#this sort of agonizing inevitable doom

[carefulfears]

the x-files entitling an episode about scully finding out that her illness has progressed to the point where her death is imminent, and mulder being told that he is the reason for it, and nearly killing himself, after…..the garden in the new testament where jesus wept before his crucifixion

[togglesbloggle]

I get nightmares, sometimes.

I know specifically where they come from. Second grade. My elementary school would gather kids up in the cafeteria and read some short-ish book to a large-ish crowd. I don't know why they did it that way instead of the classroom; it might have been some kind of after-school activity instead of during normal hours. The circumstances are pretty vague to me, this long after the fact.

I don't remember the title of this particular story either, or any of the names of the characters, most of it's long since lost in the fog. I was probably a bit bored for most of the reading. The book was a pretty generic little thing, until it wasn't. There was this caterpillar, it wanted to be a butterfly, a convenient and kid-friendly shorthand for overcoming obstacles to self-actualization through friendship and wisdom. One of the more common allegories out there.

But anyway, what made it weird was, the author decided that the catharsis of becoming a butterfly was a bit too straightforward to carry the climax of the story all on its own. So instead, most of the other bugs- the ones, I have to assume, that represented the forces of conformity and social pressure, or whatever- all became envious of the butterfly's ability to reach the sky (or sun?). When they saw the beautiful butterfly soaring through the air, in a rage they all started climbing on top of one another, and forming a big teeming pile of bugs, each one trying to get just a little bit higher, demanding to touch the sky just like the butterfly did. It became a giant, squirming mass, larger and larger until the inevitable occurred, the bugs at the bottom of this horrific mass were crushed, and the entire thing collapsed to its inevitable doom. The butterfly, armed with wings of its own, flew onward to the sky.

It's a little hard to pinpoint exactly what these nightmares are about, in a symbolic sense. They're about the anxieties of social conformity and peer pressure, certainly; my recurring fears of being molded by the community around me in to compliant and useful forms without consideration for my own happiness. But they're also about hierarchies and the meaning of social power, and even about conformist pressures in epistemic and ontological frames. It sort of slips from one analogy to another, untethered. It's a basal, animal fear that gets carried forward to many walks of life, both practical and philosophical, one that takes the particular form it does just because that story happened to be the first thing to hit this fault-line of mine at the right angle and crystalize my fears in to something I could understand.

On those nights when I find myself trapped in that pile, buried under the weight of hundreds of bodies, forced to crush the victims below me and claw my way through the airless, squirming heat and death of it all, the analogies don't really matter so much. Sometimes the beings around me are humans, sometimes they're all bugs, sometimes I am too, but always it's just about the simple, awful terror of living in that world of flesh. Things that might once have been fellow-travelers, trapped underneath and above and on every side with no room to move. When the agonizing pressure bearing down on you drives through your body without interruption, and you become an instrument that empowers and transmits that same violence to the animals that you're crawling over, with no relief from the pain except to drag somebody down from above you and get just a bit higher. Suffocating, always suffocating, gasping hot breaths where nothing's left to breathe.

But it is very potent grist for any number of metaphors, that's why I keep dreaming the damned thing. And it's not at all uncommon to be moving through my normal, waking life and find myself in circumstances that trigger this fear. I can always feel it coming on with that vague sense of suffocation, usually even before I understand consciously that I've found myself in one of those situations.

Being in the crowd at a sports stadium will usually get me pretty bad, of course. Driving in traffic does it sometimes, a little. But the merely physical crowds are pretty tolerable in the short term. Being at a protest or political rally is much worse; chanting with a crowd is more likely to trigger these nightmares than just cheering with one, because chants are semantic. More buy-in, you see? You have to conform with your ideas as well as your body.

It's there in more abstract ways as well. If I'm in a chat group or social community that brings in an applause light (or shared enemy) that is meant to unify everybody and create a sense of shared identity using public consensus, it can get a little hard to breathe; I sometimes have to go hide in a private room during dinner parties, when they go in the wrong direction. I've avoided employment in big, mission-statement-y corporations my whole life, for much the same reason.

I know that there are people who find a great deal of joy and meaning in this stuff, in being a part of social movements and organizations larger than themselves. I don't mean to say anything objective about such preferences, this isn't even really about my considered opinions so much as the animal parts of me. But man, the animal in me is so frightened sometimes. So much of our world seems to be made of these ziggurats of flesh, teeming piles of human life all trying to reach for something divine by crushing the souls below.

I have, I think, mostly avoided the worst failure states of contrarianism; better not to let the crows dictate my opinions at all, even by inversion. And actually I do better living in large cities than you might expect. Modern city life is 'dense' in the sense that you're often near a few people at a time, but not often to the point of actually restricting movement. Merely having a loud upstairs neighbor doesn't trigger my phobias at all, and it's usually pretty trivial to have basic personal space; I suppose I might struggle in places like Manhattan or Tokyo, though. It's a marked part of my life, but not a disabling one.

And like I said, this isn't a philosophical or a moral stance per se, though it's clearly part of the 'state of nature' that's upstream of my ideological commitments. Mostly, I'm writing this out because I think a lot of people tend to be annoyed by the kind of separatism I reach for reflexively, and treat it like a threat or a form of dissent. Which I guess it sort of is; I and people like me are pretty bad at forming coalitions and doing that kind of important work in the polis. But still, I'm hoping that my nightmares can do a little bit of good on that front, by providing vivid and terrible imagery to help others understand subjectively what it's like instead of just rounding it off to an easy-to-dismiss "Reddit bro" or whatever Type Of Guy is common parlance on the internet at the time.

And I guess, also, I'd like to help communicate something of the beauty of the alternative- of being the butterfly, I mean. And to the extent that it's possible, to communicate the urgency that I feel in chasing tools and institutional patterns that can help people to build their own wings and fly through the open air. There are things that help us rise under our own power as individuals, without victims. Curiosity, creativity, patience, mutual appreciation; so many kinds of strength that don't demand sacrifices. And the greatest of these, I think, is the pursuit of truth, and the sincere desire to understand the structure and consistency of the world around us.

Failing all else, during this election season please have a little patience for those of us who fall silent or slip away instead of lending our voices to the chanting of the crowds, or who seem to care more about picking apart ideas instead of organizing around them, or who otherwise never seem to miss an opportunity to make ourselves the odd one out. There's power in numbers, and this is a moment when power is desperately needed; but I don't think you can touch the sky that way. The higher goals, the things that will allow us to transcend our present difficulties outright and to achieve something really great, are too far away and too alien to reach merely by stacking bodies or echoing the doctrines of the present. Hope comes as a stranger, and we need hope right now for the same reasons that we need power.

[8bitsupervillain]

End of the Year 2023: Pre-2023 Good Games

Now we're talking, it's time for good games. As with previous years I decided on separate lists to talk about games that came out before 2023 and those that came out during the year itself. I agonized over this list. Hope you enjoy it

10: Diablo III

In the meh games list I mentioned that I'm not a fan of Diablo III. In fact for the longest time I was fairly cold on this game and really disliked it. There's something to Diablo III however, every few months since finishing the Reaper of Souls expansion way back in 2014 that kept the game popping up in my mind. You should play it again, it would say. Roll a new character, it's probably better than you remember. Then I would inevitably try it again, play a few hours and then just sort of peter off it. Perhaps it's simply because of the sheer ineptitude of Immortal, and my complete and utter lack of caring for Diablo 4 that made my most recent playing Diablo III feel so much more fun. I think enough time has passed that I can freely admit to enjoying this game for the most part. I just never go out of my way to play it, but it'll probably happen again that I'll be doing whatever and the urge to play it will occur

09: Doom 3

It's something of the black sheep of the Doom franchise, but I recall quite enjoying the games when I played them spur of the moment this year. A lot of people bemoan the fact that they just made Doom 3 a horror game, but I'm not so sure I agree with that assessment. Sure it has spooky lighting, and impenetrable darkness, but you're never really put into a less empowered state compared to the original Dooms. You're never starved for ammo, and except for the odd jumpscare there's never anything really scary that happens in the game. More so in the Resurrection of Evil expansion, where they give you the super shotgun. It's slower, and more methodical than the other Doom games, but I really don't feel it's any lesser as a result. It's truly unfortunate there's no way to really get the original versions of Doom 3 an Resurrection of Evil outside of looking in nefarious places, because I played the BFG Edition as well as the original Doom 3 and it made me feel physically ill. The originals are surprisingly forward thinking made games because it's wild to me a game from 2004 has support for a 1080p resolution.

08: Higanbana no Saku Yoru Ni (The Unforgiving Flowers Blossom in the Dead of Night)

A delightful horror themed visual novel that I freely admit I never would have ever heard of if not for Umineko. It's more of a straightforward horror tale than a Umineko because this is about the local ghosts and monsters that haunt a school. I haven't finished the second of the two games, but I did quite like the stories in The First Night. Well worth checking out if you want to see some of Ryukishi07's lesser known works.

07: The Witcher II

A lot more competently put together than the original Witcher. It's also much more action focused compared to the original. I kind of miss the different fighting stances that were in the first Witcher game, but I can understand that the series needs to undergo some streamlining as they become a more cross-platform series. It's a fine story as well, where it seems to be pulling from more contemporary fantasy stories of the time like your Game of Thrones with all of its fantasy political intrigue. But it also includes troll fart jokes, so it still remembers some of its origins as well. One of the only things I didn't really like in this game was the inclusion of the odd Quick Time Event. There's not a particular lot of them, but they just felt weirdly out of place.

06: Dragon Age II

I think it handled the transition from traditional CRPG to a more action focused one rather well honestly. It's not the deepest combat in the world, but I never really had any particular complaint with how it was implemented. I liked the time skips in the story as well, jumping to more important parts of Hawkes' life rather than meander and get bogged down in the weeds of showing their entire time in Kirkwall. A fine enough story, even though its attempts to make the final endgame events bigger than previous plot points just fall flat on its face. It was fun seeing the fantasy RPG equivalent to a Like a Dragon game.

05: Might and Magic X: Legacy

I don't know a thing about the Might and Magic series. I know one of the strategy spinoffs is regarded as the absolute pinnacle of the genre, but as far as the mainline ones go I know nothing. That being said however I did quite like the first person dungeon crawling and combat here in MMX. It's nothing groundbreaking, and I doubt it was anything particuarly special when it came out nearly a decade ago in 2014. I appreciate that the game is more than willing to let you screw up making your party and going in with a "suboptimal" team. Rather than hold your hand and tell you which classes to bring or how to level them. I wish Ubisoft would let some developers make another one of these because I enjoy these lower budget RPGs that aren't these massive open world fiascos. Also you could make bank by upsetting the crowd who cries about ruining beloved franchises by making new entries in older series. But really I just greatly enjoy this type of RPG, and I would love to see more of them. I don't know if it will save Ubisoft from their impending implosion, but I would love to see them take chances on this type of game again rather than see them put out another big open world game that takes a hundred hours to finish.

04: Bravely Default II

With series like the Bravely Default series I usually try to play the games in release order. I know developers go to great pains to make it so you can follow a narrative for a game without having played every single entry prior to it. Regardless I try to play the first entries first. Sometimes this is a double edged sword because who's got time to play the eight or so entries before you play Ys VIII? Other times you got two entries, Bravely Default and Bravely Second. But here's the thing, while I played Bravely D 1 way back on the 3DS I know I never actually finished it, and I never touched Bravely Second. But towards the end of December 2022 I decided what the hey, I'll play Bravely Default 2 and just try to figure it out from there. This game was an utter delight to play, something about the turn based combat, good story, and charming visuals just combined to make this game a real treat for me. Even when I was going out of my way to suck the fun out of the game by grinding up the job levels I was having a heck of a good time. While I enjoy the story that's not what kept bringing me back to the game. I kept coming back to it just for the sheer enjoyment of playing the actual game. A novel concept! Bravely Default II was just an immensely enjoyable game and I highly recommend it to those who enjoy turn-based RPGs.

03: Potato Flowers in Full Bloom

This is as late an entry as one could possibly get. I went into this completely blind and I came away absolutely stunned. This is a great turn-based dungeon crawler RPG that I cannot recommend highly enough. It's clearly done by people who have a great love for the DRPGs but it isn't so bogged down with the ideas of what a "hardcore" DRPG should be that it loses itself in the fine details. Rather than get super in depth with the challenge one would find in a Wizardry Potato Flowers just focuses on a superlative gameplay loop that is just extremely enjoyable to play.

02: Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

It seemed like a lock way back at the start of the year. Sure Bravely Default 2 was a sheer delight, but it couldn't match Deadfire. The combat, the look, the storyline, everthing was just such a marked improvement over the basic perfection I felt playing Pillars of Eternity 1.

01: Umineko: When the Seagulls Cry

But something came along in May that just swept the legs out from under it. There has not been an experience that has just taken up permanent residence in my head since finishing it. I went into Umineko knowing basically nothing, and by the time I finished it my mind just kept going over it again and again thinking about the characters, and the story, just replaying and rethinking events over and over again. Just a masterfully crafted narrative, and a killer soundtrack to boot.

01: Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

But the thing about games is that there's more to them than just the story, the gameplay also matters. The short of it is that Pillars of Eternity II quite handily beats Umineko on the gameplay front. Plus, I really don't want to downplay the story of PIllars II because it stands strongly in my memory as one of the most superbly written stories I have ever experienced in any RPG, much less games in general.

01: Umineko: When They Cry

But the story contained within the one hundred and twenty hours worth of Umineko is without hyperbole some of the best written I have had the pleasure to experience. Just some of the most astonishingly well-written character I have ever seen in any medium. Such dedication to the crafting of some of the most vile duplicitous bastards you have ever seen, it's staggering.

01: Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

The storyline in Deadfire takes the already major stakes from Pillars of Eternity I and manages to raise them even higher without making it seem like it's going to ridiculous lengths. The many characters you meet in this game are some of the strongest and best written I have seen in an extraordinarily long time. It's such a wonderful balancing act that you have such a range of characters who have their own plots and schemes that can affect the world but they all gel really well together. Even the overtly optimistic characters are played in a very realistic way where it doesn't come across as the game trying to pander with naive cheerful characters.

Umineko no Naku Koro Ni

I find it incredible that a series of such gargantuan length was able to maintain and hold my interest for the majority of its length. There were a couple of times early on where I felt my interest waning a bit, but everytime it was able to draw me back in and just revitalize my enjoyment. I am also immensely surprised at just how strongly it has remained lodged in my memory since finishing it. I feel reasonably confident if pressed I could give a summation of the entire VN just going off of memory and lose very little in the retelling.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

As with the original Pillars the sequel does an amazing job integrating the DLC expansions quite seamlessly into the main narrative. There were times that I would embark on what I thought was a simple sidequest but was actualy a large add-on that was just as well crafted as the stuff in the main game. It was a very nice and greatly appreciated attention to detail.

02: Umineko no Naku Koro Ni

I adore this game, I will sing its praises even while carrying the small issues I have with the production. It is such a genuinely great piece of work that I worry that I might be overselling how good it is. But I genuinely feel that it is certainly worth all the praise the visual novel has accrued since its release.

01: Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

However, games are more than just their story. It comes down to gameplay as well as the story that determines what I think the best of the year (pre-2023) truly is. And that's Pillars of Eternity II. I went in to this game with very high expectations, and I was truly surprised at how masterfully the game had met every single one of them. Despite some minor character and story wobbles I adore everything Pillars II set out to do. I highly, highly recommend this game to anyone who has even a passing interest in CRPGs.

What do you think everyone?

But in my heart I know the award goes to Umineko.

[wallgirl]

The Little Nereid Part 23

Record of Ragnarok fanfiction

Poseidon x OC

Word count: 4,600

Dynamene, youngest of the 50 Nereids, has lived most of her adolescence as a servant alongside her sisters at Poseidon’s palace. But with her coming-of-age birthday and other developments, what she initially thought was just admiration of her master blossoms into something stronger and more passionate… and painful. Loving someone like Poseidon is not easy period, let alone as your first love. But Dynamene is young and naïve, and all she wants is a chance to be at the sea god’s side.

Categories and warnings: Romance, angst, unrequited love, coming-of-age, earn-your-happy-ending, slow-burn (ish); no sexual content. Graphic violence parts 15 and 16.

Updated regularly; will have about 22 parts total.

—

Poseidon let himself slowly drift to the ocean floor, air bubbles swirling about him from the impact into the water. The sunlight gently filtered through, casting a blue light on everything it touched. A school of minnows paused as they noticed his presence, and turned around to flock around him. Poseidon wasn't in the mood for company, but the minnows weren't causing any harm, and even he had a soft spot for his tiny subjects. The little fish swam closer to his face, as if trying to figure out the cause of his melancholy.

He should've slain Hera where she stood, if there was any justice left within him. Surely her actions were just as treasonous as Adamas's; and yet one was wiped from the annals of time, and the other stood still breathing on Olympus.

