#though and this will be mine: pay off enough debt to afford the luxury of having a new console and new game.

[creations-by-chaosfay]

Quick question about a quick quilt...

I can finish a lap size rag quilt in less than a week, twin size in about a week, queen size in two weeks. It's three layers of fabric, quilt-as-you-go, minimal piecing, and they are heavy. Excellent for cold weather and folks who like the weight of blankets but not weighted blankets.* These quilts aren't as hot as layers of fabric plus beads/pellets, and they breathe much more effectively. For a heavier rag quilt, it's a layer of denim and two layers of quilting cotton or flannel. I have a rag quilt for myself that's three layers of quilting cotton. My house is drafty and winters are full of rain, which means the cold sinks into your bones with the humidity. My husband keeps stealing my quilt because his man-cave is the coldest room in the house. He doesn't care that it's very feminine colors "because it's warm."

As for why it's called a rag quilt, here's a sample:

The top is the fluffy side with the exposed seams. Instead of a quarter inch seam allowance the seams under the fabric, it's a one inch seam allowance and the seams are exposed. Said seams are then cut at one inch intervals. With every washing, the seams get fuzzier and softer. They're fun to touch and feel really nice. It's also why these must be dried ALONE or all the strings will end up on whatever else is in the dryer. Three layers of fabric also means two rounds in the dryer on high heat (which is why I like using flannel rather than quilting cotton) or one round of high heat and hanging to dry for a couple hours.

The back looks like a more traditional quilt top and is often the side with denim on it if denim is used. The one is three layers of flannel and was a giveaway prize earlier this year, to celebrate meeting a ko-fi goal.

These are a delight to make and excellent for cold winters and drafty homes. Did I mention they're pretty heavy? The one I have, once all folded up, weighs about six pounds, and knocks my husband out within about ten minutes of him laying over himself. It's why I plan on making a rag quilt for him. He keeps stealing mine.

For context regarding prices, these take significantly less time to make. This one, a lap size, took just 14.5 hours, and that included the quilting. A traditional style baby quilt starts at $2125 because I have a lot more cutting and sewing, and I do the quilting by hand (though it will soon change due to soon having a machine I can use on my Cutie frame and do all my quilting on it), and can take 70-80 hours start to finish. I charge $27/hour + cost of materials to come to the final price.

*A PT I know hates weighted blankets because they cause a lot of injuries. People rolling in bed with a weighted blanket on them have ended up in physical therapy because of soft tissue tears. Most especially dangerous for people with EDS and other connective tissue conditions. Other injuries they've seen are from the pockets with the beads/pellets in them tearing open. Pets and small children have been known to choke on those, and folks who are heavy sleepers can also be injured if the pockets near their face tear in their sleep. When the beads/pellets get all over the floor, people fall and end up with serious injuries from that. Not to mention overheating under all of them because the material doesn't breathe well.

[wanderingsoul]

money and love

i recently saw a podcast clip talking about how we often feel the same about money as we do relationships. if we’re in a scarcity mindset, its most likely affecting these two areas of our lives in similar ways. 

my first reaction was to balk at the comparison, knowing that money stresses me out beyond belief and feeling that i’ve “hacked” relationships at this point and they don’t really cause me a lot of anxiety anymore. mostly due to an extreme amount of self-evaluation and need to have everything packed away neatly, but i digress. 

ever since i was young, i felt money was something that i always craved but never had enough of. my family grew up poor, and so there was no room for extras or fancy things. my mom says i was cursed with expensive taste, and i actually agree with her. i am drawn to designer clothes and shoes, expensive events and hobbies and really a luxury lifestyle. i started working when i was 13 years old, and from the get-go, i never got into the practice of saving. anything that i made babysitting would be spent at the mall or online within a few weeks or months. my parents would force me to donate money to our church, or a charity every month but that was the only time the money i made was not mine to use entirely. once the pattern was created, it has stayed fairly consistent over the past 10 years, with increasing paychecks, and increasing spending. i’ve paid almost every bill ive had early, and was able to save enough to buy a few cars, and a house, so you would think i would have some sense of security in that. or security in my job, where i make more than the median household income in america. but somehow its never enough. every check is spent paying off student loans and my credit card debt, which is from the last check where i spent more than i made. and i am fully stuck in the cycle. it feels like for years now, at least 1-2 years, that has been my life. bi-weekly stress of paying off bills and loans, and over-drafting my account several times a year. you would think at some point, i would start saying no, learn some impulse control and stop buying things. and some months i do, but most months i don’t. so lets look at the mindset i have when it comes to money, which is “it comes and goes easily”. i say this often mostly joking but truly do feel this way. i am able to make much more than i ever though possible, and am able to afford things and experiences i never thought possible. i hardly every say no to things regardless of the cost because i know i will be able to manage it. i still manage to pay my credit cards off every month so in my mind i am fine. i still stress every single paycheck, every month about money, but also am having the most fun of my life. 

when it comes to relationships, i can see some sort of patterns in my early experiences. i really did not have any notable relationships until college, and felt that attention was not something that i got very often. i had been single for a very long time, and did’t care to compete to date someone like most everyone else did. so when i did attach, i would become a bit obsessive. i would think about them all the time, want to spend every waking moment with them, and for the first notable partners, they did not feel the same. but as i’ve matured and expanded my dating pool, i have come to realize that i am the commodity. i am the prize and i can put in fairly minimal effort to get the attention i want. however, the attention that i get is never from someone that i see as an equal, or someone i would consider as a serious partner; it often comes from lonely guys looking for a good time. my mindset is a bit more protective of myself when it comes to dating, i am not going to invest my time in something i know won’t lead to where i want, and when i do invest time into someone, its at my pace, on my timeline, when works for me. i do not chase love, and i truly believe what is meant for me will be for me. 

after looking at both areas of my life, i realize that i do have some sort of trust in the universe that i will be taken care of, and i will be able to do achieve all my dreams. but for some reason, that peace doesn’t carry over as easily into money as it does in relationships, even though the stability i have in money is arguably much more than in relationships. i think with money i feel out of control and irresponsible, whereas in relationships i almost always feel in control. i would like to shift my thinking about money away from the scarcity mindset into one of abundance. 

[hualianff]

Vampire/Human AU

(Slight NSFW, angst)

Thinking about vampire HC who owns a vampire-friendly bar with humans who apply as donors to supply fresh blood for vampires willing to pay the expensive prices. When a human with beautiful amber eyes, soft facial features, and blood that smells absolutely delectable, walks in, every vampire whips their heads towards the door. The human approaches one of the staff, YY, to inquire about becoming a donor. HC watches as the enticing morsel follows YY into a room to finalize his application.

Right after the human leaves thirty minutes later–YY probably having said it would take a few days to find him a match–HC pulls YY aside, demanding to have a look over the papers the new donor filled out. After a quick scan, HC shoves the papers back to YY with a click of his tongue,

“No need to find him a match. He’s mine.”

A human whose blood smells heavenly, who has never been bitten or even nipped by a vampire. HC wants to corrupt him. Ruin him.

The next night, HC has the human, XL, meet him in his personal feeding room. There’s a luxurious velvet couch to the side, a pristine glass table with fancy wine and glasses, and a king-sized bed with crimson silk laid upon the mattress.

HC, like most vampires, typically feeds while stimulating their donors. This can be done with something as simple as kissing or full-on intercourse. Not only does this relax the human’s nerves so they won’t tense up before being bitten, but the toxins injected into their system after being bitten feels incredibly euphoric, serving as a kind of aphrodisiac. Many humans donate their blood in this way for the sole reason of attaining this heightened sense of pleasure.

But as soon as XL enters the room in front of HC, his mind freezes as he sees the bed.

“I’m a virgin,” he blurts out, wide eyes panicked as he looks at the vampire. HC raises his eyebrow, unperturbed.

“We can work with that.”

XL gulps.

“I’ve also never kissed anyone.”

HC runs a tongue along his sharp fangs.

“Do you want to change that?” The vampire asks, walking up behind the human, pressing his chest against XL’s back. HC hears XL’s heart rate pick up at the proposition. It’s an unspoken yes, though XL also imperceptibly nods his head. He does not see HC’s lips spread into a vicious grin. However, XL does feel lips brush against the shell of his ear, sending shivers down his spine.

“Use your words, precious. Do you want to be kissed? Want to be touched, experience pleasure beyond comprehension?” HC murmurs, skimming his lips across XL’s nape. “I can fuck you too. Push into your little body as I sink my fangs into your neck. I’d place them right here-“ HC taps XL’s jugular, the human jerking to the side with a gasp. “-oh? So sensitive. All the better. I can make you feel so good.”

XL’s breath quickens, ever so slightly leaning back into HC’s tall frame. HC leans forward to catch a glimpse of those doe eyes regarding him with caution. Oh, how he wants to eat this human alive. HC turns XL around by his shoulders. He lowers his head to bump foreheads with XL, forcing the human to look into his red-tinged eyes.

“Is that a yes?”

XL blinks those doe eyes once, then twice.

“Yes.”

HC brings his hand up to brush a hair away from the human’s head.

“Wonderful.”

***

XL is at the point in his life when he lost everything. He chose to pursue a career outside of his parents’ embroidery business despite being expected to take over the shop after college. Abandoning college altogether, XL went off on his own to chase his dream to become a singer.

A few years later, where XL was provinces away from home, XL’s parents’ business had gone under, devastating them as they could no longer pay for their medical bills. Upon hearing the news, XL rushed back home to take care of them. It seemed they had kept their declining health conditions under wraps. They were too prideful to admit their weakening physical states; they also did not want to guilt XL into giving up on his ambitions to take care of them.

XL’s parents lasted one year before passing away, his father first due to prostate cancer, his mother one month later after succumbing to exhaustion and grief. XL lost their home along with the shop merely a week later, unable to pay off the debt. His parents had used up their savings for their medical expenses and XL had been scraping by as a musician for years. Additionally, there was no one he could confide in. He had lost contact with his friends as he moved from city to city, busking on streets, attempting to catch the attention of music labels.

XL was utterly alone. There were days when not even music could bring an ounce of comfort. However, music was the thing that kept him sane between the various side jobs he managed to pick up to keep him off the streets.

As if the fates decided XL had had enough bad luck for a lifetime, a CEO of a fairly well-known label offered him a business card after a busking session. It was JW of Capital Records who gave XL hope of achieving his dream. XL spent most of his late 20s under the label, training and practicing and producing. He had the chance to record a couple of singles and one mini-album–which he didn’t get to participate much in the production side–but other than that, XL didn’t make it far. He was tremendously overworked and yet, still discarded to the side.

Wondering why he wasn’t provided the opportunities other artists received to further their careers, XL scheduled a one-on-one meeting with the CEO to ask what he was lacking. JW had insisted he could give XL more opportunities if XL could offer something more than just his serene vocals and pretty face.

The unspoken suggestion that XL offer up his body pierced his heart with yet another stake. Overwhelming disappointment and betrayal crashed into XL, but perhaps he should have known better that the whole situation was too good to be true. XL vehemently rejected this idea, angering JW who eventually tore XL down to the point of a medical emergency that allowed him to leave the agency without repercussions.

At age thirty-two, XL was left with no family, mental and physical trauma, and a dying will. Ironically enough, the song lyrics he’d written after experiencing so much loss were the closest thing to making music he’d gotten. But in the end, XL still felt like a failure.

Now in Xi’an, XL was left with limited options to earn money for rent. He already worked two part-time jobs in addition to writing music—though even time set aside for this has dwindled.

One night, as XL was walking home after closing up the convenience store, he saw the neon lights of the sign “Ghost City.” He’s heard many things about this club and is no stranger to the existence of nonhuman creatures roaming amongst human society. After hours of research, XL decided to apply to become a blood donor. It’s not like he had a better option that paid more anyway.

XL’s hope to somehow redeem his past actions has all but fizzled out. He doesn’t expect a vampire like HC to care about his comfort or consent when feeding, though HC still prioritizes these things for some reason.

XL has never looked at his body and thought about the best ways to pleasure himself. HC shows him how. HC caresses and kisses XL like he’s worth being handled with care; HC also invades XL’s body as a threat to break it, broadcasting a vampire’s strength, speed, and endurance in the bedroom.

XL can go as far as to say he even looks forward to his time with HC. In between a busy work life and dealing with people who would rather look the other way than give him the time of day, XL’s mind and body steadily weaken.

It starts with memory loss, where XL can’t clearly remember the conversations he’d had the day before. One of the reasons this develops is because he goes through many days without having anyone to tell about his day. It’s like the life XL lives is so insignificant, nothing about it is worth remembering.

Then, it’s the lack of eating. Most of XL’s money goes towards rent, essentials, and groceries. But he’s not a great cook. And he’s already drained by the time he gets home after working both jobs and visiting Ghost City. XL’s stress doesn’t help, adding to the fatigue that gradually shuts his body down.

While HC might not be able to taste a difference in XL’s blood, he does notice how frail the human moves around. How delayed XL responds, more so than he should be–even as a human. XL has scheduled more visits: three times a week this time. However, his words become less. He stops telling the little stories that brought a small smile to his face. XL doesn’t even mention the songs he’s been working on lately.

HC forces himself to ask about them after an especially rough coupling.

“How’s the songwriting going, darling?” HC asks quietly. He props his elbow upon his pillow, resting his cheek on his hand as he intently observes the human struggling to catch his breath, eyelids fluttering.

“I haven’t written anything new,” XL breathily answers. HC purses his lips. He ducks down to affectionately tongue at the skin his fangs pierced.

“No? In how long?” HC asks. XL sighs heavily.

“Maybe three weeks.”

HC doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s not one to console anybody. No one had afforded him that luxury, and naturally, he did not grant anyone else his concern. The silence that follows is unbearable.

***

The next time XL visits, he’s the one to initiate their first kiss. HC growls happily against his human’s lips, pinning him against the closed door of his private room. XL moans obscenely as HC languidly licks into his mouth. His arms desperately wrap around HC’s neck to bring him closer.

“Someone’s eager,” HC says with a chuckle as he pulls back. XL instantly attaches his lips to the vampire’s jaw, peppering light kisses along the pale skin. HC can’t help but think he’s taught his little human well. XL hums while trailing his lips back to HC’s, capturing them in a kiss that’s the sweetest one yet.

HC should’ve noticed how unstable XL’s legs seemed, how dreadful the bags under his eyes looked before indulging in their bedroom activities. He should’ve kept track all along of how thin XL is, how much more skin and bone he had become. HC is certainly not one to intrude on someone else’s life and scrutinize all their choices. But he should’ve said something sooner.

Maybe then, XL’s heart wouldn’t have stuttered so violently, or completely stopped beating for five counts.

HC watches in horror as XL’s eyes roll into the back of his head. His human’s body goes limp in his arms, collapsing into HC’s chest. When XL’s heart beat starts up again, it’s very weak. There’s a noticeable abnormality in its rhythm.

HC quickly gathers XL in his arms and speeds to the bed. He sits back against the pillow, placing XL to recline against his front. HC hooks his arms around XL’s middle from behind, anxiously listening to XL’s irregular heartbeat that seems like it takes all of his human’s energy to pump. Luckily, XL awakens a few minutes later. He registers a cold embrace and warm puffs of breath lingering near his ear.

“Did I pass out?” XL wheezes out, unconsciously melting into the body behind him.

“Yes,” HC says tightly. “Your heartbeat is uneven. Something is wrong.”

XL can’t tell if he’s imagining it but that sounded like worry in the vampire’s tone.

“Oh.”

HC inhales sharply.

“You just fainted, Xie Lian. Hell, your heart just stopped for a few seconds, and all you have to say is ‘oh?’” HC grinds out.

So he is upset. XL swallows thickly, not wanting to escalate things and further upset the vampire.

“It’s okay,” XL says. “I’m okay-“

“No. You’re not,” HC interrupts.

XL takes a deep breath, wincing slightly as HC tightens his arms around his hips. He’s more sensitive than normal, XL realizes. Before XL can defend himself further, HC grasps XL’s chin and turns his head to face the vampire.

“You’re hiding something from me,” he states. He hears XL’s heart speed up. “There’s no use in lying. I can tell you’ve grown weaker since you first came.”

“Well, I have been donating my blood to a certain vampire for a few months now. I’m bound to be a bit weak in my legs,” XL replies as a matter of factly. He means to poke fun at the situation rather than acknowledge the severity of it. HC knows this because he’s done it numerous times himself. But when XL does it, it makes HC’s blood boil.

“Are you saying I am causing this- this deterioration in your health?” HC asks tensely. XL lets out a gasp, whirling around in HC’s arms, immediately backpedaling.

“No! No, not at all.”

HC’s eyes assess his human who trembles slightly in his arms. He cradles XL in between his legs, hands shifting XL further up his body so he can rest his head on HC’s chest. HC gently pets XL’s hair, an action that was uncharacteristic of him months ago, before XL had walked through the entrance of his bar.

