#title: Higher Education

[dykedvonte]

Interesting that the two people Jimmy had the most issues with where the only two with concrete and valued titles as Nurse and Captain…

More interestingly, how he holds those titles above them to stiff arm them into doing what he wants while not really respecting their positions.

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

Just remembered I have a psychiatrist appointment so early tomorrow. And I obviously dyed my hair so recently because there's green staining on my face. I don't think it's going to look great for the bipolar diagnosis, to disclose that I was feeling impulsive and wanted to get control over something, so I dyed my hair at midnight.

[kingofmyborrowedheart]

i’ve been wondering how you make swiftlet- do you listen to taylor’s entire discography for each episode or do you just listen like normal and take notes when something you want to discuss comes up?

Hi Miles! So Swiftlit started out as my senior capstone project for college. I chose to write about expanding the literary canon in higher education and using music as a way to enter into analysis and I specifically used Taylor’s music as an example. For my creative piece I decided to write podcast scripts combining literary theory and Taylor’s music, so the Feminist Theories, reputation and Characters episodes were the pieces I wrote for it. I just expanded on them for the actual podcast and separated the rep bits from the Characters one and turned them into two episodes. For the other episodes if there’s a holiday coming up I try to think of some theme related to it I could center an episode around. Before actually starting the podcast, I jotted down some potential episode ideas of parallels that particularly strike me in her works and I’ve just been bouncing around that list. I don’t tend to actively seek out an idea, although one might hit me when I’m listening to her music. I’m just kind of aware of the parallels and common themes she writes about thanks to listening for so long and my background in Creative Writing and literary analysis. I’ve been “trained” to search for connections and themes in all kinds of work so it just kinda happens with hers too. I do have a big lyric document that I go through and search for key words if doing a Marvelous Motif episode to help me out; though this time I went song by song to make sure I didn’t miss anything. To sum up this long rant: I essentially just have too much Taylor knowledge floating around in my head that I call on and see if I can find a decent amount of connections with other songs to get an episode out of.

[edwisefoundation]

How Much of a Study Gap is Acceptable in the USA?

If you're considering taking a gap year before pursuing higher education in the USA, it's crucial to understand how it might impact your application. While a one-year gap is generally accepted by most U.S. universities without requiring extensive justification, longer gaps may need additional explanation.

Whether you're applying for undergraduate or graduate programs, the key is to use your gap year productively, engaging in activities that enhance your personal and academic growth. For more insights on how much of a study gap is acceptable in the USA, visit the provided link: How Much of a Study Gap is Acceptable in the USA?.

[nasa]

NASA Inspires Your Crafty Creations for World Embroidery Day

It’s amazing what you can do with a little needle and thread! For #WorldEmbroideryDay, we asked what NASA imagery inspired you. You responded with a variety of embroidered creations, highlighting our different areas of study.

Here’s what we found:

Webb’s Carina Nebula

Wendy Edwards, a project coordinator with Earth Science Data Systems at NASA, created this embroidered piece inspired by Webb’s Carina Nebula image. Captured in infrared light, this image revealed for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth. Credit: Wendy Edwards, NASA. Pattern credit: Clare Bray, Climbing Goat Designs

Wendy Edwards, a project coordinator with Earth Science Data Systems at NASA, first learned cross stitch in middle school where she had to pick rotating electives and cross stitch/embroidery was one of the options.  “When I look up to the stars and think about how incredibly, incomprehensibly big it is out there in the universe, I’m reminded that the universe isn’t ‘out there’ at all. We’re in it,” she said. Her latest piece focused on Webb’s image release of the Carina Nebula. The image showcased the telescope’s ability to peer through cosmic dust, shedding new light on how stars form.

Ocean Color Imagery: Exploring the North Caspian Sea

Danielle Currie of Satellite Stitches created a piece inspired by the Caspian Sea, taken by NASA’s ocean color satellites. Credit: Danielle Currie/Satellite Stitches

Danielle Currie is an environmental professional who resides in New Brunswick, Canada. She began embroidering at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic as a hobby to take her mind off the stress of the unknown. Danielle’s piece is titled “46.69, 50.43,” named after the coordinates of the area of the northern Caspian Sea captured by LandSat8 in 2019.

An image of the Caspian Sea captured by Landsat 8 in 2019. Credit: NASA

Two Hubble Images of the Pillars of Creation, 1995 and 2015

Melissa Cole of Star Stuff Stitching created an embroidery piece based on the Hubble image Pillars of Creation released in 1995. Credit: Melissa Cole, Star Stuff Stitching

Melissa Cole is an award-winning fiber artist from Philadelphia, PA, USA, inspired by the beauty and vastness of the universe. They began creating their own cross stitch patterns at 14, while living with their grandparents in rural Michigan, using colored pencils and graph paper.  The Pillars of Creation (Eagle Nebula, M16), released by the Hubble Telescope in 1995 when Melissa was just 11 years old, captured the imagination of a young person in a rural, religious setting, with limited access to science education.

Lauren Wright Vartanian of the shop Neurons and Nebulas created this piece inspired by the Hubble Space Telescope’s 2015 25th anniversary re-capture of the Pillars of Creation. Credit:  Lauren Wright Vartanian, Neurons and Nebulas

Lauren Wright Vartanian of Guelph, Ontario Canada considers herself a huge space nerd. She’s a multidisciplinary artist who took up hand sewing after the birth of her daughter. She’s currently working on the illustrations for a science themed alphabet book, made entirely out of textile art. It is being published by Firefly Books and comes out in the fall of 2024. Lauren said she was enamored by the original Pillars image released by Hubble in 1995. When Hubble released a higher resolution capture in 2015, she fell in love even further! This is her tribute to those well-known images.

James Webb Telescope Captures Pillars of Creation

Darci Lenker of Darci Lenker Art, created a rectangular version of Webb’s Pillars of Creation. Credit:  Darci Lenker of Darci Lenker Art

Darci Lenker of Norman, Oklahoma started embroidery in college more than 20 years ago, but mainly only used it as an embellishment for her other fiber works. In 2015, she started a daily embroidery project where she planned to do one one-inch circle of embroidery every day for a year.  She did a collection of miniature thread painted galaxies and nebulas for Science Museum Oklahoma in 2019. Lenker said she had previously embroidered the Hubble Telescope’s image of Pillars of Creation and was excited to see the new Webb Telescope image of the same thing. Lenker could not wait to stitch the same piece with bolder, more vivid colors.

Milky Way

Darci Lenker of Darci Lenker Art was inspired by NASA’s imaging of the Milky Way Galaxy. Credit: Darci Lenker

In this piece, Lenker became inspired by the Milky Way Galaxy, which is organized into spiral arms of giant stars that illuminate interstellar gas and dust. The Sun is in a finger called the Orion Spur.

The Cosmic Microwave Background

This image shows an embroidery design based on the cosmic microwave background, created by Jessica Campbell, who runs Astrostitches. Inside a tan wooden frame, a colorful oval is stitched onto a black background in shades of blue, green, yellow, and a little bit of red. Credit: Jessica Campbell/ Astrostitches

Jessica Campbell obtained her PhD in astrophysics from the University of Toronto studying interstellar dust and magnetic fields in the Milky Way Galaxy. Jessica promptly taught herself how to cross-stitch in March 2020 and has since enjoyed turning astronomical observations into realistic cross-stitches. Her piece was inspired by the cosmic microwave background, which displays the oldest light in the universe.

The full-sky image of the temperature fluctuations (shown as color differences) in the cosmic microwave background, made from nine years of WMAP observations. These are the seeds of galaxies, from a time when the universe was under 400,000 years old. Credit: NASA/WMAP Science Team

GISSTEMP: NASA’s Yearly Temperature Release

Katy Mersmann, a NASA social media specialist, created this embroidered piece based on NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) global annual temperature record. Earth’s average surface temperature in 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year on record. Credit: Katy Mersmann, NASA

Katy Mersmann is a social media specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. She started embroidering when she was in graduate school. Many of her pieces are inspired by her work as a communicator. With climate data in particular, she was inspired by the researchers who are doing the work to understand how the planet is changing. The GISTEMP piece above is based on a data visualization of 2020 global temperature anomalies, still currently tied for the warmest year on record.

In addition to embroidery, NASA continues to inspire art in all forms. Check out other creative takes with Landsat Crafts and the James Webb Space telescope public art gallery.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[queers-gambit]

Give Every Man Thy Ear, But Few Thy Voice

title citation: Hamlet

prompt: similar to Penelope Featherington, you overhear your best mate's choice words about you after dancing at a ball.

pairing: Aemond Targaryen x female!Tyrell!reader

fandom masterlist: House of the Dragon

collection masterlist: The Truth Will Out - coming soon collection masterlist: Clingy Baby

word count: 18.3k+

note: SLUTTY ANGST CLUB, COME GET Y'ALL JUICE!

warnings: not edited. heapings of angst, hurt and no comfort, fuck your feelings. tweaked timeline, cursing, Bridgerton influenced, Aemond's both a bestie and an outstanding, fucking asshole - so is this vilified Aemond? eavesdropping trope, nicknamed reader, insecurity, insults, betrayl, abundance of ye ol' misogyny, self destructive tendencies; a single, non-graphic line that alludes suicide as an unserious threat to convey displeasure. there's men being men, men being gossipy little bitches, and the most random Lord of the Rings quote that kinda breaks the fourth wall?

Bridgerton - available to watch on Netflix 🍒 this fic was written before season three premiered

Jacaerys Velaryon version: coming soon

Tonight was a celebration that echoed across the entire Realm. Lords and Ladies alike with their service maids, House guards, any available singletons flocked to King's Landing for the courting season. They did this annually. Three solid months for eligible singles to make a match and attempt to secure their bond in matrimony.

Ladies wore layers of multicolored fabrics. Lords dressed in embellished tunics. Ladies tied on tight corsets to push their breasts to their necks. Lords shaved their facial hair, appearing "cleaned up". Ladies smelt of exotic perfume and Lords stood in shiny boots. All wore sparkling, gaudy jewelry.

While the Starks of Winterfell and the Umbers of Last Hearth traveled over a month to reach the capital, your family, the Tyrells from Highgarden, had a much more comfortable commute. Greyjoys and Mormonts sailed in from the Iron Islands and Bear Island, Tullys from Riverrun, Royces and Arryns from the Eyrie. Single, available, eligible Hightowers returned under Queen Alicent's sponsorship, Lannisters prowled in from Lannisport, and select few Martells arrived in gorgeous, gloriously golden carriages from Dorne.

Everyone who was anyone descended onto the Red Keep, eager to earn King Viserys' stamp of approval - being that he only granted one couple his presence at their ceremony. It was the highest of honors, a prize to be won, a chance to show off and show out; giving the two bonded families bragging rights until the next season. Plus there's a superstition that all weddings the King attended were prosperous, healthy, and long lasting marriages. There was a buzz in the air, a static of excitement and mystery; tension brewing when the members of court arrived and sized each other up for that first week. You thought they were silly for this energy, akin to strutting peacocks, treating their own like competition, treating bloodlines like currency.

You never realized how many purists there were.

While the other Houses had to travel, you were most lucky to already host residence in the Red Keep. Your uncle, Evin Tyrell, had once been in line to assume lordship over Highgarden, but after losing his son to the War of the Stepstones, Evin turned away from his inherited responsibilities; forcing it onto your father's shoulders. You had several siblings, both younger and older, and eventually got lost in your bustling, busy, arguably large family. Evin had no more children, wife long departed from this life, and was excited by the prospect of being a guardian; insisting you come with him to King's Landing, where he accepted a tutoring position for the King's children and grandchildren.

You were absolutely romanced by the idea of existing among the royal family, telling your father it was your one chance at a decent, higher education - an opportunity to study under the Targaryens being once in a lifetime. Truth be told, you're not entirely sure Lord Tyrell even processed your words, approving with a distracted grunt and a wave; gone by the next morning without even breaking your fast with your family. Evin hooked both your beloved horse and one of your father's young stallions to a wooden cart you shared, using the journey to King's Landing to prepare you for the life you were soon to live.

You had always been a little wild child, so, Evin felt it necessary to remind you of your manners; brushing up on your etiquette, quizzing you on members of the Royal Family, explaining what would be expected of you now that you were a guest to the royals.

For well over a decade, you were the single wildflower blooming through dragon fire, earning the moniker Rose of the Realm; living under Queen Alicent's good grace. She seemed to like you well enough, going as far as to invite you to family events after noticing the bond between you and her openly favorite son, Prince Aemond. Years ago, when you were fresh and new to the Capital City, your uncle brought you to attend Lady Laena Velaryon's funeral on Driftmark at the King's invitation. You already had a friendship with the young royals; keeping Helaena company, trying to sneak Aegon's chalices of wine out of his grip, and when the time came, rushed off over the sandy dunes with your best mate after he told you his plan to lay claim on Lady Laena's dragon, Vhagar.

After the King's heir, Princess Rhaenyra's (rumored) bastard son, Lucerys, slashed Aemond's eye from his socket, you became incredibly close. Impossible close. Like unbelievably close; being thick as thieves, joined at the hip, magnetically pulled towards one another before clicking into tight place. You were his pillar of support, his anchor to reality; and he was your salvation.

You realized you were in love with him when you turned ten-and-six. It was something strange, the two of you studying together in the library and when you looked up from your book to meet his eyes, you just understood. Something in your brain clicked, heart cemented in knowing, guts twisting in sudden realization, words caught in your throat and only letting out an inaudible gasp. Ever since that day, you were acutely aware of anything the Prince did; from the way he would caress the back of your head at each embrace, to his eye darting to look at your lips during conversations. From how he took almost every meal with you, to the way he insisted upon your invitation to family, public, and / or royal events. From the way he absorbed your secrets and opinions, to the way he shared his own - getting back what you put forth, forever mutual.

Being friends - best mates, even - with Aemond was easy. So easy, in fact, that nobody ever batted an eye when they saw the two of you unchaperoned. Your friendship was wholesome, endearing, supportive, enlightening, and pleasurably challenging in the sense that Aemond liked pushing your envelope; testing your boundaries. He set new standards and helped lift you to meet those goals, made you think harder, consider new points of view, expand your humanity.

What more could anyone ask for?

About half way through the current season, your uncle sent for you to join him for afternoon tea in the gardens. "Do you recognize these?" He asked when you arrived at the pavilion he sought shade under, admiring the bushes of florals surrounding the bannister.

"Of course," you smirked, hands behind your back as you stood at his shoulder, "they're honeysuckle."

"Native to only Highgarden, just like I called you in your youth," Evin added, plucking a bloom to admire. "Do you know why they're planted here?"

"I imagine through pollination?"

"A sound guess, but no," your uncle handed you the flower. "These were imported years ago, but have only bloomed now."

You nodded, sucking the bud to extract its honey-sweet taste, asking through puckered lips, "Imported by whom?"

"Do you remember your 17th nameday?"

"Oh, yeah, I guess, it was only a few years ago. You weren't here, you were on some diplomatic matter, right?"

"Inna way. After I concluded my affairs, I returned to Highgarden. You see, Prince Aemond confided in me how he wished to do something special for your birthday and knew you missed home. He asked me to bring these seeds back."

"Aemond asked you to plant honeysuckle?"

"Specifically here," Elvin grinned, "so they were within easy reach."

"So why have they only just now bloomed?" You tried to keep the jittery excitement out of your voice; baffled yet giddy from hearing about Aemond's kind gesture.

"There's an old legend," Evin gestured you to the patio table and chairs that was dressed for your social visit. "It's said, when the honeysuckle is gifted from lover to lover, they will only bloom when love surrounds them. I believe they have come to life this season as a portent to an impending match to be made."

"You spend too much time with Otto, Uncle, you're starting to sound like him - veiling your words and talking in riddles. Tell me why you called me here, Uncle, I know it's not for a botany lesson. Out with it, please, for the sake of my sanity."

Evin chuckled, watching you lean forward to pour two mugs of tea. "I was wondering, sweet niece, what the nature of your relationship is to the Prince Aemond?"

"Oh," you blinked, adding a sugar cube to your brew before stirring in a bit of milk, "well, I hate to disappoint, but I don't know what to tell you, Uncle. We're friends, nothing more or less."

