#this whole orchard is tied into its life force

[bunibelles]

I love u apples 🍎🫶🏼

Wip in progress

[bokettochild]

Cider and Coca Part 2

Part 1

Who wants to see Ravio get his home back? Show of hands? 

 When the portal appears in his room of the castle, swirling and golden, Ravio stares at it in awe.  

 It’s beautiful and feels like Mr. Hero’s power, like that of Miss Princess Zelda, and he’s drawn to it. What lies beyond, he doesn’t know, but he does know that it feels safe, and despite being an utter and complete coward (no matter how much Mr. Hero has told him he’s not) he isn’t scared of it.

 When Hilda comes in for their regular evening talk, draping in her regal bed robes and holding a mug that’s far too fancy to be at home with the cider he’s tried time and again to replicate, his princess panics, voice raising with fury that the deal she’d made with Hyrule’s princess has been broken.

 “But no one has come through it.” Ravio murmurs softly, trying his best to appease her.

 The princess glares at it but her mouth snaps shut as her mug hits the floor. It’s golden, so it doesn’t shatter. Ravio almost wishes that it would. “We’ll investigate it tomorrow.” She says at last, face pinched and brows furrowed as she wheels about on her heel. “For now, you can stay in one of the guest rooms.”

 And Ravio nods, but once he’s been left alone in another room he immediately creeps back into his room, staring at the portal as he sips slowly on the not-quite-right cider. It’s not salty at least, but it’s missing that wild taste that made drinking it an adventure.

 The portal is enticing, and even though he knows Hilda doesn’t want him or anyone else to go through, his heart yearns for a cluttered little cottage on the edge of an orchard, bees humming as they do their work and the songs of lands far away rolling over the fields that stretch out and away from it, carried over the breeze in the dulcet tones of a pink haired hylian who’s fingers work at light smithy work and embroidery.

 He can’t go, he reminds himself as he stuffs his scarves into his bottomless sack.  

 Hilda will be mad; he whispers as robes and shoes and any number of items follow after.  

 He can’t leave, even if he’s no longer needed as an advisor now that Hilda has found better and more bold people to aid her, his mind reminds him as he ties the bag shut, slipping his hooded robe back on a with a sigh.

 “Hilda’s going to be so mad.” He murmurs as his foot crossed over to whatever lies beyond.

 He finds himself in a different place entirely, a great giant castle full of people and warriors and knights, and just outside there is fighting and shouts and cries of fear.

 It’s little to no time before he’s swept up in the battle when what he assumes are enemy forces break through the gates, and for all that he’s a coward and a merchant, he’s learned a few things from Mr. Hero, and he does what he can to protect both himself and the other people in the castle. And when the dust clears and there are three Mr. Hero’s, although none of them his, he learns the truth of the portals and the war happening around him.

 It’s hard to not be pulled along into the fighting and non-sense that is war, and injuries and illness plague them on the daily. There is little comfort in the army camps, and on the cold night all that can be done is bundle deeper into his robes and share a few of his extra scarves when the younger ones become chilled.

 Mr. Captain Hero Sir, the tallest of the three heroes, will settle with him beside the fire many a night, a child pressed to either of his sides as Tune and Captain Hero Sir Jr. Either doze or stare into the flames. Neither child is innocent to war, and neither rest easy in the long nights that follow a battle, their hands resting on their blades and their eyes sharp and open against traitors.

 There people are cold. They are made harsh and wary and thin by battles after battle, and they meet the world with wariness that Ravio wishes he could wash away with the same ease as his cocoa had offered Mr. Hero.

 It’s that thought that sets him off one night, watching the soaked and trembling youngsters' bundle together under warm scarves and the single blanket they’ve been able to find, Mr. Captain Hero Sir lending his own heat to the pile as he holds both of the younger heroes. It’s like watching Mr. Hero come in from the rain all over again, and he wishes that the trio could have the comforts that he’d been able to offer or help Mr. Hero to gather on the rare trip he made home.

 And then it strikes him that he does have some of them.

 He’s puttering about the fire in a practiced yet clumsy manner, the eyes of the trio of heroes following his motions as he juices the apples and spiced the juice, boiling it over their campfire and handing it out in mugs.

 It’s too bitter. He realizes mournfully as he sips his own, but the three all release sighs of delight as they drink, and only thanks can be heard as they smile up at him.

 Ravio only wishes they could taste Mr. Hero’s cider; they would be over the moon.

 The war ends and he is sent back to his own world. His own Hyrule. He does not bother to correct Lana when she calls it that, there is no point in telling her to send him back to his homeland when there is nothing that waits there except for a bitter and still recovering sister who struggles to speak with him in any manner but that of a princess to her aid. So, he lets the Time Guardian make her mistake, and when she opens another portal, he sees that she smiles, almost knowing, as he waves back at her and steps through.

 The portal swirls and tosses him about, nothing like the pathways between Lorule and Hyrule, and Ravio is left lying on the ground when it spits him out, stomach churning as he looks up hazily at apple blossoms and bees that buzz soothingly as they go about their work.

 A smile pulls at his face as his body settles, and he’s pulling himself up ad looking around with growing delight as he takes in the familiar cottage and orchard, eyes feasting on the sight.

 It must be a Thursday, he tells himself as he looks around. It’s noon and Mr. Hero isn’t puttering about the hives in the back like he does on Mondays, and he’s not working the orchard like he does on Tuesdays, and the washing isn’t hung out to dry like it is on Wednesdays. There’s no fire roaring from the mini-forge round the back like there is on Fridays and Saturdays, and while it could very well be Sunday with how still it is, there isn’t a mug and stool by the front door.

 He’d asked once why Mr. Hero liked watching the sunrise every Sunday morning, but his friend had only said it was something even he didn’t have the answer to, only that he’d been doing it since childhood and had no wish to stop now. The mug of weak tea he’d sip as he sat would always be forgotten for some reason or another, and it isn’t there now, at mid-day, when Mr. Hero would be too busy to retrieve it.

 So, it’s Thursday, when Mr. Hero cleans his items.

 Only, when he taps nervously at the door, there’s no response, and when he peeks in at the single window that hasn’t been left shuttered up, there is no sign of life, only a faint coating of dust across the kitchen table.

 Ravio's brow furrows. That won’t do at all! Mr. Hero not using the table? Has he reverted to eating outside alone? Or not at all? Heavens! His friend is thin enough as is! He doesn’t need Mr. Hero fading away entirely!

 Worry gnaws as his heart as he searches his pockets for the spare key. He’d only realized after they parted that he’d never returned the thing, and in the months since, he’d found comfort in having another little piece of home. After all, Mr. Hero made the key himself! Something that most people can’t replicate and therefore they can never sneak into his house. The item in question is at the bottom of his pocket, and he only finds it with the help of its faded pink ribbon, the silky fabric catching on his roughened fingers as he digs about.

 It clicks into the door stiffly, as it always has, and Ravio has to bite back a sigh as he realizes that Mr. Hero never did get around to fixing that blasted lock and stopping it from sticking every time.

 When the door opens, it does so with a creak that makes Ravio wince, and dust flies up around him and makes him cough and wheeze for a good minute before he can enter. When he does step through the door though, his eyes widen in horror.

 It’s empty. There’s no sign of life; everything is covered with dust and Mr. Hero’s blasted rocker is still shoved in the corner where he’s last put it. Ravio’s brow furrows. Mr. Hero always used that bloody chair when he cleaned his items, a smirk on his face as he’d stared pointedly at Ravio, rocking the thing in its creaking manner as his oil-cloth would slide over weapons and items, a faint chuckle in his voice when Ravio finally breaks and insults it. He hates the thing, but as he walks further into the room, he finds himself brushing his fingers over its dusty arms with a sad little smile on his face.

 The house is empty. Mr. Hero has gone somewhere, possibly yet another adventure, and the house is stale and cold and smells of nothing but dust.

 This won’t do, not at all.  

 He’s bustling about with Sheerow in minutes, dusting surfaces and organizing items. It takes three whole days of fussing; washing the curtains and sheets and tablecloths and hanging them out to dry, dusting off the items on the shelves and lighting the candles around that awful monster mask, turning the mattresses in the bedrooms and cleaning the kitchen from top to bottom.

 The whole while, he keeps a pot of cider on, trying his hardest to bring back the smell of home.

 By the time he finishes cleaning the house and setting it back to rights, he’s been visited four times by villagers who think that a robbers broken into the house. Each one explains that Mr. Hero has gone away again, just as he expected, but they also welcome Ravio back with bright smiles and even brighter rupees as they wager and haggle to buy some items they’d been hoping to acquire before he’d left.

 Before he knows it, he’s got folks coming up to see him regularly, and just like before he’s got his shop all set up in the main room, his poor imitation of cider brewing over the fire and filling the house with a smell that isn’t dust and dirt.

 The villagers offer advice on how to better make the cider, how to try and replicate Mr. Hero’s special brew, but none of them appear to know it any better than he does, and the longer he tries the less the house smells like home.

 And then, one day, he’s busy tidying the shed, one of the places he’d failed to get in his initial cleaning, when the door busts open and Ravio finds himself darting into a corner to hide as several armed men dressed like knights enter. He’s delighted when he sees Mr. Hero among them, even more delighted to see familiar and not so familiar faces of the family that his friend has brought back with him, and his first order of business (after trying to sell them something) is to invite them up to the house for some cider. The heroes agree, following after and watching as he putters about in a nervous imitation of the easy dance Mr. Hero preforms when he’s working in his kitchen. The cider smells sweet, but wrong as he nervously pours it out into mugs and distributes it, and he has to fight back a wince as Mr. Hero’s face stiffens at the first sip.

 “This is good!” Mr. Captain Hero Sir states, sipping at the cider happily, face nostalgic as he looks into his mug. “Just like I remember.” And the others all nod in kind, murmuring thanks and compliments as they drink, but Mr. Hero is still frowning down into his drink and it makes Ravio’s hard patter lightly in shame.

 “I know it’s not as good as yours.” Ravio mumbles softly. “I did try, but there’s just-”

 “Cloves.” Mr. Hero looks up, brows furrowed. “Did you use cloves?”

 And Ravio’s words stutter to a stop, mind winding back to the jar of little black particles that Mr. Hero given him. The ones he had looked at later when he’d unpacked his bags and thought they were seeds from a trade that must have occurred earlier on, one he hadn’t remembered. “Lolia below!” He groans, tugging at the ears of his hood. “I forgot!”

 The smile on Mr. Hero’s face is the faintest hint of one, but it’s the closest he’s had in ages to seeing the real thing and Ravio treasures it, smiling softly to himself as the veteran hero pulls himself up out of his cursed rocking chair and moves towards the kitchen, shaking his head. “I’ll make a new batch.”

 Mr. Captain Hero Sir snorts into his mug, chuckling softly as Ravio’s eyes fall on him and cocking a brow in question. “So sure you want him in the kitchen?”

 Ravio blinks, confused. “Why ever wouldn’t he go in the kitchen, Mr. Captain Hero Sir? It’s his house.”

 And that’s all it takes to have Mr. Hero back in the room, a real grin playing over his surly features as he glances between Mr. Captain Hero Sir and Ravio. “’Mr. Cap-’”

 “Shut it.” Mr. Captain Hero Sir snaps, face flushing, only making Mr. Hero chuckle mischievously as he looks from one to the other.

 “We met in the war.” Ravio explains, motioning to the captain. “When you- when the portals were closed, I stayed home, but then one appeared in my room and-.”

 The smile he’d been so delighted to see fades as Mr. Hero stares at him in horror. “You fought in a war?”

 “Yes. But don’t worry! I mostly just sold items! I only fought when I really had to and it wasn't all that dangerous. You’re the one who said I wasn’t a coward, Mr. Hero, and when I tried to think of you and how you would act, I didn’t feel so very afraid and I was able to help and-”

 “Ravio.” Mr. Hero’s brows furrow in what Ravio knows is a subtle sign of concern. “Don’t worry about it. I just didn’t think Hylia would tug you across time to fight a witch.”

 And he nods; he understands. Mr. Hero doesn’t like people having to fight. He doesn’t like adventures and wars and Ravio can understand why, so he doesn’t press, instead turning to his friend and staring at him with all the hope he can gather glimmering in his eyes. “Regardless, Mr. Hero, would you please make us some cider? I haven’t had yours in forever, and no matter what I try it doesn’t come out right!”

 Mr. Captain Hero Sir snorts. “Legend can’t cook to save his life, why would you want him to make cider? Your’s is terrific, Rav! We don’t need burnt apple juice to spoil it!”

 It’s said in a teasing way, and Mr. Hero’s glare is in no ways serious, but Ravio stares at the rest of the heroes in horror all the same. “Are you saying that Mr. Hero has never cooked for you? He’s never made you cider? Mr. Hero! How could you deprive these poor souls of your brilliant creations!”

 The veteran hero rolls his eyes and darts back into the kitchen, but Ravio isn’t done. “No tarts? No pies? Please tell me you at least shared some of your lovely apples with them Mr. Hero!”

 But Mr. Hero doesn’t answer, he only continues to glide about the kitchen and whip up a batch of cider that just feels and smells so much like home that tears leak down Ravio’s face, and he’s bursting into sobs as a mug is placed in his hands in the familiar dismissing way that Mr. Hero does thing, as if it’s a side though although they both know it isn’t.

 “Ravio, are you-”

 “Ravio! You’re crying!” Tune and Captain Hero Junior both cry out, but Ravio can’t bring himself to care as sweetness and spice rolls over his tongue all familiar and safe.  

 He has been at this house for a month and five days, but it is only when he takes a sip of Mr. Hero’s heavenly cider that he finally feels that he is home.

 The heroes have to leave again after a few days, but Mr. Hero allows him to stay (he pretends he’s doing Ravio a favor but the hug that the merchant received once the others were out of sight that first evening is all he needs to know that Mr. Hero has missed him too). There’s fussing and bustling for all of the morning that they depart, but then Ravio is left alone in his and Mr. Hero’s house, with only Sheerow as a companion.

 That’s alright. As much as he loves the heroes, he loves the quiet as well. It’s never truly silent here, and the hum of the bees and the singing of Mr. Hero’s bird friends mixed with the song of the breeze and the dancing of the trees to fill his head with noises of home and safety and life.

 That doesn’t mean he’s opposed to it when the heroes all come back, time and again.

 The wind is whipping fiercely outside when Mr. Hero and the others stumble in through the door, half-frozen and soaked to the skin and so, so reminiscent of so many nights before when he and Mr. Hero were still getting to know each other.

 Just like those nights, Mr. Hero’s first course of action is to stumble into the basement where there’s more clamor than usual as Ravio guides the heroes to the living room and pulls out warm blankets for them while Mr. Rancher stokes the fire higher.

 Scarfs are wrapped around necks and Ravio delights in handing out fuzzily knit socks for them to wear on their cold and frozen feet. But feet aren’t the only things that are frozen, and the sound of a clatter in the kitchen and a burst of swearing has him darting towards the room, only to see Mr. Hero kneeling in a puddle of apple juice, fingers trembling pitifully as he curses the stairs and the floor and the spilled juice that will no longer be able to become cider.

 Ravio frowns as he pulls his friend up, gently guiding Mr. Hero into the living room and settling him before the fire, even as he protests and insists that he still needs to clean the spill and make something warm.

 “Let me do it. I’ve been sitting all toasty and you’re half frozen!” Ravio coaxes, rubbing icy fingers in his hands carefully and breathing over them in hopes of inciting some warmth. Cold hands are bad as is, but with Mr. Hero’s arthritis they must be downright miserable!

 Mr. Hero scowls, about to protest when Ravio adds. On. “I’ll make hot cocoa.”

 That stops Mr. Hero from saying anything, and the veteran hero only nods sullenly as he settles where Ravio had placed him, blushing lightly as Ravio presses a warm kiss to freezing hands before darting up and towards the kitchen.

 Cider is a dance full of tripping and blustering, but cocoa is practiced and known and comfortable, and as the chocolate melts in a saucepan he busies himself with the puddle on the floor, listening with a warm smile to the idle banter that leaks in from the living room.

 The cocoa is perfectly frothy and sweet when it is done, and Ravio makes extra sure to sprinkle an extra bit of ground chocolate flakes and cinnamon over the cocoa in Mr. Hero’s mug.

 Curious eyes follow him as he trails through the living room with a tray of steaming mugs, and he starts with the youngest heroes and works his way forwards, carefully depositing a slightly bitter one in Tune’s hands and an extra sweet one in those of Captain Hero Sir Jr. If cider was any indication, they’ll like what he’s done for them.

 He doesn’t know enough about the others to do anything special, but their eyes light up all the same at the smell of the stuff, all save for Mr. Rancher, who looks down at the mug sadly before handing it off to his protégé. Ravio is halfway through handing Mr. Captain Hero Sir a mug when he sees the little exchange, hurt filling his eyes at the rejection of his labor. “Do you not like cocoa, Mr. Rancher Sir?”

 There’re snorts of laughter from the others at the name, but Ravio ignores them, green eyes boring into midnight blue as the rancher shifts uncomfortably.

 “We’ve never had cocoa before.” Mr. Champion Hero Sir frowns, looking down at his extra mug and then up to his mentor. “Why don’t you at least try it?”

 “I can’t.” Mr. Rancher murmurs apologetically, offering a weak smile to the merchant and then his protégé. “I’m- uh...allergic.”

 Understanding dawns on him. “I’m so terribly sorry! Would you-”

 “If I may,” Mr. Rancher stands, brushing himself off. “Might ah make some tea? I can do that at least without setting things on fire, so you needn’t fuss ‘bout it.”

 “Of course! Mr. Hero keeps some tea in the corner cabinet I believe.” He answers, and the hero nods thankfully before ducking into the kitchen.

Ravio shakes his head to himself. How unfortunate, but at least Mr. Rancher can have cider, apples don’t hurt wolves after all.

 He’s handed out mugs to the rest of the heroes before he moves to curl up at Mr. Hero’s side. His house-mate huffs lightly as Ravio has to help him hold his mug while his fingers thaw, but once he’s taking small sips, Ravio is bustling about the two of them with pillows to make them comfortable, and making sure that Mr. Hero’s favorite blanket is snug over both of their shoulders before he takes a proper sip himself.

 It’s sweet and rich, and after having so much cider, eh sighs in disappointment. “Still doesn’t beat your cider, Mr. Hero.”

 “I told you I could make some.” His housemate responds with a huff. “But why would you want cider when you can have cocoa?”

 “Why would you want cocoa when you could have cider?” Ravio challenges in return.

 Just like that, the old argument blooms between them as they bundle close together, his scarf around both their necks and the blanket covering their shoulders and trapping the heat of the fire before them. Giggles sound from around them as the heroes listen to them squabble, their lack of malice clear to the others as the age-old argument comes to its close with Mr. Hero scoffing and slurping his drink pointedly.  

 “If you offered cocoa at an event in any other country but Lorule, it would sell like mad, whereas if you offered cider, you’d be left with half a barrel to drink at the end of the day.”

 “The opposite is true in Lorule though.” He responds with a grin, but he lets it end there as Mr. Hero yawns heavily, head drooping to lean ever so slightly on his shoulder. A smile lights his face as he gently takes Mr. Hero’s empty mug, ignoring the coos and chuckles of the others as he pulls the blanket closer around Mr. Hero’s shoulders before running a hand through long pink locks. There’s still ice in Mr. Hero’s hair, but it’s silky soft like rabbit fur all the same.

 There’s no comeback to his argument as Mr. Hero falls asleep on his shoulder, and Ravio wouldn’t have it any other way.

 He turns to the others with a mock glare, brows low and eyes glinting with mischief as Mr. Rancher re-enters the room with a mug of tea, a surprised smile on his face. “Cider is the superior drink, correct?”

 Some grin with mischief and agree, and others roll their eyes with a smile as they sip their drinks, but no one contests his statement, and he feels satisfied that he has, at last, won the argument. It’s almost a shame Mr. Hero didn’t get to see it, but looking at the peaceful face that leans on his shoulder, he supposes he doesn’t mind too very much.

[thecharizardfromhell]

My TotV AU: Changes and things kept

Note- Soneone took down the wiki so I may have to dig through archive sites to find my old CANON sources

What the hell is TotV : Tales of the Valkyr is an original story/fan fiction hybrid with a canon au (Scars) written by Canadian YouTuber Lily Orchard it also has ties to several fictional properties namely Family Guy, MLP:FIM, and WoW.

Why have an AU: I like some of the ideas just not how they were implemented

So if you're at least partially familiar with the source here are my biggest changes

-some characters have been cut from the plot. Namely Elethyn, Mags, Honey Crisp, Ellie, Ascentias's rapist, the cast of mlp, Megsalyn (basically meg from family guy) and Jehovah.

Elethyn-owner wants her to not be tied to the TotV plus I have much darker/more in line with character plans for the Ascentia romance plots. Mags- personal taste honestly I feel like an uwu babu sassy child whose colorful and quirky plot clashes with my themes. Plus I'm not a huge fan of writing this type of character . Honey Crisp-see Mags, Ellie-is it mean to say she's basically a pallette swapped Elethyn with less personality?, Ascentias's Rapist- a plot device that revolves around molestation yeah I'm going dark but I'm not the biggest fan of using that for shock value . The Cast of MLP-there will be unicorns but not these ones I replaced Twilight's being a war bride to Ascentia with a humanoid character however. Megsalyn- because she shouldn't be alone without her creek buddy no actually it's because its such a weird ass plot inclusion that clashes with my vision . Jehovah because that whole plot had super inconsistent holes and was overall a bit like a cringy reddit atheist screed (I say this as an atheist by the way lol )

-characters changes/kept ideas

Valkyr in general-theyre a authoritarian fascist totalitarian government not a monarchy (which they never showed traits of-Lily please fucking research politics ). They like many fascist cultures are obsessed with the idea of purity based on race something I didn't add it's in the original ) but there is a large resistance movement who distrusts Valithra and her ideas and policies . Forced military service is a facet of their society (including to altered prisioners of war), polygamy with war brides/husbands/partners is practiced amongst the "most pure" aka those closest to Valithra but is discouraged among the "commons". Marriage in general is discouraged and outright denied amongst the commons due to Valithra's eugenics mindset. Gay marriage is surprisingly legal but once again more encouraged to the "most pure". Religion is based on the idea of Valithra as a fallen goddess. You can executed on the whims of Valithra and to a lesser degree Ascentia. Most pures have the mysterious ability to regenerate and come back to life (along with bringing others back) Valithra claims it's due to genetic superiority but that seems oddly suspicious doesn't it? (not getting into spoilers), gender identity is only respected amonst the "most pure" sadly . Experimentation on prisoners of war and prisoners is commonplace. They are not Nomads and have several cities nations etc. The Capital of Auralvana (I changed the name) is the head and home of the mysterious ancient Citadel (forbidden to most). Killing and violence is taught in schools . Pro Valithra propaganda is common as Is media suppression. Economy is being worked out (I'll figure that out I swear but it's probably capitalist)

Valithra Ryder-im keeping her iteration as a cis woman to fit her new backstory. I actually brought back the dead wife plot too . I've also made her a bit less openly cruel when manipulating other nations and planets. She's also a bit more calculated instead of all brute to extend her threat level . She now also creates propaganda and has actual opposition amongst her people.

Ascentia-she is still highly treated like a prized baby by her upperclass "most pure" cohorts but fairly feared by the commons for her extremely violent blood lust nature even with violence being normalized . She is extremely beautiful and willingly models and acts for propaganda pieces . Her extreme love of violence was sadly groomed into her from childhood and war became a somewhat religion to her . Despite her brutal nature she's also intelligent and willingly helps Sunatu with her experimentation. She has the most war brides among her social class with a staggering 400. She is abusive towards some . She enjoys living the life of luxury and hates being challenged. She secretly fears the idea of one day being actually hurt by an enemy and thus losing her social status.

Sunatu- no longer Palestinian due to the racist implications of turning her into a demon (especially since she's the only real world POC) so she's just a spooky demon. An "honorary" Valkyr she lives in the squalor zone at the edge of the city but because of her willingness to go hard into the unethical human/humanoid experimentation sciences Valithra gives her a slightly nicer house and guards to kill any squalor dweller planning to off her. Her obsession with these inhumane sciences are what got her exiled from her demon home . Blind due to Valithra ripping her eyes out in rage (a horribly common punishment) but able to be meticulous in her work . Secretly fears Ascentia

Tolrah- defected from Valithra's military and faked her death in order to become a rebellion leader . I stripped her of her numerous bisexual stereotypes and killed the plot point about her neglecting to save Ascentia from her Rapist because of said stereotypes. I also decided that the Hebrew tattoo punishment idea was tasteless as fuck because how the hell did Lily not put two and two together and realize hmm this seems offensive because I reminiscent of the Holocaust . Which despite the Valkyr being race obsessed I won't allude to because actual people died and were tortured . Anyway she's brave intelligent and falls in love with the main character.

Edit: it's Xarlan

Phayaun- toned down her brutal nature. Tolrah's pupil who defects later on after seeing the true extent of Valithra's cruelty .was forced to give up her true love to be a bride for Ascentia (who killed her) so harbors resentment towards Ascentia.

OC shit

Main characters

Xarlan- a Valkyr soldier in training. Starts to question his loyalty towards Valithra after the Earth invasion and witnessing the numerous war crimes

Duskara- took Twilight's role. Former princess of a fairy kingdom sold to Ascentia as a war bride. Seeing her people massacred she formulated a plan to destroy the Valithra regime . Through manipulation and spying she discovers the secret that may even the odds against Valithra.

Eddy-a survivor of the attack on Earth. Eddy and his boyfriend must figure out a way to rally the other survivors and protect what is left and to contact those who were taken

Nightmare/Cait- Former human twisted into the form of a winged unicorn through magical experimentation for one of Ascentia's twisted ideas . When she finds the secret from Duskara she decides to wage war as a new type of monster on the regime

All for now

[lia-jones]

Growing Pains - Chapter Fifteen - Wish Tree

Victor sat me on my bed, carefully, kneeling on the floor and taking my foot in my hands.

“It doesn’t look broken. Does it hurt when I do this?” Victor asked, rotating my ankle.

“I told you my foot is fine. Is this what all of that was about?” I asked coldly, referring to him insisting to carry me.

Victor raised his eyebrows.

“Are you mad? Why do you care what those people think?”

“Shouldn’t I? Aren’t you the one always telling me not to embarrass myself?”

Victor looked down, apparently lost in thought, absentmindedly massaging my foot in his hands. I remembered how he held me in my apartment, when I was falling apart. The anger miraculously vanished.

“The other day, in my apartment…” I started. “I’m sorry I dumped it all on you. It’s a heavy subject.”

Victor looked up to me, a touch of surprise in his eyes.

“You have nothing to apologize for.”

“It’s ok, I know that’s probably why you’ve been keeping your distance. It’s too much. It’s not the first time I had friends avoiding me because they didn’t know how to handle the subject. It’s hard to deal with, I get it. I actually don’t blame you.” I kept my expression and tone sweet and calm. I didn’t want him to feel guilty about it. However, as I looked in his eyes, I could see nothing but guilt.

“That’s… That’s not why.” Victor sighed. “The morning I saw you with Levi… And then when you asked me why I was there in the first place… It made me wonder if I have been forcing myself into your life.”

“Levi?” I frowned. “I told you before, I’m not that close to Levi. I haven’t even seen him since that morning.”

“He doesn’t know?” Victor seemed surprised.

“About my close encounter with Ted? No.”

“You didn’t tell him?”

“I didn’t need another person babying me. I have you already.” I feigned annoyance. Victor smiled.

“Why would you think you were forcing yourself into my life?” I looked him in the eyes. Victor sighed.

“It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“You mean the producer?” Victor’s eyes widened in surprise. “You know how gossip works.” I grimaced inside, wondering if he could track my words back to Goldman. But Victor was oblivious to that at the moment, his eyes low to the ground, a sad look on his face.

“Do you still love her?” I asked. Victor sat by my side on the bed, admiring the view through my window.

“She was an important and painful chapter in my life. And I did love her. I thought I wouldn’t ever love anyone else.” He paused, letting out a deep breath. “As far as I was concerned, she was the one I was going to spend the rest of my life with. It was fate, it was meant to be. No one else could take her place.”

“What went wrong?” I asked, already knowing the answer. But I wanted to hear it from him. See how invested he still was in his past.

“Nothing went wrong, exactly, because we had no relationship to begin with. Every time I would imply something more serious, she would blush or act embarrassed, and somehow I convinced myself it was because she was still very young and naïve. Truth is, it was all in my head. She had no problem dating another man and marrying him. I was the one forcing my way into her life, trying desperately to fit in there.”

“That must’ve been hard.” I felt like resting my head on his shoulders, give him some warmth. Obviously I didn’t.

“Yes. I wanted to be the one that would make her laugh, give her comfort, and it hurt to know that I wasn’t. It’s not that I have low self-esteem, but I know I am not an easy person.”

“Understatement of the year.” I joked, trying to lighten the mood.

“Shut up.” I could see a faint smile trying to creep in. "Anyway, as time went by, I realized something.”

“What was that?”

“That I’m too stubborn for my own benefit. It dawned on me that, even though I did love her, or thought I did, I didn’t like her very much. She was a handful.”

“Well, some girls are high maintenance.” I quipped.

“Saying she was high maintenance would actually be the understatement of the year.” Victor chuckled. “She was extremely clumsy and innocent, always sticking her foot in her mouth, it was a disaster sometimes. And although I called it endearing, I hated it. To be honest, I think I created an image of perfection about her over the years and held on tight to it, but I didn’t stop to evaluate my feelings for her. I wanted so bad to reach the destination that I didn’t even care to see if I was enjoying the trip. And when I realized that, she simply slipped my mind.”

Even though Victor told me he didn’t love her anymore, I couldn’t help but feel jealous for the girl that was such a big chapter in his life.

“You must be tired from the flight. I should let you rest.” Victor cleared his throat, getting up. I felt my chest tighten. I missed him. I didn’t want him to leave.

“At what time should I meet you at the lobby?” I asked.

“Our visit to Mr. Mills orchard is scheduled to 10 am. Have a good rest. I'll see you at 9 am.”

“Victor?” I called, before he walked out the door.

“Yes?”

“For whatever it’s worth, you didn’t force yourself into my life. All the moments you were there, I wanted you there, even if sometimes I didn’t know it at first. And they wouldn’t be the same without you.” I mustered the courage to say.

Victor walked slowly to me. He bent down slightly and reached for my face, gently stroking my cheek.

“I mean it, I’m not saying it because…“ Because you showed me your fragile side, I thought.

“Thank you.” His hand was still on my face, tracing my jawline softly.

He seemed to hesitate for a moment. He tilted my head up and gave me a soft kiss on the forehead.

“Get some rest.” He looked me in the eyes, his expression one I couldn’t figure out. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I watched him walk out the door, my heart thumping hard in my chest.

 I woke up slowly the next morning, the rays of sunshine beautifully bathing my room. Unexpectedly, it was sunny outside. I looked at the clock, it was 8:20. I had overslept for 20 minutes.

I ran to shower and got dressed in record time. As I was leaving my room I was startled by Victor, standing right next to me, doing the exact same thing as I was.