XL gently smiles in an attempt to placate the vampire.

HC’s eyes flash a frightening scarlet.

“I don’t believe you.”

XL’s face crumples.

“It’s true! I’ve just been really busy is all. Work has been hectic and- and-“ gone is the innocence that HC once saw in XL’s doe eyes, instead replaced by stress and utter brokenness that alarms the vampire to no end. A voice in the back of HC’s head snarls that those emotions had always been behind XL’s eyes; they were simply better hidden, and HC had been too lust-driven to notice.

XL continues his rambling, frantically shaking his head. “-I took some extra shifts because I needed the money to pay for some water damage that flooded half my apartment. I’m fine—truly.“

If HC had a beating heart, it would have dropped down to his stomach at the sudden realization. His fingers dig into the paper-thin skin of XL’s hips, then trace up the bony knobs of his spine.

“You’re not eating right.”

“Wait- S-san Lang-“

The nickname HC had asked XL to call him is hurdled back into his face like a stone aimed to shatter. It sounds like a cry for help.

“And you’re not getting enough sleep,” HC concludes with a disapproving frown. His eyes now glow a deep crimson, matching the silken sheets that HC ensures are in perfect condition every time XL visits.

“Fuck, XIE LIAN, you know you need proper nutrition and rest to recover from each night you spend with me!” HC is nearly shouting now, voice wavering out of his control. Who knew another creature could make him feel so strongly?

“I-I am!”

“I SAID NOT TO LIE TO ME. I CAN TELL WHEN YOU’RE NOT BEING HONEST,” HC explodes, spatting those words with a poison that he often uses with uncooperative subordinates, but never directed at XL before.

Tears glisten in XL’s eyes as he’s cornered with no way out, no relief from the building pressure that suffocates him. Right now, after everything XL has been through, this seems to be his tipping point. He never expected HC to care this much. Or perhaps HC is just concerned his reliable supply of blood is flaking out on him, just when he’s had a feasible taste.

XL is sure HC has plenty of other donors to feed on. It’s not like XL is particularly special in that way. Frankly speaking, XL had time and time again asked the universe to give him one last sign that his life mattered in some capacity. But if he couldn’t see the value in his own life, who else could?

XL scrambles off from HC’s lap, allowing himself to speak with the deep-seated spite that has grown in his heart like an untamable weed.

“THERE’S NO NEED TO GET SO WORKED UP OVER MY HEALTH!! I’LL BE GONE SOON ANYWAY! THE DOCTOR GAVE ME THREE MORE MONTHS,” XL screams, having to catch his breath after exerting so much power into his voice. “So there. You have my answer. I’m not lying this time. Just one a couple more months and then- then you won’t have to deal with my shit anymore, okay?”

HC can’t move. He can’t speak either. The shock taking over his system renders his mind and body completely useless. He can only stare blankly at XL whose tears now cascade down his cheeks.  

No, this cannot be happening-

XL’s whimpers pull HC out of his head. The human hugs his own frail body, shivering from a coldness that does not exist in the room.

How did HC let it get so bad?

“I’m sick, San Lang. Very, very sick. Not just physically,” XL whispers defeatedly, letting out a small hiccup.

HC doesn’t hesitate to surge forward to throw his arms around XL, hugging him once more. It’s a habit now—to hold XL whenever he could. Now, HC wonders how many more times he would get this chance before it was inevitably the last.

“Xie Lian…”

“I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I-I just can’t eat. Sometimes from stress, other times I completely forget. And I want to rest, but I end up laying in bed awake for hours a-and my mind just won’t let me sleep-”

For the first time in over a decade, there is someone else to hear XL’s agonized wails.

“Please believe me, San Lang. Please."

[paperpocalypse]

duty.

50 Wordless Ways to Say “I Love You”: 13. Playing your fingers through their hair while sitting next to them on the couch.

Pairing: Five Hargreeves x Aristocrat!Reader

Word Count: 2,407 words

Warning: Wonky and inaccurate aristocrat/rich people politics and marrying young because of it, please bear with me

[A/N: No powers!Historical!AU]

The elegance of the Hargreeves estate is of the dark, academic sort – polished, reserved, all sharp lines and dim lighting and old books – and you’d feel quite intimidated by it if you were any less acquainted with its occupants. You and your sister always look out of place when you visit, bright splotches of summer color roaming the narrow, perpetually autumnal hallways; and when congregating with the siblings in the library or outside, any visitor could glance at your merry group and immediately tell apart the hosts and the guests. 

It’s all a reflection of your respective parents, really – if you had any say in how you presented yourself, it certainly wouldn’t be in the vivid, youthful hues of your mother’s choosing, and you’re sure that some of the others have similar sentiments. 

Because while your family and Five’s family are certainly different in some ways, their respective heads are both pretty damn suffocating.

“Looks like it’s a draw.”

You grunt, displeased, and collapse back in your chair, bundling up in your blanket. “Can’t take a loss, can you, Five?”

“Not if I can help it,” he answers. His frown and crossed arms speak to his dissatisfaction with the result; losing is never an option, but clear-cut victories are always better than a draw. “Want to play again?”

The suggestion is tempting. Very tempting. You reach out and pick up your king, feeling the cold, smooth marble against the pads of your fingertips, and purse your lips in thought. Your eyes flick up briefly to meet Five’s.

Oh.

“Maybe tomorrow,” you finally say, putting the piece down. “I’m getting a bit tired.”

Five studies you for a moment, head tilting in that particular, scrutinizing way of his. Then his expression smooths out and he nods.

After putting the pieces back into place, the two of you exit the warmth of the library and head towards the guest wing. The walk is silent; you keep your borrowed blanket wrapped snugly around your shoulders, the bottom dragging across the perfect, wooden floor as you look at the paintings hung along the wall. They’re landscapes, mostly – of dark green forests; cold, still oceans; blue-grey mountains shrouded in mist. Impersonal and very fitting for the tastes of Five’s father, that’s for sure.

When you reach your room, you smile at your companion, and it feels unnaturally polite. “Well, goodnight, Five.”

“Goodnight.”

The boy turns and strolls back down the hallway, and you wait until he disappears around the corner, chewing on your bottom lip, before pushing the door open to enter your room.

“You two are duller than an ashtray. 'Goodnight’?”

“Sh –” you bite back an expletive, whipping around to glare at the intruder on your bed. “Lila, go back to your own room!”

Your sister just stares at you from her upside-down position, arms and legs splayed out as she smiles. “You still haven’t talked about it, have you?”

“We don’t need to,” you snap back quietly, closing the door as quickly as you can without slamming it. “He understands it as well as you and I do.”

“You realize Mum never said you’ll have to marry the guy.”

“Of course not; she just strongly suggested it.”

“Still not an order.”

Her flippancy causes you to glare. “Lord Harold is rich and he’s willing –"

“He’s a massive creep,” she interrupts, giving you an incredulous look. “And you just came of age, [Y/n]. You’ll be miserable.”

“I can get it annulled after five years, remember?”

“You’re really going to last for five years?”

She’s trying to pull something out of you, you know it. You try to maintain your composure.

“A massive debt isn’t going to just disappear,” you repeat. “It was either him or Lady Helen, and Helen got betrothed last month. Harold’s the quickest way to fix it, in case you forgot.”

“And in case you forgot, it’s literally not your problem. Stop making a martyr of yourself when you don’t have to.” Lila sits up and swivels around to face you, crossing her legs. Her expression is expectant. “I’ll figure something out, so don’t throw a fit, alright? The debt’s going to be mine along with the estate. You can afford to disappoint Mum for once in your life.”

Your brow furrows. “Lila  –”

“If you keep arguing, I’m going to smother you with a pillow,” she says. “Either you agree with me, or you tell your future love affair that you’re marrying a human toad in the spring.”

“Future lo – it’s not like that! We’re friends!”

Lila holds your indignant gaze. Then, with practiced, unladylike ease, she hops off your bed, puts her hands on her hips and raises her eyebrows at you.

“You have the worst case of denial I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” she says.

“I’m being completely honest,” you retort hotly. And you are. You and Five are friends, and although the nature of your relationship is admittedly more comfortable than any other friendship you’ve had over the years, nothing between you and Five had ever been non-platonic.

(Not that you would mind something non-platonic – but as you’ve reiterated to Lila many, many times, you’re just as content being friends. Having a genuine, close companion in your world is rare, and you’re tired of everyone deciding what you and Five should be when the two of you are more than capable of figuring it out for yourselves.)

“Why do you care, anyway? Everything will be easier for you if I marry Harold.”

“And more miserable for you.” She lets her arms fall to her sides. “Look, I’m the oldest, so I’m supposed to be the miserable one, not you. It’s not the end of the world if you don’t marry Harold. Give yourself more time to grow up.”

You don’t know what to say.

Seemingly finished with her piece, Lila smiles before brushing past you, nudging your blanket to the side on her way to the door. You glance away when she looks over her shoulder at you.

“Sleep on it.”

… You do, though it’s a lot less sleep than you’d hoped.

—

The next morning is slow and lazy. It’s a good thing in your opinion, because as mentioned before, you had spent a great deal of the night thinking about what your sister had said, and your head feels quite foggy as a result. A cup of tea and a horse ride with everyone outside in the snow both help somewhat over the course of the day. However, by the time the sky begins to darken, you’re back in your room to take a nap before supper, and quickly return thereafter.

When you hear three quick raps on your door, you groan and drag yourself out of bed.

“Lila,” you grumble as you turn the knob and pull, “can’t you go bother Diego instead –”

You swallow your words when you see your actual visitor. Five gives you a brief, tight-lipped smile.

“Mind if I come in?”

“Uh,” you respond intelligently, then shake your head and step to the side, remembering your manners. “Of course.”

Five walks in and heads towards the window. You go to the couch nearby and sit down, slightly perplexed as he finds an interest in the candle burning on the sill – he’s welcome to hang around in here, certainly, but the two of you usually convene in his room or the library. The guest room doesn’t have much to offer in terms of entertainment.

In due time, the boy turns away from the frost-covered window and joins you on the couch.

“Your sister said you weren’t feeling well,” is all he says.

So that’s why he’s here. Shrugging, you put your hands in your lap, fiddling with the family ring on your middle finger. “I’m just a little tired, that’s all.”

Your lackluster explanation isn’t enough, if his short, replying hum is anything to go by. Five leans forward, folding his hands and resting his chin on them. And what else? he seems to say.

“It’s … It’s just been a busy year, with Lila and me coming of age and all. More responsibilities and expectations, and all that,” you eventually continue, staring down at the thick, luxurious carpet at your feet. “Though I don’t have much of a right to complain. Lila’s bearing most of the pressure, since she’s the heir apparent …”

“She doesn’t seem too bothered,” Five points out, tone bland.

You allow yourself to grin. “Because we’re on vacation. Five, if you saw Lila this summer, you would’ve seen how hard she’s been working.” Not to mention all of the proposals that she had so graciously shot down, on account of her veto power and general distaste for marriage. “Honestly, the two of you have a lot in common and I don’t know why you butt heads so often.”

“I have my reasons.”

At that cryptic snark, you reach out and gain purchase on his hair, ruffling it in righteous revenge. Five grunts half-heartedly, elbowing you away. A small smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth and you almost feel like this conversation is going to be normal – that is, as normal as it gets with a Hargreeves.

(His hair is very soft. You feel bad for messing it up, so you attempt to smooth it back into its original state; about a minute into that attempt you realize what you’re actually doing and withdraw. You shouldn’t be so improper.)

Do you have to do this?

You decide to pay the piper before you can talk yourself out of it. “You know,” you say when the joviality fades, “she’s the one who suggested that I talk to you. About my possible betrothal.”

Five’s expression flattens. He looks straight ahead again, resting his elbows on his knees. “What is there to talk about?”

“Well, you’re my closest friend and one of the smartest people I know, so I ought to ask for your opinion on the possibility of …” You reconsider for one final moment, then inhale deeply and let it out. “Of me refusing Lord Harold’s offer.”

To your slight surprise, Five nods.

“Did you talk to your mother about it?” he questions.

“Not yet,” you murmur. “To be honest, I’ve been thinking about it for months, but I only started seriously considering it last night. And now I really don’t want to marry Lord Harold. He unsettles me and I’m not ready.”

He frowns. “Neither of them is going to accept that as a reason.”

“I know.” You sigh, pinching the bridge of your nose. “They’ll kick up a fuss over finances and it’ll be a bit of a scandal. That’s why I’m asking for your advice.”

Being the pragmatist that he is, you had thought that Five would be more averse to your plan. He himself had done things that he did not want to do in order to help his siblings, so you had assumed that despite his immediate dislike of Lord Harold since the night of your coming-of-age celebration, Five would tell you to endure a few years with the noble before disposing of him and collecting your dues. It’s the easiest way to get what you and your family needed, after all.

The fact that he’s so accepting of your decision makes you curious …

“First of all, even if he recognizes your refusal – and you’ll probably have a hard time with that, which will be an issue all on its own – your mother will try to find someone else to ship you off to,” he states, eyebrows pinched. “Preferably within the next year or so, right?”

“Yes.”

“How likely is she to push back your marriage by a few years?”

“… Not very likely,” you admit.

The boy pauses, thinking, then sits back.

“I could propose to you,” he offers, “if you’d like.”

You accidentally laugh out loud, you’re so taken aback. Five? Proposing? “Come again?”

“You heard me the first time.”

“We’re practically penniless. Would your father even give his blessing?”

He rolls his eyes. “Penniless or not, you’re an aristocrat with a title. If nothing else, Dad will accept that.”

“Neither of us want to get married.”

“And yet it’s your most realistic option thus far.” Five pins you with a serious gaze, and it finally hits you that he’s genuinely, actually asking. “Are you okay with it or not?”

“I …” You fumble over your words, staring at Five with wide eyes. “I mean, yes, I’d be okay with that, but … are you sure? You’d marry me just to get me out of another marriage?”

(Your question is not born of a doubt that he’ll go through with it. Five is a person of his word. But this is a big deal, and you’re both young, and most importantly of all, you don’t want this to be a mistake.)

“Let’s just say that I’d rather it be you than anyone else,” he mutters, shrugging softly. “This is your back-up plan, anyway. And if the marriage goes sideways, we can have it annulled after a few years and you’ll get a settlement too.”

He says it as if he’s discussing the weather. You chuckle, inexplicably reassured and amused by his bluntness. “Not even ten minutes into your proposal and you’re already thinking about an annulment? I fear for our future, Five.”

“There are worse things to be afraid of,” he replies sardonically. “Bring it up with your mom when you go back. If you can’t get out of a marriage, write me and I’ll talk to my dad.”

“Alright. You should bring Allison with you, though.”

“I suggest the same with Lila. Make it convincing.”

That won’t be too difficult. You nod, and with that, the deal seems to be sealed.  Although you’re still processing what just happened, and Five is likely realizing just what he and you are potentially getting yourselves into, the two of you share a small smile nonetheless. It is hard not to.

“Thank you,” you murmur after a while. 

Five glances over at your hands, then down at his. “Don't thank me yet."

"Alright, then. If you insist."

As your friend twists the steel ring on his index finger, you think to yourself, yes, you do want more time to grow up. But if the world won’t give that to you, you figure that a life with Five would be the next best thing. 

[ahgaseda]

enough | one

even if everyone else leaves me, you’re enough for me, you’re my only one, stand by me forever, only you, just you...

summary : to survive as a single woman in the big city, you resort to letting rich men pay for your company, but never anticipated that your first client would be the boy you once loved, Jinyoung.

warnings : strong profanity, explicit dialogue, references to prostitution, mentions of gang activity, graphic sexual content, potentially triggering elements involving mental health, panic attacks, etc.

miniseries chapters : one / two / three / four / five / six / seven

“Sorry, Mom,” you apologized under your breath as you stepped into the warm, bustling hallway of the agency. The building may as well have been your second home at this point, considering you spent most of your free hours under its roof.

Your place of business lay hidden beneath a layer of secrecy, operating within the guise of an illustrious marketing firm. After all, prostitution was still very much illegal. But evading the law in such sparse times had become an undeniable artform for creatures of the underworld.

However, you had yet to jump from that hyperbolic bridge. Until today. Hence the apology to your mother.

Being an escort that didn’t have sex with her clients had allowed you to earn enough to survive. Men paid for your company, nothing more. They took you to candlelit dinners or upper class events, because in the world of preternaturally rich people, having a gorgeous slab of meat on one’s arm was a blatant demonstration of funds.

Also, if the society they ruled knew who they actually slept with, their careers would be over as quickly as they began.

When you first came to the big city from your humble hometown in the countryside, you swore to yourself you would never sell your body to make a living - no matter how comfortably you could thrive if you did. But keeping your head above water was no easy feat and you were thrust back into the bottomless pit of debt and insecurity.

