#to try to get flowers during the most bleak no snow no flowers times of year lol

[guinevereslancelot]

there should be a charitable foundation dedicated to the very good cause of me purchasing stuff that i want

[delicrieux]

Heyy! I hope it isn't too late to request.. Could u pls write Draco x reader for a enemies to lovers trope! Extra points for sexual tension (a lot of it 😅) you can take any kind of plot u want to!! Luv you!!

GIFT-GIVING | endless drabble series (summer edition)  

summary: a bookmark and a history pairing: draco x nb!reader a/n: i started w writing draco x reader enemies to lovers & ill die writing it too. used prompt 11. bookmark

masterlist. ☕. reqs are open for the  september prompts! make sure to check out the autumn features as well! <3

Inside the near endless catalogue of pages of your History of Magic textbook sits a velvety green bookmark with silver carvings of an ostentatious, long-since extinct flower. If you were to bring it close to your nose you’d feel a slight tickle from the fabric and smell something akin to sandalwood - musky, balmy, archaic.

It had belonged to Draco before he had gifted it to you - it was not only a marking of trust but also a declaration of something akin to affection. You had accepted it with an oddly beating heart.

It hadn’t always been mollified smiles and not-quite-baneful-but-not-quite-not conversations between you two - most of last year and rest before that had been spent trying to annihilate one another, be it in studies or in spirit. Pride was a treat the two of you indulged in frequently. It was only natural that, being so alike, you’d hate one another at first sight.

Winter is when you were at your worst. Arrogant and snoot, doused in perfume that changed depending on your mood - crushed daisies when happy, campfire smoke when angered - and you were particularly biting with your comments. ‘Didn’t do our homework again, did we?’, ‘What’s the matter, Malfoy? Father can’t pay you outta this conundrum. How unfortunate.’, ‘Why are your cheeks so red? You look ridiculous.’. Your cadence was gruff, insufferable. Draco once knocked your shoulder and you came tumbling down into the heaps of snow, grabbing his hand and pulling him along with you. 

He was particularly abhorrent to your warm breath on his cheek and the snowflakes that tangled into your hair, your lashes, “Let go of me, you--” His sentence came undone in a strangled yelp once you pushed him off of you. He dared not try a stunt like that without his entourage again.

You became more pacified during springtime, but only because summer was approaching and you could be rid of him soon. You daydreamed of heatwaves and seas and the sand between your toes, all while reading tomes in the library with a warm drink and a bleak afternoon outside your window. Studies took most of your time, but that did not mean you didn’t find a free minute to hex Draco’s book so that all of the writings would turn in gibberish.

In return, he simply lit yours on fire.

“You idiot,” You screamed, dropping the flaming pages onto the floor and grabbing your wand. Singed fingers stung, but you extinguished the book with one simple mutter of a spell, “what were you thinking, you oaf?!”

“Next time,” He yelled back from across the table, “learn to mind your own business!”

The library was shaking from the brewing argument. All promptly, and deathly, fell silent once the head librarian was in sight.

Summer’s when you’re at your happiest - ridding your broom and drinking so much lemonade your tummy starts hurting - but amidst endless adventure and sleepless nights you had noted a craving. As much as you adored your friends, you could never really talk with them the way you talked with Draco. None of them would talk back. 

You thought about ridiculing him for his lack of knowledge in Charms and suddenly the whole room smelled like daisies.

September you’re at your best, energetic and excited to learn, to get lost in these massive hallways and explore their secrets. You’re happy and chatty and all too loud for mornings, but no one really minded since you always had something interesting to say.

It was uncommon for Draco to find himself in the woes of almost getting detention, and the sight of it at the start of the school year startled you. The world’s axis had shifted, it seemed, because you were raising your hand and speaking his defense before you had realized what you were doing. It was a shock to everyone. You, perhaps, most of all. But he was spared cleaning the classroom and you felt too anxious after such a good deed to stick around for a ‘Thank you’.

It kept rolling from there - these small acts of kindness, or perhaps protectiveness, as if to say: only I have the right to pick on you, no one else. In somewhat of a twisted way it could be viewed as endearment. Your insults had lost their bite and gained a playful edge. He always looked too smug when conversing. By then, the whole school believed the two of you had been flirting, and it enraged the both of you.

That was until the night of the Yule Ball when he kissed you between the frost covered arches of the courtyard. You didn’t recall much from that night, only your cool cheeks inhaling mouthfuls of cool air after his kiss.

“I want you to have it,” He had said, handing over a pretty, green bookmark days after. It was old, you could tell by the dog-eared corners. You turned the marker and on the other side, in pale, glimmering letters, was written MALFOY. Strange, you thought, since everything about him and his family was always so pristine, “it’s been in my family for a while.” He admitted it with mild-embarrassment and the look in his eyes was begging you not to ask why he was giving it to you.

Your lips slinked into a small, pleased smile. You didn’t quite know what it meant, but you felt it - a warmth, a happiness, crushed daisies in the air - but even then, you still seemed smug. You’re at your worst in winter.

“Well,” You spoke after a brief pause, “’fraid I don’t have anything as fancy as this.” You motioned to the bookmark, “But,” You drew closer, “hope this’ll be just as good.” You closed the distance between you. The kiss tasted like coffee and truffles. The bookmark, crushed in your grasp, formed a few more creases. You almost forgot of it entirely once his hand landed on the side of your jaw.

hope you liked it <3

[ithinkthereforeidread]

the collected poems of todd anderson

christmas day of 1959.

ao3 link here

He knew this day would come. He’s been dreading it, sure, he’d never really enjoyed Christmas much beforehand, his multiple unopened desk sets epitomised such. At his house, fires weren’t warm, hugs were stiff and silence was punctured by the sounds of laughing children in the house next door. It’d always been this way for the Anderson family. Todd grew to accept it.

But this year was supposed to be different.

He was supposed to spend his Christmas at Welton, with all the Dead Poets.

 Usually, the boys would go home to their families for Christmas, but through the efforts of Neil he assembled a complex string of falsities about a gargantuan Latin group project that all the Dead Poets needed to finish.

“Serious business, I care about my education father, why else would have you sent me here?” said Neil over the phone, holding his index finger to his mouth to silence Todd from his chuckling, although all Todd really saw was the wide grin that hid behind it, and the way Neil’s eyes crinkled up all the way, a complete oxymoronic action when Neil was usually on the phone to his father. Todd stifles back laughter and Neil smacks him lightly, only causing him to laugh more.

“Well, that was quicker AND easier than I expected...” Neil states after placing the phone back on it’s cradle and ending the call. “But hey!” Neil squeaks, “We’re all spending Christmas together! The biggest concern was just getting my father to agree, everyone else’s parents seemed fine with it.”

Todd and Neil start to walk, side by side, Neil bumps him playfully. “I’m so glad you told me, Todd.” Neil turns his head and looks towards the shorter boy. “My Christmases at home aren’t that great either, I’ve always wanted to spend them here, but I could never work up the courage to ask my father, ask Charlie, in our first year he almost called up my father himself. It was hilarious, he had to look up at the phone, he was so short.”

“You and Charlie have been friends for ages then?” Todd queries “Oh yeah, we met in our last year of preparatory school, he was a pretty mischievous kid, obviously not much has changed.” Neil laughs, “he was just always so confident and sure of himself… I always wanted to be like that, nothing ever got to him.”

“Has that changed?” Todd’s questions were always short and straight to the point. Startling upfrontness in the most unexpected of moments. It was something Todd was known for.

“Not really… I mean, I try to get him to open up… he just isn’t an emotions type of person, I think?” Neil scratches the back of his head. “During our 9th year he went through something really big and not great, but he didn’t tell me a single word about it. To this day I have no idea wahat happened. I tried asking but it didn’t lead anywhere… all I know is some kid had been expelled but it didn’t look like him and Charlie fought or anything because they spent so much time together ....” Neil trails off.

“You know people stare at us sometimes.” Todd blankly states, an unconscious switch being flicked immediately. “When we’re walking to classes, when we go into our dorm, when we exchange smiles in classes… They bump their friends with their shoulders and snicker under their breaths… Have you noticed that Neil?”

Neil’s walking pace slows slightly, “Uh… no, I-uh I didn’t… Do they think we’re-“ “-Maybe.” Todd interrupts before Neil can say The Word. “Bu-but we aren’t, I mean, you were talking about that girl from-“ “-Yeah! Ginny, from the play, wow, I mean, she’s just great.” “Yeah, I’m sure she is.”

God.

This got awkward.

Nice one Todd.

