her name was Willow because "Life was a willow and it bent right to your wind", and she's bendy in any direction her clientele wanted her. Her middle name was recently added, because I watched Barbie (2023) too often, and her last name is Turing, because sometimes you have to hide queer history in character names. In universe, her mom liked Willow as a name, and her middle name came from her grandmother. Clíodhna was named for the queen of the Banshees in Irish mythology. Her backstory and lore are heavily based in Shakespeare, Celtic mythology, and a little in Changeling the Dreaming, so when @kentuckycaverats suggested the name, I stuck with it. Clíodhna is plagued by the ghosts of her past, after all. Sure, they're not wraiths or bean sidhe, but they basically are just that to her. Additionally, her last name is Ó Neill, which is rooted in Celtic migration and history. What is a Scot if not just an Irish Dál Riata settler? And the Ui Neill clan was one of their allies, as well as one of the most prominent families back in those days. In universe, she was born as Kenna MacNeil to Irish immigrants. She was born in Scotland, but after her aging was stopped due to her Sire ghouling her, Kenna MacNeil has been declared dead. When her Sire moved her to Ireland to basically function as a spy, Irishifying her name to blend in better made sense... Besides, Kenna MacNeil had been dead for a long time. The court in Derry are Irish nationalists, her English or Scottish name would do worse in Ireland than Clíodhna would.

10. What is your favorite trait regarding your oc?

Willow is so fierce in how much she loves. She has a couple of people she'd quite literally do anything for, even if it puts herself in harm's way. My favourite Clíodhna-trait is something that happens when I play her. She has been raised in Scotland, but over the last century she's been forced into an RP English accent. As her emotional state changes, so does her accent. If she gets agitated, stressed, or scared, her accent will shift from RP English to her native accent. It's a lot of fun to flex my accent library on my friends /lh

11. What is your least favorite trait regarding your oc?

Willow's too nervous for her own good. Some shit has happened, and where she once was a stereotypical confident Toreador with the entire world at her disposal, she's now just chronically afraid of everything and losing touch with reality and she has no idea who she is anymore. It's a little bit stressful. She'll grow out of it <3 Clíodhna I haven't had the chance to play much, yet, but I have a sinking feeling I'm going to hate what she's like with her Sire. But hey, that's what being blood bound to a Ventrue will do to you, I suppose.

19. How might your oc react to finding out you are the one responsible for their life?

Willow would probably find it very weird to know that I'm literally chronically talking about her on the internet to the little gay people in my phone. But also, maybe she'd get some strength out of this? Who knows. She'd probably want nothing to do with me and hope that I never visit Amsterdam ever. Clíodhna? She sees ghosts all the time. If I tell her I'm responsible for her life, she'd probably consider me another one of the voices she hears sometimes that say things she doesn't quite understand. She might be a bit confused because I'm not her father, ex partner, or one of the two people she killed upon embrace, but it would be nothing out of her ordinary.

[more-than-a-princess]

🐣What were you like as a kid? Allegedly? Has anything changed, and have people noticed?

In Depth and Personal Munday Meme - Accepting!

My favorite places as a child were quiet, full of books and/or dolls, and somewhere I could wear a pretty dress, eat sweets, and read to my dolls or stuffed animals. I'm an only child and have parents with busy careers, so I was left on my own (middle school and up) or with a sitter or nanny quite often. I had trouble making friends and relating to other kids as I was constantly surrounded by adults whom I could reason with: I'm pretty sure part of the reason why I was bullied so much was that I attempted to reason with other kids the way I did with adults (or tried to) and couldn't understand why they just teased me instead. I begged to be homeschooled but my parents said no and sent me to private school hell instead. I think the only time I really liked going to school for something more than my favorite classes was university.

That said, my favorite things in life were the bookstore and/or library, Scholastic Book Fair (I was that kid who ordered whatever I wanted off the book list and needed help carrying the bags to my parents' cars), the Disney Store (beeline for the stuffed animal tower and the TV playing film/song clips usually, if I wasn't distracted by dolls), and whenever I got new Barbies or American Girl dolls. I actually preferred AG more: the fact they came with books and girls from historical eras was the coolest thing to me! Those dolls and my cats at the time got to hear a lot of me trying to read aloud as much as I could.

I wasn't very athletic so sports teams were out of the question most of the time (I lifted weights instead starting in middle school in lieu of a school team due to how badly I was bullied. It just wasn't a great idea for my mental health to keep me around those kids longer than I needed to be), and I wasn't allowed video games until high school (right around when I'd sent my college applications) because my parents were convinced that if I played video games, I'd never get into a good university. This is a big reason why I never became much of a gamer! I didn't grow up with the hand-eye coordination practice with consoles and controllers many kids did. I also didn't get cable TV until the end of middle school: things like Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel were luxuries for me, ones I only got to indulge in at other family members' houses.

I think the funniest bit of it all is how I went from very much a dress-loving, pink-adorning, dress-wearing child to a teenager, constantly sullen, dressed in black/Hot Topic/early Torrid attire with the goth-iest high school senior photoshoot...and right back to a woman who adores dresses, classic colors, neutrals, and pastels, and just feels better about her day when pulling a dress and favorite pair of shoes/bag out of her closet, just to go to a cafe and shopping/a bookstore. My parents have definitely noticed this and are having the last laugh at middle/high school-era Rae, who would only wear wide leg JNCO style trousers with so many ripped holes at the bottom, bondage pants/skirts, anime/geek t-shirts, fancy dresses from The Pyramid Collection (I had a wicca phase) and the darkest red lipstick that wasn't black but still broke the school dress code so the administration made me wash it off each morning (despite me swatching it on my hand and showing them no, it wasn't black: black lipstick was banned, like jeans, miniskirts, tanktops, and anything featuring 'gang' logos or relating to Eminem or Nelly. Honestly, besides the jeans, good move school!)...is now a far more cheerful and content person, who has embraced color, dresses, bows, etc. once again.

tl;dr - my teenage years were awful, do not want to revisit no matter how much my high school keeps insisting I should show up for my 20-year reunion.

In a more nerdy sense, I'm realizing that in my late thirties with more disposable income, I can finally wear all the costumes I wanted to do as a teenage cosplayer but didn't have the funds to do so. I am doing or rewearing so many old school costumes in 2024, and upgrading some outfits I already love with higher-quality pieces.

[la-galaxie-langblr]

that game sounds so fun oml where was that when i was in high school!?

absolutely, i think we all have a different definition of the absolute meaning of life but yeah i totally agree, being a good person day-to-day and putting out good vibes and karma into the universe is why we’re here for such a long time, it’s a long process with the smallest details and the biggest impacts.

what books do i like reading? recently i read seven husbands of evelyn hugo and i just bawled my way through it, it was divine. i’ve also been discovering some classics or “must be read at some point in a lifetime books that have made their way onto my tbr. daisy jones and the six was also a great read.

my current read is lucky by a woman who’s name i can’t remember 😅 it’s about a criminal on the run who wins the lottery but can’t cash her ticket in bc she will be jailed for all of her crimes. i’m only 8 chapters in at the moment but it’s pretty good so far.

seven titles on my tbr that i’m looking forward to read are the grapes of wrath, if beale street could talk, sharp objects, american psycho, mrs bridge, midnight library, and i’m glad my mom died which i know will break me when i get around to it haha.

do i have a wip? absolutely, for the past year or so i’ve been trying to write a book i’ve currently titled “ourselves” and it’s about five female friends who live in melbourne, australia who try to save a beloved family diner from breaking point and shutting down. i have a few other ideas for when i hopefully get ourselves written and on the bestseller list 😅 gonna be hard to do that seeing as i’ve only written one chapter of the book so far, but we take things slowly bc it’s a journey, it doesn’t need to be rushed. all the best things take time, right? rome wasn’t built in a day.

i’ll leave you with three questions tonight;

are there any quotes that you try to live your life by?

three things you would ask for if a witch showed up while you were on a desert island?

where would you like to be in life in 10 years?

stay cool, bud! - k :)

(once again, long answer)

You have good taste in books, I love Evelyn Hugo :D

Also I'm obsessed with your WIP, I love family diners, I will buy a copy the second it exists!! And exactly, no need to rush, everything happens in its own time.

1. Quotes I try to live my life by? Oooooooh that's a tricky one, I had to go back to the Pinterest board I made when I was 14 to jog my memory 😅

> "If you're ever worried about not being a good person, remember that bad people don't care about improving" and that helps me be a little kinder to myself when I'm reflecting on my flaws and stuff like that,

> a quote from a Great British Bake Off series several years ago, "Always do your best, and everyone's best is different. You can't always be the best, but you can always do your best."

2. To be saved within the next 24 hours, adequate shelter and something to pass the time with :D

3. I can't even imagine life in 7 months from now where I'll be starting university 😅 but I guess I'd like to have a job I enjoy, enough disposable income, time and energy on the weekends to engage in my hobbies and do fun things and be in a steady long-term relationship, if not already engaged or married, some lofty dreams there but above all I hope I'm happy and less busy :)

Thank you once again for the asks, do you have any short/medium/long term goals that you're working towards? (idk I'll just say that short = within a year's time, medium = 2-5 years' tine and long = 5+ years' time)

Have a nice evening!!

[guillemelgat]

Tamahaq Lesson 2

I’m doing more of these because I want to take better notes and actually figure out what’s going on with Tamahaq, and I decided to post them here in case anyone wanted them. I can also post non-image versions if people would like those, the only thing is that I have no idea how I would organize the tables. Also if things don’t make sense I may or may not be able to give you an answer - keep in mind that these are my notes from my studies, not me teaching something I know about.

[FULL SERIES OF POSTS AVAILABLE HERE] [BOOK I AM USING]

[adrinktostopyourthirst]

M A S T E R L I S T

Recommendations | Answered Asks | Tropes

Entire Library | My Inbox (I swear I’m nice!) | Reviews

⇢ This is a side blog, meaning I won’t be able to respond to all of your replies to my fics. I do however answer asks, chats and occasionally reblog comments [Personal Updates].

⇢ Hiatus and Book Updates.

⇢ All of my works have their warnings at the top. Each of them are considered for an audience of 18+ and contain smut. Read at your own discretion. I do NOT give permission to copy, translate or edit my work on this or any other platform.

⇢ DRABBLES

⇢ ONE SHOTS

(Bucky Barnes)

◌ FINALLY - Bucky and you have a hard time staying away from each other. And though you try to push him away, every time he finds you again, the universe finds a new way to pull you apart.

◌ MY QUEEN - The post-battle energy rush needs a release. Suddenly, there’s a willing soldier at your disposal.

◌ READY TO COMPLY - Something had been missing. But that has nothing to do with your life time enemy standing in front of you to finally end this.

◌ THREE HUNDRED - Bucky always makes sure his best friend is okay, because that is what you need. He’s caring, but very passive and nonchalant, because you need it. Not him. He doesn’t need that. He doesn’t need you. Does he?

◌ FOLLOWING ORDERS - Bucky is always grumpy, so you’ve resorted to being aggressively bossy. But he will show you what following orders really looks like.

◌ SNIPER - Reluctantly, you get thrown into an assignment with Bucky and Yelena, but Bucky doesn’t trust you as far as he can throw you. When he’s proven to be correct, it turns out you’re still a hell of a good team.

◌ RELAX - You have never been so horny in your life and it’s now or never.

◌ DEPRAVED - Bucky catches you naked in the bathroom and you catch the stoic man flustered.

◌ ADMIT IT - A team building exercise that pits you and Bucky against each other. Too bad you’re both competetive and after a prize.

◌ MR. & MRS. BARNES - Bucky and your marriage isn’t what you thought it was at all.

◌ RING RING - Of all pocket dials ever, this might be the very worst.

◌ HEELS - You hate each other, but love competition.

◌ DISMANTLED - You like them on their knees, but this one stands much taller than you.

◌ VARIANT - The chaos of the multiverse is quite literally holding up a mirror to Bucky. Turns out, it’s very easy to get under someone’s skin when you have a universal connection to them.

◌ RULES - A constant power struggle where it seems like either you both win or you both lose. Fighting fire with fire, but passion doesn’t burn out.

◌ WITH MY LITTLE EYE - All the team wants is for Bucky to get a fresh start, but both you and him are still holding grudges. What happens when the grudge disappears?

◌ SHOTGUN - You wear heels on a mission and Bucky, as always, gives you a really hard time.

◌ FRENCH RIVIERA - You and Bucky are both agents, but you get extremely pissed at your friend when he seems to have screwed up everything he did to try and turn his life around.

◌ SATISFIED - Drunk sex with Bucky.

◌ ABANDONED - Bucky has left, just like everyone else. But you’re just pissed enough to track him down and ask him why he ever dared to leave you by yourself, only to find out the Bucky you know isn’t quite there.

⇢ TWO PARTERS

◌ UNDERGROUND | REBOUND - The Underground is the last way for you to survive whatever is left of the world after the Blip. Natasha introduces you to the Winter Soldier whose wing you’re under until you find your way around. He’s a stoic Underground fighter and you’re… useless.

◌ STING | FLING - Your tattoo artist left you hanging and you’re fed up enough to come and collect his excuse.

◌ LOOK AT ME | LOOK AT US - Bucky finally gets to put a face to your voice.

◌ QUIET DOWN | STAY QUIET - You are not, under any circumstances, allowed to wear that.

⇢ SERIES

◌ REBELLION in progress - By some miracle, you get saved from the consequences of your own actions. You’re reluctant to join a supposedly good cause. What happens when the good cause is not so legal? And what - or who - is your soft spot?

◌ PRIDE AND PRIVACY completed - Bucky works on himself as he gets used to a roommate. Turns out, she has a much better room than him and he crossed the line.

◌ SPILL IT completed - Both you and Bucky have some very mixed feelings about you. Maybe you can help each other clear things up (PlusSized!Reader).

⇢ OTHER

(Mob!Bucky and Mob!Steve)

◌ APOLOGIES | COLD - You have no idea how you got here and whether they have captured you, or it’s you who has them captured.

(Nick Fowler)

◌ HIDDEN HUNGER - You try to hide something from Nick and hide Nick from the world, all at the same time.

[alleycat97]

Rival Week

Poppy x MC (Bea)

Taglist: @samanthadalton @belvoiresqueenbee @kwaj115 @baexpoppy

@somewillwin @a-ghost-girl @uhh-the-green-thing

Short Poppy x MC fic, I'm not good at Poppy, but i hope you enjoy!

There were two things that pissed Poppy Min-Sinclair off and that was Bea Hughes, and people who harmed Bea Hughes.

So, she liked the girl and would literally bestow hell on anyone who hurt her precious Bea. Now, she would never admit it, but she loved the way Bea would handle her with her strong farm hands or look at her like no one else existed. She made Poppy truly feel special.

But, being the Queen, sacrifices had to be made, and Bea was one of them. Plus it didn’t help that the girl was after her crown. Poppy had too much to lose, something that would have a new meaning soon enough.

So the Zeta’s were in a war with the crosstown Theta’s of Sagenhaft University. It was rivalry week and Poppy tried to command her troops while trying to avoid Bea and her dumb farm smells.

Bea on the other hand was head over heels for Poppy. One taste is all it took and she was hooked. Poppy didn’t have time to waste on Bea and Bea couldn’t sit by and watch Poppy fail again.

The Theta’s had slipped some nair in the girls shampoo and Poppy fell victim. It was a crippling blow, bald was so not in season.

So Bea took it upon herself to get revenge for Zeta House. Theta house sat on top of the world it seemed like. It overlooked the campus from afar and Bea finally climbed atop the mountain of concrete, arriving in her sexy ass assassin gear.

There was no one around and the door happened to be open. It was time to get in and out, “a little J-lube will do ladies.” Bea added some lube to the wash bottles and made her way to the open balcony window.

Stepping out, she ran into the entire Theta squad. “Haha, hey everyone, this must not be the library.”

Back at Belvoire, it was Zeta movie night and all the girls were interrupted by the T. It was a picture of Bea handcuffed in her underwear with Theta makeup markings all over her body.

Poppy was pissed. She scrambled the troops and got ready to retaliate when she heard loud cheering and a car’s tires squealing away from out front.

The Theta’s disposed of Bea on the front lawn of the Zeta house and everyone came to check on her.

“Move!” Poppy demanded parting the sea of bodies. “Leave us! I need to be alone with Bea.”

“What the hell where you thinking wannabe?!”

“I wanted to help you Pops. You aren’t mad are you?”

“Mad! I’m furious! You aren’t a Zeta Bea! You broke a century old tradition! I don’t need your help! I had it under control.”

“I’m…im sorry, I just wanted to…” Bea tried.

“Save it, let’s get you inside.” Poppy said trying to pick up the blonde but Bea collapsed immediately to the ground wincing in pain.

“What’s wrong!?”

“My leg, I think it’s broken. It hurts.” Bea whined. The adrenaline had finally wore off.

“Next question is, Why are you so wet?” Poppy asked flipping on her flashlight. “You’re bleeding! What did they do to you!?” Poppy screamed. Rule number two was broken now.

“I’m getting really tired Pops, and cold.” Bea yawned closing her eyes.

“Don’t you go to sleep Bea! Stay awake, I need you…” Bea faded into a tiring sleep listening to Poppy panic and woke up soon in the hospital.

The shorter girl who she thought was Poppy wearing Bea’s ball cap, and was yelling at a nurse and Bea tried to sit up in her bed to stop her.

Sensing Bea wake, Poppy shoved the nurse out of the room and checked on Bea.

“How do you feel loser?” Poppy asked grinning.

“Better, I see my leg was broken.”

“Two places. You must have taken a good fall. What did they do to you?”

“After they tied me up and took pictures, one of the Theta’s walked me to the car but they slipped and tripped me so I fell down the stairs. I guess the steps cut me open and the landing broke my leg.” I didn’t feel any of it. I guess because I was outnumbered 140 to 1.”

“They’ll pay for this. Zeta or not. No one touches you but me. You got that Farmsville?”

“You’re my hero Poptart.” Bea mocked.

“You belong to me, and as your Queen, it’s my job to protect all my followers, even you.”

“Or maybe you like me.” Bea teased.

“Maybe I just needed you for recon. That way I can plan out next attack.” Poppy smirked.

“You need me for more than recon. Oh Bea! Don’t fall asleep, I need you…” Bea teased recalling her final moments last night.

“First off, I don’t sound like that, and second, you must have hit your head, because you’re saying nonsense.”

“Just admit you like me Pops. Admit that you need me.”

“Maybe I do. Maybe I need you desperately.” Poppy spoke straddling Bea on the bed.

“Maybe I need you on my thrown, by my side as MY Queen.”

Bea grinned as she accepted Poppy’s fury of kisses.

[jaskierswolf]

A birthday gift for the ever lovely @the-blondey! 🥳

Geraskier featuring courting gifts and a side helping of friends to lovers! (1.8k)

_____

Geralt hated shopping. He usually only bothered for ingredients that he hadn’t been able to find in between towns, or to drop into the blacksmith. He picked up supplies at the inns he stayed in, or ate what he could hunt or forage in the woods. He certainly never browsed the market like this, not without Jaskier at least.

But Jaskier wasn’t there.

Jaskier was still teaching a lecture at the university, and he probably had no idea that Geralt was even in town. This whole shopping business would be a lot better if he could ask Jaskier for help, but Jaskier was the one person that he couldn’t ask for help. He sighed, pressing his fingers to his forehead. He couldn’t even talk to Roach. She was safely stabled back at the inn.

“This shouldn’t be so hard,” he grumbled to himself. “It’s Jaskier. He likes pretty things and expensive trinkets.”

The only problem was there were a lot of pretty things and expensive trinkets on the tables, and the merchants were all claiming their goods were the best. There was so much noise, so many people. He growled under his breath and clenched his fists. It was too much. It needed to be perfect. Jaskier was too important for anything less than perfect.