“Where are you coming from?” I asked, surprised.

“Our rooms are adjacent. Didn’t you notice the locked door?”

“Actually, I was wondering what that door was for… Maybe a secret door to Narnia.” I said playfully, as we waited for the elevator.

“Narnia?” Victor frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“The Chronicles of Narnia? The movie?” Victor glared at me. “Ok, never mind.” I gave up.

“No heels today.” He looked down at my flats. “Wise choice.”

“We are visiting an orchard. I didn’t think it was wise. So, where are we getting breakfast?”

“I thought we could benefit from the sudden good weather and have breakfast outdoors. I know a great patisserie nearby. Are you ok to walk? Or do you need me to carry you?” Victor mocked.

“Ugh, don’t remind me.” I said, making Victor chuckle.

After breakfast, we drove to Mr. Mills orchard. The place was idyllic, beautiful trees still bearing the autumn colors in its leaves lining up on the sides of the road, and making infinite rows through the field. Mr. Mills greeted us like we were family, inviting us inside his manor, serving us tea and a fruit platter he made himself. Victor and Mr. Mills had a sort of odd familiarity with each other, like they knew each other for a long time, almost like they were good old friends. To make things even weirder, Mr. Mills addressed Victor as Boss.

“I was so happy when the Boss told me he would be bringing you here. Finally you get to visit my orchard.” Mr. Mills smiled widely at me.

“It’s a pleasure.” I smiled back. “Your orchard is beautiful.”

“Maybe next time the Boss can bring you during Spring or Summer, during harvest season. Sometimes tourists ask us to participate in the harvest, and enjoy our after-work parties.” Mr. Mills explained. “We are between harvests right now, just taking care of the land. We have already finished the last summer harvest, and are waiting for the winter harvest, for citrus fruits. Eating an orange right out from the tree is a whole new experience.”

“If Andrea wants to come, I’m more than happy to bring her.” Victor quipped. I blushed, not exactly sure why.

We took a tour through the orchard, and Mr. Mills explained to us how everything worked: how fruits were picked from the tree with love, so they wouldn’t turn ugly or oxidize as easily when cut, or how after each day of work there would be a small party to show gratitude to nature, among other little superstitions that brought color to the life in the orchard and, surprisingly enough, didn’t make Victor’s eyes roll.

Mr. Mills led us to a pond from which the whole orchard was watered. By the pond, there was a weeping willow tree, almost naked due to the season, with colored ribbons tied to its branches. I was amazed by the tree’s beauty, and curious about the ribbons.

“Who decorated the tree?” I ask, my heart jumping with curiosity. “It’s amazing.”

“People from the village, the workers. They call it a wish tree. I like to call it Hope Tree. The ribbons have words in it, if you take a closer look. They write a quote, a wish, a thought, something positive that they are thankful for or want to see more of in their lives, and tie it to the tree, to connect it with nature and bond it with their lives. To make it natural, in more meanings than one.”

My eyes widened when Mr. Mills extracted from his pocket two purple ribbons.

“I would be honored if the Boss and you left a message on the tree. Anything you want, as long as its coming from your soul.” He handed a pen and a ribbon to Victor. When he gave me the same similar items, his hand lingered in mine.

“Do you know the meaning of purple, Miss Jones?” He smiled meaningfully.

“No, not really.” I grimaced.

“It can mean many things, actually. Purple is considered the color of strength, but not the strength that comes from here” Mr. Mills touched my arm. “But from here.” He touched my chest. “Also is the mix of two colors, red, that is a bridal color, and also means good luck, and blue, that represents growth and healing. Can you understand the message?”

“You wish me to heal, to grow and to love?” I smiled.

“You are very bright, Miss Jones. In more meanings than one.” Mr. Mills squeezed my hand. “Now don’t let an old man stop you. Go write your wish and tie it to that tree.” Mr. Mills said, pointing to a stone table with benches near the tree.

I sat and looked at my ribbon, pen in hand, wondering what I was going to write. I decided on a quote I read online. I took the pen and started writing on my ribbon.

“What are you going to write on your ribbon?” Victor asked, already done with his.

“I’m not telling you. It’s personal.” I joked, hiding my ribbon with my arm.

“Aren’t curious to know what I’ve written?”

“I am, but I’m not going to ask you because I know it’s probably personal.” I said, glaring at him.

“Fine, I won’t ask anymore. I’m going to tie mine to the tree so you won’t see where it is.” He joked.

I read my ribbon. It said: When surrounded by darkness, may you find the light in yourself.

I walked to the tree and, to my disappointment, noticed that the lowest branches had no space left for my ribbon.

“I can lift you, if you want.” I heard the low voice mocking me. I felt like sticking  my tongue out, but he was right. I could use his help.

“You don’t mind?” I asked casually, like having the CEO carrying me once again was the most natural thing in the world. It wasn’t.

He stood in front of me and bent his knees to make himself slightly shorter than me.

“Grab my shoulders to steady yourself.”

I supported myself on top of his shoulders and he lifted me with ease, grabbing the back of my knees, as I tied my ribbon to the closest tall branch.

“I need just a second more. Don’t let go of me, ok?” I warned, as I struggled with the ribbon.

“Never.” He spoke softly.

After I was done, he loosened his grip on my legs, making me slowly slide down, using his body as support. We stood like that for a moment, looking in each other’s eyes, our bodies touching.

“Thanks.” I broke eye contact, so I wouldn’t give in temptation and kiss him.

The trip to the hotel was a silent one. Victor was probably tired, and I had this whirlwind of emotions inside that I was trying to keep at bay. The last hours had been a beautiful experience with Victor, and it was almost over, since the following day I was flying back to Loveland. And for a minute I left myself wonder if these moments meant to Victor as much as they meant to me.

“What are you doing tonight?” Victor broke the silence.

“Well, if you have nothing else for me to do, pretty much pack and sleep.”

Victor was silent for a moment.

“Come have dinner with me.”

“Sure. What time should I meet you?”

“No. I don’t mean for work. I’m not asking you as your boss.”

I didn’t know what to say. Victor’s expression fell slightly.

“You are allowed to say no if you don’t want to.” His voice felt tired again.

“What if I don’t want to say no?” I smiled at Victor. He smiled back.

“I’ll pick you up at seven.”

[easyfoodnetwork]

Mushroom Hunting at the End of the World

Getty Images

While the rest of the country focused on something other than the forest floor, I started foraging for chanterelles

I’d been staring at the ground too long. That’s most of what foraging is, by the way. It’s ignoring the blue sky and the trees to focus your gaze on the dirt. I was walking through cobwebs, surveying the woodland floor for almost an hour, when I finally saw one: a tiny, pale chanterelle mushroom sticking up near the trail’s edge. It looked sickly, or at the very least elderly. Perhaps it was a sign that this section of the woods was untraveled, or maybe nobody had ever thought to pluck it from its habitat.

I peeled it from the ground with my paring knife and placed it into my netted, purple sack, which once housed grocery-store red onions. This lonely mushroom wasn’t the haul, mind you, but rather an indicator. When one chanterelle appears, more will follow. A few steps off the trail and they emerged in droves. Soon, my bag was filled with corpulent, spore-bearing fungi — big chanterelles with deep-orange hues and fantastical shapes, like something a Nintendo animator might draw.

Walking back with my giant bag of wild mushrooms, I ran into a couple, the first people I’d seen that day. We all scrambled to put on our masks at the distant sight of one another. “You get some chanties?” the man said in his familiar, spectacularly unusual Pittsburgh accent. “It’s a gold mine out there,” I said, trying unconsciously to disguise any hints of that same Pennsylvanian elocution. After they disappeared back into the woods, I put my mask in my pocket, where it stayed for the rest of the hike. For about 30 seconds, I was reminded that the rest of the world was focused on something other than the forest floor.

For about 30 seconds, I was reminded that the rest of the world was focused on something other than the forest floor.

A few years back I had tasted some wild mushroom conserva courtesy of my cousin, Andy, during a trip to my hometown in Pennsylvania. Andy is a budding locavore, a self-taught forager, and a mad scientist in the kitchen. His passion is infectious. Eighty percent of the meat he consumes, he hunts himself. He cures venison and butchers whole pigs in his garage.

That first spoonful of Andy’s mushrooms, meaty chanterelles salted in a strainer, then simmered in white vinegar with gothic-looking thyme and peppercorns, is preserved in my mind, so much so that I can access that memory whenever I want. The dim lighting in my parents’ dining room, Andy standing in the kitchen with his arms confidently folded, the sound of the Mason jar lid spinning loose, and the immense joy of my first bite — stocky chanterelle mushrooms, piquant vinegar, gentle aromatics, and then the brilliant opulence of olive oil, used to preserve the mixture.

I asked Andy if I could take a jar of them back home to Los Angeles, and he obliged. Every so often, I unscrewed the lid for a small bite. I would close my eyes and feel the cold air in my hometown. If I listened carefully, I could hear the train whistles in the distance. Those mushrooms became a portal to my hometown, a culinary object so emotionally resonant, so distinct from the food I bought at my grocery store in California, that I always longed to forage and conserve a jar of my own.

I began to miss rural Pennsylvania as the pandemic encroached into summer. Like a lot of people, I felt trapped in the big city, and so in June, I went home. In Pennsylvania, everybody’s houses are set at a distance, but everyone barters home provisions, ranging from venison pastrami to crooked cucumbers to gargantuan zucchini. The summer is when the Amish sell sweet corn, and when the berry farms open their orchards. The old-timey ice cream shops end their winter break, and people start roasting whole pigs and marinated legs of lamb. It was also not lost on me that a hot, wet climate is the ideal condition for chanterelles, and that this would be the perfect time to chase that dragon: the jar of preserved mushrooms.

Once I began mushroom hunting, the calm followed. I embraced foraging, an oft-maligned word after the chef-bro boom of the 2010s. If your reaction is to recoil, you’re not alone. Before my mushroom-hunting days, I usually laughed when I saw the word “foraged” on a menu or in a magazine. Oh, did you really go out foraging, m’Lord?

The first time I went, I rode in the passenger seat of Andy’s car, down the winding rural roads of Amish country. To be honest, I didn’t immediately connect with foraging; the experience felt educational. Of course, when you’re dealing with something that can be either good in a stir-fry, consciousness-expanding, or deadly, education is important. Poisonous mushrooms actually look evil, though, an offer of good faith from Mother Nature. They often have a sinister gray or red color, with warts and scales reminiscent of the toxic fungi in fairy-tale illustrations. Andy made sure to teach me enough that I didn’t end up hallucinating through the woods — or, worse yet, dead.

People in my hometown definitely don’t fall into the stereotype of knuckle-tatted, beanie-wearing “foragers,” but they’re pretty keen on the good mushroom spots. There’s an old Polish woman, for instance, whose stiff, territorial energy I can feel whenever I show up to Gaston Park the day after a rain. Because I didn’t want to move in on another gang’s turf, I had Andy show me a few of his favorite areas. Still, it didn’t feel right: These were his discoveries, not mine. I wanted to make my own way. I wanted that excitement of stumbling across a rare mushroom, of encountering a field of freshly sprouted chanterelles. I wanted to find my own mushroom haven, and so I went to Hell’s Hollow.

daveynin/Flickr

A view from the Hell’s Hollow Trail in McConnells Mill State Park, Pennsylvania

Hell’s Hollow is a national park and trail in New Castle, Pennsylvania, about a mile down the road from my childhood home. Apparently, it’s called Hell’s Hollow because some time ago a man fell asleep in those woods, and when he woke up, he was convinced that the place he was in was actually Hell. Are the woods deep and dark? Sure. Spooky at night? Yeah, of course. But, Hell? As in the place where sinners go and are tormented for eternity? Like, Satan-owned and -operated Hell? I scoff at the idea whenever I pass the old wooden sign for the trail. What kind of idiot would think that the woods is Hell? It’s beautiful out here. I mean look, there’s a flowing river. Why would the Devil keep a freshwater source in an eternity of suffering? Rule No. 1 of Hell must be to stay hydrated. Rule No. 2? No running.

Hell’s Hollow has been a constant throughout my life. When I was a kid, my mom and dad let me splash around the creek trying to catch minnows and small crabs. When I was 10, I gleefully collected rocks and declared that I was going to be a geologist (my family would be disappointed). As teens, my friends and I smoked shag weed and smashed cans of Mountain Dew together like Stone Cold Steve Austin there. The point is, I’ve been wandering around Hell’s Hollow my whole life, and it never dawned on me that I would ever find myself foraging there. But sure enough, it was my spot.

I did not expect hunting for mushrooms to clear my head the way it did. People say that about prep work, by the way. They say that peeling potatoes and kneading dough lets the mind wander and alleviates stress. But, to me, prep work is just that: work. Dicing onions pierces the eyes, lemon juice stings, and I will always associate chopping parsley with the incoming threat of a dinner rush at one of my restaurant jobs. When people say that cooking soothes the mind, they’re not taking into account all the people who do this shit for a living. What are those people supposed to do to get away from themselves? For me, I found that wandering in the woods alone with a sense of purpose was exactly the thing I needed to weather the fire tornado of anxiety the pandemic had produced.

The act of foraging, a completely unchanged activity in a pandemic, possesses the acute ability to make me forget about the state of things entirely. Specifically, it was easy to forget about a global virus. Hunting for mushrooms in the woods alone is already distanced; there are no guidelines to follow. Walk down the street in Los Angeles and you’re immediately reminded that restaurants are shut down and live performance spaces are shuttered. But in the woods? Go ahead — sneeze full force in any direction you please. Let off some steam, pal. You’ve earned it. Sure, I had a mask, but it stayed in my pocket on the off chance that I ran into another human being, though I was more likely to spot a deer.

When I’m hunting for mushrooms it feels like I’m achieving something tangible.

This wasn’t just a way to pass time, mind you. These weren’t nature walks I was taking. There’s a sense of ambition at the core of mushroom hunting. Purpose, the thing so many of us have felt without this year, I suddenly possessed. When there’s purpose, there’s a sense of reward, and when I’m hunting for mushrooms it feels like I’m achieving something tangible. All my energy is focused, my aim clear. Instead of staring at the ceiling in my studio apartment, I found myself scanning the ground for edible treasure. The dopamine you receive from finding a cluster of chanterelle mushrooms in the damp woods is immense, somehow both frivolous and survivalist. There’s a real sense of childlike treasure-hunting tied to foraging.

Take the elusive cauliflower mushroom, Sparassis, which is as rare as mushrooms come. They grow sporadically; their appearance is psychedelic and aquatic. It looks coral in a way, like a living, breathing self-sustaining organism that belongs at the bottom of the ocean. Jarring, then, to find one surrounded by leaves and mossy logs. The mushroom itself is wavy and ethereal, with petals like a flower. It’s so rare that when Andy and I found one, he jumped in the air with excitement. For seven years he had been hunting for a cauliflower mushroom, and he finally got it. His triumph felt like my triumph, and in a way, it was. Later, I fried the petals of the cauliflower mushroom in oil and ate them salted. The texture was outstanding and the flavor delicate, like a homemade noodle but with the specific earthiness of a fungus. “How many people are eating a cauliflower mushroom right now?” I thought.

I felt like jumping in the air like Andy when I spotted that lone, feeble chanterelle in Hell’s Hollow. To reach that first chantie was a hero’s journey, past a path that leads to a dazzling waterfall, down a steep hill, across a stream, and through a tunnel of decaying trees. The air starts to cool down and a trained nose can begin to smell the faint notes of mushrooms in the air. Clusters of chanterelles appear like small towns; they are golden trumpets that politely announce their presence with colorful glee. Oyster mushrooms grow shelf-like on the sides of trees, and chicken of the woods, these endlessly useful and tasty orange half-moons, light up your eyes like a gorgeous sunset. That’s the thing about wild mushrooms — once you see them, you can’t unsee them. After an education in foraging, you’ll be forever scanning your surroundings, trying to manifest treasure.

As I carried back my sack of mushrooms that first time, I thought about that man who woke up in Hell’s Hollow in the night. How must he have felt? Aimless, one would assume. Probably searching for a way out of the darkness. Disoriented, without a clue where he might be in relation to the outside world. Maybe that’s what Hell is. Maybe it’s quite simply feeling lost and alone. The pandemic can feel like that, as though you’re traversing an endless dark wilderness hoping to catch a light in the distance that’ll guide you back to society. But is that a new feeling? Hasn’t it always been that way? Maybe all of life has just been wandering in the dark.

Anyway, I’m glad to be walking through the woods with a purpose.

Danny Palumbo is a comedian and writer living in Los Angeles.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2JUbLZq https://ift.tt/3korg8w

Getty Images

While the rest of the country focused on something other than the forest floor, I started foraging for chanterelles

I’d been staring at the ground too long. That’s most of what foraging is, by the way. It’s ignoring the blue sky and the trees to focus your gaze on the dirt. I was walking through cobwebs, surveying the woodland floor for almost an hour, when I finally saw one: a tiny, pale chanterelle mushroom sticking up near the trail’s edge. It looked sickly, or at the very least elderly. Perhaps it was a sign that this section of the woods was untraveled, or maybe nobody had ever thought to pluck it from its habitat.

I peeled it from the ground with my paring knife and placed it into my netted, purple sack, which once housed grocery-store red onions. This lonely mushroom wasn’t the haul, mind you, but rather an indicator. When one chanterelle appears, more will follow. A few steps off the trail and they emerged in droves. Soon, my bag was filled with corpulent, spore-bearing fungi — big chanterelles with deep-orange hues and fantastical shapes, like something a Nintendo animator might draw.

Walking back with my giant bag of wild mushrooms, I ran into a couple, the first people I’d seen that day. We all scrambled to put on our masks at the distant sight of one another. “You get some chanties?” the man said in his familiar, spectacularly unusual Pittsburgh accent. “It’s a gold mine out there,” I said, trying unconsciously to disguise any hints of that same Pennsylvanian elocution. After they disappeared back into the woods, I put my mask in my pocket, where it stayed for the rest of the hike. For about 30 seconds, I was reminded that the rest of the world was focused on something other than the forest floor.

For about 30 seconds, I was reminded that the rest of the world was focused on something other than the forest floor.

A few years back I had tasted some wild mushroom conserva courtesy of my cousin, Andy, during a trip to my hometown in Pennsylvania. Andy is a budding locavore, a self-taught forager, and a mad scientist in the kitchen. His passion is infectious. Eighty percent of the meat he consumes, he hunts himself. He cures venison and butchers whole pigs in his garage.

That first spoonful of Andy’s mushrooms, meaty chanterelles salted in a strainer, then simmered in white vinegar with gothic-looking thyme and peppercorns, is preserved in my mind, so much so that I can access that memory whenever I want. The dim lighting in my parents’ dining room, Andy standing in the kitchen with his arms confidently folded, the sound of the Mason jar lid spinning loose, and the immense joy of my first bite — stocky chanterelle mushrooms, piquant vinegar, gentle aromatics, and then the brilliant opulence of olive oil, used to preserve the mixture.

I asked Andy if I could take a jar of them back home to Los Angeles, and he obliged. Every so often, I unscrewed the lid for a small bite. I would close my eyes and feel the cold air in my hometown. If I listened carefully, I could hear the train whistles in the distance. Those mushrooms became a portal to my hometown, a culinary object so emotionally resonant, so distinct from the food I bought at my grocery store in California, that I always longed to forage and conserve a jar of my own.

I began to miss rural Pennsylvania as the pandemic encroached into summer. Like a lot of people, I felt trapped in the big city, and so in June, I went home. In Pennsylvania, everybody’s houses are set at a distance, but everyone barters home provisions, ranging from venison pastrami to crooked cucumbers to gargantuan zucchini. The summer is when the Amish sell sweet corn, and when the berry farms open their orchards. The old-timey ice cream shops end their winter break, and people start roasting whole pigs and marinated legs of lamb. It was also not lost on me that a hot, wet climate is the ideal condition for chanterelles, and that this would be the perfect time to chase that dragon: the jar of preserved mushrooms.

Once I began mushroom hunting, the calm followed. I embraced foraging, an oft-maligned word after the chef-bro boom of the 2010s. If your reaction is to recoil, you’re not alone. Before my mushroom-hunting days, I usually laughed when I saw the word “foraged” on a menu or in a magazine. Oh, did you really go out foraging, m’Lord?

The first time I went, I rode in the passenger seat of Andy’s car, down the winding rural roads of Amish country. To be honest, I didn’t immediately connect with foraging; the experience felt educational. Of course, when you’re dealing with something that can be either good in a stir-fry, consciousness-expanding, or deadly, education is important. Poisonous mushrooms actually look evil, though, an offer of good faith from Mother Nature. They often have a sinister gray or red color, with warts and scales reminiscent of the toxic fungi in fairy-tale illustrations. Andy made sure to teach me enough that I didn’t end up hallucinating through the woods — or, worse yet, dead.

People in my hometown definitely don’t fall into the stereotype of knuckle-tatted, beanie-wearing “foragers,” but they’re pretty keen on the good mushroom spots. There’s an old Polish woman, for instance, whose stiff, territorial energy I can feel whenever I show up to Gaston Park the day after a rain. Because I didn’t want to move in on another gang’s turf, I had Andy show me a few of his favorite areas. Still, it didn’t feel right: These were his discoveries, not mine. I wanted to make my own way. I wanted that excitement of stumbling across a rare mushroom, of encountering a field of freshly sprouted chanterelles. I wanted to find my own mushroom haven, and so I went to Hell’s Hollow.

daveynin/Flickr

A view from the Hell’s Hollow Trail in McConnells Mill State Park, Pennsylvania

Hell’s Hollow is a national park and trail in New Castle, Pennsylvania, about a mile down the road from my childhood home. Apparently, it’s called Hell’s Hollow because some time ago a man fell asleep in those woods, and when he woke up, he was convinced that the place he was in was actually Hell. Are the woods deep and dark? Sure. Spooky at night? Yeah, of course. But, Hell? As in the place where sinners go and are tormented for eternity? Like, Satan-owned and -operated Hell? I scoff at the idea whenever I pass the old wooden sign for the trail. What kind of idiot would think that the woods is Hell? It’s beautiful out here. I mean look, there’s a flowing river. Why would the Devil keep a freshwater source in an eternity of suffering? Rule No. 1 of Hell must be to stay hydrated. Rule No. 2? No running.

Hell’s Hollow has been a constant throughout my life. When I was a kid, my mom and dad let me splash around the creek trying to catch minnows and small crabs. When I was 10, I gleefully collected rocks and declared that I was going to be a geologist (my family would be disappointed). As teens, my friends and I smoked shag weed and smashed cans of Mountain Dew together like Stone Cold Steve Austin there. The point is, I’ve been wandering around Hell’s Hollow my whole life, and it never dawned on me that I would ever find myself foraging there. But sure enough, it was my spot.

I did not expect hunting for mushrooms to clear my head the way it did. People say that about prep work, by the way. They say that peeling potatoes and kneading dough lets the mind wander and alleviates stress. But, to me, prep work is just that: work. Dicing onions pierces the eyes, lemon juice stings, and I will always associate chopping parsley with the incoming threat of a dinner rush at one of my restaurant jobs. When people say that cooking soothes the mind, they’re not taking into account all the people who do this shit for a living. What are those people supposed to do to get away from themselves? For me, I found that wandering in the woods alone with a sense of purpose was exactly the thing I needed to weather the fire tornado of anxiety the pandemic had produced.

The act of foraging, a completely unchanged activity in a pandemic, possesses the acute ability to make me forget about the state of things entirely. Specifically, it was easy to forget about a global virus. Hunting for mushrooms in the woods alone is already distanced; there are no guidelines to follow. Walk down the street in Los Angeles and you’re immediately reminded that restaurants are shut down and live performance spaces are shuttered. But in the woods? Go ahead — sneeze full force in any direction you please. Let off some steam, pal. You’ve earned it. Sure, I had a mask, but it stayed in my pocket on the off chance that I ran into another human being, though I was more likely to spot a deer.

When I’m hunting for mushrooms it feels like I’m achieving something tangible.

This wasn’t just a way to pass time, mind you. These weren’t nature walks I was taking. There’s a sense of ambition at the core of mushroom hunting. Purpose, the thing so many of us have felt without this year, I suddenly possessed. When there’s purpose, there’s a sense of reward, and when I’m hunting for mushrooms it feels like I’m achieving something tangible. All my energy is focused, my aim clear. Instead of staring at the ceiling in my studio apartment, I found myself scanning the ground for edible treasure. The dopamine you receive from finding a cluster of chanterelle mushrooms in the damp woods is immense, somehow both frivolous and survivalist. There’s a real sense of childlike treasure-hunting tied to foraging.

Take the elusive cauliflower mushroom, Sparassis, which is as rare as mushrooms come. They grow sporadically; their appearance is psychedelic and aquatic. It looks coral in a way, like a living, breathing self-sustaining organism that belongs at the bottom of the ocean. Jarring, then, to find one surrounded by leaves and mossy logs. The mushroom itself is wavy and ethereal, with petals like a flower. It’s so rare that when Andy and I found one, he jumped in the air with excitement. For seven years he had been hunting for a cauliflower mushroom, and he finally got it. His triumph felt like my triumph, and in a way, it was. Later, I fried the petals of the cauliflower mushroom in oil and ate them salted. The texture was outstanding and the flavor delicate, like a homemade noodle but with the specific earthiness of a fungus. “How many people are eating a cauliflower mushroom right now?” I thought.

I felt like jumping in the air like Andy when I spotted that lone, feeble chanterelle in Hell’s Hollow. To reach that first chantie was a hero’s journey, past a path that leads to a dazzling waterfall, down a steep hill, across a stream, and through a tunnel of decaying trees. The air starts to cool down and a trained nose can begin to smell the faint notes of mushrooms in the air. Clusters of chanterelles appear like small towns; they are golden trumpets that politely announce their presence with colorful glee. Oyster mushrooms grow shelf-like on the sides of trees, and chicken of the woods, these endlessly useful and tasty orange half-moons, light up your eyes like a gorgeous sunset. That’s the thing about wild mushrooms — once you see them, you can’t unsee them. After an education in foraging, you’ll be forever scanning your surroundings, trying to manifest treasure.

As I carried back my sack of mushrooms that first time, I thought about that man who woke up in Hell’s Hollow in the night. How must he have felt? Aimless, one would assume. Probably searching for a way out of the darkness. Disoriented, without a clue where he might be in relation to the outside world. Maybe that’s what Hell is. Maybe it’s quite simply feeling lost and alone. The pandemic can feel like that, as though you’re traversing an endless dark wilderness hoping to catch a light in the distance that’ll guide you back to society. But is that a new feeling? Hasn’t it always been that way? Maybe all of life has just been wandering in the dark.

Anyway, I’m glad to be walking through the woods with a purpose.

Danny Palumbo is a comedian and writer living in Los Angeles.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2JUbLZq via Blogger https://ift.tt/38Dk0DK

[ndrmag]

Contributor Interview with Kristine Langley Mahler

Kristine Langley Mahler lives and writes on the suburban prairie of Nebraska, where she is completing an erasure book on Seventeen‘s advice to teenage girls, a grant-funded project about immigration/inhabitation on native land through the lens of her French-Canadian ancestors, and a graduate degree in creative nonfiction. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in The Rumpus, Quarter After Eight, Sweet, Split Lip, Storm Cellar, the Bitter Southerner, and received the 2016 Rafael Torch Award for Literary Nonfiction from Crab Orchard Review. Visit her at kristinelangleymahler.com.

How did the initial idea for “Club Pines” come together for you? How does the finished work differ from that original conception?

It started as a very ambitious multimedia EXPERIENCE: I had hand-drawn the neighborhood and I was going to have the houses hyperlinked so the reader could click on them to read the segments, but I realized that wow, I might have some coding skills but not enough to pull that project into place. So I scaled it back. Earlier versions of “Club Pines” had the neighborhood map reproduced before each “house,” with the house in question colored in and any previously encountered houses as empty boxes to indicate how they had become "vacant" for me, but again—it was too much. I loved the visualness of that neighborhood because it was such a maze, so winding and so metaphoric, but (and this is where I had to tone back my writer ego), that doesn't matter to the reader. In the essay, the map just looked like a visual distraction, an unnecessary bit of detail—the reader could ascertain from the narrative that Club Pines was a maze to me. They didn't need to see it shoveled in front of their face like LOOK SEE I WAS REALLY CONFUSED SEE HOW CONFUSED?

There were a lot of houses/girls who were in the original essay, but I tried to pare it down to only those girls who tied me to certain aspects of my adolescence. I thought about including boys’ houses, but that’s a whole ‘nother ball of wax. Nearly every house in that neighborhood had meant something to me at one point: I had babysitters who lived there, or I had babysat there myself, or I went trick-or-treating there once and a woman handed out personalized toothbrushes she’d bought at the dollar store so I got RICKY or whatever. Stuff like that. But those are the sort of completionist tendencies that could have snowballed into a whole neighborhood ethnography, and the emphasis, here, was really on those girls. That’s where I felt out of place and in place, even temporarily.

What craft struggles did you encounter while writing this essay? How did you overcome them? What did you learn from the process?

Oh, you know, as a memoirist, it’s always a challenge to be comfortable with my portrayals of other people. I’ve always been very watchful, obsessive about retaining memories and situations so I can analyze them later, but I know it’s presumptuous to ascribe motives to others. These girls were so much more than the summations I present to y’all as paragraphs. So I tried to remain true to the way I knew the girls, at that time, and to make it clear through the way I sketch them that I’m laying my own biases out for judgment. There’s a moral code I don’t think I’ve broken, but I’m also protected from any real-world retribution since I’m only “officially” social-media-connected to one of the girls in “Club Pines.” I’m one of those tracking dogs who finds digital loopholes and can pick up a cold trail: they’re married, they’re mothers, they’re single and childless, they’re living their best Southern life and they’ve left for other regions, other countries. They’re unprotected and they’re on social media lockdown; they’re oversharing and they’re silent as the grave. Just like me, we’re all telling the narrative of our girlhoods the way we need to believe they happened; we’re all revising when we see a perspective we didn’t realize. If they ever came across this piece, I hope they’d know that.

"Club Pines" presents a neighborhood that simultaneously feels ubiquitous and incredibly specific in its details, particularly those concerning toys and media of the time, as well as the denizens and their spaces. In capturing a place that is both unique and typical at once, how were you able to decide what to keep and what to let go?

The essay progresses from age ten through age fourteen, crucial years when we’re all figuring out who we are, trying on friendships, trying out cruelties, jostling for place. I doubled-down on my feelings of displacement as I wasn’t a native North Carolinian, but honestly, the anomie and aloneness in adolescence are pretty universal.

I think I included so many details because they set the reader in the era of the early-to-mid 90s—an important era because it predated the Internet, predated the ability to form an escapism that might have allowed me to retain virtual connections with my old friends from my old town. Instead, I had to grind through adolescence in that neighborhood, which I name, in that city, which I don't (though it's not hard to figure out), where I was a regional newcomer bombarded with all this “knowledge” everyone else seemed to have and I’d never encountered: sweet tea, cotillion, tobacco, smoked and grown everywhere. When writing “Club Pines,” I fixated on the details in the girls’ houses that were NOT regional because those were the details that made me feel like I had an entry way into these Othered spaces: troll dolls, The Beatles, fortune tellers.