Did it again.

~~

Ink splatters dried on the paper he cradled so delicately, he stares at the contents once more.

“what wouldn't i give to love myself as feverishly as I love you? what is the opposite of amnesia? that is what you are. sometimes i cant find my way around my memories. i have to take detours… i think you were the best one.

little fragments of joy pepper my vacancy i didn't know that i should want to be hopeful or that being hopeful meant giving up some intrinsic part of me.

last night i had a dream that we were breathing underwater flying high in the sky, arms outstretched, laughing, smiling, hugging, bodies pressed onto one another. it didn’t last long. piece by wretched, fragile piece i throw out every hated qualm of thee your impenetrable stare fixed onto me

i have hoped for love that is beyond you being caught by me or me trying to slip through the cracks. they read me, you, us, with their glacial eyes and think they know but they don't

and it seems neither do we.”

“Wow, Todd. This is so… different. But good! It’s just, I’ve never seen anything like this in our English class, in the poems we’ve studied… I just… wow.” Neil looks up at Todd, eyes so soft, Neil knows how big of a deal this is to Todd. He doesn’t just share his work with anyone.

“I-I’m glad you liked it.” Todd smiles, it’s almost as if he’s had to completely remove himself from himself in order to let Neil observe and compliment this part of him, he takes the page out of Neil’s hands and places it in his book. “What-er, who was it about?” Neil gingerly queries. “I- uh, well.” Todd’s heating up now, he should’ve expected Neil to ask him this question. Dammit. Why was he so stupid for letting him read it. “Well, I-I don’t think you necessarily have to go through something to write a-about it, it-it’s fiction for a reason.”

Neil’s lips downturn slightly, “I guess, but everything that we produce in art- whether that be acting, or poetry writing, painting- whatever… it… subconsciously shows something that you might not necessarily want to show or see, right? Like how Keating got us the other day to choose a poem we liked and recite it… It tells you so much about a person. When Charlie was reading his poem… wasn't all you could think about was how bleak it was?” Neil continues, “The academically and poetically rigorous selection made by Cameron or Knox’s complete devotion and enamoration with the simplest emotion of the human being, love? We hide these parts of ourselves, maybe we view them as flaws and faults of our cognitive machine, but art reveals them all.” Neil delivered a love poem to the class himself. He takes a big breath and lets the words he just spoke sit in the air of their dorm for a while.

“Into the meadows dawn..” Todd clicks his fingers, a vague ritual to jog his memory. “flashes my faun.” Todd recites “O Hunter, snare me his shadow… O Nightingale catch me his strain. Else moonstruck with music and madness, I track him in vain” all they’re doing is staring at each other.

“You- you remembered my poem?” Neil questions. “Yeah- I went to the library after you said it- wanted to see if there was more… Oscar Wilde…” “Yeah.” “I notice them staring now that you mentioned it.” Neil breaks the trajectory of the conversation, “God, they’re all so stupid, it’s as if Judy Garland and President Eisenhower just strutted into the school, arms interlocked!” Todd chuckles. Then more silence.

“Has anything changed, Neil?” “What do you mean?” “Between us. What this is. Our comradely bond, as Keating puts it.” Todd chuckles, “ Our co-dependence, attachment at the hip.”

More silence…

“I-I think…” Neil finally states, “that it was never anything it wasn’t already… perhaps we ignored it, suppressed the feeling… but… it was always there.”