He closed his eyes. Jaskier. His eyes, his scent, the wind blowing through his hair, the soft warmth of his smile. He took a deep breath. His head was still spinning but it was manageable. He glanced back at the table in front of him and then up at the merchant. The poor man was white as a sheet and he reeked of fear. Geralt hummed and then pushed through the crowd to the next stall.

Daggers.

“Hmm,” Geralt scrutinised the wares. They wouldn’t be up to the standards of witchers but they looked sturdy enough to kill a bandit or two. Most importantly, they were ornate, beautiful and glittering in the light of the sun.  The blades themselves were a variety of shapes and sizes, but Geralt’s eyes were drawn to a waved silver blade with Elder engraved along the length. His Elder speech wasn’t perfect, and he struggled to read the elven language but he understood enough to know the dagger was intended as a betrothal gift.

His fingers hovered over the hilt, eyes glancing up to meet the merchant’s gaze. Unless the previous merchant, they had a gentle smile on their face. Their posture was relaxed and their scent wasn’t soured with fear. He already liked them more than the first merchant.

“May I?”

They nodded. “Of course, but I’ll warn you witcher, it’s not cheap and hardly suited for your trade.”

“It’s not for me,” he grunted.

Light dawned in their eyes and their smile widened. “Oh well, in that case you ought to know the implications—”

“I know.”

He picked up the dagger and weighed it in his hands. The balance of the blade was good. He ran a finger along the edge, hissing as it cut into his skin. Blood seeped from the small wound before it healed without a trace.

The merchant’s slight hitch in breath gave away their astonishment. “Impressive.”

“A necessity in my line of work. How much?” he asked, praying to all the gods that he didn’t believe in that he could afford it. The dagger was perfect. Anything else he found now would be a disappointment.

“More than you can afford, witcher,” they admitted with a sad smile “but I might be able to strike a deal. I have work for you, if you’re willing.”

Geralt glanced down at the blade in his hands and then back at them. “I’m in.”

____________

Jaskier was scribbling away at his desk when the doors flew open. Larissa, was standing in the doorway, out of breath and red in the face. Their hair falling from the bun at the back of their head. Jaskier looked up from his notebook, tongue still stuck between his teeth. He scratched his cheek with his quill and smiled brightly at them.

“Larissa!” he greeted warmly and placed his quill on the desk, leaving the notebook open so the ink could dry. “What can I do for you, my dear?”

“You have a visitor, professor,” they gasped, wrapping their arms around their stomach as they tried to catch their breath.

Jaskier frowned. He hadn’t been expecting anyone and his open office hours weren’t until that afternoon. His students were normally better at giving him fair warning should they require him. He pulled on his doublet buttoning it up to his chin, just in case. He had been told off by the dean on more than one occasion and he was currently on thin ice. It didn’t matter how well his lectures did, one had to wear appropriate clothing. It was all incredibly dull. It made him yearn for the road, for Geralt.

He waved at Larissa, a flamboyant flick of his wrist. “Yes yes, please, show them in.”

Larissa nodded and left the room, leaving Jaskier to ponder who his guest could be. He tried not to hope, but his love was a burning fire that couldn’t be controlled and even the smallest chance that Geralt was here set his heart fluttering in his chest.

“Oh stop it, Jask,” he muttered to himself. “He’s not here.”

“Who’s not here?” came the gruff reply.

Jaskier felt his face light up and he bounded across the room just as the witcher appeared in the doorway. “Geralt!”

“Jaskier,” Geralt greeted him, a fond smile on his lips, his eyes softer than the velvet pillows that adorned Jaskier’s bed.

“I wasn’t expecting you so soon, witcher,” Jaskier laughed, putting one hand on his hip and cocking his head. “Did you miss me, darling?”

“Hmm.”

Jaskier rolled his eyes and pulled Geralt into a hug. “Well, I missed you and your grunting.”  He pulled away all too soon and licked his lips, trying to still his beating heart. It was racing far too fast and he knew that Geralt could hear it. It was a miracle that Geralt hadn’t realised why already. “What brings you to Oxenfurt, Geralt?”

“I have something for you,” Geralt grumbled, not meeting Jaskier’s gaze. He pulled on the straps that held his sword on his back, and Jaskier would almost say that the witcher looked… nervous?

That couldn’t be right?

He’d seen Geralt take down all manner of monsters and men… why would he be nervous of him?

“Riiight, well… here I am, at your disposal!” Jaskier gestured widely and gave a little bow, winking at his witcher, trying to make light of the situation before his own nerves could get the best of him.

“It’s umm… well… fuck,” Geralt growled and pinched the bridge of his nose, then he pulled a bundle of cloth from his pocket and handed it to Jaskier.

Jaskier tentatively took the packet. It was heavier than he expected, solid under his fingers. He narrowed his eyes and glanced at Geralt. “What is it?”

“Open it.”

Jaskier nodded. That would make sense. It was a gift after all, but why would Geralt be giving him a present? It wasn’t even his birthday. He wasn’t sure that Geralt even knew when that was. “It’s not going to kill me is it?” he teased gently.

Geralt rolled his eyes and scoffed. “It might if you don’t hurry up and open it.”

Jaskier gaped. “Well now! That’s just rude! Impatient brute.”

“Jaskier,” Geralt warned with a low snarl.

“Ok ok!”  he snapped, his hands shaking as he pulled back the cloth. His heart would stop pounding and his legs felt weak. He gasped quietly as he saw the bejewelled dagger resting in the fabric. “Geralt?”

“Look closer,” Geralt muttered, his golden eyes were watching Jaskier with such intensity that he wanted to melt into the floor. It was almost too much. Whatever was sparking between them was about to change Jaskier’s life, he was sure of it. It felt too momental to be simply a gift.

He passed the cloth bundle back to Geralt and slowly unsheathed the dagger. The silvery blade glittered in the candlelight. Jaskier stopped breathing as he traced the inscription with his fingers. It was written in Elder but Jaskier had had the best education Lettenhove could offer, and with the rumours going around about his mother’s fidelity and the elves, no one was surprised that Elder Speech was one of the languages he’d been forced to learn.

He swallowed and finally sucked in a shaky breath. “Geralt… Is this? Do you know…” he trailed off, tears were welling up in his eyes and his voice failed him, too thick with emotion.

“I know,” Geralt said softly, bringing a hand up to cup Jaskier’s cheek.

Jaskier whimpered, leaning into the touch. “It’s. It’s not a proposal,” Geralt said quickly but continued before Jaskier heart could break. “More of a proposal… to propose?”

Jaskier felt like crying, honestly it was a miracle that he wasn’t already. He’d loved Geralt for years, decades even. He’d given up on Geralt ever loving him back a long time ago, and now Geralt was… courting him?

It was archaic, a tradition found only in the depth of the library of Lettenhove and Oxenfurt. He felt like he’d stepped into a fairytale.

“Am. Am I dreaming?” he stammered. It felt like the only logical explanation.

“Don’t think so,” Geralt said with a shake of his head.

Jaskier nodded, then spun round on his heels with his hand buried into his hair. When he met Geralt’s gaze once again he narrowed his eyes. “And you’re not joking?” he asked, waving the point of the dagger in Geralt’s face.

Geralt chuckled and gently lowered the dagger with his hand. “No, Jaskier.”

“Oh cock!” Jaskier swore and then clapped his hand over his mouth. “You really mean it?”

Oh praise Melitele! Fuck it, praise bloody Lilit too. Praise any good that was listening in.

“I mean it,” Geralt reassured him with a heavy sigh. “and I’d really appreciate an answer?”

“Fuck, bollocks, shit!” Jaskier whined. “I mean. Yes, on all the gods, Geralt. Of course, it’s yes! Do you have any idea how long I’ve loved you?”

Geralt winced, his smile faltering. “Sorry, it takes me more time. Never even thought I could, not until you.”

Jaskier giggled, fucking giggled, and placed his hand on Geralt’s cheek. “Oh darling, you have nothing to be sorry for. I would have stayed by your side and loved you in whatever way you allowed me to, even without shiny trinkets and nearly proposal.”

“Hmm,” Geralt smirked “shall I take them back?”

“Don’t you dare!” Jaskier shrieked and ran from his witcher, keeping his new engagement dagger safe and sound. “It’s mine now, Geralt!”

Geralt laughed and ran after him, only stopping when he had Jaskier trapped against a wall. The dagger remained in Jaskier’s firm grip, forgotten as their lips crashed together.

[kelyon]

Discworld is #1 on my TBR list, and if I can slow the hell down on writing, I absolutely want to start reading it. To help hurry that day along, what are some of your favorite parts of the series? Could be themes, settings, characters, whatever. Consider this an invitation to ramble as much or little as you want.

Don’t worry about spoiling me - I LOVE spoilers. Spoilers give me something to look forward to!

So the best thing about Discworld is also the worst thing about Discworld--the intertextuality. I realized this when I got back into the series after being away for a while, a lot of the books... kind of don't make sense the first time you read them. But! These same books are mind blowing the second or third (or forth or twelfth) time you read them.

It's like a whole language that you have to learn when you get into this world. Maybe "have to" is too strong, everyone starts somewhere--but you want to understand everything. I was very fortunate that I got into Discworld at the same time as my dad (who has a disposable income to invest in a series of more than forty books.) I guess it's the same as comic books (good comic books) where you hear about something that happened in the past or in another part of the "world" and you just want to know what that was about.

For example:

The Librarian of the Unseen University (wizard college, not to be confused with the wizard boarding school of a certain other British fantasy writer) is an orangutan. In the second book of the series, a magical accident turned a previously ordinary human Librarian into an orangutan. Throughout the series, he remains an exceptionally good Librarian, able to catalog and care for the hundreds of thousands of magical books under his care (even the ones that have to be kept on chains.)

In... let's say the fifth book, the rules of "L-space" are established. Basically saying that because books are known to warp time (ask anyone who's ever uttered the phrase "one more chapter") and time can have a nebulous connection with space, all libraries (especially magical libraries) are essentially one library. The mark of a really great librarian is the ability to travel through L-space to get the exact book the reader asked for ("I don't remember the title, but it had a red cover and in the end it turned out they were twins.")

So, later in, like, the tenth book when the Discworld equivalent of the Library of Alexandria is burning down, in a story that takes place hundreds of years and thousands of miles away from the wizard university. But! When the narration makes a passing mention of a large ape swinging through the burning library with two armfuls of books--the informed reader knows exactly what is happening and why. And the uninformed reader certainly wants to find out!

It's... intense. And definitely a series that lends itself to being obsessed over.

[fictionalrambles]

Shadowhunters Fandom Story - Part Eight

Submitted by Contesse2020

Five Fave Fics:

Of Splendor in the Grass by @lecrit​

Why I love this fic: Lecrit was one of the first authors I read fan fiction from. And this one I read in the library at my University, it was packed with people because it was in the middle of exams, and students were stressing with catching up on their curriculum. I was sat in one of the comfy chairs beside a window with a beautiful view of campus covered in snow.

So, I read it in one go. And I just cried and cried, really trying not to have other students notice me. This struck a chord In me, reminding me how brutal history is and how many people around the world still struggle with something as basic as being allowed  to love. I love the authors way of driving the story forward through the protagonist inner life, there is a poetry in the way she writes. Cried some more because of the happy ending - dehydration was on my mind.

I have not dared reread it, the emotional reaction was so strong. I had to go through the fic and try and find some quotes:)

Fave Quotes: 

«Different would have to wait another life»

«Magnus kissed him, and all the poetry in the world paled in comparison. He was home. Free at last»

*

The Lonely Hearts Hotline by @unrestrainedlyexcessive​

Why I love this fic: This fic I have read more times than I care to admit - just love it.

It is actually kind of dark in the emotions and growth Alec goes through, but Fatale always highlight the difficulty with finding yourself.

And even though you reach «adulthood» you don’t need to have your shit together. Which is nice to read since I’m in my thirties and really don’t know anything, that I’m still learning who I am. Not to mention your own agency in your life - don’t let things just happen to you - be active.

The humor is exquisite, I’m laughing like a loon one minute and feeling emotional the next. And of course it is H-O-T as fuck.

The plot is original and fun, it kind of makes you cringe and think OMG Alec - love it. But also it is the nitty gritty of life.  

I really like the dialogue and that is what makes me laugh the hardest. So I will just quote some of those.

Fave Quotes: 

«Jace answers on the first ring. “Dirty Dan's Disposable Dildo Emporium. Suck 'em, fuck 'em, and chuck 'em. This is Dirty Dan speaking.”

“Ahoy, Mort’s Mortuary service. You kill ‘em, we grill ‘em.”

«Early adulthood is no man's land. You don’t have the experience to matter and no one wants to pay you to gain it (…)»

Ain`t that the truth....

*

A Tiny Spark by @magicandarchery​

Why I love this fic: This is my ultimate feel good fic <3 when ever I have read something angsty and painful, I return to this.

Magnus and Alec are in an established relationship trying to make a family, supporting each other - healthy and loving.

Absolutely loved it. We get a heartwarming glimpse into their lives with a newly «adopted» foster child, them being dads - I think I have to read it again, give me those warm and fuzzy feels, please.

Fave Quotes: 

“Just thinking,” Magnus answered, pushing a lock of Alec’s dark hair off of his forehead. Alec’s mouth twitched up at the corners as a sleepy smile played along his lips.

“About what?”

“You.”

“Care to share?” Alec’s eyes opened slowly, and Magnus’ breath caught in his chest the same way it had the first time they had met. Alec’s thumb grazed gently over the outside of Magnus’ hand, and Magnus felt a warm sense of calm spread through him as he entwined his fingers through Alec’s.

Magnus inhaled slowly, deeply. He waited for the flutters of uncertainty to fill him, but instead he felt a different kind of flutter, one of a deep, unending love. Magnus’ tongue darted out, wetting his dry lips, and he tightened his hold on Alec’s hand, centering himself.

When he spoke, Magnus’ voice was barely more than a whisper.

“Marry me?”

Magnus set his phone face down on the table as he spotted Alec and Jace a short distance away, walking toward him, dressed in dark pants and dark t-shirts with the FDNY crest on the chest. Magnus slipped his sunglasses down his nose slightly, a wicked smirk decorating his face when Alec approached the table.

“What’s that look for?” Alec asked, his brow furrowing curiously.

“Just appreciating my man in uniform,” Magnus answered innocently.

*

2C by Oumy

Why I love this fic: Did I mention how much I love a pining Alec? That combined with him being all snarky and (to a degree) self-confident is my holy grail. I love how Alec is portrayed in this, he is vulnerable and honest with his emotions. The way they needle each other is funny as hell. Two of my favorite quotes <3 the last one kicked me so hard in the feels.

Fave Quotes: 

So, there he stood, six foot three of fidgeting human, trying to figure out the right way to ask the love of his life to be his salvation.

They made it outside before Magnus got close enough to Alec’s sleeve and pulled him to a stop, and he wasn’t ready for Alec’s outburst as he turned to him and unleashed “You know what? You’re right. I’m done pretending. I’m done pretending like it’s okay that we take swipes at each other the moment something goes wrong. I’m done pretending like it doesn’t fucking kill me that every word out of my mouth is somehow the wrong one and that I can’t seem to catch a break when it comes to you. I’m done pretending like I hate you for the sake of crumbs of your attention. I’m done pretending like it doesn’t faze me when I have to play the role of the villain because for some reason, that was the only part you allowed me to play in your life. I’m done pretending like I don’t care, like my soul didn’t shrivel inside every time you mistook my reaching out to you for an attempt to fuck you over”

*

Love is a Gamble by @la-muerta​

Why I love this fic: This one is also a historic AU, since I’m a history nerd. A very angsty fic, and I’m here for it. Bring all the pain and all the feels.

I actually had to read «A Tiny Spark» right after - needed some fluff. My heart just broke for Alec and his struggle to accept his attraction to Magnus, so of course there is pining.

Also Izzy is so bad-ass in this, and I love it.

I just fell in love with all of the characters and their backstory. The plot is exciting, with action and the works - keeps you at the edge of your seat. But the best parts were Alec`s quotes - they did me in.

Fave Quotes: 

Alec shook his head, the violent movement reminding Magnus of a distressed horse. "You don't understand anything. I... There's something wrong with us. With me. You have bedded women - you have a choice in this."

"No, Alexander. There's nothing wrong with you, or with me. This is just the way we are, and the only choice I have in the matter is that I chose not to live a lie," Magnus told him firmly.

"When I confronted Aldertree, he asked me if I was a gambling man. I'm not - and never have been. And loving someone, for someone like me, is a bigger gamble than most. But there comes a point when a man's got to stop arguing with himself. I don't want to fight it anymore," Alec said, meeting Magnus' eyes squarely. "I'm not telling you this because I expect you to return my feelings. I know you don't feel that way about me. I just... never mind. I apologise if this has made things between us uncomfortable, I hope we can still be friends-"

[sassysnowperson]

7, 28, 40, for the Star Wars asks

Hello hello, thank you for this! 

7 - If you could choose any profession to have in the GFFA, what would you be?

Oooh, I'm going to go with my first instinct on this one and say Jedi Archivist. I'm not going to pretend I don't want the superpowers possible in the universe. And if that comes with a Space Library? So much the better! Jocasta Nu is my hero, lets hear it for the badass librarians :D 

 28 -  If you could stop one character from doing one thing, who would it be and why?

Ohhhh, geez. Many things. All of the things. I suppose stopping Palpatine from existing is a little too obvious of a choice, hm? Putting aside that very appealing option, I think I'm going to go with stopping Qui-Gon from leaving Shmi on Tatooine. Lets keep her and her kid together! I dunno if it would actually keep Anakin from falling, but the idea of Shmi getting to hang out in the heart of power and try to keep her kid safe and happy is very appealing to me. And there's all sorts of interesting ways that AU could go.

40 - If you could make your own Star Wars trilogy/series, what would it be about?

Ooooooh, the POWER. So, to limit myself, I'm going to say I can't re-write the existing canon, otherwise I'd be just fix-it-ing all over the place. If I was actually going to tell an original story…. 

Hmmm, I'm thinking…yeah. Droid revolution! 

Lets play with this. Our protagonist is a plucky young former-First Order cleaning droid. They're freed from their life of First Order drudgery by the end of Rise of Skywalker, and wind up with their restraining bolt sliced off to wander the wider galaxy. 

(this got, um, long, with a fully-plotted trilogy, so we're just gonna put what's next below the cut)

Movie 1: 

Coming of Age story, but with the droid. Finding self, discovering purpose, going on journeys of self-discovery trying to find a place in the world. It's Harrowing. It's clear the world doesn't much like free droids. They try to find honest employment, succeed for a little bit. 

But then! They're captured by pirates or something and almost fitted with a restraining bolt but they fight their way free (probably through clever trickery or mechanical know-how)! BB-8 is inexplicably there and helping in some way. (Cameo for the merch and to put in the trailer!) They wind up finding a place in an all-droid ship crew and sail off for a life of wonder! 

Movie 2: 

The ship crew is now home, we spend a little time getting to know the whacky cast of characters. There's the protag. There's a massive battledroid that loves a fiberart of some kind. There's a Gonk-droid that's the crew's philosopher. There's one of those tiny tatooine podracer droids (DUM? Something like that? I'm not pulling up wookiepedia right now) that LOVES explosives. There's a wise mentor-figure astromech. The captain is literally the ship itself - some prototypical thing from the Clone Wars that wasn't decommissioned as well as anyone thought. They like each other, they're family. 

ANYWAY, after the lovely montage introducing everyone, they show them doing a job. The job goes smoothly, but after that, there's Tension. They have to pretend there's an organic around to get payment. And then, their worst nightmare - some Evil Person has learned there's a crew full of droids just ripe for claiming. And the law is on the Evil Person's side! How terrible. 

"We're not people," the wise mentor says. "We're salvage." 

They're on the Run. Then, they hear a tale. A Paradise, a place where droids are free. It's secret, and protected, and there's a Fancy Space Magic Map or something. The movie leans into being an action-adventure flick after that, a wild race towards the promised land, with the Evil Person that wants to enslave them hot on their heels. There is daring do! There are dramatic ship fights! 