Seoul had become more and more expensive around you and you could feel the sensation of water rising over your head, drowning you in the hopelessness of it all. Your hopes and plans for the future were costly and the bank refused to grant you any more loans.

Then, you were reminded that sex sells. You had the advantage of being a woman in a world of ravenous men. Your employer had always given you the option of stepping into darker circles when you needed more. You met every criteria on the checklist of powerful, wealthy suitors.

Who needed dignity anyway? It was but another luxury you could not afford.

“We have just the client for you,” explained Seokjin, predictably diplomatic when discussing every dirty detail of his illegal business arrangements.

You were more than grateful and certainly never faulted him for it. Seokjin was a remarkable boss, especially considering his line of work. He had spent more than his fair share of time on the streets from a young age and he grew to provide individuals a safer, more regulated way of earning money the only way they knew how.

“He’s new,” Seokjin added, breaking you from your reverie. “Never hired before. Specifically asked for a virgin.”

“I’m not a virgin, boss,” you deadpanned, inevitably daydreaming of the one man that had ever known how it felt to be between your thighs.

How many years had passed since you last saw him? Four or five, maybe. In your mind, you tried to play clueless with yourself, but truth be told, you knew the exact day you left him down to the very hour. The bitter memory was fresher in your imagination than recalling what you ate for dinner the night before.

Seokjin twirled a pen through his knuckles before resuming his notes. From what you knew, he preferred to document everything in excessive detail. That was the lawyer part of him. Knowing that your own employer had worked his way from streetwalker to successful attorney and business owner gave you a blossom of hope for your own future.

“I’m referencing your lack of sexual activity with any of your previous clients,” Seokjin clarified, his tone level. “You have served as a public escort, not private. Emotional, not sexual.”

You nodded your understanding, already missing the simpler days that would soon be forgotten to you. Though life had abandoned most of its simplicity since you moved to the big city. Weighted under the gravity of your decision, your thoughts drifted back to that fateful morning when everything changed forever.

The rain had poured from the blackening sky and you were relieved the drops would conceal your own tears. Thunder roared with a vengeance and drowned the shouts following you as you leapt into the truck that would bring you to the city.

Your boyfriend had been a step or two behind, slamming his hands on the door and begging you to stay with him at the top of his lungs. You watched him through the window, apologizing over and over in a pitiful chant. His yelling turned to pleading and desperation, and when the truck drove away, he chased behind it.

Eventually, you lost sight of him in the rainfall as you sobbed uncontrollably. You could only imagine how long he had spent running after you.

Seokjin called your name tenderly and you blinked back to your surroundings, shifting anxiously in your seat in an attempt to rouse yourself. Meeting his gaze, you made some off-handed comment about lack of sleep, but to a man whose entire survival had once completely relied on the sharpened skill of reading people, you were an open book.

“You don’t have to do this,” he lamented, sympathetic. “The women that choose this path, do so because they want to. Clearly, you do not.”

Your experience with sex was narrow, that much you were certain. Given you had been out of the metaphorical saddle for almost four years, you wondered if you were even remotely good at the act anymore. The only partner you had ever known was heavily biased, in your opinion.

You recalled how it felt to ride him, wincing at how hard he could grab your hips while he begged you to slow down just a little, afraid he would blow his load too early. Getting off on the heady feeling of power with how easily you could ruin him, you would giggle and quicken your pace, grinning with victory when you felt him shudder with release beneath you.

“No, I do,” you insisted, readjusting your position in the chair at your unclean thoughts and the way they made your pulse throb. “I do, honestly. You know I wouldn’t waste your time unless I was sure.”

Seokjin sighed, recognizing the signs of someone who had made up their mind. After a short pause, he diverted your attention and asked, “How is school?”

“Good, actually,” you chirped, delighted he would opt to change the subject to something less heavy. “The general requirements are all done which means I can spend more time focusing on my major.”

“You’ll make a great doctor,” Seokjin crooned, sincere. “I just know it.”

You smiled. The compliment and vote of confidence warmed your very soul.

Seokjin wasn’t obligated to smooth your feathers. He was your employer, but he also served as a confidant and friend to those who needed him. You were the type of girl that never should have darkened his doorway, but life forced your hand and rather than accept defeat, you clawed a path over every obstacle you faced. Seokjin admired you for that and recognized you as someone that reminded him of his own tenacity.

Noticing you had relaxed, Seokjin gave you a reassuring simper before returning to business, informing, “There will be a function tonight. Lots of powerful people will be mingling and your new client will be present. I can have you added to the guest list and you can meet him, but only if you feel ready.”

You appreciated the fact your first meeting with the client would be in a crowd full of people. A man willing to pay for his own personal sex toy must have been a low-down dirty bastard, you surmised. Frankly, you were terrified to meet him, expecting he would see you as an object to possess and not a human being capable of pain.

The saving grace was you had unshakable faith in Seokjin. He screened every client personally and had a zero tolerance policy toward any form of abuse. Plus, he employed some of the most no-nonsense bodyguards you had ever seen. Your personal favorite was Hoseok. He was number three on your speed dial and your emergency contact on all medical forms at the university.

“Just like that?” you questioned, skimming over the document Seokjin pushed toward you. It was puzzling to you - how easy sacrificing a part of your soul would be. You naively expected some bells and whistles.

Seokjin hummed an affirmation and responded, “There’s absolutely no commitment to do anything physical with him tonight. He will be made aware as well. You have to agree to a contract of consent with him established by this agency because money is involved, similar to the ones you have had before. Tonight, you simply meet him, get to know him. Then, in the morning, you give us your answer as to if you wish to proceed.”

Signing your name on the page, agreeing to an initial evaluation with a potential client and swearing not to engage in any sexual activity with him until a contract had been signed, you acknowledged, “I understand. Thank you.”

Your employer accepted the document and slid the page into your file, tucking the folder away into his locked drawer. With that business concluded, Seokjin laced his fingers together over his desk and mentioned with a smile, “The event tonight is formal. I suggest you buy a new dress. Use the company card. We will add it to his bill.”

You chortled and stood to leave, shaking his hand and saying, “Pleasure working with you, boss.”

Seokjin rose and squeezed your fingers. “As usual, the pleasure is all mine.”

Making the long, arduous trek to your little apartment, you kept your head lowered, eyes on your shoes and every labored step you took. You wondered how many days from now you would be heading home in a walk of shame. Tears threatened behind your eyes, but none appeared. Your reserves were empty from the amount of crying you had done over the past few weeks.

Not long after you departed the agency, you came to a stop before a large stone building with a courtyard set in the center. Surrounded by well-trimmed hedges, students glided in and out.

The medical school you hoped to attend within a year or two was a massive, daunting building, but you had seen the inside during a quick tour and knew the place to be modern and professional and - in your humble opinion - warm and welcoming. Excitement gathered in your chest at the sight and for a moment, you remembered the determination you kept stored deep down and tapped into the current for the remainder of the day.

Your father was a farmer. Your mother was also a farmer. All of your neighbors within a ten mile radius were - big surprise - farmers. You were born and raised in a little town surrounded by nature and you were taught to cultivate the land from a young age.

But your heart was in a hospital and had been since the first time you were able to speak to your physician during a routine annual check. You told him you wanted to treat the sick and to your surprise, he encouraged your dream with a smile.

From that moment on, your mother rebuked you for wanting to abandon the family tradition of agriculture, as she called it. People like you and her were never meant to aspire to anything greater than the hand life dealt them, she said.

Your father, on the other hand, secretly fueled your plans at every turn. For your tenth birthday, he bought you a stethoscope which became the most sentimental item you owned. It was one of the few things that had survived your journey to the city when you ran away.

The town you came from left much to be desired. Once a simple place for hard-working residents, machines and modern advancements turned an entire way of life on its edge. Soon, your home became a breeding ground for gangs, using the rural, poverty-stricken lands for a perfect nest to hide from the law and conduct their devious affairs. Name any contraband and it was run through your streets; guns, drugs, and even women. Anything and everything was available for the right price.

Not much time passed before everyone came to recognize a simple principal: you either got in the gang or the gang got you.

You couldn’t abide by that and you would rather leave than accept it. Your heart yearned for the simple life of those that came before you; the straight and narrow path of working hard with your hands while earning your education. Without any options, you ran and turned away from your home, never looking back. And to your dismay, the big city was even more ruthless.

But you couldn’t go back. It wasn’t a matter of pride... it was the boy you left behind. You couldn’t come home and see the devastation left in your wake. Even your own family had broken all contact with you when they discovered you sold your body as an escort for wealthy men. No matter how many times you tried to convince your parents you weren’t sleeping with these people, they didn’t believe you. And you couldn’t blame them.

They didn’t know you anymore.

What you quickly learned was the city was no different from your little town except the stakes were higher. You had much farther to fall. The players in such a dangerous game were ruthless and influential and walked in plain sight without fear of consequences. You had heard the other girls chatter about the clients they regularly entertained and how deep they were in when it came to the illegal way of life.

You had most certainly jumped from the frying pan and into the open fire.

These same men meandered through the room you entered that evening, themed with gold and maroon for the elegant fundraiser. A few took long, lingering glances at you, shameless with their intentions as their eyes hovered far too long on your ample curves. You paid them no mind and made your way to the bar.

The gown you wore for your first meeting with the potential client was sultry purple. “A statement of royalty,” the dressmaker had exclaimed when you tried it on. Of course, she would say nearly anything while trying to entice you to spend a lump sum on one of her pieces. Given the money wasn’t coming out of your own account, you had no qualms when it was time to swipe the company credit card.

Hell, this man would more than likely be fucking you in the near future. He could splurge for a dress.

The thought made you overthink, as you often did, and you sipped your wine while you sat at the bar. From what your forthcoming coworkers told you, selling your body to the right man was a gold mine that surpassed security and landed in excess. Most spoke of riding a man so good the reward was a luxury car or a penthouse apartment overlooking the city.

You tried not to be disgusted, but it was a rebellion against everything you had been taught about respecting your body. You never thought you would reach this point in your life - putting a price on your own head to survive.

“Hello, beautiful,” greeted a husky voice at your side, an older man offering you a glass of bubbling champagne.

Jolting from your internal monologues, you turned and bowed your head politely, speaking your greetings shyly. A shudder of remorse tore through you. Would this be your future? To be owned by a man who had accrued enough wealth to feel he was entitled to your body as he pleased?

Briefly, you remembered the boy who had stolen away your heart. The boy who was patient and gentle with you at every turn. The same boy who was always tempted to fight any man who didn’t give you the respect he felt you deserved. Damn it, you knew he would hate you for what you were about to do.

“Don’t ever let another man touch you,” he had whispered in your ear once while taking you against a wall.

Soaked to the bone from an impromptu dive in the neighborhood lake that quickly devolved into a tangled mess of limbs, your boyfriend lost any and all patience when you begged him to soothe the ache between your thighs from his hot, wet kisses. You cried out his name softly as he held your hips and bounced you up and down to meet his thrusts, filling you with his cock and making stars appear behind your eyes.

“I won’t,” you swore against his neck, gasping for breath and locking your ankles around his waist.

He nipped at your jaw then, groaning in the back of his throat at the scorching heat of you around him, and growled possessively, “Because you’re mine.”

Fire gathered behind your cheeks, clouding your head, and you blinked rather rapidly as you tumbled out of the memory. God, you had almost forgotten how good he felt, skin against skin. No man would ever make you feel that way again, not that you had even given one the opportunity. You had tasted paradise and no one else could ever hope to compare.

Reminding yourself to pay attention, you focused your gaze on the visitor offering you a drink, realizing rather quickly he was not your prospective client when he failed to utter your designated alias. Clad in a fitted suit, the man introduced himself by his position and holdings and then proceeded to flirt borderline aggressively. The moment you could cut in between his words, you graciously told him you were expecting someone. Offended that you dared dismiss his entitled ass, he rose from your side and stormed off, taking the untouched glass of champagne with him.

You exhaled to release your irritation, drumming your manicured nails on the counter and resting your head on your free hand. The longer you waited, the more you wallowed in indecision. Could you really go through with this?

Suddenly, your phone rang and you pulled the vibrating device from your clutch. Your brow furrowed when you didn’t recognize the number, but you answered anyway with a rushed, “Hello?”

“Did that bastard really take the drink with him?”

You chuckled at the annoyance in the stranger’s voice and glanced around to see if any of the men at the fundraiser could be holding a phone to his ear.

Finding no one on their mobile, you nodded and replied coolly, “Yes, he did, but I prefer my wine anyway.”

“Is that so?” the stranger rumbled. “Hand your phone to the bartender for me.”

You narrowed your eyes in surprise before calling the pleasant server behind the bar over. Giving him your phone, adding that you were as clueless as he was, the server chuckled at the caller and echoed after a moment, “Your tab? Got it.”

You took your phone back from his outstretched hand and purred, “Very generous of you, sir.”

The caller chuckled and persisted, “Anything you get goes on my tab and I took the liberty of ordering you a White Russian, if you don’t mind.”

“We have made the jump from wine to liquor so soon, have we?” you joked, thanking the bartender when he made the drink and slid the glass your way. “May I ask, why a White Russian?”

The caller took a sip of his own drink as he leaned leisurely against a pillar and mused, “You look like the type of girl to nurse one while you scan around the room for me.”

You giggled, amused. “Well, you’re in luck. They are my favorite.”

“Imagine that,” he sang, but you failed to hear the lack of surprise in his reply. “Take your time with it. You need to be coherent for this conversation.”

The assertiveness in his voice snared your attention, because there was something strikingly familiar about it. With a smirk, you rebuffed, “Are you implying I am a lightweight?”

The client chuckled ever so subtly and replied, “I would never insult your alcohol tolerance, but yes, you do strike me as one.”

“It seems you are right again for the most part,” you admitted, giving the room another glance over for participants on their phones and finding none. “If I start singing Fall Out Boy at the top of my lungs, I’ve officially reached my limit.”

This time, he openly laughed.

The sound registered deep within you, because this delayed sense of familiarity was growing stronger.

“Alright, pretty lady,” the caller asserted, steering the conversation with a firm hand though he sounded rather young and carefree to your ear. “What is your game?”

You shrugged nonchalantly and returned, “I’m not playing any games.”

Abandoning his hiding place alongside the pillar, the stranger was quick to interject, “You most definitely are and I’m more than ready to play with you.”

You wanted to be ashamed at how effective his banter was thus far. You found yourself biting your lip and resituating on your bar stool. The rush of flirtation was pleasant, foreign to you after so long. Personally, you greatly enjoyed verbal sparring and rarely could someone hold their own against you.

Glancing at your glimmering fingernails, you sighed as if in deep contemplation, “Life is merely a game in the grand scheme of things. Isn’t it?”

He hummed an agreement before offering, “As are relationships between people.”

“I agree.”

“I like to hear you agree with me,” he confessed lowly, voice dropping an octave.

To which you replied, “You are easy to agree with, sir.”

Then, he quickly veered back to his easy-going and flirtatious manner to whisper, “I’m still trying to get a read if you’re submissive or if you just try to appear that way because you think it’s what I want.”

You swallowed nervously, viscerally reminded of the situation you were in. Harmless flirting had been fun, but now you remembered why you were here in the first place - to be someone’s plaything. To be used and used until nothing was left of you.

At your conflicted pause, the caller coaxed, “I’ve spooked you, little one.”

You came back to your senses and stuttered over your words, “No, I, uh...”

“Take a breath and sip your drink.”

You obeyed without a second thought, welcoming the liquor and swallowing a mouthful. Your conscience was too strong for this, but the duality of him had you snared like a wild animal lured into a false sense of security. He balanced adeptly between hot and cold, reeling you into a disarming sensation of safety before trapping you in his clutches. Because all the while, you knew he was a dangerous man and yet he made you brush aside your instinctual fear of him.

“Well, well, well, you are a bit submissive,” the stranger taunted, obviously pleased at how mindlessly you had heeded his order with no resistance or snark. “But you’re skittish.”

“Am I?” you sassed skeptically, glancing around with narrowed eyes. “Are you an expert on me now?”

He tsked his tongue and muttered, “And there’s that little streak of fire. I like it.”

You flushed. Your mind raced at the thought of your potential client. He had a way with words and he clearly enjoyed the banter. It seemed he wasn’t intent on just bending you over a surface and having his way with you.

He wanted to play.

Rising from the bar, you tucked your clutch to the inside of your arm and carried your drink, still holding the mobile to your ear. As you glided across the marble floor, you scanned the room for men on their phones, ready to hunt.

“You know what they say about playing with fire,” you smarted, words hushed.

He chuckled and sounded as if he were also in motion, potentially avoiding your gaze. With a smirk, he asked, “Are you going to burn me?”

“I might,” you replied boldly. “But I get the feeling you would like it.”