"You seem real chummy."

"We're close, yes."

"Romantic?"

You scoffed, "Uncle, please - "

"Tell me the truth of it."

"Nothing inappropriate or unseemly nor nefarious has occurred between us, Uncle, I promise you. The Prince and I are just friends."

Evin sipped his tea, nodding slowly, "Well, humor me. If I asked who you would marry, who would you choose?"

"Well, as of right now, I'd choose myself since I don't know the men at court yet, only rumors and whispers."

"And if the offer of marriage presented itself, would you marry the Prince?"

"I would do my duty to our House, no matter the suitor."

Evin nodded slowly, "If I said I had struck a pact with the Queen and Hand, what would you say?"

"That despite what I've just said, if you marry me off to Aegon, I'll pitch myself from a window."

Your uncle's head tilted back as he belted short laughter. "I would never condemn you to such a fate, honey girl! Have more faith in me. I speak of Prince Aemond - it's why I asked about him."

"Uncle, speak plainly. Have you attempted to make such a match between the Prince and I?"

"Pending a few logistics, the Crown's interested in the match."

The words echoed in your mind on an obnoxious repeat for the weeks to come, surely living a dream. The longer you dwelled on the impending match, the giddier you felt; a secret smile brightening your features, small spring in your step, an air of positivity hanging around you that even the tiresome Rogue Prince wouldn't be able to taint. The One-Eyed Prince has long been your best mate for a decade, surely, this match would've been offered sooner or later; it was a smart choice, the definition of compatibility.

Some might've referred to this elation as "cloud nine", though you'd say it was cloud 10, 11, 12, 100! You were flying high, feeling good, and mistakenly allowing your hopes to heighten while imagining what marrying your best friend would be like.

You prepared for that evening's courting session with a dreamy, dazed look in your eyes. Even your ladies-maid picked up on your joyful spirit; questioning through her smile, "What's got you so distracted, my Lady? You've been staring off into nothing with that smile for an hour now."

"Huh?" You met her eyes through the vanity mirror, the woman standing behind you to intricately braid your hair. "Oh, no, no, nothing, I'm only lost in thought."

"Which thought?"

"It doesn't matter, it's just a thought. When it becomes a notion, I'll tell you, my friend."

She repeated with a grin, "'Yeah? When's that? Are you expecting good news?"

"Perhaps."

"Fine, fine, keep your secrets," she playfully tugged your hair. "Do you know which dress you'd like to wear tonight?"

"The lilac one," you answered, lips stretching your smile.

"You mean the dress that matches Prince Aemond's eye perfectly?"

You both giggled girlishly.

When you arrived at the Throne Room, there was already more than 75% of guests in attendance; getting a jump on their mingling. You greeted several familiar faces, locating your best mate standing at the side with his arms crossed and shoulder leaning on a pillar. "Well, you certainly look happy to be here," you teased when at his side, leaning on the other side of the intricate column.

"It was Mother's idea, Rosie, you know I do not dance," he frowned. "She's not given up the hunt to make me a match. She's adamant this is the year."

"Perhaps if you participate, you could organically meet your future wife."

"Hmm," his eye rolled, thin lips quirking in a smirk; gaze turned on you, watching you scan the room.

There was another 20 minutes of mingling before dinner was called, laid out on tables that stretched the entire length of the Throne Room. Naturally, like every single day, you and Aemond took side-by-side seats together at a risen table that hosted the royal family which provided an incredible view of those in attendance this eve. With your elbow, you nudged Aemond's bicep, making him lean over instantly so you could speak in his ear quietly. "Looks like Lady Fell and Lord Blackwood are gonna jump each other's bones," you mused, smirking, adding, "though I heard she's already hiding a growing belly and is trying to nab herself someone more mature in age with the intent to trick the Lord into thinking she's having his baby."

"No," he scoffed in amusement.

"Yes!"

"That's diabolical. Blackwood's the father? Truly?"

"I'm pretty sure."

"Good for him, good for Blackwood - didn't know he had it in him." He paused to take a pull from his goblet of wine, continuing, "Hm! Look, look," he grinned coyly, "do you see what I see?"

"It's packed in here, so... No, I don't see whatever you're seeing."

He snickered, "Lady Mormont looks smitten with Lord Greyjoy, looks like she wants to eat him."

"I thought he was romancing Lady Redwyne?"

Aemond hummed in amusement, "Perhaps he is considering options, courting more than one lady. Are we taking bets this season, again?"

You grinned, "Of course."

"Lay out the criteria, what're the parameters?"

After thinking a moment, you answered, "The pairing and timeline of impending weddings?"

"The stakes?"

You just shrugged, "Bragging rights?"

"Oh, c'mon, Rosie," he tisked.

"Fine, uh, how about... 10 Gold Dragons?"

"Both our families have enough money."

"Then you decide the rewards."

He lowered his voice, ensuring his family couldn't eavesdrop, "If you win, I'll go to Highgarden with you next time you visit. But if I win, you have to come flying with me on Vha - "

"No," you snapped instantly.

Aemond smirked, "Those are the terms, my Lady. Do you accept? Or will the Rose of the Realm shy away from challenge?"

Well, when you put it that way...

"Fine," you relented. "You're eager to lose so bad, let's do it. Who do you think will couple first?"

"Does it count if I get at least one correct? Such as, if I predict Lord Umber and Lady Lannister, but Umber marries Lady Tully, does it count that I still predicted Umber?"

You mulled his idea over, humming, stabbing a piece of roast goose from your plate to place in your mouth and chew thoughtfully. "Hmm, no, no, you gotta get the couple completely correct."

Aemond nodded, accepting your terms, "You really don't wish to go flying, do you?"

"What gave me away?"

Sharing a chuckle, Aemond finished, "All right, Rosie, bring it on."

When dinner concluded, once more, patrons were allowed to mix and mingle; dancing to the live band, drink spiced wine to their heart's desires. Like the common wallflowers you were, you posted at the side of the room with Aemond, content to watch the sea of vying adults trying to establish and rush courtship. It was the most comfortable you could be at these events, being anxious in judgmental crowds and seeking salvation from Aemond's domineering aura.

"Lady Tyrell," Jason Lannister purred as he approached you with his chest puffed out, "I was hoping to hold your ear tonight. Your father was telling me about your love to ride horses."

"Oh, my father said that?"

"That's who he said he was - "

"My father's in Highgarden, my Lord," you corrected, knowing for fact that Evin always described himself as your uncle.

"Ah, well, right," Jason cleared his throat in embarrassment. Did this pompous arsehole just lie about talking to your father to give the illusion he was an honorable man? That your father approved of the golden headed Lannister? "Perhaps you would honor me with a dance?"

"Perhaps not," Aemond cut in sharply, bringing the tension to focus.

"My Lord," you distracted, on behalf of Aemond's anger, "uh, thank you for asking, that's very kind of you. Though I'm afraid, I'm all, uh, danced out. I won't be on my feet much longer."

"Means fuck off, Lannister," Aemond growled, appearing positively murderous at the honey blonde's audacity.

Jason eyed Aemond, stiffly bidding, "I see. My Prince, my Lady, enjoy your evening."

You bid the older widower the same, Aemond chuckling the moment the lion was swallowed by the crowd. "As if you'd ever dance with a Lannister, let alone court him," he mused, looking down at you. "But he had the right idea, you need to dance at least once. Shouldn't waste this dress standing on the side with me."

"I'm quite comfortable here with you," you shrugged off, seeing your uncle at the royal banquet table exchanging hushed words with King Viserys and his Queen, Alicent.

"C'mon," he held his hand in offer, palm up.

"What? No, no, Aemond, I'm not dancing - I've two left feet!"

"You can break every toe on my feet and I'd still ask you. Just one dance. With me, Lady Tyrell."

"You don't dance!"

"Perhaps the mood has taken me. C'mon, petal."

Your head turned from left to right as if looking for someone spying on you. The moment your hand laid daintily in his, you melted right there on the spot, not having any coherent recollection about how you ended up in the middle of the overzealous contenders. You realized you'd follow this man anywhere.

Beating off your immense anticipation and overwhelming excitement to join The One-Eyed Prince for an intimate activity, you kept your composure amongst everyone else. But, my Gods, did you want to scream in delight the moment he placed one hand on your waist and the other clasping yours to raise in the air at your side. But in this position, you could feel the ridges of his stomach - making you briefly feel embarrassed, wondering how you must've looked to the members of court.

"You sure about this?" You whispered nervously, but you had a feeling that was due to the intense concentration he pinned you with.

"We'll be fine, Rosie, just breathe and follow my lead. I got you."

So launched your dance with Prince Aemond Trgaryen, second son of King Viserys. You couldn't divert your gaze from his porcelain, angled face to save you from overthinking your dancing skill - or lack there of. A few times, he'd smirk and whisper how good you were doing, mind flashing to an image of you and he, married, tumbling in bed sheets together while he praises you. Everything he did became sinful to you; every touch, every glance, every smile, every private studying session setting your skin on fire and heart to beat rapidly.

It was a longer song, string instruments creating a pleasant, ideal, slow-paced, soft environment. Yet you couldn't hear the music, too focused on Aemond's single piercing eye and quirked lips. It was as if the two of you existed outside of time and reality, forgetting the people packed in the stuffy room. Aemond told you softly, "See? You're not so bad at dancing - you just need the right partner."

You wanted to be partnered every single dance from now until your death with Aemond.

"I thought you couldn't dance?" You coyly questioned.

"I said I don't dance, not that I couldn't."

To your idle shock, Aemond gave you a few twirls that made your hair and dress fan around you in an angelic motion. Dare you say it, you even laughed with mirth when you found yourself enjoying the courting season more than ever before - all thanks to your best friend and hopefully, soon-to-be intended. You were acutely aware of his hot and heavy hands holding your flesh, knowing this feeling would burn into your skin to remind you of his closer-than-close proximity. To remind you of his gentleness, to remind you of this dance and the way he gave you his complete and undivided attention.

When the musicians concluded the song, you were grinning authentically while joining in the applause to show appreciation towards the artists.

"Gods," you panted, "that nearly winded me. Think I'm out of shape."

"And you said you had two left feet," he mocked with a scoff, head shaking, but the smirk on his lips told you he wasn't serious. "You're a natural, Rosie."

"You're not such a bad dancer yourself, my Prince," you complimented, the applause subsiding as a new song began. "Though you'll have to excuse me while I get a drink."

You parted way in search of two empty goblets and one of the servants carrying decanters of spiced wine. After being served, you rocked on your toes to try and gaze over the heads populating the room. You were unsuccessful, so, you backed up to the edge of the crowd and moved around the involuntary empty loop along the wall, behind the pillars. There was no reason finding the white haired prince with an eyepatch would be this difficult, yet, you got more than halfway around the room before finally locating him.

Once again, he was leaning on a column, but he wasn't alone. No, there was a gaggle of Lords around him, all exchanging chatter about the Ladies they had to choose from this season.

"Well, c'mon, what about you, Aemond?" Cregan Stark pondered. "Things with The Rose look like they're escalating - congrats. Are wedding bells on the horizon?"

Hearing your name, you quickly scurried behind the same pillar, just out of sight but able to still listen. Look, eavesdropping was highly frowned upon, you knew it was bad manners, but if you heard men gossiping about your name, you would've done the exact same!

Aemond scoffed in pure amusement, "Come off it, Stark."

"No, c'mon, mate, I saw you two," Cregan continued, "dancing together, pressed all close."

"You two make a handsome match, logistically speaking," Paxtan Florant labeled. "Could marry someone abundantly worse, I think you two are quite the pair."

"Handsome and logical as it may look, there's no possibility I'd court the Lady Tyrell, let alone marry her," Aemond declared with a chuckle, your heart stalling and brows wrinkling together. "The Tyrells only just obtained their name in court, they're still too low born for a prince to entertain. Peasants like that are uneducated, prominently not intelligent enough to be my counterpart; uncultured, unwise, unable to retain most information we study during lessons."

You blinked in shock. If anything, you were Aemond's ONLY intellectual counterpart!

"So, she's not as smart as you, mate, so what?" Cregan cocked his head. "You don't need smart, you need fertile and capable."

Though he was attempting to defend you, Cregan's words made your skin prickle. How could they think you weren't intellectually on their level? Was it because you were a woman? You read the same books, attended the same tutoring sessions, was questioned on the same material they were and hardly ever answering incorrectly! And yet now you're reduced to your reproduction system?

The Prince scoffed, "Think about it, if I married a Tyrell, their lowly standing would taint the Targaryen bloodline."

"So, it was all an act?" Paxtan snickered, "C'mon, mate, you two looked dazed, all enamored with each other. Can't convince us there's nothing there, not after that."

Aemond chuckled, "You want the truth?"

"Lay it on us."

"I shared a single dance with her because I pity her. Don't any of you? The way she all but repels suitors? Surely, you've noted her dresses as well? They're terribly revealing, unlike anything a proper lady would don. No self respecting woman nor future princess of mine would wear something like that. It's as if she's so desperate for attention that she has to flaunt her flesh just to get a man to look at her since her personality surely doesn't reel suitors to her."

The men laughed, your mouth dropping open in offense. You're not chasing men away - look what happened with Jason Lannister! It was Aemond who told him to fuck off! After years of friendship, was this truly what Aemond thought of you? How did it come to this - the man you loved, the man you considered your best mate, slandering your name to any able ear willing to listen? How could he speak such calamities about you? Was this entire friendship a folly, just a cover for his pity? Was he only your 'friend' to entertain his own selfish boredom?

Was everything just in your head?

"I don't know, I like how she dresses," Tyler Lannister mused, the teenaged son of Tyland Lannister, Jason's twin brother.

"None the less, I find desperation unattractive in a woman," Aemond rejected, tears gathering in your eyes to silently stream down your cheeks. "Besides, Lady Tyrell isn't my type, she talks far too much. Truly, there's never a moment of silence, I cannot even hear my own thoughts when she's prattling - and it's never anything of substance, just useless nonsense. It's as I said, it was a pity dance, I felt sorry that she has little to no suitors."

"Seriously, mate, have you considered the reason she has no suitors might be because of her proximity to you? They might stay away because they feel threatened by your friendship, thinking she's spoken for - and trust me, no man here would dare compete against a prince for a lady's affection," Cregan scoffed, mildly disgusted by Aemond's choice words.

"The courts know there's no affection shared between Lady Tyrell and I. We are simply friends - no more or less - and that's as far as our relationship will ever progress."

Cregan hummed, nodding his head sarcastically. Then his curiosity questioned, "Answer this: are you attracted to her?"

"Truthfully, I just don't think she's... Attractive enough to be my wife. She's a pretty lass, I'll admit, but if she's called the Rose of the Realm, I fear to learn the appearance of other ladies from Highgarden." A few lads chuckled. "Additionally, there will be public outings I must attend, and as my wife, the people will expect to see someone alluring - someone qualified and fit for the position as a princess of the Realm. Someone stunning and worthy of the title, able to fulfill royal responsibilities."

"Gods, why're you so against this match? You're being terribly superficial, judgmental, and defensive - she's your friend, after all. Wouldn't this be a love-match? Do you know how rare those are?" Luras Arryn snarled, sounding genuinely distraught and jealous.

"And if you're so against her, why do you constantly escort her to formal events?" Arnas Blackwood tacked on. "It creates the illusion that you're courting, my Prince, surely you're aware of that."

"As I stated, her blood isn't pure, but she's also criminally clingy. She's always lingering around and I feel awkward not inviting her to royal events - since she's right there, all alone, in front of me. I only invite her out of obligation. Again, I take pity on the girl, knowing when she leaves the Red Keep, she'll never experience this life again."

"Well, if not the Rose of the Realm, who do you have your sights on?" Luras Arryn asked stiffly.

Aemond's smirk was clear as day, answering swiftly, "The Lady Floris Baratheon is appealing enough."

The lads obnoxiously cheered in supportive approval, directing the conversation in a new direction about how bloody gorgeous Floris was - one of them even mentioning she deserved the nickname, Rose of the Realm.