But he couldn't. To kill her would've only confirmed that it was possible to get under his skin through his personal life. It would've exposed that she really had forced a crack in his armor. She had managed to get the better of him; killing her would've only confirmed it to everyone else.

And Dynamene wouldn't have wanted him to.

His boots finally touched down on the silt-covered seabed. The minnows continued to fuss about him; they probably wouldn't leave until he told them to. He didn't have the energy to dissuade them.

It wasn't that she had awakened some sort of moral epiphany in him. He still remained firm in his belief that no god should stoop to treachery or scheming to get what they wanted, and that those who did weren't worthy of their title.

No, it was just that he knew it would make her upset, and even though he never planned to see her again, he didn't like the thought of his actions causing her unhappiness.

He held out one loose fist, allowing the minnows to dart back and forth among his fingers. Staying together would've sealed both of our fates. Dynamene had made the right choice to cut him off, and he knew it, and he hated it. She didn't want to be held over his head as a domestic hostage. Neither did she want to be with a man capable of the things he'd done. Their marriage would've spelt either death or misery for them both.

He thought back to when he had charged Doris. How was it that he'd been so gullible, so hot-headed, as to make an attempt on the life of his lover's mother? He should've known then that their love was doomed from the rash way he'd acted. Dynamene's reaction was completely natural. Perhaps that moment had been the straw that broke the camel's back. No... He remembered the look of terror and disbelief in her face when she had blocked his way. It was the same expression she'd worn when he'd ran her through with his trident.

That had been the moment he'd doomed them.

The memory made him clench his teeth. This was all inevitable. We're incompatible. A god has no business courting a nymph. Our worlds and our ways of life are completely different. Every excuse that he pulled out to himself just made him more upset. He wasn't used to self-reflection, but now he was left with only himself. Dynamene... Do you truly think I valued you only as a worshipper? The agonizing moments spent in the witch's lair when she had been dying in his arms felt fresh once more. Was it wrong to not want you to die because you made me happy?

I'm a god, and yet... I couldn't make you happy.

The strength she had shown in those final moments, plunging his own trident to destroy Hera's cursed blessing... It was the most daring thing she'd ever done. And she did it for the sake of getting away from him.

So she didn't want him. She'd decided that marriage to the infamous tyrant of the seas was no longer appealing. Well, then he shouldn't waste any more of his time on her. Two could play at that game.

Two could play... would he be the one to lose, once again?

All of the intricate plans for the future he'd just begun to take for granted had sunk out of his reach before he'd even known it was happening. There would be no wedding. There would be no nights spent by each other's side. There would be no trip to the ocean's depths to share his knowledge with her, and watch her eyes grow wide in wonder. He thought of the jewelry he'd planned to present to her as an engagement gift. What would he do with it now? One part of him wanted to smash it to bits until only fine dust remained. The other part wanted to throw it into the ocean, still intact, but never to be seen again.

"I want to be your consort, Poseidon. I... I want to stay by your side always."

"I love you. I don't want to be away from you ever again. I love you so much."

Only you.

He finally resurfaced, just in time to watch the moon rise over the horizon. The gentle rain had finally stopped.

---

Time moves on, regardless of the feelings and wounds of the past. Buildings crack and crumble; monuments turn to dust; dynasties and empires rise and fall. And just as time itself trudges on, so does the perception of it by each heartbroken individual. It leaps, it creeps; it burns and drags; but it still pulls forward in its own unsteady way.

A young girl becomes a woman, well-versed in the world. Her footprints slowly wash away in the sands of time as she walks forwards - first stumbling, then striding. But the ocean remains, calling out to her on moonlit nights when she's alone with the ghost of the past. First it hurts, then it annoys; then she accepts it for what it is: lost dreams that she must shoulder forever.

A god remains unchanging, closed off to the life that surrounds him. A ghost from the past follows him that he can neither touch nor force to leave. It sits across from him, yet another reality that he refuses to look at. He readily accepts the ghost for what it is: a mocking reminder of his own imperfection and failures.

And to both immortals, centuries soon begin to fly by.

---

Blinding sunlight through the gauzy curtains brought forth news of another clear day. The woman asleep in the bed yawned and turned over, same as every other morning, pulling the pillow closer to shield her eyes. The past few days had been such a rush, coming here from Atlantis to vacation with a few of her siblings, and now she wanted nothing more but to sleep. But the sun wasn't going anywhere, and the curtains continued to flap in the morning breeze, as if mocking her futile attempt at returning to sleep. With a loud groan, she threw her blankets back and ran her hand through her tousled locks.

"I'm not ready to get up yet. I still ache from the journey back," she griped to no one in particular. Well, maybe if she was lucky, Hypnos himself would hear her plea and immediately knock her back out. She waited for a moment, to no avail. Giving one last sigh, she got up from the bed and padded over to the room's full-length mirror. Her hair was a complete mess; not surprising, considering how poorly she'd slept. She must've tossed and turned the whole night long. She reached for her brush and set about putting it to rights, humming an Atlantean tune. The breeze coming in from the window was warm and refreshing, as it usually was here in Valhalla. Songbirds greeted her presence with their cheery tune from the nearby trees. Although she and her family had spent most of their lives calling Midgard home, encroaching humans made escaping to the gods' realm more and more relaxing. And Valhalla was a constant paradise, courtesy of the gods' combined efforts.

The scent of something cooking from the villa's kitchen piqued her interest. She hastily finished putting her hair into one braid - she'd stopped putting it in two long ago, as she'd said goodbye to her adolescence - and made her way down the brightly-painted hall to investigate. A familiar woman stood before a stove, patiently watching the pan atop it.

"There's the sleeping beauty," Actaea teased her as the woman stepped yawning into the sunny kitchen. "How'd you sleep, Dynamene? You look a little..."

"Poorly," Dynamene sighed, straightening her rumpled chiton. There was no shame in wearing her sleep clothes around her family. "But it's still good to wake up here in Valhalla." Besides her ruffled appearance, Dynamene had grown into the spitting image of her elder sister. They were the same height now, with the same trademark braid draped over one shoulder.

"Another beautiful day, thanks to Zeus." Actaea carefully slid the crepes she'd prepared out of the pan and onto a plate. "Come get your breakfast. There's jam and syrup on the table."

As Dynamene hungrily grabbed a few crepes and got settled at the table, a tall young man strode in, carrying a basket of figs. "Ah, Dyna! I didn't get to see you come home last night. How was your trip?" He beamed at her.

Dynamene took a moment to gobble down her first mouthful before replying. "It was delightful as always. Elasippus is such a generous host, especially as king. He took me on a tour to see firsthand the new infrastructure they're developing outside of Atlantis."

"So he told me!" The young man grabbed a plate and went to steal the rest of the crepes.

"Oh, no, you don't," Actaea teased him, smacking him with the spatula. "Save some for the others."

"I'm a growing young man, Ia," he protested, waving away the spatula. "And after all the trouble I went to get you all these figs!"

"You've been full-grown for half a century now, Nerites," Dynamene laughed. "Find a new excuse."

"My excuse is that I'm a strapping man who needs his energy. But suit yourselves; I'm going to make more and you can't have any." He opened up the icebox to fetch the eggs and milk. "Anyways, was that... all that happened on your trip?"

Dynamene paused, mouth full of crepe, and made eye contact with Actaea, who rose an eyebrow at her quizzically. Dynamene swallowed slowly, giving herself time to think about her response. "...No, I suppose not."

"What am I missing?" Actaea asked, settling against the counter. "What else happened?"

"Elasippus made me an offer," Dynamene said carefully. She braced herself for her siblings' reaction. "An offer of marriage, to be exact."

Actaea gasped. Nerites beamed once more. "I knew he'd spit it out eventually!"

Dynamene smiled half-heartedly. She'd known for a long time now how the merman felt; he lavished her with gifts and luxuries every time she stayed at his palace, and always acted as her personal escort. But she still saw him as a younger brother, still playing in the surf as a child with Nerites. "He was very chivalrous about it. But I had to let him down."

Nerites' smile faded. "You did?"

"I've never looked at him that way, Nerites," she said gently. "He's always been like my second younger brother. I remember when you both were still babies, afraid of the dark. And I know that he's grown into a wonderful man, and he rules Atlantis as its king well... But I just don't feel that way about him." She set her fork down and rested her chin on her hand. "I don't mean to break his heart. Trust me, if I did feel that way... I'd accept his proposal in a heartbeat."

A somber silence filled the kitchen. It wasn't like Dynamene hadn't had any romances. She'd had her fair share of suitors over the centuries, most of them humans she'd met while traveling. But the chaste affairs never made it a month before fizzling out and Dynamene broke things off. It wasn't that she had bad taste in men, or poor luck... Most of the men were kind and gentle, and sincere in their pursuit of her.

But there was just something missing... Some impossible feeling that tugged at her heart when she gazed out at the ocean.

It was a feeling that hadn't dulled with time or distractions.

"I'm sure Elasippus won't hold it against you," Actaea spoke up. "He's always been quite the gentleman."

"Yes," Nerites agreed solemnly. "He'll still cherish his friendship with you, Dyna. Don't worry about that."

"I wish I had better news for you, Nerites," Dynamene apologized. "I know how important he is to you. I don't want things to be awkward."

"You don't need to apologize for anything," Nerites said firmly. "It would've made me overjoyed to see my sister and best friend find love together, but if that's not in the cards, it's not in the cards. Elasippus will make it through."

Dynamene thought about the sincerity in Elasippus's green eyes, and the ensuing heartbreak when she'd gently let him down. He'd fought to hide it, but she could see the despair all the same, and she felt terrible. She knew all too well how painful it was to have one's heart broken.

It must've taken a great amount of courage, too, to propose to Poseidon's former lover; especially as the leader of Atlantis.

She'd hoped that the past wouldn't follow her; that the affair would remain unknown except to her family and those few gods involved. But, of course, it quickly got out into gossip, probably thanks to Aphrodite, and for a while eyes had followed her in public wherever she went. Even in the ocean, it was as if the sea life regarded her with more caution. The sea god's love... It made her feel more isolated than ever. That was why she'd only considered human men, many miles inland, as suitors. Men who knew nothing about her past, and who were away from the prying eyes of the ocean. After a century or so, things had somewhat returned to normal, but she knew what had happened before would never truly go away.

Sometimes she wondered if he felt the same. Did he, too, regret that ill-fated affair? Was that why he always faced the other way when a formal event required both of them to attend? Was that why her sisters knew better than to mention her name in front of him?

Was that why he'd never spoken to her again, even after these two thousand years had passed?

It was a laughable situation, really. It seemed like the harder they tried to forget each other, the more persistent the thorns of memory became.

"Is Dynamene awake?" A voice called from down a hallway. "I have a letter from Mother and Father addressed to all of us."

"Yes, I'm here in the kitchen," she replied. Enough reminiscing.

Thoe appeared in a huff, holding a scroll. "I bet I can already tell you what it's about. The Gods' Council."

Nerites rose his eyebrows. "That's in two days now, isn't it? I'm sure they'll be attending as always. They take their duty there seriously."

"I'll let you read it out loud, Actaea. You're the eldest." Thoe handed the scroll to Actaea, who promptly unfastened it and cleared her throat.

"To our beloved children, Actaea, Thoe, Dynamene, and Nerites; as we're sure you're well aware, the Gods' Council is fast approaching. We will be attending per usual, and are extending an invitation to any of you who might wish to join us at this important event. We have already sent another letter to your sisters, extending the same invitation to them. We're sure Nerites will be jumping at the chance to formally meet many of our brethren from other pantheons for the first time. Regardless of whether or not you decide to come, we must make plans to get together as a whole family sometime soon. We both miss you all a great deal. Everlasting love, your parents." Thoe flicked Nerites' forehead. "Ah, looking forward to it, eh?"

"It's one of the first formal events I can attend as an adult!" Nerites smacked her hand away. "Of course I'm looking forward to it. All of the most influential gods and goddesses will be there, headed by Zeus himself!"

"So Nerites will definitely be attending," Actaea chuckled. "Personally, I think I'll pass this millennia. It's such somber business, really."

"I doubt anything will come of this vote, either," Thoe scoffed, plopping dramatically onto a chair. "They've let the dirty things live this long; why stop now?"

"Scathing as always, Thoe. But I will admit that things are getting exponentially worse by the generation, now." Actaea fiddled with her braid. "When Poseidon abandoned his Midgard palace to take up permanent residence at his estate on Olympus... Well, I was shocked to say the least."

"We had some grand times with humans, back when Greek society was at its peak." Nerites murmured. "But humanity has grown increasingly destructive this past century. I miss the days when the oceans were full of clean water and life, not plastic and toxins. I know some Atlanteans were petitioning the minor sea gods to vote against the humans."

"Times have certainly changed." Actaea stared out the kitchen window. "I think the second World War was a breaking point for many gods, and that was only decades ago. They will destroy the planet and every other of the gods' creations if they're left to their own devices."

Nerites looked over at Dynamene, who sat staring at the scroll with an unreadable expression. "What's the matter, Dyna?"

"They've always been flawed creatures, but so are us deities, in our own way," Dynamene said slowly. "Every human man that I courted with had both his faults and his charms. Not unlike another man I dallied with long ago who slew his own brother."

Silence fell over the room. Nerites was the first to speak again. "The head gods should've put a technological handicap on them centuries ago. Their destructive capabilities have advanced far beyond that which their society can handle."

"Whatever happens, at least we can know their species had a good run, all these millennia." Actaea smiled wanly. "I, too, have some fond memories of them. If only we were allowed to vote, too; but what is one vote against thousands?"

Dynamene thought of the first Gods' Council she remembered, not long before she and her sisters had left home. It had sounded so exciting; all of the great deities gathered together to decide the fate of Midgard's ruling species. Back then, to her child's mind, it had seemed more like a great game than a real vote on whether or not to kill off millions of living beings. Now, the human population had doubled many times over, and there were several billion lives on the line.

What would she vote, if she were able to? Oh, it was obvious. Despite their destruction, she wouldn't be able to contribute to their demise.

What was he going to vote? Probably nothing. Even now, she wasn't sure why. Did he think such a matter was beneath the gods' notice? That the humans should be left to their own devices? Or did he think that it wasn't the gods' place to decide, either way?

That strange ache that had only grown in her chest since Elasippus's proposal suddenly reached a fever-pitch.

"I'm going for a trip to Midgard," she proclaimed suddenly. She rose from her seat.

"What for?" Thoe asked. "To visit humanity one last time?"

"No, I'm far too saddened by their potential fate to do that." Dynamene laughed humorlessly. "I just feel like going for an adventure in the ocean." We'll go with that.

"Be safe," Actaea called after her.

"As always," Dynamene replied. "When have I ever been known to do anything rash?"

---

The tepid ocean waters were so soothing against Dynamene's sun-kissed skin. The sun on Valhalla was always so warm and overwhelming; to be once again in the water where she belonged was a deep relief. This part of the ocean was as familiar to her as her own face; every groove and reef etched into her memory.

The humans had long ago begun to encroach on this territory, and it was to her dismay that she noticed a clear decline in the sea life that used to fill the waters. Perhaps it had been inevitable that the sea god would abandon his Midgard palace; he wanted nothing to do with humans and their destruction of his realm. The palace had stood empty for almost three hundred years now, with no one to upkeep it. She hadn't been there since the morning after she'd spited Poseidon; the memories had been too painful. But with all of the recent events, she felt it calling to her: a desire to return to the home of her youth.

She surfaced on a familiar beach surrounded by the same rocky cliffs. Some of the landscape had changed, worn or blown away by wind and rain. The coastline itself had shrunk; no doubt due to the rising sea levels. Dynamene stared despondently at the overgrown staircase that led up the hill. The steps were nearly invisible under the thick brush, most of the wood having rotted away long ago. It was with careful steps that she made her way up, being cautious of the broken planks and jagged stones. She was almost afraid at what she might see when she rounded the final corner. Her fears were largely unfounded, though; the grand marble structure stood as tall as ever amongst the weeds, its surfaces only mildly stained by wear.

And yet, just the knowledge that there was no one and nothing left inside tugged at her chest. Her sisters no longer called this place home; its master had long since withdrawn for the heavens. Part of her already regretted having come. Surely it would have been better to stay away and let her memories of it's heyday reign instead of it's current sorry state. There would be no laughter and warm embraces to welcome her inside; there would be no torches lighting the cold interior, despite sunset's approach. Her own room would stand just as empty as the day she'd left it for good.

Despite all of her misgivings, she trudged on through the weeds that had reclaimed the grounds towards the great double doors. It was with some effort that she forced them open, only to be met with a tragic sight inside. Debris and rubble littered the dusty floors. The wall tapestries were torn from their hangings, covered in mold and animal claw marks. What little furniture remained had been scattered and bashed around by turbulent winds from prior storms. Her shoulders sank upon seeing the once-grand rooms reduced to such a state.