And then - just as the Evil Person is on the verge of claiming them, they find the promised land! The promised land droids defeat the Evil Person. Finally, here is a whole city where droids can be free. Glory! We keep focused on the team for a bit, watching them settle in and realize they can survive without being soldiers. They get to be people, just people in a wonderful mechanical city. And THEN, just as they're HAPPY (with an indistinct amount of time passing so the fanfic writers can have a good time) in the last three minutes of the movie, you find out there is a LARGE FLEET bearing down on them. Oh no. They have been Found. SUSPENSE! 

Movie 3: 

Our plucky crew now have to Fight. We quickly meet the leadership of the Promised Land - a quiet Competent One, a Jaded old Soldier, and a Passionate Revolutionary (they are, of course, all droids).  There is a rising sense of despair. There is no place for droids in this world that is truly free. In the first third of the movie, they work out a mad plan to free the droids on the attacking fleet. It requires infiltrating the ship. Our crew do it. There is much Heroism. There are some sad thoughts about going back into battle when they thought that life was behind them. There are cool explosions. It works! The droids turn on their masters and now the Promised Land has a Fleet! 

Which, of course, is going to make its own problems. There is probably politics. A polite request from the New Republic to please give the fleet back, and they will guarantee the safety of the promised land. Oh, but of course, you will have to return all the droids you just freed from the ships. They belonged to the Corporate Sector, who funds most of our government, so we really need you to give them back. They weren't, after all, your property. 

There is a lot of agonized back and forth, but our Protagonist remains firm - no! The answer is no! We don't trade other's lives for our freedom. We have to fight! We might lose but we have to fight! And what better time than now, when we have a fleet! It is Very Inspirational. The Passionate Revolutionary on the council is on the Protagonist's side.

We're going to need to keep the fleet in fuel, says the Jaded Old Soldier. 

Well, it turns out, the Quiet Competent One says, most fuel stations are automated these days. By droids. As are most shipyards. There's more Heroic Action, slipping into a fueling station and freeing the droids, holding that and branching out to the shipyards, their fleet becoming stronger and stronger, the Corporate Sector responding in more and more force, until it comes down to an epic battle and they are strong but the Corporate Sector is stronger except...at the critical moment the ORGANIC CREW turns on the Corporate Sector. The droids realize suddenly that they are not fighting for their own survival, they are, apparently, liberators. 

The question remains: how do you build a good civilization for organic and mechanic alike? 

There's no easy answer, but it is a lot easier with the massive mines and resources of the corporate sector at their disposal.  The trilogy ends with our Protagonist attending a summit at the New Republic to graciously offer terms of political cooperation between the New Republic and the Free Droid Economic Collaboration. R2D2 is there. He says he's proud of the Protag. Protag is a little starstruck. Nothing is quite settled, but it is very hopeful, and isn't that what Star Wars is all about?

[powertothefan]

Coffee

A Stanford Pines x Original Character Fic

Hazel DeForest belongs to @evaroze

Stanford Pines is property of  Alex Hirsch

This was something tossed together after discovering the adorable OC known as Hazel, she’s so cute and I love the design of her~ So, I did a little dabble of when both her and Stanford were in college and their first official conversation. I hope I wrote her write, as I have been a little rusty in my writing, Far too long since I posted something here that was worth the read. Anyway, please share any thoughts or feelings you have as long as it’s constructive. 

Hazel was wandering the commons of the college that morning, a little on the early side. She left the door early that morning to do some research at the library for one of her papers. Just because Backupsmore wasn’t her first college pick didn’t mean that she wasn’t going to put in the effort! She wasn’t as dressed up as she usually would be, just a simple blouse and shorts. She had pulled on a pair of flats as well before herring her hair up in a big ponytail and tossing on her bright pink glasses. With her messenger bag full of notebooks and pens, she was ready to go anywhere

Glancing to her watch, Hazel checked the time. Her first class of the day wasn’t until mid morning, so she’d have plenty of time to get some work done before classes that day. Most of her dorm mates were sleeping in from yet another party. She honestly couldn’t believe it. Just because they were at Backupsmore University didn’t mean they could party the semester away. Who did that anyway? Not her! No, definitely not. 

Hazel was terrible with social interaction. In truth, she would have probably never gained any friends unless they proactively were the ones to speak with her first. She knew a few other people, mostly from those forced social circles they did as an ice breaker during the first weeks in the dorms. Otherwise, her friend group was very, very small. She was fine with that though, most of the people she did know the names of were not people she would actively spend time with. They drank and partied and blew off their classes as if they could afford to do it. Hazel didn’t have that luxury. Every penny counted! Still, a very itty bitty part of her wished that she didn’t have such terrible social anxiety. 

It would have made trying to introduce herself to a certain someone easier. 

Huffing to herself, she let her thoughts pass on as she got to the library door. Stepping inside, it was calm and quiet. It was a massive place too. For a second choice college, it had an outstanding collection of literature. Likely because they didn’t have much of a sports team to spend money on. Either way, the ability to have such a vast collection of books at her disposal made her studies all the easier. Especially with her focus on mythology. She never would run out of resource material for her papers. 

As she walked further into the library, she realized that it was very empty. In fact, there was really no one around at all, save for the librarian. Then again, it was a Monday. No one ever got up before classes on Monday, unless they were someone like her and super focused on their studies. It was all the better really, she’d have the whole place to herself. Wandering further into the library, she hurried to the folklore and mythology section. It was her element, her one true oasis. No one and nothing could take it away from her-

“Oof!” Hazel sounded as she smacked right into something. She hadn’t been looking where she was going, instead skilling the shelves as she walked past them. Just as she was stepping back out into the open areas beyond the shelves, she collided with someone, and hard. Books were flying, paper scattered by the ceiling fans, and the two moving forces pushed off the courses and onto the thin and worn carpet. Laying there, Hazel had to take a moment to breath, that impact hurt! Carefully, she groaned while sitting up, rubbing her side where he was sure she was charged into an elbow. 

“Oh, gosh. I”m so sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going!” A deep voice said, A shadow overcoming her as a hand was offered up. “I was carrying too many books, and couldn't see a thing. I shouldn’t have assumed I was the only one here.”

The tone was upset, clearly more so at themselves than her. There was some obvious disappointment in their own carelessness. However, it was also very familiar...too familiar. 

Not really thinking as she grabbed the hand, she was dizzy and shaken still, she was easily pulled right back up to her feet. With the bright ceiling lights no longer glaring down right into her eyes, Hazel could focus on the man who helped her up. As she locked her gaze on their face, about to give them a stern talking to for being so reckless in such a sacred place, her throat swelled and her heart stopped. 

Stanford Pines... It was like an arrow to the heart, struck by a cupid with a sniper rifle. So accurate that it fried her brain. Stanford Pines was everything Hazel had ever wanted since high school! Originally, he was supposed to get a scholarship of some kind and head off to some amazing college. Instead, he ended up going to her only affordable pick. She had wanted to try and be good and say hello. He had been her obsession throughout all of high school after all, not that he even knew she existed back then...Hazel never had the heart to speak. Now, as an adult, and independent, she had told herself she’d try.

And boy, did she try. 

They had gotten classes together, unknowingly of course because she hadn’t realized that he had any interest in the fields of mythology or folklore. They were English heavy studies after all, not the wonderful sciences that he seemed to be skilled in. Part of her knew that he was aware that she existed, he often waved at her with that handsome smile. However, every time that she saw him, with that grin and cute sweater vest, the ability to talk was replaced with the need to nervously vomit. In all cases since the semester began, she flat out ran away before she could lose her lunch to her anxiety. Not exactly the best way to say hello. 

Now, here he was, his glasses skewed off a bit from the impact and his large hand wrapped firmly around her’s. Only a foot apart, both a little shaken from the impact but still breathing...or at least Ford was. Hazel couldn’t get her body to continue their usually automatic functions. As Ford seemed to get himself resettled by fixing his glasses, Hazel felt herself just melt at his touch. They were rough, but not painful, Just worn from all his tinkering and building. They were so large too, and not just because of the extra finger which she had always found to be an adorable addition to an adorable man. 

Ford had really grown up, a lot more than she was prepared for. 

“Oh! It’s you!” He said suddenly, bringing hazel back down from the second hand high of his existence. Breathing in suddenly, she blinked, her mind rushing forward to catch up to the conversation. “M-Me?” She weakly said, her voice still a little breathless from the lack of air in her lungs. 

Stanford turned a slight shade of pink, giving a nervous smile of sorts as he tried to correct himself. “I mean, I recognize you from the folklore seminar class. ‘Folklore and Its Effects on Modern Development.’ You..ah, You sit in the row behind mine.”

His tone had gotten a little meek, almost as if the man was becoming uncertain of himself as he addressed her. Why was he getting nervous? She was the one having an internal battle between heart and brain!

Wait.

He was talking to her...Stanford Pines was physically talking to her! He knew she existed! The man she had been obsessed with for years knew they were in the same class. Holy crap! She needed to speak, to say something, anything. For the love of god open your mouth Hazel DeForest! 

“Ah- RIGHT!” She said very loudly, her face going bright pink as her mind finally caught up to current events. “Rightrightrightrightrightright. I remember! You did the opening argument statement about how folklore was only lore until people could collect it! It lost the folklore touch when people found out it was all fact.” She blurted out, saying just about anything to show that she wasn’t a brainless zombie. 

“Ah, well, it's true! Once something is discovered to truly exist, it isn’t lore. It’s Science. That in turn means it can’t be categorized as lore but as a truly existing species. The professor was not really impressed with my reports for that debate session but he didn’t flunk my report either so I guess my point was valid enough!” Stanford said, seeming to pick his tone back up while in a subject he could work on. “Anyway, sorry for running you down. I was walking to my table with more books and...clearly got over zealous.” It was then that Ford looked around, causing Hazel to pause and do the same thing. Oh, they had made a bit of a mess...The books were scattered all over, some having flown far enough to land on top of the shelves! His notebook was crumpled nder a couple and the pages from it seemed to have scattered to the winds, still being carried off by the breezes of the fan. 

“H-here, I’ll help clean up.” Hazel said, pausing a moment as she then looked down at their hands, which were still tightly held together. Ford noticed this too, and quickly let go with a nervous chuckle before roughly clearing his throat. “Yeah, thanks. I’ll start over here.” 

The pair turned away from each other, Ford kneeling down to grab and gently fix the books near his feet. Hazel did the same, grabbing a couple and fixing the pages before gently setting them on a nearby table. She then also started to snatch up the flying papers, trying to keep them from wrinkling any further as they continued to flutter at her feet. It took a minute, but with the two of them collecting they were able to get it cleaned up easily. The last book was picked up by Hazel, her eyes a little dazed until she read the title. Instantly, she was back to her usual self for a second. 

“Ah, It’s here!” She said suddenly, causing ford to look up as he grabbed the last few books from their places on top of the selves. “Hmm? Something catch your eye?” “This book, I’ve been trying to get it for ages but every single time I get here it’s pulled off the shelves! I need it for my report on the correlations of folklore creatures and their real life potential counterparts. It has a segment on how folklore creatures and mythological monsters are created based on a person seeing something for the first time and using other animals to describe it! I wanted to read it for my paper and reference some of it’s points on how artistic interpretation cannot be trusted unless done while actually in front of the creature.” She rattled, her tone serious and smooth as her intellectual side kicked in, a finger moving up to adjust her glasses for a second. “Oh, You’re referencing it as well?” Ford asked, coming closer and putting the last of the books on the table. “I originally grabbed it because I’ve been trying to get it as well. Whoever has been hoarding it just got it back over the weekend. I’m using to further my argument that just because we depict creatures in a certain way does not diminish their potential existence. The author has a wonderful part about the statues of medusa actually and how they believe that medusa is a real being, but her hair was misinterpreted.” “I came here this morning to borrow it...Looks like you beat me.” Hazel said, suddenly feeling herself getting shy again. 

Damn it, Hazel. This was your first real conversation with Ford and you were going to blow it because you couldn’t keep the talk going! What was worse, she had gotten up for nothing. Ford got the book first. Even if she wanted to, she didn’t have the heart to try and ask him to let her borrow it first. So much for getting a head start on that report. 

“Do you wanna borrow it?” Ford asked suddenly. 

“What?” Hazel squaked, not prepared for that statement. 

“Well, I don’t have classes until mid-morning. That’s our Folklore course. If you don’t mind just using it this morning, you’re more than welcome to take whatever notes you need from it while I’m referencing other books. I technically already checked it out but if you need it now you can keep it until after classes. Then meet up later to give it back?” Ford asked, his tone strangely hopeful. 

Was he- Nooooo, naw he couldn’t be...maybe? 

“Um, well...I really do need the book for a few other things besides just the research. If it's not an issue I guess we could meet at the coffee shop off campus? The one with the big tables? It’s very dead in the afternoon on Mondays, so we could meet up after all our classes for the day and I’ll try to quickly get the notes I need before giving back the book. The library gets too busy later in the day anyway for me to focus.”

“Heh, yeah, I have to move my work back and forth from the dorm to here because the afternoon library people. However, I can get coffee later! I’ll need it anyway for my second wind of research. So coffee, after the day's classes?” 

“Yeah, coffee!” Hazel said, suddenly finding herself smiling as her cheeks turned a bright pink. 

Ford seemed to also, his own lopsided grin making Hazel’s heart flutter harshly in her chest. Stanford quickly stacked his books back up again, still grinning a little before carefully turning so he could see Hazel beyond the still massive stack of literature. “Alright then, I’ll get back to my work. I’ll see you for coffee.”

With that, Ford smiled again and headed off, hurrying back to his work table but making sure to take the time to check each eye before moving past. Hazel stood there, clutching the book to her chest as the gears in her head turned, trying to comprehend what just happened.Coffee, she was going to get coffee with Stanford Pines. A cute cafe~ Where people sat together close and chatted over lattes and teas. So, she didn’t actually drink coffee, as she preferred tea, but that didn’t matter! She was getting coffee with Stanford Pines!

Slowly, she took a few steps into a shelf area so that she wouldn’t risk being seen, before falling to her knees in giddy delight, covering her mouth to make sure her excited giggles and squeals did not echo throughout the whole place. Looking back to the book that she set down, she snatched it up again before darting out of the place with a high skip in her step. She had to get as much note taking done as she could, as she knew that she probably wouldn’t be able to focus on her work if she was sitting across from Stanford...But that was a problem for future Hazel, current Hazel had work to do!

[rorybergstrom]

𝑫𝑰𝑫 𝑺𝑶𝑴𝑬𝑩𝑶𝑫𝒀 𝑶𝑹𝑫𝑬𝑹 𝑨 𝑩𝑰𝑺𝑬𝑿𝑼𝑨𝑳 𝑹𝑶𝑳𝑳𝑬𝑹𝑺𝑲𝑨𝑻𝑰𝑵𝑮 𝑺𝒀𝑵𝑻𝑯 𝑳𝑶𝑹𝑫  ???

            hello, it’s nora again…. hitting u with another child. a south london-born softboi who deserves tenderness. has a burner phone and doesn’t use social media. does techno dj sets. plays the synth loudly through the night if u live in gorham his room always sounds like a space ship just landed. deals weed around campus on his rollerskates. hates that he can’t get new light up wheels because ana coto made rollerskating cool again. as is tradition, here’s the pinterest board. this intro is recycled?? so if theres mistakes, sue me??? and be sure to like and subscribe for more unboxing content x

application.

『 FIONN WHITEHEAD ❙ DEMI-MALE』 ⟿ looks like RORY BERGSTRÖM is here for HIS JUNIOR year as a MUSIC TECHNOLOGY student. HE is 23 years old & known to be ECCENTRIC, FANATICAL, NITPICKY & DOGMATIC. They’re living in GORHAM, so if you’re there, watch out for them. ⬳ ooc name. age. tz. pronouns. 

aesthetics.

bed hair from a permanent state of slumber, calloused fingertips from strumming bass into the early hours and djing into the blacklit night, self-help books thumbed once and thrown beneath your bed, battered copies of choose your own adventure books, spliffs passed half-arsed across rooftops while light pollution obscures low-hanging stars, marxist literature in stacks against your bedroom walls, a burner phone twice-shattered and a stash of replacement sim cards.

tw ocd, anxiety, drugs

half-swedish, half-british. the swedish is on his mother’s side. he’s bilingual but thinks in english. only really speaks swedish around his mother. only child, and kinda put a lot of pressure on himself to be the perfect kid when he was young, but his parents are honestly, quite decent? and just want him to have a nice life, they don’t care if he isn’t successful or rich or anything, they’re honestly rather solid. (wow imagine having nice parents, a first for all my characters, im literally this meme)

grew up in peckham, a suburb of london. growing up, his mum was a model / actress / waitress who later retrained as a speech therapist and his dad worked in her majesty’s service at buckingham palace. his dad wasn’t allowed to tell his family what his job entailed but rory suspects it’s probably very boring and just involves a lot of…. logistics n security.

was bullied a lot at school. [cole sprouse voice] he didn’t fit in and he didn’t want to fit in. unironically wore a trenchcoat to school every day of his life. spent most of his lunchtimes in the library because it was his safe space. as a result he knows…. loads of useless information because 30% of his school years were spent reading anthologies on space and the vikings etc. would be good on a game show. obsessively recorded every episode of university challenge as a child.

middle-class and lowkey quite wealthy but rarely talks about money, one of those well-off people who still wears really old shitty shoes and only spends money if they absolutely have to

virgin who can’t drive

into star wars, not into the big bang theory. feminist. can’t watch horror movies

favourite film is where the wild things are. also loves the florida project. thinks kids are the sweetest thing and can’t wait to be a dad to some. right now is dad to one cat, whose name changes on a daily basis (identity is constantly shifting, duuuuude), but they were originally named ‘wheezer’

rory has been musical for as long as they can remember. first picked up guitar because he thought it would make this girl esther who he was in love with like him, but he just ended up falling in love with music instead.

formulated several different bands as a kid but ultimately had to give it up cos he was quite controlling and got fixated on making a certain sound so it wasn’t really fun for the others. got into electronic music because it was something he could do basically on his own and keep tweaking until he got it perfect

always drumming their fingers or strumming invisible guitar strings. tends to avoid parties bc he has quite has specific tastes when it comes to music and doesn’t like listening to r&b for eight hours while people throw up into plastic cups.

a techno connoisseur. has been making electronic music since he was about twelve.

after his parents divorce, when he was fourteen, rory & his mother moved to run-down suburban neighbourhood, pittsfield, massachussets.

big into photography. he mostly uses a canon 35mm camera, but occasionally uses disposable ones when he wants that more rustic feel.

moving to the states, their photography became more focused on suburban neighborhoods and are often quite dark and cinematic (think gregory crewsden). here are some shots of pittsfield i really like which rory has on his wall [1] [2] [3]

falls in love 12 times a day. never had a girlfriend or boyfriend. gets sweaty when someone cute looks at him. flirting?? what?? would prefer to idealise them from a distance

gender??? hm. doesn’t really know where he fits yet, sometimes he feels like a guy and sometimes they dont feel like anything at all. isn’t really bothered, cos they think it’s a social construct anyway. uses he/they pronouns interchangeably, but feels like ‘he’ is more fitting. won’t necessarily pull anyone up on it cos he knows having an identity that’s constantly…. in flux.. can be annoying for others … and doesn’t want to be a burden even tho it isn’t at all?? rory internalises guilt

everything is socially constructed. mirrors let you move through time. the whole thing’s a metaphor. he thinks he’s got free will but really he’s trapped in a maze. in a system. all he can do is consume. people think it’s a happy game. it’s not a happy game — it’s a fucking nightmare world, and the worst thing is, it’s real and we live in it

has ocd. tries to let it affect his life as little as possible, but obviously it’s incredibly hard to control a compulsive disorder. was teased for it at school when other kids started to notice. he was obsessed with the number five, would wash his hands five times, count stairs i groups of five, he could only use the corridors in one direction and always had to keep his hands busy. it manifests itself in hyper-fixations (trains when he was a child – specifically steam engines – then later he became obsessed with space and the patterns of constellations, and now he’s obsessed with synthesizers) and repetitive behaviours like counting stairs. doesn’t really affect his social life at all, he can jst get a bit locked-on n hyper-focused sometimes.