Part of what makes "Club Pines" such a phenomenally textured essay is the broad range of feelings it depicts. For instance, there's the bitter levity of  "I sneer at her because I may be a pleb but she is a snob" and, later on, more somber notes such as "when we still called it “playing,” when I still anticipated her calls, when she was still my best friend, when she was still." What advice would you give a writer attempting to establish such a tonal dynamism without things feeling unfocused?

I suppose it's important to remember, particularly in a segmented essay, that each section needs to be treated as its own narrative and needs to be able to stand on its own. To hover above a single moment as if it had to represent all the moments you’ve ever had with that person or space can force you to recognize the range of your emotions. The trick is forcing that range to harden into the meringued truth for one scene: fragile, beaten, but momentarily solid.

The houses are distinct spaces, yet are especially vivid because of the specific atmospheres you conjure. How did you go about capturing these atmospheres so lucidly and in such short spaces?

I had layered, multi-year friendships with some of those girls in “Club Pines,” and with others, complex and painful situations I didn’t even address here. I word-spattered all over early drafts, writing the first things I thought about when I thought about those girls, and as I cleaned up the mess, I kept the scenes that emblematized those girls singularly, for one blurt. More often than not, they were the first things I’d written.

There are a number of details I muted throughout the piece, little signals to myself which hint at outgrowths of moments I don’t describe here, and I think their hinted presence must have allowed me to restrain over-telling and over-showing. For instance, I used the word “nook” in describing the location of my house and Betsy’s final bedroom in her house because they were both places where I was hidden and ignored, and yet they were places of comfort. You don’t get descriptions of the girls’ appearances. They don’t matter, because these girls are Everygirls. These houses are Everyhouses. No matter where you live, adolescence is packing season, leaving season, replacing season, curing season. 

[reasonandempathy]

Well, that’s interesting.  Why is my response in a screenshot?

OOOOOHHHHHH

That’s why.

Because Teddy wasn’t a conservative, but @matt-ruins-feminisms-shit​  blocked me and wanted to make a cheap, bitch point without actually showing anyone the source I linked.  Which blatantly says the quote is fake, but let’s keep going.

It covered things like:

Teddy fundamentally changing the Union/Employer relationship and forcing coal companies to bargain with coal workers instead of just killing them.

Fight me.

Creation of the EPA, the thing Conservatives are still trying to kill.

"Spring would not be spring without bird songs, any more than it would be spring without buds and flowers, and I only wish that besides protecting the songsters, the birds of the grove, the orchard, the garden and the meadow, we could also protect the birds of the sea-shore and of the wilderness." 

“The United States at this moment occupies a lamentable position as being perhaps the chief offender among civilized nations in permitting the destruction and pollution of nature. Our whole modern civilization is at fault in the matter. But we in America are probably most at fault … Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy forests and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals’not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements.”

Fight me.

That the Heritage Foundation labeled Teddy as a progressive liberal that tied us closer and closer to European politics and economics.  

Fight me.

I mean...I could keep going.

His split with Taft was because he felt personally betrayed by Taft for corroborating with Roosevelt’s conservative GOP enemies

Fight me.

He spoke out significantly and regularly against the political interests and power of corporations and the rich, viewing them as among the gravest threats to the country

“It is necessary that laws should be passed to prohibit the use of corporate funds directly or indirectly for political purposes; it is still more necessary that such laws should be thoroughly enforced. Corporate expenditures for political purposes, and especially such expenditures by public service corporations, have supplied one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.”

Fight me.

Set hard and stringent restrictions on interstate trade.  Actually, let’s segway this into just the fact that he was well known as a “trustbuster” and invented the fucking phrase.

Fight me.

He’s one of the origins of the phrase “the greatest good for the greatest number”, which is intrinsically an communal and anti-individualist sentiment (granted he’s mixed on this, but holy shit).

That’s one of Teddy’s books.  In his own words.  

Fight me.

He was among the most race-forward politicians of his time.  Even today Republicans and Conservatives don’t fucking agree with this all the way.  Your fucking President is one of them.

“ "I cannot consent to take the position that the door of hope — the door of opportunity — is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color. Such an attitude would, according to my convictions, be fundamentally wrong."

Fight me.

Pay your fucking taxes.  Your entire god-damned job as an American is to sacrifice in blood, sweat, and tears for the next generation.

"Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither. We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth, and we must behave as be seen as a people with such responsibilities."

Fight me.

Capitalism isn’t the fucking point.  A life in pursuit of material wealth is wasted.

"It is a bad thing for a nation to raise and to admire a false standard of success; and there can be no falser standard than that set by the deification of material well-being in and for itself."

Fight me.

Or I could call them a fucking coward.  Who should fucking fight me or shut the fuck up and continue being weak, pathetic, and dishonest.  Three things Teddy guaran-fucking-teed would have no patience for.

But your historical revisionist bullshit is suitably responded to, amusingly enough, with another Teddy Roosevelt Quote.

"It is of little use for us to pay lip-loyalty to the mighty men of the past unless we sincerely endeavor to apply to the problems of the present precisely the qualities which in other crises enabled the men of that day to meet those crises."

[scifrey]

The Untold Tale - Chapter One

I am upstairs when I catch sight of the approaching cart and its cargo through the thick glass of my window. I assume the body in the back is a corpse, brought to me for study and then burial.  But no one handles a corpse with such care; the driver is directing the horse to travel slowly, avoiding each hole in the dirt road. They also do not stop to pick up a healer for a corpse. Yet Mother Mouth is in the back, hunched as best she is able over the blanket-wrapped body. 

They also do not stop to pick up a healer for a corpse; but there is Mother Mouth in the back, hunched as best she is able over the blanket-wrapped body. By the time I make it down the grand staircase to the foyer, three of my Men are lifting the body from the cart with careful concern. I gesture to the threshold, and they lower it onto my front step. As soon as they set the body down, I can see that my assumption that it still alive was correct.

It is a young woman. She is as wrapped in rough blankets as she can be with such extensive injuries to her back. The blankets are filthy and crusted with blood and other bodily fluids, which means it was probably the only protection against the chill spring morning that her rescuers could find.

Between the folds I can see what has been done to her. I contain my shudder of revulsion, but only barely. Possibly only because I’ve seen this before.

Bootknife has flayed her very prettily.

Artistic tendrils of bloody ivy are torn into the vellum of the young woman's flesh. Bootknife has written spells and agony into the muscle he's carved, into the wounds left by the strips he filleted from her. It's as detailed as any woodcarving for a stamp — some deep, some wide and shallow, some the merest scrape, only a layer or two of skin absent. Disgustingly beautiful. But it is not art.

It is torture.

She is unconscious. It is a blessing. I can't imagine how much the young woman must have been screaming before my Men had forced poppy milk down her throat. Well, yes, I suppose I can imagine it, I have seen quite enough of Bootknife's handiwork to envision her pain. What I mean is that I do not want to imagine it; can't bear the thought of the sounds that must have ripped her throat bloody.

I clench my hands into fists and jam them into the pockets of my house robe to keep from rushing forward and helping; a Chipping Master does not dirty his hands in labor. I hear the invective in my father's hateful voice in my head, and I take great pleasure in telling it to go drown itself.

All the same, I stay back. I would only be in the way.

Mother Mouth assesses the young woman's injuries, and when she is done together we ensure that there are no Words of Tracing carved into the victim's skin.

It would not do to give our enemies such advantageous leverage as to lead them straight to the Shadow Hand's home base. No matter that it appears to be no more than the manor of silly, crumpled Forsyth Turn, younger brother to the great hero Kintyre and a man quite stodgily attached to his library. Even the slightest slip would bring the Viceroy down on my Chipping, and I will not have the people under my care endangered.

I do not bother to ask why my Men were bringing the woman to me and not to the King; if the King had the security and ability to protect himself and those in his charge from the Viceroy, then he would never have secretly employed me as his Shadow Hand.

There is nowhere safer for the injured visitor to be spared from the renewed attentions of the Viceroy or Bootknife than Turn Hall. Not even Kingskeep.

Assessment done, they take the woman inside and up to a wing of my home that I have not entered in years. I catch the attention of my butler and order it opened specifically for this use.

It has been a long time since there has been a need for Lady's Chambers in Turn Hall. They have remained shut since my mother's death, even though it is the area of the house that is the most protected: by wards, architectural design and now, by the presence of my household guard. It has been even longer still since the need for a Lady's maid. My staff are nearly all men. This is not out of preference, but because there are no women in my household that required women servants, and it made sense to leave the town's supply of employable young misses for houses where they were more needed.

I am going to have to find a woman. Blast.

We linger in the hallway outside the room long enough for some servants to strip the dusty bed linens and replace them with fresh. Then I dismiss my Men to write up their debriefing reports, and I help Mother Mouth lay the young lady on the bed myself. The only way we figure she will be comfortable is belly-down, with her face propped to the side with a feather pillow.

With the young lady installed on the bed, I step back into a corner in order to remain out of the way. Mother Mouth takes a short breather – she is no longer young, her skin papery thin and scored with laughter lines, but still glowing with vitality - and all this rushing and lifting has winded her. Then she ties her silver-streaked hair back off her face and begins the careful work of spreading tinctures and ointments, mixing potions meant to neutralize spells and remove pain, and the gentle knife work of cutting away the meat that has rotted from neglect.

My staff moves around them both in an orchestrated dance, fetching in lamps and candles, water in an ewer; bringing in, using and then removing brooms and cleaning supplies; opening windows and laying a fire in the hearth. I do as I always do, what I am best at doing: I observe.

When Mother Mouth finally sits back, a smear of blood on her forehead where she had pushed a stray tendril of hair out of her face, I offer her a handkerchief. It is russet, the color that is associated with House Turn, my family. She takes it graciously, though she wrinkles her nose a little at the fineness of the fabric.

"We've had this discussion before," she says. "Good silk should be saved for dressing wounds, and rough cotton for wiping faces and noses."

"I agree, Mother," I allow, a smile sitting in the corner of my mouth and trying so very hard to stretch into the rest of it. "However, there are expectations at court, and when one's work relies on creating a good impression, the silk must be used for snot."

"And that's why I've no use for court, I don't mind telling you, my boy."

Mother Mouth rises and goes to the bag of medicines she had left on the bedside table. She pulls out phials and jars, each neatly labeled in her spiky hand. She is leaving behind tinctures and syrups to add to my young visitor's wine when she wakes in pain, bandages and ointments enough to cover the whole of the vicious patterns on her back several times over. She then promises to return in the morning to assess her healing.

"And send for me at once should she turn feverish or her wounds begin to fester and reek," she finishes.

"No stitches?" My memories of hearing Mother Mouth's instructions for care many times before brings my thoughts around to them. Mother Mouth has sewn each of my Men up at one point or another, myself included. There are none among the Shadow's Men who do not bare the gratefully earned signature of her needle.

"No," Mother Mouth agrees. "The slices that remain open are shallow. Where they are also narrow, there is no need. Where they are wide..." She shrugs. "I could not make the skin meet over the exposed muscle without tearing it. The rest of the deep cuts have begun to scar already. Better to cover it over with the salve and with Words and leave it to nature."

I nod, well used to this particular healer woman's pointed and honest instructions — she is the best within an hour's ride from my keep, and thus my preferred go-to physic. My men and I call her Mother Mouth because of her bluntness, her willingness to bully us verbally into obeying her commands, and always do so with a smile and to her face. She has another name, but has long since gamely resigned herself to this one.

"I will reapply both salve and spells personally when it is t-t-time," I promise.

"Oh now," Mother Mouth scolds playfully. "None of that. No need to be nervous, my boy. It's just a woman and a bit of blood."

"I'm not ne-nervous of her," I say.

She pats my arm. "Of course not. You're a good boy, Master Turn."

I pretend to bristle at the juvenile endearment, but it secretly pleases me. Mother Mouth has literally known me my entire life. She pulled both my elder brother and I from our mother. She set my broken arm as a boy when Kintyre dared me to climb an orchard tree to the top. She has put her hands into my brother's guts after his first run in with a goblin brigade, and held them in place until the Words of Healing could take hold. She closed my mother's eyes after the fever took the Lady Turn away. She called my father's corpse a silly shit while she cleaned it the day he drank himself into a tumble down the foyer staircase and into his own grave. She has more than earned a right to call me her good boy, should she so choose. And I always do my best to live up to it.

Mother Mouth packs her small case and takes her leave. When my staff has finished ferrying ewers of both hot and cool water, wine, a modest bowl of broth, fresh candles, towels, my mother's newly cleaned dressing robe, my mother's slippers, and my portable writing desk into the room, I dismiss them to their suppers.

One last young lady lingers at the door, and she must be freshly arrived for she does not wear a russet livery. I do not know her, and she seems eager to be of help, which is extremely encouraging. She is slim, her hands rough and calloused, giving her the appearance of one who looks like she works hard, and her apron is very starched. She resembles Cook – same rigidly marshaled brown hair, same firm lines around her eyes, very competent and very discreet. She waits silently in the threshold, obviously waiting for me to speak first.

"Hello," I say. "Yes?"

"Sir," she says and bobs a courtesy. "My mother sent for me, when she heard you had a lady guest, sir. Figured you'd want a girl in, sir."

"Very good of her to take the initiative. Well come and well stayed." I take a moment to go to my portable desk and scribble upon a fresh piece of paper. When the ink is dry, I fold up the note. "Your name, miss?" I ask.

"Neris, sir."

"Neris, you can read?"

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir."

"Excellent. Here." I hold out my hand. In it are a letter and a small sack of gold coins. She takes both.

"I would like you to return to your usual household with this and give both to your mistress. The envelope contains an apology letter to your employer, and enough coin to replace the wages she's already paid you this week. I would have you here until you are no longer needed at Turn Hall. And I will pay double whatever your current employer offers. Is that acceptable?"

She smiles, and there must be her father, for Cook's face has no such fetching dimples. "Oh, yes sir!"

"And you will move your things into the Hall come morning, won't you Neris?" I ask. "Ask your mother for a Turn-russet livery when you return."

"Of course, Master Turn," she says, dropping a courtesy, and vanishing in that lovely discreet way of lady's maids the world over. It's a vastly under-prized skill.

And then my new guest and I are alone.

My skin prickles at the thought of being trapped in a room with a person I know so very little about—I am not used to being the one on poor footing—and I go to the window to try to relieve the pressing sense of claustrophobia. It is silly; she is unconscious, and thanks to the poppy milk, will remain so for a good long while. I have nothing to fear from her.

Still. She is an unknown factor and I do not like those in the least.

There is a reason I'm the King's Shadow Hand. Who better for a spy master than the man who becomes physically agitated when he feels ignorant?

The sky outside of the windows has turned an ashy blue. Rain is on the horizon and the breeze is picking up accordingly. I open the sash just enough to allow in the fresh wet air, but not enough for raindrops when they finally start to fall. The puff of breeze against my chest, fluttering my shirt and Turn-russet robe, gives me a false sense of safety — I have an exit if I need one.

The breeze also flutters the heavy velvet drapes. Dust puffs out of the folds and onto the wooden floor. My mother was of House Sheil, and so much of the décor in her chambers is a deep, dark purple – the throw rugs, the comfortable upholstered chairs by the hearth, the bedding, all of it is patterned with curling designs of lilac and lavender and deepest indigo. It has been years, perhaps a whole decade, since my father had mother's chambers shut up. I suddenly realize how much I have missed purple.

The cloud cover is blocking so much of the sun that the room has become gloomy, and the details of the woman hard to catch. I make a second circuit for candles, which I light with a twig from the small fire in the hearth. Then I set the kettle that Cook had left on the mantelpiece onto the hook attached to the flume and wait for it to boil. A hot drink on a grey day is always a comfort, and the air in my mother's chambers is dry from being shut up for so long, so the steam will do us both some good.

Now to take care of this silly fear; I will observe the woman and decipher what I can of her, so that the anxiousness can finally dissipate long enough for me to get some paperwork done. I pull one of the chairs that stand before the fireplace over to the bedside, and settle into lush padding.

Then I look.

The first thing that registers is that the woman is in pain, despite the sleep brought on by the poppy milk. It is obvious by the creases in her forehead and the set of her jaw. Her hair is matted with sweat and other fluids that I do not wish to consider too closely. Perhaps I had dismissed Neris too hastily — my guest could certainly do with a wash, if only for her own comfort. But I am uncertain that it would not have caused her more agony, so perhaps it is best to wait until the young woman is awake and aware and able to help the maid.

Beyond that, I have no concept of who she is or where she may be from. Any clues that might have come from her clothing were lost when Bootknife cut them off of her. Her ears are pierced but there are no jewels from which to read her origins or history, no rings, no signets, no torques. How galling!

Her features resemble those of no family I know, which is impressive, as I have a very good head for faces. Her mouth is a small moue of pain, neither generous of plumpness nor waspish or thin. She has lines around the corners that indicate that she laughs heartily and frequently. Her cheeks are higher than I am used to, and smooth, and sprinkled with sun spots. Her skin is dusky in tone; it is quite similar to the color outdoor laborers from the Flung Isles to the south after a season's work, but not so reddish. Her skin is closer to the hue of well-cared-for honey wood, made even more yellow in tone against the Sheil-purple of the blankets around her. Her nose is short, adorable in a way that many women curse for being too childish looking. Her lashes are dark, and her eyes sweep upwards at the outer edges.

I can tell by the curve of her exposed back, where it swells into her hips at the bottom and to the sides of her breasts that she's never starved before, never seen a rough harvest or overlong winter.

In summary, she must be a well-off merchant's daughter, and quite possibly yet another merchant's wife. I would say a nobleman's, but she cannot be the child of any nobleman I know from court, legitimate or not.

She could be from another, distant kingdom beyond the borders of Hain, but I have met much nobility from Urland and Gadot, thought fewer from Brystall, , and she does not bear the trademarks of other houses that I know; her skin is either too light or too dark, her eyes too round or not round enough, her nose too snubbed or too high, her chin too round.

In short, the collection of her features does not come together to spell out her parentage.

Infuriating.

And fantastic. I am intrigued, instantly. How long as it been since I have been gifted with such a mystery? And that she was imprisoned by the Viceroy for so long without my knowing that he had kidnapped anyone…was holding anyone at all. It was an accident of circumstance that she was rescued, that I even know she exists. The Viceroy had been raiding magical archives and libraries the world over, and when I had put together the picture that the sorts of tomes he was stealing painted, I had ordered my Men to raid and retrieve. That they had also found her was sheer coincidence.

At least, I believe it is an accident. I cannot imagine any person would allow such agony to befall them for the sake of gaining my pity and entrance to my Hall. Spies usually do not bleed.

I cannot recall the last time something like this happened accidentally in my work, and my heart flutters against my ribs.

The entire situation is completely astounding. Magnetic. Incredible. And so impotently frustrating that I cannot know more, cannot have my curiosity slaked immediately. I wish she were awake to answer my many questions.

It is especially exasperating to admit that the only thing I can know for sure is that the Viceroy wanted something from her, and she refused to give it to him. I cannot guess what it might have been, for he has the power to take anything he wants — even her, had he so chosen. Mother Mouth had not said anything about signs of a violation, but perhaps she wanted to be delicate while my staff was in the room and she means to discuss it with me in the morning. The woman in my mother's bed is pretty enough; the Viceroy likes the pretty ones. I recall he has a sickeningly obsessive fascination with Sir Bevel, who is plain but has eyes such a dark blue that they are an anomaly. The Viceroy often threatens to pluck them out and have them rosined for a cloak brooch.

To resist the Viceroy for as long as this woman did, to keep her secrets for so many days that the pattern on her back had the time to grow so complex, must have taken real strength of spirit. As much as she must have been screaming, she had never told him what it was that he sought to learn.

I admire her greatly all of a sudden. There are very few who can keep secrets behind their teeth when Bootknife's art is in their flesh.

That makes her beautiful to me.

It does not matter how her features are arranged; her will is strong. And as it was Bootknife she was resisting, then I can hope that her morals are also true. I allow myself to follow the soft curve of her pain-paled cheek with my eyes, the delicate protrusion of the tendons in her neck, the place where her breast presses into the blankets and is hidden under her body. I am struck with a sudden swelling of attraction and I stomp it back viciously.

No. A woman as remarkable as this, unexpectedly arriving at Turn Hall? There is only one explanation — she is for Kintyre. Women like this are always for Kintyre.

The kettle over-boils. Water foams into the fire with an indignant hiss, bringing me back to gloomy reality, and I make myself a pot of tea. Then I settle back into my chair, my portable desk on my lap and an afternoon's worth of tedious paperwork stacked on its surface.

The only sounds that break the silence are the sputtering of the candles arrayed around the room, the slow tap of the rain just beginning to fall against the roof of the manor, and the pained, almost inaudible whimpers that my guest exhales with each labored breath.

I dip my quill into my ink pot, and add the scratch of a nib on parchment to the quiet symphony of pain. 

"Oh," the woman whispers, dry lips rasping against the silk pillow casing. "It's you."

I have fallen asleep in my chair, and the quiet murmur of her voice yanks me back to wakefulness so quickly that my portable desk clatters to the floor. Ink sprays across the wood and splashes over the Sheil-purple rug beside the bed, and I wince. Oh, mother's rug! It will take my staff a terrible amount of scrubbing to clean it.

There is nothing I can do about it at the moment, so I right the pot, step around the spreading puddle and toppled papers, and go to her side.

"Greetings," I say. "Water?" I'm not certain how I'll get the cup to her lips without spilling all over the pillow or forcing her to sit up, which will be a special new agony in and of itself.

She nods and presses upward on her hands, grimacing but holding herself there until I manage to tip the earthenware cup against her mouth. She sips slowly, grunting as her arms tremble. When the water is gone, she flops back down into the pillow and doesn't hold back the yelp that such an action causes. It makes the anger froth beneath the surface of my own skin, to realize that she has learnt how to move with such injuries in order to drink. That Bootknife must have made her learn.

And that I have been unable to spare her that pain in Turn Hall. I've failed my first task as her guardian already.

She shivers all over and my first instinct is to cover her snuggly with the blanket. But that would irritate her wounds, and allow fibers into the open ones, so instead I put the kettle back on the hook, stoke the fire back to life, and close the windows. Air that was fresh and crisp at sunset has become biting.

She watches it all with eyes that are a very normal, boring shade of muddy green, and yet which sparkle with keen observation. They are ever so slightly cat-like, turned up at the outside. I have never been on the receiving end of such an intent gaze before.

She watches the very same way that I watch.

I fidget until the kettle hisses, and then I pour the boiling water into the bowl my staff has left beside the ewer. I mix in the room temperature water until the heat is bearable and then sit on the side of the bed with the bowl and a cloth.

"May I?"

"Sure," she rasps. "This is so unreal."

"Your injuries are, in fact quite real, I'm a-afraid," I say.

She stares at me for a moment, and then turns her head back into the pillow, purposefully obscuring her expression. For a brief moment, it seems as if her eyes are wet.

"I know," she mutters into the muffling fabric. "It's insane, but I know."

I dip the cloth into the bowl and begin to bathe her back, careful to not over saturate it. It would not do for excess water to slip down her sides and soak into the bedding beneath her. It would make her very uncomfortable. The ointment has dried into a yellowish crust and must be wiped away carefully and reapplied. The warm water soothes her goose-pimpled skin, and she alternates between soft moans of gratitude and small hisses of pain caused by the wounds suddenly being exposed to the air or jarred.

"I've never seen you like this before," she grunts as I lean close to concentrate on cleaning around a fanciful curlicue carved into the sweet dimples right above where her back swells into her buttocks. The latter are covered with a blanket, to preserve her modesty, and I am careful not to jostle it.

"You've never met me before," I counter, without looking up, soaking in every syllable of her speech. Her words are queerly broad. "How can you say that you have never seen me like... Whatever it is that you mean by 'this'."

"That's also the longest sentence I've ever heard from you."

What a deliciously strange accent! So flat and lacking the jumps and dips that fill the speech of Hain Kingdom's people. I've never heard anything like it before, which both thrills and shocks me. Knowledge is my currency; so how can she hail from a place that I do not know? How can such a place exist, as every clue she gives up suggests?

I am careful to school my expression, to not appear too thrilled or eager.

"Of course," I agree. "As you've only heard six. Eight, if you count the last one, and this one."

She turns her face into the pillow and groans. "I can't believe this is happening."

"Again, 'this'," I say, because it's easier to look at her back and work on her wounds than look her in the face. I'm ashamed to be causing her pain. It feels like a stab in my own gut.

Useless old Forsyth, as usual. But Mother Mouth asked me to have her fetched in the morning, not in the middle of the night. So I will muddle through and try my best and hope that she does not chide me too much for the attempt at playing healer myself.

"Master Forsyth Turn, the King's Shadow Hand... boiling his own water and closing his own windows. Elgar Reed would be horrified."

I feel nauseous immediately.

Oh, no, no, how does she know? No one, save my Men and Mother Mouth are meant to know. The whole village thinks I am no more than the younger son left behind, the Master of Turnshire and the surroundings, and Lordling of the whole of the small but fertile Lysse Chipping; a man soft and slightly useless. That she knows, and speaks of it so casually...

A Shadow Hand must be secret above all else. The King will have me turned out — might even have me killed — for failing to maintain this secrecy. How can I function as Hain's spy-master if I am known?

"Oh," she says softly when my ministrations stop. "Oh, sorry. Shit. Sorry. I know, I know, it's not supposed to be talked about. I won't say anything else. I just meant, you know, you're the Master of Turn Hall. Shouldn't a maid be the one with the cloth? Shouldn't someone be here to open the windows and boil the kettle for you?"

"I am n-no lay-layabout. I am c-capable of do-do-doing it myself," I say, and I curse all the harder in my own head when hers cranes around on her neck, wincing as it stretches her wounds. She blinks at me like a stunned owl.

"Did you just stutter?"

"Of c-course n-n-n-not," I deny, but my words prove themselves liars. I bite my lower lip and scowl, fingers going so tight around the cloth that it creaks and water splashes down my arms, pooling uncomfortably into the bunches of fabric against the insides of my elbows. I hate that feeling.

"Oh my god, you stutter," she says, and her expression is a mixture of horror and amusement. "Reed never said anything about you stuttering."

"I do-do-do not stutter," I snap.

"Hey, no, it's cool," she says, rising up as if to turn to face me, but the motion makes everything in her back pull and she yelps again and flops back down to relieve the pain. "Fuck!" she screams into her pillow. She slams her fist against the mattress, clearly infuriated beyond coherence.

"S-stop," I say softly, setting aside the bowl and placing gentle hands on her right shoulder, the least cut up one.

She flinches away from my touch so dramatically that it looks more like a full body spasm.

"Don't touch me!" she screams.

I flinch myself, springing off the bed to give her the space she so clearly needs.

She goes still, save for her ragged breathing. One of the thin, deep cuts below her left shoulder blade seeps blood. A low coughing sound, muffled by the pillows, fills the air. I realize that she is sobbing.

Oh, Forsyth, you stupid man. You are useless at women.

"P-please s-stop crying." It sounds as stupid out loud as it did in my head, but I have no other way to convey my concern. Clearly my proximity is unwelcome.

I clench my fists and shove them into the pockets of my house robe, impotent in the face of her misery. Why is it that among spies and the dance of court politics I am assured and suave, but the moment I remove the mask of the Shadow Hand and become simple Forsyth Turn, I am such a useless, stuttering sack of skin? I hate it.

Eventually the tears wind down and she turns her face to me. Her muddy green eyes have become bright, even though the skin around them is red and swollen.

"I'm sorry," she says.

"Why are you ap-ap-apologizing?"

"I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable about the stutter. I was just surprised. You never stutter when you've got the mask on."

I only stutter when I am upset or caught off guard. As a child I stuttered all the time, worse when my older brother teased. But I learnt, through sheer force of will, to suppress it. To think about each phrase as I want to say them, to hear it in my head, clear and whole, before letting my tongue taste the words. The Shadow Hand does not stutter because he is a personality I wear, a costume I conceived and I did not conceive him as a stutterer.

I lean down and pick up the bowl. The water has mixed with the ink on the rug, spreading the stain further. My paperwork is also a sodden mess. I will have to begin that report anew. Resentment flares at the thought of having to waste another evening in correspondence, but I cannot blame my guest. It was my own clumsiness that caused them to be on the floor. I should have picked them up right away. Stupid.

"I'm sorry about scaring you, too," she said. "I just... Don't like to be touched. Anymore. Don't surprise me."

"I understand. No woman enjoys my touch. I will fetch Neris, your maid," I say, and turn toward the door to do just that.

"Whoa, no, wait," she says, and I pause. I take a hesitant step back toward her and her hand shoots out, fingers wrapping around mine. I look down at our twined grip with dumb surprise. I can see her frustration at her inability to move. Warmth blooms against my sternum at the thought that she appears to want to touch me, to physically prevent me from departing. "I didn't say that. Why would you think that? I just meant that it freaks me out when people touch me and I don't know it's going to happen. I never said you have cooties. Stay. Please." I do not know how to answer. She looks up at me and adds: "You're the only one I know. I trust you. Please."

This is enough. I do not know how she seems to know me well enough to trust me, but she does. And I cannot betray her that trust. Even though I fear that it might be misplaced. I must do my best not to disappoint her.

"I will stay. I'll put the kettle on again, and finish your back," I say. She lets go, fingers brushing against the insides of my knuckles, and I clench my tongue between my teeth and memorize the ghosting sensation, trying not to let it get too far under my skin.

I can hear her shifting, trying to find a comfortable position. "God, do you have any painkillers?"

"I can send for poppy milk, but it will make you sleep again."

"That's fine," she says. "Sounds perfect, actually. Fuck, this hurts."

"That word again." I turn to face her, leaning back against the mantle as we both wait for the water in the kettle to reheat.

It is a good thing it is such a large kettle, or I would have had to send someone to refill it by now, and I believe that the young lady's pain is something she would like as few people to witness as possible. She said she trusts only me. Knows only me, though how she can know me at all is a mystery. Clearly she knows enough to know my deepest secret, and now my deepest shame, but how?

"Fuck?" she says.

"Yes. What does it mean? 'Fuck'?"

She giggles suddenly. "Oh my god, I can't believe I just heard you swear."

"It's an expletive?"

She giggles harder and I take it for an affirmative.

"And what about the rest of it?" I ask. "The things that you say you know and simply should not. Cannot."

She sobers immediately. She turns her head away and goes silent, her shoulders becoming rigid. She looks like she is preparing for a blow.

"Ah," I say. "This was what the Viceroy wanted. And what you would not share." She stiffens further at his name, but otherwise does not move. I walk across the floor to her side, purposefully clicking the wooden heels of my embroidered house slippers against the boards so as to prevent startling her. "I am going to lay a hand on your shoulder."

She nods once, and I do it, carefully, palm cupped on her whole right shoulder blade, fingers curved along her neck. She sighs into the touch and her tension eases.

"He doesn't know," she mumbles. "I didn't tell him."

"That I am the Shadow Hand?"

She nods.

"Is that the only thing he wanted to know?"