“For me, at least.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

~~~

The wind pierced Todd’s skin in tiny microscopic ways, embedding itself under the protection of his coat and completely evading the rest of his physical form, though perhaps the wind wasn’t the cause of the spine-curdling ache he felt, but simply an additional symptom.

Bells rang, green and red Christmas themed paraphernalia adorned the streets he’d previously been driving through, staring out the window at lights and snow that trickled onto an already naturally bleached layer of the ground. His footprints leave indents and obtain a slippery consistency to the outer sole and toe cap. He treads more carefully.

His hands clutch the leather cover of the journal he is hiding underneath his jacket, minimising any further damage that may soon come its way, finally, through minutes of soul-searching and carefully treading through stones and flowers, he makes his way to Neil.

He looks at him with a certain sense of fragility, his stone head protruding from the ground and covered in snow. Todd wipes some away to see the carvings made into him. His full name. Aged 17. Dutiful son of Tom and Susan Perry.

The newness of it all sends a pang to Todd’s stomach as he looks at the other stones weathered with age and the constant bombardment of the elements. That’ll be Neil one day. Flowers not fresh and carvings unreadable. Forgotten to the world and all its inhabitants, rotting in satin lining and cherry oak wood. Todd stifles back a sob and covers his mouth, forcing himself to get it together for just this moment.

“Merry Christmas Neil.” Todd whispers, the words can barely come out. “You-you’re not here physically but you’re here with me, and Charlie, and-and all the other Dead Poets.” he continues, “though- though Charlie isn’t here technically either. He left. Had to. He’s not graduating, at least he’s not at Welton” Todd looks down, brushes his emerging tears away with his shoulder

“I just wanted to come here and give you your gift, I’ve had it in the making for a while now, you’ve seen some of it already. I wish I could’ve given it to you earlier… if I had known this would happen.” he pulls out the journal, and opens it up.

“Here, I’ll read you some.” Todd, though already cold and miserable, situates himself next to Neil’s cold headstone and leans his head on it, opening the journal's contents to its first page.

“Dear Neil,” Todd’s starts, but adds an offside, “It’s dated on the 7th of a while back, my-my birthday.”

“I hope this book finds you well,” Todd’s breath hitches, “especially considering that I’m probably too anxious to deliver it to you. What you’ll see here is what we spoke about the night we first kissed. About freeing ourselves from any subconscious fear or dichotomous dread of both working with and against the grain or being liked or disliked. The people I look up to the most are inspirationally unpopular. So, here’s a suite of poems by yours truly. Hopefully you’ll find your own meaning and reverence in the words my brain has conjured up, words mostly pertaining to you. Every inch of your being alive has me transfixed and enamoured, and I’m truly gobsmacked on the good deed I must’ve committed to have deserved having you in my life.” Todd’s face is red and stuffy from the cold and his breathing is short and punctured.

“You’re sleeping right near me at this moment, and as a sweaty toothed madman once said. We were together. I forgot the rest. Consider this journal a detachable limb of my own self, something you can always carry around and know that I am with you, always. You can suck the life force, the bone marrow out of the words I have written in here and I would applaud and encourage you to do so. Without you, I have no idea where I’d be right now. I owe you so much Neil, you’ve taught me that sometimes the world can be good. That a person’s smile can brighten an entire room. A performance perfectly acted can be a person’s ultimate achievement and their triumph. You are the word phenomenal incarnate Neil, I hope my words do you some sort of justice.

You deserve the world, Neil. I’m brainstorming ways to give it to you.

With love, Todd.”

——————————————————————————

i hope you guys enjoyed!! its fucking brutal honestly but needed some angst and tragedy in my fictional life to reflect my own.

just a preface that some of the poem todd read's is borrowed from pete wentz old emo livejournal posts because i need to somehow tie my two big interests together and MAN does that man write some gay ass shit. hope your heart doesnt hurt too much <3

creds to @neilscrown on tiktok for posting the headcanon "Todd definitely bought Neil a Christmas present and he never got the chance to give it to him so he would sit in his once shared room and stare at it" it tore my HEART OUT and inspired this rambling

[the-perfunctorily]

Who Killed Jon?

A meta post intended to (not very) seriously look at all the possible suspects in the Mutiny at Castle Black, and narrow it down to a few characters with motive, and means to be involved.

Wick Whittlestick slashed at his throat,[...]"For the Watch." Wick slashed at him again. [...] Then Bowen Marsh stood there before him, tears running down his cheeks. "For the Watch." He punched Jon in the belly. When he pulled his hand away, the dagger stayed where he had buried it. (ADWD, Jon XII)

We know for a fact that Bowen Marsh and Wick Whittlestick were part of the mutiny. But at least four people stab Jon, likely more. So, who were they?

This is intended mostly just as reference for myself as to who was where and when, and a fun game of clue, and mostly just speculation and headcanon to procrastinate on projects, and not really meant to be taken seriously (yes, I wrote 5000 words on a post that is not meant to be taken seriously. Such is life) I’m sure nothing I’ve put down is very revolutionary. We just like to have fun here.

This post also came into being because I think it’s very easy to imagine that it’s just Everyone that turns against Jon, which leads to a really bleak outlook for the Wall plot in TWOW. I’ve seen people worrying that Satin will be harmed by the other brothers, or that Val and Little Monster may be hurt, either by them or by Melisandre. These are all possibilities,  but I don’t believe that it’s necessarily true that Jon has no allies left. So I wanted to eliminate as many people as I could. When I get right down to it, I can only come up with 9 people who have either circumstantial evidence to suggest their involvement, or motive I can scrape together. So I believe there could be a solid pro-Jon contingent still at the Wall post-assassination, and his friends and vulnerable people he was protecting might not be doomed.

The suspect list is near the end in bolded large font so if you want to skip the long and mostly unnecessary eliminations, just scroll to there to see who I actually think might have been involved.

For formatting and clarity reasons all lists will be bolded, and I’ll bold every name at the point that I either count them in or out of the suspect list.

First off, I’m going to assume that Bowen Marsh was the main force of will behind the mutiny, and base my assessment of who was involved on who would ally themselves with him and what I believe to be his motives. This might not be true. He might just have been a participant, but I think he has the means, and the motive to have orchestrated it, and don’t see any other candidates for mastermind, unless GRRM pulls a complete Asimov ‘Mule’ gambit, which I will get to in my final suspect list. I think Bowen Marsh did not want to kill Jon, but believed he had to, for the good of the watch. I believe his anti-wildling feelings and traditionalist values were a big part of why he did it, and I think he did it to preserve the way he believed the watch is supposed to and has always operated. So people who hate wildlings, people who hate Jon’s radical policies and would want a return to how it was during Mormont’s command and before, people who are close associates of Marsh’s, and people who have personal reasons to hate Jon are my main suspects.

Now. To get started, I have to ask. Who would want to kill Jon? Fortunately, several people have openly threatened, or implied that they want to kill him in the past! Unfortunately, they all have strong alibis.

Ser Alliser Thorne: 

You'd best pray that it's a wildling blade that kills me, though. The ones the Others kill don't stay dead … and they remember. I'm coming back, Lord Snow (ADWD, Jon VI)

Alibi: is currently out ranging with Dywen, MIA beyond the Wall

Mance Rayder: 

I could visit you as easily, my lord. Those guards at your door are a bad jape. A man who has climbed the Wall half a hundred times can climb in a window easy enough (ADWD, Melisandre)

Alibi: is currently trapped in Winterfell on a mission to rescue ‘Arya’, allegedly imprisoned in a cage

Stannis:

 He only threatened to behead me twice. (ADWD, Jon I)

Alibi: Is snowbound in a crofter’s village about three days from Winterfell, and probably didn’t even really mean it.

Cotter Pyke: 

“Lord Snow," said Cotter Pyke, "if you muck this up, I'm going to rip your liver out and eat it raw with onions." (ASOS, Jon XII)

Alibi: Is currently having a very bad time on a boat near hardhome, on Jon’s orders, also probably didn’t really mean it.

That leaves everyone at Castle Black at the time of the mutiny. This includes Selyse, her household and knights, Melisandre, Tormund and his ~50 wildlings, and all the sworn brothers and recruits of the Watch.

I’m going to discount anyone in Selyse’s camp, despite them being at Castle Black at the time of the attack, and even present at the event, because Jon is Stannis’ principal ally at the Wall, and much as Selyse might dislike him personally, I don’t think she would involve any of her knights or retainers in a plot to have him killed. Melisandre might have the ability to take control of Selyse’s knights because they are all fervent believers, but she likes Jon, and thinks he is an important ally, so I don’t think she would do anything to harm him either.