You heard enough, more than enough, more than you ever wanted to know in an entire lifetime; rightfully insulted past belief and violently nauseated, feeling cold and mechanical. As swiftly as you could, you rushed to set the goblets down and speed walk towards the doors, shoving past both individuals and couples; not wanting to linger where you're clearly not wanted. Where you were apparently not welcome. After making your inconspicuous getaway, tears fell faster than earlier, mind replaying Aemond's words while sprinting to your chambers.

Describing you as clingy, desperate, unattractive, not his type. Dubbing you an improper lady who lacked self respect. Thinking you talk too much - that you prattle nonsense. Labeling you unworthy and unqualified to be his wife or assume the title princess with all the relating responsibilities. How he pities you and doesn't ever want to be more than your friend; thinking you're uneducated, uncultured, unwise. Declaring House Tyrell peasants who would taint his family's pure bloodline. How you 'have' to flaunt your flesh to attract suitors - since your personality did you no favors. Marking you a friend out of obligation...

Were you even friends? Did you even understand the definition of a friend? Have you been operating in a delusion this whole time?

In the words of King Théoden: how did it come to this?

Feeling utterly humiliated, you ran away from your peers; lungs heaving, huffing and puffing, panic ready to overflow. You burst through the wooden door, fully sobbing by now, engaging the iron lock and dropping to lean your weight against it.

Most, if not all, of your insecurities were aired out like soiled bedsheets for all eligible bachelors to know. Aemond might as well have hung a painted wooden sign around your neck: DESPERATE AND CLINGY LOSER - DO NOT ENGAGE.

Nothing about this situation felt normal, it all felt terribly impossible; absolutely heartbreaking and vile, like it was some kind of bad dream. But everyone woke up from dreams. You'd never wake up from this, you'd be forced to remember and relive it day after day. Tonight would haunt you, cast a dark shadow around you as if a thick, temperamental, torrential storm. Yet every storm eventually breaks, but tonight, there was no remedy, no shelter, no protection - you had to weather this alone.

It felt foreign, enduring anything by yourself. For years, Aemond was your partner, always at your side, level headed, insightful and wise; supportive, protective, calming, and something like a safety net when you faced trouble. Now, he's left you devastatingly alone; where after tonight, the very idea of being in the same room as him made you nauseated and anxious, fearful and small.

In that moment, your brain screamed that you were no longer welcome in the Red Keep - Uncle Evin's position be damned.

You sat on the stone cold floor for the better part of half an hour before your bottom turned painfully numb. After sluggishly hiking up your dress skirt, you removed your shoes and tossed them aside, standing to swollen feet to unhook your jewelry and place everything in their safe and proper place. Then, a particular necklace made of red rubies set in a thinly crafted Valyrian Steel chain caught your eye and mocked you. It was Aemond's gift on your ten-and-eighth nameday, laid in a plush velvet case for adequate preservation. This simple piece of jewelry was your absolute favorite in your collection, a treasure beyond words of appreciation that you greatly admired, now rusting in salty tears.

Being gifted this necklace had once convinced you Aemond might've felt the same for you as you do him. You remember even trying to rationalize it as a sign that the One-Eyed Prince was at a loss and didn't know how to confess his feelings. That he was shy, perhaps afraid to ruin your friendship if you didn't feel the same.

Angry tears of betrayal fell like acid over your cheeks, gritting your teeth, clenching your jaw as you snapped the velvet box closed and with a barbaric grunt, hurled it (with impressive strength) across the room. You felt so confused, so lost; deceived, lied to, and puppeted - and then the anger flared again when you realized what family you were angry with.

Why bother being upset, emotional, distressed? You had no right because your feelings truly didn't matter - not in the grand scheme of things. Nobody cared about your trivial feelings! You were just a Tyrell and by comparison, a peasant nobody who never deserved, earned, warranted, or was bestowed respect. In fact, to the Targaryens up on their mounted pedestals, none of you mattered - not a citizen in all Seven Kingdoms.

In fact, it was almost treated as a curse to not be a Targaryen. Some kind of punishment for daring to exist amongst the privileged royals as a lowborn - which, despite your family's newly established status in court, you were still characterized as. In their eyes, anyone NOT a Targaryen was lowborn; deemed unworthy to the white haired bloodline, being merely tolerated for the sake of politics, strategy, and reproduction. It was a sick game, and the Targaryens always won.

They do what they want, when they want, with no consideration towards other people's safety, emotions, wellbeing, stability, or comfort. The Targaryens were always stationed above everyone because, after all, they were closer to Gods than men; entire family spoiled, entitled, narcissistic, holier than thou, avoidant of any and all consequence.

They're legendary. Untouchable and worshipped.

And you? You're just a Tyrell, the tiny beetle trampled under the God's boot. Beetles were essential to any ecosystem, similar to the Tyrell's providing to the Realm productions of wheat, grain, barley, and corn. Similar to your family, beetles are also disposable - meaning the Targaryens might tolerate you, but they never need respect you. They could stomp you into the ground whenever they wanted because where one beetle died, three more takes place. Where one House might falter and fall, become doomed, eradicated, or subcomes to tragedy, others step up in an effort to establish their usefulness; prove their House's necessity to the Realm's ecosystem, attempt to diminish the threat of being razed to the ground by dragon fire.

Why be so upset with the Targaryens when they can do no wrong? What right did you have? And how could you ever think a Prince of the Realm would remotely be romantically interested in you?

You felt delusional and pathetic, crying over a man who was never in your league. Yet betrayal gutted you like a fish, a bright reminder that your friend would expose you like that; offer loud disrespect, speaking hatefully, to finally voice hidden malcontent. It felt impossible to stomach that your first friend, your favorite person, secretly hated you.

Because how could he not? You did not love anyone you could speak so lowly of.

Sobbing harder, you yanked pins out of your hair, working at break-neck speed to strip from your gown, then freezing when you caught a glimpse of yourself in the vanity mirror. The reflection looked distraught with exhausted red eyes; glowing in defeat, in a desperate need for a long, hot soak in the washtub. With shaking hands, you tossed a spare blanket over the mirror, despising the sight of yourself as Aemond's words continued to ring on a loop in your ears.

Clingy, desperate, unattractive, not his type. Improper, lacks self respect, talks too much, lacks suitors. Unworthy, unqualified, pitiful, never desiring to bloom past friendship - which is constructed around obligation. Uneducated, uncultured, unwise. Unfit, tainted, lowborn blood with a lowly personality. Revealing, tempting dresses.

Your mind, heart, and head screamed that no matter how hard you hoped, prayed, and tried, you'd never have a place among the Targaryens. Yelled that Aemond's right: you're ugly on the inside and out; damaged goods, undesirable - all because you were not born amongst fire and blood. Bellowed about your lack of quality, purpose, contribution. Reminded you that the one person you trusted unconditionally never truly wanted to be your friend; that he spoke horrendously on your name when absent, didn't value who you were - and never did.

He took every insecurity you confided in him and weaponized it; used it against you, made it into a joke with people you didn't trust nor want to know about you...

You sunk into the bath water, submerging as if to hide from your own thoughts.

The knock at your chamber door didn't surprise you. Servants and your uncle had been coming and going since you first refused to leave the morning after the ball. You figured Aemond would come around eventually, too curious for his own good and still under the impression he had to play "friend", thinking his deceit was unknown to you.

Aemond called your name through the door, asking, "You awake? Could I come in?"

You didn't answer.

He sighed, "C'mon, I know you're there. You haven't been seen in four days, you have to eat. You should get some air, feel the sunshine."

Silence.

Aemond frowned, "When you're ready, come find me, petal. I'm worried about you."

You wiped the tears off your cheeks, pulling your knees to your chest. For four days, you couldn't stomach the idea of running into the Prince, just wanting to avoid anyone or anything that would remind you of what Aemond said. You understood there were several decisions left to be settled, lost in an endless rampage of confusing emotions, maids bring you full trays of food and removing them with more than half still left.

Humiliation knotted in your chest, the harrowing thought of punishing yourself for being so stupid something you couldn't fight. All you registered was the feeling of betrayal, something that inked into every single thought you had, but with it came sinking realization that you were done. Simple as that.

On the sixth night, you sat with Uncle Evin, forking through your full plate and blurting, "Don't do it."

He paused to finish the bite in his mouth, "Do what, honey girl?"

"Don't - Don't make a match with Alicent and Otto. Don't make the arrangement with Prince Aemond."

Evin nodded slowly, washing his bite down with a mouthful of wine. "There a reason for your change of heart, love? The Queen thinks it's a handsome pairing. Just before, you seemed content with the match - dare I say, you seemed pleased?"

"Things change, Uncle," you spoke evenly, "and I can't shoulder this responsibility. In fact, I... I do not think I'm capable of making my own match. I will be stepping away from courting for the time being."

Your eyes seemed distant and dark, proving serious. So Elvin agreed easily, allowing you to withdrawal from the current season officially. He understood something was deeply amiss and didn't want to make worse whatever turmoil you teetered in. He didn't want to upset you and make things worse - you obviously had enough going on.

Aemond knocked again the next day, "Petal? You awake?" But you didn't answer. He sighed, "You've been missing lessons, love, and I just... I brought you some books. Thought maybe you'd like to catch up?" When there was no answer, he ended, "I'll just leave them here for you, petal... I'm not sure what's wrong, but I hope you're all right in there... I miss you."

You scoffed quietly, wiping your tears.

Ten days after withdrawing from the courting season, you left your chambers for the first time. But it wasn't like anything changed - it was still as if you were invisible, like a ghost. Losing your best mate turned you silent, refusing to attend lessons and since Aemond was your source for solace, had turned to seeking shelter at the Sept. It was the easiest way to avoid everyone - mostly Aemond.

He had shunned the religion the older he got, though respected his mother's devotion to it in trying times. He couldn't remember the last time he was in the Sept... So, it was perfect for you; a safe space.

You were no longer seen in the library - a once daily occurrence. If you ever wanted to read, you sent your ladies maid to collect content for you; but the drive to learn and read had abandoned you as swiftly as Aemond's loyalty. The stables grew cold in your absence, refusing to ride; something that troubled your uncle gravely. No longer did you take meals with family or Aemond, always seeking solitude to eat alone in your room or the physical kitchens; the Red Keep growing dark over your lack of sunshine - that had shone so brightly in the previous weeks. Even then, when you ate, it was in small quantities to only sustain yourself; mostly feeling nauseous when food was put on your stomach.

The first time Aemond saw you, you were returning from the Sept in a dress that reached close to your pulse point of your neck. He tried to get to you, but you slipped through the cracks of the Keep and disappeared when he dodged around a set of Kingsguard. Yet it was still a comfort to him to know you had left your room finally.

He knocked on your door about half an hour later, but like usual, you didn't answer.

"Rosie?" Aemond called, sighing. "I know you've not been feeling yourself, but, uh, tomorrow's Helaena's nameday. We're having dinner for her on the terrace..." He waisted, not hearing a single thing from within your chamber. "You're invited, as usual, petal. Your uncle said he'd attend, wanted you to know you're always welcome at our table."

But you didn't show up, you couldn't bear to see any of them.

You didn't eat that night, you were far too anxious and spiteful against yourself that you refused to allow yourself to indulge in celebrating your companion.

Despite withdrawing, you still heard rumor of all the matches being made and the courtships established through your ladies maid. A cord struck in your gut when you heard the couples you had bet upon were public and engaged, but so were Aemonds... Which meant you both won; and if things were different, would mean a flight on Vhagar to visit Highgarden. On nights of merriment, you would sit alone in the Godswood sometimes; attempting to connect to the Old Gods, but they never spoke back. They never connected with you.

Tonight, you were under the blood red leaves in earnest curiosity; quiet, just as you had been since the day you found out Aemond's betrayal and discouraged your uncle from making a match. It was there Elvin found you, frowning as he took a seat beside you in the grass.

"The Old Gods do not speak to me," Elvin offered softly.

"Nor I," you whispered.

"Yet I always feel at peace here," he nodded, sighing deeply. "I must ask you something, honey girl."

"Hmm?"

"Do you... Do you wish to depart? From King's Landing, I mean?" He questioned. "I ask because I intend to ride for Highgarden, your father's nameday nears. Your mother intends to throw him a grand celebration, since turning 50 seems such a milestone."

"You ride for home?"

"Tomorrow morning."

You paused, then answered, "I would like that... There's nothing left for me here."

Aemond's words had done irreparable damage, making you feel worthless and alone. Bitter. Damaged and unworthy of any such match; forever worrying if your best friend could harbor such ill will and hatred for you, surely, a husband would as well. Yet you were not new to being a woman; you knew the role you were to play, how marriage was strategic and calculated. Political. You could be a wife, you were so sure of it; but would you ever feel worthy of love? You feared you never would.

"We will stay a few weeks."

"I don't know if I would like to return, Uncle."

He offered a sad smile, "I figured as much. But should you want to, feel able to, you may return. You, my sweetling, are always welcome at my side."

You leaned into his shoulder, sighing softly. "I should thank you," you whispered in the wind.

"For what?"

"For taking care of me all these years," you lifted off him to meet his eyes. "You didn't have to, but you wanted to... And you've shown me a father's love when I thought it gone from my life. Thank you, Uncle."

He pressed a lingering kiss to your forehead, humming, "Don't tell the others but you were always my favorite. I consider it a great pleasure to raise such a gorgeous young lady - and I mean that, honey girl. Inside and out. Now," he pulled back and found his feet, offering his hand to you, "come, we've packing to complete."

"Of course."

However, while in the midst of packing, you felt a jolt in your heart. This had been your home of a decade or more; these people were who you grew and learned with. Who influenced your life in the best and worst of ways; they did not deserve to read your praise and thanks for friendship in a letter... So, you swung a cloak on and ventured out of your room.

Otto was first since he was the easiest to say goodbye to. He was gracious of your parting words of thanks; telling him how much you appreciated his wisdom and riddles.

Aegon was next. He insisted you share a last goblet of wine together - since you did not intend to delay your parting. It turned into a bit of a drinking game with his mates, but you didn't mind; far too used to the company of these debaucherous lechers. Dare you say, you enjoyed yourself.

Helaena was after, your words harder to say as your emotions strangled you. She was a sweet girl, an endearing companion, constant and dependable, albeit a bit strange and unorthodox. But you loved her all the same and cried tears of sadness when hugging her tightly as a last ditch effort to convey your gratitude for her authentic and generous friendship.

You only offered Ser Criston Cole a soft, "Farewell."

Alicent was perhaps hardest to say goodbye to. After Aemond, you were probably closest with the matriarch and found her wisdom and lessons a privilege to learn. She was kind to you; usually with a stern hand, but that was because she could recognize the little girl you once were who missed her mother tremendously. She introduced you to religion, another common bond. She encouraged you, supportive and curious; sharing affinity for the histories, often reading to one another for moments of peace.

Saying goodbye to Alicent hurt. You both shed tears of sorrow, the Queen wishing you the very best and insisting you return for her nameday and other celebratory events. She told you to write, told you to keep in touch; insisting if and when a match was made, to invite her since she would love to attend your wedding. Truly, Alicent considered you one of her own and to know you were departing in pain wounded her.

King Viserys was last. He was already in bed, half-asleep, a Maester at his side; but still, he accepted your audience. You thanked him for his hospitality and kindness - especially to your uncle. You thanked him for hosting you, for allowing you residence at the Keep and the for the years living under royal privilege. You told him you'd not forget his generosity.

You returned to your chambers after that and finished packing. You didn't sleep.

When morning broke, you stood in the courtyard with Elvin; packing the wagon you would use, your horse tacked and waiting as you both intended to ride. Alicent and Helaena came to see you off, hugging you tightly one last time before the Queen offered you a handheld velveteen case. "Just a little something to remember us by," she smiled lightly.

"Oh, as if I'm in a hurry to forget you?" You mused. "My Queen, this is too much, I cannot accept."

"You have not opened it."

"I do not need to, I know you," you smirked. "Your leadership these years is enough gift, my Queen."

"I'm not taking it back, you might as well accept it," she insisted. "Helaena and I picked it out together..."

You lifted the case lid, blinking in shock and gasping lightly. There laid a gorgeous chain necklace of Valyrian Steel, a dragon pendant dangling from front with gems of bright emerald - surely a representation of the Hightower side.

