#those silly ladies let a child score against them

[melancholytimes]

(this evil app and my stupid Wi-Fi ate my first version of this post)

as we head into the game with Manchester city, I just wanted to reflect on the last game against Everton

The 1-1 draw against Everton was so silly. They were not taking their chances and also refused to shoot. They finally got a goal when a deflected save from a Beth Mead shot was scored by Alessia Russo.

In the dying minutes of the game they gave up a corner, and Everton was able to score a header with one of the 16-year-old children that they put on the pitch at the end of the game.

I was really happy for her though, she was so excited. Obviously she’s Everton through and through from Liverpool grew up in their Academy. comes on gets her first goal against the mighty arsenal. Her little face.

hopefully they can do something against Manchester city. I’m begging for one set piece goal 

[reynauldapologist]

Beau + 99? Or maybe Vvulf + 17? 🤔

@nandashibs i did both! hope that’s okay :) also, i’m seriously beginning to think that you’re a psychic. how the hell did you know which songs would fit them the best??

apologies for any weird formatting or typos. i wrote all of this on my phone. putting it under a readmore bc this got a bit long.

Beau - Bloody Mary by Lady Gaga

(for anyone who’s unfamiliar, Beauregard is a HWM oc from one of my fics)

Hieromania, but make it silly:

Love is just a history that they may prove

And when you're gone, I'll tell them my religion's you.

Beauregard felt like he was breaking in. He knew he wasn’t - the Sisters had made it clear that the abbey was open to all, at any hour - but he couldn’t help but feel as though he was invading a sacred place, tainting it with his mere presence. It didn’t help that he had decided to visit so late at night. He’d been in churches before, sure, but the small stone chapel of his childhood seemed almost blasphemous next to this lofty place.

Big fluted pillars and a ribbed ceiling stretched above him, so high that the light from the fluttering lanterns posted at regular intervals along the walls couldn’t reach it. His breath caught in his throat. Small. He felt so small. Like a mouse scuttering along beneath a moonless night sky, waiting for the harsh scrape of an owl’s talons against his back. The altar rose at the end of the sanctuary, old and opulent, surrounded by hordes of lit candles, framed by blood-red tapestries. Beauregard crept forwards, hardly daring to breathe, unsure of what he even meant to do there. Statues of saints lined the small alcoves between the grand stained glass windows. Some wept, some stretched their hands out like beggars, some clutched at weapons, and others cradled their dismembered body parts.

Beauregard shivered. How could anyone relax in a place like this?

A door squeaked open at the end of one of the transepts. Beauregard stopped, frozen, crouched low before he could think of what he was doing. He slunk down one of the rows, as silent as a shadow scudding across an open field.

Great. As if you didn’t already look like a robber…

Heavy footsteps coming closer. His eyes darted around the sanctuary, searching for a more permanent hiding place. They fell on a statue of a man without a right hand and a knife in his left. If there was space behind it...

A shadow stretched along the far wall, made grotesque by the weak lighting.

It’s now or never!

He slipped into the gap between the statue and the alcove. It was a tight fit, and it was dusty, but it was doable. His nose was less than a hair’s breadth away from the back of the statue’s neck and his arms were twisted oddly to account for its form. Awfully intimate…

The footsteps echoed strangely off of the stone walls, making it difficult for him to pinpoint exactly where they were heading. Beauregard focused on his breathing. Slow and steady, in and out through the mouth. Beauregard couldn’t see what was happening around the statue’s head. Surely it was just the abbot, or one of the Sisters, there to check on the candles… No worshippers came here this late. Right?

Wrong.

The footsteps stopped. Directly in front of his alcove. Out of all of the alcoves in the abbey...

Now, Beauregard was certain that the Light must truly exist. There was no other explanation for such a cruel joke.

The rustle of clothes. A deep sigh.

“O Saint Dismas…”

Beauregard knew that voice.It was Reynauld, the old crusader.

...Saint Dismas?

“...patron of repentant thieves, I humbly beseech thee for thine guidance.”

Beauregard’s nose began to itch.

No. Oh, gods, no. Please.

“I have faltered once again. Forgive me for my weakness, my repeated transgressions.”

His eyes were watering. His mouth was opening.

I’ll do anything. I’ll convert. I’ll become a monk. I’ll never so much as glance at a tavern again, please, don’t let me-

“I have taken-“

“AH-CHOO!”

It was like he had fired off his flintlock. The sneeze echoed for far longer than it had any right to. The silence that followed was deafening.

Light, if you’re out there, have mercy and strike me down now.

As the seconds trickled by and it became clear that Death would not be paying him a visit anytime soon, Beauregard forced himself to break the silence.

“I…er...” Beauregard swallowed. “...forgive you?”

“Beauregard? Is that you?”

“Who’s asking?”

Another heavy sigh. A groan and a rustle of clothes as Reynauld got to his feet.

“Come out, lad.”

“A-Alright, listen, I can explain-“

“Now.”

Beauregard disentangled himself from the statue. Reynauld had his arms crossed over his chest and a severe expression on his face. Beauregard ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck.

“What are you doing?”

“I… Well, y’see, I was on a walk anyways, and it’s awful cold out there, and windy too, and I thought-“

Reynauld held up a hand. Beauregard shut his mouth.

“No. What are you doing hiding behind Saint Dismas?”

“Uh… I was… Trying to get closer to the Saints?”

Reynauld stared at him. Beauregard hunched his shoulders, ready for a lecture.

Reynauld started to say something, paused, and cleared his throat. He let out something like a rolling grunt, his shoulders bobbing up and down.

He was… laughing? Beauregard relaxed and allowed himself a cautious smile. Reynauld shook his head and covered his eyes, little hints of teeth peeking out between his bristly beard. He inhaled sharply, then broke out into full laughter, leaning his head back. It bounced off the walls, low and hearty, but cracked around the edges, as though his throat was unused to making the sound.

Beauregard chuckled along, equal parts relieved to have avoided being chastised and delighted by this new side of Reynauld.

“It’s an unorthodox form of worship,” Reynauld said, still grinning, “but better than nothing.”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your prayer. I just… I heard someone coming and I… panicked.”

“All is forgiven.”

“I’ll… um... leave you to it.”

“Are you headed back to the barracks?”

Beauregard nodded.

“I’ll accompany you. My heart no longer feels so heavy. Contrition can wait until the morning.”

As they left the abbey together, Beauregard turned over the statue in his mind. What an odd coincidence. Had Dismas’s parents named him after the saint on purpose? Who would name their child after a mutilated man who oversaw thieves?

“Reynauld?”

“Hm?”

“Who was Saint Dismas?” he asked, slipping his hands into his pockets. The cold air nipped at his cheeks.

“Oh, that’s quite a story,” Reynauld replied. “One best told in front of a roaring fire, I think.”

—

Vvulf - Take You Back (The Iron Hoof) by Orville Peck

uh oh it’s self-indulgent modern au time 😳

I've been around this world and now everything's a bore

I don't know that much, but I know about keeping score

And if there's one thing I know for sure

It'd be a long cold day in Hell when I take you back

“I knew you’d come crawlin’ back.” Vvulf blew smoke out through his nostrils. It formed a hazy wreath around his face. He leaned back in the ratty chair. “Sure as the sun rises…”

Dismas was sweating. And not just because he was stuck in the cramped, windowless backroom of a bar, in the dead of a sticky summer night, with a man nearly twice his size. It was one thing practicing his speech in front of a warped motel mirror, it was another thing entirely to face the real thing. He sucked in stale air between his teeth.

“I’m not crawlin’.” Desperate for something to do with his hands, he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his leather jacket. He flicked it open and pushed one between his lips.

Vvulf smiled, cool and thin. Dismas repressed a shiver.

“Bit late for pride, ain’t it?”

Dismas lit his cigarette with trembling hands. He puffed on it slow to get it going. He sucked down a burning lungful, held it, then blew it out of the corner of his mouth.

“I didn’t have to come here, y’know.” A lie. He wouldn’t be here if he had any other choice. “I’m doin’ this as a favor to you.”

“A favor to me?” All traces of humor left his face. “You got a lotta nerve showing your face around here and talkin’ like that, boy.”

Boy. Dismas bit back a snicker. He was pushing forty.

Dismas shrugged. “If you don’t wanna hear what I got to say, fine. It’s your damn funeral.”

“What do you want?” Vvulf tapped ash off the end of his cigarette.

“You could stop puttin’ hits out on me. That’d be a start.”

“Don’t know what you’re talkin’ about...”

Dismas raised his eyebrows.

“...but I’ll see what I can do.”

Dismas nodded. Alright. He might actually swing this.

“That all?”

Here we go.

“I want protection,” he said plainly. Beating around the bush would just make Vvulf angry, and even less likely to grant his request. “He’s after me, too.”

Vvulf stared at him. Then he laughed. Harsh and mocking and gravelly. Like hail drumming against a tin roof. Sweat trickled down Dismas’s back.

“Don’t act like I ain’t ever put my neck out for you,” Dismas said, raising his voice to be heard over Vvulf’s laughter. “I’m just askin’ to borrow a safehouse for a couple weeks, until all this blows over, that’s it.”

“You got some serious balls on you, boy, I’ll give you that.” Vvulf took a hard drag off of his cigarette. He spewed the smoke at Dismas. “You dumb son of a bitch. What makes you think you’re leavin’ here alive at all?”

Dismas’s gut hardened. This had been a mistake. But what other choice had he had? It was either this or give up the ghost and turn himself in at the nearest police station. Anything was better than getting collared by the Widowmaker. He eyed the door over Vvulf’s shoulder. His gun weighed heavy at his hip.

“Now, here’s how I see this playin’ out.” Vvulf batted aside his denim vest, exposing a holstered pistol. “You can either tell me everything you know right now, and I’ll end things quick, or I could take you out back to the shed and get you nice and acquainted with a car battery, and then you tell me everything you know. Right before I gut you like a pig.”

“You know… Neither of those options are all that appealin’ to me.” Dismas shifted in his seat. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d taken Vvulf head-on in a fight. In a tight space like this, though, he didn’t like his chances.

“I had a feelin’ you’d say that. Which is why, as an acknowledgment of our long history together, I’ll open up a third option.” He grinned. “Just for you.”

Dismas clenched his jaw. He should’ve expected something like this…

“On one condition.” Vvulf stubbed his cigarette out on the sole of his boot. “You gotta beg for it.”

“Go to hell.

“After you.”

[dancedelion]

Sleep of the Dead (part 1 / 2)

Genre: some humour, angst with a happy ending Summary: Jaskier thinks he hit rock bottom when Geralt flushed twenty years of friendship down the drain, but then he finds himself suddenly translucent and rudely walked through by a traveller. Apparently he's dead - that's certainly a new low. He needs to find out what happened, and who better to help him than the man who's made more than clear he wants nothing to do with him. ao3: Sleep of the Dead

Jaskier is reasonably certain that he is dead. The evidence is staggering: He’s got a killer headache, like from the worst kind of hangover. He’s tired and sleep of the dead sounds very appealing right now. And on top of that, a man just walked through him. So that can’t be good. And he is cold the way people get when nothing is touching them except for freezing air.

(He thought it would feel like relief. He had expected it to be a gorgeous, final, end-of-the-road sort of ending. But it’s only more – more pain, more emptiness, heavier limbs. Relief is further than a daydream away.)

How did this happen? All he remembers is going to sleep and then waking up in the forest. Only he didn’t wake up the way humans do. He blinked and then he was here, on his feet, amidst the tall-standing trees of the forest. He – appeared. Like by teleport. He would suspect it was some prank by a mage who (probably rightfully) has it out for him if it weren’t for being half translucent.

“Fucking great,” Jaskier roars at the vast forest, trying to make his voice big enough to fill the space so it can reach whatever deity is listening. “Yes, thank you! What more could we do to Jaskier after we fucked up his life and turned everything to horseshit? Oh, yes, I have the idea. Why don’t we just take it from him? He can’t have a bad life if he doesn’t have a life at all, is that what you were thinking? Hire another solution-maker, you bastards!”

So. So. So, so, so. All he needs to do is keep his cool, which should be easy, considering he’s bloody freezing. Step one after dying: Figure out your where-abouts. Should be useful to know whether he’s about to be ripped to shreds by hellhounds or worse (like running into that nincompoop from court who thought he could actually play the hurdy-gurdy better than Jaskier and died from slipping in the stables a month later).

Taking stock: Trees. Lots and lots of trees. How to categorize those? Trees more a sign of a friendly atmosphere or eternal damnation? Or are these the naughty trees, sent to be punished in the afterlife? (Can a tree commit a sin? Splurged on sunlight, now off to hell with the greedy thing?) He’ll mark it off as a maybe. What else? He’s standing on a path, which is where that rude wanderer just walked straight through him without even so much as an apology. Next to the path, a horse – woohoo, a clear score for eternal damnation. (What do you think is holding them upright? Their frail spindly legs? No! It’s undeniably the power of Satan.) And – might that lump by the road be a person? Jaskier steps a little closer, leaning over the lump.

Ah. Who else could it be but Geralt of Rivia, the Butcher of Blaviken and Jaskier’s fragile heart himself? There was never any question he would be in Jaskier’s afterlife. But which is it? Exquisite hell or torturous paradise? Right now, Geralt is sleeping, so it could be either option.

(Do you wish your last words to me had been different?)

Jaskier steps around Geralt and focuses on the horse.

“Roach!” he coos. “Oh, I’ve missed you. Sorry for what I just thought about horses. I meant it as a compliment, I swear! My mischievous lady.”

He lifts his hand to pet her head, but his hand glides right through her.

(You are careful with your wishes now.)

And she meekly turns her head, takes no note of him, as if he weren’t here at all. And he isn’t, is he? Maybe this is no illusion, no magic, no unknown adventure. Maybe this is the real Roach and the real Geralt and Jaskier is where he is not wanted once more. Forced to spend forever running after Geralt while he’s invisible to the Witcher. Ha! And Jaskier had thought the afterlife was supposed to be different.

(Those rare moments when you let me touch you, when I could find an adequate excuse.)

He stumbles and leans against the tree next to Geralt’s sleeping body, but he falls right through it. The ground can still hold him, but nothing else. He lets his heavy eyelids drop. Legs stuck in a tree. It’s all just a bad dream.