“You’re right about that. How the tables have turned. Are you reading me?”

You snickered, licking your bottom lip before sipping your drink. After swallowing the alcohol, you exhaled and asked cautiously, “Can I be honest with you?”

He nodded, slinking behind a pillar, and spoke almost sternly, “If anything between us goes beyond tonight, I want you to be honest with me always.”

That response surprised you and you didn’t bother to hide it. For all his potential danger, he didn’t instill in you a feeling of maliciousness. You were becoming less and less afraid of him. “I appreciate that,” you finally told him.

“Hit me.”

Stopping in your tracks, you turned on your heels, surveying the upper decks in the massive gallery, and inquired, “Why do this?”

He growled, “Why pay a woman to fuck me?”

His blunt words sent a shiver through your body. This man didn’t carry much fear, that you could tell. You were intimidated by your potential client already and you hadn’t even laid eyes on him. Pinching your lips, you hummed, “Mm.”

“My job mostly. I can’t have a normal relationship in my line of work. And I’m not the type who should try,” he explained without hesitation. There was nothing dishonest or remotely offensive in the way he spoke to you, which made you wonder what kind of position your client held that would lean him toward this inclination.

But you remembered something he said previously and turned his words back on him when you remarked, “You’ve already brought up submission. I think you like the power balance this would give you.”

There was a pause. Then, he exhaled, “You’re right again.”

You smiled victoriously, taking a sip of your drink, and resumed walking across the room.

The caller chugged some of his own alcohol; you could hear the ice cubes clinking against the glass. “I know you’ve never done this before. I specifically asked for that,” he began, sounding piqued with interest.

“Yes,” you murmured, shivering at where this line of question might go, but knowing you had opened the door in the first place.

“Why are you doing this?”

Flinching, you felt your heart clench. For a moment, your mind showed you that hated memory - of the only boy you ever loved chasing you down as you scrambled into the truck. He beat both hands on the door and screamed those exact words to you at the top of his lungs.

Shaking your head to snap out of your thoughts, you played cool and echoed, “Why am I agreeing to let someone fuck me for money?”

He was entirely unaffected by your language as he said, “Yes.”

Frowning at the mental image of bills piling on your coffee table at home, you answered, “Because these are hard times.”

That was a valid enough reason for him apparently. “I hear that,” he rasped.

Pensively, you nibbled on your bottom lip as you walked through the sea of patrons, tasting the slightest remnants of the White Russian on your tongue. Accepting defeat when you still found none of the men on their phones, you asked demurely, “Any more questions, sir?”

Playfully, he chuckled and teased, “No, I just wanna flirt with you some more.”

You scoffed with a roll of your eyes and said, “I’m listening.”

“I’m watching the way you move,” he sang, drifting from his perch. “You’re beautiful.”

Spinning in a quick circle, with a simple statement you were reinvigorated to find your client and called with curiosity, “Where are you?”

Amused, he easily ignored you and continued, “You’ve passed through a crowd of people and everyone has moved out of your way. Did you even notice that?”

Glancing around to see a small empty radius around your presence, you whispered in disbelief, “No.”

It was time for him to take control. Monitoring your movements from above, the caller couldn’t help but lick his lips at the sight of you, at the way the violet gown hugged your curves and displayed your beauty in all of its glory.

Finishing his drink, he continued, “You walk with confidence. You’re assertive and commanding.”

Something was nagging at you, tugging on your instincts as you meandered through the crowd. Your mind had already solved this mystery, had already put the pieces of the puzzle together, but you were in too much denial to accept the signs.

The client moved to another shadow, noting your gaze kept passing over the gallery above, and taunted, “If I were any other man and I saw such a stunning goddess coming toward me, I would fall to my knees and worship her.”

“What a silver tongue,” you droned, feigning indifference. As a waiter passed by, you discarded your now empty glass on their tray.

“My tongue is ready to do things to you, sweetheart.”

You stopped, biting your lip again, and persisted, “You said, if you were any other man. Are you implying you wouldn’t bow down and worship me?”

He swallowed the last mouthful of his drink and chuckled, “You don’t fool me. I know what you are.”

Hesitating, you resisted the urge to be offended, but the feeling seeped its way into your voice when you asked, “What I am?”

Licking his lips like a predator on the prowl and moving in for the kill, he elaborated, “You’re a rare breed.”

Approaching the stairs to the overhead gallery, you tapped your fingers on the bronze railing and ordered, “Keep talking.”

“The world has made you strong and hard. You demand respect because no one has given it to you. Even when you’re afraid, you can convince everyone else in the room that you are fearless.”

Brow furrowed, you questioned, “And that’s rare?”

“You, my dear, are no lion. You are a lamb.”

You stopped, blinking in surprise. A glimpse of his face flashed in your mind and for a moment, the world began to spin around you.

He resorted to a guttural snarl as he continued, “You may try to convince the world you are the untouched goddess who needs no god, but behind closed doors you wanna scream and beg for Daddy to fuck you harder.”

Saliva had gathered in your mouth. You knew your client when he spoke in that tone, a tone you once knew so intimately. The years had made his voice deeper, more mature and roughened by the cruelty of life experiences.

But you angrily cursed at yourself for not recognizing him until now.

At your lack of a reply, the stranger pressed coyly, “Am I close?”

A memory tore across your mind of the man who once called you the love of his life, the way he held your face and told you he would never leave you. You remembered how raw and firm his voice had been when he promised to fight every battle that needed to be fought to keep you safe.

Hands shaking, your voice broke when you choked, “Jinyoung?”

For the first time since the call began, there was only silence on his side of the line.

The absence of an answer served as confirmation and you furiously shouted into the phone, “Jinyoung!”

“Took you long enough.”

Before you could utter another word, the call went dead.

next chapter →

a/n : this story was previously Lacuna on my old blog, minheoney. I’m really excited to finally finish it! This fic was my baby for so long and I’m ridiculously happy to give it a new home :)

Hey there, beautiful! If you enjoyed this, please leave a like or reblog or follow me! Or maybe buy me a coffee so I can keep writing? Or check out my masterlist here for more stories! Thanks for reading :) - Katya

This work is fictional and for entertainment purposes only, but is licensed and protected under a creative commons attribution-noncommercial-noderivatives 4.0 international license. Any instances of plagiarism will be dealt with accordingly. Do not re-post or translate without my permission.

{ copyright 2018-2020 © ahgaseda // all rights reserved }

[azvolrien]

Water Horses - Chapter Four

This one got a bit longer than the last few. I didn’t think it was quite long enough to have a good place to split in two.

~~~

           After a good night’s sleep and a bowl of porridge, Asta wandered out of the broch to see Roan sitting cross-legged on top of the wall. Hens scurried out of her way as she crossed over to the steps.

           “What are you doing?” she asked, climbing the steps.

           Roan looked up. She had a damp cloth tied over her mouth and nose and a pair of goggles strapped over her eyes. “Making arrowheads,” she said, slightly muffled by the cloth as she waved a hand-sized lump of stone in the air.

           “Is that flint?”

           “Chert, technically,” said Roan. “But the skills involved are similar.” She set her hammer-stone down and held up a finished arrowhead for Asta to see. It was more of a lozenge or a leaf-shape than the barbed triangle that classically said ‘arrowhead’, but the point and edges had been knapped wickedly sharp.

           “And the…?” Asta sat down and waved her hand in front of her face to indicate Roan’s somewhat makeshift safety gear.

           “The cloth is so I don’t breathe in the stone dust,” said Roan, lifting her hammer again and returning to work on her current arrowhead. “The goggles are so I don’t get hit in the eye by a stray flake of chert.” She paused. “You might want to sit a little further back.”

           Asta nodded and shuffled back to a safer distance. “Do you use them for hunting?”

           Roan nodded and held the half-finished arrowhead up to her eyes for a closer look. “Birds, mostly. Grouse; pheasants. Sometimes deer. Just the little roes, though – I could take down one of the big reds or reindeer with a well-aimed shot, maybe even an elk if I was lucky, but most of the carcass would go to waste. I try not to kill anything I can’t carry by myself, since I don’t have a pony or anything.”

           “Seals are heavy,” Asta pointed out, nodding at the cloak and skull lying on the wall beside Roan.

           Roan laughed. “I didn’t kill the seal! It was already dead when I found it washed up on the rocks. That being said – I could carry a seal for long enough to get it from the sea to the broch.” She held up one arm and flexed her biceps. Asta nodded thoughtfully, momentarily distracted by the interesting way Roan’s tattoos moved over the muscle.

           “And the reindeer skin on your bed?” she asked once her focus returned.

           “Heh, you’ve got me there. I had to camp out on the hills for a few days while I rendered the carcass a bit more portable. So – knapping like this takes years of practice, but would you like to learn how to make arrows?”

           For a hermit, Roan turned out to have a surprising passion for teaching. By their second visit to the market island a week after the first, Asta could not only make a stone-headed, grouse-fletched arrow to a reasonable standard, but also gut a fish and cook it over a fire she had built herself, match wills with Vanessa the hen to collect the day’s eggs from the coop without too many pecks to her hands, roughly tell the time from the position of the sun, and pilot Each-Uisge with, if not Roan’s expertise, enough confidence to get it safely away from the island jetty while Roan finished securing their new supplies.

           “Before I forget,” said Roan as she locked the boat shed. “Here. Got a present for you back on the island.”

           It was a knife: about six inches of single-edged steel, with a black leather sheath, an antler handle, and a whetstone on a string to keep it sharp. It carried no ornamentation, not even a maker’s mark stamped on the blade, but there was a certain beauty in its simplicity and the quality of its anonymous craftsmanship. Asta accepted it in trembling hands, drew a couple of inches from the sheath to test the edge – it was sharp – and started to cry.

           Roan’s eyes widened. “Um. I’m sorry! I just – you seemed quite taken with the one you were using for the fish earlier! I thought that maybe – but no, it was a bad idea, I’ll just-” She reached out to take the knife back.

           “No!” squeaked Asta, hugging the knife to her chest. “I like it. I do like it. Thank you.” She sniffed, bowing her head, and managed a tearful smile. “It’s just.” She sniffed again and wiped her eyes with the back of her wrist. “It’s nothing.”

           Still a little wide-eyed, Roan patted her shoulder and gave it a gentle squeeze, then nodded towards the broch. “Come on. I think it’s going to be a cold night.”

           It was; by morning a thick blanket of snow had covered the ground, putting enough of a chill into the air that Roan opened the door, winced, and retreated back inside for her sealskin and a tunic with sleeves before she went to scatter some feed for the hens.

           “I think that’s the first time I’ve seen you cover your arms,” said Asta, following her out with the reindeer skin around her shoulders and her thick woollen scarf wrapped around her neck as many times as it would go. “You don’t want a hat and scarf as well?”

           “Hey, I’ve got this,” said Roan, pointing to the seal skull on top of her head. “Besides, I quite like the cold, even if I do have my limits.” She threw another handful of oats for the hens. “Was there any spare porridge? We can give it to the girls for a treat.”

           Asta went back inside for the porridge pot. The hens gathered around, clucking excitedly, as she tipped the leftover porridge out on the ground for them. “They seem to like it.”

           “I think it’s good for them to get something warm now and then, don’t you?” said Roan, watching the scrum with affection.

           “This snow won’t kill off your vegetables, will it?”

           “Nah, I already harvested everything that can’t survive the cold.”  

           “Do you not worry about foxes getting in?” asked Asta as Vanessa missed a blob of porridge and pecked the toe of her boot instead.

           “No, I have the gate warded against them,” said Roan. “Besides – even if they did get past it, I’m not sure it would matter. Before I placed the ward I once saw Vanessa rally the others to chase off one that had got in.”

           “Tough chicken.”  

           “The toughest.”

           “So…” Asta linked her fingers over her stomach and leant against the chicken coop, looking at the ground. “You were probably wondering why I burst into tears when you gave me the knife yesterday.”

           Roan scattered a last handful of oats, brushed off the dust, and gently placed her fingertips under Asta’s chin, tilting her head up to meet her eyes. “I’ve never really been in the habit of asking people about their problems,” she said quietly. “I think it gave people the impression I wasn’t interested; it was more that it always seemed like prying into things that weren’t my business.” She laid both hands on Asta’s shoulders. “But if there are things you need to talk about, I am here to listen.”

           Asta sighed, ran a hand through her hair, and nodded. “Inside, though. It’s… a bit cold for it out here.”

           “All right. I’ll be back in soon – I need to check on some skins in my workshop.”

           Asta suspected Roan was really just giving her some time to compose herself. It was only a few minutes before Roan let herself back into the broch, sat down on the opposite side of the fire, and gestured for her to start when she was ready.

           “I’m an only child,” Asta began. “My parents had done the maths. They could feed one extra mouth quite easily, and still have a bit left over for a small luxury now and then. Two, and they would struggle to even afford the basics. I’m not sure what they would have done if I’d turned out to be twins.” Roan nodded and said nothing, her grey eyes glinting in the firelight.

           “So I had a pretty good childhood. Like I said earlier – not extravagant, but comfortable. I did well at school and went on to study literature at university.” If Roan had any opinions about this choice of degree, they did not show on her face. “Then in my last year, just after I graduated… It turned out my parents had decided to take a chance and invest some of their savings in… some venture or other. I didn’t take as much of an interest in the household finances as I probably should have, so I was never sure exactly what they’d paid into.” One of Roan’s eyebrows quirked very slightly upwards, but she still remained silent. “The plan was that if the investment paid off, they planned to make a presentation to Lord zeDamar to get access to the House funds.”

           “The more you pay in, the more you get out,” said Roan neutrally. “Theoretically.”

           “Theoretically. It… did not pay off. I’m still not really sure if the venture went badly and they felt they’d paid in too much to cut their losses and back away or if it had just been an outright con from the start but it was like it just ate money. They arranged to travel out to meet the people they’d invested with, have a look over things, see if there was anything to be done to fix things, but they never made it. There was…” Asta swallowed and closed her eyes for a moment, covering them with one hand. “They hit a storm on the way, up in the Kiraani Hills, and there was an accident. Their carriage went into a ravine. The House didn’t want to know about it; it was my immediate family’s mess so it was ours – mine – to clean up. So I was left to make all the arrangements by myself, which… was expensive. And then I started getting letters from my parents’ creditors.”

           “By law, debts are not automatically inherited,” said Roan quietly. “You have to specifically agree to take them on before they’re something you’re obligated to pay. A lot of creditors rely on people not knowing that.”

           Asta laughed bitterly. “Well, it worked! I sold off one thing after another, right up to the house, and the letters kept coming. So I went out to the slave markets. The Slavers’ League agreed to take on all the debts in exchange for putting me up on the next auction block. I suppose it was flattering in a way, how fierce the bidding was. Lady MacArra was prepared to pay a lot of money just for a secretary, and she was up against a lot of competition. She never really explained why.”

           Roan pursed her lips as if locked in some internal debate and briefly opened her mouth, but shook her head and did not comment.

           “I lived with her in Duncraig for five years. She was… kind, in her own way. A little grumpy at times, not really given to, ah, out-of-work socialising, but she was patient with any mistakes I made, gave me the weekends off, and more or less let me do as I pleased when I wasn’t helping in her office. Never let Daro bother me whenever he came to pester her, which I was grateful for. Even then I’d heard rumours about how her children and grandchildren treated slaves.” Asta sighed and gazed at the fire. Roan silently got up to add another log to the flames and sat back down. “And then she died. Something to do with her heart – it came on very suddenly. I ran to fetch a healer, but there was nothing they could do for her.” She closed her eyes again, scrubbing away the tears threatening at the corners. “Is it stupid, to grieve for someone who literally owned you?”

           “Grief doesn’t care about whether or not it makes sense,” said Roan quietly, stirring the logs with a poker. “Slaves are vulnerable, no matter who their owner is, and she protected you. There’s no shame in missing her for that.”

           Asta nodded and got up to lean on the wall by the stairs, facing the stonework. “So when you gave me the knife, I… I suppose everything just suddenly piled on at once and I realised that it’s been a very long time since anyone gave me a present just because they thought I would like it.”

           Roan’s footsteps padded across the stone floor and she laid the very tips of her fingers against Asta’s shoulder. Asta turned to face her again with a half-hearted smile, and Roan drew her into a tight embrace. Asta blinked in surprise, frozen for a moment, before she sighed and wrapped her arms around Roan’s waist. “I’ve been so lonely,” she mumbled into her shoulder.

           “I think I have too,” whispered Roan. “I just didn’t realise until I had someone around again.”

           The emotional conversation went undiscussed after that, but the thoughts felt lighter for having been spoken, and the daily routine at Dun Ardech went on as usual. Asta took on a few more of the chores as she learned how to do them, such as cleaning the fish Roan caught, and was able to share a more efficient fish trap design she had read about. She had long since lost track of what day it was. After another week, she finally put her foot down about the sleeping arrangements and insisted that Roan take her own bed back; it was ridiculous for her to still be sleeping on one of the couches when it was her own home. Somehow this just resulted in them sharing it, which wasn’t quite what Asta had had in mind.

           It did mean that Roan didn’t have very far to go when she suddenly shook Asta awake in the middle of the night, a couple of days before Curlew was due back from its voyage to the north. “Hsst! Asta! Wake up!”

           “What time is it?” asked Asta blearily.

           “Almost midnight.”

           “Is something wrong?”

           “No, nothing’s wrong.”

           “Then why are you waking me up at midnight?”

           Roan grinned, only visible by the faint witchlight she had conjured. “I’d forgotten what day it is. Nothing bad – but something is happening. Come up to the roof with me.”

           Grumbling under her breath, Asta wrapped the reindeer skin around herself again and followed Roan up the steps to the trapdoor and out onto the walkway. There was no moon, but the sky was perfectly clear, covered in thousands of stars with the silvery band of the Birds’ Road stretching all the way across. A faint curtain of green light shimmered at the northern horizon, but this clearly wasn’t what Roan wanted to show her: instead she pointed across the sea loch to the south, and the sound of voices raised in song – too many to count – drifted across the calm water to them.

           “Is that – is that a dragon ship?” asked Asta as the first boat came into view.

           “Aye,” said Roan. “Sort of – it’s just a replica.”

           The longship made its stately way down the loch, the carved dragon figurehead proud at the front. The striped sail was raised, but seemingly just for show; the propulsion came from a bank of oars on each side. Behind it, a row of boats smaller than the longship but longer and wider than Each-Uisge sailed side-by-side, each one with a row of burning torches fixed along the rails, while a whole flotilla of vessels from simple rowing boats to comfortable yachts followed behind, each bearing a lantern on its prow and each pilot and passenger joining in with the same song.

           “What are they singing?” asked Asta.

           “It’s an ancient hymn to the sun,” said Roan. “Thanking it for returning even after the longest winter nights, and praying that it always will. I wasn’t sure if you would have seen this before; a few boats in the fleet leave from Duncraig, but the dragon ship leaves from a little further down Loch Gorm and the rest join it along the way. It’s an old tradition – not sure how old exactly, but it’s been done since long before I was born. The song is in an old dialect. That’s why you can’t understand the words.”

           Asta shook her head. “No. I’ve never seen this before.”

           Most of the fleet came to a halt before they came level with the broch, but the dragon ship and its escorts carried on past it. One by one, the rowers on the dragon ship abandoned their oars and jumped into the water to swim back to the other boats, where they were hauled aboard and quickly bundled up in warm blankets with mugs of tea and soup.

           One man on the foremost escort boat stood up and raised his arm. The singing came to a gradual halt, the silence spreading back through the fleet in a wave. More people in the other boats got to their feet, nocking arrows to bowstrings. The man closed his fist; the arrows were set alight, the bows were raised, and the strings drawn back. Then he let his arm fall in one sweeping gesture and two dozen flaming arrows arched high above the water to plummet back down onto the dragon ship, punching through the sail and slamming into the deck like terrible rain. The flames spread rapidly; in the space of less than a minute, the entire ship was ablaze with the firelight reflecting in the water.

           “It was originally a funeral practice,” explained Roan. “When a monarch or a chieftain died, they’d be cremated in a ship like that. But nowadays it’s just symbolic.”

           “Of what?” asked Asta, watching as the longship’s yard crumbled and fell to the deck in a shower of golden sparks.

           Roan laid an arm around her shoulders and, after a tiny pause, leant in to kiss her on the cheek. “Happy New Year.”

           Asta laid her head on her shoulder. “I’m glad you woke me up for this.”

           They watched until the remains of the longship sank beneath the water and the rest of the boats began to drift home. Roan straightened up, stretched, and turned to go back to the trapdoor.

           Asta caught her hand. “Roan.”

           “Hm?”

           Now or never. Asta summoned her courage, reached up to take Roan’s head in her hands, and pushed herself up on her toes to kiss her on the lips. Roan didn’t even hesitate; she wound her arms around Asta, almost lifting her off the floor, and leant into the kiss.

           “Wow.” Asta drew back, swaying slightly. “You know,” she said dizzily, “for a semi-feral sea witch… you’re a really good kisser.”

           Roan just smiled and pressed her forehead against hers.

           She had disappeared in the morning, though she had left a note on her pillow saying ‘Checking traps’ with a heart symbol and a tiny cartoon of a happy seal. Asta yawned, got dressed, and went downstairs to collect some eggs and start heating some porridge.

           She took her breakfast up to the outer wall to watch for Roan coming back, but there was no sign of her yet. Strangely, even though it was light, the water horses were still on the rocks. Perhaps the burning of the dragon ship had disturbed them and they were catching up on their missed sleep.

           Movement in the corner of her eye caught her attention. It was a boat, not as big as last night’s dragon ship but at least three times the size of little Each-Uisge, floating along on the breeze filling its sail. Asta frowned as the boat turned, heading for the rocks. Riabhach and his herd raised their heads curiously.

           There was a thrum of bowstrings and a volley of crossbow bolts shot from the boat into the herd. One of the water horses let out a high-pitched scream; Riabhach reared up to his full height, stretching out his forelegs to hold back the attackers while the rest of the herd made their escape into the water, but even he had to back away and flee with an enormous splash as people began to leap from the boat to the rocks, carrying long knives and hunting spears. The last to disembark held no blade, but a long whip hung coiled at his wide belt.

           Daro.

           Asta dropped her bowl and ran for the broch, slamming the door behind her and lodging the bar in its slots. Her knife was upstairs. She ran to get it and climbed to the roof to crouch behind the rampart. There was no mist to hide her today.

           Most of the strangers waited with the boat, but Daro led the rest up over the rocks and through the gate to the courtyard. The hens approached, expecting food, but even Vanessa ran back to the shelter of the coop when Daro aimed a vicious kick at her. There was a crash of splintering wood as his cronies broke down the door, then heavy booted footsteps coming up the stairs.

           Asta readied the knife as Daro pushed the trapdoor open.

           “So this is where you’ve been hiding,” he commented, leaning on the rampart as the others filed out after him. “It took me a while to round up enough help that weren’t too scared of ghost stories to launch an assault on Dun Ardech. I thought it might be easier to arrive by sea. Where’s your strange friend with the dog skull?”

           “It’s a seal,” said Asta, holding the knife’s grip in both hands.

           “A seal. Well,” Daro spread a hand on his chest in mocking apology, “consider me thoroughly corrected. I’m sure this has all been a lot of fun, but it’s time to come home, Asta.”

           “Your family estate is not my home.”

           “Asta,” he said, attempting a conciliatory tone. “Be reasonable. However far you may have fallen from your rightful place, you’re still nobility of the Empire. You belong in proper society, on the arm of a fellow noble and with a collar of the finest gold, not…” he cast an eye around the broch, “…here.”

           “Maybe I would rather live here than wear a collar at all.”

           “Come, now.” Daro placed a hand on his waist, just above the whip on his belt. “We have to maintain a certain level of discipline, but haven’t you been treated fairly?”

           “Fairly!?” Asta stormed forwards, brandishing the knife. Daro took a cautious step backwards, but motioned for the others to stay where they were. “You chained me to a post in your stable yard and whipped me until I bled when I had done nothing. I was lucky to be able to walk afterwards. If you want me to leave here with you,” she lifted the knife to his chin, “you’re going to have to drag me out.”  

           Daro shrugged. “All right.” In a flash, he caught both of her wrists and pushed the knife down from his chin until Asta lost her grip on the handle and it fell to the stone beneath their feet. “Give me some help here!” More hands grabbed her arms, forcing them down and binding her wrists behind her back, shoving her towards the trapdoor. In a last desperate move, Asta lunged forwards and slammed her forehead into Daro’s nose. The satisfaction of the crunch it made did not last for long; he lifted a hand to his face, inspected the blood that came away on his fingertips, and drove his fist into her gut. She doubled over, wheezing for breath, and three people at once lifted her off her feet to carry her bodily down the stairs and out to the boat.

           They dumped her in the stern like a sack of oats.

           “Enough of this nonsense,” said Daro, taking a moment to tie her ankles and force a gag between her teeth. “Let’s just get back to the estate and we can put this whole sordid affair behind us, hmm? Cast off!” he added to the crew.

           The boat turned to sail back up the loch. Behind it, Riabhach raised his head from the waves and roared once, before he and the other water horses climbed back onto the rocks.

           There was still no sign of Roan.