has insomnia. barely ever sleeps. finds it hard to switch off from work / writing / gaming / whatever’s preoccupying him in that moment. he’s always awake at 5am and quite often sleeps in through classes but still gets really good grades because he’s very good at his course. rarely attends classes. prefers to work independently. doesn’t really trust his tutors are intelligent enough to be teaching him, and is particularly suspicious of the lockwood tutors. a music snob tbh

secretly a small-scale drug dealer, only does weed n some party pills. rollerskates around campus dealing cos they dnt have a car

likes: techno, the webpage cats on synthesizers in space, allen ginsberg, vintage gramophones,  floating points, lcd soundsystem, marijuana, soft dogs that let you pet them, late-night strolls talking about the universe, independent films, cigarettes, herbal tea, gallows humour, long showers, brown eyes, tchaikovsky, dr. seuss, constellations, photography, late night jazz, vintage game boys and girls who could rip his still-beating heart out of his chest and use it as an ashtray. dislikes:  weddings, funerals, formality, button-up shirts that people actually button-up, bananas, hot coffee, social media, people who watch and play sports, rap music – especially of the misogynistic variety, indie wankers in wire-framed glasses that play ed sheeran songs at open mic nights.

plot ! with ! me ! i’d say all the usual “exes fwb hookups spiel” but rory… is very tender and tame… i feel like a deer in the headlights of love……. so give me

study buddies,

people who are also into techno and are music snobs about it,

people who love all kinds of music,

people who are in bands that maybe rory’s recorded and produced stuff for,

people he actually jams with (he plays bass and synth),

unrequited crushes!!

someone they met at a knitting club in freshman year and have remained friends with despite no longer going to it

people rory knows from open mic nights and gigs

library girlfriends / boyfriends that he stares at longingly while paging through leatherbound volumes

gamers !!! social recluses !!! hermits !!

people he deals weed to on his rollerskates (why r all my characters obsessed with rollerskates)

skaters. rory is really shit at skateboarding. like really shit. help the smol

hm now that rory has !Evolved! ig we can do hook up plots if u want but he’s not tht good at divorcing sex from emotion?? like he  hooked up w teddy once n felt hopelessly inlove so..... if u want soft plots b prepared for crippling sadness.......

stay groovy XD XD

[gotatext]

hello, it’s swamp witch nora again…. i couldn’t stay away.... hitting u with a tiny baby boy who is also terrible (sometimes).  musical softboi who loves karl marx and hates children dying in cobalt mines to make smart phones. as is tradition, here’s the pinterest board, have a peruse. fyi sorry for those of u who have read this intro a thousand times i literally.... can never b bothred to change it n i think thats really sexy of me x

CHARLIE PLUMMER / DEMI-BOY — don’t look now, but is that rory bergström  i see? the 23 year old music student is in their junior year and he is a rochester alum. i hear they can be whimsical, impassioned, self-indulgent and nitpicky, so maybe keep that in mind. i bet he / they will make a name for themselves living in griffin street. ( nora. 24. gmt. she/her. )

aesthetics.

bed hair from a permanent state of slumber, calloused fingertips from strumming bass into the early hours and djing into the blacklit night, self-help books thumbed once and thrown beneath your bed, battered copies of choose your own adventure books, spliffs passed half-arsed across rooftops while light pollution obscures low-hanging stars, marxist literature in stacks against your bedroom walls, a burner phone twice-shattered and a stash of replacement sim cards.

tw ocd, anxiety, drugs

half-swedish, half-british. the swedish is on his mother’s side. he’s bilingual but thinks in english. only really speaks swedish around his mother. only child, and kinda put a lot of pressure on himself to be the perfect kid when he was young, but his parents are honestly, quite decent? and just want him to have a nice life, they don’t care if he isn’t successful or rich or anything, they’re honestly rather solid. (wow imagine having nice parents, a first for all my characters, im literally this meme)

grew up in peckham, a suburb of london. growing up, his mum was a model / actress / waitress who later retrained as a speech therapist and his dad worked in her majesty’s service at buckingham palace. his dad wasn’t allowed to tell his family what his job entailed but rory suspects it’s probably very boring and just involves a lot of…. logistics n security.

was bullied a lot at school. [cole sprouse voice] he didn’t fit in and he didn’t want to fit in. unironically wore a trenchcoat to school every day of his life. spent most of his lunchtimes in the library because it was his safe space. as a result he knows…. loads of useless information because 30% of his school years were spent reading anthologies on space and the vikings etc. would be good on a game show. obsessively recorded every episode of university challenge as a child.

middle-class and lowkey quite wealthy but rarely talks about money, one of those well-off people who still wears really old shitty shoes and only spends money if they absolutely have to

virgin who can’t drive

into star wars, not into the big bang theory. feminist. can’t watch horror movies

favourite film is where the wild things are. also loves the florida project. thinks kids are the sweetest thing and can’t wait to be a dad to some

has been musical for as long as they can remember. first picked up guitar because he thought it would make this girl esther who he was in love with like him, but he just ended up falling in love with music instead.

formulated several different bands as a kid but ultimately had to give it up cos he was quite controlling and got fixated on making a certain sound so it wasn’t really fun for the others. got into electronic music because it was something he could do basically on his own and keep tweaking until he got it perfect

always drumming their fingers or strumming invisible guitar strings. tends to avoid parties bc he has quite has specific tastes when it comes to music and doesn’t like listening to r&b for eight hours while people throw up into plastic cups.

a techno connoisseur. has been making electronic music since he was about twelve.

after his parents divorce, when he was fourteen, rory & his mother moved to run-down suburban neighbourhood, pittsfield, massachussets.

big into photography. he mostly uses a canon 35mm camera, but occasionally uses disposable ones when he wants that more rustic feel.

moving to the states, their photography became more focused on suburban neighborhoods and are often quite dark and cinematic (think gregory crewsden). here are some shots of pittsfield i really like which rory has on his wall [1] [2] [3]

falls in love 12 times a day. never had a girlfriend or boyfriend. gets sweaty when someone cute looks at him. flirting?? what?? would prefer to idealise them from a distance

gender??? hm. rory don’t really know where they fit yet, sometimes he feels like a guy and sometimes they dont feel like anything at all!! slippin out of his physical form into the spirit realm! isn’t really bothered, cos they think it’s a social construct anyway. uses he/they pronouns interchangeably, but currently feels like ‘he’ is more fitting. won’t necessarily pull anyone up on it cos he knows having an identity that’s constantly…. in flux.. can be annoying for others … and doesn’t want to be a burden even tho it isn’t at all?? rory internalises guilt

everything is socially constructed. mirrors let you move through time. the whole thing’s a metaphor. he thinks he’s got free will but really he’s trapped in a maze. in a system. all he can do is consume. people think it’s a happy game. it’s not a happy game — it’s a fucking nightmare world, and the worst thing is, it’s real and we live in it!!!!

has ocd. tries to let it affect his life as little as possible, but obviously it’s incredibly hard to control a compulsive disorder. was teased for it at school when other kids started to notice. he was obsessed with the number five, would wash his hands five times, count stairs i groups of five, he could only use the corridors in one direction and always had to keep his hands busy. it manifests itself in hyper-fixations (trains when he was a child – specifically steam engines – then later he became obsessed with space and the patterns of constellations, and now he’s obsessed with synthesizers) and repetitive behaviours like counting stairs. doesn’t really affect his social life at all, he can jst get a bit locked-on n hyper-focused sometimes.

has insomnia. barely ever sleeps. finds it hard to switch off from work / writing / gaming / whatever’s preoccupying him in that moment. he’s always awake at 5am and quite often sleeps in through classes but still gets really good grades because he’s very good at his course. rarely attends classes. prefers to work independently. doesn’t really trust his tutors are intelligent enough to be teaching him, and is particularly suspicious of the lockwood tutors. a music snob tbh

occasionally deals weed n pills when strapped for cash, but only 2 ppl he knows, and on a very small scale grass-roots level!! (so its ok???) rollerskates around campus dealing cos they dnt have a car. we love to see it

aesthetics: bed hair from a permanent state of slumber, calloused fingertips from strumming bass into the early hours and drumming into blacklit night, self-help books thumbed once and thrown beneath your bed, watching vine compilations until your eyes turn square, battered copies of choose your own adventure books, spliffs passed half-arsed across rooftops while light pollution obscures low-hanging stars

likes: techno, the webpage cats on synthesizers in space, allen ginsberg, vintage gramophones,  floating points, lcd soundsystem, marijuana, soft dogs that let you pet them, late-night strolls talking about the universe, independent films, cigarettes, herbal tea, gallows humour, long showers, brown eyes, tchaikovsky, dr. seuss, constellations, photography, late night jazz, vintage game boys and girls who could rip his still-beating heart out of his chest and use it as an ashtray. dislikes:  weddings, funerals, formality, button-up shirts that people actually button-up, bananas, hot coffee, social media, people who watch and play sports, rap music – especially of the misogynistic variety, indie wankers in wire-framed glasses that play ed sheeran songs at open mic nights.

plot ! with ! me ! i’d say all the usual “exes fwb hookups spiel” but rory… has never hooked up with anyone… i feel like a deer in the headlights of love……. so give me

study buddies,

people who are also into techno and are music snobs about it,

people who love all kinds of music,

people who are in bands that maybe rory’s recorded and produced stuff for,

people he actually jams with (he plays bass and synth),

unrequited crushes!!

actually i think rory had sex w delilah in the last version of this rp so if u want a hook up plot its possible just unlikely. they’d hav 2 be the driving force i reckon cos rory doesn’t really act on impulses like desire or anythin.... jst bottles that shit up !!! but yea we could do a spicy hook up plot maybs, depending on the person

someone they met at a knitting club in freshman year and have remained friends with despite no longer going to it

people rory knows from open mic nights and gigs

library girlfriends / boyfriends that he stares at longingly while paging through leatherbound volumes

gamers !!! social recluses !!! hermits !!

people he deals weed to on his rollerskates (why r all my characters obsessed with rollerskates)

skaters. rory is really shit at skateboarding. like really shit. help the smol

[echo-bleu]

Clubbing (in the library)

This is a gift for @nearly-conscious (who I can’t see to tag) for their birthday. Their prompt was Hermione/Padma, crushing over common interests.

I haven't written in this fandom since I was seventeen, and I'm not a big shipper, but it was a lot of fun to write. I hope you like it!

Happy Birthday! :)

Title: Clubbing (in the library)

Fandom: Harry Potter

Words: 2178

Summary: “I thought you would be there.” “Where else would I be?” Padma shrugs. It's nine-thirty, and all the other students have already left the building for the night, but Padma likes nothing more than having the library for herself. “I don't know,” Hermione smirks. “Clubbing?” “Yeah, that sounds like me."

Relationships: Hermione Granger/Padma Patil

Also on AO3 and FFnet.

--

“I thought you would be there.”

Padma looks up from her homework. Hermione drops into the chair next to her, her book bag making a thud as it hits the floor. She's wearing jeans and a comfortable sweater rather than robes, and she looks vaguely tired, like she just spent the whole day studying. It's probably the case, Padma reflect. Mid-terms are just around the corner, and trying to complete two completely different degrees must be exhausting.

It came as a surprise to almost no-one when Hermione, once her NEWTs over, couldn't choose between the high level Muggle university course she was offered and magical studies. The Wizarding university, to which Padma now also belongs, is small and less structured than its Muggle counterparts, so it's fairly easy for Hermione to follow all her courses without needing a Time Turner, but it's still at least twice the workload.

“Where else would I be?” Padma shrugs. It's nine-thirty, and all the other students have already left the building for the night, but Padma likes nothing more than having the library for herself.

“I don't know,” Hermione smirks. “Clubbing?”

“Yeah, that sounds like me,” Padma groans.

Over the years of being the two most bookish students of their year at Hogwarts, they've become casual friends, although Hermione always had too much of an exclusive relationship with Harry and Ron to be close to anyone else. Padma, after her twin sister started to become interested in very little else than boys, make-up and Divination, spent most of her time in the Library, usually on her own. Oh, she was never friendless and she still has frequent contact with all the Ravenclaws and most of the Hufflepuffs of her year and the year above, but she hasn't had a best friend since Parvati stopped filling the role. She loves her sister, but they're not confidants anymore.

But since the day she and Hermione first put foot in the university building four months ago and recognized that they didn't know anyone but each other, they've gotten closer. They usually study together in the evening, for one thing. Hermione doesn't have a boyfriend to go home to since she and Ron split up on the first day of term−something about different plans for the future−and Padma has no particular wish to step back into the drama that is her parent's house too quickly, most nights.

“Can I join you?”

“In what, my very energetic clubbing? Sure,” Padma smiles.

“Thanks. Midterms are coming way to fast. All this studying is going to kill me.”

“You love it. Admit it.”

Hermione blinks Padma with a very endearing look of naked surprise. The banter is coming almost naturally, but it's something they've never done before.

“Not at two in the morning on a Sunday,” Hermione answers. “Otherwise...okay. I do. It's just so interesting!”

“Our courses or the Muggles ones?”

“Both! The history of the Wizarding World is fascinating, but it's incredible how much social theory we're just missing out on. The Muggles have studied it all! Race, gender, oppression, intersection, it's all right there and we just ignore it.”

Padma shrugs. “Does it make them better?”

“Yes! No! Uh−” Hermione blushes. Padma laughs. She loves to see Hermione flustered.

“Yes or no?” she pushes.

“It's complicated!” Hermione exclaims, apparently out of words. “Some things are better, like, you know, slavery is outlawed in the Muggle world.”

“We don't keep slaves,” Padma frowns, her thoughts going straight to her ancestors enslaved by the East India Company. She's learned that history early on, the one she's never going to be taught about in college. The English wizards and Muggles working side by side to colonize India and abuse its inhabitants.

“What about the Elves?”

“They're not slaves!”

“Aren't they?”

Padma comes up with a vague memory of Hermione's fifth year crusade to free the House Elves. It seemed like madness, at the time.

“They don't get paid,” Hermione continues. “They punish themselves for things so mundane as being late or failing a task!”

Padma tilts her head. “Okay, you're right, they don't get paid. But where did you read that Elves punish themselves?”

“I saw them do it! The Malfoys'−” Hermione stops herself. “Never mind.”

“My parents' Elves are treated like they're part of the family,” Padma says. “They would never accept any money, but they have a day off a week, and they seem happy with their situation.”

“I guess I haven't seen many elves, and maybe they didn't have good masters. The Hogwarts Elves seem happy too. But still, masters. Coming from a Muggle background, it's...very odd. Outdated, I guess.”

“I never thought of them as slaves,” Padma says.

“That's what I mean when I say we need to bridge the gap between the Muggles and our world. They have so much to teach us, if only we were willing to listen. And we could bring them a lot, even without going into magic.”

She launches into a tirade of all that the magical community could do for Muggles, which seems to include, in no distinguishable order, better garbage disposal, gay marriage rights, library index cards and a non-capitalist economy. Padma is lost in the references to Muggle law and technology within the first minute, but she nods in all the right places, admiring Hermione's enthusiasm. This girl could change the world, she thinks.

It's funny, because it could be argued that she already has. But looking at her, it seems obvious that Hermione's prime was not the year she spent on the run under a tent with her two best friends, or the spells she threw at Death Eaters during the battle of Hogwarts. Her prime will be in many years, when she accomplishes all she strives for and cuts the ribbon in front of a brand new school for Muggle and Magical studies. Padma can see it in her mind's eye, a strangely attractive older Hermione with a pair of scissors in hand, a wide smile on her face, waving at her.

Why is she imagining herself looking back and laughing in pride, two steps behind among the school's new teachers?

“Do you have books that need to stay here?” she asks suddenly, taking advantage of Hermione needing to breathe between two rapid-fire sentences.

Hermione opens her mouth, frowns, and closes it again. She looks down at the pile of books peeking out of her bag. “No, they're already checked out,” she says. “I did that before coming to find you.”

“Good,” Padma says. “'Cause I want to get out of here.”

Hermione deflates. “Alright,” she says. “The Library's about to close anyway. I...I guess I'll see you tomorrow.���

Padma stares at her for a second, agape at the misunderstanding. “No, I mean we should get out of here together,” she says. “To...somewhere else.”

She hasn't thought this through. She can't invite Hermione home, not with her parents there and her younger siblings−Parvati is probably spending the night at Lavender's again. She curses that family tradition forbids her from getting her own place. It's not that her parents lack the money, but a young woman living on her own is just not done.

“Clubbing?” Hermione offers with a smile, looking relieved.

Padma snorts. “Clubbing sounds right,” she says.

“I do have an apartment,” Hermione hesitates. “If you wanted to−”

“Are you inviting me to your place?”

Hermione bites her lip. “Sure. It's not big, but it's quiet.”

“Sounds good. Let's go.”

Padma is very curious about Hermione's apartment. She follows her friend outside the library to the Apparition point, where Hermione offers her arm.

“I can give you coordinates if you prefer,” she says, “but I'm pretty good at Side-Along.”

Padma smiles. Since nearly all adult wizards and witches have their own license, Side-Along Apparition is considered quite intimate, unless you do it with children. She could be reading this wrong, because Hermione isn't very easy to read on the best day, but she's now fairly sure the hints she's been dropping have been received loud and clear.

Hermione's grin when Padma takes her arm is like a confirmation. The trip is nearly instantaneous, from London to Oxford, and smoother than most Side-Along Padma has been on as a child.

They land into the entrance corridor of a one-room apartment. It's warm and cozy in a bookworm kind of way, one wall lined with a giant bookshelf and another with a large desk. The sofa bed is swarming with pillows and comforters, looking more like a nest than a bed. It looks exactly like Hermione, and Padma is impressed that she's managed to create that feeling in just four months.

“It's nice,” she says. “I like what you've done with it. I could live here.”

Hermione blushes again. “It's comfortable,” she says.

She kicks off her shoes and drops onto the nest-bed, so Padma imitates her. She stays far enough to give Hermione some personal space, hoping secretly that that space will shrink as they get comfortable. It doesn't have to be tonight, she promises herself. But then, sitting on her friend's bed at ten in the evening on a weekday, the opportunity seems perfect.

“How is it going on the Muggle side?” she asks. “We're close to campus, right?”

“Yes. The university is very old, older than ours. It's weird to have to hide when I'm doing magic, but it's been fine so far.”

“And the studies?”

“I'm missing a lot of Muggle references and stuff that Muggles learn in school. I'm doing my best to catch up but...for once I'm not at the top of my class.”

“What? Hermione, a mediocre student?” Padma asks in mock-shock.

“Most of the students here were the best of their year in high school too. That or they come from old money.”

“So you've finally met your match.”

Hermione laughs. “Something like that. So, why choose History and Anthropology? I can't imagine that's what your parents wanted for you.”

“No. They wanted me to become a doctor, or at least some kind of well-paid job with a high social standing. But Parvati threw them off even further by going into an Apprenticeship with a seer, so I got off easily. The way they figure it, I'll marry straight out of university and stop working to raise kids. They don't see what kind of worthy job I could do with those subjects.”

“My parents don't really understand magic at all,” Hermione says, “so they were relieved when I chose to pursue a Muggle degree as well. Relieved enough that they didn't care what subject it was in.”

“But why did you choose it?”

“Hey, I asked you first!”

“Okay. So, Binns was horrible, but I like learning about history. I'd bring library books to his classes and read them under the table.”

“Me too!” Hermione exclaims. “But who didn't?”

“Anyone who wasn't in Ravenclaw beside you?” Padma jokes.