"Thank you, Your Grace, my Princess," you breathed, closing the case and caressing it to your chest. "It's more generous than I deserve but will treasure for the decades to come."

Queen Alicent nodded and pecked your forehead, leaving you alone with Helaena to speak with Elvin. The moment her mother was gone, the Princess asked, "Did you say goodbye to Aemond? I'm surprised he's not here."

"No," you spoke softly, "I cannot, Helaena, it is too painful to even look at him - let alone share words of parting. I have nothing left to say, no more words for him."

She frowned, "You know... I don't think he meant what he said. He says things he does not mean when anxious or feeling as if he's cornered."

Your head cocked, "What? H-How do you know what's been said?"

"I saw it - in one of my dreams."

You sighed, "I know you mean well - "

"I just do not wish for you to think that is his honest opinion about you."

"If it wasn't, he would not have spoken so loudly for so many to hear. Your brother has never sounded so sure, Helaena, I do not wish to relive it."

She sighed and nodded, "Will you write?"

"Every week," you promised, the two of you meeting foreheads and breathing as one. "Take care of yourself, Helaena."

"You, too, Rosie," she smiled, letting you depart. Alicent clipped your new necklace in place and gvae you a final hug, watching you mount your horse, stare at the pair for a moment longer, then follow your Uncle Elvin out of the courtyard.

As you rode down the streets, Aemond came sprinting out of the Keep in a blind panic after running into Aegon in the hall. Normally, Aemond wouldn't have bat an eye at his hungover brother, but he had said something about you drinking him under the table and demanded to know what Aegon meant. Upon hearing you had "left", Aemond sprinted to your bed chambers and didn't even knock - just burst in.

Never before had the Prince felt such anger as when he learned you had left King's Landing without saying goodbye. Without a single word to him - as if the past decade+ hadn't meant anything! He needed to know, Aemond needed to see for himself the truth because surely, someone was mistaken. His brother, surely still drunk and misremembering because there was no possible way you could've left! Not without Aemond! Not without a word! He refused to believe it.

He panted, tears gathering in his eye, finding your room bare and stripped. Aemond's breathing picked up in panic, hands shaking as he stepped into your room; looking, desperately, for any sign of life. But there was nothing... Nothing, save for a letter addressed to him left on your table with the ruby necklace he gifted you for your 18th nameday.

Gingerly, Aemond reached out and plucked up the necklace. He frowned, petting the jewels in disbelief; noting the way a few were missing, some loose - evidence of your anger. Slowly, Aemond sunk into a chair and with the necklace still in hand and his heart hammering in his chest in a rattle, opened your letter.

Aemond ― I know you'll be the one to find this, of that, there's no doubt. Sooner or later, you will learn of my departure and come looking, and for that, for being unable to say anything in person, I am sorry. Though this might come as a shock, it shouldn't as I would hate to give you the satisfaction of being right by burdening you with a desperate goodbye. I would hate for you to think I am clingy, even after our friendship died. So, I figure a letter is better than nothing. Goodbye, Aemond. Though all a lie and dedicated ruse, thank you for the years of friendship. You made time in the Red Keep pleasant enough. ― Rosie

Aemond sprinted to the courtyard, flinging open doors and shoving past patrons; desperate to find you, understanding you overheard him all those weeks ago and needing to apologize. He needed to explain himself, the confirmation now that Aemond was the cause of your pain and reclusion? His heart was about to burst. He skidded to a halt in the dirt, turning left and right and in a circle as he realized the gates were open and you were not in sight.

"Aemond?" Helaena questioned softly, Alicent taking to her side. "Brother?"

"Wh-Where is she?" He panted. "Rose - Rose - Rosie, where is she? Where is she!?"

"She's gone, Aemond," Alicent frowned, shaking her head slowly; startled by his desperate tone, "gone with her uncle back to Highgarden."

"When? When? When did they leave!?"

"She's gone, brother," Helaena snipped, sending him a look of disappointment; ears ringing from her dream, repeating what he had said to you.

Aemond swallowed harshly, asking his sister, "She heard me, didn't she? I know you know, Helaena, please, tell me. She heard me?"

The Princess nodded and walked away, the One Eyed Prince turning to his mother in desperation and for the first time in 10 years, perhaps more, he collapsed in her arms. Emotion clawed at his chest and into his throat, starting to tremble, sniffing heatedly; his mother's arms tight and comforting.

"I love her," he whispered.

"I know," Alicent answered, "but she should've been the one you told." A pause and her hand lifted to caress the back of his head, just like when he was a child. "It's too late now, Aemond. She's gone."

requesting rules and masterlist

HOTD masterlist

does this count towards the Clingy Baby collection? since Aemond technically calls her clingy amongst other things?

[inky-duchess]

Fantasy Guide to Wards and Fostering

I get a lot of asks about wards and recently it's been a FAQ. So here's a quick guide to warding.

What is Warding?

Warding was a tradition in which a noble it royal family would take in a child from another family to their home for the purpose of educating them and preparing them for adulthood or to protect their interests. Warding was seen as a big compliment to the family of the foster child, especially if the family that fosters their child is much higher ranking. However, warding could also be in response to the family's misbehavior and insubordination or in some cases their death. Warding isn't adoption. Warding does not entitle the child to inherit anything. They cannot inherit a place in the succession, they cannot inherit lands or money or titles.

The Ward

The ward was usually a child of a lower ranking family, between the ages of seven to maturity at 16 or so. Wards usually had parents in which case the foster family was charged with the child's physical and educational welfare. The ward could return to their parents at any time either at their insistence or with the blessing of their foster family. Wards were raised alongside the host family's children as well as other wards. They were fed, clothed and educated by their foster family as essentially treated as part of the family. However, wards that come from unfriendly or rebellious families were essentially used as chips for good behaviour. If their parents or kin act up, they could be killed. Wards could also be orphaned. In this case, their foster father would have control their lands and money which is why an overlord would seek to claim warship over a vassal heir to ensure peace. Wards could also be adopted by family.

The Foster Family

The family were nearly always higher ranking and usually had another motive other than charity for taking in the ward. Sometimes the child could be used as collateral against an untrustworthy family or sometimes they were prospective spouses for the family's heirs. It was the responsibility of the foster family to discipline, educate and protect the ward. They would be charged with teaching the ward all the trappings of their position from warfare to statecraft to etiquette.

Wards to Royal families

In some cases, a ward might strike gold and be warded at court by the monarch. Wards would live at court but would be unlikely to be taught the skills by the monarch or Consort personally but would be provided with the best tutors. Wards could be brought in to be companions to the Royal children or in order to ensure their inheritances were not subjected to disputes if they were orphans or again, if their family were likely to commit trouble. Royal wards were always nobility but in some rare and extreme cases they could also be royal themselves, usually of displaced and exiled families or as prospective matches to royal children.

Wardship & Women

In some cases, an unmarried woman or a widow could be placed in the protection of an overlord or male relative in order to protective her interests. If a woman was the heir to a grand title or vast fortune and had no father or brother, the monarch or overlord would insist that a male relative or her overlord would take her in lest her claim put her in danger. Usually, it would be up to their host to arrange a match or aid her in brokering one herself.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

A fun question your opinion: In each arc, what do you think is the theme of each arc? ( It can be a motif, messages, subject)

These are a mix of jokes and serious thoughts ^^ just to avoid the post from being too heavy overall!

The Rose-Red Tyrant:

Breaking free from perpetuating a cycle of abuse

You are your own person, not a puppet controlled by your parent/guardian

At the same time, you have to take accountability for your own actions (your background can explain your poor behavior toward others but it does not excuse that behavior)

Control that is too constrictive will only push away potential connections and experiences, keeping you isolated and complacent

Anger management classes are good for you, guys

The Usurper from the Wilds:

Let’s play fairly and be good sports!

Judging people for their merits rather than by titles or birth

What makes someone worthy to lead is noble behavior and attiude

Standing up for what’s morally right, even if everyone else seems to be against you

You have value, worth, and hope in spite of what others may tell you and put you down for

It’s totally okay to get revenge on the asshole that tripped you that one time/j

It’s technically not a crime if you don’t get caught (except Leona did, in fact, get caught)

The Merchant from the Depths:

Don’t be ashamed of your past self—embrace it, accept it, and use it as a point of reference for self growth

Be the bigger person rather than becoming a bully yourself

Let your accomplishments speak for themselves

There is no “easy way out” or shortcut; be prepared to face the consequences of your actions

Not everything is as it may seem (think about the “trick” with Azul’s contracts)

… Read the terms and conditions very carefully and think things over before you sign a contract 💀

Schemer of the Scalding Sands:

Wow, this baby can fit so much generational trauma!!

Sometimes you just miss each other’s messages or greatly misinterpret the other’s intentions (Kalim giving Jamil the benefit of the doubt, Jamil obviously being the Bad Guy and everyone else has to point that out to Kalim)

There’s a very complicated relationship between those in power and those without power; this can breed hatred for those at the top

Talent and skill left unacknowledged can fester into resentment

Institutions of higher education can and will accept monetary bribes, what are you gonna do about it?

Not everyone wants to reconcile and make friends; this is okay and should be more normalized

A Beautiful Tyrant:

You can try your best and work hard, but life doesn’t owe you anything (depressing thought, but unfortunately true)

Beauty is not limited to just one’s looks; beauty can also extend to one’s character and actions

Your worth shouldn’t come from external forces; if you are satisfied with yourself, you will always be “beautiful” no matter how you look or what losses you may experience

Public opinion and the entertainment industry are brutal af

Screw gender norms 😤

The Watchman of the Underworld:

The grieving process in general

Moving on from the past instead of fixating on it and letting the past consume your present and hold you back from a future

Learning to forgive yourself

Reaching out and making new support systems/opening up to others to help you cope

Bearing the sins of your ancestors (Shroud family curse)

The Lord of Malevolence:

Change is inevitable, all good things must come to an end; we must learn to accept them and bravely move toward the future

Love endures, transcending race (Sebek), blood (Silver), and time (Lilia)

Self-sacrificial love (Maleanor for Malleus, Lilia for the other Diasomnia boys, Dawn Knight for his own family, etc.)

Is it “true” happiness if it is a fake reality, a convenient dream?

We hate and fear what we do not understand, even though we have the capacity to

You cannot live forever in a happy fantasy world where none of your loved ones/favorite characters leave you, your trauma doesn’t exist, and everything conveniently pans out how you want it to; sooner or later, you must “wake up” and face reality (this point is particularly meta; it applies both in-game and in the real world, speaking to us players and our relationship with the escapist fictional content we consume)

Prologue: Welcome to the Villains’ World and Overall Main Story:

The power of friendship :))

Revisionist history (cuz… y’know… Great Seven and all)

We’re stronger together than alone

It’s okay to rely on others

We may be very different people from very different backgrounds, but it is still possible for us to understand one another

[imagine-knowing-a-name]

Spies and Secrets

Summary: Natasha has never met her handler, she couldn’t give you their name or identify their face because she doesn’t know it. When she rants about this to you, her wife, you have to laugh... because you are her handler.

Word Count: 2048

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x F!Reader

Warnings: Swearing, lying in the relationship (not in a bad way, just in a spy way), but otherwise it’s just fluff!

A/N: I went back and wrote this idea since it seemed semi-popular. Hope you enjoy :)

»»————-　★　————-««

"Will you finally tell me who they are?"

"This again, Romanoff?"

"Just a first name?"

Fury sighs to make his vexation clear, but that's not enough to dissuade Natasha; she remains determined as ever in her mission and smirks boldly in the face of her exasperated boss.

"Just an initial will get me off your back," the spy continues through his silence.

Fury scoffs and Natasha knows she needs a different approach.

"If it's you, you can just say, Sir."

"Me? You must be losing your touch if you think I have the time for that, Romanoff. Should Hill be taking your next mission?"

Natasha stops and stares with faux hurt while Fury continues on, grinning to his own amusement. He wasn't going to let her keep the upper hand for long.

"If you want to know, ask them yourself!" Fury calls over his shoulder, "Mission debrief. C12-2. 10 minutes. They won't tell you though; above your clearance!"

Natasha groans. As much as she hadn't expected a substantial answer from Fury – she'd been asking him the same question for years – she thought she might be getting somewhere, but no matter which trick she tries, Fury doesn't budge.

On top of that, he'd reminded her that it wasn't home time yet, her mission isn't over until she's briefed her mysterious handler. So Natasha sighs and makes her way to the conference room, still wondering why only her handler chose to shroud themself in mystery. All the other agents meet theirs directly, while Natasha sits in a room alone, waiting for a shadowy silhouette to call in.

The first few years went by without a comment – it wasn't her place to ask – but as she rose the ranks and found her role, her handler, too, remained just above her clearance. Even now, as one of the highest ranking agents, her handler was higher still. Curiosity built like a dripping tap; manageable and menial to start, only to provoke greater displeasure the longer it went on.

"Hi Agent!" the disembodied voice crackles through the speakers. That's the other thing driving Natasha towards irritation, her handler's tone. It's nothing like Fury's commanding orations. No, her handler speaks with an eagerness and informality reminiscent of a junior agent meeting their hero, rather than the commanding officer that they are, and have been, since Natasha first joined SHIELD almost a decade ago.

"Officer." Natasha replies. She had never been told her handler's surname, or even a title she could use to address them. Any attempts she made to learn had been properly shut down, forcing her to stick with the appellation of Case Officer.

"Always so formal," her handler laughs. "As far as I'm aware, the mission was successful, so what's got you so grumpy today?" they continue, noticing an uncharacteristic clarity to Natasha's mood that day.

"If you told me your name, I wouldn't have to be so formal, would I?" the spy snaps back. "And I'm not grumpy."

"Natasha, we've worked together for nearly 10 years now. I know when you're grumpy, and I can throw in an educated guess that my identity is the cause?"

"I've spent my life working in secret," Natasha shrugs, then pauses in search of the right words. "I'm well accustomed to dubious legalities and taking orders from the shadows. I'm also well aware that I would be a risk to security from the moment I joined until I gained the trust of this organisation, so I understood your secrecy."

Natasha stops again, noticing the silhouette begin to fidget; whether out of boredom or discomfort, the assassin can tell the time is right to make her final argument.

"We've worked together on hundreds of missions over this past decade, enough for you to know every detail of my life and mind, while I still know nothing about you. Have you thought about how that might hurt, officer? because it does! to believe I still haven't gained your trust after all this time. That hurts."

The room stills to a silence as fragile as Natasha felt. Her handler's reaction would dictate the situation; any information given could redefine the relationship between the two spies, just as another brush off would leave Natasha spiralling further into this curiosity.

A sigh finally echoes through the speakers; its long pause circling the sole inhabitant of the room. "It's above your clearance," the voice admits. Natasha slumps; she should have known better. "But-" The speed at which Natasha perks up draws out a small chuckle from her handler, before they continue with an audible smile, "I'll talk to Fury. See what I can reveal."

Natasha settles in her seat, unable to keep the broad smile from her face. "I do trust you, Romanoff, I hope you know that… I just don't think I'll be who you expect."

As a trained spy, Natasha wouldn't let that last line slide, immediately thinking of its hidden meaning. But before she can ask further questions, her handler clears their throat. "I think it's time we actually start the mission debrief."

»»————-　★　————-««

Natasha can't wait for the meeting to end. She understands the need – giving her side of the story, answering questions, sharing the intelligence she'd gained – but it drags on without incident and without any further comments on her handler's identity, so she'd much rather be at home. 

What reason was there for her not to do this from home? Her handler calls in from wherever they are, so realistically, Natasha could also pick up from wherever she is. Ideally at home, after a relaxing shower and a little time with her wife. Natasha supposes that's where the issue may lie: you, her wife, who has been led to believe Natasha is a security guard and nothing more. If you overheard a debrief, not only would SHIELD's confidentiality be compromised, but you might never forgive her lies. Natasha's home office was soundproofed though and, because of that, the assassin would take the risk if it means extra time with you.

Throughout Natasha's homeward journey and all through the mission debrief, you are the only thing to occupy her mind. Her mission finished in late afternoon, so she had planned how she would surprise you and spend the evening together upon her return, but then the debrief cropped up, and by the time her key is in the door, the sun has long since set, leaving her to wonder if you're even still awake.