~~~

Well that’s not good

[prorevenge]

Psycho Ex gets my egoless revenge with a side of heavy-duty karma.

The following story occurred over the course of 13-8 years ago, and I apologize preemptively for the length, because it is a bit involved.

I was in a relationship for 9 years with a girl I met in college. We broke up on the cusp of my 29th birthday. While breakups and divorce are never trauma-free, this one was as close to that as I believe is humanly possible to get, there were no fights and minimal drama, and I moved to a new city to get a fresh start and be nearer my dad/stepmom/half sisters, as I'm close to them and it was nice to have family during this. Get an apartment, start over, everything's good. Then I meet "her."

Things with her seemed good at first. She was the polar opposite of my ex. She's quiet yet nice, had her life relatively together (my first wife was very unfocused and horrible with money), physically a complete contrast, wild in the bedroom--I thought I had hit the jackpot.

Anyhoo, I fall for her hard. We have a whirlwind romance, move in shortly, and we have this glamorous life where we make good money (she was a corporate accountant, I had a decent small business, we're pulling in 150K+ combined), renting a luxury apartment, one car paid and the other brand new, no kids. Things are great, except that we drink too much together and some other underlying issues I'm blind to at the time. We get soused one night and drive to Vegas, and get married on the strip after 6 months of dating and 9 of knowing each other. The ink is barely dry on my divorce papers from version 1.0, but no matter, I'm in love. My family likes her overall. Her family loves me. We adopt cats. We talk about trying to have a kid.

We upgrade our life and take on more debt, just as the housing bubble bursts and the economy tanks, she loses a couple jobs due to her inability to show up on Mondays, and I start losing clients as the ones I have start cutting their advertising budget (my field). Things start to get pinched, and she first starts complaining, then gets petulant, because now we can't spend the way we used to, the quarterly mini-vacations dry up, plus we're cooking at home instead of going out to eat 4x a week. We basically stop having sex a little more than a year into the relationship (didn't realize it then, because I was dumb and love-blind, but she cheated on me during this period).seRealizing what we're up against with our normal bills plus our credit cards, I go out and get a job bartending at a posh resort, the only other real skill I have at the time that's marketable. I get two other part time gigs to help make ends meet. She still complains, and throws me an ultimatum before I even start getting paychecks, laying the blame at my feet. I say fine, screw this then. Had we stuck it out even a few more months, things would have started to turn a financial corner. Instead, she goes full two-faced, mean-spirited bitch on me. The night we first fight, she "attempts suicide" by scratching her wrist with a leatherman, then calls 911, gets admitted to the hospital (I arrive home to cops telling me this), and has the security guard toss me when I show up to see if she's okay because she doesn't want to talk to me. I use the quotes because there was a small collection of firearms nearby I bought for her target shooting hobby which were untouched, so it was obviously just a ploy for attention.

We basically fight for the next week, I give her everything she wants, which includes leaving the house, signing over my new truck to her, and only taking stuff I brought into the relationship, basically enough to fill a small storage space. She's financially pinched so I sell my office furniture for cash and don't even touch the bank account, just take my biz money and one CC I got separate from her. I go to the Bay Area for a few months, financially struggle, don't get the job I was sure was on lock. During this time, I have this revelation one evening--I drink too much and that it's caused a load of problems in my life, so I quit, and I haven't touched a drop since.

Broke and realizing nothing I try is working, I come back to town, live with my dad for a month, find a roommate, then a shit retail job (my business has dropped from 7-8K per month at its height to now around 500/mo), I bike everywhere bc I can't afford a car, and my credit is toast partially due to her love of spending on plastic, so I'm facing bankruptcy. I'm 31, and this is really humbling, but whatever, I'm alive, have dealt with hardship before, this won't last forever. She has kept her house, declared personal BK on her debts, keeps her car, and has been dating a series of men starting a couple weeks after we split. While I never asked the details, apparently she's also reached out to a few of my friends and badmouthed me a bit. This would be mildly annoying, but add in two factors--she's dragging her feet on the divorce due to not having money to file, keeps up contact on the pretense of us needing to talk, but plays emotionally manipulative head games during the whole sequence ("I've realized I still love you, that's why you can make me cry so easily," and other bullshit Hallmark movie lines like this). Also, we live in a suburb that's smaller and tightly knit, so multiple places I go to like my church, the bookstore I frequent, and the coffee shop right by my place, she talks endless shit to people. Says I was a cheater and physically/emotionally abusive (complete crap, but whatever), I'm stalking her, I supposedly stole tens of thousands of dollars from her, the whole nine. Some people actually believe her, I even get threatened by a wannabe biker one night that's literally twice my age with violence, itself a funny story but not the point.

Finally, after some more bullshit and back and forth, she leaves town (more falsehoods around this, including her borrowing a bit of money she didn't end up paying back, and sticking me with a massive overage on our cell bill right before we split the account). My dumb, trusting heart hurts but I'm mostly relieved to see the last of her, realizing she's only nice to me when she wants something. She goes to NY to shack up with another guy, gets pregnant 15 minutes later. Finally sends me divorce paperwork. I sign it and send back quickly, all notarized docs, everything organized and flagged. She attempts to be "friends" and I want no part of this BS. I'm businesslike, she gets upset. She screws up filing, blames me. I say "whatever," straighten out the court issues. One week after the divorce is finalized, the kid is born. No word from her after that for two years, thank god. I get a new career, start advancing in it, and start dating a new woman that I'm still with 10 years later. Weirdly enough, they knew each other, and she didn't like her, partially because one of my ex's infidelity partners was her ex-husband, during a time they were exploring patching things up for the kids' sake (though there were multiple reasons for her distrust, apparently she always gave my wife an icky intuitive feeling).

So flash forward two years. I get a call from my current squeeze. She's just talked to a friend who was also a very brief roomie of "her" after our split. She's breaking up with the baby daddy. There's a custody fight. He's saying he doesn't know if it's his. Will I help her? Well, it's the right thing to do, so even though I don't trust or particularly like her, I say yes. I get the call, and a sob story. Most of it doesn't add up--he took the kid, but thinks it's actually mine, to prove paternity I'd need to come to NY and take a paternity test at one of their facilities, also he hit her, put a GPS tracker on her car, brother is a Russian mobster who threatened her, all very far-fetched. Needless to say, even without this fanciful tale, I generally assume if this woman is talking, it's a lie, so I'm suspicious. Her lawyer calls me, and seems like a clueless shmuck. I get a letter from him, very unprofessional and not even on a letterhead (every other legal doc I've seen has "from the law offices of blah blah" on it, but this is literally just off a laser printer), and says, verbatim "I, M___ K___, am the ex-husband of J___ K___, and was married to her from 6/07-8/09. I have no legal interest in the child." Super shady.

Not wanting to end up in a situation where I've allowed myself to be legally fucked over, I make my own lawyer consultation appointment. Before I can even go, the baby daddy finds me on Facebook and sends me a message. Between calls with him, his lawyer, and the impartial lawyer NY state appoints for the child's welfare, I get a very different story. He knows it's his, he had a paternity test done on the sly at birth because she had been promiscuous before they got together, and she was pregnant so quickly he was concerned. They broke up because she was drinking too much, he busted her with a bottle of vodka as she was driving with the kid in the car. She stood up in court, claimed I was actually the father, and she had no idea where to find me (he found me in 10 seconds online, I'm a tech guy with massive social media presence, a tech blog, multiple writing credits on publications, my frigging name as a domain, plus I've had the same cell phone number for 14 years). Also the other BS was just that, he's an IT guy for a university and his brother works for a carpet cleaning chain, plus just like in our relationship, he never hit or stalked her, etc.

So she, not knowing what I know, starts sending me text messages. I say "Filled out and on its way back to your lawyer," and toss it in the trash. I'm so tempted to send her some poetic message about how the truth is coming back to haunt her, but I resist, because I'm not doing this for her, but rather for the sake of their son and his father, so let's keep my ego out of it. I provide legal statements to all in the court. Tell them I know it's not possibly mine because I hadn't been with her since April 15 of '08, kid's birthday is in Sept of '09 (I remember the date because, due to taxes, I got fucked twice that day). Explain when she was in NY, which is the likely dates of conception, prove I was thousands of miles away on the west coast. Tell them to look through her social media, where she meticulously tagged herself and took tons of pictures of even their mundane locations. Provide a blood sample to a local lab. Tell them salacious details about her drinking and occasional drug use, including her abused prescriptions and a previous hospitalization where she was held for psych eval due to taking way too many pills.