“Um, I guess I wasn't really aware of other people,” Hermione admits sheepishly. “I'm a real dork, aren't I?”

“A very adorable one,” Padma says without thinking. She didn't mean to say it out loud, but Hermione blushes in the most delicious way.

“Anyway,” Padma continues, “I think...I've always been in between two cultures. I was born here, but my parents never even learned English. They just use translation spells whenever they need to, but mostly they only have Indian friends. Home is like...like we were in India, but in downtown London. You look out the windows, London. You look inside, Mumbai. I had an Indian tutor and an Indian maid and I played with Indian kids. Sometimes it feels like I'm not English at all.”

“So you wanted to learn more about English history?”

“That, and I'm fascinated by how different cultures see the world in a whole other way. We're all human, and yet−”

“I know! I felt like such an outsider when I first came to Hogwarts. Wizards have this whole culture and traditions that no one ever tells us about! We have to figure it out on our own, and honestly I'm surprised there aren't more Muggleborn students who drop out. It's so confusing!”

“Do you still feel like an outsider now?”

“No. Not much, anyway. I still miss things, but I've grown with magic in my life for years now, and I've read everything I can on Wizarding culture. Now I want to branch out.”

“Into Muggle culture?”

“Yes, because it's what I was born to and that's where I feel out of place now. But also other magical cultures. You know, different countries, people, species even…

“Maybe we could go together to Mumbai some day. I could show you some things.”

Hermione smiles. “Maybe we could,” she says slowly, biting her lip nervously.

Padma can't take any more hesitation. She bends closer and kisses her. It's sweet, though awkward and uncertain.

“That okay?” she asks, pulling away slightly to look at Hermione's reaction.

“Yeah, it's okay,” Hermione nods. “Very okay.”

“Should we do it again?”

Hermione doesn't answer and just pulls her closer.

[mybeautifuldecay]

Private Tutor. Chapter Three: It Seemed Like A Nice Neighbourhood To Have Bad Habits In.

Chapter One. Chapter Two.

I went a little over my initial word count limit on this one, but I couldn’t stop writing...so here goes nothing <3 

Here’s to you @gotham-ruaidh - you’re my shining fic light, I can always rely on you to give me wonderful advice when I need it most in fandom things, writing things and life things. You’re a gem. 

Sipping on her coffee, Claire smiled as she thought about her plans for the day. Frank was meandering around the kitchen, packing his lunch for the day and pouring his own morning beverage into his personalised travel mug. Stroking her back reverently he kissed her cheek before picking up his briefcase.

“Any nice plans for the day, darling?” He asked as he slipped his jacket over his arm and reached for his car keys – ready to go for the day.

“Yes, actually,” Claire answered, looking across at him kindly, “I’m just popping into town to run a couple of errands – and then I’m going to go and investigate the library.”

“Ah, very good.” Frank said, waving his free hand across at her before opening the back door which led out of the kitchen and into the attached garage. “Let me know if you’re passing the university, it would be nice to meet for a drink. I’m sure I can make the time for you. If not, though, see you this evening, Claire.”

“I’ll try, love you,” she said, her cheeks pinking as he winked at her and closed the door softly.

--

Closing her eyes, Claire let the fine autumn rain sprinkle across her face as she stood outside The Mitchell. In another life that would have been her morning routine. Relaxed and honest. But as it stood, Frank hadn’t spoken lovingly to her before he’d left for work. In fact, he’d barely acknowledged her as he’d woken, gotten up and dressed for the day. He hadn’t asked what she might be up to. He had kissed her on the forehead as he’d skirted around her in the kitchen, but it felt more like a gesture of ownership than of love.

The journey from the house into Glasgow had been uneventful. Claire had successfully managed to navigate the bus system and, with the help of google maps on her phone, had easily reached her intended destination.

With a fresh cup of tea in her hands, she brushed the damp hair from her forehead as she walked along the slick pavement and up the small steps towards the entrance.

It was incredibly quiet when she walked inside, the distant hum of the outdated air-conditioning vents echoing through the vast interior, wafting the scent of fresh books around her and Claire felt instantly at home. She found the information desk easily and the middle-aged woman behind the desk smiled widely as she took Claire’s ID and created her an account.

“Is there a particular section that you’re interested in, Mrs Randall?” She asked, rolling her r’s as she spoke. “I can point ye in the right direction if so, and ye canna use the computers yet – aye? We’re having some work done this week and they’re are out of action. Unless ye have a laptop, the WiFi is alright, though I canna help ye too much wi’ it, I’m no’ too clued up on these things.” She said with a laugh as she passed Claire her brand-new library card.

“I’m alright for the internet, thank you,” Claire replied, peeling her moist coat from her shoulders and placing it delicately over her arm, “I’d just like to know where the medical section is, if you wouldn’t mind?”

“Ach! No, lass. I dinna mind a bit. Usually, though, those studying medicine get their books up at the university, we dinna get many down this way. Are ye a doctor?”

Claire blushed as she fiddled with the zip on her jumper. “Oh, no, I’m not…anything, really.” She said, embarrassment colouring her tone. “I’m just interested, and I needed to get out of the house.”

“Say no more, Mrs Randall.”

“Claire,” Claire replied softly as she let an easy smile flourish across her face, “please, it’s just Claire.”

“Nice to meet ye, Claire,” the librarian said stretching out her hand and taking one of Claire’s between two of her own, “I’m Ellen, the main librarian here at The Mitchell, though ye might meet Mary from time to time. Then there’s Gillian who’s here at the weekends and Rupert and Angus – but ye dinna need to take them pair seriously, aye? They’re the jokers around here.”

Ellen continued to talk to Claire about her colleagues as she guided her, by the hand, through the stacks towards the section which held the non-fiction science and medical texts. The building was wonderfully calm and quiet, and Claire had been glad, almost immediately, that she had made the decision to come.

“The heart of the library, though,” Ellen said, coming to a stop in front of an arc of books, “is our local archives. Ye could lose yerself for hours in there looking up yer relatives. That’s how I compiled our family tree, ye ken?”

“Oh, that’s really good. You’ve got to have some work perks, eh!” Claire replied, her fingers itching to thumb through the books sitting -unopened- right in front of her eyes.

This certainly seemed like a good neighbourhood to have bad habits in, she thought, her ignorant husband springing to mind as she quickly eradicated the image of him and his disdain for her furthering her education from her thoughts. There would be time to worry about that later.

“Anyway, ye dinna want to hear about that yet. I’ll leave ye be, aye. If there is anything else I can help ye with - please let me know. It was lovely to meet ye, Claire.” Ellen whispered, patting her hand before letting it go.

Claire had barely blinked and Ellen had disappeared, back to the front desk no doubt to continue her duties. For a moment, Claire basked in the silence, the still air falling around her as the steady ticking of the clock suddenly became noticeable in the background.

So taken was she with the books now at her disposal, Claire didn’t notice the figure that appeared around the stack. Looking in her general direction, the shadow smiled and pulled himself out into plain sight before speaking lowly but clearly.

“If ye chose one,” he said gleefully, “then it’s more fun that looking at their spines, aye?”

Claire jumped, her heart racing as she refocused, turning her head to look at the new stranger. “What if I’m just here for the aesthetics?” She quipped. “Maybe I’m an architect hunter just on the lookout for some fascinating internal structures. Or even an artist who needs some inspiration for her latest…masterpiece.” Finally silencing herself, Claire cocked her head to the left as if challenging him to dismiss her claims.

“Weel,” he replied after a moment, scratching the back of his head, his fingers tangling in his longish red hair, “then accept my apologies. I didna mean to assume.” He trained his eyes on her, his face seeming quite familiar for just a moment until she shrugged it off, unable to place him with anyone else she knew.

“Apology accepted.” Claire said, nodding and smiling as she held her hand out to introduce herself. “Claire.” She said monosyllabically, not adding anything else to her name.

“Claire.” He reiterated, taking hold of her hand and hesitating for a moment. Claire saw the indecision in his eyes. It looked as if he wanted to do something else – and not just shake her hand – but, in the end, formality won out over prehistoric gentlemanly greetings. He wanted to kiss the back of her hand, she could tell. “Are ye a doctor, Claire?” He asked, mirroring Ellen’s earlier question. She chuckled to herself, the irony all too clear in their assessment of her career. Clearly, she thought, she should have studied medicine since everyone seemed to assume she already had.

“Me?” She replied rather self-consciously. “No. I’m just me, just Claire. Not a doctor. Not anything…truly.” She reiterated, her heart dropping at the sum of her life so far.

“Now that I dinna believe for a moment, lass.” He counteracted.

“Oh, you don’t. And why would that be, Mr…?” She murmured softly, leaving her sentence hanging in the air as she waited for him to return the favour and tell her his name.

“Because, ye’ve a look about ye that says yer more than nothing, aye? Take it from someone who kens these things. Hello, though, just Claire – but no’ just Claire – it’s verra nice to meet you. I’m Dr Fraser. But ye can call me Jamie.” He finished finally, bending his head in a small bow as he let go of her hand.

“You’re a doctor?” She asked, astonished that he was here - so far away from the university which surely housed a more suitable supply of medical literature.

Jamie nodded in return.

“Can I ask a favour of you, Dr Fraser?” Claire enquired with only single breath between her first question.

“Aye, ask away, Claire.” Jamie countered an unmistakable glint of joy in his voice as he spoke. “I’ll try and help ye anyway I possibly can.”

“Would you be able to spare an hour or so to help me with some research? Please?”

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Erica Heftmann breaks free from the control of the FFWPU / UC

Dark Side of the Moonies by Erica Heftmann  (Penguin Books 1982)

Erica Heftmann was born in Washington, DC, in 1952. She believed she was born again in 1974 to Korean parents — the Lord of the Second Advent, Reverend Moon, and his wife, Hak Ja Han. She was deprogrammed from the Moon cult and became interested in the issue and power of mind control. In the 1980s, because of her research and expertise in that field, she was in demand as an adviser to mental health professionals, clergy, legislators, educators, legal and medical practitioners, law enforcement agencies, mind control victims and their families throughout the world.

Contents

Part I – Heavenly Deception

Part II – Free Will But No Choice

Part III – Return to Reality

Part IV – From the Outside Looking In

1 The Technology of Mind Control 2 Deprogramming Therapy 3 Judiciary, Legislature and the ‘Cryptocracy’ 4 Critical Judgement

Notes

Dark Side of the Moonies is the disturbing account of one person who gave up her own mind, her whole life to a man she thought was the messiah.

Since her liberation from the Moonies, she has come to understand the power that was used to control her. In revealing the hidden life of one cult, Erica Heftmann exposes the startling force cults are exerting in society – and the grip they have on many people.

I was a Moonie. When I regained my mind and could look back at the horror of it, I realized that my freedom was conditional. I was haunted by the need to understand how and why I had been transformed into what I hated most. Now I would be an ex-Moonie. My innocence would never return. … I had to live with the ignorance and prejudice of a public that believes I was somehow pre-disposed to becoming a cult member while they are immune. People think cults are something to laugh at, groups of religious half-wits who would never have made it in life anyway and are better off where they are. I was there … to further incredible schemes of political and economic power.

I am setting out my story and my explanations of it. I do this for the sake of others who have suffered agonies so profound as to make my cult experience seem like a holiday. I wish that I could bring voice to the countless others... I write this for people under mind control, especially those I love who are mentioned in these pages. Do not be afraid to use your own minds; you need no greater masters.

In this era we are learning about the plight of the handicapped, the minorities, those who have been denied the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We must learn about all unfortunates because we are responsible for depriving them by our failure to listen, to understand, to allow them the right to help themselves. Those who are able and refuse to help are the true unfortunates. They do not know how precious life is.

Erica Heftmann 1981

page 1

Part I – Heavenly Deception

On the last day of 1974 I nudged my way through the bustle of downtown Los Angeles with a lot on my mind. It wasn’t only taking inventory of the past year. It was the pattern I saw emerging. Breaking away, testing new ground, retreating. Every path led to the same edge and, feeling I couldn’t make it across, I would go back to find another path. I had come to know the edge pretty well.

I was surprised to hear the stories that circulated about me because I considered my life to be too ordinary. My measuring standards were not set by my peers but by the characters that peopled my books and travels.

Adulthood was edging me away from my mother and an older sister I adored. My father and brother had removed themselves from the family during my late childhood but what was left was stable. Mom was always patient, comforting, totally involved in her two girls.

I had a short romance with formal education. After two terms at university I declared myself graduated, having learned everything I felt the institution had to teach me: how to find a book in the library and how to sit down to coffee with an interesting professor.

With full sails and no rudder, I went to Europe taking every precaution not to be a hippie, annoyed that of all the times I could have been born on this planet I had to co-exist with a counter-culture that popularized doing one’s own thing. I picked my way carefully to avoid the throngs of stereotyped individuals who faced me at every turn. …

My mother was not easy to rebel against because I felt she was usually right. How could I break away and establish my own identity if there was no risk involved? She was always there to fall back on, to soften the blows. … Maybe you’ve been on your own for a few years but the world has just been your playground.

Wait a minute. Don’t be that hard on yourself. Someone puts you on a speck of cosmic dust whirling through space without asking your permission and then just as rudely and abruptly and inevitably takes you away. While you’re here you’re given a set of problems and a set of rules for solving them. Like someone leaving a kid to amuse himself with square pegs and round holes. ’Bye kid, see you in eighty or ninety years. No, Erica, I don’t blame you one bit for stepping back to take a look at it all. People are manipulating and killing each other and for what? Do they even enjoy the spoils of their exploits? Why waste your life trying to set things up for them to destroy when you have enough sense to realize that there’s something else in this existence to do?

Lonely, confused and worried about fulfilling my potential, I had escaped the forced gaiety of the office New Year’s party. Everyone making crass jokes about resolutions and getting drunk to forget them.

On the last working day of the year, all the desk calendars in the office buildings were collected and released into the wind from the roofs. They fluttered down like ticker tape. Now as I walked the last couple of blocks to the bus stop, I stared at them cluttering the pavement. Some pages had little notes jotted on them. OCTOBER 15/meet Dave for lunch. Or 2:00/REGIONAL MEETING. Giving in to a wave of melancholy, I couldn’t help but see the metaphor days lying in the gutter, accumulated so quickly and then forgotten.

A big commuter bus moved away from the kerb and blasted a clump of pages into an open drain with its exhaust. So it’s come to this, has it, I tried joking with myself.

I looked up about the same moment that I felt someone gazing at me. A pair of blue eyes much like my own. A young woman just a few paces away was watching me. She was wholesome looking, rather tall, and had a short, dark-haired young man with her.

In my memory, it is etched that I was the one to start the conversation but I know that this is not the way it happened. There was just something so familiar and so welcoming in her eyes that I felt myself reaching out to make the first move.

All I needed for an introduction was to know that they were foreigners. How well I remembered the feeling of being a newcomer to a city and how comforting it was when strangers had stopped and talked with me.

The girl’s name was Ingrid and she was from Switzerland. The one she towered over was Antonio, a Peruvian. I asked how such an unlikely combination had met They explained that they were touring with an organization called International One World Crusade. This was their last stop in America and within a week they would push on to Japan.

Ingrid had spent all of her time in Los Angeles cooped up in the kitchen cooking for the others. On her first opportunity to get out and see the sights, she was delighted to meet someone. They chatted on. Out of the corner of my eye I was searching for a coffee shop we could dive into. I made the suggestion. It was one of those magical meetings that happens when one travels and I could tell the feelings were shared all around. My bus didn’t stop running for a few hours.

‘We’d love to,’ Ingrid said, ‘But we are just on our way back for an evening meeting. Would you like to walk with us? You could see our headquarters office and meet some of the others.’

Something flickered in me, making me want to bolt, no matter how friendly they were. Something about not being on neutral turf. I noticed it at the same time I realized that I was already walking with them in their direction. …

page 187

Part III Return to Reality

Up late this morning. At 6.00 I should already be in the lodge with Paul to correct reflection books. Paul is the best assistant I’ve ever had and this is by far the most successful workshop since the old days with Alex. Yesterday Mr Kadachi gave the VOC lecture so that we could have some time to catch up on our reports but we scrambled up onto the roof of the lodge to talk instead.

I think it is important to develop a good subject-object Foundation for the Abel position we hold collectively. …

Paul is still having Chapter Two problems about his old girlfriend. I am glad he is confiding in me. I remember all the times Kathy and I kept him away from Lisa and occupied when the centres used to come up for weekend workshop. I thought Lisa’s transfer to MFT would solve a lot. They were both trying hard to overcome and by all external appearances they had but now I’m finding out that Paul is entertaining hopes of being blessed with her. It isn’t good to think about the Blessing, especially trying to second-guess Father. Paul keeps insisting that Spirit World prepared them for the Family because they had been sweethearts since high school. . He is suffering so much and so much wants to please Heavenly Father.

We must be a good combination because we’ve been having such fantastic results with our workshops. We work as a unit. Father was right that if you serve someone well enough, you make him dependent on you. He opens up to you and gradually the power shifts its balance point. If you are a good object, it is much more important than being a mediocre subject. …

I have finally learned how to handle sleep. Imagine how much time is wasted in the Fallen World. Midnight is just the beginning of the evening for me. Paul covered for me for fifteen minutes yesterday during discussion and made me sleep. On the way down the hill with the class, he whistled for me when they passed the dorm and I was out the back way and down to the lodge before them. I had only had forty-five minutes of sleep the night before and during the past weeks it has been usually two hours, sometimes three. That fifteen minutes was like a whole night I got up completely refreshed. I think I’ve finally broken through.

I must apologize to Mr Kadachi. I was so upset with him because he slept during the day and pulled staff meetings as late as 3.30 in the morning — never before 2.00. The meetings were late only because he was reading or playing with his lizards. When he had us as a captive audience he would put off staff matters and expound on some recent theory about the Restoration. I contradicted one of his theories and still feel horrible about it but it did bring the meeting to a quick close. No one else would dare stand up to Kadachi-san. …

The day sailed by with its own effortless momentum. In the afternoon I was called into the kitchen for a phone call. Mr Kadachi was pacing. I picked up the receiver.

‘Erica? I was afraid I wouldn’t get through to you. They gave me the usual runaround.’

‘Well, Mom, sometimes I’m busy and can’t get to the phone.’

‘Too busy to take a call from me?’

I rolled my eyes up. How would she like it if I interrupted her at work?

‘I’m here in San Bernardino and I hope you won’t give me some story about being too busy to see me today. We have a date, you know.’

Did we? It seemed that I was always trying to get out of some engagement and I kept postponing these visits with promises. Guess she finally caught up with me. Kadachi was at my side poking around in his lizardarium. I placed my hand over the receiver.

‘She says she’s in San Bernardino and wants to see me today.’

‘You have a workshop to look after. Tell her to make it another time.’

I uncovered the receiver. ‘I have a workshop to look after. Could we make it another time?’

‘Erica, I’ve driven all this way.’ She sounded a bit frantic. ‘Are you going to make me turn around and go back? I’m leaving for New York tomorrow, remember, and I want to see you before I go.’

‘She’s insisting. She says she’s driven all this way and wants to know if I’m going to make her turn around and go back. She’s leaving for New York tomorrow.’

Kadachi gave me a look that revealed nothing and turned back to his lizards. How could I be so weak as to have to bother him and get him to tell me what to do?

‘Look, Ma, I’m going to have to go now. My class is starting.’

Click

I was hardly out the door when the phone rang again. It took three calls before I was reluctantly given permission to go. I wasn’t pressuring either side, they just fought it out with me as the transmitter of information. The condition was that I be back for evening discussion. I wouldn’t have missed that for the world anyway.

By the time she and my step-father Chuck arrived, I was bathed and had styled my hair with a blow-dryer I found in the sisters’ cabin. I also found a ‘good’ set of clothes I’d never seen before. They fit and I looked very nice when I sized myself up in the mirror.