It was too much to bear, seeing her old home of a thousand years this way. The palace really hadn't been maintained at all, then, since he'd left... His own suite probably looked much the same.

The suite they would've shared, in another time and place.

Without quite knowing why, she felt her legs begin to move forward again, down the dark hall towards the first set of stairs that would lead to that top floor. Every room she passed by held precious memories that now lived only in the past. She could almost hear the voices of a million different conversations.

Passing through one shadowy corridor to the next, she soon found herself slowly climbing that tall staircase once more. The last time she'd crossed these steps, it had been as a heartbroken young girl with an impossible choice to make.

Now, she crossed them as a woman who had chosen to live with her decision.

As soon as she pressed through the faded gilded doors, the cool night breeze caressed her face. The windows were open as always, allowing the air outdoors to flow in and out as it pleased. There was no remnants of any furniture to be found here, and the debris was minimal; not surprising, considering how high up it was.

Stepping carefully over a few shards of broken glass, she approached the balcony. The view was largely unchanged from the last night she'd glimpsed it. How could so much change, yet remain the same? Here she stood, a completely different person from the girl who'd cried with the burning trident in her hands... in the same room as back then, with the same fireplace with the gods and their secretive eyes, and the same towering mountains before her. But the other half she ached for was missing now; that strong presence that had filled the otherwise sterile rooms of white marble. Maybe she was fooling herself about how much she'd changed - when she caught sight of her moonlit reflection in one of the shards, she saw the same sadness in her eyes.

I was wrong indeed to come here. I'm not ready. Maybe I'll never be ready. I should go.

But as Dynamene turned to take her leave, her sandal caught an uneven piece of the floor. Catching herself, she stared down at the floor in confusion. The floor was supposed to be entirely smooth and seamless - what was there for her foot to catch on?

She knelt down to take a closer look. There was a panel carved into the floor, slightly ajar: that was what had caught her foot. She hesitated before reaching out to gently pry at the edges. It was clearly meant to hide something, but what? Her instinctive curiosity got the best of her before she really thought things through. The panel began to glow a bright white at her touch, and she fell back with a gasp.

Energy began to pool in the center of the still room, first slowly, and then all at once. Dynamene quickly got to her feet and drew up a blade of water from the damp floor. The white energy focused into a humanoid shape, and then, with a clap of thunder, dispersed to reveal a man in the middle.

He was tall, though not as much taller than her as had been the case in the past. His well-sculpted chest was largely revealed by his open blue top, the firm skin gleaming white under the moonlight. His face was partially shadowed by his rather tousled blond hair, with several waves threatening to obscure his eyes. An angel in the darkness, he seemed to radiate light from his pale hair and skin. His very presence seemed to flood the room with something that caught Dynamene's breath, stifling the gasp she'd nearly made. The force of his life-energy, strong as ever, took her a moment to get used to again.

His frosty eyes opened quickly, and he rose the trident that he held firm in both hands. "You must be exceptionally stupid to trespass here." That familiar stern voice made Dynamene drop her blade immediately, the weapon disintegrating back into a puddle of water at her feet. Their gazes met, and the man's eyes widened.

"...You."

---

Author’s notes:  The first third of this chapter fits better as part of the previous one, so I'm going to move it around here in a few days.

[therealjammy]

The Worth Of the Wait (Witness)

AN: Posting this here for the Tumblr crowd, but also in the hope it’ll garner a bit more audience. It’s quite angsty, so please bear that in mind xx

The title that isn’t in parenthesis is from Ivan & Alyosha’s song by the same name

Words: A little over 2.5k

--

And since it falls unto my lot

           That I should rise and you should not…

—

There was something in the reading of ghosts Dani had done that mentioned souls were doomed to wander the grounds around which they died due to unfinished business. As to what that business was, the spectre had to find out on their own, a task that began as soon as one came to.

           No such task was set forth when Dani woke the first evening after her death, collapsed on the shore of the lake on her knees, not knowing it was the same spot Jamie had knelt just hours earlier. No sense of purpose filled her, only the strangeness of the afterlife, the emptiness of the manor’s grounds, and a bizarre, echoing loneliness.

           Here, Dani did not bear the weight of the first Lady of the Lake. No second gaze watched from within. No claws tore away pieces of her. She was Dani once again. Almost whole, but not quite1.

           She walked the grounds to grow used to her new body and life. She mused that this must have been what the astronauts who landed on the moon felt like—terribly weightless, yet able to come back to the ground by sheer force of will. So light. Like floating on air. But she wasn’t hovering. The afterlife wasn’t nearly so stereotypical. There was grass underneath her feet, and gravel, and brick. Dani was pleased that the muted feel of them all did not terrify her. The downside, however, was everything she took in reminded her of Jamie. And Hannah and Owen and Flora and Miles. So much so that she dropped to her knees for the second time in the middle of the statue garden and allowed herself to feel another knife. It slid beside the one that’d pierced her chest at the sight of Jamie in the water, reaching for her, agonized screams distorted by the thick, choking medium. I won’t, Dani had said. Don’t reach out for me to take you; this is the only time I will not accept your hand.

           The book said nothing about the loneliness one would feel in the afterlife, nor the emotions that ghosts were still capable of feeling, nor even the fact that ghosts could have their own ghosts.

 —

Time was nearly impossible to tell here. The days varied in their colors, of course, so Dani knew the hours, but she could not count the days. Or the weeks. She only knew the beautiful grounds, once kept tame by Jamie and a series of others before her, were slowly being reclaimed. The hedges lost their shapes. The statues in the statue garden wore masks and robes of moss. The rose garden and the white iron table and chairs were covered in leaves and surrounded by weeds, and armies of aphids munched greedily on the wilting roses. The church was dark and drafty; the candles had dust gathering in them, and the benches were covered in it, too. Jamie’s beloved greenhouse was overgrown, looking the part of a houseplant jungle that was now home to spiders and large, fearless rats. Soon many varieties of leaves and arms of vines would cover the bench, concealing the evidence of a deep first kiss and—on a different day—a thick half-hour’s lovemaking.

           Concealing life so that they might live their own. Jamie would say that, or something similar to it. Part of nature, innit? Inevitable. Uncontrollable, once set free.

           Dani was not bound to the lake. Not entirely. And so she spent a series of nights on the greenhouse’s bench, on her bed of plants and cracking cushions, perfectly content to lose herself in memories that hadn’t been sharp for years.

 —

It could have been months, or even years later, that Dani began to hear voices. They were faint and far away, like music drifting from an open window several stories up, the voices unidentifiable, the words a string of incoherence. There were no others on the grounds; what others there were had moved on to somewhere else the second the Lady of the Lake settled herself inside Dani. But the voices were there, whispering in the woods and the lake, the greenhouse and the church, wherever Dani managed to find herself. Was it possible, she wondered, for someone dead to lose their mind? It shouldn’t have been. It would be cruel of the afterlife to make her repeat an act that had already been done. The voices were not memory, either; memory did not tickle the eardrums or raise one’s hackles.

           It didn’t take long for Dani to shrug the voices off, thinking them a new music serenading her world. She often fell asleep to them—a different kind of lullaby.

 —

The first time Dani was called to the land of the living was an accident.

           She was walking through the woods, admiring a golden sunset slashing through silhouetted branches on the way to the spot where Jamie’s carefully grown moonflower once sat. Dani seated herself on the log she’d occupied, watching the shadows lengthen on the iron the moonflower had used as an anchor to grow against, thinking of Jamie and her going-out-on-a-limb monologue, of the kisses that followed and the laughter-filled ascent up the stairs that led to them making love in Dani’s bedroom, with no hesitation after Jamie’s, “It’s not too fast?” A voice shattered her thoughts, clear as day, a whisper.

           “Where are you?”

           Jamie.

           Heart leaping, feeling more alive than her new life had lately allowed her to be, Dani ran, ran through the woods and the gardens, past the empty greenhouse, church, and manor, calling Jamie’s name. “I’m here!” she shouted. “I’m here, Jamie!” No avail. No reward. Just the whisper, again and again. “Where are you?”

           Once again, Dani found herself wading into cold water, and once again fell and sank, but it was not to the lake’s silty, reedy bottom.

           There was water underneath her hands. And wood. Not even an inch of it, but still it lapped at her hands, an insistent, icy tongue. There was hissing. And further away, the sound of sirens. Dani stared at the floor. Light finished oak. Skinny pieces. She knew this floor.

           Looking up, in a state of dizzying disbelief, was looking into the flooding kitchen of the apartment. Their apartment. The sprinklers were spraying water. Something must’ve caught fire, but Dani wasn’t looking for that. Her gaze was trapped by the cracked front door and the unmistakable figure of Jamie, soaked to the bone, sitting between the oven and the sink, the posture of someone who had slid there in defeat, not quite weeping but on the verge of it.

           The strangest part was how ardently she stared into the water.

           “Where are you?” Jamie said.

           “Here,” Dani would have said, and reached out to her, had she not felt herself being pulled back.

 —

Several times, the breaking through happened, each as jarring as the first, until Dani learned to expect it. Until, one winter evening, when the grounds of Bly were dusted with frost, she only thought of Jamie and was instantly over her shoulder. They were in The Leafling, the winter plants and flowers in full season. Outside, there was snow, and fresh flakes were falling like cigarette ash from a steely sky. Jamie was in dark jeans and a black turtleneck, her curls pinned up in a bun, a few unruly ones dangling over her eyes, her hands putting the finishing touches on a pot filled with pansies.

           “It’s a very ironic name,” Jamie had said once, back when they first opened the shop and rotated the flowers out depending on the season. “Call this flower a pansy but it survives the winter.”

           “Maybe we should call it a toughie,” Dani suggested. Jamie shook her head, smiling, but she ended up making a chalk art sign that read, “These toughies survive the winter!” and placed it appropriately in front of the pansy display. They’d sold out within the first two weeks.

           The signs that were in the flower shop now were not written by hand in Jamie’s half-messy cursive. They were all typed and displayed on boards. Including the sign on the door, which was flipped to closed.

           There was life here, Dani realized, her heart seizing in her chest, continuing despite the gaping loss Jamie obviously still felt.

           How many times, Dani wondered when she returned to Bly, to the greenhouse, had Jamie thought of giving up? It had to be several, by now.

           It took a special sort of perseverance to overcome the call of death.

 —

Time hardly existed at Bly, but Dani found a way to keep track of it. She watched Jamie and knew the months went by, staying longer and longer, until she hardly found herself at Bly at all.

           She watched Jamie change. Her hair got longer and less wavy. Grey began to show. Slowly at first, and then they were as sudden as weeds. Dani watched efforts of romances, all of which ended in apologies and the showing of the ring she’d slipped onto Jamie’s finger in the nineties. She watched The Leafling change hands. Watched Jamie pack up the apartment and move into a small house in a different town. Watched her fly to Paris and step through the doors of A Batter Place for the first time in ages. Owen was still there, dressed in white chef’s uniform. And Hannah’s picture remained where it was, too, her kind, smiling face forever immortalized.

           Jamie stood by the doors. Jet lag sagged her shoulders. Made her eyes droop like half-dead leaves. Yet there was determination, Dani saw, mixed with an oncoming wave of nostalgia.

           Owen was a few tables away, smiling, pouring refills of wine into two guests’ glasses. He glanced in Jamie’s direction, owner’s instinct kicking in at the sight of someone loitering in the entryway, looking back at the customers, and then giving Jamie a long double-take.

           “Please excuse me,” Dani heard him say.

           He and Jamie approached each other slowly.

           “My god,” were Owen’s first words to her, “you’ve gotten old.”

           The laughter that erupted from Jamie’s mouth was the sweetest music.

           They sat at the same table that’d seen them a little over a decade ago, talking over French cuisine and wine, until long after closing and long after everyone else left. There was much to say and then nothing at all, a silence settling over the old friends that was comfortable.

           There was a bit of happiness in Jamie’s life at last.

 —

Jamie’s life had changed since seeing Owen in Paris. It was lighter. She walked with new purpose. There was, however, one constant. Jamie always left doors cracked. Always left something filled with water—the kitchen sink, the bathroom sink, the tub, a watering can—and gazed into it, much like she had that day in the kitchen. The habit could have started long before that, Dani theorized, but there was no plausible way to be certain. The only thing that was certain was the statement these habits made: I’ll wait for you. In those moments, Dani’s heart ached in her chest, its own clenched, frustrated fist.

           On a blustery spring day in 2007, Dani followed Jamie around her plant-populated kitchen as she had a conversation with Owen over the phone. Jazzy piano floated from a speaker somewhere Dani couldn’t see, the volume low. She only heard Jamie’s side of the talk.

           “This makes me feel really fucking old.”

           “Well, wasn’t she twelve the last time we talked to each other?” A smile. “I’m giving you shite, you moosher.”

           A pause.

           Her tone turned serious. “You’re sure you want me there?” A pause. “You know they might not remember me.” Silence. Then, with another smile, “All right, you’ve convinced me with your battering on about it.”

           In the past, Jamie threw on whatever outfit was convenient: old, soft T-shirt tucked into worn jeans, jacket pulled on over it; paint-splattered overalls and flannel shirt; sweater and jeans and a grey-blue coverall caked with soil. Her style came together in the nineties. It was polished in the New Millennium. She planned her outfits with a little more care, and she looked stunning in all of them. It was, thought Dani, no wonder the younger women that floated in and out of Jamie’s life fawned over her.

           The occasion she talked about with Owen was, much to Dani’s surprise, Flora’s wedding. The man she’d been smitten with at seventeen was the same one she was marrying at twenty- eight. Jamie marked the date in the calendar hanging on the fridge.

           In the days that followed, a melancholy shadowed Jamie. Dani saw it on her face, and deep in her eyes. She believed Jamie was thinking about their own union, how they had to practically beg for it to be civil while all some people had to do was slide a ring on a finger and ask for a license. How Flora’s life stretched for acres ahead of her while Dani’s own was an uncertain countdown. Dani saw, as she’d gotten rare glimpses of, Jamie scribble the thoughts down in a notebook with yellowed edges. (She had usually left Jamie when she wrote. That time was hers alone.)

           She turned the page. Her pen hovered.

           Jamie began a new note.

We should have grown old together. Watched each other change. Kept track of the lines that appeared around our eyes and mouths. Made love until we were too ancient to do it properly. Found other ways. We should have had our whole lives ahead of us. It seems unfair I get to be the age I am. But we had our time, Poppins. Not many people get that.

             The note wasn’t a goodbye. To Dani, it was more of a reminder.

 Epilogue:

Witness

The asylum-turned-hotel was surprisingly cozy, even by dead people’s standards. Nestled in a sort of grove in Northern California, Dani liked the rustic look of the place and how pleasant it looked against the late afternoon sunlight shining through the trees. It had a sitting room just off the lobby, populated by comfortable couches. Despite the spring warmth, a fire crackled in the fireplace, and the wedding guests gathered around it, some with drinks in their hands, others empty-handed. They chatted amongst themselves until, rather abruptly, Jamie announced, “I have a story.”

           Dani settled behind her, back to the warmth of the fire. Bly did not call back to her. Nothing held her but Jamie, whose command of the room was absolute.

           She hung on every word.

           She felt light. She felt like she could fly at the way Jamie narrated the story that held everyone so raptly; her voice wavered from tenderness to melancholy to, at the end, devotion. A sense of purpose.

           It hit Dani as suddenly as cold water. Her purpose. Her unfinished business. It had only taken seven years and countless witnessing of someone perpetually in wait.

           Jamie filled the hotel’s sink. And the bathtub. She cracked open the door, just a little, letting in a small bar of white light. She turned a chair to the door. Waiting. Expectant.

           Dani knew then.

           If Jamie waited for her, Dani would wait for her in return.

           She set a hand on Jamie’s shoulder, a promise she would, hopefully, feel.

--

Endnotes

1. A reference to my favorite novel, Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones

The lines before the start of this work are from “The Parting Glass”

[popwasabi]

“They Called Us Enemy”: George Takei Recalls Interment and Its Cautionary History

Written by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott

Illustrated by Harmony Becker

 This past weekend I got to make my annual pilgrimage to the nerd Mecca capital of the world; San Diego Comic-Con.

It’s a fun and often exhausting experience between panel hopping to see your favorite movie or TV show actors speak and standing in line often for hours just to see them or to buy merch in the Dealer’s hall.

(At least it wasn’t hot this year.)

Every year though, somehow or another, I always meet at least one celebrity be it intentionally or accidentally. Last year I got to run into Billy West, best known for his voice acting roles on Ren &Stimpy and Futurama, the year before that it was MMA legend Josh Barnett who is a huge comic book geek and before that I met my all-time favorite TV composer Bear McCreary. This year I got to not only meet, but cross a massive name off my bucket list, in George Takei.

(^It me...)