Court comes, and she gets blindsided. Stack of depositions and a collection of statements from me were what sealed the deal, apparently, and the incredibly stupid game she was running is fully exposed. Gets no custody, no support, supervised visitation once a week. I run into her ex-roomie, upset, but instead of giving her attitude, I just calmly tell her the scam J__ was running, then let her "pull out of me" the truth about our split. She's flabbergasted, but also a horrible gossip, so it gets around town like wildfire. People I barely know, including the aforementioned biker, all come up to me and apologize for misjudging me. I'm years past the stage of having any morbid curiosity to check her social media, but every few months she pops up as a "suggested friend," and I notice bemusedly the number of mutual friends plummets from triple digits to eventually 3. Baby's father sends me a massive Amex gift card for Christmas, as much as I make in a week at the time. I call and tell him I don't know if I can accept it, I don't want him or anyone to think I did this for a reward. He virtually begs, saying "you helped save my family. This is nothing in comparison. Thank you." We break down crying on the phone, and eventually form an odd, distant friendship based on mutual respect for each other. I even had dinner with him a couple times when I had to go to NY for biz over the years, and I always buy, because the poor guy has done enough and gone through enough having to coparent with this train wreck.

To this day, she's apparently struggling to stay sober (alcohol and other substances), and has minimal involvement in her child's life due to her inability to show up when expected. Baby daddy tells me she's been in legal trouble, financial issues up the ass, and a string of boyfriends that never last more than a few months. I'm doing well, got married again three years ago, raised step-children, am reasonably financially successful, and rather like my life. Granted, a large part of this story is just karma in action, but I feel like I did the right thing, wasn't petty, and what I did do hit her where it hurts.

TL;DR: Ex-wife fucks my life, destroys me financially, tries to trash my reputation, then tries to use me as a scheme in her custody battle years later. I talk to the court directly, work with the baby daddy's lawyers, and get her exposed for the psycho, lying wench she is. She loses custody, struggles, and the good people live mostly happily ever after.

(source) (story by heymomo7)

[livlovlrn]

Taboo?

In my generation it is taboo to talk about money issues; especially with people you don’t know well.  I don’t know if that is the same these days, but old habits die hard.  Having said that, I feel like this subject plays a big role in this journey of mine and since I’ve chosen to record it here it makes sense to me to share the issues we’ve had.

When I first started going to this place for treatments they wanted me to come in twice a week. The fees of the treatments would have been far too much for us to be able to afford so I’ve been going in once a week.   This seems to work just fine not only as far as finances, but also because I don’t think my body would have been able to take two treatments a week; it would have been too much for it to handle.  In any case; we were managing ok with the fees for the one treatment a week, though it has meant we’ve had to be a little careful with our spending.

As I mentioned in my last post; the dr did a bunch more tests at my last visit (including the one with the painful shots across my back).  So those tests, in addition to the ones he ordered previously (which I didn’t pay for at the time; the company I used bills for the services) came to over $1000...in a weeks’ time.  We don’t currently have insurance.  My husband’s work offers insurance, but it is through Kaiser Permanente who I would never go to if given the choice (I grew up on this insurance, I’ve also seen them jerk my parents around) so we choose not to be covered at this time (shhhh don’t tell the government).  In any case that means we are paying for all of this out of pocket.  We are definitely not wealthy people, in fact I’d put us at the high end of low income or the low end of middle income.  We make enough to get by.   We have no savings because we use what money we make to pay the bills.   This whole time we’ve been paying out of pocket and it isn’t cheap...however it is necessary.  We both agreed I’ve been ill long enough and it is time for me to heal. We are going further into debt over this; using a credit card we’d paid off and not used in a while because we maxed our regular one.  We got a NSF notice from the bank, that hasn’t happened in so long I don’t even remember the last time...it was when we were young and dumb.  

So that leaves us with doing what we can to continue treatments without overspending.  We are watching every penny now because it just doesn’t make sense to give up. We trust God will provide the money we need for me to continue this process until the mystery of my illness is solved and I get the necessary treatments to be able to live a more normal life.  It is worth it to us to be a little stressed now in order to live a better life in the long run.

In case you are thinking we could let go of some luxuries to help us out, we don’t really have many.  We found a VERY inexpensive phone service, we don’t get cable, we don’t go out to eat, we don’t have car payments.  I’d say our luxury bills come to less than $50 a month and we don’t feel like we should have to give those little conveniences up. Besides, it wouldn’t make much of a dent in the fees.

I guess that’s all I have to say about it for now. As with any post, I am just trying to keep a record of this journey; at least this part of it...hopefully hopefully hopefully I am recording the end of a very long journey.

Until I check in again

Shalom (Peace: full thriving flourishing happiness, prosperity, health and completeness)

[vanta-velouria]

I had a cold dose of reality last night.For a brief moment in my life i let my reality slip and thought maybe my world could be some semblance, some pieced together reflection of what other people lives are like. I for a small time stupidly thought i could have something to hope in, but hope is not a luxury afforded to people like me. 

I am a shit Buddhist, I am a very jealous person and i cant ever seem to let that go. I am jealous of everyone for everything. When I was a child I was jealous because everyone else I ever saw had a family. they had toys and easter bunnies. They had kisses on scraped knees and birthday candles. They had mommies and daddies who loved them. 

I had abuse. I had rape. I had violence and beatings, Eventually I didnt even have a mother because i was too pretty to be kept around her husbands so I got tossed away like rubbish. I was a problem and I was only good enough to come back for when I was old enough to raise her children, clean her home, get a job and pay her rent and her bills. 

while everyone else got sweet sixteens i was a seasoned sex worker with a full time job and three kids to take care of and bills to pay. while everyone else got to stay in high school and go on dates and go to parties, I got to go to work and get my ass beat and screamed at and reminded how worthless i was.

While everyone else got to go off to college and have friends and a social life, I fought my way to pay for college working two full time jobs and whoring myself on the side that maybe one day i could afford to stop having to struggle to just barely survive. I may have looked like i had a glamorous life in college, I modeled and had nice trinkets and sang in dive bars and coffee houses, but I over glamorize my recollections because it makes it easier to swallow. I modeled because it was extra money and would work around my other two jobs and school schedule and being yelled at and degraded for every imperfection on my body isnt something i would ever wish on anyone else. I had nice things and stupid toys, but they were gifts from the men i whored myself out to to pay for college, not presents from some one who loved me or anyone special and it rarely if ever made up for the things they did to me that guilted them into the stupid gifts! and I sang for spare change and whatever money i could make to try to e able to afford a meal every now and then. When you live in one of the most expensive cities in the world and you're poor, you will do whatever it takes to get something to eat once in a while. 

While everyone else got great memories I had reality.

 While everyone else had parents and family that went to their graduations, I had to beg and plead and pay my mother to come to mine of which she only came to one, just one, and only because i paid for her plain ticket and took her out to a fancy restaurant and took her shopping and gave her money and as soon as she was done in the city i gave her money for a plane ticket back to her home. I dont think she even actually went inside to watch me graduate from college. 

Wile the rest of the world gets their mommies and daddies to plan their weddings and walk them down the isles i didnt even get a response to my invitations. I never got to have a real wedding and nobody ever responded from my side. no one ever even looked at me when i was so happy to think maybe i would have someone who would stay with me and not hurt me anymore. nobody even noticed i was there. 

when I almost died and ended up in the hospital more times than i care to count, you think anyone ever showed up for me? you think anyone ever called? only once did i have a friend show up with my dad and that’s only because my dad lived with me and it was in his old car that i got hit and almost killed in. hell after that I never even had anyone come visit me. nobody could have cared any less. when my spine got demolished and i had to have emergency spinal surgery, do you think anyone gave a single shit? nope, I didnt even get but two weeks to recover from the surgery before i had to move and go immediately back to working two jobs to barely survive.

when i finally found a way to start transitioning, i thought maybe just maybe something good will get to happen to me and i can finally have one thing thats just for me in life. I was working two full time jobs and taking care of someone elses home and family at the same time and once again had to go back to sex work to buy groceries and maybe just maybe save a little here and there for my doctor appointments and my hormones. I went through hell just to afford to transition all the while being abused by my wife and the people we were staying with. only two find out after three years of working myself to death to try and even just accomplish this one thing, that i will never be able to physically transition. I wasted all that time and effort and money. the things i had to do to get that money.. all for nothing. while everyone else gets to have hormones and surgeries and even if they get misgendered they at least get support from a friend once in a while. i have always and will always be misgended every minute of everyday by everyone in my life save for three people, two of which i never get to talk anymore and one i only recently became reacquainted with. i will never get to look in the mirror and see anything other than this worthless piece of shit body that isnt good for anything except for other people to fuck once in a while when their drunk and im desperately hurting for money.

whenever my life falls apart do you think i have anyone in the entire world that i could call and ask for even a hug? because when my wife hurt me and left me 4 months ago and i had to live in my car, I tried. I begged everyone i knew to spend time with me and give me a hug. and when my wife finally left my home and I could stop being homeless I offered to pay anyone i knew a lot of money and buy them a plane ticket to just come and stay with me for a week and let me cry. not that I had many people to beg, but every single one turned me down so fast. I put an ad on craigslist and back page offering to pay anyone to just come and stay at my house so i wouldnt have to stay in my home alone. yeah that didnt end well for me and I should have known better, but god i was so tired of being all alone. 

while everyone else can thing of someone, anyone they can call when it all goes to shit, even if they think they have no one they do. they have a friend or a cousin they can go sleep on their couch or a parent they can go back home to even if they dont like the home situation they still at least have that option. 

when my wife was punching my face in i didnt even have friends to cry to or run to or stay with, nope the friend i thought i had took my wifes side and basically said i deserved it because i made my wife miserable by not giving her the life she had wanted. anyone else would have had somewhere to run to or someone to hug them.

I can in all honesty without a shadow of a doubt tell you that when the world falls apart i have never had anyone. not one person i could go to for a hug or a couch to crash on. not one place to call home and run to. and while everyone else gets to fuck it all up and fail and run away and lose themselves and find themselves and just breathe. I have never gotten that luxury, I was always the one everyone turned to, ran to, lived with, lived off of, used, abused, lied to and cheated on. I was always the one saving everyone else and keeping them from ever worrying or having to struggle. I was the one always giving everything up so that everyone else could have a better life. ive never had not one person in the whole world ever offer to give me even a day of peace. 

I will never get to break down, I will never get to fall or fail or run away like all of my exs and friends and everyone i know has. I will never know what its like to have a childhood or a birthday party, I will never know what its to have someone to run to and save me. I will never know what its like to be happy in my own body. i will never know what its like to not have to constantly work two jobs to just try to survive from all the debt and mess that my exs have all left me with when they all take off for fancier lives and richer people. I will never know what its like to have a family or even just a mom. I will never have anything. 

so while everyone else gets to gone on grand adventures and go to concerts and travel the world and have friends and go to clubs and go on dates and transition and have family they can visit and people who love them. while everyone else gets to fall apart sometimes. I will never know not one small faction of what any of that is like. 

that kind of life was never meant for someone like me. that kind of hope was never something i could ever even be allowed to dream of. I am not even a person. I am merely a body for others to use, to take from me what they need or want. money, time, love, sex, hopes and dreams i silently stowed away  knowing i could never have. i am just a thing for people to take everything they want from. and things arent allotted niceties such ad dreams and hope and places to run to. we are just things that exist to be used until we fall apart and are discarded for something better.

i forgot my place in the world for a while there. I have a boyfriend that was kind, even if he isnt in love with me. i have a friend who talks to me more than once every few months via text. i have my dogs and cats that let me cry on them when everyone else is asleep. i for the last few weeks have stupidly forgotten my place in the world and though that maybe, just maybe the univers was going to let me have a good thing. even if it was for long that maybe i could have a reason to wake up in the mornings aside from my obligation to my pets. I thought maybe i was finally going to have a reason to not want to die every minute of my life. 

but thaknfully i got reality checked and i was able to pull my head out of someone elses cloud, some one elses daydream. Thankfully i was reminded before i fell too deep into another persons heaven that things like day dreams and hope and love and friendship and kindness just arent meant for things like me. those are meant for people, not for me. I am just a thing to be used. I am not a person, never have been and never will be. 

For a moment last night i thought, what a dangerous thing it is to have no hope, to have nothing to believe in. what a dangerous thing that would be. if you have nothing than you have nothing to lose and nothing to keep you from running away and just cracking up and finally going mental and killing everyone you can in the world.. but then my dog woke up and shifted around and i was reminded that even though i have no hope, no dreams, nothing to keep me breathing for, I still have five little furry lives i am obligated to and responsible for. fucking exs always running away and leaving behind their responsibilities and pets for me to have to care for and give good lives to.

but my pets are all getting old now and ive bide my time this last almost decade and as much as i will miss their kindness and love, its only a matter of time before they all die and i will have nothing left to keep me here breathing for. it only a matter of time before i can end it all and have nothing left to stay around and suffer for. its only a matter of time before my tired, broken, used up body can finally have some peace.

im not even angry, im just grateful that i didnt forget my place for too long. because i think in all honesty i was wrong last night. not having hope isnt the most dangerous thing, having hope is. 

[ganymedesclock]

By the clues about how the Weblum Galra acts alone, what do you think some of Lotor's key personality traits are?

I’ll just link one of my earlier analyses here, but, basically, my read so far based on Weblum Galra/Black Helmet, if that is Lotor:

More shrewd than honor-bound, but with a creed of his own

BH stands out to us at this point because in contrast to a lot of the Galra we’ve seen, who are (or at least purport to be) sticklers for honor that will follow their mission to the grave- for good reason, as that’s a philosophy Zarkon enforces with death as we’ve seen in s1e1- BH operates very pragmatically. They compile resources with Keith and Hunk, and watch their backs/fight beside them very readily.

While they don’t have any qualms threatening Keith with their weapon, they also don’t do anything to prevent him from taking his, much larger share of scaultrite, or doing anything to harm him. Keith is hurt by it, but I find it funny he comments “So you’re just like the rest of them” when BH’s retreat and the indifference it betrays are very uncharacteristic with the empire’s response to Voltron. Which, the team is not exactly being subtle about with the large color-coded “V”s on their chests and helmets.

If this is Lotor, this is going to be very interesting with Lotor tasked to pursue Voltron, since it tells us 1. Lotor already has some kind of agenda he’s acting on, and 2. he’s pretty dang blase about things that don’t relate to that agenda- which is a pretty dang far cry from Zarkon, where… consider Zarkon’s response to Altea. If you cross him, Zarkon will personally kill your entire family, salt your fields, and then set a few things on fire for good measure. He literally destroyed every planet in Altea’s solar system and we don’t even know if those planets were all inhabited.

Lotor, conversely, is perfectly willing to let basically Public Enemy Of The Empire make off with a staggering amount of scaultrite provided that doesn’t stop him from leaving. Considering how quickly he was willing to turn around and protect Keith from the Weblum microbes, it also suggests that he has his own sense of honor- Keith helped him by getting him out of his ship, and even if that was immediately followed with stealing his weapon and trying to shoot him with it when Lotor tried to get it back, Lotor still specifically shot the microbes and not Keith.

It’s not exactly chivalry as much as “I scratch your back, you scratch mine” in that if there is a kind of implied debt, Lotor would prefer to try and pay that back- and then go back to complete neutrality.

Again, Zarkon holds grudges with an incredible passion and intensity, but Lotor, it seems, is much more changeable and views interactions more as a give and take. It might suggest he’s of a rather cynical persuasion, though, if he’s that motivated to not feel like he owes someone any favors.

That all said:

Calculating personality clearly has limits

Lotor was egregiously unprepared for the Weblum. He doesn’t even have his own bag to put the scaultrite in, filching one of Keith’s instead. He has no one watching his back and a single ship that not only got stuck, but he got trapped inside of.

Part of it might be that he can’t exactly go grab a full-staffed cruiser if he’s trying to do this quietly behind Zarkon and Haggar’s back- any potential drain of resources would go noticed, and if he brings any backup, they’re likely to talk. But it betrays that as good as Lotor is at thinking on his feet and responding to things quickly? 

He has a thread of recklessness.

His entire survival was basically contingent on Keith and Hunk happening to need Scaultrite- which is rare and not seemingly something most modern civilizations mine or use- and happening to hunt down the same Weblum he was stuck in, and all of this happening in a window before he starves or, assuming his ship even had some kind of life support function, before that ran out or the Weblum mucked that up.

No amount of meticulous planning would ever consider that a viable contingency. So basically, Lotor didn’t plan or arm himself nearly enough- and charged into the situation anyway.

This would absolutely have historical precedence if we consider both Force and DotU’s incarnation of Lotor have basically waltzed up to the entire Voltron team and gone “Come over here and put up your dukes, I can take you.” in contexts where he, abundantly, cannot take them. 