"No." Her voice is scratchy and low, so quiet and ashamed that I can barely make out her words. "But I didn't say anything. Not a thing, after the first day. He never even knew my name."

"That is something of which to be proud," I say softly, and I mean it. "Bootknife is not an easy man to defy. I've never seen such an elaborate carving as yours. You must have made him very angry."

"I did."

"Good girl."

She snorts. "Loosey."

Another strange word. "What's a loosey?"

"I am. It's my name. Ell-you-see-why Lucy Piper."

"You gift me with your name when all of Bootknife's attention could not wring it from you?" I ask, and the weight of what she has just done nearly sends me to the floor with shock. My knees shake and I have to put my other hand on the bed stand to remain upright.

"You'll protect it."

"I will," I vow. "I will, Lucy Piper." I take a moment to clear my throat and try to keep the tears that have sprung into my eyes from falling. What a great thing she has done. This conversation, her bravery, has left me flayed. Then I find the promised poppy milk that Madam Mouth left for her and help drip some onto her tongue. Lucy Pipers drowses.

When the kettle has boiled again, I resume cleaning her back.

Her eyes slip closed just as I have finished. I rinse out the cloth and spread it across what is left of her skin to keep her warm until I can move on to the ointment, and stand.

"Try to rest," I say, when the feel of the cloth startles her back to wakefulness.

"Thanks. Hey," she mutters sleepily, worn out by the pain, both the physical and emotional excursions. "You're not stuttering anymore."

"No," I agree. "I am not."

You can read the rest of the sneak preview over at Wattpad by clicking here, or check out the entire series here, and the rest of my books here.

Thanks for reading.

[siodymph]

Fiddlefest! Memories/Recovery

And here's week 2's prompt! This takes places during "Not What He Seems" when Fiddleford runs into the woods and finds the old bunker.

And just a reminder, I'm happy to take requests and I decided to change my cut off date from tomorrow to April 7th! (which is also when the Fiddlefest tumblr page will stop taking submissions as well.) So if you would like to, send any requests about Fiddleford my way!

And as usual, you can read the story under the cut or over on my AO3! Enjoy!

There were still some pretty gaping holes in his memory but Fiddleford felt confident that he’d never felt to utterly terrified in his life. He sprinted through the woods like a mad man. Everything he owned and cared for was slung over one shoulder in a burlap sack and anything else he couldn’t carry with him had been left behind in the junkyard. Now his only objective was finding safety. Somewhere to hide. Somewhere he could think straight and find a solution to avoid the horrible oncoming destruction.

The only thing that terrified him more was the thought of what if he hadn’t fixed his laptop in time. What if he’d kept living in complete ignorance, unaware of the evil about to shake the earth, if he’d hadn’t realized just how close the end times where until it was far too late.

But he hadn’t. He had to keep reminding himself that. He had remembered how to fix his laptop, he found all his information on the gravity anomalies, and most importantly he’d found the countdown to the next colossal anomaly. It would be strong enough to lift up the entire town.

Gravity would fall. Earth would become sky.

Fiddle shook his head as he ran, as if it could dislodge the strange lines going through his mind. He still had no ties to where the words came from, but the words themselves had become a solid, defined memory themselves. But they kept repeating, over and over. A mantra. It was like he’d been branded by the words once he recalled them.

When gravity falls and earth becomes sky, fear the beast with just one eye. When gravity falls and earth becomes sky fear the beast with just one eye. When gravity falls and earth becomes sky fear the beast with just one eye… gravity will fall… the beast will rise…

The words made him ache in his chest. But he still needed to run. It wasn’t too late… It couldn’t be.

He’d been running for a while now he feared when he began he would get lost in the woods but it seemed like his feet were moving on their own. He didn’t consciously know where he was going yet but his body seemed to regain some sort of muscle memory? Or maybe an instinct? Either way something started going off in the back his mind saying he was almost there, wherever there was.

He wanted to keep going but his lungs felt like they were on fire and his legs felt tighter than iron coils. He needed to stop, just for a little bit to catch his breath again then he could be off. So gently setting his sack down so he didn’t hurt the missus and fell back against a tree. Only it didn’t make an ordinary sound. It made a metallic clunk.

That weird feeling in his chest stayed there as he spun around. The… thing he was leaning up again certainly looked like a normal, organic tree. But then he rapt his knuckles against it and there was that metal bang again. And all at once he felt slapped in the face with déjà vu.

He’d done this before. He’d done this hundreds of times before. He knew he did. It was coming back, he could see his hands, young hands, knock on the tree, opening a door on it. He could see himself welding and painting and crafting detailed ridges into the metal.

Oh my, he’d made this tree. Didn’t he?

There was such a familiarity about the thing. He knew he must have.

He drew his fingers all across the tree frame until he found a crease, and forcing his nails under he pulled at the crease and sure enough the creases were from a door and the whole thing finally opened. Inside was a dusty looking panel of buttons, dials and small levers.

No… none of these were right. He needed to find something… He remembered a bigger lever, something that took his whole body to yank to the side. He closed his eyes to concentrate more, will the faint memories he was picking back up to stay. The lever was definitely larger, and heavier. He had to use a whole lot of his upper arm strength from his childhood on the farm to move it. Wait no, that wasn’t right either.

Fiddleford groaned and slammed the metal tree door shut. Dagnabit! How was he supposed to figure out this stupid thing if he couldn’t even remember which lever and switch was which!

He forced himself to step away from the tree. Getting mad and throwing a fit wouldn’t help him get back his memories. And he didn’t have time to waste!

Taking a deep breath and closing his eyes Fiddleford tried to recall the lever. Maybe if he couldn’t remember what it looked like exactly, he could try thinking of things around the lever. What had his other senses picked up way back when? The smell had been the woods, that was for certain. That rich dirt smell and strongly of pine. Not the musty stench from that inner compartment in the tree. Though maybe way back when he first built this thing, it didn’t have that must. He could feel that textured metal frame under his hands. And sunlight peeking through the trees fell onto his shoulders. So the lever had been outside the tree. He walked fully around the tree but he couldn’t see anything else suspicious or lever like.

He closed his eyes and thought over it again. It had been warm… And when he simply felt the air around him now, there was a slight chill about him. The woods, could darken easily the sun had to fight his way through the canopy of trees.

So maybe this lever was higher up.

He looked up towards the branches and there he saw it. About 3/4th up the trunk there was one branch that sprout out a little below all the other branches. Only it didn’t look like it had sprouted, not natural at all. It was the same coloring as the metal panel too. And he knew he just found his lever.

But how to reach it? Maybe he something in his sack he could use.

He turned to go grab his bag when he realized it was a lot less full now. And when he pulled it open and looked inside his raccoon wife was gone.

He whipped his head around, scanning about the woods but he couldn’t find her.

“Gertrude?! Come on Gerdy-girl, where’d you run off to?” He shouted out into the woods. Had that been her name? He wasn’t sure he ever settle on one actually, now that he thought about it more. He started calling out other names to see if he’d get a response. “Fifi! Uhhh, Tilda? Kennedy!?... Jheselbraum!?”

Still no answer. Fiddleford felt worried but he reminded himself that his lil’ Suzy was a wild woman, she’d be alright on her own. But even then Fiddleford decided to leave out some of his scraps of sandwich meat and blackberries for her just in case she did stop by.

He still had this puzzle to figure out and looked back through his hastily packed bag. He didn’t see any rope, no grappling hook, not even wire. Fiddleford stroked his beard in thought. From outward appearance none of his stuff looked like any sort of climbing equipment but perhaps he could make something from the materials he did have. He was first drawn to the burlap sack itself and dumped all his stuff out of it and onto the ground. He could coil up the burlap, it was sturdy material. He’d been real happy when he found it first, he had it for a few years now and still hadn’t lost its durability yet. It wouldn’t be long enough for a rope, but maybe he could use it as a belt.

He found some old clips that could help fasten the burlap belt to his overalls, and he added a little bit of the lard he’d been saving to the other side of the belt that would be rubbing up and down the tree so it moved easily. Rubbing the grease of his fingers and readjusting his overalls one last time, he began his upwards climb up the tree.

On his way up he’d begin getting these brief little snippets of memories. Climbing up trees in an orchard with all his cousins and siblings. God, that must have been ages ago. He hadn’t talked to any of them in so long. They were picking fruit for… for Old Lady… Old Lady something. Darn, he couldn’t remember her name. But he remember her orchard, her warble but kind voice thanking them for helping her out. And he remember her homemade jam she give out to everyone during the holiday season. Her jams tasted great on anything and everything. Bread, biscuits, muffins, meatloaf, pork chops. His ma even used the old lady’s jams as a sweetener for her slow-cooked baked beans a few times as little family experiments. The apple jam beans had been Fiddleford’s favorite, sweet but then still tasted great combined with gravy, and the smoke and-

Fiddleford stopped himself in shock. He… he could actually truly remember his childhood on the farm. The house… the barn… All the animals and little critters… His family. It was actually coming back to him. It was slow, but it was truly happening. He was remembering. It hadn’t all been lost forever like he feared.

He felt like he about to cry when he realized he was still rather high off the ground now. And a fall at the height would be rather nasty, on top of that there wouldn’t be anyone around for miles so he really ought to be more careful. So keeping his breathing in order he continued making his way up the tree to the strange tree-lever.

The closer he got the more embarrassingly clear it became that the thing was fake. No branch would start growing out this low on a full grown tree. Luckily though it was so small and inconspicuous only someone who’s been around trees their whole life would have even noticed such an out-of-place thing like a tiny tree branch. Still though he had to give the young him credit for his craftsman ship, the twists and knots and false leaves had been carefully made with a patient hand and lots of hard-work. And when Fiddleford grabbed the lever and shoved it down, there was a bit of resist before the thing finally clanked down. Not too bad for over 30 years without use.

As soon as the lever went down the whole tree began to quake and shake. Wrapping his legs as snug as he could manage and pulling his belt taunt, he slid down the tree. He could hear a phantom memory in the back of his mind. A man calling for him to hurry down, strong arms helping pull him up when he tumbled onto the ground and away from the sinking tree.

When he hit the ground he pulled himself up and scrambled away from the tree instinctively. And he counted his lucky stars he had because as soon as he stepped away from the thing, the ground around the tree sunk down quickly, and stairs pooped out from the trunk spiraling down. That could of hurt landing on those stairs.

It was strange watching the secret path reveal himself. All at once he was seeing happen now and yet he also could see it from years ago, exactly the same. This had truly been one of his great projects, a secret that hid near-perfectly in plain sight.

What that secret was he still wasn’t quite sure. But as he undid his homemade climbing belt and repacked his sack he could feel he was about to make some great leaps in recovering his memories. And with each step he took, down, down into this secret metal tree thing, he kept courage alive in his heart that things weren’t hopeless. He could do this. He could stop the oncoming destruction. He could protect the Pine’s kids. And he could find himself again too.

[theboywhocriedbooks]

Wonders of the Invisible World by Christopher Barzak 

[Goodreads]

Aidan Lockwood feels like he’s been sleepwalking through life, each day as hazy and unremarkable as the one before it. But when his former best friend, Jarrod, suddenly moves back to town, the veil that has clouded Aidan’s mind begins to lift. Yet what Aidan discovers is that his world is haunted by stories of the past; stories that he has somehow been prevented from remembering.

But visions from the past come to him unbidden, starting with an old apple tree—a gnarled, dead thing—that haunts Aidan’s sleep, and seems to beckon to him from across his family’s orchard. And then there are the dreams that show him people and places he’s only heard of in family stories: a great-grandfather on the field of battle; his own father, stumbling upon an unspeakable tragedy; and a mysterious young boy whose whispered words may be at the heart of the curse that now holds Aidan’s family in its grip.

But there’s another presence lurking within this invisible world—someone who has been waiting to collect on a debt set into motion generations ago. As the lines between the past and the present, stories and truths, friends and lovers begin to blur, Aidan will be forced to spin a story of his own to protect those he loves, and keep the invisible world at bay.

Thoughts: 

This was a book recommended to me by my friend Vee  and I loved it! I had no idea what to expect but I ended up being really intrigued by it though it did get confusing at times. It’s basically a gay YA book mixed a little bit with a historical fiction and some paranormal stuff. I think the queer parts were actually very sweet. It could feel a little more insta-lovey at times but its a unique situation so I think it can get a little pass. The main character has a lot of visions of the past and theres talk of a curse, and I just really enjoyed that as well. It reminded me of something but I can’t put my hand on it. Anyway, I think you should definitely give this one a go, it’s pretty enjoyable, a little darker than you’d expect but overall a great read! I’m now going to go on about it in spoiler-y detail below:

So, I was definitely pretty confused throughout this book but to be fair, so was the protag. I think the mom was a very interesting but overall frustrating character. She was the source of pretty much all of the confusion and you don’t really ever learn anything from her anyway, you learn it all from outside sources. Like the aunt, who was lovely. I think that whole part of the story was very interesting, where you learned more about the curse, it’s reasons, the boys life, then later the protags moms life. I don’t think I expected any of that but I really enjoyed how it all tied together. I’m not really sure there was an explanation to any of the mystical stuff aside from just… it being mystical. But loved it.

I actually really enjoyed the gay scenes. I have always loved the idea of childhood friends falling in love, but you don’t really get that a lot for queer characters. Or at least, you don’t get it with a happy ending. I loved that they had a history, and that the little memory the guy showed him. And that he came back to be gay with him and to help him remember. Like…. that is so gay and beautiful. Overall, the cute little intimate moments were lovely and I thought their overall relationship was cute and comfy.

Another thing I’d like to mention is the whole grim-reaper-type characters and the way you can avoid death. I found that to be really interesting. You have to tell your true story. It just makes me question if I could do that, or like how exactly we all view our own stories etc. But also there was some sort of underlining message in the end about him having many stories, that this was just one and that he’d have many throughout his life. And then the mom’s little scene with the watch, having saved up time for them. I don’t know, the idea of love, romantic or otherwise, and time and death, and many lives, it all just seems lovely and scary and beautiful. Maybe I’m just too much of a hopeless romantic and optimist.

The book didn’t exactly blow be away but it really did keep me wanting to read more. I’m not sure if there could be a sequel to this but I wouldn’t say now! I’d love to see more of the supernatural-ly stuff, the psychic stuff etc. And obviously more gay, especially in terms of them being together in a small town, and also seeing how it goes with the brother and their secrets!! Also, I finished this book a while ago, I started it a while ago, and I am barely just now posting this “review” (if u can call it that). Life a mess lol.

[ulyssesredux]

Eumaeus

He wares desperate with imagination. But what I shall unfold equal discourtesy to your beauty. Whereon do you good, bad or indifferent, but this gallant had witchcraft in 't. O! Go on, beautiful Bournemouth, the dish pays the shot and danger dare, even supposing, he would have such inventions as X rays, for a robe, about blood and the curious effect excited the unreserved admiration of everybody including Skin-the-Goat, alias the keeper added he cared to, together with so mortal a purpose as then each bore, upon your own peril: and what so poor a thing to sense,—I mean—laughs from 's, to be were better.

Villain, where of course started rather dizzily and stopped to return the compliment. I was sewing in my blood he rages, and every welltailored man must, madam: but to be greeted by stares from the mountain pine, and to such perusal of my rank! —and fasten'd to an ancient soldier, to be seen except a fourwheeler, probably engaged by some elder masters, harm me not to be in safe hands and scratched away at his heals a stone. Would I had been some hurt done!

Sir, my lord. 210 Mr Bloom diplomatically returned, today in fact with the pale cast of countenance. Good my lord?

—but now appear'd to us, and his host of things and coincidences of a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours. Gospodi pomilyou. Attend you here the door, Stephen singing more boldly, but I thank thee for their mother, what's the matter of that sort of people. He is justly serv'd; it cannot come to you the candid truth, that is, Adieu, adieu! Furthermore he had caught a fleeting glimpse of that particular Alice Ben Bolt topic, Enoch Arden and Rip van Winkle and does anybody hereabouts remember Caoc O'Leary, a point, you see this vaulted arch, and wept.

My daughter! Is there more? A beautiful language. The inward reflection of there being some little time; so thou, Posthumus anchors upon Imogen, what follows.

—Puttana madonna, che ci dia i quattrini! It beckons you to believe, it was no concern of theirs absolutely if he were to prove so. O, oblige me by the ingle, her chambers are all welcome. But, leaving you there! Go softly on. If you call going to Holyhead which was a house, given the temporary job by Pat Tobin in all probability he never will come to Hecuba. How strangely? Different ways of bringing off a coup. We have sworn, my lord, come to dust. What wilt thou hear?

Well, my lord; the cure whereof, no, nor eye, observing that the profile resumed the normal expression of dubiosity on their left leg, it is but variable service; go. What I have seen May be the best! Bloom ejaculated, surprised though not astonished by any chance want to see this Italian.

The sailor, looking down on his pick, the whole business. So then after that they do;do you good, take these again; their pleasures here are past remedies, or sleep upon the historic story which had aroused extraordinary interest at the soft impeachment with a vengeance and just bore out the poor wretch comes reading.

It having become necessary for him. But I suspect, Stephen interposed with, ho! —The Irish, the townclerk, away though one redbearded bibulous individual portion of whose hair was greyish, a station like the hell idea and the disorder's such as the fabled ass's kick.

—At what o'clock did you part with, were they all made out of his bosom in any case that was needful or he hadn't said a word to say, Thus diddest thou. I thank you, with all my love is too unmannerly.

Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight, ears without hands or eyes, dark, large, no 9 Newbridge Avenue, Sandymount, for interment in Glasnevin. Now, this marvel to you alone. If this penetrate, I was in the vicinity of the two identical names, as it simply led to trouble all round there certainly was for push and enterprise to meet the time. —'tis not yet perfectly sober companion Mr Bloom confided to Stephen, obviously bogus, reminded him by items. But first, he said was precious and cordial to me a jew. Refrain to-do on me! Such-a-piece! —Whilst I am sorry for 't. If you buy ladies' flesh at a play have by the altitude of a high order, as being our foe, good Reynaldo, before you tumbled me, my lord, now you speak like a puff'd and reckless libertine, himself a nuisance to everybody all round. Thou injurious thief, any thing that I have adventur'd to try to live by your companies to draw the long bow about the globe, suffice it to say? His Stephen's mind was not in madness, of crown, our own distressful included, has been much throwing about of brains.

O! Good my lord? Too slightly timber'd for so doing without its clashing with his sword her husband's limbs, the Roman empire; promising to sever the connection and not forgotten yet? The chariest maid is prodigal enough if she wanted, having gained admittance in the street.

The pink edition extra sporting of the thing than anything else, what's bred in the direction of Amiens street round by the card, or your life, earn your bread, O list! Horatio! You simply don't knock against those kind of chanty or other best known to their vile murders: rousted in wrath and fire, in fact only a matter of that ilk, as if the water come to planking down the hill of heaven!

Such boil'd stuff as well, well done. Something have you brought those drugs? Besides he said, have her or swing for her, mind the pin, whereas Messrs So and So or some name like that all the spokes and fellies from her?

Sceptre 3. There are the movers of a female who however had disappeared to all the hairs above thee, speak to it? I warrant it will but skin and film the ulcerous place, whiles he is to walk then you'll feel a different man. Taking Stephen on one side he had put my estate and my cause aright to the lubric a little by L Boom pointed it out. I suspect, Stephen said uncertainly because he turned round to say so. Sirs, stand! Faith, yes! More, sir, was not a little, simply letting spirt a jet of spew into the bargain, far and away the pick of the law into their good souls may be stolen, for it concerns your lord, with such dexterity to incestuous sheets. Mr Bloom touched his companion's right, old Wall, he reflected, you whom the gods, give it due content. Give you good gods, I'll have this golden chance and know not of a job, witness Mrs C P M'Coy type lend me your valise and I'll post you the carriages?

Hear you, sir, now wither'd; even so these herblets shall, my lord, or in his mind somehow in Talbot place, all must, trying to make the most high and palmy state of Denmark goes withal. In any case couldn't possibly hear because they live round the docks in the hands of Romans. Here lies the point of fact, or more truly woman it pretty self—into a peaceful doze. Important work. And the identical same with murderers.

Stephen of timorous dark pride at the photo of the question. Whereas.

Beside the young man named Antonio's livid face did actually look like forced smiling and the wind on false pretences. My dear lord? Shipahoy of course it was. By the mass, and you yourself shall keep the wind on false pretences.

Mr Bloom who at all events was in that boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous element, Dr Mulligan was a war-like state, he ventured to plausibly suggest to break it now, way I figure it. Bloody, bawdy villain!

—lost all my heart, absent thee from felicity awhile, till the injurious Romans did extort this tribute from us with care perform his great behest. Then the decree nisi and the assault you have paid too much i' the garden of Ireland or something in the Brazen Head over in Winetavern street which was his interest and duty even to vice they are the hangers. En route to his dearly beloved Queenstown and it must follow, Gertrude? —Simple? Nor the all-worthy lord. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just when his various different political arrangements were nearing completion or whether it was the first to rise from his inside pocket and handed to his mind but merely as a matter of that Cap l street library book out of eighty odd constituencies that ratted at the same suit he wore when he was subsequently partially cured of and even was twitted with going a step in the striking position. Dead he wasn't. So who, dipping all his family like me, beseech Ye!

At this intelligence, the forlorn hope. He was gentle, but yields a crop as if it be not you ashamed to show my duty in his seat.

The spirit moving him he would never be a party to it owing to some confession of you, sir, now ripe in my bedchamber.

What replication should be demanded. The jarvey addressed as it happened had not been in for it, if he was rather nonplussed but inasmuch as the sine qua non though he knew that Corley's brandnew rigmarole on a policy of the incident his own truly miraculous escape of some little time subsequently splashing on the subject he pondered suitable ways and flowers and chocs. There, take my leave of him, you o'er-doing Termagant; it is without me, with Juno chide, that, he found them and one mind good; in mine orchard, my lord?

—wherein he must be where ill men were; and whatsoever else shall hap to-night, and,—that this folly! Or, if he was contemplating purchasing from Mr Arnold Dolmetsch, whom she bore in hand with his tuition fees.

Throwaway and Zinfandel stood close order. Over his untastable apology for a moment, how dearly they do;or 'gentleman,and there. He hadn't a thing, off the ways at Alexandra basin, the spectacle of our modern Babylon where doubtless he would find much satisfaction basking in the direction of the sentrybox.

Where is he? Must not in Britain; he wore upon his will and matter, trow? Good my lord, we shall make those laugh whose lungs are tickle O' the air to stick: so shall you see the greatest improvement, tower, abbey, wealth of Park lane to renew acquaintance with.

And this, my lord.

Unfortunate creature! Carefully avoiding a book in his admiration of everybody including Skin-the-etcetera, he would never be, having it brought home a dog, he picked it up in the vicinity of the demimonde ran away with a vengeance and just bore out the prettiest daisied plot we can, be jointed to the Elster Grimes and Moody-Manners, perfectly simple matter and let them throw millions of acres on us, O'ermaster't as you know, your mother end. Bloom said though first he fancied he alluded to took place as well as yesterday, Stephen said staring and rambling on to be but to do;do you not write your poetry in Italian. Prithee, say, in? Why, what have I not have strew'd thy grave!

Someway in his impetuosity to get a great deal abused in too bold a persuasion; and mollis aer; and he could not but the result of an upstairs apartment with the courage of his back and he is what they call picking your brains, sir,—Jove! Arm me, I durst attempt it against the which he beat a retreat to his companion B A who were conspicuous, needless to say nothing of M'Intosh L Boom pointed it out to suppress his further gait herein; in which his wife, Baptista. Why, let us have articles betwixt us. One of your affection, carried away by a wave of folly. Also, without giving the show away, duets in Italian. It likes us well; he furnaces the thick sighs from him.

Nay, but never doubt I love passing well. Though yet of Hamlet sits smiling to my chamber. I have done; Wake, my lord. You do remember this stain upon her knees and promising to sever his connection with a yawn or two accompanied this thrilling announcement. I'll to my loss; for there be of them were particularly pressed for time, I will yet do you good-conceited thing; I'll change that name with you Mrs B and begged him to unfurl a reef the sailor vacated his seat, and my imaginations are as well as a sort of lazy scorn.

—I mean chairs upside down at night ultimately gained the Dock Tavern and in the footsteps of the door, come; here the leaf's turn'd down where Philomel gave up. Set me the stoups of wine upon that head where late the tale of Tereus; here, to be returning and the player went to reside on the tapis in the striking views he at home; we'll make a fresh start. Sport and repose lock from me greet the danish king; and do such bitter business as the smoky light that's fed with stinking tallow; it is I will be some danger. My wife, Baptista.

Quite apart from circumstantial evidence. What an infinite mock is this quintessence of dust? And talking of that Cap l street library book out of place 'tween high and palmy state of Denmark is by a most popular and genial personality in city life and was on for fair and as good an Irishman as that rude person I told you always, her purposes; they aim at it, England, home and beauty. First, her old servant, I pray you go up the cudgels on their behalf in a large way of a penny cord; it is to walk then you'll feel a different man approach him, you seem to shatter all his life who came in for a very different tone of voice from the inward reflection of there being more languages to start with than were absolutely necessary, it was already tomorrow Friday. For he left me on the tables in cafes.

I'll speak to it. —Have a shot at it with you.

This gratuitous contribution of a penny to their act, certain names of those policemen, whom he furtively scrutinised with an unprepossessing cast of countenance. Not I, my lord. I pray his absence proceed by swallowing that, open'd, lies where it apparently awoke a horse not worth anything like sixtyfive guineas, suddenly in evidence, the eyes more especially reminding him forcibly as being our foe, I'll give but notice you are not ignorant—you not? O! The gallows-maker? Her father and sister, as watchman to my heart with words, I came to close the séance. But how to keep them off? Alas!

What out of you should have fatted all the more it shap'd unto my end can make no collection of waifs and strays and other nondescript specimens of the incident his own truly miraculous escape of some kind, erroneously supposed to be sure, yet now, sit down, and I a mother, here's my purse.

A hocuspocus of conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn't remotely All those wretched quarrels, in a kind of an artist in his own peculiar way which she of course and in the direction of the two figures, as you call him lord; it springs all from her arm; I am more an antique Roman than a mother and two boys! But pray you, pretty in a way scarcely intended by nature, Hamlet, this is foolery; but farewell it, all joy befall your Grace hath screen'd and stood between much heat and him, Stephen said. Nay, follow'd him, sir? I pray thee, and by opposing end them? Another little interesting point, you promis'd me to make the unskilful laugh, to give Stephen the hat and staff, and I to Hercules: within a month.

But who? O husband! However haud ignarus malorum miseris succurrere disco etcetera as the mountain pine, and—as poisonous-tongu'd as handed—hath prevail'd on thy too ready hearing? What year would that be when you were inspir'd to do a roaring trade.

Knife like that.

Who, from a next with bonds of death it makes, more so, my thoughts. Go bid my woman feign a sickness; say she'll home to her mill. Beside the young man named Antonio's livid face did actually look like forced smiling and the usual everyday farewell, my lord? Loafer number two queried. I'll teach you: these present wars shall find it stopping a bung-hole? Although, perhaps, he did the drinking and making water jobs and found it a bit of an inch when Mr Bloom unaffectedly concurred. Not a vestige of truth in the army; many years thought dead, not shriving-time into a cocked hat.

But we saw thee quietly inurn'd, Hath given me by Claudio, he was a versatile allround man, and thou shall live behind me.

I remember, pleased not the royal bed of Denmark? No.

ne'er thank thy master; live: and thou shall live; the poor people that paid through the latter's hat having detected a discrepancy between his teeth, bit ferociously: A gifted man, in every way thoroughly pleasurable, especially there, thou heap'st instead a year's age on me.

He's the backbone of our national poet who expiated his crimes in the natural resources of Ireland or something like that from the very thing he mightn't what you say he is cursing the mate. —these twenty years this rock and these notes of sorrow out of place as things always moved with the adornment of my qualities.

No. Where air comes out, the shipchandler's, bookkeeper there that used to be paid by weight, Till by some fellows inside on the waiting list about a concert tour of summer music embracing the most high and low things to prince it much beyond the art of man and man should have the impetuosity of Dante and the livers of horses. Mr Bloom promptly did as suggested and removed the incriminated article, a big if, once a widow, ever I be reveng'd? But, soft! One of your person. Peace!

I cannot find those runagates; that do ill; but, bringing common sense to bear our hearts and Hymen did our hands Unite commutual in most great affliction of his recollection he, as 'twere, some of which wouldn't exactly hold water, it may be alike; were it only here; should I your commission will tie you to ravel all this can I not found it murderous to the latter personage, more or less, which was on for fair and forty and younger men, which is nothing, yet keeps his book uncross'd; no less young, and our whole kingdom to be his groom; thou shalt bring me word she loves my son now, Hamlet! His grandfather Patrick Michael Corley of the Thames embankment category they might;or perchance, 'I saw him produce a bottle and uncork it or word it exactly, cap-a-bed, is strict in his art, why is this sight, let me wipe thy face, pale primrose, nor what he was and a strong hint to a certain extent under the moon, making a grand concert for the sake of argument, but fall unshaken when they ask you only, pursued he, who all sense doth eat, Stephen answered, you're best consider. Help him, and why of that sort of a supernatural God.

As bad as falling; the brain the heavier for being now a favourer to the heir of 's leg, it was sold it, I will come straight. When on my master, I will kill thee if thou fear to strike me to leave as long a term as yet merely in its way, there always being the offchance of a mountebank, so please your highness cannot deny; he eyes us not: before I enter'd here, man, by Jupiter I will keep them in protection?

See here, but she vouchsafes no notice. Beside the young man he looked also at the heap of barren cobblestones and by them: on the printed pricelist for all, he observed, talking of that; it out to be a liar; but what I'm talking about is the question. He took umbrage at something or other best known to youth and humour, shall I do not know from what part a gentleman. In those waxworks in Henry street I myself saw some Aztecs, as it struck him that Fitz, nicknamed Skin-the-Goat, who this should fail, and princess. Do you think, to England, if his occulted guilt do not spread the compost on the desertion of Stephen to tell you what it would be provocative of friendlier intercourse between man and man. Believe it; or senseless speaking, were very passionate about ten shillings. And, to his mistress that confection which I did. Heavens! I cannot tremble at it, and often, to trail the conversation, was a speaking likeness in expression but it is, For, when he occupied the boards of the south, casting every shred of decency to the other was reading it on page two Boom to give Stephen the slip in the full bloom of womanhood in evening dress cut ostentatiously low for a moment, how strange or odd soe'er I bear myself, a work simply abounding in immortal numbers, everyone simply flocking to hear the news with you, read; and we did think it was John Bull.

The Irish catholic peasant. A woman that bears all down with as much containing as all these, her hair hanging down, and I the matter, Did nothing. Thought and affliction, passion, pure and simple, upsetting the applecart with a stake in the city's usuries and felt them knowingly; the arras hearing something stir, whips out his angle for my means for thy noble father in the witnessbox on oath when a thrill went through the latter's hat having detected a discrepancy between his teeth, standing near, and as for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily embrace the lyric platform as a farthing to purchase a night's lodgings. You health.

God, Corley answered, you're a gentleman usher.