Similarly, I’m going to discount Tormund and any of the wildlings he brought from Oakenshield. The mutiny was motivated partly by anti-wildling sentiment, and disapproval of Jon’s welcoming of wildlings south of the Wall, so I don’t think that Bowen Marsh would ally himself with them. Furthermore, the mutiny takes place right after Jon has given a speech endearing himself to the wildlings, I don’t think they would suddenly turn against him after cheering and swearing to come with him to Winterfell. This includes Borroq, who, though he speaks derisively to Jon, and Ghost reacts aggressively towards him and his boar, I think means no ill will towards them. I actually think he will be instrumental in facilitating Jon’s resurrection. For what it’s worth, I think most of his smugness and rudeness toward Jon is because Jon is not acknowledging his own warging abilities, not because of personal animosity. And Ghost’s aggression is more due to his past experience with other skinchangers (namely Orell the eagle trying to break his neck and then later trying to rip Jon’s eye out) being averse, than any sense of ill-intent. A lot of stock is put in the direwolves’ intuition about who means their Starkling harm, but in reality I think it is more based on the kid’s personal feelings that they aren’t acknowledging. Grey Wind wants to hurt Tyrion in AGOT despite him being innocent of the attempt on Bran’s life, but shows no ill will towards Lothar Frey, one of the main architects of the Red Wedding. Jon is suspicious of Borroq, so Ghost is, that doesn’t necessarily mean that he is an enemy.

I’m also going to exclude guys who are not explicitly stated to have died or been sent elsewhere, but for some reason do not appear in the ADWD appendix or the wiki as being at Castle Black during ADWD. These are:

Bass: The Castle Black master of hounds, I’m assuming he went on the ranging and didn’t survive, since nobody seems to be keeping any hounds at Castle Black anymore.

Red Jack Crabb and Rusty Flowers: Were supposed to escort Janos Slynt to Greyguard. Presumably they were sent there after his execution.

Rudge: helps Donal Noye fix Longclaw in AGoT, but is not mentioned again, nor does he appear in any other appendix. Maybe he died on the ranging, or was sent to another tower. Maybe he died of personal problems.

Ser Wynton Stout: Ostensibly commanded Castle Black while Bowen marsh was away with the Garrison chasing raiders and then fighting on the bridge of skulls. He appears in the AFFC appendix but not in the ADWD one, I’m assuming he died of old age somewhere between books.

Also not included in the appendix are the two unnamed recruits that were part of Conwy’s first group of prisoners, a barber “a greybeard leaning on a staff” and a brigand “some grinning loon who must have fancied himself a warrior” (ACOK, Jon I). These guys might have died during the attack on Castle Black, might have sworn their vows at some point during ADWD, or might still be recruits with Hop-Robin and Jace. But they aren’t named so I’m not going to worry about them.

This leaves the men of the Watch who are stated, or implied to be at Castle Black at the time of the mutiny for our suspect list. Here they are in alphabetical order, according to both the wiki and the ADWD appendix.

Albett, Alf of Runnymudd, Arron, Bearded Ben, Black Bernarr, Septon Cellador, Clydas, Cugen (or Cuger), Dannel, Sweet Donnel Hill, Duncan “Big” Liddle, Elron, Emrick, Fulk the Flea, Garrett Greenspear, Geoff the Squirrel, Goady, Halder, Hareth “Horse”, Three-Finger Hobb, Hop-Robin, Jace, Jax, Jeren, Kegs, Leathers, Left Hand Lew, Luke of Longtown, Matthar, Mully, Othell Yarwyck, Owen the Oaf, Rory, Satin, Spare Boot, Tim Stone, Tim Tangletongue, Ty, Tom Barleycorn, and Ulmer of the Kingswood.

Obviously there are probably more men than this, I don’t think it’s ever actually said how many brothers are still at the castle at the end of ADWD, but it’s probably more than just 40. (though maybe not by much? it feels quite empty there and everyone expresses feeling outnumbered by wildings and Kings/Queens men) However, this is a post about who, of the people we know, killed Jon. There isn’t much of a point if it’s unnamed stewards #23 and #17.

Next, I’ll remove people I believe like Jon and wouldn’t hurt him, and have no reason to suspect. However, I wouldn’t put it past GRRM to make one or more of these guys a mutineer for the emotional toll it would take.

Albett, Matthar, and Jeren: All of them were recruits with Jon that he never clashed with directly, they were even friends. Matt had Septon Cellador light a candle for Ned when news came to Castle Black of his execution and he was one of the boys that went with Pyp and Grenn to bring Jon back when he rode off. (side note, I find it very funny that these guys are all just At The Castle while Jon is doing his ‘woe is me the lonely friendless commander’ bit. Dude, half of your graduating class is standing right there)

Arron and Emrick, Horse, Jace, and Hop-Robin: Recruits that came to the Wall either right before or while the great ranging was gone. They fought alongside Jon to defend the Wall, and trained under him briefly. Horse lived in mole’s town and only survived the attack because Jon warned the people there, and he decided to take the black after the battle. I would imagine that he thinks very highly of Jon. When they are made brothers, the twins accompany Horse (and Leathers and Jax, all followers of the old gods) to the wierwood grove to say their vows despite following the Seven. They are all close enough in age to Jon’s friends and would have had lots of time to get to know them during the ranging. None of them ever knew the Old Bear, so wouldn’t have any nostalgia about his tenure as LC. They seem like the best candidates for Jon loyalists to me.

Duncan “Big” Liddle: As the eldest son of Torren Liddle, he is Morgan “Middle” Liddle’s big brother. Morgan Liddle is among the northmen that join with Stannis’ army. He is the loudest shouter of the “Ned’s Girl” refrain, suggesting that his main reason for joining is because of him and his house’s strong feelings of loyalty to house Stark and Ned’s legacy. Also, Bran runs into a Liddle subject (or so he thinks) on the way to the Wall who expresses strong pro-Stark sentiments. I’m going to say that Big Liddle shares his family’s warm feelings toward the Starks, and would be loyal to Jon, him being ‘Ned’s Boy’.

Three-finger Hobb: Was always nice to Jon, even if he was exasperated about the wildlings and having to do a whole wedding feast. He seems an easygoing sort and not someone that could be manipulated into doing a mutiny. Also he was nice to Sam and gave him a salted ham for a nameday present, so I will not hear anything bad about the man. That said, he’s a long-time associate of Bowen Marsh, and being the chief cook, they would work very closely together, so it wouldn’t actually surprise me if he was involved.

Jax and Leathers: As former wildlings, I don’t think they would work with Bowen Marsh. It was Jon who facilitated their coming south and they took the black of their own free will. Also leathers was actively intervening in Wun Wun’s meltdown during the mutiny, so he had his hands full, and besides, he seemed like a good pal to Jon.

Owen the Oaf: He’s a nice boy and was happy to follow Jon’s orders, also Jon let him have Janos Slynt’s Boots.

Satin: If GRRM makes Satin complicit in the mutiny I’ll cry, so I simply won’t entertain the possibility.

I’ll also mention that in Jon VI, he sends out nine men on a ranging. I’ve taken out all the ones that are named: Dywen, Ser Alliser Thorne, Kedge Whiteye, and the three men who’s eyeless heads turn up just outside the gate, victims of the Weeper: Hairy Hal, Black Jack Bulwer, And Garth Greyfeather. This leaves three men that go unnamed. One in Dywen and Ser Alliser’s party, and two in Kedge’s. They are presumably experienced rangers. They might just be unnamed, unlisted watchmen, but they also might be some of the above brothers. Bearded Ben, Black Bernarr, Sweet Donnel Hill, Elron, Geoff, Goady, and Tim Stone are not mentioned after Jon sends out the ranging, so it might be any of them. I’m going to discount them all, because I don’t see any real motives there anyway, except Sweet Donnel and Goady, for reasons I’ll get to later.

Jon also sends an unknown number of guides with Stannis in Jon IV, and later with Tycho Nestoris in Jon IX. None of them are named, they might have been stewards or rangers, who knows, I’m not going to speculate.

Now,  there are several Rangers here who could go one way or the other, so I’m not going to spend time on the ones that are at Castle Black during the mutiny but don’t have much of a motive. They might have, they might not have been part of the mutiny. But Since Bowen Marsh was in charge, I think that it was mostly made up of stewards. So I’m going to take Garrett Greenspear, Luke of Longtown, Rory, Tom Barleycorn, and Ulmer off the suspect list. (Also I like Ulmer, and think he’s cool, so there. Also what’s up with Tom Barleycorn. Have you guys ever heard the song John Barleycorn must die? Where a symbolic figure of the harvest named John Barleycorn is sacrificed to be resurrected in spring and keep people alive with sustenance and alcohol? Kind of sus when this guy named TOM Barleycorn is at the castle where a main character named Jon dies and is presumably going to be resurrected, and likely have a hand in ending the winter.)

Similarly, for the builders, Othell Yarwyck, as the first Builder, and frequent Naysayer of Jon’s, is a prime suspect. However, even if Othell was involved, which is a distinct possibility, I don’t think he would have ordered his men to also involve themselves. So I’m going to take Kegs and Spare Boot off the list, since I don’t see a motive for either of them, and they both seemed very enthusiastic about fighting alongside Jon during Mance’s assault.

And as for stewards. As the men directly under Bowen Marsh’s command, they are the most likely to be involved, So I’m just going to say that I have no real reason to think Ty, Cugen, Tim Tangletongue (who does not appear in the text but is in the appendix), or Dannel would turn on Jon, but they very well might have, and I wouldn’t be very surprised if they did. For the record, Dannel gave Alys Karstark a sausage from the kitchen when he and Ty found her, and that alone endears him to me enough to take him off the list, and Cugen is only ever mentioned here:

Sam will remain in training, with the likes of Rast and Cuger and these new boys who are coming up the Kingsroad. Gods only know what they'll be like (AGOT Jon V)

as a recruit that might hurt Sam if he did not graduate with Jon and the others, so perhaps he would be anti-Jon, as someone associated with Rast

All of this said, Chett’s prologue is pretty much a direct message from GRRM that even guys who Jon barely notices might hate him and wish him ill. Since we only see the Wall through Jon’s PoV, we are going to have the same blind spots he does. So any of these half mentioned, mostly forgotten guys might harbor some intense resentment, and have all the reason in the world to kill Jon. But for the purposes of this post, I am focusing on characters that I think make sense as being anti-Jon, and there’s no way to speculate on people with no evidence to suggest them.