Hell, Force Lotor basically did the equivalent of shotgunning magical red bull, immediately travelling to Arus, and trying to fight the entire Voltron team in his underwear.

(being fair he didn’t like… strip down specifically to fight Voltron, he’d just hulked out on magical red bull, but it bears mentioning that he had an abundant amount of time to find some other clothing or armor, space suit, anything, and didn’t.)

The exploits of BH would suggest to us that Lotor is very versatile and perceptive- and much keener on exploiting literally whatever can be an asset to him than Zarkon is (certainly Sendak would, I think, turn up his nose at the idea of working with the Voltron Paladins, but for Lotor, swallowing his pride doesn’t even seem to be an issue)- basically, Lotor plays a hell of a game of improv and is less predictable than Zarkon.

This could mean very bad news indeed, since while some of Zarkon’s predictability meant he was able to wear the team down (his incessant pursuit of them) they were also able to exploit that to escape; for example, Shiro was able to use Voltron, and the Black Lion, as bait to draw Zarkon away from the Castleship in Eye Of The Storm. Lotor being a less dogged opponent means the team would have more room to breathe- but it also means they can’t count on Lotor being predictable or chasing a singular vendetta. He might go from completely dragging his heels and having no interest in fighting the team to throwing everything he’s got at them with very little warning.

On the other hand, it tells us that Lotor’s games of improv are rooted in the fact that Lotor is at least some degree of either cocky, or just impulsive. Either could be the case- he might simply be arrogant enough to take riskier leaps on the assumption that he can handle it, or he’s a bit more like Keith, in the sense of he just sees what needs to be done and tries to go for it, and the ensuing tunnel vision can leave him caught off-guard by details he’s overlooked.

I personally like the idea that Lotor is cocky, because that does fit in with prior reads on his character. At the same time, it also sets him up, as I’ve discussed before, similar to Lance, where he paradoxically has both threads of arrogance, and self-deprecation.

Because as I’ve said, BH uses anything he can get his hands on and doesn’t turn up his nose at help, even from his mortal enemies. That suggests another big difference between Zarkon and Lotor:

Zarkon fights like the emperor of the known universe. He considers his opponents’ defeat inevitable and is willing to be a slow, inexorable predator. He has so many resources and has gone unchallenged for so long, it’s massively gone to his head. Even as his opponents continue to escape him and gain in power, it’s difficult for Zarkon to consider them worthy successors even. In Space Mall, he acts as if Shiro’s bond with the Black Lion is basically just a fluke, and is both literally and figuratively blindsided by the idea that Black would actually take Shiro’s side.

If Black Helmet is Lotor, then Lotor does not fight like someone who’s had a cushy life in the lap of luxury. He fights like someone who is used to having almost nothing, and barely squeaking by. He is not too good for any resource or help that affords itself to him even if he doesn’t like it, or they make it very clear they don’t like him- he doesn’t even really acknowledge Keith and Hunk’s rather unguarded doubts or barbs at him.

It’d suggest Lotor is cocky in his own abilities, but in practice, does not view himself as the decisive or even favored victor.

Personally, I’ve really liked the idea that this means Lotor is going to be a more expressive and even comedic villain compared to Zarkon- because again, part of why you don’t see Zarkon taking a lot of comedic falls is because his pride would never tolerate that. He lashes out aggressively at being so much as second-guessed.

But if Lotor is a thrifty, calculating antagonist- a lot of the thrifty solutions that team Voltron has pulled together have been completely absurd, like the time all of the paladins had to go stand in the teludav holding cookies, and then Coran had to smear his disease mucus all over it so they could wormhole properly.

So I’m enamored with the idea of Lotor as an antagonist who is not above undignified solutions that actually work, and thus Lotor actually getting in on a fair amount of the comedy and exasperation- not only us as an audience being treated to it, but Team Voltron witnessing it as well. 

One of my personal favorite scenarios to imagine is Lotor successfully taking over the Castle of Lions at some point but being increasingly stressed out by Kaltenecker who’s just, in the way that cows are very good at, completely indifferent, and on Lotor’s end… he’s a space prince, he doesn’t know what cows are. All he knows is that Team Voltron just inexplicably has a good-sized alien animal roaming their base and so the entire time he’s trying to threaten/blackmail/posture at the team he’s just getting increasingly stressed by this cow in his space.

Potential relationship to Zarkon and Haggar

I think there’s something very interesting if Lotor is Black Helmet- well, a lot of interesting things as the multiple lengthy posts would suggest- but as mentioned, BH tries to be very pragmatic, and is seemingly very used to managing with far too little, to the point that it might feed some of his recklessness; he’s okay going into situations under-prepared because he’s just always under-prepared.

This is very interesting if Lotor’s parents are Zarkon and Haggar- because both of them are people who command an incredible number of resources and generally operate with no expense spared. We’ve seen in their relationship with their subordinates that they will even deliberately waste resources, in terms of personnel, if they don’t think that person is doing exactly what they want.

So why would the child of people like that come away with an attitude that you have to use whatever you’re given and there isn’t really any use in complaining or considering something beneath you?

It suggests that very little of Zarkon and Haggar’s ambition and empire has actually benefited Lotor. That there’s basically no room in their scope of things for him.

Now, that conjures the image of like… a tragic unloved orphan out in the rain, but Lotor would seem to have ambitions of his own, in contrast to and possibly in spite of Zarkon’s utter lack of help. I do see Lotor as someone in a sad place, because neither Zarkon nor Haggar are great company except towards each other- but I also see Lotor as posing a genuine threat to the team. He isn’t just going to be a kitten that runs to them as soon as they prove to be better people than his parents- if BH is Lotor, then it tells us he has an agenda, and we don’t know at this point how dangerous that agenda is to the team.

So with that element of unpredictability, there might be situations where Lotor and the team can work together. Belly Of The Weblum may be establishing that dynamic specifically- that sometimes they can count on each other, and Lotor can be a powerful ally (the trailer for season 2 prominently features Black Helmet under “New Allies” even though the new allies the team actually gains are the Blade of Marmora, who as far as we know BH has nothing to do with) but also that just as quickly Lotor might just take what he came for and leave them in the lurch- or outright endanger them.

[d-a-l-3-k-s]

Deemed selfish because for once in my life I have a steady income and can afford slightly better things. It’s easy to look at me now and assume I’m privileged, but •Parents were on disability/carer benefits until my late 20’s. •Father was an abusive alcoholic who unless my mother hid money from him he’d spunk it all at the pub or on cheap cider, if she didn't we would have had no money for food •Never been on a holiday to another country and never had a family holiday passed the age of 9. •Family being on benefits meant zero luxuries. •When I went to Uni instantly got a part time job because though I got the full loan/living allowance it still wasn’t enough for rent and living costs because I didn’t have the “bank of mum and dad” to live off. •All of my adult life except for the last 2 years I’ve only ever had zero hour/part time hour contracts, never a full time minimum wage job despite me being qualified and applying for as many that were within my capabilities. Leading me to constantly worry about money, rationing food and generally not having much of an existence. There's been numerous times I've work 3 part times jobs, which severely impacted my physical and mental health. •Negative effects of the above meant that when my mental health took a nose dive (roughly 3 times throughout my life) I ended up in a lot of debt, which I’ve only just about managed to pay off. •Despite that I’ve routinely gave a space for people to stay at mine living practically rent and bill free for months. •Whenever I have the money spare I happily help friends financially/treat them to a nice evening/buy them essential things because I know what it’s like to not have spare money for even necessities. •Always lived in sub par housing with shit landlord/agents because of the rent being “affordable”

but no…. all of the above isn’t taken into consideration because right now I look like I’m living some kind of middle class nightmare due to lucking out for once in my life, getting what some might consider a dream job and in some situations putting myself first…. well you can fuck off, especially if you had one of those privileged middle class backgrounds and still able to rely on parents for handouts into your adult life.

[justforbooks]

Min Jin Lee on the Road to Free Food for Millionaires

I had already failed at two novel manuscripts. Publishers had rejected my first manuscript, and I rejected the second, because it was not good enough to send out. I was 32 years old and beginning my third novel.

I had been trying to get a novel published since 1995, the year I quit being a lawyer. Since high school, I’d had a chronic liver disease, and I couldn’t work the hours of a Manhattan law firm without getting ill, so I thought I’d write fiction. My husband Christopher had a steady job with health insurance, but we had gotten our apartment and mortgage with two incomes in mind. Money was tight. After a miscarriage and a difficult pregnancy, our son Sam was born, and that same year, we learned that beloved family members, who could no longer support themselves, were awash in catastrophic debt, and suddenly, we were responsible for another household.

It is never a financially prudent idea to be a fiction writer, but I had not anticipated running through my savings in a year, being unable to earn even a modest living, not being able to afford part-time childcare to write, having a debilitating liver disease, and taking on the debts of people I love.

I was ashamed. After six years, I had not yet written a published novel, and I was broke from the choices I had made. I wondered how we’d pay all these bills, send Sam to college, and save for retirement. When my friends asked me to lunch, I made excuses because I could not afford the luxury of eating out. I could not answer when they asked kindly when my book would be available to purchase. I hid my failure by staying home.

From the moment I quit lawyering, I tried to learn how to write good fiction. I had written and published personal essays in high school. I was a history major in college, but for pleasure, I’d taken three writing classes in the English department. To my surprise, in my junior and senior years, I won top writing prizes for nonfiction and fiction, respectively. It’s possible that the college prizes misled me to believe that I could publish a novel immediately after quitting the law. However, the more I studied fiction, the more I realized that writing novels required rigorous discipline and mastery, no different than the study of engineering or classical sculpture. I wanted to get formal training. Nevertheless, after having paid for law school, I could not hazard the cost of an MFA. So, I fumbled around and made up my own writing program.

Always a reader of the 19th-century greats, I read more widely. I read every fine novel and short story I could find, and I studied the ones that were truly exceptional. If I saw a beautifully wrought paragraph, say from Julia Glass’s Three Junes, I would transcribe it in a marble notebook. Then, I would sit and read her elegant sentences, seemingly pinned to my flimsy notebook like a rare butterfly on cheap muslin. Craft strengthened the feelings and thoughts of the writer. When I read and reread Junot Díaz’s stories in Drown, I was struck by his courage and genius. His perfect narrative voice matched the intricacy and greatness of his plot architecture. Great fiction required not just lovely words or fine feelings, it demanded emotion, structure, ideals, and bravery. Fine works of fiction made me feel glad, the way I feel glad when I see a painting by a master, an ocean at dusk, or the face of a child.

In New York, it is possible to study with great writers for very little money. If one can afford to live here, there is a shock of riches in culture, so much so that artists work for almost nothing. Once a week, when Christopher could watch Sam after work, I took a turkey sandwich in a baggie or a carton of hummus and went to my writing classes or met with my writers’ group. For less than $200, I was able to study for several weeks with Lan Samantha Chang, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, and Jhumpa Lahiri at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop early on in their careers. I took a class at the Gotham Writers Workshop with Wesley Gibson. For about the same amount and for a season’s length of classes, I studied with Jonathan Levi, Joyce Johnson, Joseph Caldwell, Joan Silber, Shirley Hazzard, and Nahid Rachlin at the 92nd Street Y. The Y runs a famous preschool, and in the evenings, grown men and women sat in these preschool classrooms, smelling of tempera paints and box apple juice, anxious to know if their stories made any sense. Teachers generously encouraged me to continue, but privately, I wondered if I should quit. I was getting older, and I was afraid that I could not return to a steady profession.

The year after Sam was born, impulsively, I applied for a spot at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and was accepted. The tuition was more money than we could spare, something like $1,000. However, I knew it was difficult to get a spot at all, and I felt I had to go. I had nursed Sam for a year, and I thought this might be a good reward for having given up my body—or so it seemed to me—for the pregnancies, the illnesses, and the breastfeeding. Christopher took time off from work and stayed with Sam, and I went to Tennessee. For nine days, I studied fiction with Alice McDermott and Rick Moody. Each day, after my class, I would go back to my dorm room and cry because I missed my baby.

At Sewanee, it felt like everyone had gone to prestigious MFA writing programs like Iowa and had book contracts. Back then, conference attendees wore name tags, and mine read just my name, indicating that I had not received any scholarship money to defray the cost of the conference tuition. One day, during lunch, I met a young woman whose name tag stated her name plus the name of her fellowship. She hadn’t paid any tuition because her publications had merited her a scholarship. There was a group of us at the table, most of whom had scholarships, and the young woman casually mocked the housewives who had paid full freight to attend the conference. I didn’t realize at first, but she was talking about me. That summer, I was 30 years old, a new mother, and I learned that a talented young woman artist held housewife writers in contempt. I couldn’t eat so I returned to my room. I avoided her for the rest of the conference, because I sensed she was right. It had been a mistake to come all this way to take a class. Then at the end of the conference, Alice McDermott nominated my workshop story for an anthology called Best New American Voices 2000, and though the editors didn’t take my piece, I thought that maybe I could keep trying.

Then something else good happened a few months later. I got an Artist Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in the category of fiction. It was for $7,000. I used some of that money to pay for a five-day writing class in California with the famous editor and writer Tom Jenks and the novelist Carol Edgarian. To improve my understanding of the sentence, I began to read poetry. I took a class at the Y with David Yezzi to learn prosody, and it changed the way I looked at every word. Whenever the poetry critic Helen Vendler came to the Y to give one of her seminars, I did whatever I could to attend.

There was so much to learn and practice, but I began to see the prose in verse and the verse in prose. Patterns surfaced in poems, stories, and plays. There was music in sentences and paragraphs. I could hear the silences in a sentence. All this schooling was like getting x-ray vision and animal-like hearing. I had no way to prove objectively the things I was learning, and I can’t tell you why I thought my self-curated education correct, but I followed the steps I could afford to take and somehow trusted that I would learn how to write something fine.

When I ran out of money for classes, I went to readings and bought hardcover books I could not afford. At the bookstore or library, I’d sit all the way in the back. If there was a Q&A, I would have half a dozen questions forming a lump in my throat, but I wouldn’t voice a word. I went to the readings of Herman Wouk, Marilynne Robinson, Junot Díaz, Joyce Carol Oates, Gary Shteyngart, Julian Barnes, Richard Ford, Jay McInerney, Chang-rae Lee, Veronica Chambers, Ian McEwan, Joan Didion, Susanna Moore, Shirley Hazzard, James Salter, Kazuo Ishiguro, Toni Morrison, Rick Moody, Susan Minot, and many more. I wanted to know: How did you do that? How did you send me into this whole other world of your creation? How did you make me feel these new and old feelings? How did you keep trusting that it was all worthwhile? And yet, I could barely form an audible sentence around them, but I suppose I didn’t have to, because I had their work, and their work spoke to me and stayed with me in a private way without me having to prove anything to them or them to me.

As a habit, I read on the subway. One day, I was finishing V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas on the 2 train, and I burst into tears, amazed at the magnificence of Naipaul’s literary achievement. I knew of his politically controversial attitudes (e.g., he thought women writers were unimportant), and yet I understood that in this work, this man had done something extraordinary with fiction. Through characterization and sympathy, Naipaul had made me care deeply for a humble and curious character, who so clumsily yet so vitally struggled for his wishes. Later, I learned that Arwacas, the fictional setting of the novel, was based on Chaguanas, an immigrant town where East Indian-Trinidadians live and where Naipaul had grown up. Naipaul gave me permission to write about Elmhurst, my town in Queens.

After the classes, the readings, the discarded drafts, I started to research my novel like I was a journalist. When I wanted to learn more about my character Ted Kim, the investment banker, I interviewed several men who went to Harvard Business School. One of them told me that I should pretend to apply, because one had to see a school like that to believe it. So I did. I logged into the website, and I filled out a visitor’s form, and I was able to come in for a day.

I sat in on a class. There were maybe 25 students, and each person had a name card in front of him or her. It was impossible to hide in that room; however, what was clear to me was that no one was hiding. It wasn’t like any class I had ever attended in high school, college, or even law school. I don’t know if everyone in that room had done his homework or if she understood the lecture and the complicated spreadsheet on the whiteboard, but I learned something about these attractive young people. I surmise that what distinguishes a Harvard Business School student is his confidence in his abilities. I have never been in a building so filled with young people who look like they can do anything and want to solve very difficult problems. After a few hours, I started thinking that maybe I should apply for business school because the energy was so buoyant. If anyone was depressed or anxious or doubtful, I think he or she must have stayed home that day. No, I did not apply to HBS, but that day changed me, because I started to value research, not for the details or the velvet scraps of dialogue, but for the feelings that new information made me have. I felt confident just by being with other highly energetic people. I wondered what it would be like to have two years of that atmosphere when even I, an applicant pretender and a writer with no book, felt that positive after mere hours. So I took that feeling and gave it to Ted, a man who believes that he is right even when he is troubled or afraid. Ted’s convictions propel him to great economic success. However, even his convictions are weakened in the presence of sexual desire and a secret yearning for a kindred person. Ted is not good, but research allowed me to recognize his vulnerability, which allowed me to love Ted in his totality.