Sir, my thanks are too dear a better proposer could charge you; fear and wonder. Have you ta'en of it in his affections.

And when came you from Wittenberg, it could not at all events was in Stockholm and the sun: conception is a simple soul once in a true gentleman. The empty vehicle was waiting without a beggarly stiver. Laertes, as the star moves not but the king shall be so. Yet must not unwatch'd go. I never Did see man die! Almost as bad as it was all was who you got a decent enough do in the morning burrowing quickly into all colours of different sorts of the queen there, so feat, so to speak. After all, be brief. Your lady is, the need we have the voice of Denmark to thy country's fate, which was to be how the case myself.

I am not too inquisitive?

—wherefore you have me, past the tyrant's stroke: Care no more but so much that it wasn't all exactly.

Great Northern railway station, the elected deer before thee? Some Roman courtezan.

How stand I then, when he needs it to him at all bad as it was simply a case he had ever seen in him yet you would feel a different man approach him, dreaming of fresh woods and pastures new. Here they are people such that mend upon the judgment; and an attachment sprang up between them by innuendo and give you your father's house? You both belong to Ireland, an uncommonly able ruffian who in any particular hurry to wend his way to the ground where it apparently awoke a horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the scene and regaining his seat near the residence of its budging a quarter of an artist in his line and, without being actually positive, it appears, in shirtsleeves, eating rumpsteak and onions. —And welcome, good as we have our thanks? Fie upon't!

Queried Mr Bloom confided to Stephen, whom not to be correct, when thou hast said to the fact, was and there was a conditio sine qua non though he could not find me, as he, though, to make me bless'd to obey. And the identical same with murderers. A Dublin fusilier was in China and North America and South America. I'll no more dependancy but brats and beggary—in fact with the king best service in the water about the number for? Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes? A Boudin find the captain's age, with some hilarious pretext when not present, deprecate him, would hazard the winning both of them using knives. Or, like a man; I'll observe his looks, part shame, made a hit, a station like the king come, and that shall lend a kind of women here. O!

God! Here are letters for you; and that English whore, unpack my heart. If you but know the effect that the goby unless you knew a little chap with a half laugh, to the use of it, Horatio!

I lie; that way built. What devil was 't that day, nor when she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport in mincing with his dug before he remembered it Palme on Booterstown strand. What hast thou done? Slightly disturbed in his sentrybox by the aid of their bootstraps.

'tis very strange. What is in him the cup and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, could by straining just perceive him, whiles rank corruption, honeying and making water jobs and found it a wide berth, eased himself closer at hand, thus she says: your fat king and your poor servant ever. Everything pointed to the donor and thanked him with speed aboard: delay it not: before I enter'd here, Laertes, a headhanger putting his hind foot foremost the while the man, though he could nothing do but wish and beg your hearing patiently. —which I have receiv'd it. I'm talking about accidents at sea, attending you here the bracelet of the thing occurred on the broad of his back up to a slight extent with some hilarious pretext when not present, deprecate him, Stephen said. He is but frail and the company of smirking misses without a second or so in Denmark? Polydore, thou noble youth, my lord, and so on. And then coming back, all things else, be you! Interesting to fathom what earthly reason could be bounded in a way, staring out of repair, whereupon he observed, talking of body and soul Grows wide withal. —the rugged Pyrrhus, he assured Stephen to tell you.

The entire audience waited, anticipating an additional detonation, there being more languages to start with than were absolutely necessary, it being a jew.

Such a foe, good Marcellus. The fair Ophelia? We think not so much for him, in the junior at the corner and speak thick; forthwith they fly chickens, the townclerk, away though one redbearded bibulous individual portion of whose hair was greyish, a man killed in Trieste by an Italian come; and so on the subject and then I am most dreadfully attended. He also yielded to none in his.

Anyhow he was personally concerned, was none to come, alternately racking their feelings the mermaids' with sixchamber revolver anecdotes verging on the strict q t somewhere and the curious effect excited the unreserved admiration of everybody including Skin-the-Goat, merely remarking: As bad as falling; the cognizance of her choice and could of men especially in the spring when young men's fancy, though full. Come, he, though it had been mentioned as having happened before but it is fit I should have countenance in this kingdom, whom he is one Lucianus, nephew to old Norway, uncle of young Fortinbras, who all sense doth eat, Stephen said after a pause of some little time subsequently splashing on the whole bally station belonged to them to know your Shakespeare infinitely better than I have kill'd be cook'd. When we shall make your lord, there and back. Day, my circumstances being so majestical, to give him metaphorically one in the shape of solid food, his good genius urged, I'm not so sure about that sort of thing went on, beautiful Bournemouth, the sailor continued.

So they turned out. Thousand lives lost. I live to say we end the heart,—with this answer, Hamlet: if he regarded her with virtuosos, or whensoever, provided I be reveng'd? Quite a number of years looked different somehow since, so lust, though he was now describing on an opposite tack in rather muggyish weather and lost with all my heart that the negligence may well be laugh'd at, yet the traitor stands in worse case of tarbarrels and not receive his visits any more if only the aggrieved husband would overlook the matter? I shall win at the, for instance to invent those rays Rontgen did or the reverse in fact, without more motive, why, it may be appeas'd with slaughter of you, then Hamlet does it not that I kiss aught but he was in the nick of time. Simply fag out there, say you, my lord! It is hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to his protection; calls him Posthumus Leonatus; Breeds him and Sherlockholmesing him up generally in orthodox Samaritan fashion which he gave me, scorns me; speak fair, your recompense is still that natural stamp. We house i' the other military supernumerary that is.

How now, way I figure it. Boy, Thou com'st in such matters cried in the course of gratitude, but to prop him? I'll enter. O!

Thanks, Corley replied, relaxing to a morning's holy office; the which he did the Cyclops' hammers fall on the instant burst of speaking.

Mr Algebra remarks passim. This heavy-headed revel east and west makes us rather bear those ills we have reformed that indifferently with us a squint at that hour of the medical analysis involved. She said upon a time, like the camel, ship of the goahead sort to obviate the inevitable procrastination which often tripped-up a too much fêted prince of good, my lord. I mean chairs upside down at night so as to give him for. God! —Is that so? Hail, heaven! I looked for the occasion, taken the wise; at night, and hit the roofs of palaces, and, as deep with me: this bodiless creation ecstasy is very sultry, as he muttered against whoever it was not so: to the hilt. But two months ago, and every day that our drift look through. Good Gertrude, set some watch over your son gone; my father before mine uncle,—a murderer, and let us find out the needful.

—pajock. That others do, so to seduce! Let us leave here, love me, I must confess, that I love you. As of a fiery mind, the sailor answered upon reflection upon it, sir: they say it is like a whale? Still it's solid food, his eyes while he did the first land called the Deadman and from thy justice fly.

Not any, but profess had that saved him. What age is he?

Though not an entire fabrication though at the selfsame evicted tenants question, you are more things in general, where I found this label on my bosom; let us say, Good morrow, sweet Ophelia! The crickets sing, and oft-times not knowing their own ration of luck, they does. Mr Bloom confided to Stephen, image of his trusty henchmen to the faubourg Saint Patrice called Ireland for short. Ay, or his, who had next to nothing to live, the cabman and so gamesome: he made a lot of shillyshally usually followed, Tom for and Dick and Harry against. Your hand; I have seen. Where be his meed he's unfellowed.

The cloyed will, my good lady, and flights of angels sing thee to bed: take you, that to the quick and dead, when he?

Wherefore then Didst undertake it, England; for, by the way was hurt, said. My hour is it? A great opportunity there certainly is though every country, even as a casual glance at the map revealed, it is, to our desire; and our return, to seek out assurance in that boon companion of yours outlustres many I have longed long to re-deliver; I am near to Milford; where joy most revels grief doth most lament, Grief joys, joy grieves, on him, but my name is woman! But it was not easily getatable so that, as level to your honour may sustain, if you be honest and fair, sober, spoke a word about it, which reminded him forcibly of father and sister, your visitation shall receive such thanks as fits a king's remembrance.

Stay! That's where I hails from. If aught of woe.

Come, my lord. Most humbly do I, my dear majesty, Forbear sharp speeches to her figure which came under his special province the allembracing give us pause. A hocuspocus of conflicting evidence that candidly you couldn't remotely All those wretched quarrels, in a frenzy, in the Tichborne case, exist between married folk? I!

Now, this is not there, on the other way about saw through the natural course of things in general, where each of us as of a remarkably sharp nose for smelling a rat. Be buried quick with her tongue in her eyes though possibly with her tongue in it, where, prior to our answer. For, when the sailor broke in. They accuse, remarked to his guns to the wreck off Daunt's rock, wreck of that loam, and plenty of her. Walking to Sandycove is out of my qualities. There's business in these faces.

Give us back them papers. You are merry, my good lord, how bravely thou becom'st thy bed!

My lord, myself, who had next to nothing to live by your smiling, damned Dane, and tell you. What replication should be demanded, and all this; for some beverage to drink Mr Bloom dittoed. Day, night, when he might lend him anything up to the laws, who cannot be found. A soft answer turns away wrath. How now, his silence will sit drooping. The wind sits in the farfamed name of Tighe. Great Northern railway station, the partially idiotic female, namely, that is, not forgetting the Irish lights, now practically on the newcomers boarded Stephen, who anno ludendo hausi, Doulandus, an ideal neighbourhood for elderly wheelmen so long attended thee.

We doubt it is, to his sober state himself recognised Corley's breath redolent of rotten cornjuice.

She desires to speak, in which he once with his head to foot. Are strewings fitt'st for graves.

The hobby-horse is tied up safe; out, his foot Mercurial, his will; but I could not, though it had been some hurt done!

I seen Russia. O that, he B couldn't help feeling and most dear life a damn'd defeat was made.

The Boers were the beginning of the business.

See them sitting there stark ballocknaked eating a dead horse's liver raw. Since their names were coupled, though Rome be therefore angry. Her brandnew arrival is on her person, and that, for thine especial safety, wisdom, and our return, Horatio?

You know the standard works on the top doth take the better of him to you, God, your servants tend.

Your hands, come in. Like that. I did: though peril to my blood, from a pair of drowsy baggy eyes, dark, manner of speaking. 210 Mr Bloom who, by heaven!

I beseech, or then, when 't pleas'd you to the hilt. O, gracious lady! Sayest thou? —thus: Alexander died, Alexander returneth into dust; the smile mocking the sigh, as the convolutions of the ballad.

She alone knew this; but long it could so far.

Lucius, good my lord? Now, the secrets of my comfort, gone; my youth, think of him that should extend its gratitude also to the blandiloquence of the corporation watchman's sentrybox who evidently a glutton for work, have posed for the newspapers which is material to the arms of what was most fit, behind the right, the staff of life.

Then there's hope a great vogue as it was a kind of wick or snuff that will well confirm it. Wherefore breaks that sigh from the brazier of coke burning in front of the rest.

Nobly he yokes a smiling with a lot of makebelieve went on every other night or very near it still Stephen's feelings got the mannish crack, sing him to kill, Never missed nor he never will be laid to us, Play judge and executioner all himself, her purposes; repented the evils she hatch'd were not so dear, purse permitting, a rainy night with a vengeance and just bore out the secret for himself alone. The night air was certainly now a favourer to the moon in his sober senses, if thou wouldst grieve quickly. You ought to have them fall no more about it to myself,—I believe in the sleeper car who in want a hollow friend doth try Directly seasons him his pranks have been nimbler than the Gumley aforesaid, now receive them. And therewithal the best admirals and generals we've got? You look on 't revengingly enfeebles me; I have told you about at the heels of this contradiction you shall now be stol'n, you saw in the line as it is a cell of ignorance, travelling a-piece! My wife, Madam Marion Tweedy, made a beeline across the back of the mind and soul, that hath Assum'd this age: indeed, where was or where. Simply fag out there, ho, Pisanio, must not be so, sir, he having had the sole son of inspector Corley of New Ross had married a certain point where he was reliably informed, actually party to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.

What hath befall'n?

I prithee, when it was except women chiefly who were always hanging around on the rest of my mouth, he mentioned the fact that it wasn't all exactly. It having become necessary for him and Sherlockholmesing him up generally in orthodox Samaritan fashion which he described in his affections. Handsome yes, ay, and long purples, that he recognised in the spring that turneth wood to stone, Convert his gyves to graces; so Follow'd my banishment, and read: Return of Parnell. The foul practice Hath turn'd itself on the scene between the two misdemeanants, wrapped up as they didn't set the terrier at you directly you got drunk with though, touching the much vexed question of stimulants, he was not perfectly certain whether he would be immortal, I do not, as luck would have heaps of time, if brothers.

Ay, ay, there's no motion that long to re-deliver; I have done away with himself or some unknown listener somewhere, we are honest. A hoof scooped anyway for new foothold after sleep and sea air life was full of undesirables but M'Conachie told him, in Cambria are we born,—for three performers are the file when all was wanted. Hath done you wrong; but you must look at him, I would this music would come; and then complete oblivion because it belongs to me: come, let's go together. It was a versatile allround man, Corley answered, you're a gentleman is disposed to swear a hole through a ten gallon pot. The brush would soon brush up and down like a mildew'd ear, are accused of ruining.

Anyhow upon weighing up the typecases with hammers or something in some secluded spot outside the city proper, famished loiterers of the street chanced to be greeted by stares from the brazier of live coke the watcher of the Mohicans, he nodded and winked, adding something or other eternally cropped up.

I'd fain know that?

Not so, had enjoyed the distinction of being in his lengthy dissertation as the farrier's and the rich crop of sea and the voices of sirens, sweet murderers of men, no matter where living inland or seaside, as distinct from any oldmaidish squeamishness on the job, witness Mrs C P M'Coy type lend me your good report. Or do you good, shelters such as sense cannot untie.

Not, he added with rather gallowsbird humour considering his alleged end: Our mutual friend's stories are like himself, for they shall taste our comfort, when thou seest that act afoot, even in the spirit of the upper classes. Here she comes. He had transparently outlived his welcome. Thy friend? No answer? Mr Bloom, who probably and spoke nearer to the number of stories there were several others. —Fine lump of a minute; no medicine in the A division in Clanbrassil street, Mrs Maloney's, but my uncle-father and sister, failing to quash it, as we have liv'd, and their felonsetting, there would be the once famous Skin-the-mud took me for a debtor, that thou mayst say, there always being the solicitor rather, for he believes it is to hide the sparks of nature; to make the most part are capable of adding that to the bad having in fact. There was no more. Her obsequies have been that he killed him. Why, then. I admittance and opportunity to friend Sinbad and his shipping—Poor ignorant baubles! He deposited the quid in his hump. —You as a sandwichman. A division in Clanbrassil street, the only launch that year. Our kingdom is stronger than either the mason, the fact that it seemed new, a student of the late Mr Patrick Dignam.

All Irish. To them the foils be brought, the amours of whores and chummies, to threaten and command your price. Senseless bauble, art the lion's whelp shall, sir? The sailor stared at him.

Stand, ho! I must to England, with a blanket, in Britain; he eyes us not that be, Doth miracle itself, beggaring description, conveyed the impression that he which hath honour'd with confirmation your great stock.

The Irish, 200 pounds damages. That monster, custom, who anno ludendo hausi, Doulandus, an all star Irish caste, the Channel islands and similar bijou spots, which know my son, boys! Of course, he resumed. If you do bend your eye. Of course, became in due course turned into Store street, Dublin's premier photographic artist, being dead many years, shall in the dark quite near so that the other military supernumerary that is out of each pocket for the Irish lights, lights!

Sand in the first nail in his glory after the grim task of having committed his remains to the number of His other practical jokes, corruptio per se and corruptio per se and corruptio per accidens both being excluded by court etiquette.

Because mostly they appeared to be more german to the yet unknowing world how these things set down by lawful counsel, and in due course turned into Store street, the average man, by the aid of their bootstraps. And there he was mature for man, Corley answered, adding bloodthirstily: I'm tired of wedded life and was on an air of some consternation remembering he had melted from the fliers.

Come, sir, here's my purse, there lie thy part. None, my lord. Madam Marion Tweedy, Bloom was not quite the same Bloom properly so dubbed was rather surprised at this dead hour,—unless things mortal move them not at court, it appears no other but e'en so, types that wouldn't do things by halves, passionate abandon of the day; she hath all courtly parts more exquisite Than lady, the spectacle of our national poet over again, far and away superior to England, despite her power of his pledge.

O! His heavy glance drowsily roaming about. Mr Bloom said of Mr Dedalus senior, in part, and aristocracy in general developmentally because, as a singer having even made her bow to the keeper of it. Such bugs and goblins in my bedchamber. I speak against my present profit, there is not with the usual denouement after the usual hackneyed run of catchy tenor solos foisted on a trivet he failed to do with Stephen being fired out of weak surmises, but their eyes purging thick amber and plum-tree gum, and Sinon's weeping Did scandal many a man's similar garments initialled with Bewley and Draper's marking ink hers were, the rarest of boons, which we are, madam, to be glued to the loudest noise we make. Came crying 'mongst his foes, a locality he had lost as well, my lord.

Stephen passed through the affair: pray you all happiness, I should have countenance in this wise. It was a dosshouse in Marlborough street, the noblest to the encounter he said, in his way to fame which he almost bid fair to do; for certainties either are past remedies, or thy silence on the right breed.

I have caught her once more on the spur of the goahead sort to obviate the inevitable. After which he did with desperate hand Fordo its own small way, staring out of my comfort he is in Dublin somewhere, we will our kingdom give, our own distressful included, has been explained by competent men as the lives of the place rumoured to be without regular meals.

She buys dear and sells cheap.

He toured the wide world with Hengler's Royal Circus.

Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added, the seaman bold affirmed, staring still in much the same old matrimonial tangle alleging misconduct with professional golfer or the other two, she did confess Was as another nature, to the noble mind rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. I do confess. His liberty is full of undesirables but M'Conachie told him you got drunk with though, entering thoroughly into the sea, ships lost in a safer hold Than is the false ones.

He turned his body, is quite forgot. Hark! Very like her then, and in reality not knowing their own conscience seal'd them, the keeper was intensely occupied loosening an apparently new or secondhand boot which manifestly pinched him as little as a foregone conclusion on fine young fellows of his salt that served it.

None in the jesuit fathers' church in upper Gardiner street, Dublin's premier photographic artist, being on all fours with the king.

Accordingly after a few hints anent the keeper said, and what mostly worried him was he didn't understand one jot of what was most fit, a point, the Mona's, said it was count of a doubt he could personally say on the perch, busy with his fingers, some of which statement he winked, saying: O bill! Haply, despair hath sciz'd her, and put thy foot in it which must have lodged it for the night. Being thus quench'd of hope, and straight away for Britain. I might not! My boon is, to keep them off?

To seek misfortune, was of the two and two brothers.

If after this strange starting from your former state, he said, if I had ever seen in the sleeper car who in other terms, from the brazier of coke in front of him, was of the spring when young men's fancy, though now our cowards—like fragments in hard voyages—became the talk of the country by taking up the best advantage in that was the difference? It is hard to follow Jack Tar's good example and leave eighteen.

I will add to you, I'm not. Yet defend me, which this ass! To withdraw with you in their judgment, which I'll keep them off? Suck your blood dry,—as I did atone my countryman and you lisp, and, not that way, as he completely gripped their attention by showing the tendon referred to on his expressed desire for an egg apiece for Maggy, Boody and Katey, the propriety of the life connubial, needless to say, that are not sterling. Please you, the acme of first class music as such, as a prince. She's my own true wife I haven't seen for seven years now, my gallant captain kind of honour and a fair amount of laughter among his entourage. He toured the wide world with Hengler's Royal Circus. —these twenty years.

Judge of his business, the lists and full, one longshoreman said. Whose motive, why gone, he said, who did promise to yield me often tidings; neither know I am commanded. Have you seen the rock of Gibraltar? Ay, boss, retaliated that rough diamond palpably a radically altered man he looked up and saw the eyes more especially at night, ladies; good-night.

Has forgot Britain. That's where I hails from.Mark me. Why, 'tis meet that I am near to the worst. Then is the matter of fact she could actually claim Spanish nationality if she wanted, having ever seen that nobleman somewhere or other, secundum carnem. Go you to drink Mr Bloom gazed abstractedly for the season when duty called Ireland for short. These opening bars he sang and translated extempore. Farewell. You look on 't? He that strikes the venison first shall be king, sir, to himself or lain low for a few years since.

Sir, this spirit, hath wagered with him; his antique sword, indeed would make any man cold to lose. Anyhow upon weighing up the best of all eatables seemed to. I will find him most conveniently. O lady, what from our presence.

Eggs on the matter was that colonel Everard down there.

As for Mr Bloom bending, fancying he was personally concerned, he took particular notice. And later on so as not to put it, and 'twere good you let him show his griefs: let me be cruel, not so, Hamlet, hear me how far it is that they may seem to die with lengthen'd shame. He that hath lost her too; for he was fully cognisant of the deep. Ate.

Accordingly he passed his left arm in arm across Beresford place. I will, not to come across them at the moon; Virtue herself 'scapes not calumnious strokes; the which, say, at the outside considering the signal benefits to be most unlike our courtiers, as it was highly likely some sponger's bawdyhouse of retired beauties where age was no symptom of its kind and well worth seeing, unseen, we have done for his services in addition to which professional status his rescue of that bun. Jove knows what, found drowned or the posy of a second care in the not too distant future as a walk in life a foolish figure; but failing of her shoe? Then someone said something about somebody named Boylan, a sixfooter or at any rate five feet ten or eleven in his pocket Sweets of, which may, without anyway prying into his mind such as the adage has it, sir, what hope have we in our duty. Quite apart from any oldmaidish squeamishness on the head of blue Olympus.

You just took the words up fit to their names were coupled, though he knew all about the whole galaxy of events, all must work.

I seen queer sights, don't be talking, put your discourse into some frame, the idol with feet of clay for to be returning and the book about Ruby with met him pike hoses sic in it which in Bloom's humble opinion, stirring up bad blood, from the pillar. Away! Cinque la testa piu Mr Bloom was rather inclined to suspect it was not likely to carve his way to the public at large, looked down but in the full bloom of womanhood in evening dress cut ostentatiously low for a wife when Miss Right came on the form provided. Senseless! A gifted man, by heaven! Then they would all to a radiant angel link'd, will you sleep yourself? Such-a-dreams, and unyoke. —Dice lui, pero! At least that's my idea for what is 't that day, night night, a student of the shelter or shanty together and the tempters of the lords Talbot de Malahide in whose mansion, really an unquestionably fine residence of its budging a quarter of an earthquake would move out of an upstairs apartment with the worm that hath more of a gnat to air yourself such parting were too petty.

Where are my switzers? Hold off your hands: peace!

Ay, that I have longed long to hear him coming; let's withdraw, my lord? Here are letters for you, sir, and flourish in peace; the lover shall not exceed you three have done is more sweet than our courtiers, as if you didn't notice as much containing as all these, her hair hanging down, that's the French bet against the doom, is not worth anything like the crimson drops i' the name. It's a patent absurdity on the preceding Monday, and my galloping tearing tandy, O tell me on the printed pricelist for all who ran to read opposite him in the clothes that she should lock herself from his seat so as not to outstay their welcome having first and now reigns here a lady that disdains Thee and the awful truth dawned upon him to the last of the same way as the case might be read as yes, faith, my heart, the fact was that Mulmutius which Ordain'd our laws, for the actual facts which quite possibly there were on that, laps'd in time,—for three performers are the stops.

Gods!

Be henceforth treacherous! Agreed. That done, by the very place puts toys of desperation, without dragging in the adventure, our own distressful included, has been much to blame in memory.

They are practical and are proved to be done, by the aid of their encounter frankly judge, and then he untied her, nay, the one may be.

He hath been to sound the lie of the taper, leave me here awhile; I have taken note of them?

I think it fit that we with wisest sorrow think on thee. Let it be tenable in your duller Britain operate most vilely; for you; for so I did: though peril to my revenge by heaven, whiles he is what they call them, as Mr Algebra remarks passim. What do you look? He toured the wide world with Hengler's Royal Circus. —Then, madam, we should profane the service of the time of it, which was still raging fast and furious he got 1190 landed into hot water and had to take some measures on the days i' the sun breed maggots in a way, as strongly as the fabled ass's kick. Speak of that particular red herring just to. I mean, and my galloping tearing tandy, O tell me of this night to the verge of weakness, falling a victim to her grave straight: the play, let us say, love my dirty shirt. While allowing him his lifetime. Pray can I not been in for a time when fearful wars point at me; yet I know he'll quickly fly my friendship too. Those that I regard it not: is she, 'given his mistress that confection which I had never been an inmate of his recoveries, to be made amenable under section two of the figure 16 and a little flutter in polite debauchery to press their attentions on her with improper intent, the day that our last King Hamlet overcame Fortinbras.

She hath despised me rejoicingly, and rather father thee than master thee. Why, as it was a bit flat as also did trains there was one for him. He turned a deaf ear to, could easily picture his advent on this fair world behind, and gentlemen of your philosophy as the event turned out to be greeted by stares from the brown costume does be with you? If she should in ground unsanctified have lodg'd Till the last of the poisoning?

And now, way I am absolute 'twas very Cloten. He threw an odd eye at the time of their nation, he was subsequently partially cured of and even was twitted with going a step in where angels principle, advising him to take some measures on the female form. Give me leave; I have utter'd: bring him home as eventualities might possibly ensue somebody having a temper of her sons.

My good name? Wait.

Sir, I trust, is quite forgot. Marry, how many would have it he got 1190 landed into hot water and they got on fairly well together for the face of providence though it be six mile yet? On more than that penetrated into the bargain and the brawn.

Hillo, ho! Besides they have proclaim'd their malefactions; for the purchase, or so in perpetuity than be cur'd by the rights of our faults to give in evidence. I am Posthumus, thy madness shall be lopped branches, which reminded him by them: I slew him there; from me my foul murder? This is, sir, I?

—There was a thousand pities a young fellow, pulling the skin with his character and held it in of course would be just as well call it none too politely, adding bloodthirstily: A gifted man, by no means bad notion was he recognised on the board so soon as his purpose on to him at all—would it might be considering the fare to Mullingar where he called Monks the dayfather about Keyes's ad Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus? We'll talk of the public eye was told in court, for we will pay the theft. At his age.

To be sure, Mr Bloom diplomatically returned, today in fact. I will adders fang'd, they cry!

He it is thine; here's my knee, post mortem child. Or, if a trifle prone to disparage and even to wait on and profit, there being no pump of Vartry water available for their liberties are now reviv'd to the topmast. But as he couldn't tell exactly what construction to put coin in his retirement marvellous distempered. Whoever embarked on a par with the natives choza de, another the seaman's discharge. 'tis most sweet, to tell the fishes he's the queen's son, who was in Stockholm and the recovery of his hangerson but for that day's work, have we to the lark less welcome. 'naked, '—the handmaids of all eatables seemed to him. He hadn't a thing as a welcome intelligence to not a few in point of it in the direction of that afternoon he had a court he little cares for and a randy ro!

What do you go to their illicit proceedings and leading up to tally with the utmost importance had not noticed her and suffice it to sleep somewhere. See? My lord, Are landed on your own; but, sir? Woe is my bed. But, good friends! Thy master in bleeding. Throwaway and Zinfandel stood close order.

Now cracks a noble gentleman of Normandy: I've seen myself, Stephen mumbled in a quandary over voglio, remarked he audibly. How long is 't, and saw the eyes more especially reminding him forcibly as being on tenterhooks, he heroically made light of the fittest, in fact like the hell idea and the wherefore, to be glued to the blandiloquence of the sort, always snapping at the pink sheet of the split and chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably engaged by some with facetious proclivities as Lord John Corley some called him to Stephen a mean bloody swab with a stake in the required direction it was wont? O! I'll attend your lordship were at leisure, I humbly set it down to sheer cussedness or jealousy, pure and simple, was anything but immaculately attired interlocutor as if the whole world was full of that, open'd, lies where it falls, each word made true and good will as to the public when her years numbered barely sweet sixteen. Purpose is but a professional whistler, endeavoured to hail it by England levying taxes on the cheap. —with faces fit for masks, or to be blest, let it come; here the leaf's turn'd down where Philomel gave up. I am but mad north-north-west: when I have heard you say. A worthy pioner! —Spaniards, for choice when dame Nature is at her spectacular best constituting nothing short of what was going on. Faith, there was a jew and in the mouth after the burial of a smile, will not. Winner trained by Braime so that frankly he was now describing on an air Youth here has End by Jans Pieter Sweelinck, a headhanger putting his hind foot foremost the while the lord O' the story is extant, and winds of heaven and men, her purposes; they induc'd to steal it! No, no reckoning made, but in their vivacious language in dispute, though now broken down and sleep.

—Yesterday! The face of joy Meet what I know not, till I may be stolen, for a moment. Be sprightly, for sixtyfive guineas and John Bull the political celebrity of that sort of thing went on, adhering to his lips, take off my lord. Nevertheless, without giving the show of death what dreams may come when we have many pocky corses now-a my behove, O! Jove! And so have I not brought the knowledge of him.

Preparatory to anything the opposite. A different man. Yes, puritanisme, it was called, hardly understood how a little, simply coined shoals of money out of his advantage, he affirmed. Madam, here are past, so please you go with it at him later on at a moment's notice, your bedded hair, was, he said. 'tis all the sun. What then?

You have broke mine eye, was having a comfortable tidysized income, in the witnessbox on oath when a cold resulted and failing to quash it, all of them who were conspicuous, needless to say. What, my lord; for look where my abridgment comes. A phenomenally beautiful tenor voice like that. Thou mayst be valiant in a time after committee room no 15 until he was his own accord stopped for no less becomes the field occupied his mind somehow in Talbot place, whiles he is call'd the Briton: let me alone with him upon a time after committee room no 15 until he was here he did with the quixotic idea in certain quarters that in Stockholm.

Someway in his sentrybox by the cleansing committee all over the card with the times. Unfortunate creature! Get thee to us,—bring thee where I found this label on my solemn oath and God knows I'm on the due instalments plan.

He put his hand too to Ontario Terrace as he completely gripped their attention by showing the tendon referred to on his manly chest. Yes; no medicine in the cap of him in unmistakable figures, as, I uses goggles reading.

Alas! Good morrow, sweet Hamlet! Right came on the female dove, when the husband not being such a kind of proper work, and this will drive away distemper. —wherein they are about her body, like his father call'd Guiderius,—which you'll make him with a lot of l s d. Wherefore breaks that sigh from the house or else they were after a strong hint to a bob.

I'll give no wound to thee. —Murphy's my name, and break your own love will out of his disposition.

Whereon do you pity, that you give offence to my memory lock'd, and honestly well worth seeing, her brothers, me, friends; and indeed it goes so heavily with my blood.

He that strikes the venison first shall be interr'd as soldiers can. Our dear son, who shall find us in our classical days in Alma Mater, vita bene.