So, finally, having eliminated everyone without motive or evidence, this leaves only the characters I actually have reason to suspect were involved. The suspect list is as follows:

Alf of Runnymudd, Septon Cellador, Clydas, Sweet Donnel Hill, Fulk the Flea, Goady, Left Hand Lew, Mully, and Othell Yarwyck.  

I’ll go from least to most likely mutineers, listing reasons I suspect them, and reasons I think they might not have been involved.

9&8 : Mully and Fulk the Flea.

Evidence: Ghost acts aggressively towards them while they are guarding the armory the day of the Mutiny.

Fulk the Flea [said], "but your wolf's in no mood for company today.”

Mully agreed. "He tried to take a bite o' me, he did.” (ADWD, Jon XIII)

Alibi: Neither has any history of being anti-Jon that I can find, and personally, I like Mully because he is named after Mulligan the orange cat, here pictured with Parris  

which I think is just too cute, so if either of them were involved I would prefer it were Fulk. I know that’s not a real reason but its my list and I make the rules. Anyway as I said before, Ghost being aggressive doesn’t necessarily mean guilt. At this point, Ghost is paranoid because Jon is paranoid, feeling people around him plotting against him. Fulk and Mully might just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

7: Goady

Evidence: He was part of Jarman Buckwell’s scouting party on the Giant’s Stair, which spotted Jon among the wildlings. I imagine it would be very hard to shake the image of Jon as a wildling, even after he is elected Lord Commander. Especially if he then turns around and lets those same wildlings through the Wall.

Alibi: He does not appear in the text of ADWD, only the appendix, and his only mention in the books at all is in the Storm of Swords Chett prologue, in Kedge Whiteye’s dialogue

 “Harma the Dogshead has the van, the poxy bitch. Goady crept up on her camp and saw her” (ASOS, Prologue) 

so who knows what he’s actually up to. He may very well be with Kedge Whiteye out ranging right now, since he’s an experienced scout,  and they seem to be good buds. I just wanted to include him because he’s the only surviving member of Buckwell’s party that isn’t explicitly stated to be elsewhere.

6: Septon Cellador

Evidence: Vocally disapproving of most of Jon’s decisions, extremely homophobic towards Satin, Religiously intolerant towards followers of the old gods, and racist toward the wildlings, he is definitely a leader in the anti-Jon contingent. In fact, I don’t doubt at all that the had a hand in planning the mutiny.

Alibi: I don’t think he has the guts to actually stab anyone, and considering the mutiny took place at night, he was probably too drunk to stand, let alone participate.

5: Clydas

Evidence: Here is the Mule theory. (I don’t actually believe this, but it would be a wild curveball for GRRM to throw, and I wouldn’t put it past him) Clydas was the last person to handle the Pink Letter, being the one to give it to Jon. Clydas can read, and manages all the correspondences coming to, or going from Castle Black. This gives him ample opportunity to interfere with incoming mail. We know the letter may have been faked or at least tampered with, since the wax seal is only a smear by the time it comes into Jon’s possession. It’s entirely possible that Clydas was working with, or masterminding the mutineers to forge all or some part of the Pink Letter in order to incite Jon to forswear himself.

Here’s the thing. Clydas has been assisting Maester Aemon since before Jon Arrived at the Wall, he likely was aware of Jon’s hand in getting Sam into Chett’s position, he was privy to Jon’s chafing about being assigned to the stewards, and probably knew about Jon’s desertion attempt. Clydas helped Sam count the votes for Lord Commander, and who knows how much he figured out about the election rigging. He has never stated much of an opinion on any of it, and often plays the dim, forgettable assistant. However, what if he was smarter than he was letting on? What if his impression of Jon was that of a manipulative ambitious young man willing to cheat the system to get what he wants. What if he, knowing Jon, having observed him from the age of fourteen, and read every letter written by, to, or about him, and was likely also privy to many conversations between high officers (including his uncle) about him, knew exactly what Jon cared about, and what buttons to press that would make Jon instantly too angry to think straight, and decided to put that into action, and team up with (or even manipulate) Bowen Marsh, who had his own reasons to want Jon gone, and the command of enough men to get the job done.

Alibi: I don’t want him to be involved!! :(( He’s never been anything but kind to Jon, asking if he’s alright, seeing if he’s ok after the news about ‘Arya’, calling him Jon instead of my lord, almost fondly. I would be really sad if he was. Also, while he may have been involved in the planning and orchestration part, I don’t think he participated in the physical assassination attempt. He is frail and old with poor vision, and two hours and change before the mutiny, Jon has Mully and Satin escort him back up to his chamber in the maester’s keep because it is so icy. I don’t know if he could make it back down to the yard in the dark to do a stabbing in that time.  

4: Sweet Donnel Hill

Evidence: He was part of the Chett’s planned mutiny at the Fist of the First Men, survived the Fight at the Fist, and made it to Craster’s keep. However at Craster’s he stayed loyal to the Watch, and was among those survivors to make it back to the Wall with Grenn and Dolorous Edd. This seems to me like a man that is fully willing to get rid of a Lord Commander if he disagrees with his leadership, but who remains loyal to the principles of the Watch. This is exactly what the spirit of the mutiny was, in my opinion, and puts him high on my list. Not to mention the fact that he is a steward, and thus under Marsh’s command.

Alibi: He is not mentioned after Jon III when he is one of the archers that shoots Rattleshirt disguised as Mance as he is burned alive, he may have been sent elsewhere by the time of the mutiny, or is simply not an active enough Jon disapprover to be noticed by him, which suggests his uninvolvement.

3: Othell Yarwyck

Evidence: As I stated before, Othell is a close associate of Bowen Marsh’s and among the chorus of naysayers that become constant fixtures in Jon’s ADWD chapters. He’s a traditionalist, and a better follower than a leader. 

Othell Yarwyck was not a man of strong convictions (ASOS, Jon XIII) 

I definitely think Bowen could sway him, they are on first name terms, have worked together for a while, and probably talk about what Jon is doing that they don’t like when he isn’t there. He is also present in the Shield Hall by Bowen when Jon reads the letter, and leaves with him when he storms out.

Alibi: The first inkling we get that Bowen is harboring malice towards Jon is that he refuses wine or food in Jon VIII. At that time, Othell happily takes a seat and a sausage. As the sort not to think too deeply on things, 

Othell Yarwyck was as stolid and unimaginative as he was taciturn (ADWD. Jon V) 

he might not second guess Jon’s orders beyond what Bowen tells him to, so he might not harbor the same anti-Jon sentiments. He’s not one to rock the boat, killing the lord commander is a big boat rocking. I believe he knew about the plot, and that Bowen would want him in on it, but IDK if he would be directly involved.

2: Left Hand Lew

I must admit I have no motive for him. But he’s standing right with Bowen and Wick Whittlestick in the shield hall, 

Bowen had Wick Whittlestick, Left Hand Lew, and Alf of Runnymudd beside him] (ADWD Jon XIII)

and we have no other evidence for Wick until he physically tries to cut Jon’s throat (well besides that he is the keeper of the keys to the food stores, which would obviously be a position that worked VERY closely under Bowen Marsh), so I have to put him top of the list. He’s standing with the primary perpetrators just moments before the crime is committed. He was probably the third or fourth knife. I don’t have an alibi for him either.

1: Alf of Runnymudd

The same things can be said about Alf that have been said about Lew. He was standing with Bowen and Wick in the shield hall, he left with them when they stormed out. However. Unlike Lew or Wick, Alf has a definite motive.

In Melisandre’s chapter, we get some characterization for Alf. He is a builder, he took R’hllor for his god (of his own free will) and, most importantly, when it is revealed who was killed by the Weeper, he screams and breaks down crying to hear that Garth Greyfeather was one of them. He’s so distraught he has to be drugged and put to bed.

“Who is it?" asked Owen the Oaf. "Not Dywen, is it?"

"Nor Garth," said the queen's man she knew as Alf of Runnymudd, one of the first to exchange his seven false gods for the truth of R'hllor. "Garth's too clever for them wildlings."

"How many?" Mully asked.

"Three," Jon told them. "Black Jack, Hairy Hal, and Garth."

Alf of Runnymudd let out a howl loud enough to wake sleepers in the Shadow Tower.

"Put him to bed and get some mulled wine into him," Jon told Three-Finger Hobb.  (ADWD, Melisandre)

@nobodysuspectsthebutterfly​ has written before about the possibility that Alf and Garth were in a gay relationship. I fully subscribe to this idea, and if you know me at all, you know I am a huge proponent of the Wall Husbands concept, and think there is probably a decent population of gay men on the Wall (my main choices for this being Benjen, Dolorous Edd, Big Liddle, and Waymar Royce [you may notice the pattern of them being sons of lords who joined of their own free will. It just makes sense to me that a lord’s son who for SOME reason didn’t want to have to get married to a woman would consider the option of joining an order of men that live together and never marry]) 

So my theory regarding Alf, is that he blames Jon for the death of Garth Greyfeather, his lover. Because Jon sent the ranging out knowing full well that few rangers are making it back alive, and here’s the clincher. Despite his many crimes, Jon is still willing to pardon the Weeper  

“Surely the lord commander cannot mean to allow that ... that demon [The Weeper] through as well?” [said Bowen Marsh]

“Not gladly.” Jon had not forgotten the heads the Weeping Man had left him, with bloody holes where their eyes had been. Black Jack Bulwer, Hairy Hal, Garth Greyfeather. I cannot avenge them, but I will not forget their names. “But yes, my lord, him as well. We cannot pick and choose amongst the free folk, saying this one may pass, this one may not. Peace means peace for all. [...] When a man takes the black, his crimes are forgiven,” Jon reminded them. “If we want the free folk to fight beside us, we must pardon their past crimes as we would for our own.” (ADWD, Jon XI)