Takei needs no introduction of course; the outspoken OG Star Trek alum is now firmly an internet personality of sorts and hugely popular figure amongst my generation and nerdom alike. But he wasn’t there at Comic-Con to talk about Star Trek or any number of Science Fiction related items to his acting past. No, this time he was here to promote his new graphic novel “They Called Us Enemy” based on a much darker period in his life; the infamous internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps across the country during World War II.

Takei has never been shy about his opinions on politics and society and definitely very open about his time in those camps but this graphic novel helps not only shed a light on his own personal experience there and all the nuanced feelings that came from that but just how deplorable Executive Order 9066 was on American History.

Now, with the recreation of concentration camps this time along the southern border indefinitely imprisoning migrants seeking asylum in our country, Takei’s graphic novel reminds us all why this is so wrong and why we should not turn our backs again.

“They Called Us Enemy” is one-part history book detailing key events, people and often distressing quotes from our politicians on Japanese-American concentration camps but three-parts a visual and written history of Takei’s family journey from pre-WWII internment to the present. Through his parents, his father a first generation Japanese American, his mother second generation to how the events of Pearl Harbor unlawfully stripped them of their dignity, they try their best to make sense of the situation while keeping their children from baring the weight of this shameful period of history. What is an “extended vacation” for Takei and his siblings is a prolonged agonizing experience of doubt, humiliation and degradation for his parents and the toll it takes on his father especially is told through the panels of this graphic novel.

I think the most astounding thing about this graphic novel is that it isn’t especially bitter. It’s upsetting for sure, and bitter in parts, as Takei certainly wants his reader to feel how his family felt through this period in American history but he makes a point of showing how inevitably in all things in America, the wheels of justice may be slow but they do not stop moving forward as long as there are those willing to fight for it. How Takei’s family handles this humiliating and degrading experience is both brave and sad all at once. Takei, for his and his younger siblings, part are completely ignorant of the situation they’ve been forced into and his parents do their best to keep things as normal as possible for them through this ordeal treating it as a long “vacation” for them. They do this despite the fact they’ve been forcibly torn away from their homes, given no time to pack their things, given nametags like cattle and forced to sleep and live in conditions befitting of farm animals.

America may not have led anyone into death camps, during this period, as the Germans did with the Jews but as Takei points out it was still based on fear of a perceived “enemy” and still forced Japanese Americans into these horrid conditions and to do things that our constitution and Bill of Rights explicitly states against for its citizens.

But for Takei, as a child back then, it was an adventure of sorts for he and his siblings that was shielded by his parents to keep him from grasping the full scope of what was really going on. In this way, the graphic novel is somewhat bittersweet; sweet that George and his siblings through the tireless effort of their parents was able to enjoy some level of a childhood within the camps but bitter that as he grew older he finally understood why he was there.

Through Takei’s writings and Harmony becker’s wonderful illustrations we get a grasp of the simultaneous joy and pain that Takei associates with this period in his life; how his mom, when given little time to grab her own personal belongings when the soldiers came, grabbed only things for her children such as sweets and a sewing machine to fashion them new clothes in the camps as to keep their childhoods alive, and how his father helped organize camp leadership and helped lead these disillusioned Americans who had no idea what the future held or if there was a future there at all.

It was in these camps in fact that Takei discovered his love for acting and theater, as funny as that may sound, as camp members were able to show movies within its barb-wired fences. Takei would use this inspiration when his family returned to Los Angeles to become an actor down the line and eventually take up his famous role as Sulu in “Star Trek” and the reason largely was because of the camps. As the graphic novel states Gene Rodenberry (Star Trek’s original creator) wanted a show that envisioned a future where a diverse cast of people worked together for the benefit of all humanity and having an Asian American not only be present in this cast but be a resourceful, responsible lead was paramount. Takei understanding how taking on a role that could give Asian Americans agency in popular media wanted the part immediately as it could help show the country that people who looked like him weren’t the enemy.

Fifty plus years later and he is still advocating for that representation and need for diversity today.

(Being God damn fabulous at it too)

The graphic novel does lay out many things that most average Americans are probably not familiar with; the fact that much of these Japanese-Americans belongings were liquefied and sold off after they were taken from their homes, that many of them tried to join the fight against Japan after Pearl Harbor but were turned away because of their race, and of course after the US finally needed more troops they conscripted members of these very same camps, people they had openly vilified and wrongly detained, to enlist later to become the 442nd Battalion the most decorated group of its kind during World War II.

It’s again infuriating and uplifting all at once; as Takei points out the people who chose to enlist from the camps were as much patriots and heroes as those who chose not to and who could blame them? Many Japanese Americans saw it as an opportunity to prove they were indeed Americans and show the country that had wronged them that they were as patriotic as their white counterparts. For the others it was an act of civil disobedience showing that they didn’t need prove anything to the country that had turned their backs on them.

Takei’s family chose the latter in this regard and nearly lost everything in the process.

The path toward justice is often a long and degrading road for victims and the unjustly accused. For Japanese Americans during this time it took damn near half a century before reparations were made and by then many of its oldest prisoners had passed away not knowing that America had admitted their guilt. 

Its sad and if reading about this part of history and seeing what’s happening now at the border doesn’t make your blood boil, I’m not sure what will.

“They Call Us Enemy” does a great job of not only informing Americans on what happened during this time period and Takei’s very personal story in between all that, but offers a stark warning about repeating the mistakes of the past as we are now at the border. We cannot keep going with this cycle of endlessly vilifying folks for simply looking the part of “the enemy” regardless of their legal status or us being at war with countries that happen to look like them. 

I’m of the mind that people deserve inalienable rights regardless of citizenry. Locking up people and throwing away the key indefinitely and ripping children from the arms of their screaming mothers (Something we didn’t even do to Japanese Americans) without trial is FUCKING WRONG PERIOD and ill-befitting of country that self-labels itself as the “greatest” on Earth.

If we are to pretend we are the good guys in any of these types of conflicts we better start acting like it. FUCKING NAZIS in Nuremberg were given trials after World War II; you cannot tell me an “illegal” doesn’t deserve a chance at a hearing.

I’m often very angry and bitter about the state of the country these days and where we appear to be trending as a society but Takei’s book is not all doom in gloom when it comes to its warning on where we currently stand on justice. As the graphic novel states:

Our strength as a country is that we are capable of change, we are capable of becoming the pillars of democracy and justice that we profess to be through the valiant efforts of those who fight for it. Whether it was the Abolitionists of the Civil War period, Martin Luther King during the Civil Rights era or for these wrongly interred folks, Fred Korematsu, Yuri Kochiyama, Wayne Collins, or Daniel K. Inouye, we will always find a way to move forward as long as brave individuals come together to fight for what’s right.

We can be those brave individuals too, so long as we stand up, voice our disapproval and move the needle of our democracy. We still have all the power here to affect change. We cannot let the wrongs of the past continue on in our present, our democracy and the very fabric of decency, respect, and justice depend on it. Takei’s family and 120,000 plus Japanese Americans who suffered through this depend on us being better for the present and future.

Don’t turn your back on it. Not now, not ever.

[solitarylurker]

magase ai’s hidden quest in babylon

after finally getting up the nerve to watch the last episode of babylon, i found myself pondering the ending and sorting out the series in light of the final episode

and i found something surprising hidden within the final episode, something i haven’t seen discussed anywhere--i discovered what i feel was the (perhaps intentional) purpose of the story

for a long time now i’d been wondering if perhaps the structure of the story was meant to be less literal and more a modern “stage” to work through the idea of “what if there really was such a thing as the whore of babylon, what would that look like in a modern context?”

obviously a take such as this, and a story which explored such a topic, wouldn’t be able to use simplistic reductionist themes like “oh, magase ai was just a girl who’d been abused by the patriarchy and was getting a little revenge on the system”; instead, it takes a more visceral mythological slant, granting a child (who becomes a woman) an ability to distort and tempt the weak-willed around her without even meaning to at first, and then easily once her own malice entered the picture

what would such a character look like, and what would their effect on the world be? and what does this mean for us as viewers? 

this was what i’d begun to think was at the heart of the story, but i think even that view may be too simplistic in light of the finale

as far as i can tell, all the political set up is basically a stage for the whore of babylon to act out her role--i think any “taboo” would have worked (incest, bestiality, euthanasia, murder, etc.); suicide probably was chosen because it’s more common than the other options and also removes the immediate, easier rejections that murder would entail, but ultimately the exact topic debated doesn’t really matter for the purpose of the story

instead, the topic is the excuse to crack open the veneer of the “good” and the veneer of the righteous, to expose the filth in the system (prostitution, inhumanity, greed, etc.), and to let the whore of babylon have free rein to do her thing--magase ai choosing suicide for her victims rather than some other vice is irrelevant, as i think her gleefully murdering sekuro demonstrates she’d be perfectly happy pursuing whatever vice moved her along in her quest

and here’s where the little surprise hit me with the ending--the whole damn story is a race between magase ai and seizaki zen: which one of them can find what they’re looking for first before the other is destroyed?

seizaki is obviously looking for the meaning of evil and how to separate good from evil and eradicate evil; magase’s quest is the exact inverse of seizaki’s--she is looking for the meaning of good and trying to separate good from evil

the difference between magase and seizaki, besides their perspectives, is (i think) that magase wants to find “true good”, the good that cannot be corrupted, no matter what buttons she pushes

this is why, in my own understanding, biblical themes were chosen for this story rather than buddhist ones--buddhist themes would paint magase and seizaki as two opposing forces in the world eternally doomed to face each other and butt heads, but biblical themes don’t have to have that aspect

in essence, my understanding is that seizaki was magase’s “project”--she was testing his limits to see if he could materialize “true good” for her; he was probably one of many such projects

her helping itsuki kaika likely was only a means to an end while she searched for the next appropriate candidate for her continuous project, one that had likely started when she was a child (we can probably assume the boys she drove to suicide were some of the earliest such candidates, as well as her foster uncle)

the reason i think this is magase’s true focus is because she is so deeply delighted to find seizaki in episode two; not only is she delighted, she actively pursues him in ways she doesn’t seem to with any of the other targets she takes down; his name must seem poetic to her, and the idea that maybe she’s finally found the one person who can stand as her opposite probably fills her with glee

i think her obsession with the video game in particular, and with the hero, plays into this--she knows she is the villain, but as far as she can tell, she can’t find someone to be a proper foil for her

if she is true evil, there must be true good--but where, and how can she find it? she doesn’t seem to have any trouble accepting what side she’s on, nor is she agonizing over it--she relishes and delights in it; what she appears to be agonizing over is that she doesn’t have someone who can stand against her, who can truly face her with an opposing viewpoint without ultimately corrupting under her touch

this theme is chilling and deliciously subtle, especially when the writers connect it back to the garden of eden (the beginning, connected to the end, through the temptress); if magase is representing both the tempter snake and the whore of babylon, she’s metaphorically (and literally) the embodiment of evil

the amazing thing about this, and i’m not entirely sure this was intentional on the part of the novelist but patterns happen whether humans intend them or not, is that there is no one on earth who can face evil as the embodiment of good

earth, in the biblical sense (which the story is invoking, whether true or not) is a fallen world, a world filled with those who are the offspring not only of the two first sinners, but also the first murderer (cain)

this means that wherever magase ai goes, she will never be able to find “one” person who embodies true good--biblically, only one such “person” ever existed, because all humans are fallen creatures who can only embody “true good” with divine assistance (and even then they fail)

thus, magase’s quest is far, far more hopeless than seizaki’s, because evil is relatively easy to define if you step outside of postmodernism, and it’s easy to “stop” evil, but it is not easy to “embody good”

this is why it’s inevitable that seizaki must become evil to stop evil, and by doing so he fails to become the “true good” magase is searching for

i personally am of the opinion that seizaki shot himself in the final scene, mostly because of the weight of his own failure to live up to his own principles and his understanding, at last, of what he’d allowed himself to sink to, even if it was expedient/necessary in a utilitarian sense--this story is not about utilitarianism, it is about the platonic/biblical form of “the good” and “evil”; seizaki was searching for “the good”, not expedience/utilitarianism, and he failed to embody it

and by seizaki failing, magase’s latest experiment fails, and she vanishes from the stage to begin the quest anew

what i love, love, love, about the ending is that it establishes that magase is a force in the world who will continue, forever, always searching for someone, anyone, who can embody true good and face her at last, bringing true justice and meaning to her existence

but, if she truly is the embodiment of the whore of babylon, this reckoning cannot occur until judgment day, and so this is a story about the limbo the whore of babylon is eternally stuck in, waiting for that day to come

ultimately, i think babylon’s ending is the “bad end” for the story--seizaki fails to embody the good, and magase fails to find that embodiment in him and must move on to corrupt other souls; however, as a thought piece and as a story, i think it’s such a refreshing take and i must admit each episode (outside the first one, ironically) seemed to fly by in no time at all

[starcourtking]

@illithidheld continued from [x]

     There had been no time to think, not with the thing bearing down on them. No time left to wonder why the goddamned monster-dog abominations were hunting the people of Hawkins once more. Maybe if he’d had his bat in hand he would have stood some sort of chance against it, but even then he would have been delaying the inevitable. They were just too fast to take on head to head, without an edge he was doomed.

    They were doomed.

    Steve couldn’t let that happen. At the very least he could give Billy the chance to run, to get somewhere safer. Fear gripped his heart, but determination moved his body. That thing would tear him apart, would kill him without a qualm--but Billy might be saved. That chance...that was everything. 

    In the brief moment their eyes met, Steve felt everything stop, and in that instant he finally, truly understood his life was over. This was how he died; at the hands--claws--of one of those awful, flower-faced assholes. Like Barb. Like Bob. Just another name on the list of Hawkins’ victims, forgotten with time. 

    Just let it be quick.

    A cry tore from his throat as rows of needle-sharp teeth ripped into his flesh, head slamming against the ground as the weight of the creature knocked him down. Panic raced through his veins, abject terror causing his heart to pound and lungs to seize. He fought back, despite the futility of it all, but each blow seemed weaker, less effective against the monster. He was dying, it would be over soon--

    He wasn’t wrong.

    Shock soon crept in, replacing the fear and leaving Steve in a muddled fog, unsure of exactly what had happened--unsure of what was still happening. The agonizing pain from his shoulder had dulled into something undefinable, distant and foreign until he was suddenly dragged back into everything by a hazy face above him. His eyes began to focus, pain blossoming in his shoulder anew, drawing out another cry of pain in the process. Pain. He was still alive.

    “Y-You idiot...you were...you were supposed to run.”

[two-are-the-trees]

31 Days of Poe Day 5: “The Pit and the Pendulum”

While Poe is a master of terror and creates all sorts of frightening, morbid scenarios to shock our senses, none of his stories reach pure, primal, unrelenting levels of fear quite like “The Pit and the Pendulum.” This is one of Poe’s most graphically and physically horrifying stories, haunting readers with tortuous traps that are seemingly straight out of a Saw movie.

The tale follows a man who has just been arrested for an unknown crime by the Spanish Inquisition. He is thrown into a completely pitch-black dungeon and left to await his execution. The narrator is thrown into agonizing suspension as he wanders his cell, wondering what horrible method of torture will be used to carry out his sentence, as he has heard stories of terrible fates at the hands of the Inquisition. As he explores in the darkness, however, the narrator begins to notice strange things about the prison in which he is held and he must keep on his toes in order to avoid the various traps that his captors arrange for him. At each turn, his chance for survival looks bleaker and bleaker, and yet some internal urge pushes him to see how long he can escape his inevitable death.

Poe’s vividly descriptive language in this tale creates an atmosphere of the utmost squalor and desperation. The sensory details told through the narrator are meant to shock readers at whiplash speeds, inspiring feelings of disgust, hopelessness, confusion, and horror. The narrator describes walls that are slimy and cold, the oppressive claustrophobia of complete darkness, hairy rats crawling in his face, the pain of hunger and thirst, ghastly smells of decay, and the heart-stopping chill of terror that comes in intense waves. This imagery evokes an intense sympathetic response, more than most of Poe’s other works. Readers are thrust directly into the action, bonded to the narrative by our shared experiences of bodily sensation. The tale is also steeped in death as the assured presence of doom in one form or another hovers over every scene.

“The Pit and the Pendulum” is primarily a story of fear. It is fear that punishes the prisoners for their crimes and it is fear that inspires the narrator to attempt to escape every execution attempt thrown at him. The narrator experiences many different forms of fear; fear of closed spaces, fear of disease, fear of starvation or dehydration, fear of solitude, fear of bodily harm, and even some unnamed fears that seem to haunt the innermost recesses of his soul. While most of Poe’s tales use fear to some degree, this story is an absolute exploration of its most primal forms. Whether psychological, physical, or spiritual, Poe seeks to understand how fear affects us and what extremes we will go to because of it.