You are. Just about. Your pyjama clad figure appears in Natasha's sight and you rush down the stairs to meet her by the door.

"You're home!" You beam as you wrap your arms over her shoulders and take her cue for a kiss.

"I am."

"How was your mission?" you tease. You know how seriously she takes each assignment, always doing prep work in her office ahead of the trips; she treated them akin to a secret mission and you never missed your chance to rag her for it. 

One of your favourite methods of teasing is to liken her to James Bond, which only gets more realistic when you catch her mouthing along to the movie lines.

"Top secret. Can't tell you," your wife jokes back, her smile threatening to burst off her face.

"No injuries this time?"

"None at all."

"Good girl." She preens. "Have you had dinner?"

"Not yet, I came home as soon as I was done. Couldn't wait to see you."

"Sweet talker," you laugh and kiss her again, then take her by the hand, "I put some leftovers in the fridge, you clean up, then you can eat and share your 'top secret' thoughts."

The evening's plan formed just like that; you reheat the noodle dish while Natasha takes a shower, before the two of you come back together to sit at the dinner table.

"So, how was it really?" you ask her.

"The job itself was alright, no problem." Natasha replies, but by the way she's stabbing the noodles with her fork, you can tell something else is coming. "But my bosses…they just won't tell me all the information. Say it's 'above my clearance'."

"The cheek of them."

"Don't mock me."

"I'm not, I'm not! I promise, love," you say, though you can't hide your barely contained laughter thanks to the prominent pout on your wife's face. You school your face back into an expression of neutrality before you talk again, "that sounds annoying. Do you need this information?"

"No," she sighs, "it's just a matter of trust."

"Well, you must be working with idiots for them not to trust you after all this time."

"Mm, you reckon I should tell that to them?"

"You definitely should."

The smile comes back to Natasha's face as she shakes her head, "you're going to get me fired, sweetheart."

"You're too good for them to do that. Just keep it up, you're going to be leading them one day, I'm sure of it. Then all the secrets are yours."

»»————-　★　————-««

Another week, another mission. And with another mission comes another mission debrief. Natasha asked for her handler's identity three weeks ago and still knows nothing more. With how poorly her recent mission went, she doesn't even feel like asking the question again.

"What went wrong, Romanoff?" that same anonymous figure asks her, and Natasha can only groan: what didn't go wrong?

"We were ambushed to start with; whoever gave us the heads up got their information wrong, or someone sold us out. Either way, the plan went to shit the moment we arrived and the team went to shit by throwing mole accusations around. Splitting up only made it worse; nobody trusted their teammates to do their parts and it resulted in a mad scramble. My orders were ignored, but my team members were injured and I take full responsibility."

"That won't be necessary, Agent," the voice hums, "as leader, the responsibility falls on you, yes, but it is each agent's responsibility to trust in you and follow your plan, and you will not be faulted for working with idiots who don't trust you."

Natasha starts to defend her team, before the familiarity of the phrase has her searching through her mind for a recollection. What she does remember is a long shot, but she'll lose nothing by asking.

"Do you have a wife, Officer?"

"I do," they reply.

"Is she a redhead?"

"She is."

"Works for SHIELD?"

"Why, it's almost like you know her," the handler goades. If one had an illustrated list of all of SHIELD's employees, they would know that the short game of 'guess who' still left a couple dozen potential employees in the running, but the teasing and testing tone is the final clue Natasha needs to make her assumption.

"Y/N/N?"

"Hey love," you reply, with as much adoration as you can muster, glad to finally be rid of the voice modulator while you talked to your wife.

In front of Natasha, the screen flickers before the silhouette that had become so familiar to her is replaced by another familiar sight in another familiar location: the smiling face of her wife…in her office.

Natasha's face falls at once, striking you with panic that this wouldn't be the gleeful revelation that you'd expected; that is, until the assassin speaks again. "Is that my desk?"

"It's your whole office, my love. I'm not taking these calls from our bedroom."

"Is that why it's sound proofed?"

"I gave the approval for that, if you remember, and it's certainly not because you're taking SHIELD calls at home; you haven't even had one while we've lived together!"

"That's because you organise it straight after the mission so I don't have time to go home!"

"Because that's where I am! you'd be suspicious otherwise."

Natasha falls silent for a moment. You know her well enough to leave her to her thoughts, only twiddling your thumbs as you watch her through the screen.

"So can I do debriefs at home now?"

"I don't see why not," you shrug, "remember I still have to take notes though, so I get the desk and no cuddling until after."

"No chance of that."

"Come back now, Romanoff, and we can put it to the test," you challenge.

She accepts. "I'll be there in 30."

"I know."

»»————-　★　————-««

Tagging: @supercorpdanbeau (since you mentioned you’d like to read it on the original post!)

[tododeku-or-bust]

This is the last thing I'll say and then I'll move on. But don't ever think that just because someone has a "higher education" doesn't mean they're not susceptible to the same old racism, that their racism is somehow more logical and valid just bc it's in "prettier" words from a "smarter" person, or that their education was not formed with a racist bias.

For example, I'm reading this amazing book called Orientalism by Edward Said, and it basically discusses how the entirety of what we call the study of the "Middle East" is done through the lens of the white western agenda, regardless of its roots in truth or the actual perspective of the people who live there. This includes literature, history, culture, economics, and so forth.

A white supremacist with a title is still a white supremacist. 🤷🏾‍♀️

[crazerk]

When you find yourself among the few women chosen to become a concubine in the Imperial harem, you have a chance to carve your place in court.

The life of a concubine might seem luxurious and idyllic, but behind the silken curtains of the harem, dangerous games are played. Games where the wrong words will cost your life, betrayal, lies and secrets are commonplace and gaining the shah’s attention is paramount to your survival.

Start out as a princess, disgraced noble or captive.

Intrigue, intrigue and more intrigue.

Dramatic events on par with a soap opera

Revenge, backstabbing, forbidden love, plots and more.

Rise the ranks by outsmarting or eliminating your rivals.

Produce and raise heirs to secure your place.

Influence politics through the emperor or seize power for yourself.

Learn fire magic or join a cult of chaos.

Live a life of leisure and the pursuit of higher education or a life of hedonism.

Inspired by the Sassanid dynasty and Persian mythology.

Shah Khazunef

He is calm, perspective and far less ruthless than his father before him but they share the same cunning nature and intimidating aura. Khazunef has deep brown skin, dark hazel eyes and silky mid length black hair that frames his face perfectly.

Fang

A former slave whose fighting prowess earned him freedom. He has since become a close friend of Khazunef and they regard each other as brothers. He serves as an informal advisor and spy to the shah but shirks any formal duties. Fang is charismatic and extroverted with copper red hair, rose skin and blue eyes.

Persa

Her name means dove and fits her gentle demeanor. She was raised a princess in a land of mountains and snow that was conquered by Shah Arzad. Upon the fall of her city and murder of her family, she was brought to the capital to serve in the palace. She has honey blonde hair, dark brown eyes and alabaster skin.

Ignasia

Ignasia is a fire priestess and staunch follower of the faith. Although born a noble, she gave up all claims and titles to serve in the fire temples as a guardian of the eternal flame. Ignasia has dark hair, darker eyes and a regal, reserved bearing.

Valide Zarayan

She is the ruthless and ambitious mother of Khazunef, originally a distrusted foreigner who rose to great power in the court of Shah Arzad. She rules over the harem like her own little kingdom and holds influence over her son.

Shahbanu Yaris

The wife of Khazunef and shahbanu of the realm. Yaris wed the emperor when he was 17 and she 26 in an alliance that strengthened the empire and influences it to this day.

Vizier Rubien

The grand vizier and advisor to the Emperor who Khazunef considers a father figure. Rubien is fiercely intelligent, loyal and wise. He remains dedicated to his work and helping the Emperor rule justly.

Averus

Averus is a high priest and soothsayer of the court. His advice is sought by all and a bad word about you from his lips can sully your reputation and relationships beyond repair.

Consort Iltani

Former consort and favorite of Shah Arzad. Her name is whispered like a curse, and her influence spreads far wide even though the valide has her currently imprisoned within the palace.

This story is for mature audiences, please proceed with discretion! Story will contain violence, drugs, alcohol, death, suicide, infanticide, harm to animals, miscarriages, abuse and sexual themes.

Demo

[misstycloud]

Yandere servant

Yandere!servant who is loyal to you only. Of course he has to listen to others in your family, otherwise he'd lose his job, but your word will always be his priority.

Yandere!servant who is eternally grateful that you took him in as a young orphan boy with no place to go. No one else wanted a filthy boy at their doorstep and turned him away instantly when they saw him standing there and asking for shelter. You were different though. You didn't throw rock at him or call him bad things.

Yandere!servant who can help you with anything. To repay you, he has made sure to be educated in various topics. Don't ask him how he learned all those things. It won't be what you think.

Yandere!servant who is at your beck and call. He’ll do whatever you order him to.

Yandere!servant who hates when you smile to the other servants. Why are you paying attention to them? They’re all useless. Bet they can’t even mop the floor properly while he had the ability to do numerous tasks.

Yandere!servant who wants you to only use him for your needs. He wants to clean your room, give you advice, help with documents and accompany you everywhere.

Yandere!servant who can only dream of being with you. Your relationship would never be accepted by society. A noble and a common street rat; it couldn’t work.

Yandere!servant who personally didn’t care about status, but what he thought didn’t matter to the higher class. Besides, he didn’t know what you’d think of those relationships and wouldn’t wish for you to be uncomfortable.

Yandere!servant whose sole chance of having a future with you is to attain a higher title. He definitely could with his intelligence. Perhaps he could invest in business among other things.

Yandere!servant who has to quit working for you in order to become successful and marry you. Despite the years it would undoubtedly take, he would remain faithful to you and always carry you in his thoughts.

Yandere!servant who will come back outstanding; someone worthy of your hand.

[bouquetface]

PAC: Your Future

Not every reading you come across is going to be for you.

Tarot is read of current energies. Tarot does not mean something is set in stone especially for general reads. You can always change paths.

So for those reasons, take it as entertainment.

Titles & photos have very little to do with the content btw

1-2

one.

You spent many years feeling stuck & trapped. You imagine a life where you’re free. You may have goals of living in a city - somewhere far from home. You want to be unreachable from your current life.

In the future, it appears you have moved far away. You could be working or studying. You will know if this reading is for you if you have interest in biology, health, fitness or a physically active career. This career definitely requires higher education. You may be 25 when this happens or it takes place in 2025.

In the future, you are satisfied because you have finally achieved the goal of leaving.

The downside you still feel empty inside. Building a new life in this new place is not easy. You are either not close with your family or you want to do things independently. When issues arises (ex: car/transportation problems, a surprise bill/expense, etc) you have no one nearby to call. You struggle a lot.

However, it feels necessary. You must mature. Become independent, teach yourself the necessary skills to survive in life (cook, basics of laundry/cleaning, surviving on a budget, basic car or public transportation knowledge, etc).

Occasionally, you feel fear. I sense a deep pit in the stomach kind of feeling. You may experience a scary situation - being robbed, being followed, etc. Or it may simply be a fear because you know these situations are a possibility.

As I said wrote earlier, you will struggle a lot and there are a lot of tears. You will adapt but the questions - Did I choose the right path? What will become of me? - are consistent.

You will have a few acquaintances through work and/or school. You don’t seem very close to any of them. It seems everybody already knows everybody. Everybody prefers someone else over you. This can change over time.

However, effort is required. Effort is required for all of this to turn out positively. If you fail to teach yourself how to survive, if you fail to do well at your job or in school, this could easily lead back to your current state - 4th H Card: hometown, parent’s house.

If you adapt & survive, I see your personality transforming. You will be more independent/self reliant, you will feel deeply proud of how far you have come.

In romantic life, possibly due to the stress and fears of being lonely in this city, you will begin to desire a protector. You will lose interest in other types of guys like the nerdy, artsy, skater types, etc. You want someone who is intimidating. Someone who scares any possible threats away. This could be sub conscious. This may not even be a change in your type, you could already want this kind of partner. Either way the desire for a protector is extremely strengthened.

Now, be cautious because I feel some of you may accept a toxic person. Excuse their behaviours because you simply don’t want to be alone. The early part of this year - having moved & learned to adapt - was extremely transformative & possibly traumatic. You don’t want to go back to that dark phase. Keep in mind, your romantic partner has potential to be just as much of a predator as some rando on the street. Choose wisely is my advice. Don’t jump into a relationship because you’re lonely - although you will be tempted. Don’t stay in a situation that isn’t safe just because it has become comfortable.

two.

Similar to pile one, 5 is important either in 2025, in 5 years or when you’re 25.

You will be hearing “congratulations”. If you’re in a relationship, you will be getting engaged. If not, you will soon meet someone. The energy here is very stable and traditional.

You will have graduated from your schooling. You will have a stable job. Your person will choose this time to propose. The summer after you graduate is significant. This chapter in your life is so joyful. Everything you manifested is/has come to fruition. You’re so excited. Smiling so much it makes your cheeks hurt. Everyone around you is so happy. You or your best friend may love to organize and plan (Prominent Virgo or Libra placements for this person). They’ll help make your dream wedding day a reality. The wedding hasn’t happened but everyone is celebrating you! (Prominent Leo, Gemini or Cap placements).

There is a lot of earth energy to this reading as well. Your wedding or proposal may take place outside. You and your spouse could be athletic people. Enjoy a lot of outdoor dates - camping, lakes, beaches, biking, etc. Life is going absolutely perfect for you, pile two.

However, there is a very youthful energy here. You two may still be young - mid 20s(?). So of course, you’ll get some making hateful/judgy/jealous comments 🧿 But I don’t see this even bothering you one bit. You are simply too happy and focused on yourself and your loved ones. Good for you pile two! It hasn’t been easy for you in youth to not let other’s opinions affect you. You’ve definitely grown.

One important thing that keeps reappearing is an older feminine is so proud of you. It may be your mother, grandmother or mother in law. Your family is so proud of you. You archived everything you said you would - school, career, marriage. They’re definitely calling people to brag about you. If you have a sour relationship with your mother, by this time it really seems like all is resolved. Real growth & maturity. Lots of love.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Dion J. Pierre

The campus group National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is waging a campaign to gut Jewish life in academia, calling for the abolition of Hillel International campus chapters, the largest collegiate organization for Jewish students in the world.

“Over the past several decades, Hillel has monopolized for Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes,” a social media account operating the campaign, titled #DropHillel, said in a manifesto published last week. “Across the country, Hillel chapters have invited Israeli soldiers to their campuses; promoted propaganda trips such as birthright; and organized charity drives for the Israeli military.”

It continued, “Such actions reveal Hillel’s ideological and material investment in Zionism, despite the organization’s facade as being simply a ‘Jewish cultural space.'”

DropHillel claims to be “Jewish-led,” although only a small minority of Jews oppose Zionism, and the group has been linked to and promoted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters.

Hillel International has provided Jewish students a home away from home during the academic year. However, NSJP says it wants to “weaken” it and “dismantle oppression.”

The idea has already been picked up by pro-Hamas student groups at one college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s official student newspaper. On Oct. 9, it reported, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) unveiled the idea for “no more Hillel” during a rally which, among other things, demanded removing Israel from UNC’s study abroad program and adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Addressing the comments to the paper days later, SJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, proclaimed that shuttering Hillel is a coveted goal of the anti-Zionist movement.

“Zionism is a racist supremacist ideology advocating for the creation and sustenance of an ethnostate through the expulsion and annihilation of native people,” the group told the paper. “Therefore, any group that advocates for a supremacist ideology — be it the KKK, the Proud Boys, Hillel, or Heels for Israel — should not be welcome on campus.”

The #DropHillel campaign came amid an unprecedented surge in anti-Israel incidents on college campuses, which, according to a report published last month by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have reached crisis levels.

Revealing a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena, the report — titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024” — painted a bleak picture of America’s higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.