If news of that got to Alf, I easily imagine he would be fully on board with killing him, and might have gone and tried it himself even without Bowen Marsh’s prompting. All of this makes him my suspect #1 for third or fourth knife. I think his story is a tragedy and really really hope he gets some moments in TWOW and is not just killed off right away. 

[missaureus]

EXplOration in Manila Pt. 2

 My roommates finally arrived past 1AM. I was super drained but I still managed to put on my bear nail stickers while waiting for them. The moment I opened the door we were already squealing because we haven’t seen each other since my Davao vacation on January that year. We chatted randomly and eventually dozed off. We only had a few hours to be physically prepared for a hectic day ahead.

The concert proper was still at night but we scheduled to go to the mall area at 10AM to distribute freebies under Team Jongin PH. I was wearing heels and my feet were already crying. Obviously, I am not used to it and it was a poor decision. Cafes and restaurants near the arena were banning meet-ups and large groups who were giving stuff to concertgoers because it would obstruct other costumers. What would they expect in a day like this? We respect establishments and would not go out empty-stomached. But I cannot blame them. With that, we ended up being stationed in a wing way distal to the arena. 

Many familiar faces were spurting inside the café. I got to introduce to them using twitter usernames. It was hilarious. I even messed up with my other internet friends who I failed to recognize right off the bat! I felt so apologetic. Probably out of exhaustion, my sugar was depleting! 

Around 2PM, I had pasta and coffee as my lunch. I cannot indulge my palate that I had to share my small dish to a friend. My fight-or-flight hormone was doing its job generously that afternoon. I could not recall how much yards we had to stroll for unknown reason in and out the mall. 

After giving away those packed stuff, we took some pictures in front of the arena in groups. After that, we went back to the condo to freshen up and get ready to line up. With my sequence number, around 400, I was near the end of the line. Surprisingly, almost everyone in my area was from the province, particularly Bisaya. We finally realized how the provincial assistance failed us that year. Probably the worse experience I had due to the hectic announcements for the Manila leg. At that moment, a hint of regret was circling my thoughts. Was it a right decision that I did not bite that one under the table offer? I could have experienced a barricade line. I just ignored that bleak light of what-if.

Inside the arena, around 5PM, I was probably 5 or 6 lines away from the stage. It was way farther than my ElyXiOn stop but still a good and close view. There were still foreigners in our area. There was no sign of the event to start so I finally decided to listen to my feet’s plea --- to sit on the floor. The VIP area was more compressed than the first day. Thus, I had to stand in no time to reserve my spot. 

Around 6PM, the show commenced. The intensity of Filipino EXO-Ls’ heated cheer in response to the house rules was much more ear-splitting than yesterday’s. The setlist was not even rolling but one or two from our area were already dragged out, mostly foreigners. I swear, the level of security was not a joke this time! 

With the same pattern of Moonlight being played, it was a hint for everyone to mentally prepare. The 1st VCR played on the big led screens. The ghastly intro was beating in a rising intensity until the EXOs finally set foot on stage. By the time Tempo played, not only the lightsticks but also the phones were raised up high to shot fancams. I was so stressed I forgot how the moshpit game should be played. I had to brace myself for over 2 hours! People in the pit were starting to make waves out of pushing and eventually I had to stop my fancam during Transformer because the bouncers were barring my view when they were trying to catch another bull-headed fan pinpointed by Filipino fans. 

Due to the endless commotion, I was ushered to the side barricade and had the opportunity to step on the platform for a much elevated view. I was so afraid of stampede I did not dare to move an inch from my position. I anchored myself to the barricade. From there, I had a better view for Gravity which is a personal favorite. A choreography does wonder to a song!

Baekhyun came out with the backup dancers for UN Village after the 2nd VCR was shown. Undeniably, he appeared to be exhausted which was obvious when he let the fans sing most of the song at the end. The fans did not fail to par the energy of the song with its fanchant..

This was followed by the 3rd VCR then the powerful trio: 24/7, which played a huge part in my decision making of which ticket to buy. I was after Jongin’s position for this song. Unlike, ElyXiOn that each member had a fix spot every time they go scatter around, EXplOration was way opposite and random. All te members were so mobile throughout. Next, the general public’s favorite, Love Shot attacked. Followed by Oh La La La. 

The deafening shout from the crowd was breathed out when EXO started talking for the 1st ment. They individually introduced themselves with matching hello Philippines and mabuhay greetings. Finally, Monster! This was a stage missed out last ElyXiOn. I was happy to finally witness it live. The members then scattered on the main stage for Oasis. The led screen was an art it was dancing gracefully with them. Breathtaking!

A solo stage by the leader, Junmyeon, followed. Funnily, they were now confident to rip off in an oversea show excluding Japan and China. With that, the crowd was expecting so much from Been Through. The moment Junmyeon exposed his chiseled abdominal muscles, the crowd went crazier that the shouts reached the roof the arena. 

Finally, a ballad song! Jongdae entered the center stage and the light bulbs were simultaneously falling like stars. He sang Lights Out too perfectly and I commend the crowd for understating the sole assignment during this stage --- to stay silent to appreciate his vocals. The lights were already reflecting towards my tears pooling in my eyes. 

The SeChan duo then took over the stage after the 4th VCR. They entered the scene with their bigass luggage as props. They were playing with What a Life and Closer to You. After that, the rest of the members joined with Falling for You.

A brown couch was dragged to the center stage for Wait stage. This ballad number was so heartwarming when the crowd sang along with the EXOs as if it was a duet. They appeared relaxed. Literally, feeling at home vibe in the living room.

The 2nd ment started. SeChan playfully pointed their microphones to the fan to let then sing some parts of What a Life. As expected from Phixos, we are remarkable to the group as the loudest crowd among all hosts. The rule will always be, we do not do fanchant, we sing the whole song haha! The leader then teased Baekhyun with his sexy choreo in UN Village. Baekhyun did it  which made Chayeol crazy for it! Randomly, Jongin danced the sexy choreo of Been Through followed by Junmyeon. Out of nowhere, the crowd cheered loudly for Jongdae’s name suggesting for him to be next in line to do the steps. He was generous enough to do both choreos while singing Lights Out lol I swear they were so chaotic! After that, Sehun did it too! Chanyeol was not getting any free pass and the crowd cheered for his name next. He was crazy that I did not already care for his self-image at that moment. He did his own version of rolling hills and the crowd had gone mad for it! He eventually went near each member to grind at them lmfao! Guess what! Except for Baekhyun!!! Jongin had a secondhand embarrassment for this guy and even threatened to punch him. To end the chaos, the leader finally introduced Power as the next song. It was so fun there were also fireworks-like effects during the break dance part which was serve by the leader, supposedly it was Kai’s part but the members cheered for Junmyeon to do it this time. 

At this point, I was a battery at 2% already. I almost forgot what was next in line. A Kai solo! Jongin entered the main stage with the back up dancers, he was wearing a vest with nothing underneath it and a cap! To be honest, I loved his get-up on the first day more but the experience of him much closer to me is the best! I did the fanchant, I tried religiously but his performance was jaw-dropping that I kept on losing my focus, I went silent while covering my mouth! Surprisingly, he opened the only clothing coving his upper torso that finally exposed his amazing physique! By that time, I already got unleashed, I am still sorry for that crispy FUCK on my fancam hahhahahaha! 

Bad dream and Damage were performed on the main sage. I actually was not able to give my full attention to it because my phone notified I was out of storage. Out of impulsivity, I deleted all of my applications thinking that it would save me until encore stage. After that, EXO danced to the legendary title tacks in a form of a medley, Growl, Overdose and Call Me Baby. 

The 6th VCR was a hint that it was about to end and I went emotional. The boys playfully performed Unfair and On the Snow. The latter song is nostalgic. It is vivid how Jongin was enjoying this stage, wearing a black shirt and pants with his cap placed backwards.  SeChan were so cute during You give me yours, I'll give you mine part when Chanyeol gave the maknae a bouquet of flowers. The fans started throwing lots of stuff on stage, the floor got crowded. 

During the last ment, I befriended the person in front of me who is a Chanyeol-biased. We shouted in chorus Jongin’s name while raising a gom banner but unfortunately he did not respond. We just kept on laughing! We tried it to Chanyeol while waving a banner of him and he waved backed to our area enthusiastically using the doll he picked on the floor. While the others were busily doing their individual messages, ChanKaiHo were so bust playing with the coiled spring, I swear they were kids! 

During Jongdae’s part, the audience started chanting Walang uuwi! We also did this last ElyXiOn and finally this time it was already translated back to the boys! They kept on saying that they enjoyed the night so much with the fans and shamelessly said it was way better that yesterday hahaha! I had to agree. They said that they would love to come back to the Philippines for a concert and a vacation. During Sehun’s part, he secretly asked the translator how to say “Walang uuwi!” and Sehun said it back to the crowd cutely. Finally, after a year!!!