I ran down the steps of the lodge to meet them. The guard at the gate had already informed me of their arrival. After quick hellos I found myself in an argument. I wanted them to come inside and meet my friends. They replied flatly that they were not interested in coming in, only in seeing me.

‘You say you’re interested in what I’m doing. How are you ever going to find out if you don’t see for yourselves? You just keep reading those negative articles.’

They could hardly conceal their discomfort and my mother couldn’t pass the opportunity for some hostile remarks so I decided that it was better to leave right away. Then, at least, I could return earlier. Paul was thrilled about taking over for a while and I was looking forward to the meal so it wasn’t a bad arrangement after all. I told them to wait a moment on the landing. I searched for Kadachi to say goodbye. His wife told me he had locked himself in his room at his cabin. I would probably return before he emerged from his meditation.

I slid in the front seat between my parents and chattered the whole way down the mountain. I told them about Roy’s close scrape with his parents. They had tried to kidnap him but he escaped. He was sorry for hurting his father in the tussle on the ground but not sorry enough to speak with them. I usually handled Roy’s calls. They simply would not understand that he had been transferred. They thought we were hiding him. No one at camp even knew where he had been transferred to.

‘Imagine parents trying to do something like that to their own child!’ I gasped.

Chuck dropped us off at a small restaurant in town while he went to see about getting something fixed on the car. I ordered a large meal and wolfed it down. Mom didn’t touch what she had ordered. She said that she was coming down with flu and had lost her appetite. If my stomach had been able to stretch, I would’ve eaten her meal as well. We didn’t talk much. These days we had little in common. I couldn’t see the point in pretending to be interested in the Fallen World and she refused to take an interest in the Restoration. She kept glancing at her watch, obviously worried about Chuck taking so long.

When he arrived, he said he wasn’t hungry either and they wanted to beat the traffic back to town. They still had to pack for their trip. He hastily paid the bill and we went out to the car. The lot was dark and the car was at the rear of the building. I instinctively sized up the lot for fundraising. Hard habit to get over. Good thing I was going back to camp instead of out blitzing.

I was grabbed from behind and thrown forward. It happened so quickly that I was in the back seat between Chuck and a strange man before I caught my breath. My mind jammed. My mother was in the driver’s seat revving the engine and another person sat in the front seat on the passenger’s side. We took off as the doors were being pulled closed.

It was several moments before I could speak. My mind snapped into the witnessing mode. I politely extended my hand to the man on my right to introduce myself.

‘How do you do? My name is Erica.’

He reached under the seat and brought out a bouquet of flowers. Presenting them, he said, ‘Very well, thanks. My name is Dana. Here, these are for you.’

Dana! I couldn’t believe it. Dana Stevens? It must have been ten years since I’d seen him — he’d been living in Paris for that long. He was a dear friend of the family, someone I had been infatuated with as a child. Mom had told me that he had come back a few weeks before to get married.

I could not recognize him in the dark but there was no mistaking his style. I looked at the person in the front seat. A woman. She must be his new wife.

‘Mrs Stevens, do you mind if I embrace your husband?’ I threw my arms around Dana’s neck. It was totally unprincipled but my mind was jilted and I was too happy to see him to care about Principle for that moment.

My mother had the wheel gripped firmly. ‘I’m sorry, Erica. You didn’t show up at Dana’s wedding so we’re going to have another reception party now just for you.’ I believed her even though I still felt a panic. I had no time to be part of a practical joke. They would worry back at camp, especially Kadachi. I pleaded for her to stop and let me phone them at least. My mother could always out-insist me, especially when I became hysterical. I thought of leaping from the car, disregarding the danger, but I was flanked by two strong men. Roy had told everyone to carry matches with them so they could set fire to the place if anyone ever took them by force. A lot of good that would have done me. I was no longer in the mood for conversation and numbly rode the rest of the way in silence. My mind was blank as if I had been unplugged.

We pulled off the freeway somewhere in Long Beach and, after circling around some residential streets, pulled up at a modest house with several cars parked in the driveway. They surrounded me on the few steps into the house and then, with some other people, formed a corridor so that I had no choice but to go past them to the rear of the house. I didn’t know how many people were in the house or who they were. It didn’t look like a party.

I entered a small bedroom at the end of the hall. The room was tiny, carpeted and bare except for a blanket and a pillow. There was a piece of plywood covering the one small window. Through my mind flashed the story of The Collector. It was clear to me that I was going to be held prisoner for someone’s pleasure but I had no idea for what purpose.

The sight of the blanket and pillow made my heart stop. I knew this was the end of the line. When I looked up I saw half a dozen strangers standing around me. The door was shut. It was explained to me that I would have to speak with these people. Disbelief clogged my mind. They wanted to talk to me about the Movement. How could they talk to me about something they knew nothing about? I understood then that I would stay in that room until I converted them all or died — there would be no way to escape unless I could befriend one of them and gain sympathy to be set free. I wondered how that tiny room would look after the first year. I would know every crack on the ceiling, every sound from the outside. I looked for Dana. Surely he would help.

‘Can I see Dana please?’

‘I’ll see if I can find him for you. In the meantime, why don’t you make yourself comfortable?’ It was a woman who spoke. She was thirty-ish, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. She looked nervous, which gave me confidence. She left the room and two or three of the others trailed out with her.

Dana appeared at the door. His shirt was unbuttoned and he had a beer in his hand. He looked at me with mild surprise as if he couldn’t fathom why I might want to speak with him.

‘Dana, what do you think you’re going to prove with this? I’m going to be missed at camp by people who care about me. What sort of a kangaroo court do you intend to hold? You’re holding me prisoner. You can’t do that.’

Spectacularly unimpressed with my plea to his sense of justice, he suppressed a belch and scratched his chest. ‘I’m not the one who made the decision, you know. Your mother wants you here. It can’t hurt to listen.’

‘Listen? Under these conditions? Why didn’t you just arrange to have these people, whoever they are, come and meet me in a coffee shop somewhere? I would discuss anything with anyone at any time. That’s my job.’

‘Well, your anywhere and anytime and anyone seems to be here and now with these folks, doesn’t it?’

The years had changed him. I remembered the late-night talks, how, he had made my head spin with his unconventional ideas. He was the one who first infected me with the idea of breaking free. Now he had sold out like the rest of them, even getting a beer belly. There would be no point in talking to my mother. I knew how she was once she made up her mind about something. I asked to see Chuck. I knew he would not be able to conceal anything. His face always gave him away. He had always listened to my ideas with endless patience and took my troubles to heart. He supported and nurtured my individualism with pride, even the things that must have been hard to swallow. Surely he would understand me now. Yet when he came in and sat in the same place that Dana had been sitting, I wondered if I was going to come up against the same stone wall. Maybe they had some kind of routine worked out. We were no longer on the same team. God had divided us.

He didn’t give me the chance to wonder long. He took me in his arms. ‘We had to do this, honey.’ His voice broke and he cried, unable to speak for a while. ‘It’s a horrible thing to have to see you here like this. We want you to be free. I know that’s a hard thing to understand, that we’ve locked you up to free your mind. We wouldn’t be doing this if we didn’t love you. All we want you to do is to listen to these people. They’re good people, honey, don’t be afraid. You know your mom would never let anyone hurt you. That’s why she wants you away from that group. We miss our girl — the one who’s so free, the one who was never afraid to stand up for what she believed.’

Now it was my turn to force back the tears so I could speak.

‘Will you stay with me?’ I was terrified of the thought of them leaving the next day for New York.

‘Of course we’ll stay with you.’ It was my mother. She must have been listening at the door. I didn’t hear her come in.

‘You aren’t going to New York?’

‘No, that was just a story to get you to come with us. We were so afraid that you would cancel again and now that we brought Sara out here —’

‘Sara? Is she that lady? The one in the shorts.’

My mother held a handkerchief for me to blow my nose as she had done when I was a child. ‘Now the other side, blow hard, you can do better than that.’ I laughed through the tears until Sara walked in with some others and my panic returned.

I decided to size up my captors. Mom and Chuck left the room. The others sat around me in a semi-circle. Danny had been in the Children of God. He said he’d been deprogrammed by Sara.

Doug had been in the Family. As soon as I learned this I tried to see the brother in him. Sometimes he revealed it but he had been in the Fallen World too long. The brother in him was only a flicker. Perhaps he would be the one I would befriend if I could convince him of Principle. He could help me escape back to Father. Would that make him my spiritual son? He did not want to talk about his spiritual parents or his missions. He said they were not important. What else could there be to talk about if we were going to talk about the Family?

Jill had been in the Family too, but not long enough to know very much.

I didn’t know quite what to make of Sara. She seemed to try to blend into the background and quite succeeded — all but those eyes of hers. Every time she caught my glance she pinned me to the spot.

Something was rattling around loose in my mind trying to find where it belonged. Maybe my whole mind was rattling around loose. I felt fatalistic — the controls were jammed on automatic pilot I felt almost... well, sportive, gay... having the burden of the destiny of mankind lifted from me temporarily. The ball was for once in somebody else’s court. A funny thought lifted the corners of my mouth. Old girl, you only get kidnapped once in life, that is, unless you’re terribly unlucky. You may as well have a good time. After all, you’ve got a captive audience.

I made myself comfortable. ‘It looks like we’ll be here for a while,’ I remarked breezily. ‘If you want to do your job properly, you’ll need some background information on me. I guess I’d better tell you about myself.’

Danny stretched out and groaned, then unclasped his hands from behind his neck and drew himself up on one elbow. ‘The only thing we need to know about you is already obvious. You’re brainwashed.’

‘You watch too many movies. Who do you think you are, Clint Eastwood? Where did you get this brainwashing stuff?’

‘Well, Queen-for-a-Day, what happened to your humility, love, understanding for mankind and all of that? If you were a real disciple of Christ, you’d be praying for me and setting a good example. I guess your dignity and integrity only work when you’re plugged into your little messiah.’

Doug shot him a look to keep quiet. Interesting. They were not united so I was bound to triumph. First rule of Principle. Unity forms the Foundation. I had the knowledge of Principle on my side, they had nothing, not even unity. Evidently Doug remembered something of it in trying to keep Danny in line.

Danny rolled onto his back and addressed the ceiling. ‘All right, go ahead and give us your testimony. I probably know it word-for-word already. I’ve heard enough of them and they’re all the same. Don’t tell me, let me guess — you went to India, came back and read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, had an abortion, became a militant feminist —’

Doug cut in, ‘Don’t mind him. Sure, I want to hear your story. It’s hard to be a Moonie. You wouldn’t be where you are unless you were a good person but don’t tell me that you joined because you realized it was the truth. None of us joined because we understood what they were teaching us.’

I began my story. To my surprise, it didn’t come out like I had planned it. It wasn’t my usual testimony. I told them about my life before, about the things I had loved and believed, things I had forgotten until then. I must have talked for two hours. Sara was pacing outside. Jill left for a while and when she came back in she asked me if I wanted anything to eat.

‘No thanks,’ I answered. ‘I had dinner with my mother.’ My mind drifted back to the camp for a moment. It seemed universes away. I wondered where I was. Whose house was this?

‘Is this Sara’s house?’

‘No,’ Jill answered. ‘It belongs to a woman named Alice.’

‘Can I see her?’

A woman was brought to the door. She hesitated before coming in. She was a friendly looking, middle-aged lady, the kind I’d seen by the hundreds on the lots, motherly, middle-class. I thanked her for letting us use her house. It seemed to me that it must have been a great inconvenience to have so many people in her home for such a long time. I indicated the boarded window. I was sorry for my being the cause of her house being turned upside-down. Tears formed in her eyes.

‘Honey, your parents love you very much. Everyone here is very concerned for you. We all want the best for you. Everything will turn out all right.’ She hesitated and phrased her question shyly. Jill says that you don’t want anything to eat. Can I bring you something else? Something to drink? How about a glass of warm milk?’

Warm milk, yech. I always hated it and gagged on it but I didn’t want to refuse her hospitality. For her sake I gratefully accepted. I was glad I did when I saw the look on her face. She couldn’t have been more happy if I’d given her a million dollars.

While she was fetching the milk, the conversation turned away from me and the kids talked among themselves. I couldn’t hate them. I wished that I could have joined in the conversation but it was as if they were speaking another language, things I hadn’t any knowledge of. Danny was sprawled out comfortably. Jill was teasing him and heaved the pillow at him. He propped himself up with it and turned to me.

‘So, this Moon is the messiah, eh?’

The devil himself couldn’t have been more satanic. What a way to talk about Father! It slashed my heart to hear him referred to as ‘Moon’. I would have to educate this guy if we were going to be able to talk at all. He would have to learn to call him Reverend Moon.

‘History will show if he is the messiah or not Reverend Moon has —’

‘I know, he has the potential of becoming the messiah but now he is in the John the Baptist position. I’ve heard it all before. Why don’t you just come out and say it. It will save us a good twenty-four hours. Don’t give me all the PR lines. I know you believe he’s the messiah.’

‘Well, I have to define what messiah means.’

‘Yeah, he has to be born in Korea between certain years — where’d you get all this information anyway? I could tell you that the messiah has to be 5’5”, have blue eyes and be born in Los Angeles in 1952. How’s that grab ya?’

‘God has revealed certain things to me.’

‘What’d He do, call you on the phone?’

‘Don’t you believe in God?’

‘Don’t try to get off the subject by attacking me. Yes, I believe in God but my God doesn’t go around talking to me. Just answer a simple question: did God call you on the phone?’

‘Don’t be absurd.’

‘Does that mean no?’

‘No, God did not call me on the phone. There, are you satisfied?’

‘Did He send you a telegram?’

Doug broke in. ‘What he means is how does God communicate with you. You said that God revealed certain things to you. How did you receive them?’

How did I receive them? I just knew. ‘I just knew.’

‘Maybe you just knew wrong?’

‘Divine Principle clearly outlines the qualifications for the messiah.’

‘Great, who wrote the Divine Principle?’

‘It was revealed by God.’

Doug looked at Danny. ‘You getting dizzy yet? I told you the Moonies have everything tied up and you can go round and round for ages without getting anywhere.’

Danny sat up and looked at me. ‘It’s no different than my group. We believed our leader was the end-time prophet Why? Because his doctrine said so. I thought God revealed it to me too.’

‘Well, you were misled. Divine Principle talks about that. You were in a cult’

‘And you are in one.’

Alice came in with the milk and my mother trailed in after her.

‘Are you getting sleepy? I brought you some things to sleep in.’ She produced a nightgown and slippers. My eyes popped out of my head. A nightgown no one had worn before. It was so beautiful, so elegant, and slippers. I couldn’t wait to put them on.

‘Where can I change?’ Surely I wasn’t expected to change in front of the men. I had heard that men in deprogrammings humiliated and raped sisters.

Danny and Doug stood to leave.

‘Good-night, Brothers.’

Doug said good-night but Danny couldn’t resist getting in one last little dig. ‘In case you didn’t know, we are not biologically related. Brothers is also not a common slang term — it’s a Moonie word. The sooner you stop talking like a Moonie, the sooner you’ll stop thinking like one. Do me a favour, hey? Every time you use a Moonie word and I stop you, try substituting an English word.’

‘Okay, good-night, Clint Eastwood. How’s that?’

He tossed the pillow at me.

Sara and I were alone. She was cautious but wanted to know how I felt, what I needed, what my fears and anticipations were. There was nothing about her or any of the others that would cause me to distrust them. I could see that they were sweet and honest people, just misled and being used by satanic forces. Mostly, my mind was on sleep. The opportunity to sleep away from masses of people, in clean bedding, in a quiet house, in my own nightdress, close to my parents — it was too much of a luxury to put off.

Sara asked if I would mind if she and Jill slept in the room with me. I laughed. Would I mind having only two sisters in the room with me? I was under the covers in a flash and the light was turned out. They left the door ajar. They were going to sit in the kitchen for a while and come to sleep later. Mom came in to say good-night. I made her promise me one last time that she would not leave for New York that she would be there when I awoke in the morning. I don’t remember if she left before I fell asleep.

With the window boarded over and no sunlight, I had no idea what time it was. By habit, I was completely awake. From totally off to totally on in a millisecond. I tried to fall asleep again but it was useless. I’d have to get up sometime and face the music. This was Sunday. I had probably missed Pledge. I couldn’t muster my thoughts to say a proper Pledge but I started in on a short prayer. Security and anxiety were marbled in my heart As long as we talked about Principle, I would be safe. They were not united and they did not have God’s truth. There was no way they could harm me. It would just be a matter of time. Sara came in.

‘Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to wake you. I just came in to find my brush.’

‘It’s okay, I just woke up before you came in. What time is it anyway?’

‘Ten o’clock. Bet you’ve never had such a good sleep in the cult.’

Cult! That word hurled frustration, fear and anger at me. I stood up quickly and began to fold my bedding.

‘You want to take a shower?’

‘Yes, thank you. If I may.’

Sara showed me across the hall. What a luxurious bathroom. I felt like a princess. A fresh set of towels were set out for me and everything was spotless. A new toothbrush and a new tube of toothpaste, a hairbrush, even some cosmetics. I turned the shower on full blast. Sara yelled through the door.

‘There’s plenty of hot water. Let’s forget about the cold shower conditions, okay?’

‘Okay!’ How did she know about conditions? She obviously didn’t know very much. I couldn’t set a condition without clearing it with a central figure anyway. I stepped into the shower. Ah, I would have a hard time stepping out again. I watched the steam escape through a small window. I remembered in The Collector that the woman had thrown a note out the window in hopes that someone would pass by and read it. Maybe I could do that. But what good would it do? I was in the Fallen World now. Even if I could squeeze out the window and run away, to the police maybe, they’d just bring me back here. In Satan’s world who would help a Family member? I would have to work it another way. I didn’t have enough mental power to consider the future anyway. It was all I could do to concentrate on the present I was being bombarded with new-old sensations, the things in the bathroom, the cleanliness, the newness, the freshness, the comfort and security. I was reluctant to turn off the shower. My mother came in and talked to me through the shower door. She wanted to know if I needed shampoo or anything else. If nothing else, it was overwhelming to be with her in circumstances that seemed so normal. It was like being on holiday. Maybe I could postpone the inevitable confrontation. I felt a surge of energy and wanted to crow with pleasure. Sleeping until ten o’clock!

Mom brought me some clothes to change into, a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. It felt deliciously wonderful and forbidden to wear them. I asked permission to keep the slippers on. She gave me a queer look

The bedding was put away and the room was bare again but for one blanket and a pillow. As I dried my hair with a towel, Danny asked me what I wanted for breakfast. I wasn’t in the mood for eating. We decided on coffee.

He brought it in and went out again for his Bible. Doug carried in a small case of papers. They wanted to talk about fundraising. Fair enough. Doug had been on MFT. I couldn’t understand why he asked me questions he already knew the answers to — questions about the Economic Restoration. It was as boring as giving lecture to answer him.

They couldn’t do anything to dislodge the truth. After all, they had nothing better to offer. Nothing better than beer, cigarettes, divorce — the Fallen World. I remembered how Larry had told me that even if God did not exist and if Father wasn’t the messiah, the gathering of dedicated people giving endlessly of themselves was bound to be the best thing yet.

‘Why do you lie on the streets when you beg money from people?’ Sara entered into our discussion.

‘I don’t lie. I never did. Lie about what?’

‘Lie about where the money was going.’

‘Everyone knew I was from the Unification Church. We even wore —’

‘— badges issued by President Salonen,’ Doug. ‘But most people didn’t understand that you were a Moonie. If they ask you outright if you are raising money for Reverend Moon, you deny it, don’t you?’

‘Never! I’m proud of Father. Why would I conceal the truth?’

‘You lied to Tom Evans.’ Now my mother. Okay, I made a sales pitch in the gallery of someone who worked with my mother and by the time I realized who he was I couldn’t retract what I had said.

‘Okay, so I lied once.’

‘Once!’ Everyone cried out in unison.

I was not hurt for myself. I was trying to shield Father from their attack. Nothing they could say or do to me would worry me, but they must not blaspheme.