Would I recommend “The Pit and the Pendulum?” Absolutely, BUT only if you think you can handle it. This story DOES contain some graphic descriptions by Poe’s standards and many hard-to-read fears are explored in detail. However, this has become one of Poe’s most iconic works for a reason. It’s a genuinely thrilling story and the language is amazingly effective. Like, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” I would also definitely recommend the animated version of this tale in the Extraordinary Tales anthology (which is narrated by one of the masters of horror himself, Guillermo Del Toro.)

For more analysis (which contains spoilers!!!) please read below the cut!

As I mentioned above, fear is one of the primary themes of the narrative. The narrator shows an array of different responses to fear and describes its many different forms. He exhibits the strongest reactions to the titular pit and pendulum, and it is these two specific moments, as he faces two different, horrible deaths, that seem the most significant. I like to think that these two methods of execution represent a duality that divides all fears; one is a fear of the known, and one is a fear of the unknown.

The pendulum, which represents a fear of the known, inspires fear primarily because the narrator is allowed to see its journey downward, nearer and nearer to his vulnerable body. He is strapped to a table, facing upwards, so he cannot turn away from the fate that is set for him. He is able to track the pendulum’s movements; study how the mechanism lowers the blade inch by inch, maddening him with each swipe. Poe describes the spine-chilling sound of the screeching metal as it swings, reflecting the heightened senses of the panicking narrator. Because the blade is made to descend slowly, the narrator is given ample time to reflect on his death. He imagines how the blade will feel as it cuts away at his clothing, and then the top layer of flesh, and then deeper into his tissue until it reaches his heart. It’s gruesome imagery, and this grisly train of thought leads the narrator through several stages of pure fear, from unbearable desperation to bleak resignation. The terror of the pendulum is that it forces the victim to grapple with the certainty of death. The narrator knows exactly how he will die, how painful and slow it will be, and this knowledge will only add to the agony of his final minutes.

The pit, on the other hand, represents the fear of the unknown as the depths of the pit and the horrors that lie within haunt the narrator throughout the story. The narrator’s first experience with the pit is when he almost falls directly into it in his pitch-black cell. He narrowly avoids walking straight into his doom as he trips and falls just at the edge of the pit, enough for his head to hang over the side. Immediately, he is repulsed. He describes a horrible, musty, decaying smell coming from deep within and when he drops some debris into the hole and listens to see when it lands, he discovers that the pit runs dizzyingly deep. As much as he tries to infer about the pit with the limited sensory information that he has, he cannot truly know what fate may have awaited him. He gets a brief glimpse into the pit before he is subjected to the pendulum, but it is still unclear in what horrible way he would ultimately die if he were to fall into the depths. This type of fear, the fear of the unknown, is especially potent for the narrator as, after he escapes the pendulum, he is forced nearer and nearer to the pit by contracting walls, and his thoughts race in horror as he regards the pit as the most horrible death of all. This reflects our human, primal fear of things unknown; things like the darkness of night or of deep, dense forests. Any number of horrors could be lurking in obscured places.

Poe brilliantly captures the feeling of fear within the story, however, there is another element that complicates the narrative and sets it apart from many of Poe’s other works; the presence of hope. Yes, as bleak and disturbing as “The Pit and the Pendulum” can be sometimes, remember that it is essentially a story of survival. Even in the most despairing of situations, the narrator cannot fight his desire to stay alive and the hope that, somehow, he may live to see another day. He doesn’t simply lie and wait for death. He seeks out the dimensions of his cell and he eats the food that he is given eagerly, even as he is strapped to the table waiting for the pendulum to bisect him. He formulates a plan to break free of his bonds and escape the pendulum, even though he knows another death will await him soon. He even tries to resist the burning hot, contracting walls that push him toward the pit. Something deep inside him retains the spark of hope that allows him to escape doom. Ultimately, it is this hope that pays off in the end as the narrator is actually rescued from his horrible fate at the very last moment. Yes, this is a Poe story with a happy ending! “The Pit and the Pendulum,” bizarrely, is both a story about the human relationship with fear and about the willpower of the human spirit. It connects us with our primal roots and provides a very interesting and, dare I say, universal look into the human experience.

So, what did y’all think? What really makes the pit the most horrible form of death? What do you make of Poe’s “happy” ending? Are the pit and the pendulum representative of something else? If you want to share your thoughts, please comment on this post or send me an ask! You can also use the tag #31daysofpoe to write your own response post!

[phantomwarrior12]

To Be Human

Prompt: To Be Human by Sia

Word Count: 1,961

Summary: He’s alive, but human. What does it mean to be like his Father’s creations?

Warnings: Mild swearing, angst, a lot of pain

A/N: Hey folks!

I haven’t done one yet, so here’s a human!Gabriel fic. :)

Leave a like/comment and let me know what you think!

Enjoy!

~ Phantom

----------

To be human is to love

Even when it gets too much

We're not ready to give up

-----------

He's stumbling and cursing and it's no use. He isn't fast enough, he can't get there quick enough.

Instead, the former archangel is thrown to the ground, explosion cracking, blood pounding, heart racing. He looks up and you've braced yourself against the cabinet, shielding your head from the splinters hurtling through the air.

He screams your name but it's lost in the cacophony when a second explosion erupts to his left.

Somehow he registers your command to get down and cover his head, somehow he doesn't see you scramble to your feet and tear through the rubble towards their assailant. Somehow, when he next lifts his head, you're at his side with a kind smile and an outstretched hand.

"You okay?"

He can barely register the sound of your voice, disoriented and lost beneath the ringing residue in his ears. He can offer little more than a nod, slowly shifting to a seated position.

"What was that?"

"A werewolf with a loaded armory."

"I guess you don't see that very often." It's a nervous chuckle, something to give him time to process, to calm the storm within.

"No, not usually." You stand, casting a glance towards the door before settling y/e/c on Gabriel, "can you stand?"

His nod is shaky, but he manages to accept the hand outstretched and hoists himself to his feet. Muscles tense and tendons scream as he struggles to get his bearings.

Humanity--how in his Father's name had they learned to cope with distress. Everything seems to be in slow motion as legs cave and suddenly he's collapsing back to the floor. Were it not for your arm looped around his waist and a solid stance, knees would have met cement long ago.

When whiskey finally settles on your features, he offers a weak smile, "Sorry, I--"

"--it's okay. Just focus on staying on your feet. Let's get you to the car and get out of here. It's gonna be all right."

A brief nod and the two of you begin your trek out to your car, a journey that takes far longer than what the archangel would like.

He's human, a mortal doomed to the same state of existence as his father's creations. When he was resurrected by his nephew, he never imagined returning graceless, at least, powerless for the foreseeable future.

Castiel assures him his grace will replenish, but it could be months or millenia before he returns to full strength.

Now he's left at the mercy of monsters, demons and cranky Winchesters alike. His only saving grace is you and the warmth you provide in his dreary existence.

You don't know how he feels, you've never known. He promised himself when he woke up in the Empty that he would tell you as soon as he got back. He hasn't--he can't. Not yet. He isn't ready and your answer is what scares him the most.

And now, with your body pressed so close to his, he wards off as many human hormonal reactions as he can.

He's lost in his thoughts as the engine roars to life and when glazed hazel finally find their way upwards, you're parking the car just outside the bunker.

"Are you okay to walk?" You question, quietly gauging the intensity in which his eyes are locked on the windshield.

He blinks once. Twice. A third time before honey settles on you and he can breathe again. "Yeah, might need some help with the stairs though. You know, the excessive death hazards that they are."

He tries, dear Father, does he try to offer a reassuring smile, but the upwards twitch of his lips seem more like a grimace to your seasoned eyes.

"Right, well, let me help you out of the car. You've probably stiffened up."

"No, it's fine--" the former archangel opens the car door and attempts to swing his feet out, only to find every muscle, every tendon in his legs protests any sort of movement.

There's an exasperated sigh before he turns with a sheepish grin towards your skeptical expression, "I think I could use some help."

"Hang on, feathers." You snort, climbing out of the driver's seat and starting towards the passenger's side.

Your fingers curl around his and he's tugged unceremoniously to his feet, immediately wrapping an arm around your shoulders to steady uncertain legs.

"Take it slow. Your very mortal body isn't used to being thrown around." You secure an arm around his waist and kick the car door closed.

"And yours is?"

You pause, seemingly considering his query before smirking and nodding, "Yep."

"How?"

"We don't have fancy grace to heal our every cut and bruise. Our bodies adapt, recover and  become stronger. One of the perks of being human, feathers."

Gabriel snorts indelicately but offers little response beyond turning his eyes downcast to focus on walking on what you had informed him was probably a torn ligament.

It isn't until the two of you reach the bottom of the stairs--a feat that took close to thirty minutes--that Gabriel asks the inevitable question: "When's Cas getting back?"

"Tomorrow night. The boys just texted to tell me they wrapped up the case and are spending the night. Personally, I think they just want to take Jack to the amusement park in the morning."

"The place is what? Seven hours away?"

"Yep." You nod, tossing your gear onto the table and turning to face the pouting archangel. "Cas'll patch you up when he gets back. For now, let's get you off that leg and ice it up."

"I'd rather not--"

"Gabriel." Your tone left little room for argument, "I've been human a hell of a lot longer than you have. So, get your ass out of that chair and let's get you to your bedroom."

"Y/N, come on. I can wait here for Castiel."

"He's not coming home until late tomorrow night. You really want to wait more than 24 hours in that chair?" You gesture to the dated wood, the chair already causing painful jolts to run up Gabriel's bruised spine.

"Fine." He holds his hand out reluctantly, a gesture accompanied by an eye roll.

"On your feet, feathers." There's a triumphant smile and every ounce of contempt melts away from the former Messenger of God when his body collides with yours. 

Y/e/c meets glistening whiskey and for a brief moment, time seems to stand still. For a brief moment, all he can feel, all he can see is the triumph's gradual reduction to what he dares suggest is adoration. For a brief moment, you're pressed flush against him and he wants nothing more than to close the short distance between you.

Sparks fly and electricity dances, fingertips laced with tension and exhilaration curl around yours. A calloused thumb brushes across the top of your hand, holding it a little tighter than absolutely necessary--as if holding you close will allow this fleeting moment to last for an eternity.

The former archangel's warm breath fans across your cheeks, his eyes baring into your very soul--as if he can still see it, vibrant and beautiful.

He isn't afraid to admit that he misses being able to see it. The very sight always assured him that you were all right, that you were strong.

Now--now he can't see and he doesn't know. He's never been good at reading emotion and with you so close, he longs for his now absent grace.

It's as if you could read his mind and offer a gentle smile, stepping to his side to swing his arm over your shoulder.

"One step at a time."

He nods slowly, eyes turn downcast in an effort to keep himself upright and moving. Each step sends a jolt up his leg, nerves scream and tendons plead, but they're moving.

By the time they reach Gabriel's room, there are tears pricking the corners of his eyes, jaw set in an effort to silence the agonized groans and grunts slipping past his throat.

He all but collapses onto the bed, biting back a growl when you help him hoist his leg onto the bed. His fists have wound around the sheets, clenching tightly for some sort of anchor with the pain singing through his skin.

He all but yelps when the pillow slides beneath his knee, your gentle hands cautiously adjusting the feathered sack.

"I'll get some ice--"

"--Y/N!" His hand snaps out and clasps around your wrist, tugging you back onto the bed.

"What is it?" For a split second, Gabriel swears he can detect a hint of terror in your voice.

"Please. Just, don't go." His grip slackens, realizing how tightly he'd gripped and how little you'd protested.

The adrenaline, the rapid pace of your heart begins to fade when you release the breath you'd been holding, "Gabe, I'm just going to grab some ice. I'll be back."

"To hell with the ice." His fingers entwine with yours, clutching your hand to his chest.

"I'm sure they'd like the ice down there--"

"--sugar." It's a broken plea. It's the first time he's uttered your nickname since he'd been back. His eyes alone beg and your heart aches as you settle closer to his trembling form.

"All right. I'm not going anywhere," you give his hand a gentle squeeze and brush a wayward lock of gold away from his brow.

His smile is soft and relieved as fingers tighten around yours, bringing them up to his lips for a quiet peck.

"Sugar, I have something that, that I should have told you a long time ago."

There are tears gathering in his eyes and he wants to wipe them away, but he doesn't dare let go of your hand. You're the only thing tethering him down, the only lifeline he has left. So, he clings a little tighter and stares down at the blankets spread across his legs as confessions fall from his lips.

"I didn't know how to say this before. I'm not even sure I know how to now," honey flickers upwards, meeting your eyes with a vulnerability you've never seen from the archangel before, "but after today--I need to say it."

"Say what, Gabriel?" Your gaze softens, subconsciously sliding closer as your eyes search his for answers that seem just out of reach.

"I love you, Y/N." He relinquishes one hand's grasp on your smaller one to gently cradle your cheek, "From the moment I met you, it's like I was drawn to you--like a beacon. All these years, all this time, I kept looking for the right time, the right way to communicate all of this."

His thumb brushes away a trailing tear, his own heart pounding in his ears, terrified of the disbelief in your glistening eyes.

"And when I woke up in the Empty, the only thing that drove me to stay awake was the thought of seeing you again, of telling you how much you mean to me. I can't show you, not like I used to, but, if you'll let me--"

He never gets to finish. Suddenly, he's pressed against the headboard and your arms are thrown around his neck. Suddenly, his lips are pressed against yours and he's holding you tighter than he's ever held anyone or anything before. Suddenly, all those years in Hell, all that time spent away from you: it's all worth it.

If he could relive a moment in his lifetime, in the thousands upon thousands of years he's walked both heaven and earth, it would be this moment. For this one moment, all is right in the world.

For this one fleeting moment, he truly understands what it is to be human.

-----------

Wanna be here? Send me an ask/message!

Tagging:

Gabriel Squad: @thewhiterabbit42  @erisunderthemoon @stuckoutsideofthebox @nuvoleincielo @lyselkatz @high-church-of-the-holy-dick

Forevers: @heaven-hell-imagines @spnfamily-alwayskeepfighting @currentlyfangirling99

[wanderingwoodswoman]

Major Arcana Cheat Sheet

The Fool: The Fool is a very powerful card in the Tarot deck, usually representing a new beginning -- and, consequently, an end to something in your old life. The Fool's position in your spread reveals which aspects of your life may be subject to change. The Fool portends important decisions ahead which may not be easy to make, and involve an element of risk for you. Approach the changes with optimism and care to gain the most positive outcome.

The Magician: The Magician generally associates with intelligent and skillful communicators. His presence in your spread indicates a level of self-confidence and drive which allows you to translate ideas into action. A practical card, the revelations it brings are best applied to the pragmatic and physical aspects of your life, rather then the ephemeral or theoretical. Your success in upcoming ventures in politics or business will likely hinge upon your own strength of will and determination.

The High Priestess: Your identification with the High Priestess suggests you possess inherent good judgment, in the form of strong intuition. She may indicate that reason should take second place to instinct. Your head must trust in the wisdom of your heart for a change. Yet, she is also an aide by nature, and her presence in certain parts of your spread could be indicative of someone close to you coming to your rescue with their own intuition. Intuition is most effective at seeing what is hidden to the senses, so the High Priestess may also come as a warning of concealed facts or influences that are, or will be, important to you.

The Empress: Traditionally associated with strong maternal influence, the presence of the Empress is excellent news if you are looking for harmony in your marriage or hoping to start a family. Any artistic endeavors you are currently associated with are also likely to be more successful, as this card often finds those exposed to strong bursts of creative or artistic energy. That creative energy may not be in the form of a painting or art project, however: This card also suggests a very strong possibility of pregnancy -- not necessarily yours, but you might be seeing a new addition to your extended family or the family of a close friend in the near future! This card is a good portent for you and those around you.

The Emperor: Counterpart to the Empress, the Emperor is signifies a powerful influence, generally male in nature. This can also include concepts in your life historically considered masculine, such as leadership and authority, self-discipline, and stability through the power of action. Its positive influences suggest you may be on a path to advancement or promotion, but it can also be neutral. Often a companion to those destined to take on greater responsibility, it may presage change or loss that necessitates you stepping forward to shoulder a greater burden than you have in the past. Whatever the impetus for the change, it indicates you may possess an uncommon inner strength that will compel you act and to lead.

The Hierophant (Pope): Depending on your own nature, the Hierophant can mean very different things. At its root, it represents doctrine, but doctrine can come in the form of teaching and guidance or rigid authority. Where it appears in your spread is also important, as it is most often indicative of your own approach to the moral, religious, and social conventions of the world. Considered wisely, it helps show the path towards fulfillment. 