(Does a song still taste so sweet without the lute and with no ears but his own to hear it?)

Nothing has a presence. You can always tell when it’s close by. Years ago, Jaskier was stupid and starry-eyed. He thought he owned the world, he thought he had the future to fall for. At some point, all that hope and optimism had to make room for… nothing. When he starts to listen and stops believing, his chest hollows out.

(This is just the final step, yes? This is where he was headed. No sense in regrets.)

This is what Geralt always thought of him and his songs, all talk and no substance. Har, har, Geralt, bad bloody joke. He is no substance now, only cold air. Once Geralt wakes up, it will hurt so much more. Jaskier lets out a laboured breath that brings no relief. He liked being alive, he thinks. Even when he hated it.

(Marmalade sandwiches. Gosh, he will miss marmalade sandwiches.)

He can’t feel the ground beneath his back, but panic still readily comes to him. The tears don’t. Dreadfully sorry, no tears available at the moment. Why don’t you ask again in an eternity?

Jaskier stands up again and paces the floor around Geralt. Oh, nobody, I’m sorry, did I step on your feet? No one, may I ask for this dance? Here, have a glass of nothing. This is terrible. Jaskier won’t have anyone to talk to. He doesn’t know any ghosts, he doesn’t know the most popular ghost-social-spots, he doesn’t know ghost-etiquette. Although he could always talk to Geralt. This time, there will be no complaints. And Geralt’s responses have always been a rare commodity.

But the terrifying truth is, Jaskier has only himself for company now. No one to sigh at his antics, no one to suppress a laugh at one of his jokes. And he wants – yes, despite the tiredness weighing him down, he still wants. If he is still here, in a world he doesn’t belong in anymore, if the desperate longing is somehow strong enough to keep him here, then he won’t get to rest.

What a sensible man would do: accept it’s over. Accept his chances are up. Put those silly wants and needs into a clean box – place them there like something precious. And then bury them as deep as he can.

Jaskier has not, by any stretch of the imagination, ever been a sensible man.

He lies down next to Geralt, like in a dream, one of the good ones, and thinks about words.

He doesn’t have matter, but no matter, he doesn’t matter.

He lies and thinks about words that have content. Even nothing has meaning. But not Jaskier. He is just – gone.

       is dead air now. Literally dead. A spot of nothing.

       thinks about spirits. Don’t lose your spirit. (Don’t be one.)

       is as tangible as the songs    carried over the lands.

A hole in the world.

When         wants,    wants everything.    wants too much. Of course,    turns up empty, the way the greedy do, with their slippery hands.

The leaves rustle, and say: You have lost your grip. We have seen many fall. You are no different, helpless, unbalanced, immobilized. A nestless child.

The wild wind whispers: You are alone.

Lying in a dreamish nightmare,         watches as the moon moves across the cloudy sky.

But the tiredness doesn’t leave. It clings to     like oil, hanging at every strand of     hair, gathering in    eye sockets. It does not wash off. Tiredness, paradoxically, does not get tired.

And    is tired of wondering. And    is tired of regret.

When sleep will not come and stays away,         turns on     side and watches Geralt. At least   has this. There were times when   thought    would never see Geralt again. But here he is. Still the same way he looked all those years ago when         first became intrigued by him. Beautiful white hair, beautiful features, but tense lines on his forehead, even in his sleep. He is not restful either.

Finally, finally, after hours or minutes he rouses.         gets up, elated.

“Rise and shine, Geralt! Don’t sleep your life away. Take it from me,”    says lightly, and only because    knows Geralt can’t hear    . But Geralt jerks and rolls away in an instant, making a grab for his sword.

“Wait, can you see me?”        asks.

It’s impossible. The man on the road couldn’t. Surely a random peasant won’t be so unfazed by the appearance of a ghost that he just casually strolls through    .

“I can,” Geralt says. “And you know what that means?”

“Maybe I’m not quite as dead as previously estimated?”

“It means I’ll know where to aim.” He presses the sword closer.

“Woah, woah,” Jaskier holds up his hands in a placating gesture. “Calm down. I know we didn’t part on the best of terms, but surely this is not necessary.”

“You’re not Jaskier.”

“Wha- why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because Jaskier isn’t dead. He wouldn’t dare. He knows I wouldn’t let him touch Roach for weeks if he died on me. You’re a doppler. An imposter. Something.”

Jaskier’s teeth gnash together. He is dead, all out of the blue. He didn’t expect this. He didn’t plan for this. He certainly didn’t choose to show up next to Geralt’s sleeping body. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say he’s had a really bad fucking day.

“Go on then!” Jaskier is seething. “Put your sword through me. The only thing you’ll hurt is my feelings.”

Geralt hesitates. How courteous indeed, at least to hesitate before impaling his only friend with a sword. Or. Well. His “we’re not friends”. His “if life could give me one blessing”. His never-friend.

“So prove it,” Geralt says.

“What do you want me to say? What haven’t I put into a song that half the country has heard?”

He was proud of those songs once. Now they’re only painful reminders.

“What was the last thing I said to you?” “Really? That’s what you’re going with? Out of all things you could ask me?”

Geralt’s face twists again, in an agonizingly familiar way. He lowers his sword, but keeps it in his hand.

“Dammit, Jaskier.” “Oh, yes, that’s what you started with. You want me to give you the whole speech? Because, believe me, I have it memorized word for word.”

Geralt looks conflicted, confused, but also like he is trying desperately to hide everything away again. He takes one step toward Jaskier, and Jaskier twitches, not sure if he wants to step backwards or forwards, so he just stays.

“It’s not the sort of thing you forget.” Jaskier shrugs. “There are very, very few things that could have ever made me even look at you again,” he lies, and spreads out his arms. “It’s your lucky day.”

Geralt is still looking at him like he’s seeing a ghost – oops. Jaskier keeps forgetting.

“But you can’t be,” Geralt says, completely stiff. “That would mean that Jaskier –“

He reaches out to grab Jaskier’s wrist, but his hand glides right through it.

“No. No, you’re not him,” Geralt is nearly shouting now. He is clenching his jaw and has to turn around. He has so much presence in the world. He would leave craters, if he were ever gone. Whole cliffs.

Jaskier gives Geralt one more glance. It’s not like he really expected anything. He’s not Geralt’s problem anymore. Jaskier only really stayed because he thought Geralt would never know.

“How about the last words I said to you, then?” Jaskier says, because he knows when he is defeated. Even when it takes him twenty years to realize. “See you around, Geralt.”

He turns around and doesn’t know where to go and goes anyway. It’s colder now. There is no body to drag around, but Jaskier feels heavy. He is walking down a mountain. He can hear something shuffling in the bushes. He is alone and he can never learn from his mistakes because he is addicted to this one, even though it leaves him bleeding every time.

With every step, he feels himself fading a little more. It would take so little to just – “Wait!”

He should keep walking, but disaster smells so sweet.

Geralt is standing in the same spot, like he is frozen, but Jaskier comes back to him.

“What happened to you?” Geralt asks.

“Ah, I was just, you know, enjoying the afterlife and then I thought to myself, I’m gonna fucking haunt your ass.”

Geralt looks so unhappy and somehow, Jaskier regrets waiting for him to wake up even more now.

“I’ve known my share of vengeful spirits,” Geralt says warily.

“Melitele, Geralt, I was kidding. You’re so self-absorbed.” Kind words have grown tired, don’t find their way onto Jaskier’s lips any longer and sleep at the bottom of his stomach instead. “I know this is the last thing you want, but I need a favour.”

And he doesn’t mention that Geralt is possibly the only person who can see him and he doesn’t want to be alone.

Doesn’t mention he has dreamed of Geralt every night and thought of him every day.

Doesn’t mention he would do it all again, even with the heart ache. (He knew what he was signing up for from the start.)

“What do you want?” Geralt presses out.

Jaskier doesn’t want to be just another person who takes from Geralt, who doesn’t know how to stop giving. But he is not asking for protection or shelter or food. He is only a shadow now, in the corner of Geralt’s eye. And he doesn’t know what else to do.

“I want to know how I died. And why.”

Just let me keep you, he does not say. Just for a little bit.

Geralt sheathes his sword. “What do you remember?”

“I was headed home, I think. Maybe.” Jaskier watches Geralt’s face carefully, trying to analyse his expressions, but not quite daring to come to a definitive conclusion, seeing how badly he misread the room – or, well, the open mountain plane - the last time.

He decides to skip the reaction.

“So? Come on. Avenge me or something.”

“Really?” “It’s the least you could do. After what you said to me.”

Geralt grumbles, but he starts to pick up his bags, which Jaskier takes to assume they’re going. Which is good. Geralt will know what to do. Once they know more - (Once Geralt doesn’t feel guilty any longer -)

Roach neighs softly, and even though she might not be able to see him, Jaskier walks toward her, intending to say something.

“Get away from Roach,” Geralt calls immediately, although Jaskier was reasonably sure he hadn’t even been looking in their direction.

Jaskier starts pouting.

“You know what you did,” Geralt says.

“Can’t touch her anyway.”

Jaskier lifts his hands and backs away.

They start walking then, the Witcher and Viscount de Can’t-take-a-hint. Side by side. And it’s almost like it used to be. And it’s almost perfect – if he had a lute, if Geralt weren’t so unnaturally tense next to him, if it weren’t for the overwhelming tiredness seated deep in his bones. But all anyone would see is a lone Witcher wandering by himself. (And it’s true - Jaskier has long since been written out of that story.)

(When a humble bard

graced a ride along with

Geralt of Rivia)

   Geralt can’t look. Looking makes real. The sound is bad enough, but can be written off as a memory, an earworm, a voice in a deranged head. (Impossible to touch what he so often flinched away from.) (Impossible to hold what has always flown and flickered.)

(All those sweet, tender things Geralt never wanted.)

Jaskier is safe. Jaskier is somewhere. Jaskier has a pulse and a breath and a fluttering heartbeat.

It’s just him and Roach and a faint hallucination to keep him company. Anything else. Any other option. There are no other options.

(So much to miss when you almost have it.)

(Such a distantly warm feeling in his chest where he was once happy.)

(His worst mistake cuts deeper now.)

Jaskier is at the coast. He is playing in taverns. He is safe from Geralt. Safe.

Geralt is doing what he does. He gets scowled at in the streets. He takes a room.

Lies in a lonely bed.

Safe. Warm. Breathing.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to sleep again. It’s simply rude at this point. After all, it’s not like I can join you.” Closes his eyes, all by himself.

“Have you never heard of ‘no rest for the wicked’?”

Safe. Warm. Breathing.

“So how is the mourning going? Maybe you should start wearing black. Oh, wait.”

Sleep makes it go away, for a little bit. Guilt he doesn’t know how not to feel. Regret, his most cherished companion. His… (safe.)

(He must be.)

Waking to a nightmare. Geralt does what he does. He sharpens his sword.

“Am I just supposed to sit here and watch you make the same hand motion over and over? Not gonna lie, I’m a little starved for entertainment here in ghost-land.”

Geralt lays a book open on the table, for no particular reason at all. At random times, he turns the page.

(Still whole.)

(He must be.)

A monster to hunt, that’s what he does.

“Oh my, finally I can see one of your hunts from the premium seat.”

Geralt talks to himself sometimes.

“It’s a hunt, not a performance.”

“You really haven’t seen yourself, have you?”

A group of rotfiends. Looking dead, rotten flesh hanging off their bodies. Necrophage oil coats Geralt’s sword.

“Geralt! Watch out!”

He twirls around, takes off the head of one that was about to lurch at him. Geralt keeps moving, slicing his way through more, but they get up again, stubbornly hard to kill.

“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.”

A shriek, the rotfiend is about to miss him, but right behind him is… Geralt twists his body, ensures the rotfiend doesn’t miss. It manages to scratch his chest before he kills it too.

“Why, by the Gods, did you do that?”

Only one left now. He kills that one too. Does what he does.

“How is your furniture doing? Because I suspect very strongly that you have got more than one screw loose.”

He wipes the blood and oil off his sword and sheathes it.

“Are you a squirrel? No? Then how come you are behaving like such a nutter?”

Geralt starts walking, grits his teeth. He’ll have to tend to the wounds back at the tavern.

“I’m dead! I’m literally dead, gone, pushing daisies, bit the dust. It’s a little late for the sacrifice game, understood?”

He arrives alone, with a rotfiend head for proof. Gets disgusted looks in the tavern.

“What were you even thinking? Melitele forbid Jaskier gets stumbled through by a rotfiend? How will I ever live with myself knowing I let a rotfiend unknowingly touch the same air as my deceased friend? What is wrong with you?”

“I’ve done what you asked,” Geralt says.

The man who hired Geralt slides over a bag of coin. Geralt doesn’t count.

Safe. Warm. Breathing. Somewhere far away from monsters and witchers and a life not suited to humans who are far too fragile, who have lives far too short…

(He has never known a vengeful spirit like…)

On his own, he goes to his room. There is no one to tend to his wounds but himself.

[princessvicky01]

Imposition

Part 8 of Annabel X Cullen epilogue story ‘Happily ever after’ following them after the events of trespasser.  

Click for: Whole story on AO3 or Part 1  Part 2  Part 3 Part 4  Part 5  Part 6  Part 7

Summary: Cullen and Annabel finally make it to visit his family who've moved back to Honnelth. Full of warm fuzzy tooth-rotting family fluff and then there is smut of course. NSFW - Pregnancy sex

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Imposition

“Mama! Mama! The imposition is here! Mama! Come see!”

The little girl’s jubilant cheer draws a bark from the mabari by Annabel’s side who bounces to stick his head out the window. Prince seems to favour the wind against his slobbery chops, and all but leans out the carriage with his stump wagging furiously as they pull to a stop. Annabel must admit she’s grateful too, the chance of a few weeks rest in a real bed has been calling to her in the way it always did after a long journey.

When the door opens the hound all but falls out, making the cabin lurch and sending her sprawling, thankfully, Cullen, is quick as always to lend a steady hand and catch her as she stumbles.