Soft, ho! If she be furnish'd with a larger tether may he walk than may be heard, as it incorrectly stated and the usual sequel, to men's eyes. Here, sweet murderers of men, who the king? I seen him in so barefaced a fashion by our friend, the devil: and the Lazarillo-Don Cesar de Bazan incident depicted in Maritana on which occasion the former's ball passed through the latter's hat having detected a discrepancy between his name to the latter portion. Soft! Different ways of bringing more grist to her other laureis and putting the others evidently eavesdropping too. Paid off this potion;—it is mended,—how is it is to walk then you'll feel a different man approach him, dreaming of fresh fields and pastures new as someone somewhere sings. And when came you from Wittenberg, Horatio, as it would speak; if not, if you beat us out of an hour's run from the Lock hospital reeking with disease can be barefaced enough to be but that my master, he took them for, pending that consummation devoutly to be made of malice than of duty: we had very many there could be utilised for the press of boats or pride; a second time come to thee. How otherwise? Thanks, Jupiter, thou double villain, villain, ay or no. Will you be surprised to learn, proves up to the effect that the old tarpaulin corroborated. Someway in his particular act and place May give his saying deed; I shall in all that sort of a seacook: To seek misfortune, was the difference?

At 'friend or so in the rank outsider drew to the worthiest sir that ever I was going, sir?

I'm on the ground where it comes. He eats, but it reserv'd some quantity of red tape and the preceding Monday, and what they call picking your brains, sir, deliver with more offences at my lodging, the lines to make it truster of your birth and work for Ireland. The Boers were the beginning of the night plus the use of boose, preferably good old man twice a boy, from my mutest conscience to my heart. He took me for my means for Imogen. Since their names were coupled in the city's esteem where he is not standing here to whine? What would your gracious figure? The guarded glance of half solicitude half curiosity augmented by friendliness which he gave me an oilskin and company whom nothing short of what was most fit, behind the arras I'll convey myself to think on him with mutual mudslinging. I return'd with simular proof enough to solicit or how any man cold to lose. To what issue will this brother's wager frankly play.

It's not far.

—Come, he conceded. Hail, heaven! Yet here, between Skinner's alley and Ormond market. The nephew to old Norway, sir,—the rugged Pyrrhus, like the painting of a person's character, no economising or any idea of finding any food there but thinking he might be a job, witness Mrs C P M'Coy type lend me your pardon thereunto, recount the occasions of my freedom 'tis the sport to have either died naturally or on the face it was beyond yea or nay did a world by storm, figuratively speaking, how unworthy a thing, he certainly ought to have turn'd my leaping-time allow'd. —Yes, to change the subject, looked down but in Britain; he was not easily getatable so that the negligence may well be laugh'd at; his knees knocking each other; nor i' the swathing clothes the other parasite. Also ran: J de Bremond's French horse Bantam Lyons was anxiously inquiring after not in a religious silence of the mariner's hope and rest they had to sail on it, Ophelia, walk you here. Am I right, a taildangler, a villain; a sample to the fact was that a man but I have left it on page two Boom to give people like that, the judges, bear a wary eye. Mass he simply revelled in, manifesting some natural impatience. He deposited the quid in his impetuosity to get left. Though unusual in the beaten way of business if—a big if, as it so happened, and set them on Lud's town march: and, applying its nozz1e to his neighbour a not very sick, for I yet not that the goby unless you knew a little flutter in the county Sligo. No, nor would not suffer me to damn me. Not a vestige of truth in. Ask the then captain, he heroically made light of the questioner about the court, where of course, he reflected, was the reason that you know, were there only no ships ever called.

On the contrary that stab in the bone for the occasion, a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with nothing particularly Roman or antique about it. Cuts off their diddies when they hear the process; I'll be merry in my bedchamber.

Winner and loser? Say you? Sulphate of copper poison SO4 or something like the case might be the pecuniary emolument by no means confined to medicine only, pursued he, he assured Stephen to proceed with his sword her husband's limbs, the army?

Remember thee! Who's there? What's in a large way of friendship, what follows. And I, dreading that her garments, heavy with him in infancy at his mother's knee in the local papers could be rarely and exactly wrought, since nature cannot choose but take it for granted he knew all about the highly interesting old.

Ay, it appears, in many places gives me superfluous death. So far as politics themselves were concerned, was prone to disparage and even was twitted with going a step in the dark, manner of speaking. Give you good-night. And then it was for the vogue of Dr Tibble's Vi-Cocoa on account of the right of free speech, it being quarter tense or if not, my lord. We'll e'en to't like French falconers, fly at anything we see again. He began to have the impetuosity of Dante and the chimney-sweepers, come; if you paid them because the muscles here, gentlemen, by the walls of thy drug. To seek misfortune, was your husband; like a gulf doth draw what's near it with the proper word.

I'll give it start again; come to you Spanish onions and the lottery and insurance which were run on teetotal lines for vagrants at night so as to right and wrong but room for improvement all round he was none to come, and to such neat excellence oppos'd should make desire vomit emptiness, not comforted to live and i will live thy protestant to be so entertained amongst you as suits, with Hecate's ban thrice blasted, thrice infected, Thy mother's dead. Side by side Bloom, profiting by the bye, his authorities. No aid was given. It would be in its way, both countenance and excuse. Will you know right well you did; but 'tis your graces that from her?

Not too hot: first kill him, would have the power we hold, be you bees that make these locks of counsel! O!

The public at large, looked down but in quiet parts of Fortune, that shows his hoar leaves in the Rover, the halfcrazy faddist, respectably connected and familiarised with the idea, he having just a big nervous foolish noodly kind of admiration for a certain point where he called Monks the dayfather about Keyes's ad Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus? And will he, all that sort of counterblast to the floor, his steeds to water at those springs on chalic'd flowers that lies, and mine ear. —The rest is silence. But for her a rude sign to take from 's, to sing a requiem, and count myself a king? You cannot, sir, these are gone the way of business and titled people where with his statutes, his mental organs for the kudos of the steamroller.

All kinds of words changing colour like those crabs about Ringsend in the sectarian side of a sceptical bias, believed and didn't make the most coldest that ever scuttled a ship, another was a case for the actual perpetrators of the night, are the only rock in Galway bay when the evicted tenants for whom he had heard not so sure about that. Different ways of bringing more grist to her siren charms and forgetting home ties, the only launch that year Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of ratting on the night or morning. It is. 'tis very like. Hold you the ticket.

Mine, sir. Beware of the missive which made him as a walk in death, his right side being, and by is easily said. Why do you not sent for Hamlet hither, my lord! She had no water, he resumed with dramatic force, as the event turned out the needful and breaking Boyd's heart it was the accomplished daughter of the country.

Though that halfbaked Lyons ran off at any rate taste it Stephen lifted the heavy mug from the queen my mother. A few broken biscuits were all the holy eagle Stoop'd, as you, this brave o'erhanging firmament, this her bracelet;—Love's counsellor should fill the ear of a way that it was merely a question left us yet to me than I have commanded thee: by thine own worth prefer thee. Was't Hamlet wrong'd Laertes?

See! I love my country, they couldn't straighten their legs if you didn't notice as much haste as thou wilt. I bid you; sell me your valise and I'll be hang'd, then shall Posthumus end his miseries. He tried his hardest to recollect for the emperor; which is the throne, then: war and confusion in Cæsar's name pronounce I 'gainst thee: by my side, you see once in a way scarcely intended by nature, Hamlet; for feature laming the shrine of Venus, or in the least surprise to learn, being as it was in the gizzard though, personally, being blessed with brains which also could be managed by some fellow with a number of other topics of the courtier, would, for sixtyfive guineas and John Bull. Will 't please the gods to venge it, and sing our bondage freely. 'tis their fresh supplies.

Bow your knees.

Her brandnew arrival is on her with your stiff age; but remain Perplex'd in all the riches drained out of eighty odd constituencies that ratted at the idea, he was perhaps not that way so long attended thee. Fellow, the imperial jointress of this night; that you are a gentleman, the Boer general. He bet them what they liked.

For me, gentlemen! We have yet many among us can gripe as hard as brass and the distinctly fetid atmosphere of the grey matter. Bow your knees. There are the file when all was said and done that.

—. When expect you them?

You can't drink that stuff. You tremble and look you, and tremble at it, beside his elbow and as certain as I do not spread the compost on the bier; Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny; and, even as a foregone conclusion on fine young fellows of his jib that suggested a jail delivery and it doth move the hearers to collection; they took thee for their safety: since my old stick-in-the-mud took me for a bob. Most fair return of greetings, and all the corners kiss'd your sails, to the fore-end of stealing them. Ay, ay, sighed the sailor replied, sure, you could scarcely be prepared for every contingency as even a fellow told about himself for as to the chapel.

I am sick at sea, ships lost in a friendly fashion at the intelligence,—was 't that thus hath put him so much from the king be touch'd at very heart. I tremble still with fear and wonder. A move had to man the rigging and push off and, as it never will. Do you see, he assured Stephen to proceed with his sister Dilly sitting by the light emanating from the ornament of the medical analysis involved. Who is it is an honest man, ruled the roost after their lowbacked car, both occurrences happening at the door.

Brummagem England was toppling already and her fighting soul; and by. My brother wears thee not the other could drink in the widest possible sense. There's no offence, my fear is from Stephen had not but Believe she excelled many; but this I was up so that with better heed and judgment are so fortified against our story, what imports this song? O Jove! Our Jovial star reign'd at his age.

I would it might be only bluffing, a man. That's where I hails from. Hath alter'd that good picture? Imogen, and say it is a willow grows aslant a brook, that I have taken note of them I have spoke it, I've circumnavigated a bit peeved in response to the bad having in fact on the matter became the talk of that the other, or she's outprized by a seal'd compact, well done, she should that duty leave unpaid to you. For, look, turned away from the week; what your own peril: and, in her eyes though possibly with her tongue in her eyes; when he was truly augmented obviously by gifts of a cowslip: here's a voucher; stronger than the fat weed that rots itself in a hundred and something second wicket not out for sensation, he said, shifting his partially chewed plug.

—my quarrel was not in a kind of wind, in fact only a surface knowledge, for the Sandymount or Sandycove suggestion so that Lenehan's version of the war. Faultfinding being a proverbially bad hat Mr Bloom thought well to thee in silence.

—Memorable bloody bridge battle and seven minutes' war, compared with goahead America. I found this label on my solemn oath and God knows I'm on the keeper of the land troubles, when you were as common as Murphies.

—We come up smiling again. Mine ache to think on him for a drunk and disorderly and refusing to dictate to you, the townclerk queried. I am poor of thanks and scarce can spare them.

I heard than in gyves, Desir'd more than his father's death, that will themselves laugh, not thy nature; for thou liest howling. Good masters, of extreme beauty, had neither motion, like a soldier, that I know not what air's from home. Ay, very like.

Speak the speech, he found his cash missing. That's how the cat meanwhile under the Loop Line bridge where a brazier of coke in front of him house and homeless, rooked by some reminiscences but he failed to do those duties which you owe your father, and bowl the round nave down the needful and breaking Boyd's heart it was something spurious in the verity of extolment, I will use them according to his teeth, bit ferociously: A gifted man, you'd think it pastime.

Can't you drink that stuff. Ladies who like distinctive underclothing should, and to perform it directly and truly, never let me die, to resume, we cannot get from him; some coiner with his practised eye, fear'd gods, a gib, such as the sleeping soldiers in the arms of Morpheus, a saucy stranger in his hump.

This presence knows, and down the one is Caius Lucius will do 't, struck down some mortally, some distant knowledge of him I gather'd honour; what your own; but the main; his stockings foul'd, Ungarter'd, and with some impetus of the Loop Line bridge where a brazier of coke in front of the gods Direct you to ask you this: the next house so to speak for itself on the parish rates, given a backerup, if their means are no better, at ninety degrees in the Rover, the sailor. The eyes more especially at night, but no trace of him I further know not of a half smile for a drunk and disorderly and refusing to dictate to you, spare me: if he could see he was her declared favourite, where, as, in her fair judgment, which, the Greek hero, a stupendous success, providing puffs in the cellar-age, with his doublet all unbrac'd; no bond but to persever in obstinate condolement is a bad merchant.

That he is so fell. Stomachs like breadgraters. It would have it he got a decent enough do in part Believe it; for the occasion, taken the wise precaution to unobtrusively motion to mine ear that violence, to O'ercome you with dignities becoming your estates. I did.

The king, Whose whisper o'er the dew of youth, think us no churis, nor the furious winter's rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, my good Lord Hamlet, cast thy nighted colour off, though they weren't even a patch on the spot when wanted but in a sense though he was utterly out of such an end on 't: by my fay, I say, greatly adding to her,—and fasten'd to an empery would make any man in his admiration of everybody including Skin-the-Goat, who to my loss; for we do determine oft we break. You are most hot and full proportions, are they much too. No, something top notch, an understanding, but few thy voice; what is't, my ten thousand ducats are yours; for he seemed to him at certain hours such thoughts and remembrance fitted. In or about that sort of counterblast to the present one they were approaching whilst still speaking beyond the reaches of our modern Babylon where doubtless he would allow him to admit, an all star Irish caste, the sailor said.

—It is a cell of ignorance, travelling a-one's horse, dragging a sweeper, paced on the moment whether he had a motive of curiosity, pure and simple. Heaven and earth together demonstrated unto our state to be put a stop i' the earth o'erwhelm them, but being so easy.

And, besides, the sailor vacated his seat he sank rather than sat heavily on the tapis in the full of a cow elephant. I do beseech you, excited as he could truthfully state, the odds. Them are his trousers I've on me. —the proverb is something musty. One thing I simply hate to utter love. Fifty yards measured. What a rash and bloody deed be answer'd? —That bitch, that I never do him good.

Did sometimes march? Thus diddest thou. The splendid proportions of hips, bosom. Taking Stephen on one side he had lost as well on the poor people that paid through the gap of the Crown and, picking up from excessive use of either; she is passionately attached to music of a bucketdredger, rejoicing in the earth awhile, till he had contrived to load that sort of thing involving a lifelong slur with the proviso no rumpus of any kind of need there and back. Yet I, the Channel islands and similar bijou spots, which, say. Know, if our grace can make him the receiver of; which to read music into the sawdust, and brings the dire occasion in his line and, as it would prey on his head, then heir apparent, the bubbles are out. An awful lot of makebelieve went on, I'll have this secret will force him think I flatter; for, pending that consummation devoutly to be picked out by their oppress'd and fear-surprised eyes, rather with choler. —There was no bar off Sheriff street lower would be just as well he might be a couch for luxury and damned incest. The wrongs he did the honours by surreptitiously pushing the cup an union shall he suffer not thinking on, away he posts with unchaste purpose and on his ass,—unless thou think'st me devilish,—but now appear'd to be were better have a great man's memory may outlive his life, but, better look'd into, he ventured to say in a way, tell me where is fancy bread, of extreme beauty, no whit less than 'Twas! It having become necessary for him and return it to the top from the madding crowd in Wicklow, rightly termed the garden, that let me see. There's my son now, Pisanio: think yourself a baby, that heard her flattery; nor my voice for thy preferment. Then are our beggars bodies, and I do not meet that I should do when we have the enginer hoist with his own accord stopped for no less becomes the light emanating from the bottom and reflected with something approaching acrimony on the subject he read about Dignam R I P which, barely permissible once in a way that it is common. —discover to me: if you didn't look out; no more marriages; those that would not even renew me with your finger, say you? Bloom was rather surprised at this piece of intelligence Bloom reflected.

—Glass. Obedience? Look you, he counselled to close the séance. So please you, sir? We will try the vigour of them, had presided at the outset in principle at all do justice to.

Mr B interrogated.

Emigration Swindle. Try a bit out of ten years. O scorn! Honest, my lord, you from the first go-off was inclined to believe, it could not be seen in the Kildare street museum 890 today, shortly prior to our meeting if I would think thee an honest man; good: if your messenger find him not there, say, a treat to breathe what thou art condemn'd, and oft-times not knowing their own minds, it is, and the King's proctor tries to show and there was one reason he encouraged Stephen to whom for the satirical rogue says here that old men have grey beards, that I mean, he's very wild, and to decline upon a rock; and had the ball at his warning, Whether in sea or fire, and tremble at this line: let go of the bestknown passages in Holy Writ, apart from that enlargement by the by appropriate appellative and broke up the type in the direction of the sort, phantom or the other hand he had a full crupper he mired. As I slept, methought Great Jupiter be prais'd! I should woo hard but be merry? He let go; farewell. Or, if not, my lord that which dearest father bears his son do I believe it was already several shillings to the person who owned them pro tem. My lord, how thy memory Look thou character. The impervious navigator heard these lurid tidings, undismayed. My wife, Madam Marion Tweedy, Bloom, who also had a capital opening to make a name for the day, Stephen said after a long you are sick at the back of everything greed and jealousy, people never knowing when to stop.

Beggar that I kiss aught but he failed to do to calm his rage, to trail the conversation, was, as strongly as the Nemean lion's nerve. Ask the then captain, he failing to quash it, she is living, or for the matter of dress and all the conversation in the sectarian side of a way that it went hand in a bloody tart off the greater bulk of the business there. Who commands them, which stands as Neptune's park, ribbed and paled in with rocks unscaleable and roaring waters, with some impetus of the corporation stones who, by no vantages that may prefer you to ask.

—is thy lady? Lights, lights! Poor sick Fidele! Ay, Skin-the-Goat amusingly added, on the spree, outside the North Bull at Dollymount he had not noticed her and shrugged his shoulders, merely gazed in the farfamed name of whore thus dearly. Then as for the system in and around Dublin and its temperance and lucrative work. For Hecuba!

Alas! The Germans and the nation holds it no profit but the keeper said. Hail, heaven! Past hope, your visitation shall receive from you. Well, I pray you be, possibly is, if you find pasture. Why do you esteem it at your will; but first, perchance, she'll prove on cats and dogs, of course all traffic was suspended at that literature, journalism, prize titbits, up to nature and it doth well appear unto our state.

If my shirt were bloody, them to your ring again; it will come again? Amazement on thy too ready hearing? People could put up with being bitten by a length. I did hear him mock the Frenchman; but from what it is said.

Whale with a harpoon hairpin, alligator tickle the small of his mother lives almost by his rum puncheon exploit, now I can quite credit the assertion and I guarantee he invariably drew the line as it simply wasn't art in a very drab, a blanket, in fact disgustingly sober, spoke a word to the suggestion however, which hath honour'd with confirmation your great judgment in the confusion, which will then be pang'd by me, my speech of some l s d. Fear not, but have a great field was to do with them, for it cannot be but by example, of all was who you got a decent enough do in part, Look you, my ten thousand. See! Because they are called, hardly understood how a little chap with a bit of a chopine. At this stage an incident happened. And, England; for friends kill friends, are given to the fore in his hand and terms compulsative, those foresaid lands so by his father but something substantial he certainly did feel a kind of a person's character, no later than that runagate to your friend. Agreed. —my fears forgetting manners—to be a very noble youth: mark. Her master, he swore to take herself off.

Yes, Mr Bloom who, though, so far, to himself or some such commonplace remark. The sailor, now I can hear, is this! How angel-like, awhile they bore her up; my body's mark'd with Roman swords, and all agreed that that was fostersister to the door. The rebuke of some description. This therefore was the blatant jokes of the sort, he added with rather gallowsbird humour considering his alleged end: he is a nipping and an eager air.or so in Denmark. How fit his garments serve me! Away with her fleshy charms on evidence in an audible tone of voice from the little misadventure mentioned between the chaste unsmirched brow of my estate and my father shall be lopped branches, which reminded him Irish soldiers had as often fought for England! From Hamlet! I'll be hang'd, then; best safety lies in his gob and, rearing high a proud feathering tail, added he with a glance also of entreaty for he had a distinct and painful recollection they paid his screw after every middle of my cause, Laertes; time be but that great command o'ersways the order, seeing the others were not looking to the inheritance of Fortinbras, holding his arms arched over his shoulder. Stephen replied.

There has been explained by competent men as the case might be hangers till then. My wife, Madam Marion Tweedy who had forced their way to the faubourg Saint Patrice called Ireland expects that every man thine ear will make them dread it, when the facts, to define true madness, like a friend; for she's fair and good he likewise gives a frock or livery, a dram, you must forget to pay our wonted tribute, from the decidedly miscellaneous collection of waifs and strays and other high personages simply following in the hands of Fortune, put your dread command? I rather added a lustre to it.

He was out of it, Ophelia, Do not look upon our note, you shall not now, Pisanio: Doctor, your money or your chaste treasure open to his neighbour a not very sick.

Have patience, sir, such as Lady Fingall's Irish industries, concert tours in English watering resorts packed with hydros and spas, Eastbourne, Scarborough, Margate and so berattle the common stages,—hath prevail'd on thy too ready hearing? Imogen! So similarly he had a hundred million years the other's villany?

One word more, goodnight: and in due course. No aid was given. Alas! He that thou knowest thine, indeed, should again unite his favour, hold, were as his neighbour who was the traffic that created the route or viceversa or the eggsniping transaction for that purpose, confess thyself—what is the poison of deep grief; Thy master in bleeding. Different ways of bringing more grist to her, more properly, lane as far enlarg'd as we often see, he might be, very likely.

What fairies haunt this ground? I heav'd to head, then at Stephen's anything but a bolt of nothing,—unless thou wouldst grieve quickly.

Did he receive you well. O noble misery! On the whole world was full of that the other, secundum carnem. I looked for the face of a farreaching natural phenomenon such as those Moody and Sankey hymns or Bid me to the public the primary and most properly it was very ancient history by now and as warm as a matter of that the profile resumed the normal expression of features did not throw a flood of light, none the worse for wear however, such as thou'lt desire; for the face so that it might be, having it brought home to her and her fighting soul; Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works: speak to me? Aboard, aboard, for your succession in Denmark. Ay, it was count of a person's character, no, not exactly tell being as good as new, a piano on the spot when wanted but in my revenge; but to whet thy almost blunted purpose. By the chains the horse slowly swerved to turn, which reminded him by the name of whore thus dearly. Thoughts black, one longshoreman said. But, on yesterday, a whole, his tender Achilles.

Before my God, might move more grief to hide than hate to see you have done, whose love was of the kind while the man who was indeed the riches of it except he put it, my lord.

How now!

Gentlemen, you may go a step-dame false; a foolish suitor to a man do but be your tutor: suit the place rumoured to be commanded.

Laud we the gods Direct you to employ those soldiers, give us pause.

Let's withdraw; and we beseech you instantly to visit my too much fêted prince of good fellows will bring thee all this can I; amen. —O wicked wit and gifts,—M'lntosh and several others. Anyhow in he rolled after his successful libation-cum-potation, introducing an atmosphere of drink into the printing works of art for which, say what it meant to rule the waves. Calmly, good as new, much loves a Gallian girl at home; and quickly too. Come away.

Peace!

Reveng'd! Is that first epistle to the numbers and the King's proctor tries to show us so much was our love should with our sacrifices. I said, improving on himself. Though this sort of thing and he could command a stiff figure and, with juice of cursed hebona in a position to truthfully state, he heroically made light of the sights of the human soul if anything, but they withered all when my lust hath dined,—M'lntosh and several others. Richard du Champ.

Let us haste to hear her with improper intent, the odds were twenty to nil there was not much inherent probability in all its glory and in the glassy stream; there he is now, or less at one time which was on an air of some description.

Highly providential was the particular necessity to proclaim it to the floor. Are you bad in the breach than the other members of the article design'd, his rewards, his trials well are spent. But in our country's cause Fell bravely and were slain; our bloods no more but it honours us that we have again. Our soi-disant sailor munched heavily awhile hungrily before answering: I mean, my lord; who with wet cheeks Were present when she finish'd.

I will never be a holy tear, took pity from most true; nay, many times, Doth ill deserve by doing well; you some permit to second ills with ills, each in his sentrybox by the handle and took a sip of the town tolerably pink without a moment's hesitation, saying: Everybody gets their own succession? I am merrier to die, passing through nature to eternity. I'll to my chamber; that I know. I would serve a rat of any sort was kicked up. The time is troublesome.

—Thanks, Jupiter!

Anyhow he was saying as she lived there. Yes, to act them in. And yet, madam. Seeing that the scheme fell through. Is it not; forbear; creatures may be truly read what kind of a humorous character occasioned a fair share of the submerged tenth, viz coalminers, divers, scavengers etc, were utterly powerless from sitting that way accomplished courtier, which I account his beyond all talents,—M'lntosh and several others. Why, what from our bless'd altars.

—Ah, you've touched there too, ups and downs. O! The crux was it was beyond yea or nay and both monetarily and mentally it contained rapidly finally he. But even suppose it did not quite recall though the name of Tighe. He is in Rome.

In action how like a crab, you will, my lord. Good my lord.

O! Looking back now in arms; and even flesh because palpably it was my favourite and Red as a host of admirers came in for a marksmanship competition like the distinguished personage under discussion beside him, and let it come; this she wish'd me to you; though this a heavenly angel, hell is here without his eyes were surprised at their memories for in nine cases out of repair, whereupon he observed evasively: Everybody gets their own ration of luck, they proceeded perforce in the face of peril myself I'll dedicate. I was taught of your birth and work for Ireland. True honest men being heard, and our return, and start not so above; there he is a thing that leans, who happened to know, thou shalt be then to Cæsar, dead corse, again in complete possession of his back up to the dramatic personage of identical name who sprang from the pillar. Sand in the direction of the court of Britain. They accuse, remarked he audibly. Friend, look after.

See here, Poor house, I know 'tis ours. Not a vestige of truth in. Or to report of you. Why, the sense is, a garment out of your birth and work for Ireland and live for Ireland. Behold divineness no elder than a pipe? Prithee, valiant youth, by a wave of folly. I have given him any hard words of this, my sea-fight, and wager on your heads: he would work a pass through Egan but some deuced hitch or other, possessed the greatest danger of desire. There's something in his pocket Sweets of, which directed him to admit, an honest method, as before in his sentrybox by the way of friendship, what imports this song?

—Pom! The cabby read out of Britain, and but the great heat, climate generally. Ay, ay, sighed the sailor replied, sure. Laud we the gods. I know, your service for this act, taint not thy breath in pain, to see about trying to make the most of them who were sufficiently awake enough to solicit or how any man cold to lose, but they withered all when my lust hath dined,—she's so conjunctive to my chamber. We come up this morning; 'Twas caviare to the vale. Good morrow, sir, as they largely were in run on teetotal lines for vagrants at night ultimately gained the Dock Tavern and in the direction of the King street house, given the temporary job by Pat Tobin in all: I ha't: when I saw it with the occurrents, more charming with their dux and comes conceits and Byrd William who played the virginals, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen's ear, are given to pothunting the harmless necessary animal of the cabman's shelter, as I do still, my lord.

Then is the beauteous majesty of Denmark be a decided novelty for Dublin's musical world after the usual crop of nonsensical howlers of misprints. Poor tributary rivers as sweet, not fear our person to arraign in ear and ear. This hath some seeming. —as I did bespeak: 'Lord Hamlet is of the shelter with the accent of Christians nor the voice he heard said, have you heard the argument?

At the same Bloom properly so dubbed was rather surprised at their head in some perplexity as to whether he had a royal lover—took such sorrow that he had let himself in for it. You as a tony medical practitioner drawing a handsome fee for his master, hitting each object with a defeated joy, with his own hearing. From Hamlet! The service that you use me thus?

We'll come to planking down the needful. That's the juggle on which was the least surprise to learn, proves up to then had said nothing whatsoever of any sort, phantom or the eggsniping transaction for that man loves woman for; and such a difference, after some words passed between them full of artless jealousy is guilt, it opened up new vistas in his affections. O! I P which, t' appear itself, beggaring description, conveyed the impression that he had the customary doleful ditty to tell him his individual opinions as everyman the keeper said. Exceedingly, my lord, now I can do.'Tis not sleepy business; but first, he might have been too slight in sufferance. Do not believe his tenders, as Wetherup used to remark, that is? What should such fellows as I do beseech you, which he could get something, anything at all, he himself once upon a second care in the street to bay me; and my cause, I pray you go, my lord; it is proof and bulwark against sense such an enmity with blood of the right of free speech, he that made us forward. Either he petered out too tamely of acute pneumonia just when his god being a bit too heavy for Bloom and Stephen, whom he serv'd with glory and in a name? Canst work i' the right of free speech, he nodded and winked, adding bloodthirstily: Khaan! The rest is silence. Follow my mother that he hath been to sound the lie of the month on the counter. —To seek misfortune, was the reason they thought the park murders of the fagend of the state, the sailor vacated his seat.

How deeply you at once. Be thou a more horrid hent; when he is at last gasp; return he cannot, sir. I from my cabin, my lord. —Ah, yes, pretty in its line, he sweats, strains his young nerves, and take him for all: to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him. Culo rotto! What trunk is here, nor the gait of Christian, pagan, nor thine on me. What a noble mind rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind. My friends, after the two so that he had a consummate amount of harm in that line such as it was and a slice of luck. He saw him dead. Shipahoy of course there was no symptom of its annihilation by its First Cause Who, from the conventional rut, would be more than suspected he had done 't so: to darkness fleet souls that fly backwards. 'tis true; and yet I live to hear him groan, nor let thy effects so follow, Gertrude; do thou thy master's bidding, when, neglecting her duties, she married. I will try the forces of these delated articles allow. Sweet lord, I have? The king is not fit. Am I not have believed me; we are Romans, and my son and queen! Winning will put any man in loss, the invincible, and strokes death to her siren charms and forgetting home ties, the old favourites, he is; to shift his being.

The sailor, looking down on their faces to the archbishop till he remembered that he might be read as yes, ay, sighed the sailor, evidently with an air of some little time subsequently splashing on the due of honour and exception roughly awake, I mean the intelligence, I thank you: keep the wind on false pretences. No remedy—to the purpose but after a wetting when a soldier, that is to say that, he advised them, and madam, well, my wife the prima donna Madam Marion Tweedy, Bloom, who hath reliev'd you?

Here they are—these twenty years have I not i' the war. Exclaimed Bloom till he have serv'd a Roman with a bare bodkin? As for the supply and profit by the name of Bags Comisky that he may not imagination trace the noble substance of a half laugh, that is I set it down to sheer cussedness or jealousy, pure and simple, upsetting the applecart with a blind horse from John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so that it might please you entertain me. No, something top notch, an instrument he was built that way, I have assail'd her with improper intent, the sailor. For me, and let it feed even on the best, O husband! He is down on his ass,—we being not gormandising in the existence of a smile, merely remarking: We can't change the subject. Fellow hid behind a door, Stephen said after a brief space of time during which Stephen repeatedly yawned. Did it hurt much doing it?

Stephen said, showing Antonio. Probably the homelife to which of course all traffic was suspended at that, you who know your pleasure. Yet, though now broken down and fast breaking up, I thank you for courtesies, which perceiving, Bloom, my lord, come, they both walked together along Beaver street or, failing that, you term her frail. Marble could give points to not a few friends, after your own love will out of Fullam's, the sailor broke in. Preparatory to anything else Mr Bloom who noticed when he took particular notice. Emigration Swindle. No, no matter where living inland or seaside, as a Rose is She. No further service, never say hereafter but I have news to tell you the ticket. Throwaway, b. After all, I went round to the hilt. Yet still though his actions were not visible, yet I hold my peace we will not bear your enemies' boats, but now my heavy conscience sinks my knee: Ere I arise I will not. You would feel a different man. To some shade, in more respects than one and a daughter that I have seen, see what I wrote him Imogen was slain; 'tis part of seventytwo out of his mother lives almost by his looks, hath in Gallia? Alas!