The Lovers: Your first instinct will most likely be to associate this card as representing love, but, much like love, it does not possess a simple nature. Not only does love comes in many forms, but the Lovers may indicate important or difficult choices ahead in your life. This is bad, in that the choices it portends are generally mutually exclusive, paths to two very different futures, but also good, in that it also confirms that at least one of those paths will take you to a good place. As such, if you happen to find it in your spread, you should consider it carefully, but not fear it. It tells a story of difficult choices, likely painful, but that the correct decision and a positive outcome are within your grasp. 

The Chariot: You have some hard work ahead of you. It may be resolved quickly, but the Chariot is a powerful card, and the labor you are undertaking will probably trend towards long and difficult. You will quite possibly experience rough roads, long uphill slopes, dead ends, and painful setbacks. A good outcome is only assured if the card is upright, but do not let yourself lose hope: This hard road will instill in you a strength of purpose, the ability to overcome through organization and endurance, and the confidence possessed only by those who have done what they thought they could not. Harnessed correctly, few forces can stand against an individual like that. 

Strength: Strength is the rawest form of power, and you possess it in some form. It is a very happy card if you are fighting illness or recovering from injury. As might be suspected, its influence over you, and the use you put it to, can trend towards light or dark. You likely trend towards facing your problems courageously, head-on, and conquering them through perseverance and will. With this ability to overcome life's obstacles, though, comes the responsibility to control yourself, and it this card may be a warning to take command of your own actions or emotions before they damage you or the people you care about.

The Hermit: There are times in every life, when one must step back and make a careful examination of their situations and decisions. Finding the Hermit in your spread suggests this is just such a time for you. You are in need of a period of inner reflection, away from the current demands of your position. This retreat can be physical, or a search within. Only a deep and honest introspection will lead to a solution, however.

Wheel of Fortune: Symbolic of life's cycles, the Wheel of Fortune speaks to good beginnings. Most likely, you will find the events foretold to be positive, but, being aspects of luck, they may also be beyond your control and influence. Tend those things you can control with care, and learn not to agonize over the ones you cannot.

Justice: Justice is a very good card to find in your spread if you have acted with kindness and fairness towards other and, especially, if you have been a victim. It is a significant indicator of a positive resolution, although how and what sort will depend on your own experiences. If you have been unfair, abusive, or otherwise shady and immoral in your dealings, though, pay heed. For the unjust, this card is, at best, a dire warning to change your ways before retribution falls upon you, and, at worst, a simple statement that it is already too late. In neutral cases, it may simply be telling you to seek out balance in your life. 

The Hanged Man: The Hanged Man can be interpreted in two very different ways. All change is a small kind of death, as the old must die to create the new, and it may simply indicate upheaval or change in your future, perhaps beyond your control, but more likely a decision that, for good or ill, you will not be able to turn back from. The other interpretation is one of sacrifice, although whether this sacrifice is small or great may not be easily interpreted. Both interpretations imply permanence, and that you should give very careful thought to the decisions in your life. 

Death: Death is indicative of change in your future. This change can be in almost any aspect of your life, but it will almost certainly be permanent, significant, and absolute. Death suggests a complete severance between the past and the future, and it will likely be painful. Despite the sense of loss that may accompany it, Death fills an important and natural role in life, and leads eventually to acceptance. It is a necessary part of moving forward, and you will find the changes easiest if you embrace them, rather than fight them. Expect the end of a close friendship, a job, a marriage, or even a life, but do not focus too greatly on the negative.

Temperance: An optimistic card, Temperance encourages you to find balance in your life and approach problems with a calm demeanor. It recognizes that opposing forces need not be at war within you. Tread carefully in any major decisions you make, with confidence that good decisions will lead to a good resolution for you.

The Devil: The Devil is in the business of entrapment. It signifies a situation from which there is no escape, or a road leading to one. Forewarning may let you avoid the trap, or it may not. What sort of trap, and how you might avoid it, depends on where the Devil appears in your spread, and what other cards surround it. This card does not foretell doom, only the need for prudence.

The Tower: Dark and foreboding, the Tower is the embodiment of disruption and conflict. Not just change, but the abrupt and jarring movement caused by the unforeseen and traumatic events which are part of life. The Tower in your spread is always a threat, but life inevitably involves tragedy, and you must decide whether you will face it with grace.

The Star: The Star's presence signifies a period of respite and renewal for you. This renewal may be spiritual, physical, or both. It is a particularly positive sign if you or someone close is recovering from illness or injury. It is a light in the darkness, illuminating your future and your past.

The Moon: Something in your life is not what it seems. Perhaps a misunderstanding on your part, or a truth you cannot admit to yourself. It may also indicate something important being kept from you by another. This may be a source of worry or depression in your life, and the Moon is a strong indicator that you must rely on your intuition to see through the subterfuge.

The Sun: As an inherently good influence, finding the Sun is a positive development. It is suggestive of personal gain, and that personal goals and joy are within reach, if you are willing to invest the effort to actualize them. If you are embarking on a new personal venture, such as marriage or beginning a family, the Sun is of particular influence. 

Judgement: Judgment tells a story of transition, but unlike Death or the Tower, it is not sudden change, or born of luck or intuition, but change that springs from reason. It signifies plans, often long in the making, coming to fruition. If it points towards the future, it may also speak towards the nature of the change; if there is a choice that needs to be made, ruminate and let your mind guide the decision. Logic, in this case, is a better guide than intuition. Be prepared to make a major decision in your life, likely one that will shape the next chapter of your life.

The World: The World is an indicator of a major and inexorable change, of tectonic breadth. This change represents a chance for you to bring about a desirable end to the Old and a good beginning to the New. It is indicative of growing maturity, a sense of inner balance and deeper understanding. It suggests that you may be approaching a more final sense of identity, and the security in the self that comes with age. It also represents the falling away of boundaries, sometimes in the effusive sense of the spiritual, but sometimes in a purely physical sense, indicating travels or journeys in the future. 

[killapunk]

for @timer-the-bunneh , on Jacket and silence

--

He’d never been much of a talker. He’d always trip over his words, speak too softly, or take too long trying to think of what to say, and it had led to plenty of ridicule. While this made him avoid it whenever possible, he had never been completely nonverbal. After '86, though, it was like he barely had a choice.

The silence was agonizing. Paralyzing, almost, in its intensity. It made him aware of his solitude, which he seemed to be unable to shake for long. He didn’t want to be alone, he had never wanted to be alone, and yet he always ended up that way. The absence of sound also meant the return of the voices. Not the kind he’d heard about growing up, those belonging to strangers telling him to do bad things, but rather snippets of conversations he’d tried too hard to forget accompanied by whispers reminding him of all his faults. He’d grown so used to this deafening silence that whenever he did try to speak, he couldn’t find the words.

It was almost funny how the strangers giving him heinous orders existed somewhere outside his head, but being a former soldier, it was nothing new to him. Hearing another person’s voice was almost comforting at times, even if he didn’t know who it belonged to, and the familiarity of following instructions made him feel like he was adhering to some sort of routine. If there was ever a time in which this would have struck him as concerning, said time was past. He’d jumped at the chance and he knew it.

The sound of gunfire was nearly worse than the silence, though. It reminded him of Hawaii, which inevitably reminded him of those he lost, which, of course, reminded him- once again- of the fact he was alone. The upside to being surrounded by gunfire, though, was that it didn’t leave too much room to think. Being on a job made him turn to his survival instinct, and any remaining thoughts he had turned from loneliness to revenge. He had signed up for this. He was going to see this through. He was going to make them pay...

Once he made it back home, though, it was just him and his own brain. While he didn’t feel guilt, exactly, for what he’d done, that only served to fuel the string of whispers telling him he was a monster. Irredeemable, through and through, and doomed to solitude. Trying to confront these whispers out loud only made him feel worse, as hearing his own voice made him realize how weak, how scared he sounded. 

But now, now it’s different. Now the girl’s here. His thoughts have turned from self pity to concern, and he has to talk to her- not a lot, just enough to know if she’s okay. Just enough to let her know he isn’t going to hurt her, that he wants to help her, that she’s safe. It doesn’t take more than a few words to do that, and she doesn’t ask for more. 

She’s only really asked for three things: his name, his favorite kind of pizza, and some new clothes. Nothing about what happened the day he found her, nothing about what he does when he goes out. She doesn’t care. She just gives him a soft smile when he leaves, and another when he returns. He knows any day now she’ll want to hold an actual conversation, but she’s in pretty bad shape still and he doesn’t want to make matters worse by being awkward or invasive.

She gets to decide when they talk, and when the day comes, he’ll try his best not to stutter too much, but until then, he’s perfectly fine with silence. Sitting beside her on the couch, without even an answering machine beeping to interrupt them, is a source of relief.

If something were wrong, they’d have to speak. Silence means everything is okay. 

[mistressofsmite]

April is the cruelest month: The most depressing books I have ever read

“April is the cruelest month” begins T. S. Eliot’s masterpiece “The Waste Land.” I don’t agree, myself. I always find January, with its post-holiday letdown, to be the most depressing month. September isn’t much better with its blazing weather lingering long after summer has worn out its welcome. But Eliot is my favorite poet and until I can write something as good as “The Waste Land” or “Ash Wednesday” or “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” or “Marina” I’ll defer to him.

In honor of the cruelest month I offer the most depressing books I’ve read. And they are all, in their own ways, good books. They aren’t depressing in the “trees died for this” way but in the bleak, brutal beauty of their stories and the empathy they generate for their characters.

1984 by George Orwell

Probably the grand-daddy of excellent-but-depressing books. These days Brave New World is more relevant to our society, but at least in that dystopia most of its inhabitants are having what they think is fun, at times. But 1984’s world is a grim, shabby place where even the Inner Party members lead lives devoid of much in the way of comfort or sensual enjoyment. Combine that with the ruthless efficiency of the brainwashing and the inevitable betrayal and renouncing of humanity, and you’ve got one downer of a book.

The Book of Sorrows by Walter Wangerin, Jr.

Wangerin’s sequel to his popular Christian fable The Book of the Dun Cow is an example of truth in advertising: its very title tells you this is a book brimming with sadness. Mind you, The Book of the Dun Cow wasn’t exactly a rollicking fun time: Rooster Chanticleer and the animals he’s lord of must fight for their lives (and their souls) against a demonic half rooster/half snake beast called Cockatrice and his horde of poisonous snakes; the battle is won by the self-sacrifice of humble dog Mundo Cani. The Book of Sorrows takes up shortly after the battle has been won, but implies the war may be nearly lost. The losses of the battle, particularly of Mundo Cani, weigh heavily on Chanticleer as he descends into depression and paranoia. As a brutal winter takes its toll on the remaining animals, the characters who triumphed over external enemies start to succumb to those within, facing starvation, infertility, suicide, the semi-accidental killing of a mother and child, and more. It’s a beautiful book, though, with marvelous characterization and effective use of both Christian and pagan stories and myths. But very hard going at times.

Depressing in a different way is the fact that in 2013, to tie it in with a third book in the series, Wangerin heavily revised and drastically pared back The Book of Sorrows and retitled it The Second Book of the Dun Cow: Lamentations. Basically he pulled a George Lucas. I am not pleased with this turn of events, but I’ll save that for a different post.

The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kozinski

Kozinski’s 1965 novel is somewhat overshadowed by its author’s personality and by his claims about the book’s inspiration (once described as largely autobiographical, it was later revealed to be not so autobiographical after all). But despite that and some occasionally clumsy writing/translation, it’s a stark, grim novel that’s more frightening in its depiction of the depths humans can sink to than many horror genre novels. The story follows a nameless child in World War 2 Poland, sent to the country by his parents to escape persecution (it’s implied he’s Jewish, though he’s at times assumed to be a gypsy). When his guardian dies he’s left to wander alone in a countryside that’s populated more or less exclusively by ignorant, savage peasants. Halfway through the book (right after he’s tossed into a cesspool to drown after he accidentally drops a Bible during Mass) he’s so traumatized he’s unable to speak. It ends on a (not entirely convincing) happy note, but the horrors witnessed by the child linger in the reader’s mind, as does the suspicion that this kid is going to end up as one seriously messed-up adult.

The Bridge by John Skipp and Craig Spector

What do you get when you combine no-holds-barred splatterpunk with apocalyptic environmental horror? You get The Bridge. The titular bridge is in a small town called Paradise, and is the favorite dumping ground of the local polluter. At least until the toxic waste becomes this sentient, unstoppable force that mutates everything it contacts, inhabits the minds of every living thing, and takes over the world in a matter of days. What makes the book frightening is that the toxic force doesn’t kill – everything from plants to people just becomes an extension of the force, trapped forever in a kind of living death. What makes the book so depressing is the inevitable doom for everyone, including some very likable people.

The Brave by Gregory McDonald

Fans of McDonald’s lighthearted Fletch series definitely had to reach for the Xanax after reading his 1991 effort The Brave. Young Rafael lives with his family and some other lost souls in a shantytown community in the Southwest. There are no jobs, no government assistance, no money, and almost no food. The primarily Native American populace’s life consists of foraging in the nearby dump for food and for other goods they use to survive. Alcoholism is rampant, even among children, and if the people aren’t shot by the dump’s armed guards they die quickly in accidents or lingeringly from untreated cirrhosis or cancer. So when Rafael is given an offer of $30,000 to be tortured and murdered on camera for a snuff film, he agrees – to give his family and friends the means to escape the shantytown, and to have the chance at a quick (if agonizing) death instead of his miserable existence. And his sacrifice will help his family and friends, because the sort of people who make snuff films would never go back on their promise to give his widow thousands of dollars, and they’d never use a phony contract to bamboozle a naïve, illiterate young man. Would they? The Brave is a very good book but bleak doesn’t begin to describe it – it’s for those who thought Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle just wasn’t grim enough.

Now, I can hear rumblings from the peanut gallery – people asking why on earth I read these in the first place. Well, I don’t really have an answer for that. I’ll blame some of my early reading, particularly Russell Hoban’s The Mouse and His Child, a children’s book that’s grim, almost existential fare. And those Choose Your Own Adventure books – no matter what I did, I always got the “and you were never heard from again” endings. Just lucky, I guess.

[mittensmorgul]

12.19: More creepy, off-balance music cues letting us know something’s NOT QUITE RIGHT HERE.

These jarring chord progressions are just as telling as things like the use of certain camera angles, lighting and shadows, and other visual cues (like certain beer signs-- El Sol the beer of illusion and deception, or Schultz the beer of death, or Margiekugel the family beer, or Kingdom the sign of Heaven... the list goes on...) to let us know something is just “off” about what we’re seeing.

Heck even WAFFLES are a warning sign that all is not as it seems on this show. So we can extrapolate that out to recognize that the sound effects and soundtrack are used to similar purpose.

The scene where Dagon finds Kelly after her suicide attempt has some pretty damn jarring musical cues. A steadily descending, slightly off-key chord progression that just sounds wrong and upsetting. Because it’s alerting us to the fact that we’re supposed to interpret Kelly’s lines as wrong and upsetting.

She looks up at Dagon with the absolute conviction of a True Believer in her eyes, having been resurrected from the dead, insisting that the nephilim wouldn’t let her die, and wrongly assuming that the nephilim’s motives were altruistic toward her.

By contrast, Dean and Cas’s entire conversation in his room, with the infamous mixtape has entirely ZERO musical cues. The scene is absolutely SILENT aside from the words they exchange, encouraging us to put our own soundtrack to that scene (possibly the entirety of the contents of that mixtape)...

Same with Dean and Sam’s entire conversation culminating in the revelation that they may have a “better way” of taking care of Kelly and the nephilim without killing either of them, by extracting the nephilim’s grace and potentially rendering him human... Absolutely silent until Dean excitedly gets up to track down Cas and tell him the good news. That’s when the sad string music kicks in, which feels weird over Dean’s positively charged emotions... until he opens the door to Cas’s room and finds he’s gone. Suddenly the sad string progression makes agonizing sense.

Same with Dagon’s speech to Kelly about how mistaken she is about the nephilim’s intentions for her. Silent until she talks about how Dagon herself will be there to step in and raise the baby (and we have another progression of low and ominous strings). The music from this scene bleeds over into Cas in his rain-splattered truck, carrying that “ominous” vibe into the beginning of his scene with Kelvin outside the house where Dagon is keeping Kelly.

Cas presents Kelvin with the Colt to the background noise of that evil train whistle warning noise (tagged with zerbe’s bells and whistles tag going back to s9). That whistle appears again behind Cas’s line of, “I-I stole the Colt to keep them out of this mission and to keep them safe from Dagon.” 

Cas and the other angels sneak into the house to the sounds of an inane game show and Dagon’s laughter, which is replaced with an urgently ominous string chord and horn fanfare in the soundtrack that fades out to a driving drum-backed mishmash of WARNING music when Cas rounds on where he believes Dagon to be only to have her appear behind him unexpectedly.

After all of Cas’s fears about Sam and Dean not being able to kill an innocent, and that being his entire reason for taking on that mission HIMSELF, stealing the Colt, and he failed to kill the innocent, too. There’s no music behind his conversation with Kelly where she pushes Cas to admit this.