The leader finally introduced the encore song, Smile on my Face. The confetti were starting to rain and feel our faces. The harmonization was heavenly that I almost cried. To be honest, I was sad but happy at the same time. The boys then arranged themselves on the moving platform. Until the last time, Sehun kept on saying Walang Uuwi!. They faded before my eyes, it was surreal! Thank God for letting me see them twice in a row! 

I looked for my friends in the pit and cried in unison! We took pictures outside the arena with some of our friends and decided to look for a place to eat. It was actually raining cats and dogs as if heavens knew how heavy my heart was that it was finally over. 

We went back to the condo with my packed order hahahaha I do not know what was into me that I did not touch my food. I just quenched my thirst bottoms up with a soda full of ice! I was so silent after that hahahaha. 

We slept around 2AM after consuming our fancams. The next day, we had breakfast in Naynay’s condo. Hnnng I miss her food! After that, we parted ways with my condomates and met some of my friends also before heading to the airport.

It was raining. The weather turned my departure more melancholic that it should be. But when I reached the arrival area, I was so touched my whole family came to fetch me. Thank you for supporting me and my happiness. Thank you for allowing me to have this memory when I grow old. 

This is my youth.

[casual-eumetazoa]

i’m a perpetually broke grad student so instead of buying gifts for Christmas and birthdays i write fanfics or short stories for friends. Christmas 2019 i asked my best friend to pick up to three genres for his gift story and he told me political drama + classical literature + self-help. i added steampunk sci-fi to that and took that as a challenge...

--------------------------

A Yule Anthem

(or how to end the monarchy and overthrow the government in twelve* simple steps)

a memoir by Erasmus Waynard Smith, a once royal circuit keeper

 *

Season’s greetings to you, dearest reader. Although I have no way of verifying this, it is quite likely that you are starting this book on the dawn of a Yule, as this is the date my memoir is set to be released. If that is the case, then happy holidays! I wish you all the best. May the spirits of old Earth guard you and support you in all of your endeavors in the upcoming cycle of the Suns.

It is with an unsteady hand that I begin this story, for I have never intended for it to be heard. Indeed, the book you are projecting onto your cornea as of this very moment would not exist if it wasn’t for the efforts, diligence, and, if I may be so frank, stubbornness of a certain someone.

Thirteen months ago, you see, I was approached by Theodosia Pruce – a talented and perceptive lady from the distant, exotic shores of the planet Zanzibar. Miss Pruce was the one who convinced me to put my memories into words, for the sake of future generations. And although I do not give as much as half a bitcoin for the future generations, I was, nonetheless, swayed, by the most generous offer of a personal mansion on a resort world and a fully paid pension for the rest of my physical existence. And so, I am sitting here now, a tall glass of rapidly cooling Roomas juice by my side, and a touchscreen quill pressed tightly in between my fingers, trying to jolt my memory and produce exactly as many words as I was asked for, not a word more, not a word less.

Conveying all the truth and nothing but the truth about these events is an earnest challenge for me. I am an old man of a hundred and fifty now, dearest reader, and 2237 seems centuries away from the present. Back then, I was a young lad of hardly forty, and my mind was full of foolish desires, far-reaching ambitions, and cotton candy. I worked as a royal circuit keeper in her majesty’s planetary servers - a skillful but simple and honest occupation - and, like so many before me and around me, dreamed of preposterous things. Dreamed of success, and money, and love, and a glorious revolution…

Lean back, dearest reader, adjust your mindscreen settings, and let me bring you with me on a trip to the past and tell you how to accomplish what I have somehow accomplished.

step 1: identify your project

This story begins on a dark, uneasy, snowy evening, on the first day of Yule of 2237. The shifts down at the factories and the river banks were rolling to the end, and the work hours just came to a close for all the royal employees. I – your faithful servant – had only about arrived at my usual spot, the Drunk Mongoose pub, when a roar of thunder shook the ground and shattered the glass in the liquor cabinet.

-The forecast didn’t say no thunder snowstorm. -  Said my best friend Arabella, as she fell down into a lumpy seat beside me. – I left Boy outside. If he will get struck by lightning again, I’ll never get the money to replace his burned-out batteries.

-Chill. – I advised, and took a generous sip of my drink. – It don’t seem to be a big one.

As if to disavow my word, the thunder crashed again, with twice as much strength this time. It pulsed through the floor, crackled in the walls and shook the roof above our heads.

-I ain’t likin’ it. – I whispered.

The lights and sounds of the pub were starting to flicker.

-Same. – Arabella retorted, clutching the rackety table with utmost strength.

Side by side, we watched as every single candle and kerosene lamp in the building lingered and died, blown out at once by a rush of electromagnetic wind. A low, irritating murmur reached my ears, and I realized that the entire holographic engine must have gone caput. For the second time this lunar cycle.

-Not again! – Came the exasperated moan of Octavius, the pub owner.

I sighed, and forced myself out of my seat, intent on helping the man with the machine.

-The entire network’s down. – Arabella informed, pointing at the blank projected screen of her pocket watch. – I’m so sick of this, Ersh. They’d promised to fix this back during the wet season!

-Sick of the government? – Yelled some drunken gentlemen from the other side of the pub. – Sick of his majesty’s empty promises?

-Yeah! – Another random visitor of the establishment supported the man enthusiastically.

-Well big mood, I tell ya. – The first man snorted. – Everyone hates them, but ain’t no one gon’ do a thing about it. So get back to your work.

Now I cannot put my finger on why that simple remark had such a profound effect on me… Was it the man’s voice, so full of despair and apathy and subdued anger? Was it my own exhaustion, the quiet rage at the thought of coming back home by foot, through the howling thunder and snow, in the absence of a sky bus? All in all, something must have short-circuited in my mind, as a sat back down, looked Arabella in the eyes and said, in a voice most confident:

-You know what? Let’s overthrow the government.

 step 2: define goals and objectives

On my way home, I was drowning in feverish frenzy, drunk without wine and hopeful beyond reason. Oh, for how long I have dreamt of this! Many a morning I have spent imagining what it would be like to live on a planet fair, unburdened, free from the thralls of corrupt government and incompetent king. I knew that I wanted it, and I knew that every one of us wanted it, and, somehow, despite all common sense, I knew that I could do it.

I stumbled out of the pub and wondered on unsteady feet towards the docks. The snow swirled and raged around me, and my blurry eyes struggled to focus on my surroundings. I stopped at the slope of the northern canal and gazed into the clouded sky, feeling the snowflakes land on my eyelashes and the wind slash my face. I cannot tell you why, dearest reader, but I felt so utterly happy.

-How much for an uber these days? – I announced cheerfully as I approached the line of carriages waiting by the canal.

-Three fifty for a mile. – Echoed one of the drivers – an older lady, who was stroking the head of a white, shabby-looking horse.

-Steep. – I whistled, and swung myself into the carriage. – Hampton Hall please, down at the cross of Richmond and Westby.

She nodded at me, and pushed the minute counter switch. One word to the horse, and I could hear the sound of its metal hooves striking against the cobblestone. I half-sat, half-laid in my seat, staring at the hole-ridden ceiling of the carriage, and listening to the sounds of the dreaming city.

‘Alrighty then’, I thought, pulling out my notebook. It had hardly any charge left, so the bleak night mode would have to suffice.

“Tasks for tomorrow”, I noted down, and drew a flower on each side of the line. “Destroy the government from the inside. Make King Edmund step down from the throne. Profit”.

 step 3: define tasks

It was only at noon next day when the realization of what I just committed myself to hit me like a bolt of lightning. I was enjoying my Roomas (the good kind – they don’t grow it right anymore) with my colleagues at the servers, and suddenly it dawned on me – I was going to take this planet apart, bit by bit. So powerful that was, so profoundly terrifying, that I had to excuse myself and sit in a locked bathroom stall, wheezing, my heart pounding in my chest. A few girls and a man must have heard me, as I was asked repeatedly whether I was okay.

I was not, but I was going to be.

I went straight home after the workday was over. I forced myself to gather my thoughts, and look rationally at this situation. This task, though ambitious, no doubt, could surely be accomplished. I knew this planet, knew it through and through. I knew politics too – it was the first thing I ever studied in university, and I hated it, I’ll admit, but it was useful nonetheless. All I needed was to sit down, think it through, and draft a plan.

And that is precisely what I did.

 step 4: build your team

We met in the abandoned park by the lakes at dawn the next morning. The air was bity with cold and static electricity, and the seven of us could not help but shiver as we walked towards our gazebo. It was buried underneath a thick layer of snow, and I laughed as Arabella pretended to push the fluffy heap onto my head.

-Good morning, everyone. – I greeted, inviting them inside before myself.

-Skip to the important bit, please.  -Arabella yawned, and took her seat at the table.

-Fair enough.