Sara said, You don’t even know when you’re lying and when you’re not. You weren’t like that before. Somebody taught you a little trick called Heavenly Deception.’ Danny chimed in, Yeah, we did the same thing in the Children of God but we called it Spoiling Egypt.’

Sara continued ‘And in Scientology they call it Fair Game and in the Divine Light Mission they call it something else and I call it a con game. How could you tell people the truth about where the money was going when you don’t even know yourself? What about your little 40-day condition that was extended? Where did that money go?’

How did she know about that? I told her what I had found out. The money went to buy some land.

‘That land was already paid for, honey. The money you raised went straight into Moon’s pocket for some little private business deals. Wake up, Erica, you’ve been had.’

I turned to Doug. ‘You know the importance of fundraising. It is to pay indemnity. We have to restore tribal, national and other levels.’

Doug turned to his case of papers and fished out a page from Master Speaks. He read to me from it that Father said all of that indemnity was paid already. I demanded to see the page. Master Speaks. The first thing that hit me seeing it was the format of the page. The familiarity of it energized me. He snatched it back.

‘Don’t space out on me. I know you are visually programmed. The sight of the thing reinforces your programming. Just read these lines.’

I read them. How did I know the paper wasn’t a forgery. ‘Mother, how could you want me to believe people as low as these. Look at Sara. Look at the way she’s dressed, the way she speaks.’ Sara stiffened.

‘Please don’t smoke in front of me either,’ I demanded. How satanic to fill the room with smoke. She didn’t say a word, just stubbed out her cigarette and put the ashtray outside the door.

‘I won’t smoke in front of you if it bothers you but I’ll tell you this, you spoiled brat, it’s not the smoke that bothers you. It’s this holier-than-thou little goodie-two-shoes routine of yours. Why don’t you come back down to earth with the rest of us mortals. You can’t even answer simple questions. How thin your perfection is when you’re outside your self-centred cult. You think you’ve become more God-like? Is God so arrogant? You think you’re saving the world with Moon’s money? What do you know about responsibility? Do you tend the sick, the poor, do you ever pay income tax?’

‘I’m a missionary without income. I have nothing to pay tax on.’

‘Maybe, but you have to file every year with the government anyway. When was the last time you filed?’

‘Okay, so I didn’t file last year, big deal.’

The morning dragged on. They kept talking from man’s point-of-view. I kept talking from God’s point-of-view.

We broke for lunch and, while we ate at least, the crew eased up on me. As soon as I put my plate down, Danny looked over at me through narrowed eyes.

‘So, Moon’s still the messiah, huh?’

I had to fight to keep the food from coming back up. There was just no point going on like this. We could discuss until Satan’s restoration and they still wouldn’t make sense.

‘You can say what you want but you’ll never make me lose my love for Father.’

‘Erica, when we point things out, just assess them as they are, at face value. If the Bible says one thing and Doctrine X contradicts it, then that doctrine is wrong if it claims to be harmonious with the Bible. You click off when anything threatens Moon. You have no ego, no mind of your own. You’ve got two possibilities: a) Moon is the messiah, b) Moon is not the messiah. If it helps you, let’s not say Moon, we’ll say Mr X instead. Now, he’s either the messiah or he’s not. He can’t sort of be the messiah, agreed?’

It took us a long time to get on equal footing. Finally he got me to accept, for the sake of argument, the hypothetical.

‘If he is the messiah, we can all pack up and go home. If he’s not the messiah and has claimed to be, then what is he?’

I couldn’t fill in the blank.

‘If he’s not the messiah and he’s claimed to be, then he’s a fraud. Now, how can we determine if he is or not? Glad you asked that question, folks. Let’s make it really easy on him and not even use the acid test. We’ll just let him cut his own throat. He says that God is eternal, absolute and unchanging, further that he is the second Christ. It follows, seeing as God doesn’t change His mind, Moon must jive with what the first Christ said about Christ’s mission.’

This was not so difficult to accept as the initial point. Once he got rolling, I could follow him after a fashion. As soon as he pulled out the Bible to substantiate what he said, to prove that Jesus and Father did not agree, I was hopelessly lost again. Every time he made a point, I would do a quick scan through Purpose/Fall/Restoration.

I was aware of the binary functioning of my brain. Each question entered and was shuffled off down yes/no corridors until it met the proper answer or a dead end. Something like a pinball machine. I worked the flippers like mad but the balls just rolled down the chute. Danny would send the ball shooting out again and I made the same scan through Principle with the same result. Sometimes a phantom answer would appear but it would vanish either before or after the question passed through. I couldn’t hold both a question that didn’t compute and a phantom answer that didn’t compute. One of them faded as I concentrated on the other.

Danny was well versed in the Bible. If only Kadachi or Alex could have been with me. Surely they would know the answers. There had to be Divine Principle reasons why the Bible was wrong, I just didn’t know them. After a while my attention scattered. When we talked about the Family, I felt my mind become agile again but as soon as Danny started up with his Bible, my brain felt like cotton and my eyelids started to droop.

Some people came in the room quietly like they were entering a theatre after the show had started. I felt like I was on the operating table in an arena for medical students. Bright lights and someone saying, ‘Here we see the soul exposed, badly lacerated. The heart is bleeding and the mind is twisted. Some of this will be corrected through surgery but the patient will probably never be healthy again.’

One of the visitors, a middle-aged man with a kind face picked up Danny’s Bible and leafed through it. I braced myself for a raging born-again argument ‘You believe you’re doing God’s will, don’t you?’ Probably next he was going to ask me if I knew God’s will by telephone or telegram. I set my jaw. It’s too long a story to explain — if I told you that I know God when I see Father, you’d never understand.

‘You’d do whatever Moon asked you to, wouldn’t you?’ ‘He would never ask me to do anything that was not the will of God.’

‘What if he asked you to kill your mother?’

‘ — ’

‘Why don’t you answer me?’

‘ — ’

‘Forget about answering that question. Your silence tells me what I really wanted to know: you actually have to sit and think about whether or not you’d kill your mother if a man told you to. A man, Erica, not a god, and you are under his control.’

He snatched up the Bible. The sound of the turning pages was like trees falling in the forest.

‘“If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his own family, he has disowned the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.” The Bible says to help the poor, to help other people. Jesus didn’t tell his followers to give Him their possessions. He told them to distribute them among the needy. Do you believe that is a good thing to do?’

I nodded.

‘Well, then, that makes you better than True Father, doesn’t it? You want to give to the poor and your messiah only wants to take everything for himself.’

I was too weary to begin to explain to him the meaning of the Economic Restoration. When Jesus was on earth, it was the mission of the messiah to serve mankind. For the Second Coming, it became the duty of mankind to serve the messiah.

He wouldn’t let go of that point. That makes you a better person than your Master of the Universe, doesn’t it?

‘You have more compassion than he does. You don’t see anything wrong with him keeping everything for himself?’

I thought back to Father’s visit that had left me so desolated. I remembered that the brothers and sisters from the centres drove through the night to get back to their centres and sleep only an hour or two before having to drive back for Father’s morning address. Meanwhile, Father was sleeping in silk sheets. He could have at least let them sleep in the garage. One driver fell asleep and his van had gotten into an accident.

I began to cry. The man holding the Bible was looking at me waiting for an answer. I couldn’t speak. He put the Bible down and cradled me. So long I had been giving, giving, giving everything I had. He rocked me gently and whispered, ‘Don’t worry, baby, we’re right here. Don’t be afraid. We’re all going to see you through this, doll.’ He didn’t try to hush me, he just let me cry. I tried picturing True Father in my mind but I could not see him comforting me like this. I couldn’t believe that even in the Spirit World he was beside me. All I knew was the here-and-now of things and their realness. Fear gripped me — so this is how Satan would win me — with confusion, with trying to soften the warrior in me.

I heard myself make the man promise he would come back the following day. When he went to the door, I got up and extended my hand, Moonie-style, to shake hands with him. He grabbed me in a bear hug and ruffled my hair, ‘You’re gonna be all right, kid.’

With the others, discussions went on without either side gaining. I retreated under the blanket. Only my head showed, propped on the pillow. Doug and Sara and Jill continued. They would go through a point and ask me to clarify my side of it. I had just not studied enough, not read enough Master Speaks. There were answers to these things but I did not know them. The things they asked me didn’t matter. I believed in Father.

Sara asked me, ‘What I want to know is why you need so much proof to get out of the group. Lord knows you didn’t need any proof to get into it If I ask you if two plus two is five, do you need to look it up? No! You just use the common sense you had as a child. So why, if I show you things that don’t add up by Moon’s system, can’t you see it?’

Danny came over and ripped the blanket off me. ‘It’s the dead of summer, you know. The rest of us are sweating. What are you, a foetus? Sit up and join the human race.’

I grabbed the corner of the blanket and we each tugged our end of it. ‘Well, I see you have enough strength to fight for your baby blanket, don’t you have enough strength to fight for your mind? We’ve been sitting here hour after hour force-feeding you. Where’s your interest? Some disciple you are. Let’s assume that Moon is the messiah and we’re satanic. Don’t you have a lot to learn from us? You should be picking our brains for all we’ve got, go back to your cult and show them the blueprint of the opposition. You’re a lousy Moonie, I’ll say, and you’re not much of a human being. Your brain doesn’t work. We ask a simple question and you either space out or tell us something Moon said. I think we might as well just cover you up with this blanket and stick you six feet under, babe.’

He smiled. ‘But it’d be a shame, ’cause I know you’re in there, somewhere. I know because I’ve been through it. I’m only tough on you because someone’s gotta do it, otherwise we’d sit here playing games. Honest, I’m really a decent guy.’ We both started laughing. ‘We drew straws to see who would play the part of the heavie. Doug and I were arguing about it, weren’t we bro? We both accused the other of getting the part last time. I’ll tell you what, you think he’s sweet? He can be a worse son-of-a-bitch than I.’ That was signal for them to start rough-housing. We all needed a break. I went to the bathroom.

I closed the bathroom door. I’d had chances to be alone for a few moments like this in the Family but it wasn’t the same. I was never alone-alone. I looked at myself in the mirror, something I so rarely did that I knew Father’s face better than I knew my own. I noticed my locket. It had been given to me by Maria and was engraved: ITPN. In True Parents’ Name. Kadachi-san explained to me that it was blasphemy to abbreviate Parents’ name even in that much-used phrase that we signed our letters with. I wore it with some embarrassment but refused to take it off because it was given to me by my spiritual child. Maria got kicked out of the Family. Dr Baum ordered me not to talk to her anymore, even when she called up desperate to be allowed back into the Family. She was so exhausted after Yankee Stadium that she had stayed in bed for three days and Dr Baum turned her out for a problem of attitude. It tore me in two to have to refuse to come to the telephone when she called up pleading.

I unlocked the chain. That same chain had once held the cross given to me by Father Peter. Reverend Kropf made me remove it because the cross was a symbol of Satan’s victory. Inside the locket were pictures of Father and Mother. I looked at them.

I had heard that deprogrammers were likely to deface pictures of Parents and nothing could be worse, but I liked them all — even, perhaps especially, Danny. Deprogrammers could torture brothers and sisters but we had to protect Parents to the death. I removed the pictures and swallowed them to save them from harm. Everything was out of focus in my mind. As we talked in the room, the obvious Principle answers were in my mind. They were my mind. But at some point, I don’t know when, a second answer started to appear, a phantom that would hover and then disappear like the tiny stars you can only see if you look slightly away from them. The two answers would passively cancel one another and only the question would remain until I could no longer remember it. I looked at the locket in my hand. I was of two minds, two hearts. It seemed a millstone around my neck. I left it on the toilet tank.

‘Let’s talk about this messiah of yours,’ Sara. ‘Do you know anything about his past?’

I did. He had seen Jesus when he was sixteen, had been in prison before he began his ministry.

‘Did you know that the university where he claims to have gotten a degree in electrical engineering has no record of him? No record by either name. His real name isn’t Sun Myung Moon, you know. He changed it from a name that means shining dragon — sounds more like the Beast than the messiah. He’s been married before, arrested for indecent acts. He’s a common thug, a businessman, a criminal. He’s a pimp and he’s got kids like you out on the street hustling for him. He even claims to be a Jew, doesn’t he?’

‘Well, a descendant of the House of David. I guess that would make him a Jew.’

‘Funny since he claims that the Orientals are descendants of Japheth and the Jews of Shem. How do you feel about him saying that the six million who died under Hitler died because it was God’s will. This coming from a Jew.’

‘You answer that yourself. You’re the guys who claim to have all the answers.’

‘Sit up,’ Sara urged. ‘Come on, don’t cop out now. You should be defending your faith. There’s nothing wrong with thinking about things. Think! If you’re trying to find the answer in the DP, you won’t find it because the answer is just not there. Two and two will never equal five.’

My mind was elsewhere. I looked at the stack of papers. The reverse of an article we had just read was on the top of the heap. It showed a reproduction of a painting of Jesus on the cross. It was exquisite. It reminded me of the fresco I used to study in the Greek Orthodox cathedral Jesus of infinite tenderness and dignity, Jesus who by His deeds gave meaning to life. Across the stack on another part of the floor was a picture of Reverend Moon. His pudgy, glistening face peered up at me. My eyes went from one to the other, from Jesus to Reverend Moon and back again.

Sara and the others seemed at a standstill. Sara picked up the Bible and leafed through it. She stopped at a page in Genesis and handed the book to me. ‘Read that. Start with Genesis 2:24.’

I read aloud: ‘Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. Now the serpent was more subtle than any other —’

‘Stop right there,’ said Sara.

I looked up at her.

‘Don’t you see it? Adam and Eve were husband and wife before the Fall, not brother and sister; husband and wife, one flesh. They did not fall because they had sex before becoming perfect. And further, Lucifer fell before them because it says that Eve was tempted by a serpent, not the Archangel.’

I looked back at the page. My vision sharpened with an almost audible click. My face burned, my blood was pounding through my body. I looked back up at her. Sara was waiting.

What happened next happened clearly, frame by frame, but was all contained in a split second.

What was spectacular was not the question nor the answer but a total sensation that I had to acknowledge and identify. Doubt, I called it. Doubt. Perhaps I could entertain the possibility that what they were saying was true. I felt myself peering over a cliff. The abyss was so without light and without bottom that the shock weakened me. I feared I would fall and equally feared remaining on the edge. But no sooner did the shock seize me than I found myself on the opposite side.

The split second came as I was handing the Bible back to Sara. ‘Well, then, what was the Fall?’

‘I’ll tell you my interpretation but there are many. Everyone in this house would tell you something different and some don’t even have an opinion or couldn’t care less. That’s all okay. That’s what life’s about.’

It never occurred to me that people could have different opinions or no opinion at all. I was sure that these people would try to destroy the Divine Principle and then unveil their truth. Subconsciously, I must have believed that it would be the antithesis of goodness and that ... what a totally astounding idea that I could choose what I wanted to believe. This last idea came as Sara explained that there was no rush on truth, that I would have the rest of my life to think about things. Still, most of my mind believed that the non-Family force had the scoop on the Fall.

Sara handed me back the Bible and pointed to Genesis 3:5. It read: ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’

She stated simply, ‘If you are tempted to place yourself in the throne of power you lose your innocence and you learn the true nature of good and evil.’

At dinner-time my face was still burning. The message came in from the kitchen to find out what I wanted to drink with dinner – milk, juice, water, coke.

‘Make it a gin and tonic.’

‘Getta load of her,’ Danny nudged Doug. ‘Queen-for-a-Day is having herself a drink. Hey, no drinking on the job.’

‘Well then, we’ll take a break — and while we’re at it we can call a truce until dinner’s over. What do you say? I won’t call you Clint Eastwood and you won’t ask me if Reverend Moon is the messiah.’

I felt frisky and in a mood for celebrating something but I had nothing to celebrate. I didn’t want to cope with anything. I concentrated on my dinner.

‘Compliments to the chef!’ I called out. ‘Must’ve been you, Mom, no one cooks like you.’

Different sensations were rushing me, things I’d never known could be sensations — like spontaneity. Not checking the catalogue in my brain before or after a thought or action. Sara sat next to me with her plate.

‘Yeah, your mom is a great cook. I’ll tell you, she’s a great lady. Sure it was easy for you to make the choice between your family and the cult because you never lose your family so it’s not a real choice. You can cut them off, mistreat them, but they always love you. Moon wouldn’t know you if he tripped over you. You couldn’t get through to him on the phone now if you wanted him to come and rescue you. But your real parents? They’d go through anything to rescue you and believe me, they already have. I know you couldn’t have looked your mother in the face and told her that Mrs Moon is your True Mother. You’ve got a lot to learn about parenthood. You know how Moon is always saying that his members are more loving than anyone else and they have ‘Parental Heart’ — honey, you could never fathom what real caring is. You’ve been in a make-believe world. Moon used you. Your parents never stopped caring, never gave up on you.’

My tears were hot They had nothing to do with what she was saying. The thought of my mother’s love made me feel that I could love myself, forgive myself, cleanse myself of the never-ending guilt I had felt in the Family. For once I could feel that I had given of myself, that I was a good person. No matter what Sara said, I was not a spoiled brat. I was sincerely trying to do the best thing. I felt the two of me, one pitiful and the other pitying.

Doug joined us. He had a VOC lecture book in his hand. ‘You know, what really gets me is how you went on and on so self-righteously about Moon being against communism. What do you or anyone else in the group really know about it? Did you know that Moon uses the identical methods of indoctrination? You have the world so sharply divided between Satan and God, black and white. Do you think that fascism is any better than communism? Was Hitler any better than Stalin? I can see the Moonies on trial saying, “I was only following orders”. What about democracy?’ He paused and fished in his case for some papers.

‘You need only one error in the Divine Principle to make it false. We’ve shown you hundreds. It’s a strange thing about mind control — if you demolish most of the doctrine and leave just a tiny bit standing, the mind hangs onto it.’

Evening brought another guest. Mom had been talking about a young man who had been deprogrammed from the Divine Light Mission. She was glad that he had been able to arrange the time to come and talk with me. He talked about his job, asked how I was feeling, stayed away from heavy subjects. It was hard for me to remember how conversations were supposed to go. By the time he got to the end of a question, I had forgotten the first part of it. He sensed that I was bleary.

He set up a tape recorder for me to hear a speech by his former guru. A man with a funny accent was saying something like: when you have evil thoughts, push them out of your mind. Because your mind troubles you, give it to me. It won’t trouble me.

The young man rolled his eyes ceiling-ward. We all laughed yet it was a frightening tape. How could you be told what and what not to think? Imagine someone telling people not to use their —

Father ‘I am your thinker. I am your brain.’

Lectures: Have no give and take with negative thoughts.

It suddenly wasn’t so funny. Change the accent a little and —

The young man nodded when I looked up at him with this realization spilling out of me. The room was filled with people. Such a small room, so many conversations like a cocktail party. No one noticed the crucial understanding in that exchanged glance. It didn’t matter. In the Family everything had to be noticed, examined, accounted for and nothing belonged to me. It was always public knowledge, any private thought. This understanding was for me alone, accountable to me, a me exists. In the Family everything was given equally ultimate significance. Things do have different values. So no one noticed me. So what.

I was resting my head in my mother’s lap and she stroked my hair distractedly. She was engrossed in a conversation with Doug. Jill and Sara were laughing about something in the corner. The others were getting up to go into the kitchen. The young man from the Indian cult stretched out between my mother and the wall.

Why hadn’t Father told us about these other groups — so many of them? Sara had read me the testimonies of people I thought were all ex-Family members. Turns out they were from several other groups. All else aside, Father should have explained to us the truth about cults and mind control for our own sake.

‘Would you like to go out with me sometime?’ The young man had a nice smile.

I laughed. ‘Under the circumstances, that’s a very tempting offer.’ The escape I had wanted. I was surprised when I found myself telling him to call me at my mother’s house to arrange a date. Would I be living there?