(As Dean lampshaded earlier, the only way they truly work well is when they work together, setting up the inherent failure of any plans they try to enact on their own... letting us know that Cas’s plan was destined to fail from the start...)

Dagon’s “chat” with Lucifer where he learns that Dagon lost Kelly to Cas is underlaid with a tense and nebulous miasma of strings and Lucifer’s screeching, as well as a high pitched whistle over the low brass honking of doom.

Cas’s entire conversation with Kelly in his truck after he receives his orders from Joshua, to bring Kelly through the portal to Heaven, describing what will happen to her is overlaid with the gentle whoosh of traffic noise and-- strangely-- the cheerful chirping of birds. He warns her that her baby could “bring the universe to its knees.” The MOMENT Kelly retorts with, “Or lift it to its feet,” ushers in a straining minor chord of strings, prompting us to subconsciously DOUBT HER WORDS HERE. Cas replies they can’t take that chance, and the music turns sad with the addition of Sad Oboe of Sadness as Cas can’t get the truck started again...

Sad Minor Key Oboe blends into the next scene, along with High Pitched Angel Whistling as Dagon tortures Kelvin for info, and resolves into more ominous and deeper tones yet again. That scene ends on another high pitched whistle that blends into Cas trying to hide Kelly at the motel.

again Cas’s entire conversation with Kelly about her suicide, the baby saving her, about there being no “Special Purpose” behind Lucifer’s desire to get her pregnant, aside from destruction and chaos, is entirely silent. UNTIL Cas gets to this: (annotated with the musical cue introduction)

So even if you are right, [gentle crescendo of mournful sounding music] and even if the worst isn't inevitable, then who will care for him when you're gone? (Sighs) Who? Who is strong enough to protect him and to keep him from evil influences and to keep him on the righteous path?

Followed by a high pitched sustained note while Kelly feels the baby kick, and Cas declines to put his hand on her belly to feel it, so instead KELLY GRABS HIS HAND AND INSISTS HE FEEL IT AGAINST HIS WILL, at which point the music turns from mournful to downright ominous again as we see Kelly’s eyes flare golden and hear the YED Sound Effect of Intense Doom overlaying her vision of Dagon burning at the sandbox.

That whole act of the episode ends on an extended unresolved note sustained over Cas answering the door to Sam and Dean.

We return to see Dean pushing Cas against the wall in anger (shot so lovely and romantically through the wall of circles), overlaid with a low note that resolves into a softer piano medley as they see Kelly. Then music goes silent while they question Cas.

Everything stays silent until Cas and Kelly are in the Impala. Cas tosses the keys over the front seat, Kelly says, “It’s not supposed to happen that way,” and glances down at the keys as very low and DANGER OMINOUS strings begin to play. Then we get the gunshot drum sounds as the DANGER OMINOUS strings are joined by the off-kilter high whistling noises and Kelly screeches out of the parking lot in Baby.

Cas has his crisis of faith in himself, and Kelly tells him they’re “destined” for something (and hell does that word have some horrifying baggage for Cas-- having survived the Winchesters throwing off their destiny to end the world ffs). Cas says, “I wish I had your faith.” He wishes he had the sort of faith in HIMSELF that Kelly is heaping on him... but that wish goes so horribly bad. Cas never regains that faith in himself because Jack... hijacks it. When Kelly replies, “You will,” there’s no ominous music; there’s only the purr of the Impala’s engine.

The next scene opens with Dean repairing Cas’s truck, with a DOG BARKING in the distance, and Sam asking how any of this happened. The dog barks again when Sam says Cas’s name, barks twice when Dean says “Lucifer.” The barking continues during the gap after Dean tells Sam to give the ignition a try, and the truck starts with a screeching sound.

Cas and Kelly arrive at the Heaven Portal sandbox to sweet yet melancholy piano and oboe and string music, which takes a minor turn when Kelly utters the line, “As long as you're here, I know it's gonna be okay.” Cas give her a strange little look, but activates the portal with a shimmering sound effect, the music turning briefly “positive” in tone and overlaid with a “choir” effect.

Joshua steps out and encouragingly tells Kelly not to be scared before Dagon appears behind him and explodes him in a cloud of smoke. Followed immediately by the LOW RUMBLING PIANO CHORDS and the discordant high pitched whistling and the intense yet subtle Percussion of Intensity. They fight, and as Cas is thrown to the ground the music spirals higher, the strings whirling up through octaves until they feel like a swarm of raptors spiraling overhead. until Sam and Dean arrive, distracting Dagon from finishing Cas off just yet.

Dean aims the Colt at Dagon, but she disappears before he can fire, the percussion growing more intense throughout until we see Dagon had pulled the same trick she had before with Eileen-- that if Dean had fired he would’ve shot Kelly who’d been standing behind Dagon... Dagon appears at Dean’s side and wrestles the Colt away from him, destroying it in a flash of searing light with the high pitched noise we’ve come to associate with searing lights on this show, and dramatic chords playing below it.

Then we’re back to the tympani rumble and minor strings, and the discordant woodwinds as Cas and Kelly join hands, and Cas is taken over by the creepy nephilim light ALONG WITH THE YELLOW EYED DEMON GROWLY NOISE OF NOPE NOPE NOPE, and the straining strings jump in intensity before being joined again by a low ominous note and then spiraling down the scales as Cas says, “Call it a miracle,” and Dagon burns, and her screams echo.

As Dean and Sam approach Cas to ask what that was all about, the music retains both it’s low and ominous tone, and its minor key... this is nothing good happening here. The music is telling us that something is very very wrong here.

When Cas heals Dean’s arm, there’s a brief infusion of a different, softer musical theme for a few moments, as well as the high-pitched “healing” sound, but the MOMENT Cas says, “Thank you for coming to fight for us,” the music reverts to the minor key again.

When Sam tries to stop Cas leaving, and says, “Hey, Cas, wait a second...”, the music resolved into a sustained violin note that’s held through Cas’s reply of, “You’re just going to have to trust me.”

Dean’s, “No, no, no, wait. Okay, whatever that thing did to you, we're not just gonna let you walk away.” introduces the low, sad cello Tears In Their Beers theme. As Cas talks about the “future” Jack showed him, Tears in their Beers picks up a distinct air of menace with a rumbling bass note and two rasping higher pitched (and menacingly malicious) chords as we zoom out and see Sam and Dean lying unconscious on that playground.

So regardless of what you want to believe about this episode, the music is distinctly telling us where the points of greatest concern are, highlighting the fact that certain phrases were underscored with CLEAR AND OBVIOUS MENACE, and where we should presume malicious intent in the text.

[murasaki-murasame]

The first thing I read when I get on my computer is Ao no Flag chapter 12 and honestly I feel so attacked right now.

You could literally stab me in the chest and it would hurt less than the end of this chapter.

Thoughts under the cut.

OK I’m just gonna ignore the obvious elephant in the room for a while and try and tackle this whole chapter in chronological order.

That title page really puts into perspective how big of a size difference there is between these two. Damn.

I’ve seen other people talk about it, but it’s nice that Taichi is still close with his other friends, and we actually get to see them regularly hang out. Way too often in this sorta manga, the MC’s friend group at the start gets totally ignored once the other main characters show up.

I guess it feels, uh, weird to say this considering how the chapter ends, but it was still nice to get more focus on Touma doing his thing and being happy and successful, with everyone being there to support him. Or at least that’s what I thought in the process of reading the chapter, lol.

I still don’t trust Mami at all. After that one really ominous panel of her glaring at Touma I’m CONVINCED she’s gonna start some drama soon. Though for now it seems like she’s mostly there to make Futaba feel insecure and unworthy of Touma, which also kinda sucks to watch unfold. I keep being caught between being like ‘you can do it, Futaba! I believe in you!’ and ‘please just cut your losses before you realize that your feelings were doomed from the start ;___;’. It’s kinda agonizing.

When Taichi said that he’d give Touma the refreshments in Futaba’s place, I was kinda expecting some kinda misunderstanding to happen, so I’m pretty glad it went more naturally than that.

Touma must have felt really nervous being interviewed on TV. I probably wouldn’t have been able to do that, even if it was only for a little while. It was kinda cute seeing Taichi act like a reporter. I guess it shows how comfortable they both are around each other.

I probably should have guessed that Touma wants to get to Koushien. Since that’s, like, THE goal that sports people in Japan tend to have. Although this reminds me of the stuff bought up in the story earlier, about how Touma’s choice not to go to uni seems weird if he’s so intent on getting a professional sports career. And the fact that he went to a high school with a bad sports team. I think I said it before, but I think that part of it’s probably to do with Touma making a compromise to stay close to Taichi, but that can’t be the whole of it. I’m not entirely sure what the reason could be beyond that, unless Touma secretly doubts his chances of getting a pro career and is basically setting himself up to fail out of pessimism.

Seeing Taichi say that he won’t laugh at Touma’s dream because it’s what he’s wanted since he was a kid was really heart-warming. Although it kinda threw me off to see that one panel where his hair was drawn way more realistically than it usually is. It’s just weird seeing his hair drawn with so many highlights, when usually it’s just completely inked in. It made him kinda look like Masumi. But it looked nice. Just sorta jarring. I think it was probably meant to visually signify a shift in atmosphere, so to say. Like we’re seeing him drawn more realistically when he says something serious that kinda threw Touma off-balance. I dunno how to explain it.

I don’t entirely know what to make of Touma’s smile afterward but I know that it feels really bittersweet for reasons I can’t articulate. It feels sorta . . . wistful, I guess, which makes me think that Touma might be hiding something that makes Taichi’s statement not entirely accurate. Or maybe he was just genuinely happy to get some emotional support from Taichi. It’s kinda hard not to read into anything Touma does, lol.

It’s still kinda surprising how many people in their school seem to know Taichi by name. Maybe it’s just me not being used to how close people can be in school.

I felt really happy seeing Taichi be like ‘well, it might be tough, but Touma can do it c:’ but then the next page came around like ‘or so I thought’ and I immediately wanted to shout at my computer screen. The whiplash was real with that one. It’s like a bucket of cold water splashed in your face to prep you for how fucking miserable and heart-wrenching the rest of the chapter will be. I knew immediately that it’d suck, but HOLY SHIT I WAS NOT PREPARED.

And then of course right after that little stinger we got a few happy pages of Touma winning his next match. Which was also nice to see. It kinda feels like we’ve been speeding through these matches, but I have no idea how they’re spaced out. And obviously this isn’t literally meant to be a sports manga so it makes sense that the narrative focus is on everything surrounding the matches.

Lemme just say that I was NOT at all expecting the cat thing to immediately come up again, at least in this way. That kinda made my heart skip a beat. I guess it makes sense to get this moment to follow up on the previous conversation about how Taichi would probably save the cat if he had another chance, but I didn’t expect it so soon.

It’s kinda interesting that Masumi was the first one to look around and try and get Taichi to stop. I guess on some level it goes to show that their conversation really helped them to bond. And yeah, seeing someone usually stoic like her start freaking out and shouting really drove in how serious things suddenly got.

I may or may not have screamed a little at the panel of Taichi standing right in front of the car. Just putting that one out there.

I honestly nearly teared up during Taichi’s flashback to his mother comforting him after the cat thing. Seeing little Taichi crying like that just kinda tore my heart apart. And damn, that goddamn dramatic irony with the ‘I’m glad you didn’t jump out and get injured’ line.

And then we get Taichi waking up on the side of the road, and you get that awful moment of not knowing what happened.

Seeing the other characters in the background being visibly traumatized and upset over what they’re looking at, before we get to see it, really hurt. And it also made it immediately clear that Touma was the one who saved him and got hit.

For some reason, having the chapter just end with Taichi seeing Touma’s schoolbag on the ground made it hurt even more.

I’d also like to remind everyone that this is the end of volume two so, uh, this sure is a goddamn cliffhanger!!! It’s interesting that the final panel actually says that, though. Since the scanlation team seems to be using the regular chapter raws for the series now, does that mean that that sort of message is there even in the magazine? I kinda thought they just edited those ‘end of volume ___’ messages into the physical volume releases. Huh.

I should probably say that I was already spoiled in advance that Touma got injured, but I didn’t know it happened so soon. It still completely surprised me. I guess it’s at least nice to know that he’s just injured, and not dead, since that’s technically up in the air as of this chapter. Oh boy.

I was gonna say before this chapter that it’s interesting how much focus is put on sports, and how it kinda makes sense since Kaito did a few sports series before this one. I was wondering how big of a thing it’d be in the long run, but this chapter kinda . . . puts an abrupt halt on that. I assume that Touma is pretty much out of commission sports-wise, at least for a while. I wonder if this will be severe/long-lasting enough to completely destroy his chances at having a pro career, or if it’ll just temporarily delay things. But even if his injuries might not take long to heal, hypothetically, the main issue is that we seem to be right in the middle of a sporting season, so he probably won’t be able to participate in any of the upcoming matches for it, and considering that this is his last year of school, this was probably going to be the season that decides how his career goes. Hopefully he’d be able to work his way back up and have another chance later on, but I don’t know how that works. It feels like it’d take a long time, though, and probably involve him having to sign up with an entirely different team, since he’s just in a high-school sports team now and is going to graduate soon.

It’s just so tragic that it was Touma saving Taichi that’s potentially gonna destroy his sporting career. Being forced to basically give up one to save the other just . . . sucks. It reminds me of the whole monologue Taichi’s had a few times about if he were faced with the choice of saving either his lover or his best friend.

I wonder how things are going to go from here. This is a pretty severe development that’s going to completely change the game from here on out. I have a feeling this is going to lead to Taichi blaming himself for Touma’s injuries, and him getting blamed by basically everyone else in the school aside from Futaba and Masumi. So that’s gonna be depressing when that inevitably happens. I hope this doesn’t create a rift between Taichi and Touma. But it’d make sense if this makes things super awkward between them, to put it lightly. I don’t think that either of them would necessarily blame the other person, but still.

This is also just making me hope even more that Touma can get a happy ending. Now that it’s clear that he might not even be able to have a successful sporting career now, at least for a while. It’d be pretty miserable if he’s just sad and alone by the end of the story. I knew that any ending short of him ending up with Taichi would have some degree of bittersweetness to it, but that was at least with the assumption that one way or another he’d have a successful and fulfilling career. If he can’t have THAT, then it’s just gonna be depressing as fuck if he can’t even be with Taichi in the end either. I guess for now I’ll just see where the story goes.

Now I’m back to wondering just how long this manga’s going to be in the end, since this definitely feels like something that would at least mark the halfway point of a story, if not the start of the final arc. But we’re only two volumes in right now. We’re obviously getting at least one more volume, and from what I’ve heard I doubt that it’ll be the last one, so I’m expecting that we’ll at least get four volumes in total, if not more. At this rate I’d be slightly surprised if we get more than five or six volumes in the end. We’ll see.

And in terms of narrative structure, this is also reminding me that it still feels like the other shoe is going to have to eventually drop, in terms of Touma’s sexuality [and Masumi’s, but mostly Touma’s]. A good amount of the story is to do with Touma’s feelings for other people, and other people’s feelings for Touma, and it feels like we’re being set up for some sort of a moment where Taichi and Futaba find out that he’s gay, and it shakes up their dynamics with him. Futaba’s whole crush on him in particular is clearly being set up for failure. It’d be kinda weird if she goes the entire story without ever realizing that her feelings weren’t ever going to be returned. I guess my point here is that, this whole injury thing is it’s own huge plot twist/development that’s going to shake things up for a while, so it makes me wonder when we’ll get the other inevitable ‘twist’. I imagine we’ll probably work through the whole aftermath of this before that comes up. But I definitely think it’ll be bought to the forefront again eventually. With how things are going though, it feels like it might be a pretty late-game thing. Which I guess makes sense.

I’m just gonna wait and see how things go, but yeah if things keep going in this direction it’s gonna feel REALLY depressing if Touma just ends up sad and alone. I just want him to be happy ;___;

Also, in terms of predicting where things might go from here, I just realized that this is probably going to cause Mami in particular to absolutely hate Taichi. I was wondering what her deal is gonna be, but it makes total sense that with how much she’s obviously crushing on him, she’s going to get all hostile with Taichi since he indirectly caused Touma to get hurt. That’s gonna be painful to watch.

I’ve also been thinking recently, if this does end at around five volumes or so in length, it’d be really cool if we could get an anime adaptation that fits it all into twelve or so episodes. It’d probably work out nicely, in terms of pacing. I’m not gonna get my hopes up or anything, though. I feel like manga in digital publications like this tend to not get anime adaptations as often as manga in print publications. We’ll see.

Reading this chapter also reminded me that my copy of v2 is probably going to get here in a week or two, so I guess I’ll be able to experience this chapter all over again when that arrives.