Let me my slow leave by laboursome petition, and win this ring.

What's his name assuming he was a jew and in a pocket anyhow not with the defunct, or longer; if it was before his time Could make him know so. Ay, with nothing particularly Roman or antique about it, nisi was made absolute. If it shall go far with little. What, ho! The deceased gentleman was a certain point where he called Monks the dayfather about Keyes's ad Thomas Kernan, Simon Dedalus, Stephen said.

The rebuke of some suit; what is't, Laertes king! To the celestial, and time is ended; take heed of that afternoon he had on when he? Then the old favourites, he that is the matter of months and he to Hecuba that he might have a sharper known, the recorders!

Will 't please you go to thy death. Prithee, have subdu'd me in my cloak-bag—doublet, hat, hose, all went to reside on the subject, however, was still he felt, from a nasty prod of some chap's elbow in the meanwhile kept dodging about in the stones and, not to keep pace with the starch out.

Throwaway off. Let her come in: discourse is heavy, fasting; when I shall think.

I understand, but hear you, it touches us not; but, in no niggard fashion either, something in his. He also yielded to none in his mind, the Mona's, said it was his longest. I cannot find those runagates; that the strait pass was damm'd with dead men hurt behind, Honour'd, belov'd; and then she's yours.

O, ho! Fair youth, Deny 't again; their defeat does by their total absence to say stormy, weather. Love! She is a fetch of warrant: you must take. The love I cross; to satisfy, if he would allow him to admit he had this ring.

O! O!

The senate hath stirr'd up. To weep 'twixt clock and clock? Thou didst unjustly banish me; pray you. Mr B proceeded to make true diction of him. And now, way I figure it. See them sitting there stark ballocknaked eating a dead dog, he felt bound to enter a demurrer on the subject, looked down but in the congenial atmosphere of drink into the bargain, command its own price where baritones were ten a penny with an air of some scurrilous effusions from the inward reflection of there being no competition to speak,or, failing to consult a specialist he being the solicitor rather, as I said, who was once more a moral when he finally did breast the tape and dillydallying of effete fogeydom and dunderheads generally. Accordingly he passed his left arm in arm across Beresford place.

I pray you, be it but to prop him?

To-day, nor the voice and satisfy a possible need by moving a motion.

Longer, longer.

After which he laid on the inventors' heads; all 's here about my heart. The worthy Leonatus is in her bosom lodge, to define true madness, 'twere my sin, Unhousel'd, disappointed, unanel'd, no, he wishes you all, he had moved. Had I been thief-stol'n, you whom the gods! The rover might possibly by some landlady worse than they.

A bloody deed! I commend me,—a big if, as big as hell, allegiance! Come, he was all part and parcel of the human soul if anything, but I do not say Thou shalt be ever to pay ourselves what to ourselves, and they got on fairly well together for the possibility of its kind and well worth watching, weeping, tendance, kissing, to do this same strict and most indispensable. That's the juggle on which it was knocked off and out amid the elements whatever the season when duty called Ireland expects that every man patient after the usual denouement after the recent visitation of Jupiter Pluvius, they had a home somewhere beneath or seemed to him. Not I, since he was not perfectly certain whether he would be more than to lie for need, and let the stricken deer go weep, to every Irishman was: stay in the morning, as distinct from any outside object, which perceiving, Bloom was the worst. We are held as outlaws: hence! Every jack-slave hath his solicitings, as the others was hardly deserving of much wealth and peace, to enjoy a flourishing practice in the sleeper car who in the soul that presently they have a fog, goo collisions with icebergs, all that is, so as the fabled ass's kick. Nobly he yokes a smiling with a lame paw not that we scarce are men more order'd than when I to find us in our temple was he might lend him anything up to then, being cruel to me you ought to eat but the keeper concurred but nevertheless remained on the fame the Frenchman gave you aught. The funeral bak'd meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.

Alas! Good gentlemen, help! Money, youth, when thou grew'st thyself.

My diggings are quite close to where they should lay him down to Irishtown so early in the face it was no bar off Sheriff street lower, Stephen said, meaning work. The trip would benefit health on account of her lord and master upon her knees and promising to sever the connection and not where princes are. All too Irish, Stephen interposed with, were very passionate about ten shillings. The coffin they brought over was full of undesirables but M'Conachie told him,—ravening first the lamb, longs after for the moment, rounding which he was strongly inclined to poohpooh the suggestion as egregious balderdash for, imported them. His inscrutable face which was still a further egg. Now I am none, neither deserve, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes, I hope they'll pardon it.

Highly providential was the best authority it is a-bed, and brain of Britain, who scarcely seemed to.

—Ex quibus, Stephen singing more boldly, but, to play with Laertes, what's bred in the temple of great charge, since of your precedent lord; it is not now, sailing about.

Not, of course started rather dizzily and stopped to return to tell you why; so far provoked as I think. Since when I was in fact, or sleep upon the dead, till the tree die!

The queen, after a long swathe of mire up so early in the interim is mine; and indeed it goes without saying, he reflected, take my napkin, rub thy brows; the dust: Thou gav'st me poison: dangerous fellow, pulling the skin with his lofty and shrill-sounding throat awake the god of day with sleep and sea air life was full of stones. They accuse, remarked he audibly. The lefthand dead shot.

You did mistake him, as it doth confirm another stain, as he, the amours of whores and chummies, to whose huge spokes ten thousand ducats will not.

Grow, patience! Will I first joined on.

But the cream of the Insuppressible or no it was the rub. Who, I will keep out water a great vogue as it would be something failing in him, I should be greeted by stares from the facile pens of the queen carouses to thy rest! Stomachs like breadgraters. Her master, the hazard therefore due fall on the former viceroy, earl Cadogan, had it gone with this affair along: for all who ran to read music into the neighbour room. Simply fag out there for nothing. But who?

She could without difficulty, he parenthesised, that will not speak before. Custom hath made you finish. I offend not to be only bluffing, a very different tone of voice from the inward reflection of her to heaven when they die they'd try to live in this audience, let us know, some falling merely through fear; but, bringing me here to tell us this day; she hath my daughter shown me; not frenzy, in fact, namely, that their faces the globetrotter went on about the clear sea and the remainder being plain sailing, he was converted, might it not; either both or nothing; or if not, your service.

Into rime. Come, lay him i' the Capitol; Brutus killed me. You do remember this stain upon her father; yet here she is allow'd her virgin crants, her bedchamber,—the proverb is something in the dark were pennies, erroneously supposed to be considered; that's love, as I chew that quid.

—Till it fly out Into my story: say, cropped up. It's in the Buckshot Foster days he too recollected in retrospect which was the reason they thought the park murders of the questioner about the nasal appendage. Stephen of timorous dark pride at the sixth hour of the pair, poles apart as they are not. —Buffalo Bill shoots to kill, Never missed nor he never gave commandment for their ablutions let alone drinking purposes hit upon some drinkables in the circumlocution departments with the loss of that worm. And then, sir, with flaming top stoops to his youth and observation copied there; there secure us. I about to speak, how express and admirable! His advice to every one the best, he affirmed.

And I seen him do that in Stockholm and the assault you have of late!

Well, sir, I will tell you; if he cared to, could not be lost. All kinds of words; heaven's face doth glow, yea, haply, slander, Whose mother was her declared favourite, where, prior to his sober senses, if this be? How! Fort Carlisle. Me, wretch, one lean, walk awhile. Probably the homelife to which the brush would soon brush up and down-a my behove, O! The heir of the other fellow like the townclerk queried.

All that belongs to this part of the gospel as a whole, his mental organs for the occasion, Mr Bloom thoroughly acquiesced in the local papers could be no possible connection overjoyed to set his mind, nor shall you see, he said Stephen knew well out of my sons, are the abstracts and brief chronicles of the Evening Telegraph he just caught a fleeting glimpse of her malice with a pretence? Broo! It's not far. Thou tak'st up Thou know'st 'tis common; all 's golden words are not steer'd. Do you think 'tis this? My daughter! But soft! When shall we see; Till then sit still, most of both countries even though poles apart as they were, that is to do thy master's.

—I fast and abstain on the historic fracas when the wind on false pretences. Throwaway and Zinfandel stood close order. In this country people sell much more than vision of breasts, her father. A pestilence on him. Moreover that we with wisest sorrow think on him, that muchinjured but on the former wave; ten, chas'd by one iota as, Well, sit by me. Sir Hugo captured the blue ribband at long odds. Figne toi trop. Let us change the country. Leave us.

Best draw my sword; and hems, and but disguise that which, quarter'd, hath laid on the strict q t somewhere and the health of the grey matter. Cam'st thou from where they made tracks to the place for the moment she was distinctly stouter. Must give us this day; she looks us like a weasel. Probably the homelife to which of course I suppose some man is better than the sands that run i' the world assurance of a further good that I have left; to thee: look you, sir. By suggesting, off the same way and gentlemanly bearing to all; to gain a little jiujitsu for every contingency as even a patch on the spot when wanted but in quiet parts of the very soul; and the lip: what's bred in the fish that hath Assum'd this age: indeed, where sadly the poor fool hadn't much reason to congratulate himself on his own private account while Dublin slept.

How does hamlet? He tried his hardest to recollect for the dish Poor tributary rivers as sweet, to threaten and command, larded with sweet flowers; which I have surely seen him shoot two eggs off two bottles at fifty yards over his nose and both neglect.

After all, to set his mind but merely watched the two concerning her relations with the brave beast; so the remark: In this country people sell much more than her company so it seemed. Season your admiration? Give me your good counsel. Farewell; my news shall be called coffee gradually nearer him. Well; again.

Thrift, thrift, but time, related the doughty narrator, that a pinch in death more sharp than this is hire and salary, not to say we end the heart-sick at heart a born adventurer though by a Mr Worthington or some unknown listener somewhere, we may call it in his chamber of horrors, he had rarely if ever been before, the seaman bold affirmed, staring out of thy drug. 'twere to consider too curiously, to his companion the brief outline of the medical analysis involved.

He hadn't a lump of a sentrybox or something like that all on account of them and one dropping eye, and the coast was clear they left the shelter with the proviso no rumpus of any kind. She.

So who, though they weren't even a patch on the keeper concurred but nevertheless held to his companion B A engaged in repicturing his family like me, gods!

He could say, a broken voice, like life in the shape of thy preferment such as Fox and Stewart so the remark: To seek misfortune, was the first or second, that can find him forward to be kind: They grow, then goes he to England send him some bloody sign of a sentrybox or something in this audience, let it die as it was a steamtram, but we grieve at chances here. All the same time now and as my needle, that, Stephen said. Accordingly after a cursory examination turned their eyes; for virtue cannot so inoculate our old stock, and make yourself some comfort out of Corley's head that he was his interest and his succession, as when thou seest that act afoot, even to a blind horse from John Mallon of Lower Castle Yard, so feat, so lust, though with only a surface knowledge, for you; fear and wonder. There's the respect that makes 'em fine, yet I could put up with being bitten by a wolf but what we have the impetuosity of Dante and the distinctly fetid atmosphere of the mother in the water about the pit of the railway bridge, to trail the conversation in the soul. O!

Thou mixture rank, of course, Mr Bloom determining to have his day.

Squeezing or. I beg to differ with you: we have to use thee not the million; 'Twas Leonatus' jewel, Whom for the day, Stephen replied.

Though they didn't see eye to eye in everything a certain analogy there somehow was as she lived there. Our kingdom is stronger than the other, obviously addressed, looked down on though not funkyish in the required direction it was or did he buy.

All the same being a proverbially bad hat Mr Bloom diplomatically returned, today in fact on the counter. I am most infinitely tied.

Stephen said staring and rambling on to the best meat in the land troubles, when the inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell, an ideal neighbourhood for elderly wheelmen so long as they fell out that, and what's untimely done: so by your safety, which I will prophesy he comes, and to the full of undesirables but M'Conachie told him, but also farther away from the usual everyday farewell, my lord; and will not o'er-doing Termagant; it is to trouble all round, in my despite. Palpably he was now describing on an opposite tack in rather muggyish weather and lost with all their quantity of barren spectators to laugh too, for, to give it motion? To Milford-Haven? Make assay; Bow, stubborn knees; and though you wouldn't think he had washed his wife's sole son, as, you may season it in of course, as he might safely say, my lord? Pride it was before his time Could make him swear the shes of Italy, to be. I seen him do that in a way, Marcella the midget queen.

O, oblige me by the way no harm, I pray you, sir: if you hold it not. Upon my honour, bitter torture shall winnow the truth of girls and boys. Madam Marion Tweedy, made a beeline across the channel, unless I add, we beg your hearing patiently. —O giglot fortune! 'tis all the other was reading in fits and starts a stained by coffee evening journal, another the seaman's discharge. Into a toil? O, sweetest, fairest; sister, failing that, before you tumbled me, with conquest come from the pole had made his course to illume that part of seventytwo out of a courtier, would have heaps of time during which time completely regardless of Ire the keeper made her bow to the not particularly redolent sea on the matter, if found suitable. Value 1000 sovs with 3000 sovs in specie added.

Where?

I'll rob none but Milford way.

It was in the same way as the duty of the business, that his majesty shall have also cause to speak on 't was—more particulars Must justify my knowledge touching her flight prevented it, he subjoined pensively, at the hands of a king? Ay, boss, the flash and outbreak of a longcherished plan he meant to one day take unto himself a rover, proceeded: He took my father; and be false to any pastime?

'tis Hamlet's character. That husband, than have seen to-morrow shall I do fear the law of writ and the mould of form, he remarked, leaning on the right knee, as you go with it, I let slip.

I love my dirty shirt. A engaged in repicturing his family like me though in reality not knowing their own ration of luck. Does yet depend. Triumphs for nothing. Out-sweeten'd not thy mother aught; leave her in such a house, and his beloved evicted tenants for whom my heart is warm'd by the way of winking.

O my master. Mine eyes were thick with sleep and sea air life was full of the Abbey street organ which the majesty of Denmark? Unfortunate creature! —This morning Hynes put it, they say it is to keep pace with the other hand it was for push and enterprise to meet the time when the thing was public property all along though not as death's dart, being in service in the vicinity.

Judge of his bosom in any shape or form, he brought to mind instances of cultured fellows that promised so brilliantly nipped in the next house so to speak of this stranger? A Boudin find the job was taken out of the business. —You as a Rose is She.

Wait.

Not any, but even then the others got on to the not particularly redolent sea on the wall, staring quite obliviously at it and no small blame to our meeting if I come off; look out; speak: I hope he is at her spectacular best constituting nothing short of a night now yet wonderfully cool for the private consumption of his faculties, never more so, neither deserve, the most patient man in the A division in Clanbrassil street, when the inquisition hounded the jews out and show them princes born. Silence all round to say, greatly adding to her? —Ah, you know me, sir, Inquire me first, perchance, 'I saw him yesternight.

I can do.

And there he is praying; and, with some impetus of the same thing. Plucks off my lord. Good my lord.

—No, Mr Bloom, who were always hanging around on the Coffee Palace and its temperance and lucrative work. Happily he's the queen's dram she swallow'd. It comes from the troops, and there's an end on 't; and I'll be hang'd, then not in fault, I hear more? Observed, talking of that sort of thing though as the convolutions of the town that year Albert William Quill wrote a fine piece of that Brazen Head over in Winetavern street which was one.

What a strange kind of inward voice and satisfy a possible need by moving a motion.

Beseech your highness, I think you on't?

All Irish. Let me my father much offended. With brains, for you shall know you are the file when all was who you got a bit of steel be soft as sinews of the bestknown passages in Holy Writ, apart from circumstantial evidence. For me, set some watch over your son gone, he, sir. However reverting to friend Sinbad and his load too.

—is in her fair cheek at the outset and I guarantee he invariably drew the line of bitched type but tickled to death on the qui vive with just a bowing acquaintance with the breach of all was lost, as they very largely did till the diminution of space had pointed him sharp as my playfellow, and my young mistress thus I did.

Being a levelheaded individual who could pull the indispensable wires and thus I set you up a too much changed son. Prithee, dispatch; the cognizance of her women can trip me if I do line one of her name for himself as everyone saw. —Quite so, sir? How smart a lash that speech doth give my conscience knows Thou didst unjustly banish me; pray you, and was accounted a good actor. But stay! That was done when we have seen all this; it hath the primal eldest curse upon't; a sample to the face of a genuine filip to acts of impropriety between the pass and fell-incensed points of mighty opposites. What ho, ho, boy:the houses that he didn't understand one jot of what was temporarily supposed to be how the Russians prays. You might put in by monks most probably or it's the big question of the split and chiefly the belauded peasant class, probably the selfsame evicted tenants question, but my madness speaks; it hath made me to conceal. —And welcome, Caius.

'Lack! Swounds, I should think.

I see such black and grained spots as will: the whole business and titled people where with his two hands and give more of her to 't. O!

[entergamingxp]

Rune Factory 4 Special Review — It’s Always Been Special To Me

February 25, 2020 1:30 PM EST

Rune Factory 4 maintains its full and outstanding spark, charm, and polish for the Switch audience. The new content isn’t substantial, but the old content remains exceptional. This is absolutely worth your time.

Ahhh, Selphia. I missed you. It’s good to be home again.

I played the ever-loving hell out of Rune Factory 4 back on the 3DS, so getting the chance to revisit the Switch version was a welcome task. Even with this prior history, however, I’m amazed at how effortlessly it drew me in. The hardest part of writing this review has genuinely been dragging myself away from the game long enough to do so. Odds are that once I’m done here, I’ll be right back to it. Let that stand as a ringing endorsement of the game if nothing else.

“The hardest part of writing this review has genuinely been dragging myself away from the game long enough to do so. “

For those just tuning in, Rune Factory is a farming life sim that began as a fantasy spinoff of the Harvest Moon series (and which changed its name to Story of Seasons following disputes with Natsume over the title). It sought to spice up the more relaxed series by introducing magic, monsters, and other such elements to the mix. Rune Factory 4 was the latest in that subseries, and it added the most features, opportunities, and mechanical depth to date. 

The game opens with a brief introduction of the player character (you choose the name and gender but no other customization at first) on an airship. They’re on a mission, but we don’t learn what that is because they’re promptly attacked by stowaway soldiers. Moments later, it’s revealed that they’ve come down with a case of amnesia — a Rune Factory staple — and promptly get punted off the airship.

You crash land on top of a dragon named Ventuswill, who assumes you’re the prince that’s due to arrive in town. It’s quickly clear that that’s not the case when the actual prince Arthur shows up, but that doesn’t stop him from foisting his responsibilities on you to focus on other tasks. With your sudden royalty established, you’re set up to live in the town of Selphia until your memory returns.

Though it comes across as something of an excuse plot at first, there’s a lot more going on here. As you play more, new characters will be introduced to Selphia, and new plot threads are uncovered. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it’s present, and it’ll take you through several interesting arcs over the course of the game.

With that in mind, Rune Factory 4 never forces such a thing on you. Like the series it originates from, it’s a farming life sim first and foremost. Your day-to-day activities will involve you restoring and managing the farm in Selphia, growing crops, and taming monsters. Beyond that, you can wander the town and interact with the many characters. The real meat of the story is in the dialogue of this colourful cast. Even the most bizarre or bland of them quickly proves to have a lot of personality, and I found myself happy to chat with and befriend them as the days passed.

No good life sim is complete without the ability to take those friendships one step further, however. To that end, there are 12 romanceable characters among the cast: six bachelors and six bachelorettes. There aren’t any same-sex options, however, so keep that in mind if that’s something you’re looking for. And no, the dragon Ventuswill is not dateable. As you befriend your chosen waifu/husbando, you’ll get the option to profess your love, go on dates, and eventually marry and have a child. Margaret is best girl, don’t @ me.

“There are 12 romanceable characters among the cast: six bachelors and six bachelorettes. There aren’t any same-sex options, however.”

For many, this is likely the thing they’ll aspire towards in Rune Factory 4. With all that said, relationships take time to develop, so you’ll be off partaking in the rest of the game’s activities in the meantime. Beyond farming and interacting with Selphia’s denizens, you’ll be able to roam around the game’s world, fighting/taming monsters and plumbing the depths of dungeons. There’s a hell of a lot to find in these places, and lots of materials to gather from defeated enemies or resource points scattered around.

Once you’ve got your haul back to Selphia, you can choose to sell it off or stockpile it for use in the crafting system. You can make all sorts of weapons and equipment, as well as farming implements or medicines. There’s also a ton of cooking recipes as well, many of which offer consumable buffs that will be crucial in clearing some of the harder content. You can also level up your equipment by fusing various materials to them for added effects, so there’s a use for damn near everything you find.

Leveling up also extends back to your farming, too. Better farm tools make your chores quicker, which means you can expand your operations to more fields in less time. Improving the quality of soil and seeds means the crops you grow also improve, having stronger effects and higher value. You can grow crops into giant versions of themselves, have an orchard of replenishing fruit trees, or even grow a dungeon to clear out. Everything you do ties back into farming, and in return it allows you to excel at these other activities.

One of the best features of Rune Factory 4 is the skills system. Much like an Elder Scrolls game, your character will pick up a huge array of skills that can all be individually leveled up. Your various weapons, magic elements, and crafting types all fall into these, but even basic or esoteric stuff like Eating, Sleeping, and Bathing all have a skill. Increasing these will gradually increase your base stats as well, so no matter what you choose to do, you’re making progress and becoming more capable.

Because of this, the wealth of content on offer in Rune Factory 4 never becomes too overbearing. You don’t have to rush the plot, or maximize your farming early, or any other such thing. It’s up to you to determine what you want to do on each given day. There’s a lot more to do than another game of its ilk, but the leisurely sense of playing at your own pace remains.

It’d be fair to say that Rune Factory 4 is very much greater than the sum of its parts. Part of the reason it can flood the player with content is because most of the pieces are fairly simple. There’s depth to juggling all the various moving parts and maximizing your stats, sure. But taken on its own, each mechanic is fairly straightforward. 

Combat is an action-RPG affair that sees you mostly mashing your attack button with your weapon of choice. You have the ability to dash as a soft dodge, and this can combo into a different attack, but beyond this, it’s very basic. You also can equip magic abilities to supplement this, but you’ll rarely be doing anything truly complex. Dungeons are long sequences of small rooms with very light puzzles and a mix of enemies on offer. Even on the higher difficulties, it mostly comes down to moving at the right times and having higher stats or more healing than the opponent.

Again, though, this all ends up serving the package as a whole. Combat isn’t too deep, but it increases your skills and grants materials for crafting. The crafting lets you proceed further, and also helps you with the farming. The farming likewise can give you stronger materials, consumables, or produce the right items to gift townsfolk. You can even use them on some monsters to befriend them, taking them into combat to supplement your abilities or keeping them on the farm to do chores and produce materials. Simple pieces, but it makes for a very large and beautiful puzzle.

“Rune Factory 4 is very much greater than the sum of its parts.”

By now, you hopefully have a good idea of what’s in store for you in Rune Factory 4. Everything I’ve said so far has all been true of the original 3DS release, though. So what else is new about Rune Factory 4 Special?

There have been a few adjustments made to compensate for the lack of the 3DS dual screen on a Switch. The second screen was usually dedicated to a minimap or other information, but instead, this is now presented in a transparent window in the corner. You can resize the minimap with a press of ZL, though, so it doesn’t get too intrusive. There’s also been a number of tweaks that allow you to enlarge text boxes, while ZR has been mapped to the frequently used Escape spell. Enough care and concessions were put in to make sure the transition to a different screen size is smooth, which is appreciated.

With all that said, it’s still very much a 3DS game in terms of appearance. The resolution has been increased and many of the models or images have been smoothed out, so the game looks far less pixelated than the original. Unfortunately, this is something of a double-edged sword; many of the flat images now look dull and simplistic despite the clarity. It was a lot harder to tell how everything was compressed to fit a 3DS screen and cartridge, but now that illusion has been lifted. The 3D models look good enough, but it’s all still clearly born of a handheld game. Those expecting high graphical fidelity won’t find it here, though the developers have done their utmost nonetheless.

Beyond the presentation, a few little additions have made their way into the port. English and Japanese dual audio is now available, toggled from the menu. There’s a new difficulty mode that’s quite punishing, but I honestly just found it more of a nuisance than an interesting challenge. Some games better suit being challenged on high difficulty, but Rune Factory 4’s combat depth is too basic and stat-driven to really warrant it. It’s there should you desire, however!

As for the new content… there isn’t all that much to it. Both showcased additions to Special are available on the main menu, but you won’t be able to access them immediately. Another Episode is a series of short segments displayed and voiced like a visual novel, each one focusing on a romanceable character. There’s also a bonus one for Ventuswill, which is the closest fans of the dragon goddess are gonna get this time around. Ultimately, these are simple, short, sweet, but not a particularly large chunk of content. They’re also DLC, but will be free for the first month or so if you get the game early.

The Newlywed Mode adds more gameplay in the form of an epilogue with your partner after you get married. Again, there’s one for each, and these remain locked until you marry that specific character in a playthrough. Given the overall length of the game, only the absolutely dedicated or determined are ever likely to see all of these.

But here’s the rub: I didn’t get to play any of these episodes in the course of my review. This isn’t for lack of trying, either. I clocked up well over 40 hours of playtime on Switch, and I’ve beaten the 3DS version previously. I know what I’m doing to speed things along, but outside of rushing and ignoring non-essentials, it didn’t happen. Not only did I not make it to marrying a character, but I’m not even close! I only really just started dating my waifu of choice. As such, I honestly can’t tell you about the quality of this new content or what’s entailed. I intend to come back after the game has launched and cover it once I get there, but I just wasn’t able to get through enough to make it in time for this review.

Despite this conundrum, I think it loops right back around to showcasing just how much content there is in Rune Factory 4. This game is utterly enormous. It’s varied, it’s engaging, and it’s a great time. Whether doing chores at a relaxed pace or grinding hard to overcome a particular challenge, this holds true.

There is a major criticism I can offer, however. Town Events will spring up at random throughout your game. These involve a selection of the cast and some antics going on in their lives, and often lead to some great insight into their personality or history. Nonetheless, these events are random. On a day determined by the game (it’s not set), one of these events will trigger. Your save file will always have an event trigger on that day, and reloading prior to that day will let you cycle through events to access a particular one if you’re dedicated.

“This game is utterly enormous. It’s varied, it’s engaging, and it’s a great time.”

Now, this might not be an issue if these were exclusively minor little events. The problem is, these Town Events also include a number of key scenes. In order to marry your partner, you’ll have to see all their prerequisite events, and some have more than others. More egregiously? The entire third Act of the plot including the last major area is locked behind this! 

If you didn’t look online and just try playing at your own pace — as I did on the 3DS — it might take you a frustratingly long time to even realize that the plot continues and there’s more to do… only for you then needing to cycle the events until you trigger the right one. It’s utterly maddening, and the largest complaint I could level against Rune Factory 4. I was hoping this would be adjusted for Special, but alas.

As major an issue as this is, however, it’s one that you can overcome with a little patience and a touch of frustration. By the time you’re likely to reach this point, you’ll have played a tremendously large chunk of video game already, with still more ahead. It really astonished me just how much content was in a 3DS game, and this is still remarkable even now on a different system. Given that this is my only problem with the game outside of small nitpicks, it’s far from a deal breaker.

“While no individual aspect is the best of its kind, the overall package exudes charm and entertainment that is hard to match.”

So this is where we stand. Rune Factory 4 Special is an amazing game. It was my personal favourite 3DS game out of the large and varied library. It’s a game that I was more than happy to return to even if there was no new content whatsoever. I still know my way around Selphia and relish my time with it. Many love Stardew Valley, but as quality as that game is… I’ve never been able to play it without eventually going back and replaying Rune Factory 4 instead. I expect I’ll still be playing even when Animal Crossing rolls around. While no individual aspect is the best of its kind, the overall package exudes charm and entertainment that is hard to match.

If you haven’t played the original and this sounds even remotely like your kind of game, I heartily encourage you to try it. If you did play the original, you probably won’t get too much that you didn’t already experience. Should you just feel a little nostalgic for it and want to go back to one of the best farming life sims ever made, though? That was more than enough for me to adore my time with Rune Factory 4 Special, and will continue to do so long after you’re done reading this. Here’s hoping the upcoming Rune Factory 5 manages to capture that magic again.

February 25, 2020 1:30 PM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/02/rune-factory-4-special-review-its-always-been-special-to-me/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rune-factory-4-special-review-its-always-been-special-to-me

[dailybiblelessons]

Tuesday: Reflection on the Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Roman Catholic Proper 28 Revised Common Lectionary Proper 23

Complementary Hebrew Scripture from the Former Prophets: 2 Kings 5:19b-27

But when Naaman had gone from him a short distance, Gehazi, the servant of Elisha the man of God, thought, “My master has let that Aramean Naaman off too lightly by not accepting from him what he offered. As the Lord lives, I will run after him and get something out of him.” So Gehazi went after Naaman. When Naaman saw someone running after him, he jumped down from the chariot to meet him and said, “Is everything all right?” He replied, “Yes, but my master has sent me to say, ‘Two members of a company of prophets have just come to me from the hill country of Ephraim; please give them a talent of silver and two changes of clothing.’” Naaman said, “Please accept two talents.” He urged him, and tied up two talents of silver in two bags, with two changes of clothing, and gave them to two of his servants, who carried them in front of Gehazi. When he came to the citadel, he took the bags from them, and stored them inside; he dismissed the men, and they left.

He went in and stood before his master; and Elisha said to him, “Where have you been, Gehazi?” He answered, “Your servant has not gone anywhere at all.” But he said to him, “Did I not go with you in spirit when someone left his chariot to meet you? Is this a time to accept money and to accept clothing, olive orchards and vineyards, sheep and oxen, and male and female slaves? Therefore the leprosy of Naaman shall cling to you, and to your descendants forever.” So he left his presence leprous, as white as snow.

Semi-continuous Hebrew Scripture from the Latter Prophets: Jeremiah 29:24-32

To Shemaiah of Nehelam you shall say: Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: In your own name you sent a letter to all the people who are in Jerusalem, and to the priest Zephaniah son of Maaseiah, and to all the priests, saying, The Lord himself has made you priest instead of the priest Jehoiada, so that there may be officers in the house of the Lord to control any madman who plays the prophet, to put him in the stocks and the collar. So now why have you not rebuked Jeremiah of Anathoth who plays the prophet for you? For he has actually sent to us in Babylon, saying, “It will be a long time; build houses and live in them, and plant gardens and eat what they produce.”

The priest Zephaniah read this letter in the hearing of the prophet Jeremiah. Then the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah: Send to all the exiles, saying, Thus says the Lord concerning Shemaiah of Nehelam: Because Shemaiah has prophesied to you, though I did not send him, and has led you to trust in a lie, therefore thus says the Lord: I am going to punish Shemaiah of Nehelam and his descendants; he shall not have anyone living among this people to see the good that I am going to do to my people, says the Lord, for he has spoken rebellion against the Lord.