Hmm. The title ‘Imposition’ may have been correct after all. Honnelth isn’t so much a village as a small hamlet of stone farm cottages, and their arrival must have all but doubled the population of the place. The announcement had clearly reached every household, and a crowd had gathered to greet them with hushed murmurings. Annabel can’t help but be suspicious of the sideways looks that are traded, being judged was never a pleasant experience, even though it is one she’s used to. Years at playing the game allowed her to see past the whispers and find that most of the folk seemed merely curious and nod in welcome if her gaze lingers on them long. That wasn’t usually the vibe she got from crowds like this but in a way its what she should have expected, they were welcoming back a successful one of their own.

A tiny spark of paranoia about her hand crackles with the green gemstone, and she curls her prosthetic fingers to hide the faint glow. She wants to be seen for her and not as the Herald of Andraste, although that seems impossible nowadays, the two have largely become one and the same, forever interwoven, in the public’s eyes.

Glancing to Cullen, she notes how his eyebrows have drawn in, searching the scores of people with scrutiny, evidently seeking someone who isn’t there based on the way his eyes continue to narrow. She gives his hand a reassuring squeeze, whatever judgement she’s feeling must be tenfold for him, and she doesn’t envy him in the slightest. Excitement buzzes along with the nerves, and she bumps her hip against his in the hope of transferring some of that positive fizz over.

Her action has little to no effect, and she notes his focus is glued to a slow emerging path. It’s being cut through the mass by the forceful march of a tall and broad-shouldered woman. Her wavy golden hair is tied up in a loose bun, and strands of flaxen locks wisp in the breeze as she pushes her way through. The steely determination in her copper-rich eyes confirm what Annabel had already guessed; this must be Mia.

“Cullen Stanton Rutherford,” the lady remarks, one hand on her hip and a light smirk gracing her features. “And just what brings the Commander of the Inquisition’s mighty forces all the way out here?” 

Before he can answer a squeal from behind her sounds, and another shorter, plumper, blonde woman with a babe in arms pokes her head around. Unlike her big sister, Rosalie rushes straight over to him, with another young child in tow, and both proceed to hug him tightly.

Cullen can’t help but be overwhelmed at the turnout, at the way Mai somehow looks just how he remembered, despite the years, and how Rosalie clutches him like she had when they were small. Could it be they had really missed him? Even after all his failings? He’d lost count of the ways he’d let them down. From the blight, losing mother and father, the upheaval of the move, the poverty it had brought them, right up to the way they had rebuilt their lives piece by piece. All without him. All while he had been too consumed by his own Templar duties, his own dark obsessive mission to control mages in a way that would make his siblings skin crawl.

Their smiles though, welcome him in a way that only loved ones could and tentative warmth begins to creep through his chest. He might not deserve their love or such a heartfelt welcome, but Maker only knows he needed it. He hugs them back, his hand falling on his nephew's shoulder and squeezing. He’d been so foolish to stay away so long, too insecure of his worth he’d gladly let himself be blinded by his work, that he knows now had been a terrible mistake. Emotion wells in the back of his throat, and he has to pull away from their embrace or risk tears spilling out of him.

Cullen spies Branson approaching by Mai’s side and can’t believe just how much of a man his little brother has become, tall but lean with muscle, scars peppering his arms, and one across his cheek all combining to tell the tale of a hard life. He also can’t help but notice that while Mia and Rosalie's husbands hover on the sidelines, Branson’s wife is notably absent. Mia had let him know that she’d died shortly after giving birth to a little boy and guilt begins to ebb into the corners of Cullen’s mind. It’s just another example of a time when his family had needed him, and he hadn’t been there. Annabel’s burst of laughter, however, pulls him back from the dark tendrils of his thoughts before he can become consumed them. Glancing down finds that the source is the great big hug their nephew, Bran, is giving her waist.

Looking to the beaming smiles all around him and down then down at young Bran, Cullen can’t help but crack his own. Branson had muscled in to claim a spot and extends his hand for a hearty shake.

“It’s been far too long,” Mia murmurs, squeezing his arm, there's no chastity to it, just the tell-tale ache of old longing. Surrounded now by family, Cullen knows she’s right, and an apology begins to stutter from his lips, but she promptly shakes her head.

“There’s no need, it’s just good to see you,” Mia’s smile is soft, and she locks eyes with him. She’d always had a way of getting her point across, and it seems nothing had changed in that regard. She clearly would hear no apology, not now at least, so he refrains from trying to give one.

“And you must be Annabel!” Rosalie lights up as she turns to her.

Little Bran swivels his focus up at his new aunt. “The Herald? The warrior with the magic hand? Can I see?”

Instinct pulls Annabel's prosthetic hand away, hiding it slightly behind her back, a kindling of shame still marring her once open nature. This, however, is her nephew, and his gaze is nothing but brightly curious. Holding her palm out to him, she can almost feel the old crackle the mark would've made as her nerves tingle, but the stone merely pulses lightly.

“Wow! Papa, did you see!?” Tugging her hand Bran lifts it high over his head to show his father with all the grace of a clumsy four-year-old, and big dark eyes the sparkle in the green hue.

“Hmm, yes it’s very interesting, but that’s no way to treat a Lady is it? Especially not your new aunty,” Branson raises a brow, and his son instantly drops her hand.

“Oops, sorry!” The boy is scooped up by his father, and the baby in Rosalie's arms snuffles a cry at the commotion, or perhaps merely demanding some of the attention for herself.

“And here is little Julie, your niece,” Rosalie presents the baby to Annabel, and for a moment she stares blankly at the child. Annabel isn’t sure how she should hold her or that being handed to a stranger will improve the little one’s mood. Scrunching her face, the baby begins to muffle a sob, but Rosalie's press into Annabel’s arms is insistent. “Go on! You’ll have your own soon enough, oh, I can’t wait, another cousin for Julie!”

More than a little overwhelmed Annabel takes the baby and does her best to support her. She’d never been overly interested in babies, unlike many young noble ladies who might coo around a new arrival in frilly lace she was more likely to pull silly faces at them until they'd either laughed or cried. The same went for how she’d treated babies most of her life. She’d never even had a doll. She’d been gifted many as a child, ones in elaborate satin dresses with beautiful curls of hair and hand-painted smiles. They’d mostly sat on shelves gathering dust as she charged around with her brother and their wooden swords causing the kind of chaos such pristine dolls would no doubt roll their eyes at. That thought had always unnerved her slightly.

Despite whatever reservations Annabel might have, she finds a natural smile is drawn out of her at the sight of Julie. She must admit, she is awfully cute, with a tiny nose, flushed round cheeks and a faint dusting of blonde curls. Somehow, she even smells new, if such a thing was possible, and her tiny grunts, complimented by scrunched fists make Annabel’s chest start to glow. Sensing Cullen’s looming presence she looks up and finds him staring at the bundle with a soft lopsided smile that spoke of a besotted father to be. She can’t help but wonder if their child will have a mop of curls, it seems to be a Rutherford trait and one that Annabel hopes continues.

“Right, come on, let’s get you all inside. I imagine you could do with a cup of tea, maybe one of those cakes Rosalie made, come on now.” Mia ushers them like a mother goose, guiding the swollen family as one, after little Bran who rushes ahead with the dog to one of the stone buildings jutting around them.

Entering the cottage Cullen can’t help but find it much smaller than he remembered, quaint even. It’s no wonder really, he’d been but a child the last time he’d been in here and had since lived in circles, temples and Skyhold. Somehow the low beams and thick walls just make the space feel homelier, more lived in, loved. Dry and fresh herbs hang from the kitchen’s beams, along with copper pots all of which direct the gaze to the oak dining table set out with tea, crumpets and small buttercream cakes. The assorted goodies are all surrounding a painted vase filled with idyllic purple meadow flowers, ones which Cullen vaguely recalls were mother’s favourites. It does seem his sister has thought of everything, as always.

A thousand ancient, long lost memories, flutter to the surface. The strongest are drawn out by the smell of stew in the oven which reminds him of long chilly days, of laughter around a crowded table, of his mother, perched on his father’s hip, tea towel in hand which she used to wipe at his dirt-crusted hands. He struggles to recall her voice now, but the way her smile had always beamed with warmth had never left him. Tears begin to well in the corner of his eyes, but they’re quickly pushed aside as a child’s voice captures his attention.

“Uncle Cul, look,” with an instant shove, a folded travelling chess board that had long since seen better days, is placed in his hands. His fingers trail over the names etched into the side, his own, crudely scratched along with his sibling’s, and now with Bran’s. “Mia said you was good but not as good as me,” the boy gives an impish grin, cheeks flushed red with excitement. “Can we play?”

“After tea, now go, sit down,” Mia has already swooped in and is leading the boy to a stool set out just for him, leaving Cullen holding a piece of his childhood which, although battered and scarred, was still very much loved. He sure there is a metaphor in that somehow.

The others shuffle in, Mia pouring tea and Bran takes hold of his niece and begins to pull silly faces. When hands wrap around his waist, Cullen doesn’t need to look around to know who they belong too. He can feel her breath prickle the back of his neck, and soon her nose follows to nuzzle under his ear in the kind of open affection he’d come to love from her. “Happy?” it’s a light word, whispered against his skin where Annabel’s lips pepper reassuring kisses.

Overcome, Cullen merely nods, turning so their eyes can meet. The dazzling blue of hers finally brings out the joyful smile which had been wanting out him from the moment he’d arrived. This is home. She is home. His lips find hers to share a tender kiss, one which is cut all too short thanks to the disgusted ‘ewwww’ that sounds from their nephew at the table.

“You've done well for yourself, Cullen,” Mia’s voice is deliberately soft as she emerges to lean against the door frame, tea towel over one shoulder and hair now slightly frazzled from steam. He glances up to her with a little nod, catching how that frazzled appearance went much further than skin deep. “I was worried… Well, I was worried for the longest time after what happened at Kinloch, then you moving to Kirkwall… but I can see, I don't need to worry anymore.”

“Mia...” his head lowers, shoulders slumping under the weight of years of guilt and failure. “I... I’m sorry, I didn’t, I -"

“That's enough, I won't have you apologising to me, you've done nothing wrong,” she taps him on the head with the spotted rag in mock sternness. “You helped save Thedas, helped hundreds of people, just like you said you would, just like I knew you would.” Her eyes and smile match in the depth of their warmth before she quickly nods out to the field. “You also somehow found yourself a most radiant wife… You should be proud.”

Cullen can sense the depth of emotion that wells within her eyes, and which lies hidden behind her cheery tone. To avoid more awkward apologies, and poor explanations he instead follows her line of sight to see Annabel playing sword with young Bran. Their brother is shouting advice from the sidelines while Prince bounds around in giddy excitement, do nothing to help the child’s concentration. That was an important part of battle though, learning to focus on the target when chaos ran riot around you, he smiles faintly to himself, he is not playing the role of Commander right now, but still, it seems he can’t help but judge their swings.

The cracks of their wooden practice blades can be heard clear across the field, as can the chortle of laughter and baying of the hound. Exact words are lost to the wind, but Cullen can see all are smiling from ear to ear. When his wife pauses to brush damp hair from her face, their eyes catch briefly despite the distance. He wasn't sure it was possible, but her smile appears to grow even wider as it greets him.

Sensing his chance, Bran rushes at her and Cullen can see it all unfold in slow motion horror before his eyes. The boy’s feet pound against the grass, sword held high above his head, his full force blow aimed right at her stomach. Muscles clenching, Cullen’s breath catches in his throat as panic rushes up, he goes to cry out, already halfway to his feet, but it all happens too fast, and he can’t find the words beyond a strangled anguished cry.

Annabel apparently spies his concern, and with a dart to the side, she rolls to avoid the strike which sails clear over her.

Thank the Maker… Cullen still clutches the bench tight under his fingernails, his breath sharp and erratic. Sometimes he still forgets that his bright and beautiful wife was not a defenceless lady, and she never had been. Pregnancy tummy or not, she wasn’t about to change into someone who froze or cowered at a blow. She’d been training since Bran’s age, and it shows in the way she swoops around to scoop the child up in her arms.

A gentle hand on his shoulder brings Cullen from his poised position and inches him back down onto the bench. All is well. In fact, Annabel is ruffling Bran’s curls in mock retribution, her bright, playful smile apparently dazzling the boy into a fit of giggling.

“She'll be a brilliant mother.” Mia’s voice cuts through the serene moment to bring Cullen back to her and one of near equal serenity. Sat on a bench made by their father, at the edge of a field which backed onto his family's homestead, enjoying life’s simple pleasures in the dappled shade of a tree he’d frequently climbed in his youth. The problems of the past two years, of the past decade, somehow seeming to fade into a haze in the freshness of the breeze.

“I know,” it's a murmur, a solemn affirmation made as his eyes never leave Annabel. She's already moved on to squaring up with his brother while Bran chases Prince, who has somehow got hold of his sword and is happy as can be with his new, highly prized, stick.

“I've never met anyone quite like her…” he trails off, his voice distant and awestruck. He still can’t believe his luck, that he’d found her, that she’d returned time after time to him, that she loved him, that she loved their baby…

“I imagine she thinks the same of you, or else she wouldn't have joined this shambles of a clan,” his sister nudges him playfully with her elbow. “Who would’ve thought, my shy little brother, stumbling over his words, able to woo himself a real noble Lady. Just to bring her home, and play with sticks in the dirt like a real Rutherford.”

Cullen chuckles, the sound made all the richer by witnessing his wife giving Branson a good thrashing from the moment they square off. He wouldn’t have believed it either if someone had told him back in Kirkwall this would be his future, he would have called them mad, heck, he probably would have called them possessed. The mere notion that he could marry a woman like her, could find happiness in the light she shone into his darkest places, well it was as alien as a fish on land.

“Why don't you join them? It looks like Branson could use your help,” Mia’s voice is light with laughter as Annabel shows that she's still very much the warrior she always had been.

Cullen shakes his head all too swiftly with the huff of another chuckle. “I've lost more than enough times to that woman. I'll never hear the end of it.”

“Ah, yes, well you always was the more sensible out of the pair of you,” Mia pauses and winces as Branson takes a strike which will no doubt leave a nice bruise on his arm. “Radiant... and dangerous, your wife.”

Casting her a sideways smirk Cullen all but brims over with pride. “Very much so.”

Annabel isn’t very good at washing dishes and despite everyone's instance that there was no need for her to help she’s determined to be useful, although she’s quickly handed to drying duty as a rather weary Branson washes. Sat at the oak table Cullen studies her, he’d tried, much in vain to help, but she’d pushed him back into his chair and said something about him needing a break.