“As the year progressed, Jewish students and Jewish groups on campus came under unrelenting scrutiny for any association, actual or perceived, with Israel or Zionism,” the report said. “This often led to the harassment of Jewish members of campus communities and vandalism of Jewish institutions. In some cases, it led to assault. These developments were underpinned by a steady stream of rhetoric from anti-Israel activists expressing explicit support for US-designated terrorists organizations, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.”

The report added that 10 campuses accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents — 52 and 38, respectively. Harvard University, the University of California – Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University, and others filled out the rest of the top 10. Violence, it continued, was most common at universities in the state of California, where anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.

[silkscream]

CHAPTER 7: TOO YOUNG TO GROW WINGS

ੈ✩ gojo satoru x reader, geto suguru x reader

He needed to learn how to stop being so goddamn obsessive. He’d work on it later, maybe. He’d try not to speak curses into existence from the way he felt about you.

At the moment, he wants to make this good for you. Something like love.

ੈ✩ chapter cw/tags: explicit content (18+ mdni) , unprotected sex, drunk sex, face sitting, blowjobs, cum eating (lol) lots and LOTS of angst, gore, blood, graphic descriptions of injuries, bullying, satoru being......... himself

ੈ✩ wc: 8.8k

ੈ✩ a/n: i wasnt gonna post this but then i was like well. i start a new job on monday so who knows if i'll be able to keep up the weekly update thing. this is also prob my fav chapter so i couldn't hold back OOPS enjoy the yaoi btw <3 title from angel by omar apollo

playlist ✸ read on ao3 ✸ series masterlist

April, 2009

Jujutsu Technical College looks lovely in the springtime—the golden light hits the room in a specific way that makes your body warm. You’re calm, nearly dozing off until three people barge into the classroom, taking up as much space as they can. When you open your eyes, you see Satoru, Suguru, and Shoko smiling at you as they take their seats.

The boys had convinced you to attend (with the help of Shoko) after informing you there was a generous stipend included with your education. Despite the scholarship you’d gotten from the college you’d meant to attend, they had easily persuaded you. You hadn’t had friends you were so close with before, after all.

“Suguru. Switch with her.”

“Huh?”

“Just do it. I want her to sit next to me.”

You lift your head, realizing that Satoru is talking about you. Suguru laughs nonchalantly and stands up to switch with you, and you move to replace him when you notice Satoru’s baby blues searing into your skin. He grins at you brightly as you roll your eyes.

It’s been like this for weeks – Satoru possessing you, claiming you, even though you never ask for it. Truthfully, it pools your stomach with ardor. You’ve never felt as wanted as you do when you were within a close radius of him. 

It dwindles eventually when you realize that the boys’ strength is so far beyond yours. In combat, they’re flawless, beautiful in their movements as they spar. You’re happier to watch than join—Shoko thinks the same, often rolling her eyes every time the two of you are assigned to practice hauling cursed energy for the sake of fighting. It’s nice when you can get her alone, studying healing techniques and watching her reversed curse technique grow.

Sometimes, you don’t even know why you’re here. Shoko is talented and you aren’t. You’re useful enough for superficial wounds, but you can’t do a reversed cursed technique. You doubt you could even heal something of a higher caliber than what you’re used to. You fear the prospect of this revelation on a mission that you know Yaga will eventually send you on. 

“Do they ever fight over you?” Shoko asks over a cigarette.

“Wh-what?”

“You know,” she drawls, smiling. “Satoru’s such a brat. Suguru is more open when you’re around. They’ve gotta be possessive, right?”

You shrug. You don’t know the extent of what she knows, but you can assume from the boys’ behavior that it was written all over their faces. Satoru’s hand on your waist, Suguru’s point to tower over you. Unspoken proximity wars between them with you in the middle. 

“I don’t know about that. They’re overprotective for sure,” you admit, taking a slow drag of her cigarette when she offers. 

“Twigs! Not you, too!” Satoru bellows. “Don’t give my girl your cancer sticks, Ieiri!”

Shoko laughs at that, grinning with the cigarette in between her teeth as you fold your hands into your lap.

My girl.

Satoru hovers over you and holds out his hands. Curiously, you take it, which you regret immediately when he pulls your body and hauls you over his shoulder. You thrash a bit as he laughs until you’re stumbling onto the grass. When Suguru throws a staff in your direction, you catch it reflexively. 

“Ready?” 

You roll your eyes. You’d gotten better at sparring, though you still choose to hang back and concern yourself with areas of Shoko’s expertise. She had become a mentor to you despite being a peer. Meanwhile, the boys had been trying to get you to practice combat, thinking you would do well with a cursed weapon.

You remember the first time you had tried to fight, watching Satoru and Suguru wrestle in the grass shortly after. Their raspy grunts, the skin of their waists underneath ridden-up shirts. The memory makes you flush.

“Yes,” you sigh.

You focus on Satoru’s eyes, saturated like a lightning strike. You were rather well-versed in the language of his body – you think that your intuition often matched Satoru’s rather equally. He was still much taller and larger than you, but you exceeded in your efforts to dodge. He didn’t often bother with hand-to-hand combat much anyway, much more focused on perfecting his inherent techniques.

You gasp when he decides to close the distance between you. The touch of his fingers on your skin is a jolt to the senses as his legs sweep you when you’re too occupied with dodging. You hit the ground with a thud, groaning.

“Sorry, babe,” he chuckles, leaning down to take your hand. When he does, you pull him backward so that he tumbles.

“Hey!”

“Payback,” you shrug. You maintain a fighting stance once again, staff in hand. 

Suguru often took you more seriously, offering to teach you martial arts when Satoru was off on solo missions. You breathe heavily as Satoru takes his first swing, which you dodge by a hair. 

Focused, you move with the grace of a ballet dancer, halting his movements with your staff the way Suguru had taught you. When you kick a leg high in the air, Satoru catches you by the ankle just for you to fall again. This time, you’re sure you’re bruised. 

“There’s still time for you to give up,” he teases. 

You groan in irritation, rising to your feet and walking closer to him. He smiles, enjoying seeing you pissed off and breathing so hard. He’s so wrapped up in looking at you that his senses are hit with whiplash – your fist gets through his Infinity easily and socks him square on the jaw.

“You little–”

“Why didn’t you have your Infinity on?” you exasperate, but he’s already pushing you to the ground and struggling with you the way you used to when you were children.

“I’m soooo gonna get you for that–”

You end up kicking him again, this time in the ribs as he groans. When you pin his wrists above his head, he merely stares at you with wild eyes and heaving breaths. His face is red and cherubic, and when he squirms, you squeeze his waist in between your thighs.

You lean down close to his face, your breath tickling his ear.

“I win,” you whisper. You flick him on the forehead and he flinches. You wonder again why he’s letting you touch him like this. 

“Letting you pin me down isn’t me letting you win, sweetheart,” he rasps lowly, only for you to hear. He rolls his hips slightly and it makes your eyes widen, much to his satisfaction. You frown and crawl away from him just in time to hear Shoko beckoning you.

“Lab time!” she calls after you. Without a second look at Satoru, you follow her inside.

Satoru is lying on Suguru’s stomach, frowning because it isn’t as soft as yours. 

He’s also without entertainment since Suguru has been hogging his DS for the better part of an hour, which Satoru had only let him do because he claimed he wanted to take a nap. But, as per usual, he can’t sleep. He’s still roused from sparring with you, slightly sweaty still from the warmth and the mustiness of the dorm room, and his cock is getting hard again just from thinking about you on top of him. 

“Fuck,” Suguru swears under his breath, caught up in a game of Pokemon Emerald.

Satoru lifts his head to scoot his body higher, chin resting on Suguru’s forearm to peek at his progress. 

“You’re doing terribly.”

“I know that, thanks,” Suguru groans. “I have like, two backup Pokemon left and they’re both level 30.”

“Do you use the same technique with your curses?” Satoru teases. Suguru makes another agitated noise again in response.

“You should’ve brought your Game Cube from home.”

Satoru shrugs, sighing as he sits up. He snatches his DS out of Suguru’s hands, interrupting the boy’s protest with a wet kiss to the mouth. Suguru kisses back immediately, tongue peeking into Satoru’s mouth before he pulls away.

“You haven’t kissed me in months,” he chuckles. Satoru shrugs. 

“Maybe you haven’t kissed me in months.”

“I would’ve thought you’d count it as cheating.”

Satoru is quiet for a moment, rubbing Suguru’s jawline with his fingers gently. He’s been rather gluttonous lately, and he thinks Suguru is starting to catch on. He’s been clingier to the both of you, obnoxiously so, acting more of a nuisance to you specifically for the sake of attention. His heart is aflame whenever he sees you interact with Suguru in ways that are both good and bad, but he doesn’t prefer to dwell on it for very long before he nearly forces you to give him attention.

“Having withdrawals?”

“Huh?”

“She’ll be back soon,” Suguru laughs cruelly. “Whenever she’s gone for a bit, you act like you’re fucking dying.”

“No, I don’t,” Satoru frowns. But he knows he’s lying.

“Don’t mope. C’mere.”

Suguru sighs, seemingly out of pity. He grabs Satoru by the face and sticks his tongue in his mouth – a rough kiss out of spite, out of unbridled passion. He’d dreamt about Satoru and you for weeks, always sneaking glances. 

He’d considered taking both of you months before when you and Satoru and Shoko threw him an impromptu surprise birthday party despite his refusal. He had seen you tipsy, squirming in Satoru’s lap while Utahime set up karaoke on the television, and decided he’d let you come to him when you wanted to. You were still a shy thing even after New Year’s, never asking again for his touch.

Satoru groans, palming his dick over his slacks as he leans back. He could feel his cock leaking in his boxers already just from the roughness of Suguru’s knuckles grazing his skin. There was a manic buzz in his head, thrilled by the slight power imbalance he was allowing. 

Suguru hadn’t touched him since before he started seeing you, and even then, it was mostly rudimentary teenage lust. Jerking off to magazines together. Seeing how much they could take in their mouths before gagging like it was a competition.

“Fuck,” Satoru grunts, feeling Suguru’s tongue on his clavicle.

“You thinking about her?”

“Yeah,” he rasps.

Suguru chuckles darkly, biting harder at the bone. “She was so hot today. I taught her those moves, y’know.”

Satoru makes a mumbled nose, eyes fluttering shut as Suguru palms him. He unbuttons his slacks to reveal the snowy trail of hair above his pubic bone, Satoru’s cock flushed and weeping as Suguru holds it. 

“Want me to fuck you?”

“Use your mouth,” Satoru pants. He knots a fist in Suguru’s dark hair. “Want it like this.”

He hisses when he feels Suguru’s mouth. His jaw slackens at the feeling, gasping for air when Suguru hollows his cheeks to suck tightly. Satoru shoves him down further.

His body feels tight when Suguru motions a finger towards his hole, pausing to spit on his fingers beforehand. With two fingers stretching him open, Satoru pants and gasps. His thighs twitch, hips rolling upward into Suguru’s mouth like it was a cunt.

Your face flashes in Satoru’s mind and it makes his insides careen. Brain like pulped fruit. He opens his eyes to see Suguru’s, narrowed and golden and taunting. It’s similar to the way you look at him, sometimes.

The fist in Suguru’s hair tightens now, knuckles white. Satoru grunts brutishly, overwhelmed by the stimulation in his hole in tandem with Suguru’s tongue pressing on the underside of his cock. 

“Fuck, gonna cum–” 

Suguru moans, jaw aching only slightly. Satoru could feel his dick inside Suguru’s mouth, heat building up until he spills onto the boy’s tongue. His head falls back. Breathing like he’d just run a marathon.

“You need a better appetite. Shit tastes like battery acid.”

“Doesn’t all cum taste like that?” Satoru frowns. His hand is still in Suguru’s hair.

“You tell me.” Suguru kisses him, licking the inside of Satoru’s molars. His lips move against Satoru’s mouth slowly, listless so he can take himself. When he pulls away, Satoru wipes the slick off his mouth, plump and bitten.

“You’re exaggerating.”

May, 2009

The sky is oddly grey this afternoon despite the pleasant morning. Yamanashi prefecture is as beautiful as ever with cherry blossoms blooming, but as you approach the cursed site, you continue to feel a chill down your spine. 

It’s your first real mission. One that Yaga had at least approved you for after you had nailed your physical assessments, able to imbue enough cursed energy into a katana to swing around without slicing yourself. Still, you were meant to act as backup for Suguru, which Satoru hated. 

“Why don’t we just both go with her?” he had wailed to Yaga days before, to which Yaga grunted in dismissal. 

“You have a solo mission.”

“But–”

“That’ll be the end of it, Satoru.”

Admittedly, you do wish he was here. Suguru is a comforting presence, though, calmer in demeanor but much less talkative than what you’re used to. You walk with him through overgrown grass and lengthy vines. 

“What kind of curse are we supposed to find?” you question out loud. 

Suguru shrugs. “It’s difficult to tell exactly, but I’m assuming the cursed spirits roaming around here will be, er, women-shaped? Maybe. It should be Grade 2 at most."

“What do you mean, women? What happened here?”

“You don’t know? This place is super haunted.”

“So we’re ghost-hunting.”

“Ghost exorcising,” Suguru grins. “There used to be gold mines here in the 16th century owned by the Takeda Clan. They also ran brothels for the miners. After the Battle of Nagashino, the clan had to give up the land, but not before they killed all the prostitutes to keep them from spreading information about the gold mines.”

“H-how did they kill them?” 

“The miners had the women dance at a farewell party, then they hacked the vines that kept up the bridge they were on. They fell into the waterfall.”

“That’s horrible,” you frown. Foreboding swells in your chest. 

You can’t sense any cursed energy around you other than Suguru’s. You’re too busy ruminating to watch your step, accidentally tripping over a thick root. You fall forward into Suguru’s arms. 

“You okay?” he croons. His face is inches from yours and you forget how to breathe.

“Y-yes. Sorry.” As you untangle yourself from him, your body jolts. You gasp when you hear the hint of a wretched, bloodcurdling scream in the far distance that makes your blood run cold. It isn’t very loud, but it almost sounds muffled, like someone was screaming from another room.

“What? What is it?”

“Did you not hear that?” you whisper. 

Suguru frowns at you in confusion, his expression seemingly genuine. You blink, trying to shake off the horrible feeling in your body. 

“I think I just heard something. It sounded like a scream.”

Suguru waits, prompting you to elaborate. The forest seems darker now despite it being midday, the curl of the trees billowing in a way that feels uncanny. A girl-shaped forest. 

“Maybe we should split up.”

“Absolutely not,” Suguru protests, his mouth set in a firm line. You hold his hand in yours, stroking it gently with your thumb. 

“Suguru, you can’t expect to protect me the entire time. I need to learn how to handle things on my own–”

An inhuman gurgle rumbles from behind you. The curse looks similar to a reptile, yet human-like with webbed hands and sharp incisors slick with algae. The stench of mud is apparent in the air now. It drools green sludge before it bows.

You stand in shock, unsure of what to do as you lock eyes with Suguru. Warily, you draw your sword, and the curse’s eyes roll back in agitation as it lets out another gurgle. 

“Oh, shit–”

You dodge a projectile of slime, but it crawls towards you at a faster pace than you expect. A slice of your katana dismembers one of its arms, but it easily grows back. Within seconds, a giant curse rises from the ground and swallows it up, teeth mashing on gooey flesh in a way that makes you want to hurl. Suguru’s ringworm curse is dismissed once the riverbank is cleared.

“What was that about not needing me to protect you?” Suguru sneers.

“I still mean it,” you exasperate, heart hammering out of your chest. “You barely gave me time.”

“I’m sorry. I’ll let you have the next one, I swear.”

He smiles genuinely. Satoru must’ve gotten to him – he’s not nearly as neurotic as Satoru in that way, but he wouldn’t be able to stand it if you got hurt. It was less of a possessiveness thing and more of a selflessness thing. Suguru had always been the one to be reliable. He was also more perceptive than Satoru in the way that he could practically feel the tightness of the leash he held on you. 

If you were going to be something in the Jujutsu world, you wouldn’t be held back. Suguru thought you could be something ever since he saw you.

You continue to walk with him, knuckles brushing as the air turns thick. Suguru thinks that maybe you’re sulking in his periphery, so he pokes your cheek.

“Yes?”

“You’re awfully quiet.”