Then something wonderful happened. The Missouri Review published a story I’d rewritten 17 or 18 times. I had a Bankers Box filled with just drafts of that one story. Maybe that’s what it took.

Not much after that, my wrists began to hurt. I had trouble lifting a coffee cup. My son was in preschool then, and to drop him off and pick him up, I had to walk a few blocks, but it was painful. My ankles were swollen and holding hands with my son to cross the street was hard. I couldn’t turn round doorknobs or walk up stairs with ease. After several misdiagnoses, I was sent to a rheumatologist who guessed correctly that my liver disease was making me ill. I had developed liver cirrhosis, and I had never had a drop of wine.

There were a lot of doctors, and they wrote about my case to each other. A gastroenterologist wanted me to try a course of treatment with Interferon, because I was so young, and liver transplants were not so easy to be had. For three months, I gave myself a shot of this medicine in my thigh each day. My hair fell out in clumps in the shower. When I bent down to sweep the floor, blood vessels would break in my face to make bruises. I could not leave the house sometimes because I had diarrhea or because I could not stop vomiting. Each day, I had a few hours of energy, and I would store them up for Sam, my three-year-old. I wanted him to think that I was well.

When the treatment ended, my liver function tests improved markedly. My doctor was cautious, so he took more tests. I continued to work on Free Food for Millionaires, compelled to finish a first draft. A year after the treatment, the doctor told me that I was cured of my chronic liver disease. One in a million, he marveled. I went home that afternoon, and I lay down on my bed with my good news. This life was unexpected. I told myself that I could not be so afraid of judgment that I would hold back. And so I did not.

When I sold the manuscript in the summer of 2006, I counted 11 years as my apprenticeship. I was 37 years old.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[dallasareaopinion]

Living wage versus living condition

I have been on the “we need a living wage” bandwagon for quite a while now. A friend of mine recently pointed out the correct way to address many of the social-economic problems we face is more a living condition fight.

In some ways, they are just about the same fight, yet by saying living condition you encompass a much broader way to define what we need as the working and middle class. He did not have to say more than two words to get me to understand the term living condition can be a better rallying cry all around than the term living wage. 

I can use some personal examples to help this distinction. First, though I remind the reader that I am an angry old man. It took years for me to claw my way back to a respectable wage since the recession. And this probably still matters to many. So using that knowledge this example might make a bit of sense. 

Healthcare is always a great example to use since just about everyone struggles with paying medical bills nowadays. So a couple of years ago I had day surgery that I had been needing for years. I had avoided it because of the cost. Then one day I ended up in the hospital and used up my deductible, so I thought I could afford the surgery. Well, not so fast, but to make a long story short, even after using my deductible and paying a few hundred dollars down I still had a bill that is taking me two years to pay off. Essentially come next April we will be getting a small raise in our take-home pay. Now I just recently got my last raise so I had a second job for two years, not just to pay this hospital bill. We do spend a bit more than we need to live in a place we really desire to live. It is all about location location location... joyfully I am able to walk to work. Anyway the better half works, I had two jobs and still, our budget was tight. Having a higher wage has helped, but it still leaves it difficult to continue to pay all past debts and save money. If the recession hadn’t hit us so hard then our lives would be much less stressful right now.

I hope I am explaining this well, but this is the living condition we should have and that is other people’s bad financial decisions shouldn’t impact hosts of other people to the point where they cannot manage a reasonable lifestyle. Nor should people, in any circumstances be put in a position that cost of living or healthcare or paying the utilities puts a strain on a budget. We should be able to earn enough, and the amount of the “enough” is not as important as what we can obtain with the wages we earn to live a reasonably stressless life in a boring day to day fashion.

We cannot predict what will happen so the amount we earn should allow us to save, to prepare for what may come when life isn’t the boring day to day routine. Also our lives and when I say our lives I am speaking to the broader world. We are blessed in this country and what we have should be the generator of much of our foreign policy, or another words we should work hard to make our economic policies be something other countries want to import to help their own people. Anyway our lives and what we “earn” should allow us to generate savings to be able to invest, or build a business or invest in our children’s future. Yes, we may have to make some sacrifices if we want to step out completely and take a chance on something completely new, yet we should be able to participate in the broader success of day to day living. 

Nothing will be perfect, but with the wealth concentration of modern economics, we are doing damage to the human condition. People’s lives shouldn’t be held hostage so a few people can accumulate more and more wealth. There has to be a balance. A person obtaining wealth in and of itself is not bad, but when the only people allowed to be successful are the same people over and over again you eventually destroy the fabric of society.

This society needs strong eduction, strong middle class, strong culture, strong values to thrive, yet when this is taken away as what is happening in our country now sooner or later the piper will be called and someone will have to pay in ways we, nor the uber-wealthy really want. 

A living condition is a better term than living wage because if we argue about what the minimum wage should be or what income is middle class we lose sight of what is more important and that is the overall condition of each individual. One hospital bill or one accident or one death in a family shouldn’t put a strain on a family’s budget. We should all be able to deal with a normal amount of life with a regular income. 

It is when people are working two jobs to pay the rent, light bill and eat food that the living condition is suffering. If you are having to do that you have no time to help your children succeed, plan for retirement, save for a rainy day or to handle unexpected events or pay hospital bills even when you have used up your deductible. To me, a second job is for saving for luxuries or savings or something special so having one should be a bonus not a necessity. And then the opportunity of having a second job, especially if temporary, benefits yourself and creates more economically for all. 

I said I would stay away from political posts as much as possible till 2020 since that is the election year, however, pocketbook issues and balancing the wealth gap are priorities we should address with the people running for office. 

If you have read this blog regularly you know I have put forth many ideas to address these issues. And I will continue in this endeavor in my blog all next year. In 2012 I wrote a very verbose platform for a fictitious third party that addressed these issues. In 2016 I posted ideas throughout the year. In 2020 I hope to get back to a full platform, yet be much more succinct. 

We still need new parties.

Cheers

[lilac-milk-moon]

Sitting Poolside with Sebastian and Tawnya from Money Saved is Money Earned

The Sitting Poolside interview series

When people think of retirement, scenes of beachfront homes, rounds of golf, or reading by the pool come to mind. Sitting Poolside is a series of interviews that challenges that notion and other financial misperceptions. The series name pokes fun at the stereotypes, but it’s also an opportunity to discuss people’s real stories and unique insights. So grab a piña colada and pull up your lounge chair!

Sebastian and Tawnya from Money Saved is Money Earned

Sebastian and Tawnya started Money Saved is Money Earned so they could share their knowledge of help others understand financial topics and reach their money goals. Neither of them are wealthy because of inherited wealth or ultra-lucrative careers — they have been able to reach their money goals and become “rich” through savvy financial planning.

They offer a diverse perspective because they are at different stages in life and come from very different backgrounds.

About the blog

Mr. SR (MSR): From your site, I know that you are co-bloggers who manage Money Saved is Money Earned together. What inspired you to start the site and to approach it this way? How do you make decisions and balance both of your opinions?

Tawnya: I met Sebastian many years ago through a former colleague of mine and we’ve always gotten along well. Despite our differences we have a very similar outlook on life, and he’s been a very helpful mentor for me.

Many years ago, Sebastian mentioned to me that he’s always wanted to start a business of some kind. He’s also very passionate about helping others. I’d been following a few bloggers and I thought between the two of us we could put together a great resource for people to learn about personal finance. Thus, the blog was born.

As for making decisions and balance, we hold formal blog meetings and try to treat all aspects of these meetings like you would any business. We make suggestions and offer feedback to one another. One thing that makes us a good partnership is we have expertise in different areas, so we let the other handle what they’re good at.

Sebastian: I worked in the financial field over two decades. Subsequent to my career, I started volunteering at Catholic Charities as a financial coach and a counselor and I came across many horror stories from many of my clients.

Most of my clients were taken advantage of by businesses, financial institutions, and car dealers. Some of the stories are flat out mean and cruel, especially to the low-income and less educated people. Such stories made me furious. This is one of my primary reasons for starting a personal finance blog. I want to educate and show the average Joe how to conduct their personal finances without being a victim. 

I also shared some of my personal finances and success with my current co-blogger, who is pretty darn good with money herself. My co-blogger couldn’t wait to start a personal financial blog in order to share some of my success stories and our combined insights in order to help others get ahead.

Reaching the audience

MSR: Sebastian, it’s interesting that you mention being inspired to help people who are less financially literate. I recently surveyed personal finance blog readers, and that was one of my main takeaways too — the blogging community needs to connect more effectively with people who are not currently as financially literate.

What are you doing to connect with this audience? What is your best advice for people who are just getting started with financial literacy or who have been victim of financial predators in the past?

Sebastian: That is a good question, and one we’ve grappled with from the beginning. Unless someone finds an article through a Google search, the vast majority of people reading PF blogger content are other PF bloggers and not those who need this information the most. Of course, we’ve tried to do a good job with SEO and some keyword research to give ourselves the best chance of reaching people organically, but we’ve also worked to help spread information by any means we can.

I am a financial coach and promote our blog through that organization, but I am also actively trying to work with people who need financial assistance. Tawnya has advised her colleagues and friends on financial matters when it’s come up. Hopefully, collectively the PF blogger community can begin to reach those who need it through our blogs and our daily lives.

As for those just getting started or who’ve been victims, the biggest piece of advise I can give is to not feel ashamed, stupid, or to ignore it. All of us have been taken at one time or another, and no one is 100% proficient in all financial topics. It’s okay to not know something and it’s okay to ask for help. Just acknowledging that there’s a problem or a lack of information is a huge step in making changes. Check with people you can trust and look for local resources.

Their financial journeys

MSR: Tawnya, you share that you are in the midst of your career and that you previously held multiple part-time jobs to pay off debt and reach your goals quickly. What motivated you to pursue your goals so enthusiastically? Can you share more about your journey so far?

Tawnya: I’m not sure what prompted me to pursue some of my goals as a younger person. However, I have had some great mentorship in the form of my grandparents and others such as Sebastian. I learned about saving money and only buying what you can afford from my grandparents, and my desire to buy a house came from seeing that modeled as the majority of my family owns their own house. 

As for working multiple jobs, I did that because that was the only way I was going to be able to save up enough to buy my house and also be able to pay off my student loan debt. Since joining the personal finance community, I’ve learned a bunch about investing and wealth-building and that has become my focus even though I plan to work a full career as a teacher.

MSR: Sebastian, you share that you immigrated from India to the US when you were 22, worked your way through college, and are now retired early (after a financial analyst career and creating a rental property portfolio). Congratulations!

Your story is encouraging for all of us. Can you tell me about some of the challenges you faced along the way? How did you overcome them?

Sebastian: During my initial few years, I was busy looking for ways to earn a living and getting myself through college so I could land a decent job. Even though I did not reach exactly where I wanted to be, I must say that I was lucky enough to land a career with an above average income and live the typical middle-class life. Hey, you shoot for 110% and land at 80%. This is the formula for an immigrant when they have to compete with the dominant main stream population! 

As I look back, I have been a victim of discrimination from college, work, and in my everyday living. As we all know, many of us become immune to some form of adversities in our life. It is like a traffic jam, can’t do anything about it. I often told myself that discrimination due to my color or nationality is just another form of judgement from other people. They just don’t know me.

On the other hand, I decided to embrace everyone I met and try learning from them to get ahead in my life. That is part of my success. The key ingredient for my success has been focus and perseverance until you accomplish your goal. In my case I had to adapt to the environment to be successful rather than trying to change my environment.

Wealth

MSR: What was your concept of wealth when you were growing up? How do you view wealth now, and what changed your perspective?

Tawnya: Growing up I had most of what I wanted. On the other hand, I’ve always been one that didn’t want much. I’ve always been frugal and reluctant to spend, and when I do spend, I make sure I get what I want and keep it.

My family was very much focused on things and material possessions. While we did take vacations and do fun things, the focus was on working hard and saving for a better car, house, whatever. As a kid it was easy to look at what people had as a measure of wealth but as an adult I now realize that looking purely at what others have is a false measure.

What changed that for me was learning about topics such as net worth, savings, etc., and realizing that many who have things have very little money to their name. I also experience the tendency to judge a book by its cover in my own life.

I drive an old beater Camry and people make all sorts of assumptions about me because of it. They have no idea I have a house, no consumer debt, and the savings/investments I do.

Sebastian: I believe that we all need money to live, but if we just live for money life can lead you into many unhappy and unhealthy consequences. I had the luxury of growing up with virtually no money or conveniences of life. It gives a different perspective to me about wealth.

However, safeguarding my hard earned income is the number one priority. I would say everyone should try managing their wealth meaningfully. Be frugal, escape consumerism and read Money Saved is Money Earned!

Early retirement

MSR: Tawnya, are you hoping to retire early? If so, what are your plans for your future early retirement years?

Sebastian, what are your plans for your current early retirement?

Tawnya: I am not currently planning on retiring early in the sense that most other bloggers discuss, although I will likely be able to retire early compared with most people. I’m a teacher and plan to work a 30-year career in part to enjoy the benefits of a lifetime pension. I’ll hit 30 years at age 56 and should be able to comfortably retire around there.

My plans are to travel, spend time with my niece and assist her in any way I can, and spend time with family and friends.

Sebastian: I have been retired for nearly six years. The first six months, I emptied myself from my career and became nobody, nowhere, and nothing. It was great! Now, I see that even though I am not a workaholic, I need to be productive every day, otherwise I feel empty. During the first three years, on and off, I took some part-time assignments.

The latter years I am heavily involved in volunteering. I worked as a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) to assist foster children for the first year. For the last four years I have been volunteering as a financial coach at Catholic Charities. I am also a board member (treasurer) of the Mental Health and Addiction Association of Oregon.

Teaching

MSR: Tawnya, what motivated you to choose a career in teaching?

Have you found that the same experiences that lead you to your career have also affected your passion for helping people with their finances?

Tawnya: Honestly, I never wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be a psychologist, but I graduated right after the recession and couldn’t get into grad school. I needed a job and ended up working at the same facility I now teach at but on the mental health side. I was able to see many different career paths related to mental health (therapy, psychiatry, psychology, social work, etc.) and the only thing that seemed to be making a difference was teaching.

I decided to go back, get my master’s in teaching, and I’ve been working at the same facility as a teacher ever since (you can read more about my unique teaching situation in the interview I did for Educator FI).

I would definitely say my career has effected my desire to help people with finances. I’m pretty savvy financially and have a background in psychology, so I can bring an interesting perspective to finances.

Advice

MSR: What’s the most helpful book or blog post you’ve read recently? 

Tawnya: I read articles every week that are helpful to me so it’s impossible for me to pick just one. However, I read Grant Sabatier’s book Financial Freedom for a review we did before it was out, and that book really got me thinking about some things I hadn’t before.

For one, I changed my investment strategy as a result of that book, began investing more of my income, and am now looking at purchasing a rental property.

Sebastian: The books I read are more academic in nature. I had the opportunity to learn about money management through my career through continuing education, training, and everyday financial work. Besides finance, I am continuing to watch and learn about astrophysics, which is a topic I greatly enjoy.

MSR: What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Tawnya: I think the best advice I’ve ever heard is something my grandfather said for an article we did featuring him when he turned 90 last year. He came from poverty and abuse to where he is now, and he said to strive for better, not best. I’ve heard other versions of this advice in PF circles as well. It usually looks like “compete with yourself,” or “only compare yourself to where you were, not others.”

I think this advice is really important because all we can do is try and improve our situation the best we can. It may not seem like a lot compared to others, but all we can do is try our best to do the best that WE can. I think that goes for whatever financial goals we have, whether it be financial independence, semi-retirement, early retirement, or none of it.

Sebastian: Being retired, I must emphasize making sure you have sufficient income for all the expenses from this point on. Not to scare you, it is the reality. Have you considered all your one-time expenses for the next twenty years such as roof, furnace, water heater, car etc.? I know it is a bit extreme.

The next question is what are you going to do after you retire? You must have a plan. If you just want to retire since you worked for a long time, unless there is a good reason, you may want to consider continue working at least part time to build up some reserve or to increase your retirement.

MSR: Thank you both for sharing your stories. I love seeing how you’re working together and leveraging your unique experience to help others! I’m looking forward to see how Money Saved is Money Earned continues to grow.

  The post Sitting Poolside with Sebastian and Tawnya from Money Saved is Money Earned appeared first on Semi-Retire Plan.

from Semi-Retire Plan https://ift.tt/34I53f1 via IFTTT

[zi-tales]

Interview: Aum Yzyrlid