While faint orange rays catch the bronze in her hair, he can’t help but think Mia’s description of her was spot on. She is truly radiant… and dangerous. There is a glow about her skin in the soft lighting and when she deliberately pokes at a sore spot on Branson’s arm for being too slow the later part of the description comes into play to make him chuckle.

Sipping at his warm tea he soaks in the serenity of the moment, his hound is asleep, snoring under the table, his family are chattering next door, and his pregnant wife is stubbornly trying to place glasses on a shelf that’s far too tall for her.

His brother steps in, and when done dips out with a nod to him and warm if not tired smile. Annabel is soon back at his side, arm wrapped over his shoulders as she perches against him in their first moment alone since arriving.

“How you feeling?” she asks, head leaning to one side to rest against his, instinct draws his arm around her waist to hug her close.

“It’s been a long day… but I’m glad we came.”

“So, in other words, still happy,” she jests, nudging and nuzzling her nose in his curls until he breaks out a smile.

“I’ve never been happier,” he gives her a little squeeze, the familiar scent and feel of her soothing his weariness away.

“Good,” slipping from his lap she tugs on his hand. “In that case, you can bring those bedroom eyes of you’ve been making at me all evening, to a more, private, setting,” her own eyes sparkle as a little inviting smirk dances over her lips.

The distance she’s put between them is too much, and Cullen finds himself stood up to wrap his arms around her once more. “A tempting offer, Mrs Rutherford, but I hardly want the whole household to know just how thoroughly you enjoy your husbands, intimate, company…”

Annabel gives a smile that on anyone else would be coy, but on her is always edged with mischief, her hand coming up to play with the curl that’s fallen loose over his forehead. “Don’t worry. I’m nothing if not discreet.”

“Oh, really?” Not believing it for a second, Cullen lifts one brow and studies how her eyes grow steadily darker in the fading light. With a chuckle she pulls away, hand clasped in his to drag him along, he gets a few steps, his body acting by will of its own before he pulls up short.

“Annabel… we shouldn’t…” It’s not that he doesn’t want to, Maker’s breath, he’s never wanted her more, but his eyes are drawn to the small but distinct swell of her stomach.

“Why... “ she trails off, her brow lightly furrowing as she lets go to regard him with suspicion. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing's wrong.”

“Don’t lie to me,” her eyes narrow to let him know she won’t tolerate his attempted cover-up. “You’ve not wanted to… you know… Well, I’ve never exactly had to force you into anything before, but ever since Ostwick you’ve been, off, with me. I can’t say I like it very much.”

“Annabel, I’m sorry,” his hand reaches out, but she takes a half step out of reach.

“Then tell me what's wrong,” she repeats, her heels clearly dug in and unwilling to budge. Knowing he can’t convince her otherwise Cullen sighs then gestures to her tummy.

“You mean because I’ve got fat!” Annabel’s eyebrows shoot up incredulously.

“Maker’s breath! What?! I… I, no, no, not all, that’s not what… What I meant was-”

“Everything ok in there?” Mia’s voice echoes down the stone corridor, and he has to step in quickly before Annabel has the chance to dig him an even bigger hole.

“We’re fine, thank you,” he hollers with a distinct old air of authority. Annabel stiffens and gives a little growl, but accepts his embrace and the way he presses his palm over the curve of her navel. “You know you're beautiful… radiant, even,” he murmurs, rubbing her tummy. “It's just... I don’t want to... you know…” he trails off, losing the words to the heat tickling up his neck and fraying his thoughts. “Hurt you. Either of you,” he nods downwards, and the penny seems to finally drop.

The harshness she’d embodied moments ago melts away, like the bristles of a hissing cat that turns to warm fluff under a soothing caress. “Oh, Cullen,” she murmurs, snuggling her body closer and wrapping her arms up around his neck until she’s gazing up at him from under long, thick lashes. “You do know that's impossible, right?”

“I know…” he sighs, eyes darting away, but the blush remaining. He had asked the midwife and the medic a thousand questions back in Ostwick, they’d been patient at first and indulged him, but he’d had to let his wife ask about lovemaking when he’d repeatedly failed to get the words out. “But… How can anyone be certain? I… I couldn’t bear it if I…” he trails off, the thought is too distressing to even put into coherent words. Her thumb comes up to brush his cheek and travels along the stubble of his jaw, a tender touch that speaks of nothing but care.

“We don’t have to do anything. But I promise you won’t hurt us, either of us… we can always go slow and gentle…” her lips brush over his now, the words and action a mirror of her suggestion. “See how we go… besides,” another brush of his cheek, her pitch lowering, darkening. “We both seem to be very good with our mouths,” her lips press against his, and he can’t resist the taste of her. The sound of her voice is honey sweet, with a rasp of lust that never fails to allure him, and the taste is like heaven itself.

Magnificent woman… who once again astounds him. A distinct pulse of arousal twitches him to life. It seems she approves as she hums against into the kiss, a delightful noise that only seems to deepen the pooling desire growing between them.

“I suppose I could try,” he murmurs, the hint of a smirk on his lips as they part.

“Well, only if it’s not too much of an imposition,” she drawls, fingertips plucking loosely at his collar. A loud squeak erupts from her as he squeezes both her ample cheeks in his broad palms. At the noise, the murmur from the front room grows quiet, and both know they’ve been heard. “This way,” with a conspiratorial whisper and a tug she’s already leading him out the back door.

“You Mrs Rutherford, are one very naughty woman,” he rumbles, holding her small hand in his, eyes transfixed on the sway of her hips as she leads him very much astray.

“So I’ve been told,” Annabel’s voice is now a purr radiating warmly through her chest as she treads carefully across the yard towards the carriage. Stepping up she tosses brunette locks over her shoulder before casting her wicked gaze at him. “But the question is, just how naughty?” Her smirk is the kind which would have made him blush in his teenage years and the kind which now only seeps a deviant look through his eyes.

Stepping in he finds the space is cramped, lit by one dim lantern, and the seating is still awash with silk cushions. For the most part, he can’t even stand up straight, but that doesn't matter… it seems his wife was resourceful after all, its private, secluded, and all too cosy. “Very,” he rumbles, the sound resounding in the small space to make her giggle, a sultry sound which is swiftly masked by the lock of the door.

His hands are all over her all at once, and Annabel can’t help but mould herself around him. Leg hitching as she stumbles in the tight space and falls to land with a chuckle against the cushions. Brushing hair from her face, Annabel looks up just in time to catch Cullen’s wolfish lopsided smirk. She narrows her eyes playfully, her foot rubbing against his leg as he looked down at her with all the predatory hunger of the lion she’d married.

Slipping to his knees, he pinches at her dress, then slowly inches it up over her thighs, his amber rich eyes firmly locked on hers as he takes his sweet time. Soon her leggings are being slowly peeled away to prise her thighs open before him, and a flood of want drowns her. Damn perfect man... kissing his way up her inner thigh tickles and excites, the scrape of his stubble over every damp patch of skin he leaves sends tiny pulses of pleasure up to her core.

“Naughty man…” she pants, her fingers finding those luscious golden curls and scritching against his scalp. Suddenly one of his hands has her splayed open, on full and glistening display, distinctly delicious enough to make him hungrily rumble. The sound shudders pleasure through the aching heat in her core. It’s been far too long since she’s had his undivided, his earnest and, oh so, sinful attention, far far too long.

“Very,” his rich baritone and the breath of air against wet folds is enough to make her gasp. Anticipation fires through every nerve to set her heart thundering, a pant tumbles from her, wanton and desperate. He answers with the flat of his tongue, and one long, languid lick, up her centre. A shock of pleasure pulls her muscles tight, the fingers in his hair now kneading, urging him to deliver more. And like the Maker sent man he is, he willingly obliges.

Dipping in, Cullen kisses at her entrance, dancing his tongue over the sweet bud that wants his utter devotion. Instinct rocks her hips as he takes his time paying every intimate inch of her his uppermost attention. His nose nuzzles against her, his fingers dig in a little tighter as he forces his tongue a little deeper, and when he sucks, pleasure throbs through to snatch the air from her lungs. Laying back she moans her most wholehearted approval. She could carry on like this forever, letting him explore, letting him devote himself to her and worship her in a way like no other had, always hungry for more.

Despite all this though, she still craves far more than his mouth. As glorious as it is, it doesn’t stretch her, doesn’t fill her, doesn’t pound her in the way she desperately desires. A tug on his scalp sees Cullen’s copper tinted eyes peer up from under his brow, jaw still very firmly nestled between her thighs.

“Please,” Annabel begs and writhes under him. It’s too damn hot in this tiny space, and she grapples with her dress while her mind swims in a heady concoction of pleasure and lust. She struggles, huffing as her hair tangles and soon he’s there, pulling the garment free to leave her in nothing but a breast band that is busting at the seams.

Cullen growls on sight of her, lurching forward to nestle his face, his raw kisses between the ample swell of her bosoms. Clawing up his side she welcomes him, thighs hitching over his body to find and rub his concealed erection against where she wants it the most. Bless him, he’s careful to place no weight on her, the brunt of his force bared by powerful arms that have her firmly trapped between him and cushions.

The ping her bra as it snaps free makes a giddy laugh spill from her. Within moments Cullen's nuzzling his way over each curve to land a hungry kiss against her nipples. The pulse of pleasure mingled with a tingle of pain makes her moan, half certain she’ll be sore tomorrow but not rightly caring as he hums and with his mouth full.

“Hmmm,” he pulls back slightly letting her pert bud pop from between his lips. “I shall be sorry to share these…” he murmurs, licking one cheekily before she can truly reply.

Deliciously wicked man. A deft tug of her hand’s spills open his trousers and tugs them down over his hips. “You shall be sorry to share me and my time, full stop,” she squeezes his peachy rear, hard, dragging him up against her by his toned arse until his lips all but crash into hers.

She’s not wrong, but the fact that it will be their baby taking up her time, her energy, well, he could hardly hold a grudge. She tastes all the sweeter for the nectar still on his lips, and Cullen can already feel her hand slipping over his navel. His kiss breaks into a pant as she pumps down the length of him to send a shot of blinding pleasure and throbbing need through him.

It’s been far too long… Rumbling he pulls her flush against him, dragging his stubble along her jaw until his lips reach her ear to whisper hotly. “But for now, your all mine, Mrs Rutherford,” with that, his hands are on her hips, already helping to twist her round underneath him. He won’t take any chances, so he guides her up onto the cushions and on her knees. Running his fingers down her spine makes her buck like the temptress of a woman she is, sticking out the delicious, ample curves of her rear so he can nestle himself between her cheeks. He gives one a little tap, to hear her squeal and have her arse bounce around his cock and deliver a pulse of pleasure to all his senses.

With a slowly guided thrust he enters her, her heat hugs around him, wet and wanton, and, oh so, glorious. A curse slips from his lips as she moans and embraces all of him. Perfect woman, carrying his perfect child... Worry still niggles the corner of his mind. Despite the desire pounding through his veins with every hammer of his heart, he pulls out slightly, one of his hands slipping around her hips to brush tenderly over her stomach. “If you want me to stop-”

“Don’t you dare,” with a sharp pant, she sinks herself over him to drag loud broken moans from them both. And with that, he’s lost to her, in her, with her, together as they should be, both building pleasure until there’s nothing else.

Maker, she can barely breathe, the heat of pleasure as he stretches her, as he begins a slow and dutiful rhythm is overwhelming. It’s not the wild rutting they so often were debased too, this is something much more tender, but his thrusts are no less deep, no less satisfying. If anything, the controlled slap of his hips against her arse only serves to drag the pleasure out. Legs spreading Annabel can’t help but seek more, always seeking more, chasing the edge over which she’ll tumble, wanting all of him and nothing else. Cullen’s panted breath is hot against the damp of her back, he’s grunts confirming he’s as consumed by her as she is by him. Together they rock, back and forth, his pace growing faster as her panted moans grow louder. The steamy air fills with the mixed scent of them, musk and sweat and sex and it's downright intoxicating.

One of his hands sneaks around, calloused and firm, they knead against the bounce of her breast. Her hands press firmly against the wall, seeking purchase, something to ground her as pleasure slams through with every snap of hips.

Lightly pinching her nipple leaves sends a sharp wave of shock, pleasure and pain shooting through her until she’s left crying out his name while his cock sheaths deep inside her. Annabel’s nails claw at the wooden backboard as her cry breaks loudly from her, bliss buzzing through on the euphoric high that only he could bring. His pace falters as she shudders around him, a few sharp snaps, more brutal and carnal than the rest and it’s all too much. Another sinful moan resounds from her chest as pure pleasure blinds her. His groan meanwhile is decadently rich against her back, making a wave of molten pleasure tingle through every nerve as he comes in hot, heavy, spurts inside her.

Panting hard, Annabel comes too to find her face pressed against the carriage wall, nails still digging crescent moons into the wood's surface as she feels Cullen slide from her. The whole room rocks slightly as he collapses beside her and she wonders briefly if it had been shaking the entire time… So much for discreet. She smiles cheekily to herself, humming and nuzzling against her arm as the scorching pleasure inside fizzles down into a warm sedated glow.

Fingers lightly brush against her hip and softly her eyes open, blinking hazily in their bliss-soaked state they regard him lovingly.

“Your… I didn’t… Did I-?” Concern distorts his features as he pants the words out all too quickly.

“I’m fine… in fact… I’ve never been happier,” she mumbles, sinking to rest on her heels, head still leant against the wall, hair wildly splayed over to one side. Annabel knows a moment later she’s wrong, as Cullen smiles and rests his head back, eyes closing, chest still heaving, but his every scalped muscle relaxed… seeing him like this, that is what makes her happiest of all.

Shifting she curls herself against his side, his arms opening to loosely welcome her close, his hand finding her stomach where his fingertips lightly trace idol patterns over her skin.

“Me neither,” he replies, nestling a kiss against her forehead, his fingers continuing to devote his contented glow to her, and their baby.

---

Thank you for reading <3 Apologies it took so long to get this part done, but if you liked it likes, reblogs and comments are all gratefully recieved!

[criticalthinkingedu-blog]

The Last Leaf

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These "places" make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!

    So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a "colony."

    At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table d'hôte of an Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.

    That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places."

    Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house.

    One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, grey eyebrow.

    "She has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. " And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-u on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?"

"She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day." said Sue.

    "Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance?"

    "A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind."

    "Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten."

    After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime.

    Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.

    She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.

    As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle of the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside.

    Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting - counting backward.

    "Twelve," she said, and little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine"; and then "eight" and "seven", almost together.

    Sue look solicitously out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks.

"What is it, dear?" asked Sue.

    "Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now."

    "Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie."

    "Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?"

    "Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were - let's see exactly what he said - he said the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self."

    "You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. "There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too."

    "Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the light, or I would draw the shade down."

    "Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly.

    "I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Beside, I don't want you to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves."

"Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as fallen statue, "because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves."

    "Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I come back."

    Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along with the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above.

    Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker.

    Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings.

"Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Yohnsy."

    "She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old - old flibbertigibbet."

    "You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes."

    Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock.

    When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.

    "Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper.

    Wearily Sue obeyed.

    But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last one on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from the branch some twenty feet above the ground.

"It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same time."

    "Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, "think of me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do?"

    But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed.

    The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves.

    When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.

    The ivy leaf was still there.

    Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove.

    "I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring a me a little broth now, and some milk with a little port in it, and - no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook."

    And hour later she said:

    "Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples."

    The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left.

"Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his. "With good nursing you'll win." And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is - some kind of an artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more comfortable."

    The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You won. Nutrition and care now - that's all."

    And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and all.

    "I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colours mixed on it, and - look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell."

[zoegmiller]

Fire Emblem Fates - Hanabi

This (nsfw!) work was created as part of the Fire Emblem Femsplash exchange as a gift for @peeta-arts

“Again, she heard the sound, scraping at the carriage roof. Srrrkt. Srrrkt. Srrrkt.”

Hoshido was uncommonly hot during the first summer festival following the war’s end, but, despite the ill climate, the spirit of celebration abounded. Children of Hoshido and Nohr frolicked together through mazes of festival stalls and paper streamers, partaking in games of chance and skill, sharing festive treats both savory and sweet. Some of the bolder Nohrians even had a go at donning the traditional festival yukatas.

Indeed, armistice is a time for reconciliation. Thus, with this noble endeavor in mind, far above the festival proper, in a secluded copse of trees near castle Hoshido, Camilla, the eldest princess of Nohr, had decided to show her new Hoshidan allies how Nohr once celebrated their solstice.

Camilla’s deep voice cut the humid air with ominous intent as she continued her story. “The words of her love resounded in her head, ‘wait here, I’ll be back soon’ and left her paralyzed. And always, from the carriage roof. Srrrkt. Srrrkt. Srrkt. Was it a branch, she wondered?”

Ophelia clasped both hands over her agape mouth, scooting a bit closer to Soleil on their shared log.

“Or a squirrel, she thought, scratching at the carriage fixtures for bedding to steal away for its nest. Surely nothing more than that...”

Ignatius gripped Forrest’s hand a little tighter.

“Yet still, as the hours passed, the sound became her only companion in the darkness. With every billow of the wind, it returned. Srrrkt... Srrrkt... Srrrkt…” Camilla twined a curl of lavender hair around her finger, looking skyward. The lapping flames of the bonfire lent a menacing cast to her scarlet eyes. “She began to fear that her lady love might…”

The swaying branches of the trees encroached upon the gathering like a shroud of grasping claws. An audible gulp came from Siegbert and Shiro’s corner of the fire.

“Of course not! It couldn’t be!” Camilla dismissed the possibility before she offered it. She leaned forward, tenting her gloved fingers before her. “But curiosity battled with fear in her quavering stomach, and still her lady love had yet to return. Perhaps she was lost upon the road, or hurt and in a terrible need. Thus, she summoned all the bravery of her small form, threw open the carriage door, and strode boldly out into the dawn. With that, the clank of metal…”

Selkie squatted atop her log like a rapacious gargoyle, the rapt flicking of her ears devouring every foreboding word.

“It was a crude metal hook, shaken loose from the door handle. But our pitiable princess took no notice of this fearsome instrument, barbed and bloodied though it was…”

Velouria seemed more interested in stripping fistfuls of grass from the patch of ground between her boots, until an instructive elbow from Nina beside her refocused her attention.

“Throwing her gaze to the tree above, a truly shocking sight consumed her. Dawn was breaking, the culmination of this long, terrible night, and so, with the sun cresting the horizon, she absorbed, in bold detail, a face, bloodied and mangled. It wasn’t so. It couldn’t be. And yet, faced with that a terrible visage, she—”

A sudden shriek rang out so loud it shook the trees.

“Let out a sound rather like that, I suppose.” A canny smile tented Camilla’s lips. “Hinoka, darling, if you wanted to play a role, you only had to ask.”

The elder princess of Hoshido ducked her head, potently aware that a dozen sets of eyes were now focused on her. “I-I didn’t…”

“Are you quite all right?” Camilla asked, voice honeyed with exacerbated with hyperbolic concern. “Why, you’re pale as a ghost!”

Hinoka bridled her burgeoning embarrassment with a stern pinch of her lips. “My color is i-is none of your concern.”

“Regardless, I’m not sure young Setsuna appreciates you digging your claws into her flesh.”

At that, Hinoka abruptly abated her vice-like grip from her retainer’s arm.

“Oh, I don’t mind…” Setsuna unconsciously shook her now-free arm, paying no mind to the purpled welts Hinoka’s fearful clench had scored into her pale skin. Her lethargic eyes were more focused than they had been in months. “Lady Camilla, what did she see in the tree?”

“Ah yes, as I was saying.” Camilla’s voice sunk an octave. “It was a truly shocking sight. A terrible visage, that awful, grisly affair. For, looking up into the skeletal tree than loomed above her carriage, she saw none other than the gristly, mutilated face of—“

“Yes!” Hinoka sat bolt upright. “What was that, Corrin? I’ll be right there!”

Teetering at the edge of Camilla’s cliffhanger, the assemblage of army brats hardly noticed as Hinoka sprinted off into the trees as fast as the strict ties of her yukata would allow.

The air was cooler in the darkened castle halls. Standing on the garden terrace outside her bed chambers, Hinoka allowed herself a few minutes to recompose herself, swiping sweat from her brow and syncing her tremulous breathing to the calming clack of the garden’s bamboo fountain. There now, she was fine. Why, she hardly thought at all about what might be lurking around the worrying bend of the hallway off towards her sibling’s chambers, where a sconce had long-since guttered out, and trickling darkness spread gloom along the thin, paper walls.

Where were those servants, anyway? Festival or no, all these lamps should’ve been lit and stayed lit!

“Hinoka, dear! Where have you gotten off to?”

With the echo of Camilla’s voice down the terrace, Hinoka shrunk against the wall, gaining a new appreciation for those sinister shadows, now that she so direly wished to vanish into them.

“There you are!” Camilla let out a petulant huff. “Did you plan on whiling the night away in some darkened garden? You’ll miss the fireworks.”

“Oh, damn the fireworks. I’m not a child, to be wowed by…“ Hinoka balled her fists at her side, presenting a staunch offense—though in truth, it was more to stop their damnable shaking. “It’s just… it’s just too oppressively hot for such foolishness. Fireworks, honestly! And a bonfire, in the middle of summer? And you… you…”

“My, my.” Camilla closed the distance between them with casual grace, her sandals drawing not even a creak from the floorboards. “Did my story scare you? I had no idea my dashing Hoshidan princess was so… sensitive.”

“Of course not.” Hinoka furrowed her nose. The lilac of Camilla’s sweet perfume was dizzying. Camilla was dangerous in her proximity. Hinoka floundered, struggling for her bearings, and applied a straightening jerk to her rumpled yukata. “As if such a thing…”

Camilla cupped Hinoka’s cheek. “I’m sorry, darling.”

With a soft hmph, Hinoka looked away. “I’ve spent too much of my life seeing such things already.”

A knowing nod from Camilla. “We all have.”

Hinoka swallowed, and in the time that bought her, she steeled herself to say.

“But… it was kind of exciting.” She coughed. “Being scared I mean.”

“Oh ho, she does have a curious side.” Capricious smile. Bold with frightful delights. “Do you want to hear how it ends, then?”

“No.” Her face burned like a thousand suns. The reverberations of Camilla’s story, the vulnerability, the testing, languid, drawn-out nature of the fear… Hinoka shivered down to her toes. “I’m… quite all right, being left in suspense…”

Camilla’s fingernails raked along Hinoka’s arms, flirting over sensitive skin through the sheer, summery cotton of her yukata. “I quite agree. Sometimes, letting those feelings build up and up and up, anticipating the moment they overwhelm you in full… that’s half the fun, isn’t it?”

“Stop.” Hinoka giggled at the ticklish scrape of Camilla’s fingers, her hips shifting this way and that, her hands atop Camilla’s only ostensibly dissuading these curious touches. “Besides, someone might see.”

“Who might? Your family? Your servants? They’re all out watching the fireworks…” A pause for thought. “Unless…”

Hinoka’s jaw went slack, as her gaze drowned in the performative purse of Camilla’s full lips. The gears of her mind cranked slowly. Someone could come, someone could see! Takumi, bored of the festivities, cloistering himself off in a remote patio to train. Fastidious servants, sneaking away from the fireworks to clear away dishes from the feast, or to take a well-earned nip from the sake stashes in the cool basement, or, possibly, to relight these damned lamps. She could imagine such a slew of mental possibilities! Camilla’s toying touch along the curve of her stomach was making such mental auditing… somewhat difficult.

“Unless?” Hinoka throat bobbed, a querulous swallow.

“Srrrkt, srrrkt.” Camilla’s finger roved tauntingly up and down Hinoka’s sides, applying a curious scrape in time with each threatening sound. “Srrrkt, srrrkt.” The bite of her nails. “It’s coming to get you, dear.”

Hinoka struggled to restrain the nervous energy threatening to boil over within her. The sound locked her spine. Skin went clammy, and her heart staggered into a staccato beat with the memory of fireside fear. Hinoka’s toes curled against the rough grain of her sandals.

“What are you talking about?” Even this silly game forced her heart to pounding, and swelled her head with nervous energy. Every inch of her skin was alive, alight. Camilla’s searching fingers swept over her small breasts with the tickle of her yukata’s soft cotton, and Hinoka realized the abject sensitivity of her nipples. Tension somehow both diminished and engorged inside her with the same, tremulous shudder. She struggled to play along. “Who is?”

“The monsters, of course.”

Ugh, this woman! Hinoka tilted her head away, blushing. She centered herself, biting down on the inside of her cheek. “What monsters?”

“Me.” Camilla said, darting in for a kiss.

Hinoka groaned against the kiss as much as she did Camilla’s inane little tease. The anxiety tickled the seams of her stomach to bursting like a legion of fretful butterflies. She wasn’t some foolish country girl or love-struck adolescent. She was a princess of Hoshido! And she knew that Camilla wouldn’t tease half as much if she didn’t respond as she did…

Yet, there was such thrill in Camilla’s touch, and, far different from the menacing campfire stories that terrified Hinoka all the way back to her bedcovers in her youth, there was always a sear of power in Camilla’s words. How long had she craved someone like Camilla? Someone who knew how to act, how to pose, how to move and how to move others. Camilla was taller than her, bolder than her, and knowing exactly how long to let a moment linger. Didn’t she want to bury herself within in that strength? Didn’t she want to drown in those scarlet eyes—filled with knowing, with precision, with confident zeal and easy affection. Camilla spoke so freely, acted as if on whims. So casual, so calculated.

She accepted the kiss. Moreover, she met it boldly.

Camilla’s fingers trailed over Hinoka’s ear, to tangle in her short hair. “But you do forgive me for giving you a fright, don’t you, darling?”

Hinoka’s eyes went half-lidded and glassy at Camilla’s touch. Her heart surged in her chest—not too different, she thought, than her scare at the bonfire. “Depends.”

“On?”

“On…” Her tongue slipped between her lips, moistening them. She felt like an utter fool, a fake, a farce, making a show of it. She did it anyway. She deepened her voice—resenting its natural, high-pitched creak—straining to descend to Camilla’s octave. “What you do to make it up to me.”

Camilla’s eyelids fluttered with the sudden, claiming advance of Hinoka’s sweet tongue. A shared moan volleyed between their clasping lips. Camilla’s deft hands moved with sensual measure, working loose the sash of Hinoka’s yukata.

A rush of cool night air swept over the light patina of sweat coating Hinoka’s skin. The hum of the cicadas filled the air in the garden. Her body awoke in the darkness.

“Camilla.” Hinoka gasped. flinched, twisting her head to the side, her neck locking. Her cheek pressed against the wall. The sweat of her skin stained the paper wall of her bedchamber. “Someone really could come.”

Their embrace deepened. Camilla’s breasts were heavy atop her shape, as if they alone could pin her. The twist of Hinoka’s neck left her dangerously exposed. A thump, as Camilla’s palm impacted the wall beside her shirking head. “Oh, I very much suspect someone will.”

Hinoka hated how she’d say those things; wordplay and puns and subtly unsubtle innuendo. Rove of hands over her bared flesh. Teeth found her earlobe, striking down sharply, and Hinoka cried out with fatuous need.

Camilla’s fingers stroked against the hard resistance of bone between her breasts. They descended in exacting waltz over her bare stomach, shuddering with uneven breath. Weighty tears of worry and excitement shuddered in the corners of Hinoka’s eyes. Camilla’s touch journeyed over the hard lines of her hips. She struggled to blink away the wetness, to see her love more clearly, head thrashing to the side, cheek meeting Camilla’s bracing arm with a meaty thwack of skin. Camilla sighed, thrilling at the suspense of her finger’s careful dance.  through the thatch of her pubic hair, toying and teasing and tugging at the wiry red curls. Hinoka groaned, gripping a hand around Camilla’s neck, mutely pleading for support, as her legs shook like fresh festival mochi.

A volley of fireworks broke the sky, lighting the terrace with fire bursts of dazzling indigo and vermillion radiance, deepening the shadows around them.