“Just thinking,” you mutter.

The katana feels heavy on your back. You had never thought of yourself as a particularly strong person, growing up to be obedient. A maid’s daughter. Hands a little rough from housework and the dirt of the Earth when you were wild, once. 

“Let me walk around in that little brain of yours,” Suguru murmurs, always charming.

You pause, swallowing. You realize you have never spoken your insecurities out loud. When you were on the brink of it, it would always be during petty arguments with Satoru, who had a way of shutting you down dismissively. He was always a bit of a control freak, even with you.

“Do you think I’m weak?” Your voice sounds almost frail.

“Of course not. I think you’re very talented, actually,” Suguru says. “Satoru and I– we just care a lot.”

“I’m not sure if talented would be the word. It’s not like he thinks so, either.”

“He does. He just doesn’t know how to express his feelings.”

There seems to be something lingering in his tone that gnaws at you. The way he sighs. You decide not to pry, attempting to steer the conversation away from Satoru altogether. 

You hear a wail again. Something in the shape of a girlish scream but only the echo of it. Suguru gives you that confused look at him and you aren’t sure if he’s just messing with you at this point. He touches your hand again and the motion makes you wince.

“What’s wrong?” He looks genuinely worried now as he looks at you, holding a hand to your jaw. That alone is mildly unnerving for some reason, even though you think that in any other environment, you’d welcome it. You place your hand over his palm.

“Do you really not hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“That woman screaming!” you hiss. 

“Are you sure it isn’t some wild animal?”

You blink at him blankly.

“You don’t hear it.”

When he shakes his head, you hear it again. You begin to walk towards the source of it while Suguru stalks behind you, but you stop him. 

“Maybe I should handle this.”

He grimaces, clearly unhappy. You raise your brows, challenging him. Suguru wants to hold you back but he knows he shouldn’t. 

“Hey, another fucking– river monster could show up, and you’d be able to handle it. Maybe this is something that only I can see or hear. We’ll be too conspicuous with both of our cursed energy.”

He says your name with a hint of desperation and discipline, but you hold your gaze firmly. 

“Okay,” Suguru sighs. “But if anything goes wrong, just yell for me, okay?”

You nod. 

The tall grass tickles your legs as you move, which makes you thankful you decided to wear trousers instead of your usual skirt for the mission. Your hand grips the strap of your sword bag with anxiety. As you get closer, it’s as if the air is permeated with a smell that you can only describe as being in between sex and blood.

The scream you hear is louder now. You aren’t sure if it’s truly a hallucination, but it seems like the forest laughs back at you after. If you were a smarter person, perhaps you’d return to your partner. But you also assume that if you were to do that, you’d be a weaker person.

You walk over a wooden bridge that feels like it’s holding on by the barest thread. The creaking of the bridge beneath your weight adds to the unease that has settled in your gut. Every step forward feels like a gamble, a test of your bravery. The forest seems to close in around you, the trees whispering secrets you can't quite decipher. 

A scream rips through the air and this time, against your better judgment, you follow it.

It’s punctuated with sobs and whimpers, getting louder and louder as you walk along the path. Cursed energy flickers in the shape of a girl. When you get closer, you see her. 

A girl is sitting in a fetal position behind a tree, clutching her shoulder as she wails in agony. Her long black hair is matted and damp. She doesn’t seem to notice you yet, so you swiftly move to hide yourself between shrubbery to get a better look.

“P-p-please… help me…” she sobs. You choke up at the sight of her torn dress, hands and shoulder crimson with blood. She looks younger than you – no older than fifteen.

You grasp the strap of your sword bag tightly and cautiously as you walk towards her. Her eyes widen when she sees you. You aren’t sure if it’s a look of relief or fear.

“Hi there,” you say with a tremor in your voice. “What’s your name?”

“Akane,” the girl whimpers. Her face is pale with bruised lips.

“Akane. Are you lost? How did you get this injury?” You crouch down to meet her at eye level. 

“Th-there was a man… I was trying to run away from him… but I’m in t-too much pain to keep going,” she breathes. “Please help me.”

You furrow your brows. You’re surprised that there was anyone in this forest besides those grotesque cursed spirits considering how abandoned and desolate the place was. The girl must’ve run far. 

“Where are you from, Akane?”

“Tabayama.”

“That’s not too far from here,” you smile softly. “Let me heal you and my friend and I can get you back home, okay?”

You reach for her arm but she flinches and looks at you with unease. 

“It’s okay,” you reassure her. “I’m a healer, see?”

Your cursed energy waxes and wanes within your palm like a luminous mist. You hover it over a superficial cut on your hand that you’d gotten from dealing with thorns earlier and the skin patches up like new. Akane watches in awe.

“I want to help you. Is it okay if I touch you?”

She nods her head apprehensively. You unwrap the saturated cloth from her shoulder, cringing at the sight of the gore and blood. You can’t quite envision the type of violence she’d just been through from the vagueness of her words, but you don’t want to make the poor girl explain in the midst of her trauma. 

It’s more effort than what you’re used to – the wound is so deep that you fear that you’ll overexert yourself. You’d spent enough time in the lab with Shoko to improve your technique, but this time, it seems as if everything you’re doing isn’t enough. The skin on the girl’s shoulder is healing very slowly, and when you think that her condition is improving, another area of her body seems to bleed out.

“Maybe I should get my friend to help. He could take us to a hospital.”

“He?”

You look up to see Akane’s eyes grow cold. Almost lifeless, as if she’s looking through you. You hear the visceral sound of a limb breaking, the squelch of her organs. It seems as though her face is transforming right in front of your eyes, but it feels like an illusion – the way her skin looks decayed, the way her teeth grow sharper. 

Akane – or what was Akane – cackles cruelly. Her cursed energy is overwhelming now, suffocating you. There’s a warbled cry that falls from her mouth.

“I’ll kill him.”

This is not a fucking Grade 2 curse.

You immediately get to your feet and swing your katana, but the curse blocks your attack easily. She’s also growing exponentially, no longer the size of a teenage girl and more like the river monster you’d seen earlier. She grabs you by the ankle, tripping you. A hack to the wrist with your katana makes the creature scream even more. You watch in horror as thick, black blood seeps out.

You yell Suguru’s name at the top of your lungs.

You see the Rainbow Dragon first, flying through the forest around you and the curse, but the nails on her other hand are strong enough to slice through the dragon’s hide. When you turn to lock eyes with Suguru, the curse lets out something in between a sob and a scream, shrill in your ears. 

It seems as though she forgets you entirely, running head-first towards Suguru. 

“I’ll… kill…. youuuuuuu!”

“No!” you screech, pulling her backward by the leg with all the strength you can muster. You slash the curse’s skin with your katana, making her wail, but she pins you down in retaliation with cuts to your arm from its sharp nails. 

You hiss at the pain. You notice that her hair has transformed into its own entity, tentacle-like and razor-sharp as it slices through one of Suguru’s hound-like curses. She directs her attention back at him and aims for his neck, but you hold down a bloody hand onto her back as your hand pulls one of her sharp hairs back. 

You cry out at the wound it makes in your hand, but your other stays pressed to the slimy flesh of her body. Your cursed energy ignites something unfamiliar in your body, something painful, but you imbue it into your touch with all you have. 

She’s screaming. Or maybe you are. You can’t tell anymore – your head is dulling from expending more cursed energy than you ever have. It’s all dissonant to you. A horrific cacophony. You feel blood drip from your nose. 

The curse’s flesh is rotting. As if the wounds she had when she appeared as a human were only rapidly progressing into decay, cells rupturing, body degenerating the harder you push. 

It’s like she turns to mush. The corpse of the curse is barely recognizable anymore, just a puddle of chunky purplish-black blood. 

You breathe heavily, looking up to see Suguru staring at you in shock. You try to give him a weak smile, but you don’t feel anything other than sick. Or maybe it’s numbness, at least for a few seconds as the forest is quiet again.

You double over and vomit. Your vision blacks out.

As a surprise to no one, Gojo Satoru is fucking livid. 

He’s about to open his mouth but stops himself when Suguru gives him a look of disdain. There’s no one to yell at, except maybe Yaga, because why the fuck would he put you on a mission that could potentially involve a Special Grade?

“She’s fine,” Suguru affirms. 

Satoru merely exhales through his nostrils, curling his hands into fists as he slumps down on the bench next to Suguru. He can’t help but envision your corpse, his brain reeling a horrific supercut of all the ways you could’ve been disfigured, maimed, bruised. Changed.

He realizes that the protectiveness over you he feels has turned into something ugly now that he knows you’re in the infirmary, something akin to fear, which is foreign to him. 

It sinks into him like teeth down to the marrow, parasitic. He thinks of a faceless curse that he wants to tear apart with his bare hands. Satoru had tried to get over the desire to keep you in a cage, to keep you so unbearably close to him out of his own selfishness, but the feeling came back. He doesn’t know where to keep it other than lodged in his chest like a bullet.

“Did you absorb it, Suguru? Because I might need you to summon it later so I can get my fucking hands on it myself,” Satoru says, his voice low and seething through gritted teeth.

“No,” Suguru sighs.

Satord nods dumbly. Silence ensues.

“She killed it herself.”

You have dreams while you’re passed out. The curse you killed transforms its face from its teenage girl form and into others. You see Shoko, Suguru, Satoru. Everyone you’ve ever known. And when the skin of its face starts to rot the same way it did when you used your technique on it, you end up staring at yourself. 

When you wake, it’s slow. The fluorescents in the infirmary don’t help. From outside of the room, you can hear hushed voices. 

When you attempt to lift your body off the bed, you see Shoko sleeping in a chair next to you. Your bones ache, your skin stinging with the ghost of a wound. The cut on your palm from being slashed by the curse is a scar now.

You drop your head again, squeezing your eyes shut in an attempt to rest more. It’s too fucking bright in this room. Your breathing stills when you hear the door creak open.

“For fuck’s sake,” a voice bristles. 

You hear another whispering Shoko’s name. Waking her, you assume.

“How is she doing?”

“She’s okay,” Shoko yawns. “Just sleeping. Her wounds were kind of deep, but I took care of it.”

A hand caresses your jaw gently, fingers stroking through your scalp. Your eyes blink open slowly to see Satoru grimacing above you. From the way the overhead light illuminates the back of his head, you think he almost looks like an angel. A makeshift halo shining on moonlit hair.

You notice the way he holds his fist tightly and the iciness of his gaze. It’s a fraction of rage, which makes you feel nauseous again. You’d seen that look on his face before, during the night of Shoko’s party. You wonder now, vaguely, what he looks like when he kills.

“Hey,” you mumble weakly.

“Hey,” he scoffs. “Wanna tell me what the fuck happened?”

“Satoru, let her be–”

“It’s okay,” you interrupt. You rise, wincing at the soreness of your muscles. “Um. I… killed the curse.”

“So I’ve been told,” Satoru deadpans. His jaw is tense, but his eyes soften. He looks up, flickering his gaze between Shoko and Suguru.

Shoko clears her throat. “She used her technique. The healing part of it is based on cell regeneration. Apparently, it can also be used… the opposite way. It must've been activated by adrenaline, and then it was too much. Passed out from exhaustion.”

“How is that possible?”

“Well, our technique is like a muscle, right? And she didn’t use hers very rigorously until now, so…”

“Right,” Satoru sighs, his voice clipped.

“I need a smoke,” Shoko rasps. “Do you need anything, baby?”

You smile weakly, shaking your head. 

You can’t help but feel guilt snaking its way into your body. Even though you had exorcised a curse, your first actual achievement in Jujutsu sorcery, the bloodshed you’d experienced feels fruitless. You don’t feel very powerful at all, only monstrous. 

It’s difficult to gauge what Satoru is thinking. He’s clearly upset about the fact that you got hurt, but you wonder if there’s more. If he resents you pulling a stunt like that and nearly killing yourself in the process—because what would you be if not his? Are you still his with bloodstained hands? Would he like you better now that you could prove to be strong?

It didn’t matter. He would always be stronger. 

You hate the tension in the air. You can’t bear it. Maybe they’ll disperse once you get on your feet. There wasn’t anything left to do with your treatment since Shoko had tired herself with your wounds. 

When you swing a leg over the cot and attempt to sit up straight, an invisible wall stops you. You glare at Satoru holding his hand out, palm outstretched inches away from your chest.

“No,” he snaps.

“Don’t do that,” you grumble. “I’m fine.”

He laughs but there’s no amusement in his tone. His eyes are cold again. Pools of ice.

“Right. You’re in fucking pristine shape.”

“Satoru,” Suguru warns.

“I– I can walk–”

“No,” Satoru repeats. “You’re hurt. Stop it.”

You look between Satoru’s hard gaze and Suguru’s frown and roll your eyes. You’re so tired, and overwhelmed with pain that transcends the physical kind. You can’t even put a name to it, the amount of emotions spilling out of you as you look at the two of them with mild desperation. You want to sleep for another twelve hours.

Irritation flares behind your face. You aren’t sure if you want to scream or cry for catharsis, but you stay quiet, trembling.

“I want to be in my bed,” you mutter.

Satoru lets out a breath as if he’s been holding it for a while. Gently, he touches the nape of your neck, Infinity down. Laces his fingers in your hair in a sort of compromise. He moves his arm underneath your back with the other under your knees and lifts you, kicking off the blankets.

You curl into him, head on his chest. It made it hard for Satoru to breathe, for some reason, like something was stealing the air from his lungs. He nods to Suguru as a voiceless confirmation, watching his cursed energy flare. I’ll take it from here.

When he gets you into your room, Satoru releases you, placing you gingerly on the floor. Part of him wants to shake you by the shoulders, have you slap him across the face for reasons unknown to him. Something, anything other than the despondence of your limp figure. He can’t stand it.

“Satoru,” you whisper. “I’m sorr–”

“Don’t,” he strains. “Do you even know why you’re apologizing? Or is it just second nature to you?”

You say nothing.

He strips off your uniform, torn and battered. Still reeking of copper blood, the stench all too familiar, but not on you. 

“I’m sorry for being mean. I was just worried,” he says. “I’m… proud of you.”

“Proud?” You look at him, dazed, as if this is the last thing you expect him to say.

He nods curtly, a sad smile on his face. “I always knew you had it in you.”

He picks you up again despite your futile protest, walking you to the attached bathroom. After turning on the faucet, he sits next to you, hand stroking your thigh gently in silence. He doesn’t look at you. He’s not sure if he can.

“C’mon. Up.” He taps your thigh once.

You’re still dizzy as you enter the bath, sighing at the warmth of the water. As you sink into the bath, a sense of relief washes over you, momentarily easing the tension in your body. A much-needed respite.

You feel Satoru trail his fingers around your collarbone, rising to feel your pulse. The rhythm seems to calm him as he soothes his palm over your shoulders and back. His touch is less urgent than it usually is. 

He squeezes shampoo in your hair and threads his fingers through it, scratching your scalp gently, untangling the mess of you. He saturates a washcloth with soap, rubbing small circles over your limbs, lifting you like you’re a doll. It was funny—he had never had to take care of anyone other than himself before, but at the moment, he’s indulged in the small hums of pleasure you make, reveling in your comfort. Your trust.

He likes taking care of you. It makes him feel like he has a sense of control. He doesn’t want to indulge too far into it, knowing it’ll smolder a nasty part of him in some way. But the steam of the hot water makes his cheeks ruddy, and when you open your eyes at the feeling of his hand on your jaw, he can’t help but want to keep you. 

Satoru turns your face toward him, cupping your chin as he leans in to kiss you. Your mouth opens like a flower blooming, ready for him like always. He tries not to be rough despite the moan you tease out of him. Your skin is soft after he bathes you. His hands know carnage, but they also know you.

You break apart, looking at each other for a few seconds before he kisses you again. He pecks your mouth, nose, and cheeks, leaving you to scrunch your nose by the end. Laughing, he rinses your hair.

“Feel better?” he asks lightly. You nod. 

“C’mon, baby. You’re gonna get all pruney in there.”

You’re perfectly capable of drying yourself off and putting on clothes, but Satoru seems eager to do it for you, so you stay limp in his arms. He’s being oddly affectionate as he babies you, which he never does. It’s usually the other way around.