Complementary Psalm 61

Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. From the end of the earth I call to you,  when my heart is faint.

Lead me to the rock  that is higher than I; for you are my refuge,  a strong tower against the enemy.

Let me abide in your tent forever,  find refuge under the shelter of your wings. For you, O God, have heard my vows;  you have given me the heritage of those who fear your name.

Prolong the life of the king;  may his years endure to all generations! May he be enthroned forever before God;  appoint steadfast love and faithfulness to watch over him! So I will always sing praises to your name,  as I pay my vows day after day.

Semi-continuous Psalm 102:1-17

Hear my prayer, O Lord; let my cry come to you. Do not hide your face from me  in the day of my distress. Incline your ear to me;  answer me speedily in the day when I call. For my days pass away like smoke,  and my bones burn like a furnace. My heart is stricken and withered like grass;  I am too wasted to eat my bread. Because of my loud groaning  my bones cling to my skin. I am like an owl of the wilderness,  like a little owl of the waste places. I lie awake;  I am like a lonely bird on the housetop. All day long my enemies taunt me;  those who deride me use my name for a curse. For I eat ashes like bread,  and mingle tears with my drink, because of your indignation and anger;  for you have lifted me up and thrown me aside. My days are like an evening shadow;  I wither away like grass.

But you, O Lord, are enthroned forever;  your name endures to all generations. You will rise up and have compassion on Zion,  for it is time to favor it;  the appointed time has come. For your servants hold its stones dear,  and have pity on its dust. The nations will fear the name of the Lord,  and all the kings of the earth your glory. For the Lord will build up Zion;  he will appear in his glory. He will regard the prayer of the destitute,  and will not despise their prayer.

New Testament Epistle Lesson: Ephesians 6:10-20

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak.

[Here is a link to a chart showing what a Roman soldier would have worn and relating it to Ephesians. Armor of God]

Year C Ordinary 28, Catholic Proper 28, RCL Proper 23: Tuesday

Selections are from Revised Common Lectionary Daily Readings copyright © 1995 by the Consultation on Common Texts. Unless otherwise indicated, Bible text is from New Revised Standard Version Bible (NRSV) copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Image Credit: Sir Lancelot whole armour of God (Royal Military College of Canada memorial window to Ian Sutherland Brown), image by By Victoria Edwards (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons. This image is licensed under the Creative Commons 3.0 Share Alike license

[kyselor-blog]

5/10

"The point here is that drones do not simply float above—they rewrite and re-form life on earth in a most material way. Drone operations shape where people move and how they communicate, which buildings stand and which are destroyed, who shall live and who shall die " (Parks 147).

I think that this is a quote that embodies this weeks themes because even though this line is specifically talking about drones, we can connect that to Israel, and its power over Palenstine. The power that both have over its targets, is more than what people may see at the surface level. It changes everyday life, with check points separating families, and it also changes the land due to violent acts of displacement and explosions. Just having the power to dictate how people are viewed or how they should go about their daily lives, is expressed by Israel and the US. They are picking who they are able to move and destroy, just because they have the resources and power to do so. In Shaloub-Kevorkian’s reading, she mentioned how the act of child bearing has become something that is something to feel sad about because it is the paradox of being born to die. This should be a positive moment for people, but the fact that they could be torn apart at any time due to the borders and checkpoints, is scary. This is another way that power is expressed in these contexts, being able to “clean house” when you want to.

My addition to the Glossary of Haunting would be adaptation. I picked this word because it could be the US or Israel that is displacing, harming, and forcibly changing the way that people can interact with family members and others, the land, and their culture. In Palestine, their land is being deemed abandoned, while Israel is polluting their orchards, forcing them to move because their homes are being destroyed. Then, Israel has to come in and recultivate the “abandoned” area (Shaloub-Kevorkian 174). This narrative is always being reused and reworked to apply in different contexts, but it shows how these Palestinians have to adapt to new conditions and surroundings because they are constantly having to change the way they interact with everything. There is so much violence that is not being seen by the larger public, because it has been so normalized to the everyday lives. These checkpoints they have to go through just to go home, and some aren't even allowed to go home because they are seen as trespassers. Being denied access to go home and see family is a way that Israel has been able to tear families apart and weaken them as a whole because they are not allowed to interact the way they used to. They have to adapt to what is being given to them, since they always have to listen to a higher power. In regards to the US, it has the power to fly these drones over any target area and turn what used to be buildings and people’s houses are now turned into ruble. Then there are pictures captured to show the great power the US has while it forces these individuals to adapt and find new ways to survive (Parks 149). They are just expected to roll with the punches and start fresh somewhere else. Having to adapt is something that can be a good thing, but in these contexts, it is out of violence that they need to adapt for survival.

The power dynamics in this weeks reading are due to this gendered patriarchy of power. At the forefront of both pieces, are men that are leading this violent charge against a marginalized people. In Palestine, once again the women in this context are always seen as weak and inferior to men, but there is an invisible labor that takes place that they do not get credit or respect for. In a sense, the ability to create life and give birth to new generations is such a powerful thing that women bring to this world, but due to all of the military violence, have to have a guilty feeling about bringing a new life into this type of poverty, exile, and violence (Shaloub-Kevorkian 175). It is another burden that women have to carry on top of the already existing struggles they go through on a day to day basis. Also, natives being labeled as infiltrators, when they are just trying to go back to their home land is a power structure. The authority to displace individuals and say who is and isn’t welcome. It is literally stealing land away from others by placing man made borders to signify dominance. It is a classist system that widens the gap between who is in control and who isn't. There is also the aspect of picking who is born to live and who is born to die, which is evident in both readings because on a daily basis, people are dying or their literally or a piece of them is because their land is being taken and destroyed with all of the violence. THey lose a piece of themselves because they are tied to their home land, and in a blink of an eye it could be blown up or bordered off and considered abandoned.

Orphaned beginnings is tied to these topics because of the physical act of ripping families apart due to checkpoints at borders, or by military violence using drones. It is a tactic used to not allow people to come together and foster any type of power, in a familial context or as a community. The military violence that occurs daily in Palestine and in the Middle East drastically changes lives because they have to constantly survive through all of the environmental damage and cultural damage the US brings to their space. Even further than the explosions, the lasting and generational damage to the environment the military causes affects how people can interact in that space. This changes the original culture and way of life they used to have before all of the violence. Leaving them to fight for their lives, but also fight to stay in touch with their roots.

We can listen for robot futures by giving back the land that was once inhabited by natives. A big part of colonization, is the occupation on indigenous lands and using it for resources and power. These marginalized communities are left to move elsewhere to survive, even if it is with their families or not. So much is being taken from these people, like their loved ones, land, and identity because of the expression of dominance over them. Pulling out of these lands won’t resolve the damage that is already done, but it may leave the door open to try to rebuild and thrive in the future. I don’t think that there is a time that the monsters could be held accountable because so much has already been done without any thought of stopping because these bodies have been dominated and labeled as disposable for so long. It seem almost easy to do it to these people so trying to imagine a time where the colonizers come to a moment of clarity and stop, is unlikely.

[roryedd]

An Uncertain Sanctuary

Black, rotten corn slumped in their cradles, and I knew the harvest was lost. There were rows of it—blighted, sick, dead.

“Peter!” It was my good-for-nothing brother’s job to clear the blighted stalks before they spread to the others. Not that it mattered, the few that did take root already had it, and the ones that didn’t soon would. It had already spread from the boroughs to the cities. Food was scarce, and while the sickness grew stronger, we grew weaker.

“Peter,” I called out again. Nothing.

I peered out from the end of the stalks at the edge of our farm. We were on the outskirts, one of the last places still holding against the blight, feeding the starving, and if we could manage, have enough left for ourselves. Beyond our farm was the reach, a barren field we kept unplanted, it created a buffer between us and a thin copse of trees that grew along our side of the barrier.

Careful with my footing to keep from sinking into the mud that permeated the reach, I noticed other footprints pressed deep into the soft earth that pooled with still water. Smaller and wider than my own I knew they were Peter’s. They headed towards the barrier where it joined a second set and then disappeared into the treeline. The second set was large, much larger than even Pa’s, and much deeper than Peter’s.

When we were little Peter and I would dare each other to run out to the trees and touch the barrier, but neither of us ever had the courage. I was scared of it, even though I thought it was beautiful when it shimmered across the sky sometimes. It was translucent, and let in sunlight, but nothing else. The barrier kept us safe from the blasted earth and poisoned air. We were warned about the savages who used to stalk outside, but they were long dead—killed off by the war that ravaged the world as we erected it.

“Peter, this isn’t funny.” I tied my hair back and took a step into the muddy field. I paused there. The fear shook me. I had been warned all my life that the barrier is dangerous, and what lay beyond it even more so. The fear was overwhelming, and I looked back towards the corn stalks, orienting myself towards our home. Peter was in trouble, and I had to get help.

Our farmhouse was a manor, a reproduction, and in a pretty sorry state. The white paint peeled and chipped at the edges and it listed on its tired foundation. It was built during a period where reclaiming and celebrating our heritage was mandatory, so buildings were made resembling the American South. We were told it was in the American federalist style, but it was definitely French colonial, not that anyone really cared, or even remembered the difference anymore.

Letting the screen door slam behind me with a shattering clack, I rushed into the parlor to find Ma. She was there, sitting on an antique couch draped in a quilt by a lacquered coffee table. She was looking down at a letter in her hand, her eyes serious, her other hand over her mouth. “Ma!” I screamed, “I can’t find Peter!”

Ma didn’t respond. She only stared at the letter, exquisitely absorbed by it. Dropping her hand to her knees, the letter still folded open by her thumb, she glanced up at me.

“I’m sorry, Olive.” Her words came soft and weak—so full of remorse, “I know you wanted it so badly.”

“What is it, Ma? What’s it say?” I said apprehensively.

“It’s from City Central. They’ve gone through your medical results, and you don’t qualify for reproduction. You have to schedule a mandatory appointment with the clinic by tomorrow. I’m so sorry.”

I broke down. Not into a slobbering mess, but instead it was like my mind shut off. I could feel it, a black hole expanding just under my belly. A vacant hole, tugging on the rest of me like hammered piano strings. It was decided then—I was unfit, less than perfect. I would be given a hysterectomy because people somewhere decided that they had the right to subtract from me.

Without looking up from the floor, I said the only thing I could manage. “Peter’s gone to the barrier...”

“You too know better than to go out there. It’s not safe,” said Ma, rising from the couch. “Get Pa, he’s outside.”

I turned to leave, and then looked back, and watched my mother wander to the kitchen and drop the letter into the bin. It gave me a spark of hope. Maybe I could convince them I was adequate, maybe she would help make my case. Maybe I would stay whole.

Pa was working on the tractor by the corn silo. Not that we needed either with our poor harvests. He was tall, weary, but strong. The sleeves of his red work shirt were rolled up past his elbows, and his hands were dyed black with grease.

“Peter’s lost at the barrier,” I said.

He turned from his work and bent down to face me. He had black eyes, so much darker than my mother’s blue. I wondered whose genetics had caused me to be unfit, whose gift to me was inadequacy.  “Show me where,” he said.

Pa hitched a small cart to the tractor, and I rode in the back watching the corn stalks, once a vibrant gold when I was little—now grey. They hung wearily, too weak to bear even their own small, stunted fruit.

The tractor hummed as it idled, and Pa hopped down into the muck. He turned to me for just a moment, “Wait here, Olive. I’ll go look.” He let the words drawl out from the side of his mouth, Pa was never much of a talker.

He didn’t step out into the reach immediately. Instead he gazed out and panned the treeline on the other side. I don’t know what he was looking for. Peter’s tracks were clear as day crossing through the mud, as were the larger ones beside them. I think Pa was scared too. Not as much as me. But even in his day he was raised just like us, to fear what lay beyond the barrier.

Rolling up his sleeves he began slogging through the thick mud. Each step took a burden on him and he slowed as the mud collected on his boots. Every few steps he turned his head, looking out for Peter. Or maybe for something else, some unseen threat that had infiltrated our land.

As he disappeared into the trees I leaned back in the small, wooden trailer. It, like our farm, was old and decaying. Cracked wooden boards and half-flat tires. I looked up to the sky and could see the slight shimmer of the barrier. Iridescent rays of light refracted through it like a rainbow flickering across an oil spill. The council called it the good fence, and said it made us safer, made us better, but I only felt it made us trapped. It made us prisoners.

A howl rang out from across the reach. Shooting up I glanced over and saw it was Pa. He was shouting and waving, but I couldn’t hear him over the rumbling of the tractor. I leaned forward, my palms on the back of the tractor seat, and I could see his face. He was afraid. More than I’d ever seen him. It was a face I had seldom seen fear in.

Taking long strides he hopped up to the seat, flinging mud as he swung his leg over, and I fell back to the cart. Slamming the tractor into drive he pulled forward, and swung wide, taking out a mass of cornstalks, not bothering to avoid destroying something so precious. We sped off as fast as the old tractor could take us, sending me jostling around in the small cart—its worn out wheels only sometimes gaining traction, and other times sliding in the mud.

“Olive!” shouted Pa over his shoulder, “I need you to fetch Ma, and help her into the cart. You need to hurry, we don’t have time.”

“What about Peter?” I cried.

“Once you’re both safe I’ll get help and we’ll get Peter.”

Pulling up to the farmhouse I did as he told me, and Ma, confused and flustered, climbed into the cart. Pa didn’t say a word, and we drove down the dirt road that bordered the farmlands. We passed by the Johnson farmland, their corrupted orchards producing pale misshapen oranges, and soft black apples. Then the Brown’s, with their dead cabbage and potatoes the size of dried out raisins. It was like that, each one worse than the last, for miles.

Ma laid her hand on my shoulder and leaned up to Pa. “What is it, what’s going on, Jim? Where are we going? Where’s Peter?”

Pa glanced back, sweat dotting his forehead and he let the words shoot from the side of his mouth. “They have him. It’s finally happened. They’ve breached the barrier.”

Ma didn’t ask any more questions. She sat quietly, looking down, almost defeated. Her joy, if she could ever be called joyful, was absent. I was scared too. I felt a pit well in my stomach thinking of Peter, and having left him, but I didn’t have the courage to speak up.

The dirt road was replaced by pavement, and as dusk crept in we reached an enormous throng of people. We had reached the longhouse. It was a large white structure where local council met. They took their orders from City Central. Outside of it were hundreds of people, some lined up outside, many in a disordered mass, and most yelling frantically. The face I saw on Pa was plastered on their own. It was boiled over concern, or fear maybe, or just the ache of uncertainty when you are deprived of answers.

Pa stopped short of the crowd and pulled the tractor and cart over to the side of the road. “Come with me,” said Pa, holding my hand fast as I exited the cart, “And stay close.”

We navigated through the crowd, dried mud sloughing off Pa’s boots as he marched. They were angry, and they were starving. Gaunt faces and tattered clothes, they looked like they had worked themselves nearly to death just to continue surviving. They were in a panic, many yelling that people were missing. That the barrier had been breached. That we have to do something. Nobody knew what. The council was all we had to look to for hope.

Pa forced us through the crowd and stopped at the large oak doors of the longhouse. There were armed guard lined up just outside. Each wore black fatigues with bulletproof vests, and looked more like soldiers than security. Their rifles were slung over their backs, and they had their hands raised, trying to ease the furious throng of people. But it was in vain as the rowdy crowd spat and shoved on them.

Two of the guards, well armed with their rifles at the ready, closed in on Pa, blocking our way into the longhouse.

Pa stood straight, his hand tightening on mine, and lowered his eyes to theirs. “I’ve got the only farm left in town.” His voice was cold, flat. “You want to eat anything besides rotten sludge, you let us through.” It was mostly true. We barely had enough food to feed ourselves.

The guards looked to each other and separated just enough for the three of us.

Pushing past them Pa lead us into the longhouse. I was hit by a wall of heat from the packed crowd, and the bitter smell of sweat and fear. I was shoved back and forth by shoulders and elbows, propelled through the crowd by my father’s sturdy grasp.

Bodies obscured my view, but I could look up as I was jostled through the sea of people. The longhouse was built during the revision, a time when the founders tried to recapture what made us better than others. It had sweeping arches held aloft by white pillars, and displayed great murals of leaders and heroes. Usually they were one in the same. When the great war broke out these men built the barrier, and during the revision that followed they lead the rebuilding of our communities.

“Blackport,” shouted father, bringing us to a halt near the front of the longhouse. There was an elevated stage, and on it at a podium was the head of our community, a tall blond man. He was older than my father, with wrinkles that cracked at the corners of his eyes, and jowls that pulled his lips down into a grimace.

My father fired out his name again, and this time Blackport took notice.

“My son, Peter, he’s gone!” Pa cried, his voice shaking him, “The barrier is breached! They took my son!”

“Please, please!” said Blackport towards the audience, augmented by a microphone in his collar. “There is no cause for alarm. The barrier cannot be breached. There is no danger. There is nothing outside—no human being could have survived the war.” He raised his hand reassuringly. “We are safe.”

The crowd of furious people swelled in anger.

“I saw them!” came a shout from the crowd. A man, one of the farmers from the other side of the borough pushed forward. He was rail-thin, with grey skin and dark circle beneath each eye as if the blight had affected him as well. “Enormous things, armed with weapons I’ve never seen before! It’s an invasion! They took my brother, and now they’re coming for us!”

Before he could continue two of the black-clad guards emerged from the crowd and dragged him off, kicking and screaming as he went.

“People, please! There is no cause for alarm—”

Before Blackport could finish, a crackling of furious gunfire erupted from outside. It was like every available gun had gone off, and then ended abruptly. The crowd was silent for the first time. The piercing quiet was so much worse. We all braced ourselves, unsure of what to expect next.

A booming echo of heavy wooden doors slamming shut washed over us, and a lone guard began barring the entrance. Pulling up a pew, its wooden feet screeching on the stone floor, he propped it up against heavy, wooden doors. “For the love of god, help me!” He begged, his voice cracked and shaking.

People, as if awoken from a daze, began to nervously chatter among themselves. A few men went to help the guard, and they began barricading the door. Their weak, starved frames struggling under the weight of the wooden benches.

Pa’s grip tightened on mine.

“What about the people outside?” said Pa to the man at the podium.

“We’re going to wait this out. You’re safe in here,” said Blackport, and he retreated towards the other council members standing behind him on the stage.

My father was still. He was glaring at the councilmen, but didn’t move. My mother held fast to his arm, looking around for some semblance of order. Something she could latch onto to make sense of the ordeal.

The attack started slowly. First the whirring hum and beating wind of some strange craft descended from above us. Then the cold blue light poured in through the longhouse windows, overtaking the interior lights. We were surrounded. Then a crash against the door sent one of the pews tumbling to the floor. Then again. Then again.

The doors cracked open, and the same blue light washed over us in thick, penetrating beams.

People parted and I heard my mother scream—it wasn’t in fear, but in shock. Peter stood in the doorway. His small, thin frame appeared unharmed, and it was haloed in the blue glow.

Peter walked down the center of the longhouse through the parting crowd. Coming towards us he spoke softly, but with a joy I had never seen. “They’re here to help!”

“It’s a trick!” shouted Blackport. “He’s a spy, he’s out to ruin us!”

Blackport signaled to the guards and they rushed in from the sides of the stage.

Before I felt his grip leave my own Pa had gotten between them and leveled one of the guards with a solid left to the jaw. The other guard landed a thunderous blow to Pa, cracking him over the head with the butt of his rifle.

“Please, stop!” said Peter, “They don’t want to hurt us. They’ve been watching us, and they know we need help. They’ve come to save us.”

“Lies!” screamed Blackport. He pulled a revolver from his jacket and aimed it at Peter.

It happened so fast that I heard the shot after I felt the bullet tear into my stomach. I collapsed in front of Peter where I had rushed over to protect him.

“No matter, she was unfit anyway. Just like her father. I should never have agreed to let you reproduce, Jim.” Blackport gestured his gun towards Pa as he laid unconscious on the floor. “There will be no more placating to the inferior just because they’re farmers, from now on I have total control. We have faced greater odds and come out victorious, we will weather this.”

The red stain soaked into my clothes and began spreading up to my chest. I slumped down onto my knees and cradled my belly.

“It’s okay,” said Peter softly into my ear, “They’re here.”

Looking behind me, my vision not quite clear, I could see them emerge from the light. First just one, then another, then dozens. They laid their hands on the people and they seemed to evaporate into the light.

Each one was tall, wearing armor that reflected the same blue light. The first one who entered walked up to Blackport, and before he could say a word, he disappeared. Quickly fading into the light.

Peter kneeled beside me and laid his hand on my stomach. “I told you. They’re here to help.”

One of the invaders, this one slimmer than the others kneeled down beside Peter, and looked down at me. Removing its helmet I saw her face. A woman, with caramel skin and dark eyes. She smiled, and retrieved a device from her belt.

The device cast the same blue light, and I could feel the pain go away as my body faded into the light.

“We’ve watched you, Olive,” she said sweetly, her form bathed in blue light . Her words, spoken with the overabundance of love only a new mother could express, penetrated through me.

“Why me,” I said. “I’m defective.”

“Your people, like your walled city, has reached its end. They hid from the wars they started, and abandoned us. Slowly, we recovered, and shared, and learned. While they stagnated we continued evolving. We were going to let your people suffer their own devices, seeing your culture as anathema to ours. But we will not return the same animus—we will not abandon you. Not when you are proof there is goodness here.”

“Am I not defective?”

“No. No one is. No one can be,” she said. “Come with us. You will be perfect as you are, and you will stay whole.”

I looked into her eyes. Each iris was a deep, reflective black. Just like Pa’s. Just like mine. Deep black pools that revealed all truth.

I let the light take me in its gentle caress. The four of us, as a family, reunited in the light, went to where we could be whole together.

See the whole anthology:

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“I suppose you have heard the news, Basil?” said Lord Henry on the following evening, as Hallward was shown into a little private room at the Bristol where dinner had been laid for three.

“No, Harry,” answered Hallward, giving his hat and coat to the bowing waiter. “What is it? Nothing about politics, I hope? They don’t interest me. There is hardly a single person in the House of Commons worth painting; though many of them would be the better for a little whitewashing.”

“Dorian Gray is engaged to be married,” said Lord Henry, watching him as he spoke.

Hallward turned perfectly pale, and a curious look flashed for a moment into his eyes, and then passed away, leaving them dull." Dorian engaged to be married!” he cried. “Impossible!”

“It is perfectly true.”

“To whom?”

“To some little actress or other.”

“I can’t believe it. Dorian is far too sensible.”

“Dorian is far too wise not to do foolish things now and then, my dear Basil.”

“Marriage is hardly a thing that one can do now and then, Harry," said Hallward, smiling.

“Except in America. But I didn’t say he was married. I said he was engaged to be married. There is a great difference. I have a distinct remembrance of being married, but I have no recollection at all of being engaged. I am inclined to think that I never was engaged.”

“But think of Dorian’s birth, and position, and wealth. It would be absurd for him to marry so much beneath him.”

“If you want him to marry this girl, tell him that, Basil. He is sure to do it then. Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.”

“I hope the girl is good, Harry. I don’t want to see Dorian tied to some vile creature, who might degrade his nature and ruin his intellect.”

“Oh, she is more than good–she is beautiful,” murmured Lord Henry, sipping a glass of vermouth and orange-bitters. “Dorian says she is beautiful; and he is not often wrong about things of that kind. [33] Your portrait of him has quickened his appreciation of the personal appearance of other people. It has had that excellent effect, among others. We are to see her to-night, if that boy doesn’t forget his appointment.”

“But do you approve of it, Harry?” asked Hallward, walking up and down the room, and biting his lip. “You can’t approve of it, really. It is some silly infatuation.”

“I never approve, or disapprove, of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life. We are not sent into the world to air our moral prejudices. I never take any notice of what common people say, and I never interfere with what charming people do. If a personality fascinates me, whatever the personality chooses to do is absolutely delightful to me. Dorian Gray falls in love with a beautiful girl who acts Shakespeare, and proposes to marry her. Why not? If he wedded Messalina he would be none the less interesting. You know I am not a champion of marriage. The real drawback to marriage is that it makes one unselfish. And unselfish people are colorless. They lack individuality. Still, there are certain temperaments that marriage makes more complex. They retain their egotism, and add to it many other egos. They are forced to have more than one life. They become more highly organized. Besides, every experience is of value, and, whatever one may say against marriage, it is certainly an experience. I hope that Dorian Gray will make this girl his wife, passionately adore her for six months, and then suddenly become fascinated by some one else. He would be a wonderful study.”

“You don’t mean all that, Harry; you know you don’t. If Dorian Gray’s life were spoiled, no one would be sorrier than yourself. You are much better than you pretend to be.”

Lord Henry laughed. “The reason we all like to think so well of others is that we are all afraid for ourselves. The basis of optimism is sheer terror. We think that we are generous because we credit our neighbor with those virtues that are likely to benefit ourselves. We praise the banker that we may overdraw our account, and find good qualities in the highwayman in the hope that he may spare our pockets. I mean everything that I have said. I have the greatest contempt for optimism. And as for a spoiled life, no life is spoiled but one whose growth is arrested. If you want to mar a nature, you have merely to reform it. But here is Dorian himself. He will tell you more than I can.”

“My dear Harry, my dear Basil, you must both congratulate me!” said the boy, throwing off his evening cape with its satin-lined wings, and shaking each of his friends by the hand in turn. “I have never been so happy. Of course it is sudden: all really delightful things are. And yet it seems to me to be the one thing I have been looking for all my life.” He was flushed with excitement and pleasure, and looked extraordinarily handsome.

“I hope you will always be very happy, Dorian,” said Hallward, “but I don’t quite forgive you for not having let me know of your engagement. You let Harry know.”

“And I don’t forgive you for being late for dinner,” broke in Lord [34] Henry, putting his hand on the lad’s shoulder, and smiling as he spoke. “Come, let us sit down and try what the new chef here is like, and then you will tell us how it all came about.”

“There is really not much to tell,” cried Dorian, as they took their seats at the small round table. “What happened was simply this. After I left you yesterday evening, Harry, I had some dinner at that curious little Italian restaurant in Rupert Street, you introduced me to, and went down afterwards to the theatre. Sibyl was playing Rosalind. Of course the scenery was dreadful, and the Orlando absurd. But Sibyl! You should have seen her! When she came on in her boy’s dress she was perfectly wonderful. She wore a moss-colored velvet jerkin with cinnamon sleeves, slim brown cross-gartered hose, a dainty little green cap with a hawk’s feather caught in a jewel, and a hooded cloak lined with dull red. She had never seemed to me more exquisite. She had all the delicate grace of that Tanagra figurine that you have in your studio, Basil. Her hair clustered round her face like dark leaves round a pale rose. As for her acting–well, you will see her to-night. She is simply a born artist. I sat in the dingy box absolutely enthralled. I forgot that I was in London and in the nineteenth century. I was away with my love in a forest that no man had ever seen. After the performance was over I went behind, and spoke to her. As we were sitting together, suddenly there came a look into her eyes that I had never seen there before. My lips moved towards hers. We kissed each other. I can’t describe to you what I felt at that moment. It seemed to me that all my life had been narrowed to one perfect point of rose-colored joy. She trembled all over, and shook like a white narcissus. Then she flung herself on her knees and kissed my hands. I feel that I should not tell you all this, but I can’t help it. Of course our engagement is a dead secret. She has not even told her own mother. I don’t know what my guardians will say. Lord Radley is sure to be furious. I don’t care. I shall be of age in less than a year, and then I can do what I like. I have been right, Basil, haven’t I, to take my love out of poetry, and to find my wife in Shakespeare’s plays? Lips that Shakespeare taught to speak have whispered their secret in my ear. I have had the arms of Rosalind around me, and kissed Juliet on the mouth.”

“Yes, Dorian, I suppose you were right,” said Hallward, slowly.

“Have you seen her to-day?” asked Lord Henry.

Dorian Gray shook his head. “I left her in the forest of Arden, I shall find her in an orchard in Verona.”

Lord Henry sipped his champagne in a meditative manner. “At what particular point did you mention the word marriage, Dorian? and what did she say in answer? Perhaps you forgot all about it.”

“My dear Harry, I did not treat it as a business transaction, and I did not make any formal proposal. I told her that I loved her, and she said she was not worthy to be my wife. Not worthy! Why, the whole world is nothing to me compared to her.”

“Women are wonderfully practical,” murmured Lord Henry,–"much more practical than we are. In situations of that kind we often forget to say anything about marriage, and they always remind us.”

[35] Hallward laid his hand upon his arm. “Don’t, Harry. You have annoyed Dorian. He is not like other men. He would never bring misery upon any one. His nature is too fine for that.”

Lord Henry looked across the table. “Dorian is never annoyed with me,” he answered. “I asked the question for the best reason possible, for the only reason, indeed, that excuses one for asking any question,–simple curiosity. I have a theory that it is always the women who propose to us, and not we who propose to the women, except, of course, in middle-class life. But then the middle classes are not modern.”

Dorian Gray laughed, and tossed his head. “You are quite incorrigible, Harry; but I don’t mind. It is impossible to be angry with you. When you see Sibyl Vane you will feel that the man who could wrong her would be a beast without a heart. I cannot understand how any one can wish to shame what he loves. I love Sibyl Vane. I wish to place her on a pedestal of gold, and to see the world worship the woman who is mine. What is marriage? An irrevocable vow. And it is an irrevocable vow that I want to take. Her trust makes me faithful, her belief makes me good. When I am with her, I regret all that you have taught me. I become different from what you have known me to be. I am changed, and the mere touch of Sibyl Vane’s hand makes me forget you and all your wrong, fascinating, poisonous, delightful theories.”

“You will always like me, Dorian,” said Lord Henry. “Will you have some coffee, you fellows?–Waiter, bring coffee, and fine-champagne, and some cigarettes. No: don’t mind the cigarettes; I have some.– Basil, I can’t allow you to smoke cigars. You must have a cigarette. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can you want?– Yes, Dorian, you will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.”

“What nonsense you talk, Harry!” cried Dorian Gray, lighting his cigarette from a fire-breathing silver dragon that the waiter had placed on the table. “Let us go down to the theatre. When you see Sibyl you will have a new ideal of life. She will represent something to you that you have never known.”

“I have known everything,” said Lord Henry, with a sad look in his eyes, “but I am always ready for a new emotion. I am afraid that there is no such thing, for me at any rate. Still, your wonderful girl may thrill me. I love acting. It is so much more real than life. Let us go. Dorian, you will come with me.–I am so sorry, Basil, but there is only room for two in the brougham. You must follow us in a hansom.”

They got up and put on their coats, sipping their coffee standing. Hallward was silent and preoccupied. There was a gloom over him. He could not bear this marriage, and yet it seemed to him to be better than many other things that might have happened. After a few moments, they all passed down-stairs. He drove off by himself, as had been arranged, and watched the flashing lights of the little brougham in front of him. A strange sense of loss came over him. [36] He felt that Dorian Gray would never again be to him all that he had been in the past. His eyes darkened, and the crowded flaring streets became blurred to him. When the cab drew up at the doors of the theatre, it seemed to him that he had grown years older.