Hinoka’s seizing fingers reined Camilla’s hair with a death grip. She cared not for the exposure. She cared not for anything but this moment. Swept up in this tizzied fervor, wet tears of raw emotion spilled down her cheeks. She sniffled until it pained her, clogged her sinuses and blotted out her thoughts until nothing remained but the purity of animal instinct. The stoke of flesh and ardor. The humid air that clung like sodden weight inside her lungs, forcing struggled breaths. Her body was over-hot, blistering, searing, scorching, with nowhere to vent but into the one before her.

Camilla bore it with precision. As her fingers pressed into her lover, so too did her hips, trapping her arm between their shaking bodies. The impact of Camilla’s form slammed Hinoka back against the wooden ceiling beam. Camilla’s tongue flirted and flitted along the curve of Hinoka’s ear, slickening it with their shared passion. Her free hand groped around Hinoka’s buttocks, nails dug deep, drawing her forward, guiding her path, making obvious this route for Hinoka steaming lust to escape.

Hinoka’s croaking breaths of uncorked passion shook the walls in time as carefully-timed combinations of fireworks—violet, azure, crimson—reverberated against one of another, shattering the dark and starry sky, soaring towards crescendo.

Her hips ground, groping with her body, scraping her mound against the willing resistance of Camilla’s palm. Her eyes narrowed to slits and her breath had no escape but in pinched, bleated whistle through her flaring nose. Her jaw trembled, jigged. She yelped like a startled animal, when Camilla drove another finger into her roiling sex.

Her body clenched with ready want. Her legs buckled. A bestial groan escaped her. Her hands were feeble, useless, pawing at any bit of Camilla they could touch, they could claim, gripping around cheeks, around elbow, around shoulder, into hair. Begging with her eyes, and with the wordless quiver of her parted laps. Please. Please. Please.

“Like that, darling.” The fireworks kept the confidence of Camilla’s whispered words, meant to be shared with one, and one alone. “Just like that.”

Camilla’s eyes claimed hers, the penultimate moment of this impromptu dance, as she drove her fingers to the apex, curled them outward within her love, and squeezed.

Eruption overcame Hinoka like a sudden shock. Her hair bristled. She consigned her worries, her wants, her recalcitrance and her desires to blissful, orgasmic oblivion. Unburdened by shame or fear, she cried out, nails furrowing into Camilla’s scalp, the concussive barrage of the fireworks at full climax masking the hoarse cries of her pleasure.

…to all but the woman before her, of course…

But even as the cannon fire helpfully concealed the screams of Hinoka’s release, the prismatic bursts of color that lit the hallway blistering as broad daylight on the battlefield, exposing them to any who’d care to look.

Fortunately, both those of Hoshido and Nohr had more a mind for fireworks, and less for the spying on impromptu lovers’ trysts.

The final shrieking whistles filtered through the leaves of the shaking tries, and the muggy air of castle grounds was silent once more, but for Hinoka’s wheezing.

Pants of effort spilled from Camilla as she collapsed into her love. Hinoka’s quaking arms drew her into a feeble embrace, and Camilla drowsily watched the final few smoky fronds of the fireworks dissapate into nothing, enjoying the fuzzy, auric emanations of Hinoka’s release that lapped like lazy waves over her senses. Soon, only the great, overwhelming blackness of the night sky remained. “Ah poo,” she said. “We missed all the fireworks.”

Hinoka flushed, the gentle fry of her voice all the worse due to her pounding heart, and painful worry over this public exposure. Drawing herself from out of the blissful abyss of her orgasm, she at least developed enough presence of mind to release her death grip on Camilla’s hair. “N-not all the fireworks.”

“Darling!” It wasn’t much of a wordplay, but Camilla knew that no flower grew without encouragement. “We’ll make a proper flirt of you yet!”  With a nuzzle of her nose through Hinoka’s hair, and a rather chaste kiss atop her head, Camilla sealed the act of her contrition, and spoke in sotto voce. “Am I forgiven, truly?”

“Hush. I’ve said so twice already.” Though Hinoka yearned for nothing more than shirk all social obligations and drag her betrothed into bed and fall into a deadened oblivion of sleep, pillowed against her ample, generous body. But, though the aftershocks of her ad hoc climax still wracked her, Hinoka thought it prudent to at least suggest the option… “S-should we rejoin the festivities, then?”

A bit of a purr swept through Camilla, as Hinoka’s trembling fingers brushed along her scalp, straightening her hopelessly mussed hair. “I’d recommend against it. Believe me, dear, they’d smell you coming a league away.”

Hinoka glanced down the corridor. Her heart was still, and she was invincible—come what ghosts, what monsters, what murderers of ladies fair might lurk in the flickering shadows cast by lamplight. “Hush, I said.”

Camilla lightly brushed her clothing back into place. At her full height, she fairly loomed over Hinoka, placing a hand at the wall beside Hinoka’s head, and taking Hinoka’s hand with her other. She spoke tenderly, granting permission as only a princess can, and speaking the words Hinoka kept locked inside her head, for fear of disappointing Camilla, and her social proclivities. “Let’s have a bath and slip beneath the covers.” A playful, cat-like cruelty filtered through her doting gaze. “I’ve intentions to draw at least one more burst of “fireworks” from you before the night is through…”

And once more, for good measure:

“Hush, I said…”

Washed clean and smelling of almond and soap, Hinoka stared at the ceiling as Camilla ruffled her hair dry with a soft towel. She cleaved to the droning hum of the cicadas. The bawdy, brazen fireworks had passed, and now, albeit cautiously, the insects reclaimed their ownership of the night. The festivities showed no signs of stopping. Here and there were the sounds of revelry, as the younger family members chased each other up and down the halls, ebullient, shrieking and giggling, bounding after one another and hurling together, collapsing into uncoordinated heaps, overcome by the thrill of the evening and feigning drunkenness off of the small, ceremonial sips of rice wine they were allowed—it was a special occasion, after all.

Camilla’s bare skin was as satin against Hinoka’s back. The scars upon her fingers were gentle and smooth as she offered her tender ministrations to her lover, tracing her touch along Hinoka’s hips and flowing atop the slow rise and fall of her stomach with her breathing.

A crash of an overturned vase out in the hall. “Soleil, pick that up!” Ophelia ordered. “Make me!” came the retort, cut short by a cavalier giggle.

A sigh escaped Hinoka. “I can’t remember a time when I was ever like that.”

“Like what?”

Hinoka rolled over, pillowing her head in her arms. “Carefree? Unencumbered? Unafraid?”

Camilla melded to her. Hinoka shivered at the too-warm mingle of their bodies in the oppressive heat of this long night. “We weren’t so they could be.”

Despite sticky discomfort of their cooling bodies, Hinoka stroked her finger along the arm Camilla settled around her stomach, just above a ragged scar, a memory of battle recent enough that it still ached—in her heart, if not to the touch. “I suppose that means something.”

The stampeding of bare feet, and the boisterous shrieks of young love, receded into the distance as the Soleil and Ophelia enacted a raucous get away from the scene of their crime.

Camilla drew her closer, their bodies slotted together like puzzle pieces scored and shaped. Her blissfully soft hair danced against Hinoka’s face, and each word came with the brush of lips over Hinoka’s shoulder. “Is my sweet little princess envious of their unfettered youth?”

“Absolutely not.” Craning her neck, Hinoka took in Camilla’s features. The clever scarlet of eyes, the capricious smile encumbered at its corners by the exhaustion of a long, event-filled day. “If an easier youth meant a void of you, I’d shun that risk in a heartbeat.”

“The feeling, my dear, is mutual.”

Hinoka tucked her arm over her eyes, shielding herself from flicker of the bedside lamp. “Besides, I’m too tired for envy. Let the young have their fun, they’ve earned it.”

“Rightly said.” Camilla dipped finger and thumb between her lips. With the rustle of covers, and the slip of skin over skin, she leaned for the night stand and snuffed out the light. “Let’s have a rest, we’ve more than our share of obligations in the morning.”

Camilla was atop her, leg hooked around knee, breasts folding over hers, sharing warmth,  and kindness, and all the things Hinoka never thought to need, until this woman, not so long ago, had granted them to her as easily as one shares a spare loaf of bread.

“Let’s,” she said.

“Let’s,” Camilla replied.

Hinoka marveled at this saintly woman above her, touching fingers to her soft cheeks as if in reverence, and taking the loose coils of her hair to set them right behind her ears, as if these meager efforts could improve a face already perfect. When Camilla smiled at her in that deep, quiet dark, she felt she could sink eternally into the welcome softness bedding, be swallowed up by it, consumed by the security, sanctity, and love of this woman.

“Oh, and darling?” Camilla said. Her eyes shone with innocent, guileless affection in the dark as she took one of Hinoka’s rough hands in both of hers. “Could you do your lady love one small favor before we both collapse?”

Hinoka’s eyes adjusted slowly to the dim moonlight. Perhaps that was why, drinking deep of Camilla’s winsome features, she missed the ulterior intent of the cat-like smile spreading across in her lips. “Anything.”

“Do check to make sure there’s no hook-handed fiends lurking under our bed.”

In that deep, dark, and fearsome night, Hinoka’s groan of abject worry shook the foundations of Castle Hoshido itself.

[u-dont-care-kms-blog]

The last leaf

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These "places" make strange angles and curves. One Street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account! So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a "colony." At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. "Johnsy" was familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine; the other from California. They had met at the table d'hôte of an Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted. That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown "places." Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick house. One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, grey eyebrow. "She has one chance in - let us say, ten," he said, as he shook down the mercury in his clinical thermometer. " And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-u on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopoeia look silly. Your little lady has made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?" "She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day." said Sue. "Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking twice - a man for instance?" "A man?" said Sue, with a jew's-harp twang in her voice. "Is a man worth - but, no, doctor; there is nothing of the kind." "Well, it is the weakness, then," said the doctor. "I will do all that science, so far as it may filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten." After the doctor had gone Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room with her drawing board, whistling ragtime. Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep. She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story. Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature. As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle of the figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She went quickly to the bedside. Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting - counting backward. "Twelve," she said, and little later "eleven"; and then "ten," and "nine"; and then "eight" and "seven", almost together. Sue look solicitously out of the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare, dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half way up the brick wall. The cold breath of autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the crumbling bricks. "What is it, dear?" asked Sue. "Six," said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. "They're falling faster now. Three days ago there were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes another one. There are only five left now." "Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie." "Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go, too. I've known that for three days. Didn't the doctor tell you?" "Oh, I never heard of such nonsense," complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. "What have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well real soon were - let's see exactly what he said - he said the chances were ten to one! Why, that's almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street cars or walk past a new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and pork chops for her greedy self." "You needn't get any more wine," said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window. "There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go, too." "Johnsy, dear," said Sue, bending over her, "will you promise me to keep your eyes closed, and not look out the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by to-morrow. I need the light, or I would draw the shade down." "Couldn't you draw in the other room?" asked Johnsy, coldly. "I'd rather be here by you," said Sue. "Beside, I don't want you to keep looking at those silly ivy leaves." "Tell me as soon as you have finished," said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and still as fallen statue, "because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves." "Try to sleep," said Sue. "I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner. I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move 'til I come back." Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along with the body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who scoffed terribly at softness in any one, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to protect the two young artists in the studio above. Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly lighted den below. In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away, when her slight hold upon the world grew weaker. Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for such idiotic imaginings. "Vass!" he cried. "Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I will not bose as a model for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der brain of her? Ach, dot poor leetle Miss Yohnsy." "She is very ill and weak," said Sue, "and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I think you are a horrid old - old flibbertigibbet." "You are just like a woman!" yelled Behrman. "Who said I will not bose? Go on. I come mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece, and ve shall all go away. Gott! yes." Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-sill, and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit miner on an upturned kettle for a rock. When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull, wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade. "Pull it up; I want to see," she ordered, in a whisper. Wearily Sue obeyed. But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last one on the vine. Still dark green near its stem, with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and decay, it hung bravely from the branch some twenty feet above the ground. "It is the last one," said Johnsy. "I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same time." "Dear, dear!" said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow, "think of me, if you won't think of yourself. What would I do?" But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed. The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was again loosed, while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch eaves. When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised. The ivy leaf was still there. Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her chicken broth over the gas stove. "I've been a bad girl, Sudie," said Johnsy. "Something has made that last leaf stay there to show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring a me a little broth now, and some milk with a little port in it, and - no; bring me a hand-mirror first, and then pack some pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook." And hour later she said: "Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples." The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left. "Even chances," said the doctor, taking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his. "With good nursing you'll win." And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is - some kind of an artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute. There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more comfortable." The next day the doctor said to Sue: "She's out of danger. You won. Nutrition and care now - that's all." And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very blue and very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and all. "I have something to tell you, white mouse," she said. "Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia to-day in the hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him the morning of the first day in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold. They couldn't imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colours mixed on it, and - look out the window, dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the wind blew? Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf fell."

[shewhowantsmouseears]

Love Like Lava, 6

Notes: As always, big massive thank yous to my marvelous editors, Drucilla and Blueshifted!

I feel like this chapter is mostly filler. In between the horrifying sadness, anyway.

This storyline troubled me for years, in that I couldn't find a way to do the Pygmalion plot with Goofy without making it really creepy. Then it hit me - explore and explain the creepiness!

Summary: In trying to give a blessed gift, Minnie winds up giving Goofy an unknowing curse. As she becomes closer to Mickey, the sculptor's heart is broken once more.

Goofy had been a young man when he lost his lady love, although in such ancient times, twenty was a perfect age for marriage. He'd lost his own parents years before, but had been able to pull through thanks to Millicent's tender love and care. When she died, he felt as if a part of him had died with her. Even now with Goofy in his forties, the pain lingered like a fresh wound. He longed to see her again with every beat of his heart.

But longing didn't make miracles, so when he regained consciousness and saw his formerly dead sweetheart kneeling at his side patiently, it was almost enough to knock him out again. He wasn't particularly knowledgeable about many things in the world, but even he knew that the dead stayed dead, simple as that. He opened his eyes again, and she was still there.

“Does your head hurt?” the girl asked, hands on her thighs, cocking her head to see if a lump had formed on top of Goofy's skull – it was difficult to tell since his head was naturally bumpy. “Your head hit the floor really hard.”