With his hands on your waist, a dangerous thought flits through Satoru’s mind, but it dissipates when he fixes your hair to see you fresh-faced. You look young, innocent. Untouched by violence like he had known you before. 

He takes you to the bed, where, despite the size of it, he manages to slot his body next to yours so he can curl into you. Head on your chest to listen to the murmur of your heartbeat. 

You stay like this for a while, listening to each others’ breaths. You’re on the brink of sleep when you think you feel tears on your chest. Dampness on your cotton shirt, but only a little. Satoru exhales heavily, squeezing the meat of your side. You’re feeling a little too warm from the proximity but don’t have the heart to untangle yourself. You close your eyes.

“I love you.”

You aren’t sure if it’s a whisper in your dreams or not.

June, 2002

You both had matching bruises. Green and yellowish like snot.

The summer was changing you and Satoru in a way that held gravity. Satoru’s body was growing more and more, handsome like the beautiful child he’d been when you first met him, and you were a purgatory. Something girlish. Something ghostly.

Your mother had reprimanded you last week for coming back with a bloody knee, scolding you for rough play. The expiration on your youth seemed to be ticking from the way she chastised you about your shared misbehavior with Satoru – you were meant to grow into something polite and womanly.

Satoru had scoffed at the notion when you told him. He liked that you weren’t obsequious to him like everyone else in his life who treated him like a little prince. 

Unfortunately, you’d pave the road of your abjection all by yourself later on.

He still thought of you as the only person who understood him. He was your first friend, your only friend for a while, and you were his. You’d count stars with him. Catch fireflies and make wishes on them. Wear each other’s clothes before his growth spurt.

You’d clung to each other for years—it was difficult to tell which one of you was the parasite. Despite this, sometimes you think Satoru hates you. Sometimes he makes you cry, especially with how apathetic he can be. You blame his stoicism on his upbringing, but there are times that you feel like an afterthought, only exacerbated as he grows older and into something of worth.

At age twelve, it’s difficult for you to believe that you could be anything similar.

Your young ferocity gets minimized to meekness at school. There’s hair-pulling, harder than Satoru’s ever done to you. Stolen lunches. Spitballs to your back. Your face kissing pavement.

“What happened to you?” Satoru asks, narrowing his eyes at the sight of your split lip.

“I fell.”

He’s forceful when he drags you to him. He’s too tall for his age, towering over you with cold blue eyes staring down at you. You flinch when he touches your cheek with his hand.

“You’re lying,” he frowns.

“It’s fine,” you mumble.

He doesn’t pry after that, but he does force you to clean the cut with hydrogen peroxide, which is ironic considering how little he cares about his own cuts and bruises from his private training.

On the playground the next day, you’re targeted again, reaching desperately for your backpack that’s stolen straight from your hands. A kick to the shins has you scraping your palms when you try to ground yourself. Your hands sting as they bleed. You gasp when you feel another kick to the stomach, a cruel round of laughs taunting you.

But then, you hear them gasp. The sound of knuckles hitting bone. 

“Touch her again and I’ll fucking kill you.”

Satoru lifts you up by the hand and holds you by the shoulders. He picks the debris out of your hair.

“C’mon, let’s go home,” he sighs. He ignores the tears on your cheeks. He’ll wipe them away later along with the dried blood in your palms.

You’ll shower in his bathroom, mind blank under the hot water. He’ll see your silhouette through the peek in the door, and his stomach will lurch in a new way. He won’t be able to look at you for a week after. 

June, 2009

He comes to you at night a little drunk. You’re surprised Satoru didn’t warp this time – you’re used to seeing him in the blink of an eye right before you go to sleep just because he doesn’t want to sleep in his own room. Sleep is hardly a thing for him anyway – his insomnia has gotten a bit worse over the years, so he prefers to play on his Nintendo DS quietly as he strokes your hair. 

“You actually knocked?” 

He shrugs as he moves past you to flop his long body onto your twin bed. You look at him in question. He doesn’t answer, only gesturing for you. 

“Come over here,” he slurs.

“Are you drunk?”

“Not–” he hiccups, “at all.”

“Satoru,” you berate.

“Okay, maybe I went a little crazy with the Dirty Shirleys. Needed a drink after the stupid fucking mission Yaga sent us on.”

“You shouldn’t be drinking this much. It’s a weekday.”

He mocks you and settles a hand over your waist. You notice the calluses on his hands, ironic considering he can never let anything touch him. But you can.

He sits you on his lap, rubbing your shoulders carefully. “How’s your night been?”

“Shoko made me watch Audition,” you frown.

“Oh. I love that one.”

“Of course you do,” you sigh, “Nothing scares you.”

You aren’t wrong. After assassination attempts and countless wretched curses thrown Satoru’s way, nothing could make him flinch anymore. 

“You scare me,” he pouts, undressing himself. Always staking his claim on you in this way – he wouldn’t leave if you asked, and you know that you won’t.

“I highly doubt that.”

“You should yell at me more. It’s kind of a turn-on when you’re mad.”

You roll your eyes as you turn off the lamp, plunging the room into darkness if not for the light of the moon and the annoying brilliance of Satoru’s eyes. Even his hair seems to glow in the dark, head dipped in starlight. 

As you lay on your side, you feel Satoru’s palm undulating your bare thigh, tickling you under the hem of your t-shirt. He breathes in the scent of your neck.

“You have goosebumps,” he mumbles against your hair. “Gonna get nightmares from the movie?”

“No.”

“I’ll protect you,” he giggles boyishly, body overheating with want.

He sucks on your neck, hand parting the plushness of your thighs. You keen at the feeling of his teeth and tongue, gasping at his large fingers sliding your panties to the side to prod your cunt.

“This is all I could think about today.”

“Yeah?” you whisper.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice rough. “Kept thinking about all those sounds you make. Kept thinking about your face.”

“You shouldn’t—ah—let yourself get so distracted on your missions.”

He laughs. “Whatever. Killed all those fuckers in less than ten minutes anyway.”

Satoru keeps you pressed to his chest, his other hand grasping your breast. You feel his dick hardening behind you as he plays with your cunt, fingers knuckle-deep inside you. It didn’t take him long to find your spot the way he had you memorized. Your eyes shut tightly as you moan. Stars knock around your head.

He turns your face toward his and licks at the seam of your lips, tongue roughly licking the inside of your mouth. Your body tingles at the sound of his groans. He holds you by the chin, hand slipping around your throat to hold you in place so he can take in every detail of your face. 

You flush under his gaze, how his blown-out pupils outweighed the ocean blue. His pink mouth is parted and breathing out, zephyrs of maraschino cherry tickling your face.

You cry out when he pins you down, sinks his cock into your wetness. A wounded sound. It makes him shiver, makes him think about you on that dingy cot a month ago in the infirmary. Satoru was about ready to avenge you in any way he could, back then, even when you weren’t even half-dead. He’d reshape mountains. Drown the whole city of Tokyo with his bare hands.

In the way he holds you with bruising force, rutting into you like a devoted dog, he decides that he will be the only person to hurt you. The only one who should, knowing that even with his regrets and jagged ways of caring, no one else should lay a finger on you except him. He’d never hurt you in a violent way, unless his passion had counted. If devouring you counted, which it probably did, he would be content with his selfishness if it meant you were safe.

He needed to learn how to stop being so goddamn obsessive. He’d work on it later, maybe. He’d try not to speak curses into existence from the way he felt about you.

At the moment, he wants to make this good for you. Something like love.

“Made for me,” he whispers. “You were fucking made for me.”

“Yes,” you gasp.

He splits you open, spearing into your gut as he mumbles praises lowly into your ear. Your cunt pulses at the sound of his voice. He thrusts into you harshly, making blood rush to your head.

“You make me feel insane,” he grunts. “Used to think about you like this in high school. You were so fucking stubborn, refusing to give me attention.”

“You were a brat,” you flush. “Still are.”

“Your brat.”

“Mine,” you hum.

He groans at that. He’s so deep in you, drowning in syrupy velvet. He liked it when your body made him feel like this, like he was levitating. He wasn’t Gojo with you, always Satoru, always just a boy. He’d be content in this infinite spiral, swapping spit in between tongues and fucking into you until you cried. Your body is sacred. You made him forget himself when he needed to.

You like when he carves you out like this, your cunt a shrine for him at this point. You moan at the loss of him, watching through glassy eyes as he stumbles, fixing your body in between his knees.

“Wanna see my pretty girl’s face,” he groans. He’s annoyingly rough when he enters again, but you love it. He says your name like it’s a prayer.

Your head buzzes as he thrusts into you faster this time. His hair sticks to his face, tickling your cheek as he bites into your neck. Midnight vignettes blur your vision. 

“Wish you’d let me have you earlier,” he pants.

“Fucking me for the past year wasn’t enough?”

He shakes his head. “Wish I lost it to you. I was thinking about you during it, too.”

“Satoru,” you whine.

He means it. He was already blunt as could be, but alcohol made him over-honest. He liked that his candor made you blush.

“Would you have let me fuck you?” he teases. “When we were fifteen?”

“No. You were even stupider then.”

“So mean to me,” he chuckles, rolling his hips more aggressively. He revels in watching you squirm. “I would’ve worshipped you.”

“No, you wouldn’t have,” you mumble, hiding your face in his chest. Nails cross-hatching the length of his back.

“I would’ve.” I will.

He kisses you open-mouthed like it’s a promise, pulling your hair in the process. The room was starting to get hot, that June humidity unforgiving, even at night. You’d have to open a window later. His body makes yours swelter, skin melting into skin like he’s trying to fuse the both of you into one thing. Like that Greek myth about two halves of a soul.

“Fuck, ‘m so close,” he whimpers. “You feel too good. Shit, I wanted to make you beg.”

“Sounds like you’re the one begging,” you exhale.

“Yeah,” he grunts. “Want you. You’re killing me. Fuck.”

He spills inside of you at the same time you cum, the heaviness of his low groans making your brain break. He’s still drunk, head swimming with every part of you. Above you, he sports that fallen angel look again, eyes gleaming with rapture. Prodigious as he was, he worships you instead, blessed with love bruises adorning his shoulder.

Satoru always liked to fuck you like it was the last day he’d ever have you. Tonight is no different. 

He exhales at the juncture of your neck, soothed by your hands in his hair. He lifts his body up, kissing your collarbone before he descends to your belly. You tremble at the feeling of his hand cupping your cunt.

“Satoru, I can’t–”

“Please?” he pouts, his breath tickling your clit. “Wanna taste you. All mixed up with me.”

Heat rises to your face violently. “You’re disgusting.”

“You love it.”

“You made such a mess,” you grumble.

“I’ll clean it up,” he grins. 

You let him. His sharp mouth never lets up, anyway.

“Wait! Sit on my face.”

“I can’t even feel my legs,” you pout.

He whines your name. “I had such a tough mission today, baby. You don’t think I deserve it?”

“Spoiled,” you mumble as you switch positions with him. Below you, he looks feral in the eyes, over-eager. Hungry like a wolf even after fucking you hard.

You gasp when he pulls you down, slotting your thighs on each side of his head while he starts to taste you. Licking up into your cunt, moaning at the taste of himself and the sweetness of you. He grips your ass, guiding your movements like the ebb and flow of a wave. You shake above him.

“Jesus.”

You feel him laugh, the vibrations tickling your clit. 

“Annoying slut,” you call him. He seems to enjoy it, thinking of it as praise considering how loud he groans. It almost embarrasses you.

That familiar feeling twinges in your core again. 

“Cum for me, baby,” he breathes. He latches his mouth on your clit and you think you might burst. Maybe crumble and fly away in the wind like a dandelion.

He continues to suck on you as you ride out your orgasm, your thighs trembling. When he gets up for air, his eyes are blown out wide, drunken smile on his face as if he’s peaking. Chemical reactions in his blood.

“So good for me,” he grins, kissing you on the mouth. Your heart flutters.

His gaze is still searing into you. Looking at him hurts, sometimes. 

Satoru presses into you, curling into your neck again. His heartbeat reverberates throughout the room. Tenderness floods the both of you, bodies slotted together like he wants to make a nest out of you. 

You’re exhausted with heavy lids. Satoru strokes your skin until you fall asleep, careful fingers soothing the places his mouth had been. Divine wounds. Like a devotional dog with teeth too sharp and love larger than his body, Satoru will be the only one to hurt you.

[amyhayanora]

KHOC WEEK 2024 Day 2 - Past

the things for my OCs are now the only ones I do, so, off with the annual @khoc-week appointment.😂

The protagonist of this post should have been Aspis, my little Anguis kid, but since Aspis is deeply connected to another character, it's probably better that I start with some headcanons I have about the Foretellers. Between those and the designs, at this point they feel a bit like OCs too. even tried to do a Nomura-esque version for the occasion.

The assumption is that the Foretellers were one of the many attempts on the chessboard of the Master of Masters to face the Darkness. He gathered under his protection a group of lonely and desperate kids, with a tormented past, acting in the grey area more than out of affection. He bet on them. He sought out children who possessed specific flaws of distinct deadly sins, trained them, and made them his apprentices on a journey designed to make them overcome their "sin" and use it as a virtue that will be essential to their future "roles." For example…

Gula, who lived on the streets as a feral child, has known hunger, and food is also how MoM attracted him. Gula suffered from bulimia and nervous hunger for years, before managing to direct his anxiety towards logic and study, becoming an analytical boy "hungry" for knowledge.

Ava, sold away by her once rich family fell in disgrace, wanted EVERYTHING back. everything she had lost, or that she wanted but could no longer afford. Mom was the one who has bought her, she's too young to understand the extent of the family tragedy. that's why she later was the perfect one for the task of choosing any wielder she desires or attracts her eye, without limits, collecting the Dandelion.

Aced has always used his muscles to win easily, alone, without effort and without ever really try to improving himself, until carelessness cost him his tribe and an eye… he is now a loyal follower and uses his strength to defend the group, the arm of the law under Ira.

Ira, balances strength in combat and intelligence, which are also the qualities of his union. stubborn and rebellious, as an angry teenager he ran away from home, losing his path. He was the first one found by Mom, and he owes him his life. He learned to control his anger because of him, obtaining determination, willpower and the courage that made him choose as Leader.

Luxu carried the burden of being an unwanted child, the result of an affair, from an early age he felt cursed by that because of a big birthmark on one eye that vaguely resembles an X. shy, insecure and reserved, people pleaser, until life with his apprentice companions brought out his mischievous and creative personality. His being a people pleaser made him incredibly attentive to the behavior of the people around him and the ideal candidate to infiltrate among people and live their lives, one after the other.

Finally, Invi.

like all the other foretellers, her name is more of a title. Her real name is Nivea, and she was isolated from her village because white hair was considered a bad omen. The resentment of having to survive alone, with a little brother to support, he too with lighter hair than was welcome, soon turned into Envy, gnawing at her insides every time Nivea stopped to observe the normality of other families, lurking and hating everyone but her brother Aspis.

MoM saved both, proposing a deal to Nivea: he would take care of them, they would have a roof over their heads, education, a future, as long as she studied under him.

With no other real choice, the children accept out of desperation.

Nivea and Aspis initially lived together, but as they grow older she is forced to uphold her end of the bargain, spending more and more time at the clocktower. Aspis and Nivea's relationship is ruined irreparably, as Invi begins to enjoy her studies and the company of her peers, spending less and less time with her brother "for a higher purpose".

On the other hand, Aspis, who has always remained silent about a subtle hostility from the inhabitants of Daybreak Town due to his bad temper and sharp tongue, is left almost alone. His only wish was not to be a burden to his sister, who therefore always believed everything was fine and let him go without regrets. Aspis is full of resentment towards Mom, blaming him for brainwashing his sister, now obsessed by Light and darkness, when she clearly only wanted a better life for them.

Aspis and Invi do not hate each other, but the lack of communication makes it difficult to make peace, they will miss their chance before the War.

Aspis eventually made some friends along the way, that made his loneliness bearable. he is in a sort of trio with Lupe and Leonna, and a little girl who for some reason adores him like a big brother, Velcia (she's @alchemist-of-thebes 's oc). he'll never admit it, but he would die for her.😂

concluding this post with some old foretellers art dump xD