‘Wherever you are, I’ll find you. All the employees where I work are going to Disneyland for an evening, you know, when they close the park down for a private party. Would you like to do something like that?’

Be anonymous again? Be a part of life with no one looking over my shoulder? Laugh at simple things?

How had it happened? It seemed that as soon as I entertained the possibility of something other than Principle, my prison vanished. I was free. Confused but free.

What about True Parents? I loved Father and could see him accusing me of being Judas. I pictured the photos from the locket. I visualized the image of Parents deep inside me. They would stay there until I dealt with them later. I would deal with everything later.

Before I fell asleep, Jill came in. She sat down where I was snuggled under the covers. ‘Know what I did the other night? I went down to the ocean. I kicked off my shoes and walked along the shore. I found a place to sit and I just sat there feeling the wind on my face, listening to the waves, smelling the salt air, letting the feeling of the sea surround me. I thought to myself: I am free. I can think anything I want.’

I was jealous of her. How wonderful to go to the sea. To sit at the shore and belong to no one. That most sacred and private place between me and me had been violated. I wanted the salt air to cleanse me, renew me.

What do you do when a huge section of your life is spliced out and the two ends fit neatly back together as if that time had never been — when you wonder where that lost time went but you’re still in it like a phantom — when you wonder who that other person in the time spliced out was but at the same time realize that that other person is the most familiar core of what you are made of — when you are relieved to the point of euphoria and terrified at the same time (both for no apparent reason and for endless reasons) — when you can’t go back to being that old self at the past end of the splice and certainly aren’t the self you haven’t been yet at the future end — and the reality of the matters at hand is so crushing that it requires the equivalent of a session of parliament in your brain to decide if you want a cup of coffee and when none of that really matters because everything emanates a calm like the warbling of birds after the bombing has stopped and you know the bombs will never fall again.

Another good night of sleep. In the morning we breakfasted and talked. I was aware that I no longer had any opinions about anything. I was blank. The blast had taken everything out by the roots. I was amazed that Danny and Doug disagreed on various things. The outside world was now my world and it was not united. Doug was talking to me about switching over from my absolutist frame of mind. He said that the doctrine wasn’t so important but the way I thought. Not which things were painted black and which were painted white, because these varied from cult to cult. All ex-members, he said, had to get away from thinking in black-and-white terms and start looking at the shades of grey. I was miles ahead of him. I was dealing with technicolour. Let out of a dark hole into the blazing sunlight, the eyes of my mind winced closed.

I didn’t want to leave the deprogramming room for the time. I didn’t feel deprogrammed. I was to learn that deprogramming only starts the mind thinking again, asking questions. It doesn’t provide the answers.

I was brought into the living room. The team was relaxed, limbs draped over the furniture, every comment followed by a soft round of chuckles. The world had never looked so wholesome, so inviting. It seemed that milk and honey, or sunlight or some tangible substance of peace was flowing out of everything.

Dana and his wife stopped by. They were on their way back to France. Dana told me a little bit about the concerts he was doing. His wife told me about her dress when I admired it. Alice showed me pictures of her children. Tears still formed in her eyes when she looked at me and several times she put her arm around me to say what she couldn’t find words for. She promised me that I would have a wonderful life. I hoped I didn’t look to her like someone who needed a glass of warm milk. The drifts of conversation carried jokes and casual swearing I found offensive. It was all too much for a mind that was racing nowhere fast. I wandered back into the deprogramming room and curled up on the floor with the pillow. Danny followed me in and plunked himself down.

‘Wanna talk?’

‘Sure.’

I didn’t, really. I just wanted to absorb the racing.

‘Spit it out.’

It wasn’t a matter of spitting, it was a matter of running to all the vast frontiers of my brain at once with a sieve to catch evaporating thoughts. It came out something like this:

‘Dan, I want you to watch me. I think I might be too clever, like I might be fooling you — or me — or something. I want to be deprogrammed or not deprogrammed. Maybe you know what I mean.’

‘Sorry, lady, I know what you’re going through but I can’t help you. You have to do this one alone. The ball, as they say, is in your court.’

‘What did you do after you left the Children of God?’

‘Why, so you can do the same? Sorry, I ain’t gonna be your new messiah. Besides, I don’t think you’d want to do what I did. When I found out that Moses David wasn’t the end-time prophet, I got sick. I just started to vomit. I was in bed shivering and sweating and Sara stayed up with me. It was a long time before I could go back and understand what had happened. I floated a lot. Floating means when you snap back into your programme. You’re probably not far enough out to snap back into it but when you do — it’s an eerie feeling —’

‘Like being back in the cult but not being there? Like phantoms?’

‘Like phantoms.’

Danny stood up and moved for the door. ‘Piecing things back together takes a long time. You have to learn to be patient with yourself — like when you get your leg out of a cast, you can’t run on it right away.’

I could hear the others laughing in the living room. I stared at the carpet. My senses were like bees out of the hive. I could see the carpet. The blue was so intense I could almost hear it. I could take the feel of it under my hands. I could feel my heart beat. A few moments, a few precious moments of awareness. I would have a lifetime of them. Cradling myself I thought no one, no one can ever take this away from me. Yet hadn’t someone already done that? Yes, I would have to have patience even to find the place to begin again.

‘Honey?’ My mother was standing at the door. ‘Can you come here for a minute? We want to ask you something.’ In the next room Chuck was sitting on the bed. Mom shut the door. The floor was piled high with a tangle of clothes spilling out of half-open suitcases. My mother sat on the edge of the bed, choosing her words gingerly.

‘How do you feel?’

‘Like Lazarus. Whatever the question, the answer is probably going to be “why not”?’

‘Erica, we have to decide what you’re going to do now. You know that you have all the time in the world and that we’re always here for you but Sara thinks it would be a good idea for you to go home with her for a while. Some time to rest and learn some more. She has answers we simply don’t have. There is so much more you have to sort out for yourself.’

The thought appealed to me. Of course, just like the ladies in nineteenth-century novels who took a cruise or sojourned at an auntie’s when they were grieving. But on the heels of this came an image of Sara’s house. So many new things to cope with. She would have friends visiting. The thought of having to face anyone new was staggering. Of having to fill my time. If only I could hide away, but where? I didn’t want to see anyone I knew, not even my sister, until I was better. Before I could finish the thought, a tidal wave of tears tore everything loose. They were not tears of self-pity, frustration or grief. They were not tears of relief. They were tears I was born with. I wanted to cry to the bottom of them so I would never have to cry again. I don’t know how long we were there, Mom and Chuck crying too before Sara poked her head in the door.

‘Mind?’ she abbreviated.

Mom and Chuck exited. Sara curled up on the bed.

‘Enough clothes for the first six months, eh? I’ll say. It’s been what, two or three days? You sure don’t travel light ’ I found a sleeve of something to mop my face with.

‘Coming to New York with me?’ Sara never cut any fancy footwork, never introduced a subject. She searched my face. The invitation was sincere.

I grinned. ‘When do we leave?’

pages 228-236

2

When you hurt yourself somehow, fall down or get in a fight, you walk away thinking you’re feeling pain until you wake up the next morning and the soreness has set in and you puff up and turn every colour of the rainbow. I was going along for a while thinking, jeez, there’s not much to this when the shock wave returned from its journey of reverberation and smacked me. I was so bottomed-out physically that I didn’t get to the mental problems for a long time.

Most of the first month I slept I’d get up at ten and be back in bed by three in the afternoon. It was hot and humid. I shared Sara’s bedroom, a converted attic. There were windows at both ends under the eaves and the heavy summer wind passed through the room. Whenever I closed my eyes and put my head on the pillow, I felt I was falling into a thick darkness with such a strong force that there was no way to hold back. Sleep locked me into a blackness violently swarming with images. I would wake up screaming or imagining that I had screamed. No matter where she was in the house, Sara would hear me make the slightest stir and would appear at my side to put on the light, smooth down the covers and listen to me until I was quiet again.

It was during that time that I became familiar with a nightmare that recurred for years. A black ocean devoid of life. No matter how far inland I was, the waves would find me and suck me out to the depths. It was not the water that frightened me because I could breathe in it. It wasn’t a fear of sharks or sea monsters. Not even a microbe lived in the sterile inkyness. It was the power and vastness of it.

I was extremely sensitive to light and sounds. Crowds made me dizzy; the faces would blend and I’d grow faint. My memory and attention spans were useless. I couldn’t read or converse for more than a few minutes without getting completely worn down and needing a rest Reading a newspaper article could take an hour. How would I ever catch up on the world since my Rip Van Winkle sleep in the cult? I even had to learn about the things I’d not been isolated from but merely blanked out of my perception like the changes in clothing styles.

Sara had to keep reminding me to think for myself, to not look to her for opinions, to not soak up whatever I heard. But she had little trouble getting me to try new things. Boating, skating, concerts, dancing, water-skiing — but not all things came easily. Remembering how I had served Kadachi-san and all the guests at headquarters house soft drinks and had never been allowed to drink something so fine myself, I swore I’d drink the stuff until I burst In the cult I had served from bottles and didn’t know that drink cans had since changed and were manufactured with pop tabs. I saw the cans in the fridge and balked. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to figure out how to open one and didn’t venture to try for several months. I never knew when I would excel and when I would fail, when the next step would be on rotten floorboards or on no floor at all. I glossed over with what I hoped was a sophisticated appearance by remembering things from the old Erica.

Sara read me as if I had neon signs flashing what I needed. When something needed to be resolved, she never hesitated to draw me into discussion but dancing the polka at Polish weddings, sitting on the front stoop eating watermelon, taking a martini break from a shopping spree, washing the dog and chasing each other around the yard with the hose — these did more for me than years of psychotherapy ever could have.

I shuddered to think if I had been institutionalized instead of deprogrammed I would have been in a hospital for years getting worse. Sara knew what she was doing. She had first gotten involved when her brother fell prey to a nomadic cult and disappeared. He got arrested hundreds of miles away and when they went to claim him, they found a total stranger who spoke in Bible verse, wore a long robe and had been surviving by scrounging food from garbage tins. After straightening him out, handling a Moonie was a piece of cake.

She took me out to meet people — seemed like she knew everyone in the whole state. We gave talks about mind control. We’d pull into a small town, talk to the school kids, the local paper, the service club luncheon and then have the whole town turn out in the evening to hear us speak at the church. What a welcome to the Fallen World! Total strangers listening to me with tears in their eyes, pinching my cheeks, giving me their addresses in case I ever needed them for anything. The warmth and attention were wonderful but I started to feel like a circus exhibit.

Sara started doing deprogrammings at home. It was my turn to say: I’ve been in your shoes. Every time I watched a deprogramming, another huge burden was lifted. They didn’t all break out of mind control in the same way. Kara from Ananda Marga let out screams that shook the house and Billy from The Way calmly balanced his Bible on his knee, took off his spectacles to wipe them and observed, ‘Well, it certainly appears that I’ve been deceived.’ Some said nothing but flushed in stunned silence. It was always miraculous to see the real person suddenly rush into the robot shell.

We worked together on floating until each person learned to handle it alone. We recognized the symptoms in one another instantly and instinctively. Sometimes the eyes would glaze over or the person would drop out of conversation. My own mind was like a minefield. I never knew when I’d trip an explosion. Sometimes I’d catch it like a contact high from one of the others, sometimes a phrase, a snatch of a song, maybe an unresolved bit of doctrine and always parking lots. Going to stores was a trial. I’d automatically check the lot for the flow, for the clues from Spirit World. If no one else was around, I’d work myself into a panic. I’d think what if, what if. If they are right, I’ve been deceived by Satan. My mind would start pacing and sniffing its old haunt, Purpose/Fall/ Restoration, and I’d snap back, or only half snap back and be spread between here and nowhere.

The thing to do was trace the floating back and resolve the problem that had triggered it In the cult they told us to cut off doubt Sara encouraged it Challenge, weigh, delve, decide. In the cult they told us that everything about the other world was evil. Sara told us not to destroy our good memories and benefits from the cult, people we loved, things we had learned and overcome.

Floating was only the punctuation, not the constant

The constant was exhilaration. The intensity of it was sure to illuminate the rest of my life. Every time I encountered something, I considered it as if I had never known of it before. There is an essence one can sometimes feel for a quiver of a moment when he looks at the stars. I felt that all the time. The smallest thing was not without its glory. Being able to sit down without permission, without guilt Buying a postage stamp with my own money and being able to send a letter of my very own thoughts to anyone. Feeling the wind, seeing the buildings, smelling the earth, letting my imagination run free. And being able to say no.

This expanding, more than anything else, combated floating. I simply could not fit back into that narrow mental slot. When I realized that, I knew that even though I was not completely healed, it was time for me to get back into the world.

I was prepared to enter society at the bottom rung, having been used to meeting handicaps that I never knew I had until I found myself in a situation for which I was not equipped. It took me a long time to realize that part of my handicap at this stage was being too advanced. By having met my weaknesses and shortcomings I had become stronger and wiser than most people who simply refused to admit to human frailty. I kept thinking I was wrong because I didn’t fit in but it was still the same old world that didn’t make sense.

There were practical problems that hit me left and right How to explain that blank in my resume when applying for a job. Say that I was off on independent study in some remote place or tell the truth and risk losing out on the job? Getting a driver’s licence, opening a bank account, getting references to rent a flat — meeting new people, especially dating, I always wondered if I should tell the story or not If I didn’t tell it, I would remain a stranger and if I did, I’d have to tell the whole thing knowing that when I’d finished, the person was not likely to have changed his view that cults are harmless groups of people who are better off where they are. When I was speaking to groups in New York, the people had been friendly because they pitied me. Now I was learning that no one really understood.

One of my old friends invited me to a high school reunion party. I mingled: a singer, a local politician, a craftsman, a journalist One woman arrived late. The talk quieted down as she made her entrance and hellos. ‘Sorry I’m late, guys. You’ll never believe what held me up. I stopped at a gas station and some Moonie came up trying to sell me flowers!’

The whole room burst into laughter. I looked down at my drink. The girl I’d been talking to turned to resume the conversation. ‘And what have you been up to since I last saw you, Erica?’

The thing that got me most upset was when people asked why I had become a Moonie and then didn’t notice at all how uncomfortable I was in answering. They’d never think to ask in casual conversation, tell us about how you became a quadriplegic in your motorcycle accident or tell us about watching your best friend get blown to bits in Vietnam and, oh, pass the chips, won’t you?

I found out that my brother had tried to foil the deprogramming. He thought my mother was over-reacting and shouldn’t treat me like a baby by bailing me out of trouble. He thought it was a fad, a phase I’d pass through. He wanted to phone me at the camp to tip me off to get out before she came to get me. Luckily, he wasn’t motivated enough to follow through. When I saw him, I asked him about it He scoffed at the idea that I had been brainwashed. Okay, big brother, what if you are right and I had just happened to, say, be into self-mutilation and your little plan had worked? He was unmoved. According to him, my great failing was that I just hadn’t been cool, hadn’t been doing the in thing, something I was still guilty of. I decided, after a time, to put my thoughts to him in a letter. The letter came back to me. He had scrawled across it ‘I’m rubber, you’re glue ...’ from the rhyme we used to taunt each other with as children ‘… anything you say bounces off me and sticks to you’. Welcome home, sis.

Surely someone would understand. I went to speak to a rabbi who reduced me to tears by ridiculing me for having toyed with Christianity and then to a minister who said I would have never become a Moonie if I had studied Christianity better. Father Peter was too embarrassed to discuss it I was barking up the wrong tree. It wasn’t a religious problem but a psychological one.

I finally came across a lukewarm article on the subject in an obscure publication and wrote to the author. He referred me to the only person he knew who had any knowledge of cults. I went to see this professor and gladly consented to having our talk taped for use in his book. A totally misleading sliver of one of my remarks later appeared in a Moonie PR book. I then heard that this professor was on Moon’s payroll as a functionary at the annual international conference that a Dr Moon with eyeglasses hosts for eminent scientists.

After the Jonestown tragedy, an informational hearing was called in Washington, DC. The Moonie campaign to have the event cancelled did not succeed but they pressured enough that the Moonie president was called to testify and ex-members were not.

Hundreds of Moonies had the place mobbed by dawn. A friend, fearing for my safety, got me into the hearing room before the doors were opened to the public. First the press came in, bright lights, scuffle, equipment being set up, the sound of people filling up the room behind me and then a peculiar and familiar stench. That smell I could never get rid of on the fundraising team. I turned around and saw the entire hall filled with Moonies. As people stood in turn to give their presentations, the Moonies jeered, stomped their feet, hurled insults. Security guards, panelists, press all stiffened at the unpredictability of this confrontation. Wasn’t it the right of a governing body to gather information after the assassination of a congressmen and the death of over 900 others? How many were the Moonies willing to sacrifice to protect themselves? One of the ex-cultists prevented from testifying who had lost her tiny son in the suicide-massacre shook like a leaf when the Moonie president spoke in her stead. The Moonies rose as a man with a deafening cheer.

I wasn’t going to hang around. I pushed my way through the knotted crowd towards a side exit. Almost there but someone was blocking my path. I tapped his shoulder to move him aside. He spun around and faced me. Baum.

‘Erica, it’s-so-good-to-see-you, we’ve-been-so-worried-about-you.’

Yeah, so worried you’ve been losing sleep thinking what deprogrammed fundraisers will do to Moon’s bank account. I tried to step past He kept talking so fast he was spitting.

‘Listen, Sister, I-know-that-you-think-I’m-possessed-by-evil-spirits and we-think-that-you’re-possessed-by-evil-spirits, but-that-doesn’t-mean-that —’

‘Bob,’ I luxuriated in the heresy of addressing him like that and putting my hand on his shoulder, ‘I don’t believe in evil spirits.’

‘What?’ He took in a sharp breath and seemed to grow visibly larger with disbelief and indignation. ‘Well... don’t you believe in God?’ He had on a red and white pinstripe shirt that had an odd optical effect of making him seem to vibrate all the more.

‘You mean a person can’t believe in God without believing in little invisible things running around that make people open their wallets and fall asleep on the highway?’

I still love you, Bob, but not in a way you could understand. Not because doctrine says I must, not to show how super-spiritual I am.

‘I know you weren’t one of those jeering and stomping your feet You were always dignified and knew to turn the other cheek.’

His smile caught me off guard. Then I checked the eyes. They were blazing. ‘Oh, no. Oh, no.’ His head bobbled. ‘Things have changed. The time has come. The course has changed from a passive one to one of aggression. We’re on the offensive now.’

All the times Moon had spoken about military aggression. All the times we listened with our lids fluttering closed, as he droned on in his hypnotic way, punctuating with militaristic words, of battle, of enemy, of charging and crushing, defeating, subjugating, annihilating, of taking over the government, the United Nations, the whole world. Baum had me by both arms. I looked toward the door, searching wildly for a face I knew. Two friends spotted me. They flanked me and moved me through the door into an empty corridor. Baum ran after me, shouting, dancing to himself, trying to pry one of the men loose.

‘Leave her alone, Baum, can’t you see she doesn’t want to talk to you?’

‘Never mind that. You have to answer to a few things, Erica. What about this article in Newsweek? Why did you lie, Erica? Why are you saying things about us that you know aren’t true? You can’t do that, you can’t get away with it.’ He had his lips peeled back, lunging forward at every question. What did he intend to do about it? The press had already gone for the story about suicide training in the Moonies, about members being taught how to slash their wrists. Ex-members everywhere were crawling out of the woodwork. I wasn’t the only one talking.

Off the corridor behind one of the endless unmarked doors we stood. We’d ditched Baum. I was shaking. I sank into a chair.

I was shaking because I knew that but for a flick of fate, Baum and I could have traded places.

And by that same fate I had once been a model Moonie, a hard-liner like Baum. Would I not have made a model Nazi? Had not both the victim and the victimizer lived within me? Was I not now cast out forever from the innocence I once enjoyed? Moon had held out the forbidden fruit and my eyes had been opened to know good and evil.