He didn't speak at first – more accurately, he didn't possess the words to fit what was going through his heart and mind. Fear tried to freeze the blood in his veins, knowing something had gone against the very will of nature, yet unbridled happiness would melt it away because she was there and she was alive and what could be wrong with that? He heaved as he forced himself to sit up, hot tears blurring his vision. “Millie?” His voice cracked like glass, terrified and joyous, scared and elated. “Is... is it really...you?” His trembling hands reached out to cup her cheeks – cheeks that were warm, of fur and skin and flesh, and a sob escaped his throat. She hadn't aged a day since that fateful one decades past, looking the same as she did before she went on that deadly voyage.

“Well, who else would I be?” she replied, chuckling softly at his reaction, allowing his hands to do as they pleased. “Honestly, Goofy, you ask the silliest questions. You'd better expect some very silly answers.”

Goofy yanked Millie into his arms, his face becoming a wet embarrassment. “Millie!” It was nearly a howl of agony, all the years of pain released into this very moment. He wept her name over and over until it was a jumble of incomprehensible letters, and he didn't care if the entire village went up in flames so long as this time would never end. Millie, for her part, made no effort to wipe away his tears, as she figured they wouldn't stop for a while. She simply rested her head on his shoulder, her fingers curling against the shabbily made necklace that hung from her neck.

“I've missed you,” Goofy managed to speak in between hard breaths. “I never stopped thinkin' about you, all these years...I wanted you back every single day.”

“What do you mean, you silly goof? I've been here for a long time.”

The sculptor's eyes snapped open, a sudden and terrible realization out on the horizon. He wanted to believe she meant something sappy, like she'd been in his heart all along. He untangled his arms from around her thin body, pulling back enough to stare at her cheerful face. “Wh-whaddya mean? Whaddya mean you've been here for a long time?”

“You must have hit your hard much harder than I thought,” Millie quipped, still strangely peaceful despite all the sobs and screams. She lifted her hand and pointed to where the statue of her once stood – and stood no more. “I've been right there for years. Don't you remember? You say hello to me every morning and dust me off once a week.”

Now fear won out and Goofy's very soul felt as if it had become encased in ice. His fingers trembled, and for once he wished he really was as stupid as everyone believed he was, so he wouldn't have to understand what was happening. “M-Millie...What...what was your father's name?”

The poodle paused, her pretty eyes bouncing back and forth in contemplation. After a brief moment she merely shrugged. “I don't know. I don't think you've mentioned him.”

Bile began to rise in Goofy's throat, and now he could no longer control himself. He shoved Millie off of his lap, and she rolled over with a startled cry. “Who are you?” He scrambled to his feet, pressing himself to the wall, as if he was corned by a monstrosity that had come from a place he dared not imagine. “You're not Millie! Who are you?!”

Millie – the girl – whoever she was – whatever she was – slowly rose up, her once pleased face now wrinkled with confusion. “But you've always called me Millie. Isn't that who I am?”

“No!” Everything inside of Goofy hurt, but before he could even try to rationalize anything, his eyes found the necklace. A hot rage blinded him, that wound of memories now bleeding and raw. “That's not yours! Take that off! THAT'S NOT YOURS!” His hand lashed out, grabbing the necklace and snatching it off her neck, scratching the girl's neck with two harsh cuts. He was about to demand how she thought she could wear this, how much pain she planned to inflict upon him, but the girl was whimpering now, touching the injuries where spots of blood began to prickle. It was her first time experiencing pain, of many varieties. Guilt lowered Goofy's arm. “I...I'm sorry, I didn't mean to...”

She began to open her mouth, but Goofy knew he wouldn't be able to handle any more words. “I can't, I'm sorry, I can't... I gotta... I gotta...” Without any further explanation than that, he fled from the room, the destroyed necklace still in his hand. He burst from his house, unsure of where to go but he had to get away from there. He ran and ran and ran, confusing his neighbors when he didn't even try to say good morning. He ran until his legs gave out, letting him collapse in a patch of dry grass, not caring who, if anyone, saw him retch and cry like a sick child.

As for the girl who wasn't Millie, she was at a complete loss what to do. She sat there for a time, rubbing her sore neck, trying and failing to understand what his words had meant. Eventually she began to imitate what she would see Goofy do on a normal day – dust off his statues, make his bed, and have breakfast. She ate and ate and ate until she experienced her first stomachache, and as she sat on the dirty floor, licking an apple core between her sticky fingers, she wondered how she would, in Aphrodite's words, “Heal Goofy's heart”.

Regardless of how much pain anyone was in, the day went on, as time always does in its unforgiving and relentless way.

~*~

As Minnie had promised, she came back to Mickey's cave the very next morning. He'd still had lingering doubts she would come, but just in case, he took the longest bath he ever had. It was worth it, as she flounced into the cave without Axelia's assistance as if the place was her second home. Like day one, she asked question upon question and he gave answer upon answer.

One of those questions involved a map she was allowed to take from his wall. “Where is this?” she asked, spreading it out on the floor as Mickey hammered away, breaking up ores to find the precious minerals and stones inside.

“The coast of Izmir.” Mickey paused briefly in his work to make sure he was remembering it right. “I think. That's what the girls say, anyway.” He resumed his smashing, bits of broken rock spitting back at him. “Sometimes if I have a free day, I'll ask them to describe coasts and shorelines of other places, so I can try to draw 'em.”

Minnie lifted her head, her hands still flat on the map. “Why don't you just go to these places to see if you got them right? You're a god, aren't you? You can go anywhere you want with just a thought.”

“Aw, what do I need with other places?” He rolled his shoulder, letting the past where he did in fact long to go to those places slide down his back to be forgotten. “I got everything I need right here: Food, friends, and a furnace. Can't ask for anythin' else.”

Minnie pouted, her cute cheeks puffing out. He was a stubborn one when he wanted to be. As much as she wanted to tell him about her accomplishment with the statue, she felt it wasn't right to divulge anything about herself as long as she was keeping her name a secret. Besides, there was much more to learn about him. Maybe once she learned absolutely everything about him, she could even the score and tell him the truth. Maybe.

“Asking and wanting are two different things,” Minnie said after she placed the map back on the wall. “I bet you've wanted a lot of things!”

Mickey snorted, not bothering to raise his head as he answered. “Y'think you know me so well already? This is just day two, missy. If I say there's nothin' I want, then there's nothin' I want. What makes you think you know me better than I know yourself?”

“Because everyone wants something! It's part of what makes us who we are.” Minnie skipped to his work bench, plopping herself down beside him. “There are a lot of things I want every day. A beautiful sun in the sky, a new friend to make, and to learn lots of things I didn't know before.” She then grabbed his arm to force him to look at her, though it really didn't take that much. “Are you honestly telling me, right here and right now, there's absolutely nothing you want?”

If Mickey didn't know any better he'd swear she was implying something else, and his cheeks reddened. Of course there were things he wanted, but wanting was foolish when you would never get your desires. In the end, it only caused suffering. However, this strange feminine beauty gazing intently at him for reasons he couldn't fathom was suffering in its own way. A girl like this could kill a better man, with those gorgeous eyes of hers that – “Hey!” he realized, much to his relief to have a distraction, “Did you know your eyes change color?”

Minnie blinked rapidly, her train of thought now on a different track. “Huh? They do?”

“I think so! They were red before – now they're like, kinda orange. I dunno... Hey, Axelia!”

The Axelia he called for had been organizing his blueprints, but she stopped abruptly upon command. She walked over, arms straight at her side, waiting for further instructions. Mickey placed his hammer aside, grabbed Minnie by the shoulders with both hands, and turned her around. “What color are Minnie's eyes?”

Axelia craned her golden neck at Minnie, and the answer came in seconds. “They-Are-Black-Black-Black.”

Mickey laughed in amusement, and instead of taking up his tool again, he reached for his walking stick. “I ain't ever heard of any mortal, myth, or creature that can change their eye color! How come you didn't know you could do that?”

Minnie slid off the work bench and smoothed down her dress, although as usual there wasn't a single wrinkle to be found. “I guess everyone assumed I already knew. Now it makes me want to ask everyone I know what color my eyes are!” She giggled, wondering if Daisy saw the colors of the garden or the colors of her husband's gaze. “Didn't you say orange was your favorite color?”

“Sure did.” Though it begged the question why it had been red before – and why, on their first meeting, he'd seen blue. But if Minnie didn't even realize her eyes changed color, then it would be useless to ask her the reasons behind it. “C'mon, I want to show you to the girls. Bet they'll get a real hoot out of this.” He began to chuckle again, already imagining them squeaking like dolphins at Minnie's eyes. Maybe Minnie was something nautical like them.

As Mickey placed his walking stick under his left arm and began to hobble along, Minnie had to physically stop herself from trying to help him along. If he could create women of gold, beautiful jewelry, and weapons designed for others, why did he settle for a mere stick for disability? She tilted her head as she watched him. “Mickey, has your leg always been like that?”

Mickey stopped, though his eyes instinctively went to his twisted limb. He supposed she was bound to ask eventually, since it was his worst feature and biggest shame. “Yep. Can't move it, and can't feel most of it.” He waited to hear the inevitable follow up questions – Can't you fix it? Can't you make it work? Doesn't it bother you? Why is it like that? Why don't other gods look like that -

“Are you ticklish there?”

“No.” Wait. What? Mickey turned his head, and Minnie was at his side, all smiles and sunshine as always. “Huh?”

“Well, you mentioned seeing the girls, and I figured they've probably tried to tickle you all over before. I don't even know if I'm ticklish.” Her hands were knotted behind her back, keeping slowly with Mickey's pace as they made their way forward together. “The mermaids, the nereids...They're like your family, right?” If they were Mickey's friends and family, then she had to become their friends and family too.

Mickey wondered if he'd ever understand how Minnie's mind worked. “Ah, um, yeah. They raised me since I was a little guy. Mermaids taught me how to talk, nereids taught me how to walk. They fed me and took care of me until I could do it myself.” Though they were headed for the sunlight, Mickey's eyes stayed down, thinking of saltwater days when the girls would lay on the sand with him, holding him until he went to sleep. “I know folks think they're a bunch of dummies...but they've got good hearts. They didn't have to keep me. Makin' 'em feel prettier is the least I can do repay 'em. So – so go easy on 'em if they bother you, all right?”

Mickey thought he was simply saying the facts as they were, but Minnie could hear the depths of his appreciation and care with every sentence. The same could be said of his gifts – they were only so breathtaking because he put genuine love into each craft, trying to say with metal what he couldn't express in words. “Of course, Mickey. I would be honored to meet your precious family.”

He almost asked why, but didn't. They walked around the sharp rocks, sat upon the sandy cliffside, and Mickey taught Minnie his special whistle to summon his companions – two fingers, pinky down, sharp breath. Minnie was still practicing when bubbles began to pop up underneath their feet, followed by giggling and splashing. Once again, as had happened more times than Minnie could count, the women froze momentarily as they got an eyeful of the goddess of beauty. She waved and spoke to knock them out of their shock. “Hello, everyone! It's very nice to meet you all.”

Mickey cleared his throat and straightened his back. “All right, everyone, this here's Minnie. You treat her nice, understand? Cause I brought her here for a fun game.”

“Game, game, game, I love playing games!” “I want to play a game with pretty Minnie!”

“I'm the best at playing games and being pretty!”

“Okay, good! All you gotta do is answer one question.” Mickey gestured towards Minnie's face, making sure not to block their view. “What color are her eyes?”

“Pink! I win!” “Where do you see pink? Her eyes are purple!”

“They're green! Green, green, green!”

Perhaps Mickey had overestimated how gracious his girls would be, as instead of making it a fun guess, now they began to argue about who was right. They began to splash at each other, tugging on hair and taking sides. “Hey, hey, hey! Calm down!” He grabbed his walking stick, intending to physically split apart those he could, but when his back was turned, he heard Minnie give out a surprised  “Oh!” followed by a splash.

Color drained from his face – he wanted to impress his mermaids and nereids, and now he was making a horrible impression on his new friend. “Minnie!” He whipped around, but it was too late. She'd been captured by the gaggle of girls, so one could clearly show the other Minnie's eye color. Minnie herself was unharmed, blinking away water from her eyelashes. Mickey was imagining a thousand scenarios, most of them winding up with a frustrated Minnie storming off after being humiliated and never turning up on the island again. “You – you – you fish heads! You let her go!” He waved his walking stick at them, but this was as far as he could go. With his leg the way it was, he couldn't swim.

Yet Minnie wasn't as helpless as everyone tended to think. With a smirk curling on her lips, she clapped her hands once. “Everybody wins!”

A beat of silence overcame the school of fish friends, and then an eruption of celebration squealed forth, with clapping and spinning and singing.

“I win, I win, I win!” “I won too!”

“This was the best game ever!”

With that miniature crisis over, Minnie flashed a sporting grin at her companion, but Mickey still wasn't relieved. He offered her a hand, and while she took it, she didn't pull herself out of the water. “Aw, Minnie, I, I'm so sorry! I thought they'd be better behaved than this!”

“Oh, Mickey, relax!” She squeezed his hand before letting go, letting herself float on her back. “You just have to know how to talk to them. I guess I know you and your girls better than you do after all!”

Mickey's eyes narrowed, taking the challenge. “You think so?” This girl was nuts, bonkers, and absolutely off the wall. What a nice change from his predictable lifestyle. He found a smile forming on his mouth, and he twirled his stick in the air. “Say, ladies! Minnie here doesn't know where she's ticklish!”

Minnie's eyes widened. “You wouldn't dare.”

He dared. “Why don't you all be a bunch of good girls and help her find out?” In seconds Minnie was mobbed by eager fingers and screeching laughter. It was also nice to have someone else be a target for once. Even this didn't frighten Minnie away, as she tried to return the favor and tickle back her assailants. The game eventually grew boring for some of the elders, who now wanted to dress Minnie up in pearls and seaweed, which she allowed as long as they introduced themselves.

Mickey watched without comment, chewing on his lower lip. A part of him thought that maybe, perhaps, he'd been trying to see if she would be driven away by his nautical allies – almost counting on it, because she would be driven away eventually, inevitably. She would find a reason to leave as soon as her tiara was completed. His mind worked to excuse what he saw – so, fine, she liked mermaids and nereids, but you could find them on any shore, and the world was a big place. If she wanted their company, she could go anywhere she wanted.