[penmanshipandquill]

Roses are Red

“You made flowers grow and fill the space in my lungs, which made it impossible for me to breathe.” - Denice Envall

.

.

.

What’s the saying? Raisa thinks bitterly as she crouches over the toilet, Better to have loved and lost than never loved at all?

Another wave of intense coughing wracks her body-- she hears the seeds rattling around in her lungs, she feels the tickle at the back of her throat. She clutches the toilet bowl like a lifeline.

What a lie that is.

She retches and retches, each movement sending a flare of pain throughout her chest, until finally, finally the blooms reach her mouth and she can reach in and pull. It’s agonizing. She tries not to scream as she grabs the roses and yanks, thorns scraping the inside of her trachea raw as the vines that are invading her lungs are pulled free.

Eventually she gets all of the plant out-- there were two, this time. Two red blooms stare up at Raisa from inside the toilet; she can’t tell what’s rose petal and what's her own blood.

She feels vaguely sick, a funny, hollow sort of feeling in the pit of her stomach. All of this was futile, she knows that-- tomorrow the vines will be back and she will do this again. Eventually there will be more, too many for her to manage, and the thorns will puncture her lungs and she will die.

Raisa loves and has loved, with her entire heart, and has lost in the worst way possible.

--

Raisa Sullivan is dying, and it’s all Emrys Bergara’s fault.

Well, technically-- it’s Raisa’s fault. She was the one who, foolishly, stupidly, had to go fall in love with her closest friend. She hadn’t even gotten to enjoy the crush like a normal person, before it all began; the realization of her love and the flowers that were killing her came back to back.

She remembers the day in vivid technicolor. She’d had the worst cough for about two weeks, and an impending sense of doom had followed him like the plague, and then the realization came. It was after she had spent the day with Emerys and a couple of their other friends-- and then they’d ended up alone at the end of the day, having a long discussion about existentialism and the universe under the stars. Raisa remembers how she had caught herself staring, and had ducked her head in embarrassment. Sitting in Emrys’s car, listening to him talk of philosophy and the meaning of life, blush had colored Raisa’s cheeks as she realized she was in love with him.

So when she was throwing up rose blooms that night after she had arrived home, she knew who they were for.

She remembered that first time, when she collapsed on the floor of her bathroom, coughing and gasping for air because she couldn’t breathe. She’d ripped out the plant too fast and the thorns snagged in her throat, taking with it bits of gore as it left her body.

Raisa isn’t sure she would have been more scared if she hadn’t realized what was going on. She was extremely horrified, despite the fact that she knew what the bloody flower on her bathroom floor meant.

Most people have heard of what they called ‘Anthophile's disease’, usually from one of those ‘medical mysteries’ television shows. Most people watched it and learned about it and thought, wow, thank God that’s not me, before tucking the information away and eventually forgetting it.

A disease borne of unrequited love-- it almost sounds romantic, but Raisa failed to see the romance in how flowers invaded the victim's body, killing them slowly, until finally the plants puncture an organ or something equally important, and the victim dies.

She had been so scared, at first. She wasn’t ready to die, there was so much she still wanted to do-- she’d cried and she’d cried those first few days, missing work because she couldn’t force herself to get out of bed.

Emrys had texted her, of course, asking if she was alright. It made her want to scream, because Emrys’s kindness, Emrys’s friendship, Emrys was killing her and he was completely oblivious.

And despite this-- she still found herself completely, helplessly in love with him.

A year later and that fact hasn’t changed. Raisa doesn't think anything in the entire universe could change that fact-- sometimes she thinks that maybe she’ll stop loving Emrys, but then he’ll smile or laugh and Raisa will have to excuse herself to go heave up flower petals in the other room.

Raisa can feel the end approaching, now, knows she only has another year if she’s lucky. And it still scares her, but the panic attacks and random sobbing fits that would overtake her in those first six months were gone, for the most part.

Sometimes he wonders if Emrys will miss her, but has to stop herself before that train of thought gets very far. All it does is make her upset.

--

Raisa is over at her friend Sara’s house after work, surrounding a box of pizza with her friends as they talk and joke about inane, trivial things. It’s nice, being with all of them again, Daysha, Jen, Maycie-- and of course, Emrys is there as well. If Raisa closes her eyes, she can almost pretend that it’s two years ago, they’re still in high school and she wasn’t in love with Emrys.

Then she opens them again and meets Emrys’s dark eyes, launching her back into the terrible present. She feels it start-- today had been going so well, she’d barely had any problems-- with the pressure building in her chest. The seeds that rattle around in her lungs have gone quiet, but she knows that isn’t a good thing.

Raisa doesn’t look at their faces as she stumbles up from her seat and runs to the bathroom--until she passes Sara, and sees the look of concern on hers. She hates to think that if she knew that look would be pity instead.

But she doesn’t think about that then. She can barely think about anything at all because she can’t breathe, everything feels like it's on fire as her lungs scream at the lack of oxygen, and she’s coughing and coughing but all that comes up are petals and blood. She wants to claw at her own throat, knowing the blooms are right there, and she could breathe if she could only get them out.

After what feels like forever, her hacking dislodges the flowers and she can rip them out. Raisa doesn’t get up, even as she sucks in the precious oxygen; she’s not totally sure her legs would work.

“Raisa?” Sara’s familiar voice is muffled slightly by the door, and despite the sudden anxiety she has over Sara finding out, she can’t force himself to get up off of the floor. The door creaks open and Raisa knows the moment Sara sees everything, the blood, the flowers, everything.

“Oh my God,” Sara mumbles, still with shock and horror, “Raisa, I-- what--”

“It’s called Anthophile's disease,” Her voice is hoarse and miserable, and she stands shakily, “But it’s-- I’m--” The words I’m fine lodge in her throat and she can’t get them out, and before she knows it tears are welling up in her eyes and Sara is pulling her into a tight hug as she sobs.

They stand there like that, in the Sara’s guest bathroom, Raisa crying and crying because there’s so much she wants to say, so much she wants to tell Sara but she can’t find the words.

Finally she quiets-- Raisa knows she must look awful, eyes red-rimmed and mouth covered in blood. Sara looks up at her with that damned pity in her eyes and it makes Raisa want to throw up all over again.

“Are you dying?” She asks, and Raisa can’t do anything but nod, the lump in her throat blocking any attempt at speech. She sees the tears in Sara’s eyes and it just adds to the feeling of sickness that seems to be spreading throughout her entire body.

She moves away before Sara starts crying, going to clean up in the bathroom mirror. Her reflection stares back at her with red eyes and bags so dark they almost look like bruises. Red blood is caked on her chapped lips.

She coughs again, a horrible hacking noise that lasts about five seconds and makes her mouth taste like metal, before turning on the faucet and trying to clean up her face, hands shaking all the while. She hears Sara sniffle behind her, and her heart aches.

Raisa knows that when she finally dies, it will kill the people around her. All her friends, all of her family, will have to stare at her cold and lifeless body-- it makes her want to start sobbing again. They don’t deserve this. Sara doesn’t deserve it; Daysha, Jen, her mom and dad--everyone she loves, none of them deserve it.

Emrys doesn’t deserve it.

She feels sick again, and leaves the bathroom before Sara can ask her more questions. Her other friends are gathered outside of the door, looking at her with worried expressions. Emrys’s eyebrows are furrowed and Raisa catches the concerned look on his face.

They don’t know she’s sick. Raisa’ll have to tell them one day, but right now she is shaken and in pain and she doesn’t want to see the pitying, sympathetic looks on their faces as she explains that she’s dying.

She doesn’t want to tell Emrys, specifically. Knows she’ll get the inevitable question of Who? Raisa doesn’t want to tell anyone who’s the cause of the vines that are slowly choking the life from her-- it’s humiliating, and she would never want Emrys to blame himself for her inevitable death.

She pushes past her friends, pointedly not looking at anyone, and goes back into the kitchen, gathering her belongings and then promptly leaving. She doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now, and the ever-present pain in her chest is flaring up again; all she really wants to do is curl up in her bed and be alone.

Raisa hears Emrys calling her name as she’s pulling out of the driveway. She ignores him.

--

Sara becomes the most informed person on Anthophile's Raisa knows in the month after she learns about it. She knows Sara must spend hours upon hours reading about it online, in medical journals, looking for something, anything.

There is nothing, and she tries several times to tell Sara that. She tells Sara that her search is a lost cause-- Raisa has been looking for months, and has accepted the fact that there is no cure to what’s killing her. She wants to grab Sara by her shoulders and tell her to give it up, that what she’s looking for doesn’t exist and she’s only getting her hopes up.

At first, Sara had tried to keep Raisa updated on her search, would tell her new information when she had found it-- but all it did was make Riasa sad and irritable, and every so often she would lose her patience and snap at Sara, telling her to let it go already. That her search is futile.

Sara stopped updating her, after a while.

Raisa knows that Sara’s still searching, despite everything she’s tried telling her. One day Sara calls her while she’s on her lunch break, voice overjoyed. Sara won’t tell Raisa what she’s excited about, only that she needs to come over immediately.

When Raisa pulls up at Sara’s home, Sara drags her inside, the bright and joyful look on her face that’s been missing the past two months returned in full force. Sara sits Raisa down at the kitchen table, looking as if she can barely contain her glee.

“There’s a cure,” Her smile is wide and her tone is so hopeful-- Raisa narrows her eyes in suspicion, but motions for Sara to continue, “There’s this doctor in Spain who’s figured out how to remove the flowers from the lungs of people with Anthophile's-- it’s all really experimental stuff, but it’s worked on every single patient so far. Raisa, Raisa you can live--”

“Stop,” Raisa’s voice is shaking, her hands are shaking. She’s far too jaded for this, she knows good and damn well that this is too good to be true, “There has to be some kind of catch.”

Sara’s smile falters.

“There’s a… small catch, I guess, but it’s worth it, I promise,” She sounds slightly desperate now, her voice still cheerful but it sounding a little more forced, “When they remove the flowers, your romantic feelings towards whoever caused them in the first place will disappear. They’ll just be gone, and… there’s a seventy-five percent chance that all your memories of the person will disappear, too.”

There are a few beats of silence.

“Absolutely not,” Raisa says, voice firm-- she’s thinking of Emrys, of his lovely voice and warm brown eyes, of his inquisitive nature, of their childhood adventures and high school antics, “Never in a million years.”

“Raisa, please,” Sara’s voice is wavering and she grasps Raisa’s hand tight, “You don’t understand what you’re saying, you can’t-- I can’t lose you.”

I can’t lose Emrys, she wants to say. But she can’t. Sara doesn’t know.

“Stop,” She tells Sara, voice cracking; she feels tears threatening to spill, “Stop, Sara. I’m not doing the surgery. Not with a price like that. Don’t-- don’t try and convince me. Please.”

Sara looks like she wants to say more, but Raisa abruptly stands up and goes for the door.  Her head is spinning, and a familiar pressure is building up in her chest. Sara doesn’t rise from the kitchen table to stop her from leaving.

Some part of Raisa knows that she should go through with the surgery, for her loved ones’ sake, but… but she is a selfish woman. She wants-- no, needs to cling to the love, to the person that’s killing her for as long as she can.

--

Raisa tells Emrys she’s dying on a rainy Wednesday afternoon.

It started when he had invited her over to his apartment for lunch; they had been laughing about some stupid joke when Raisa’s ever-present cough came back with a vengeance. She hacked and choked until it started coming up red and she couldn’t breathe again. Emrys watched in horror as Raisa bent over a trashcan and tore two bright red, fully grown roses out of her throat.

There’s no way to hide it, after that.

At first, Raisa doesn’t offer any explanation, and Emrys doesn’t ask; she just goes and curls up on his couch and tries to ignore the pain all over her body. Abruptly, he leaves to go into his kitchen, leaving Raisa alone in the living room with only her thoughts and her pain. Every part of her body hurts, and she almost tells Emrys to drive her home when she hears him come back into the living room.

But the scared, confused look on Emrys’s face is enough to stop her. He’s holding two mugs of tea and Raisa’s heart pangs because of course he is-- he’s always so thoughtful and wonderful and Raisa suddenly wants to start crying.

She doesn’t; she sits up, takes the mug and doesn’t shift away as Emrys settles down beside her. There’s a couple minutes of somber silence, the only sound Raisa sipping at her tea, before Emrys speaks up.

“Please tell me what’s going on,” he says, voice quiet.

Raisa wants to say I will be dead within the next year. She wants to say the flowers in my lungs are there because of you. She wants to say I’m in love with you and it’s killing me.

“I’m sick,” She says instead, words barely above a whisper, “It’s… terminal. Incurable.”

There’s a hitch in Emrys’s breathing but Raisa can’t look at him, she knows that if she looks over Emrys will be giving her those soft, sad eyes and Raisa figures she would break down on the spot if she saw them.

“Raisa…” Emrys is touching her arm and his voice is gentle, but Raisa can hear the tremors in it. Raisa’s skin is on fire where Emrys is touching her, but she knows Emrys has no idea. He’s so completely naive about what he does to her.

The lump in Raisa’s throat makes it difficult for her to speak, so instead of replying she just shakes her head. She doesn’t want to talk about it anymore right now. Emrys, thankfully, seems to understand and doesn’t press; he just moves closer to Raisa so that he can hug her.

Raisa leans into the touch, heart catching in her throat when she hears Emrys start to cry. They don’t say much after that.

--

Emrys spends the most time with Raisa, more than even Sara. Raisa tries not to get her hopes up with fantasies of Emrys suddenly confessing his love, the flowers disintegrating as Raisa’s love becomes requited. She knows it’s not going to happen, but that doesn’t stop her brain from hoping.

She can feel the end fast approaching, and she tries not to let the fear overtake her. Tries not to think about how she’s weak almost all the time, how every time she manages to get one flower out another appears. How she’s going to die, and it’s going to be soon.

It’s not all bad, though. One day, Emrys surprises her by showing up at her work when she was getting off and telling her they were going to get dinner together, and going to the local fair afterwards. Raisa has no say in the matter, and she lets Emrys drag her to some fifties diner downtown.

It feels so easy to forget about everything when she’s sitting with the man she loves, laughing and eating greasy food with him. Despite Raisa knowing it’s not a date, it feels like a date, and for a moment Raisa lets herself pretend that she’s not sick and Emrys loves her back. Emrys even insists on paying the check, despite her protest.

She wants to grab Emrys’s hand as they leave the restaurant, interlock their fingers together-- she doesn’t, of course, but that doesn’t stop the aching desire within her.

They go to the fair nearby and it’s the most lighthearted Raisa has felt in two years. She doesn’t cough once the entire time.

They ride the old, rickety rides that feel like they’re going to fall apart at any moment, they play arcade games (Emrys wins Raisa a stuffed bear), she eats her weight in funnel cake. It’s fun, amazing and it’s everything Raisa has ever wanted.

They get onto the ferris wheel, and as it turns, Raisa’s terrible brain is quick to point out how romantic it would be if they were dating. We aren’t, she reminds herself, averting her eyes as Emrys smiles at her, we never will be.

Far too soon they leave, and the car ride back to Raisa’s apartment is solemn. As the giddiness of their evening fades, she feels the sobering reality settle back down upon them like a weight. Neither of them know what to say, so they just allow suffocating silence to fill the car.

Raisa doesn't get out immediately when Emrys stops the car in front of her apartment complex. She’s at a loss for words; what is she supposed to say? Thank you for the nice time tonight, but I’m still dying? And then suddenly--

Suddenly she’s crying and she can’t stop, sobs wracking her body and tears streaming down her face. Emrys holds her hand and whispers pleasant things that aren’t true and don’t mean anything--  You’re okay, it’s all going to be okay. It only makes Raisa cry harder.

She doesn’t want to leave this, doesn’t want to leave Emrys or anyone else behind. She’s so scared to be without them, to be alone. To die.

Slowly, she gathers herself. Regains her composure and wipes her face with her sleeve. Emrys pulls her into a hug and Raisa thinks that his face might be a little wet, too.

Emrys asks if Raisa wants him to stay over. Raisa tells him no, she’s fine for the night. She gets out of the car and tells Emrys goodnight and thank you, and then he’s gone.

Raisa makes no move to go inside, and instead stands alone, watching the car go. After Emrys is out of sight entirely, Raisa takes a deep breath and disappears into the apartment complex.

--

Raisa Sullivan dies the next Friday morning.

911 was called by a neighbor after she collapsed on the floor of the hallway coughing up blood and rose petals; her heart stopped in the ambulance.

She is buried a week from that day, in an ornate coffin, underneath a cherry tree. She is in a burgundy dress, a couple of red roses tucked lovingly into the breast pocket.

Emrys cries when he hears the news, he cries every single day before the funeral, and he cries and cries and cries during the service and the burial. Seeing Raisa’s dead body, knowing Raisa would hate the dress and the roses, breaks something inside of him.

And when he coughs up violet petals that night, he knows exactly who they’re for.