She would leave him. That was a fact. Minnie was kissing the foreheads of the younger mermaids and allowing an older nereid to play with her spitcurls. When they tried to give her the trinkets Mickey had made for them, she politely declined, insisting it looked much better on them. “And I wouldn't want to take away anything your dear brother gave you.”

“Brother?” The nereid adorned with green coral repeated, looking at her sisters and aunts and mothers for help. “I don't have a brother. Do I have a brother?”

Mickey raised his hand. “I think she means me.”

“Mickey's not my brother. Mickey is Mickey!”

“Mickey's not our brother or cousin or uncle or father because those are all boring.”

“We have a Mickey, and no one else has a Mickey, so we're the best.”

“Best Mickey, best Mickey, best Mickey!”

Minnie quietly glanced at Mickey, thinking she might see a hurt or pained expression, but instead he was just rolling his eyes with a knowing smile. This was not like the traditional families she saw on the mortal plane, with a pair of mothers and fathers and a set number of children. This was a family of choice, but still a family nonetheless. In their forgetful ways, they latched onto the new topic of conversation by showering Mickey with compliments and requests for more pretty accessories, playing keep away with his walking stick but being sure to never break it. With a bit more personal space now around her, Minnie swam back to the cliffside and tried to climb back up.

“I'm sorry,” Mickey mumbled, not making eye contact with her.

“About what?” Minnie asked as she began to squeeze water out of her dress.

“Y'know, them! I should've figured they'd pull some kinda stunt. They're not that bad, normally, I swear.”

“Mickey-”

“It's just - they can't help it, okay? That's what they are. I've tried teachin' 'em, but it's hard, cause they don't wanna learn.”

“Mickey-”

“You can't just snap your fingers and make seagulls change the color of their feathers, and it's like with them, you can't expect too much, you can't-”

Minnie pushed her palm against his mouth in a quick attempt to shush him. “Mickey. You don't have to make excuses for them.”

“Mmmmf?” Mickey asked, which roughly translated to “Really?”

“Yes, really. I like them. I like you. I like being here. Now will you please relax?” She made him nod by pushing his head back down, and then pulled her hand back, poking him on the nose afterward. “You don't have to apologize for them like that. Just tell me about them. Please.”

Mickey almost asked if she was entirely sure, absolutely sure, but she was giving him that funny, intense gaze again. He sucked on the inside of his cheek, trying to make himself calm down and do what she had so kindly asked. He had been ready to both defend and excuse his beach beauties much like he had felt he needed to both defend and excuse his entire being. He knew their reputation across the lands – and that it wasn't entirely unjustified – but they were his, and if no one would accept them, then good riddance to those jerks. But she was accepting them.

She was accepting of a lot of things.

Mickey cleared his throat. “Fine, then, you better pay attention, cause I'm not going to go through everyone a second time.” His eyes found the nearest girl, and he motioned to her with a point. “That there is Lydia.” Upon being named, a raven haired nereid swam forward, returning his walking stick and getting an affectionate pat on the head in return. “She's Tallia's little sister.  She likes to wear things that make a lot of noise.” So evidenced by dangling hooped earrings that clinked whenever she moved her head.

“It's nice to meet you, Lydia.” Minnie placed her hands on her lap, leaning forward. “Why do you like making a lot of noise?”

“Because then it's really hard to ignore me!” Lydia yelled giddily, clapping her hands as hard as she could.

“Very well, then I will never ignore you.” She moved to flick Lydia's earrings, making them clink and clank back and forth, and Lydia kicked in the water, thrilled to bits. Mickey then introduced her older sister Tallia, then Aquata, then Calista, Andria, Rydia, one after the after, telling them how they were related, what treasures they desired, favorite moments out on the sea, who could imitate a dolphin's call, the best backflipper, so on and so forth. With each meeting, Minnie made sure to do more than greet them – she interacted, she asked questions, she complimented. She made an effort to remember each and every single one of them, which to a newcomer was no easy task. It helped that she genuinely adored them, and found them like children with grown bodies. It was, she imagined, like a new mother being introduced to the young ones of her new beau.

Having children with Mickey  - wasn't that a lovely spot of fantasy! Though she had tried to tell herself that she couldn't really love Mickey without knowing all about him, her mind didn't get the message, happily wandering off to see Minnie holding a newborn with the beautiful features of both parents while Mickey was hard at work making a crib.

The parental paradise was unknowingly interrupted as Mickey kept going with, “And this is Damara.”

Damara – Damara – where had she heard that name before? Minnie slowly moved her eyes over, and her paradise turned to panic. This was indeed the exact same mermaid who, to her words, met someone who could have been Aphrodite. Had she been so caught up in romantic fantasies that this chance meeting never occurred to her? Mickey was saying something or other about how Damara liked to play pranks on mortals, despite Mickey's lectures about not doing that. But Minnie and Damara were looking right at each other, with Damara blinking at Minnie, clearly recalling a moment.

Sweat broke out on Minnie's face – she hadn't told this one her original name, right? She was so overcome with worry that her mind went blank and she couldn't remember anything. As Damara tilted her head, Minnie silently hoped that this particular mermaid didn't have a good memory and was as smart as a wad of seaweed. Mickey was oblivious to Minnie's panic attack, too focused on the mermaid in front of him. “Hey now, be polite! Don't just stare, say somethin'. Be nice.”

So Damara spoke, tugging on the ends of Minnie's dress. “Have we met somewhere before?”

“Ummm,” Minnie drew out the word, adding more “m”s in a hard attempt at thinking. So far she had never technically lied to Mickey, she had only left out certain details. But if she actually denied Damara's words, that would be a lie for real, and Minnie would be a terrible person for it. If she could help it, she would not lie to her dear Mickey or his precious family. “Yes. We have.” She winced as she spoke, her chest feeling tight.

“I knew it!” Damara clapped in victory, her head bouncing back left and right. “I knew it, I knew it! She's the one I was telling you about when I broke that “No Aphrodrite” rule!”

“You broke it again!” said a mermaid with skin as dark as night.

“I did not! I'm not talking about Aphrodite, I'm talking about a girl that could be as pretty as Aphrodite!  If I was breaking the rule, I'd be saying she was Aphrodite, but she's not Aphrodite, she's Minnie, Mickey said so! I'm not breaking the rule, so I'm a good girl!”

Mickey ran a tired hand down his face. “I'm thinkin' I need to reword that rule a little. Did you have a point somewhere in there?”

This required another twenty seconds of deep thought for Damara who ultimately concluded, “Your girlfriend is very pretty.”

Just like that, Mickey and Minnie switched moods. Minnie was calm and relaxed, whereas Mickey broke into alarm. “G-G-Girlfriend?! What are you – you – you girls are as dumb as rocks, is what you are! New rule! No saying that word! And no embarrassing me!” He swiftly turned to Minnie who was smiling adorably from ear to ear. “Well – I – you said – you said not to make excuses or apologize, so, so, so I won't! But! Y'know! That's...they don't know what they're sayin'.”

“I am a girl,” Minnie pointed out, scooting in half an inch closer to Mickey's side. “And I am your friend. So, in a way, she's right.” She knew exactly what would come next, and enjoyed every second of it, even waving her finger about like a conductor's baton.

“I'm right, I'm right, I'm a smart girl!”

“Wait! This means I'm Mickey's girlfriend too!”

“We're all Mickey's girlfriends! Yay!”

Mickey wondered if his cheeks would ever return to their normal color again, as right now he couldn't stop blushing. He tried to muster up a glare at Minnie, but it was difficult. “You're enjoyin' this way too much.”

“I had to pay you back after you sent your tickle army after me.”

“Yeah, yeah, missy. You keep that up and I'll push you back in there.”

Minnie had no doubt that he would, and it all made her giggle the absurdness of everything hitting her at once. It was a contagious noise, and so to no great shock, Mickey also found himself laughing, needing to hold his stomach as it came harder and harder. Even though the mermaids and nereids didn't really get the joke, they laughed as well before they decided on more games and more questions to pester the pretty one with.

Later that day, Mickey would find another surprise – in that he spent much more time with the girls than usual that day. He wondered if Minnie's presence had anything to do with that. On a small level he was annoyed, as it meant he was now behind on all of his work, even if only by a few hours. Yet he couldn't say he'd change that day if he could. Having a second like-minded head in there made dealing with the girls a little easier. It was, dare say it, fun.

Perhaps it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if it happened again, though he still believed it was a hard “if”. Perhaps some conversations were as entertaining, if not more, than working on his projects. Perhaps Minnie was the type to change things even without meaning to. Who knew? She was a mystery, but he was in no hurry to solve it. Like the mystery of why she looked at him so strangely – it was a way he'd never seen before, and so couldn't put a word to it. Maybe it was the way the rest of the world looked at each other.

Girlfriend, however – he ought to push Damara's bracelets back a week for that stupid remark. Why, he bet she didn't even know what the word meant, and was just trying it out. Mickey knew that word was not meant for him, and to dare imply anything about that in regards to Minnie was downright insulting to her. They were friends. Unusual friends, yes, but she was unusual. Once she had her gift, she'd leave, and things would go back to normal. Whatever normal meant.

So when he laid in bed that night, he told himself he didn't care if Minnie had a boyfriend (even though he definitely did) and that he didn't care if Minnie had a thousand boyfriends (even though he doubtlessly did) and that he'd never want her as a girlfriend in a million years (even though after that popped into his head, he couldn't go back to sleep.)

But with every shift he made under the sheets, he felt his twisted leg move, and with it came the reminder of who he was, what he was, and the future that had been laid out for him the second he was born.

Pretty girls don't become the girlfriends of rejects.

~*~

Hours before Mickey would go to bed and contemplate matters of the heart and how furiously he denied them, Goofy finally went back to his house. He hadn't eaten all day, and now his stomach matched how bad his head felt. He stood in front of his dilapidated house, afraid to enter and relive the horror of that morning. Yet he also knew he couldn't stay away forever. With a giant gulp, he walked inside and opened his mouth – but what could he call her? She wasn't Millie.

The girl in question was back in the bedroom, having recently discovered one doesn't eat orange peels. As she rubbed her belly, she looked up as Goofy stepped in, and they watched each other with frightened intensity. The broken necklace was still grasped in Goofy's hand.

Eventually Goofy began the investigation, moving to sit down on the floor across from her. “You were my statue.”

She nodded, rubbing her sore neck. The bleeding had been quick, and the tedious healing process has begun. “Until the other night, yes.” Her voice was quiet, unsure of what would spark his fury again.

“What happened the other night?”

“The goddess Aphrodite came to me.” She placed her hand on her heart as she remembered the moment, rubbing the area as feeling fur and skin was still a new and exciting threshold for her. “She told me I would heal your heart. She laid her hands here, and brought me to life.”

Had Goofy somehow offended the goddess and this was his punishment? Or had the divine woman honestly believed this was a righteous action? Now Goofy was afraid of going back to the temple, lest Aphrodite's next well-meaning intentions completely destroy his sanity. But what to do now? To pray to Aphrodite to send this woman back into her marble form seemed cruel. She had life now, and no one had any right to snuff away – though one could argue no one had any right to give it, either.

After a heavy sigh, Goofy decided, “You aren't Millie. You can't ever be Millie.”

“Then...” She sat on her knees, wanting to get closer but not within striking range. “Who am I?”

Wasn't that the question of the century! Goofy scratched his head, going over the possibilities. It was not within him to toss her out into the street and fend for herself, so, ultimately, she was now his responsibility. Feeding one stomach was already hard, but there must be people worse off than he was. Until this got resolved one way or the other, he would have to do the right thing. It wouldn't be easy, and for a second he wished he was a rotten fellow, someone who could ignore it all and do what made life simple for him. But he wasn't. He never would be.

“I suppose,” Goofy said, “Until you find a name you like better, we can always call you... Agalma.” It was the Greek word for statue. Names weren't his specialty, and he did feel a smidgen silly for simply calling her what she used to be. But what else could he do?

“Agalma,” she repeated, and then said it again, “Agalma!”, letting it work on her tongue, saying it three times more before being satisfied. “It'll take some getting used to. But I don't think it's so bad. I am Agalma.”

“And I am hungry.” Goofy could hear his stomach rumbling, and spotted the orange peel in Agalma's fingers. “You ate my oranges?”

“The insides are very good, but the outsides are awful.” Agalma stuck her tongue out, as if that'd get rid of the taste. “I'm still getting used to having tastebuds. Did you know we have a lot of tastebuds?”

Already there was a glaring difference between Millie and Agalma – Millie would have never eaten someone else's food without permission. If his mind wasn't so rattled he might have found it funny. “Guess I gotta go to the market. I think it's still open.” As he began to stand up, Agalma stood up with him. “And buy another bed, I figure.”

Agalma blinked. “Why can't we share this one?”

“Reasons.” He was in no mood to explain any further than that. “Gunna need to getcha some more clothes too.” This was going to drain every last coin he had. He was going to have to find a larger, more permanent source of income fast. “I'll be back as soon as I'm able.”

The woman dared to step in closer. “Can I come with you?”

Goofy looked at her, breathing quietly through his nostrils. Could she come with him? Should she? The world was a large place, and apparently she had a lot to learn, with only a clumsy fool as a teacher. What a pitiful girl. “Better now than never, I reckon.” He took her by the hand, and began to walk her back out of the house.

For the second time that month, the villagers stopped to stare as Goofy walked with a girl far more lovely looking than they believed he deserved. Once could be fought off as coincidence or circumstance, but twice was deliberate and gave them much to think about it. On the way to the marketplace, Goofy could see Aphrodite's temple, and the glimmer from within told him someone was burning an offering, of which he had only recently learned that is what one does with them, or had lit candles to welcome people inside. As a mortal, did he have any right to ask for a proper explanation from an all knowing and all mighty goddess?

He thought of Millie, of Daisy, of Minnie, and believed they'd make much better goddesses than Aphrodite. Yet he bought another crate of peaches, because in that kind tired soul of his, he saw it as a way to say he forgave her. She had made a mistake, and he knew all about making mistakes.

As for Agalma, despite all the pain and terror she'd experienced in that day, she also wanted to make an offer to Aphrodite. They weren't pleasant experiences, but they were still experiences, and it was better than feeling nothing at all. Even if things hadn't worked out as planned, she was alive, and that was the best gift of all. No life was a mistake, not hers, and not Goofy's.

The night was cold, and they held each other's hands tighter.