I took a deep breath in and gazed upon my freshly assembled crew. Arabella, a fellow circuit keeper and the fastest hacker I have ever met. Ambrose, a talented but not extensively successful journalist. Cecilia, an up-and-coming politician herself, but currently a secretary to one of the most famous politicians on the planet. Wilhelmina, a social media manager with hundreds of contacts at her fingertips. Josiah, an artist and designer, currently one of the official dressmakers to the king. Euphemia, a policewoman in the past, now a social activist and respected public figure. Matthew, a writer and a poet, who happened to be the lover of three separate government figures, all of different genders, all filthy rich. And me, a humble sysadmin with a dash of organization skills and arrogance to spare.

-Esteemed guests, - I said, and paused to clear my throat, - you all know why we are here. Now allow me to explain to you exactly what we will do.

 step 5: create a timeline

-This is flippin’ insane, Ersh. – Wilhelmia exclaimed, glaring, and I was forced to shush at her.

-Quiet. – I reminded, and she swallowed hard, remembering that anyone in the building was at liberty to overhear us.

The upcoming revolution was now two days old. On the surface, we continued to lead normal lives, working, complaining, gossiping, and counting the minutes to the end of the shift. In truth, we were right in the middle of action. Meeting all over the city – in undiscovered pubs and inns, in unguarded computer cellars, on the rooftops of nuclear boilers, and in the dead-ends of dark alleyways. We communicated over quantum radio and made sure to burn all of our transmissions after every call. We were brave, and vigilant, and determined, above all else, to bring this to a close as soon as possible.

-But that is too fast. – Wilhelmia insisted in a hoarse whisper. – You don’t seriously believe that this will be over before the Yule ends, do you?

-Indeed, I do. – I replied, and had the displeasure of being poked in the ribs. – What’s more, it is the only way to accomplish what we set out to do.

-How so? – She questioned.

-Conspiracies are short-lived. – I elaborated, and shifted in my tight, deeply uncomfortable sit.

The server ventilation shaft was far from a pleasant place to be inside of.

-The longer it goes on, the more likely it is to fall apart. Especially as we begin to bring more people into it.

-But ten days, Ersh! – Wilhelmia repeated. – How would that ever work?

-Simply and elegantly. – I smiled. – Remember, my friend – I am brilliant under tight deadlines, especially when said deadlines are self-inflicted.

Wilhelmia chose not to argue with me – for she knew, deep down, that I was right.

 step 6: adjust your plan accordingly

I did not get a wink of sleep on the fifth night of the revolution. The visions of failure haunted me like vicious yet intangible ghosts, and I tossed and turned in bed until the second moon grazed the sky. Giving up on sleep altogether, I got up, mixed up a glass of dehydrated water, and turned on the radio. I expected to be lulled back into calm by its soft, crackling static – but instead, I had my anxieties validated.

-Thank heavens, Erasmus. – The voice of Josiah erupted from the speaker. – I’ve been trying to reach you for hours!

-What is it? – I asked, and slumped down to the floor, my head dizzy all of a sudden.

-It isn’t working. – Josiah confessed, and I could practically taste his desperation. – Not a tad. He is listening to me, but he doesn’t believe me in the slightest, I fear.

-Okay. – I said, though I was as far from okay as one could be. – It’s fine. – It was not, in fact, fine. – Roadblocks happen. Let’s talk. We’ll think of something, I am sure.

And, unlikely as it was, we did.

 step 7: be flexible

The sixth day flew by so fast; I hardly noticed the night arriving. Eleven pm, and I found myself on the top floor back row of a double-decker, moving smoothly on its set path, the electric engine buzzing and murmuring somewhere far below. Outside, the snow was replaced by a thick fog, with neither of the moons in sight. The bus was almost empty and deathly quiet. I sighed, turned to my left, and met eyes with Matthew.

-How many in total? – I inquired, my voice down, still aware of the potential danger of being overheard.

-Forty-seven. – He informed, and the hint of a smile touched his lips. – Which makes it almost a third of the entire government.

-Not enough. – I shook my head, unsatisfied.

-Not enough? – He pouted.

-Time is not in abundance. – I said, and he looked away, avoiding my gaze. – We need to accelerate. Do you agree?

He sighed, but nodded.

-Good. – I glanced sideways, and drew a spiral on the mist-covered window. – You know what to do, Matthew.

-Yeah. – He said, smirking. – Unleash them memes.

 step 8: communicate with your team

All of us gathered together again on the afternoon of the seventh day, in a tacky, brightly lit and empty tea room. The forecasts mongered another thunderstorm, and the atmosphere was heavy still, but, somehow, it did not bother me in the slightest. I smiled as the maid droid placed a tray in front of me, and the smell of cinnamon and lemon zest reached my nose.

-We’re on the right track. – I proclaimed confidently, and took my acai rice pudding bowl and a steaming hot cup of Earl Gay off the tray. – Cheers.

-Cheers. – The team echoed, and we clanked our china cups together.

We spent the hour discussing the current affairs, congratulating each other, chatting, laughing, and feeling oddly optimistic about the whole endeavor. My step was light as I was leaving the tea room. We had a few challenges ahead, sure – but, overall, everything was going according to plan.

 step 9: address any problems before they occur

Then the eighth day arrived, and, all of a sudden, nothing was going according to plan. News rushed in through the radio one by one; they piled all on top of each other, and right as I was leaving the server maintenance room to enjoy my well-deserved Roomas break. I felt drops of sweat form on my neck and roll down my spine as I scrolled through the message feed of my wristwatch. Nothing terrible has happened so far, I admitted – but it could. So shaky. So many opportunities for it all to go to hell – and in rapid succession. Three seconds later, and I was overtaken by fierce, unwavering panic.

It must have been twenty years at least of sitting in the memory cube closet, hugging myself and trying desperately to remember how one was supposed to breathe, when someone knocked on the door. The first aid droid, I realized.

-I have detected alarmingly high levels of adrenaline and cortisol. – The droid’s voice sounded even sillier than usual, obstructed by the door. – Would the gentlemen like some treatment? I can offer morphine drops or deep brain stimulation.

-No. – I yelled back through the closed door. – No, thank you.

-Very well, sir. – The droid responded. – If you will need me, I’ll be at my re-charging station.

-Yes. Fine. Now leave me, please. – I groaned, and gently bumped my forehead against the wall.

I cannot tell you why, but somehow, that brief exchanged kicked some sense back into my mind. I let go of my shoulders, took a deep breath in, and told myself – “think”. Yes, the opportunities for disaster were plenty. Yes, we were on shaky ground now, even more so than before. Nevertheless, not all was lost. In fact, nothing was lost yet, I realized. You see, dearest reader, the benefit of having anxiety is that you can foresee potential problems and overcome them before they arise.

Fifteen minutes later, I had a solution for every single issue that could occur in the last phases of the plan. I thought about it further over my Roomas (with just a few drops of morphine), then found an excuse to leave the server buildings for a brief pause. Outside, it didn’t take me long to find a kid aimlessly wandering the streets.

-Any spare change, sir? – The kid asked, big blue eyes full of sadness. – I am all out of coins to buy Fortnight mods.

-Just your luck, your little rascal. – I smiled, and ruffled the kid’s curly hair. – I’ll give you a tenner – if you can bring this, - and I handed him a memory stick, - to lady Euphemia O’Malley. You will find her somewhere in the city center, most likely close to the town hall.

-Alright, sir. – The kid said, and snatched the memory stick out of my hand even before I transferred the payment. – I sure will try.

I nodded, said my farewells, and felt completely tranquil at once. Whether it was the effect of having dealt with the problems, or the morphine kicking in, I had no clue.

 step 10: learn to say ‘no’ and accept help

I took a break on the ninth day, knowing that the revolution was beyond my grasp at that point, and all I could do was step back and watch the dominos fall into place. I ended the shift early, and went to the ice rink up at Thatchley Square. It was full of preschoolers and noisy beyond tolerance, which prompted me to push my airpods deeper into my ears. I would take the majestic, sophisticated sounds of Ed Sheeran, Gwen Stefani, and other classics over the offensive modern chaos they played in public places any day.

Half an hour of skating back and forth across the artificial crystalline surface, and my muscles were starting to betray me. I sighed and leaned against the nearest wall to rub my aching thighs and ankles. Alas, I had not been built for physical labor. I was about to leave the rink, when something – no, someone – rammed into me at subhuman speed, making me cry out in shock and stumble backwards into the snow.

-Oh lord, - the someone exclaimed, - I am so sorry!

And I mumbled something incomprehensible in response, for there, in front of me, covered in snow and helping me get up from the ground was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Tall, lean and bright-eyes, she had bubblegum pink hair and a pierced nose and a tattoo of a rose on her neck. And she was staring at me… goodness me, she was staring at me as if she knew me.

-Erasmus Smith? – She asked, frowning, and my face lost all colour.

-Shush. – I said, immediately on guard. – Come to the dressing room with me.

We sat there, talking and drinking those awful food machine concoctions out of cellulose plastic cups, and she told me everything she knew about the revolution, and how she came to know of it. It brought me concern at first, but soon enough it left my mind, for I was told that she had no intention of upsetting our plans. And what’s more, she even wanted to join in – and take it up a notch.

-Out of the question. – I responded immediately, once she had laid out her scheme for crashing the entire political system. – We are not risking the original plan on a dare.

-But… - She protested.

-No. – I shook my head. – We’re sticking to our goals.

-Oh well. – She sighed. – It was worth the shot. Say… can I help you out, at least?

I considered it for a moment, then gave her a singular nod. It made her eyes glow with excitement and pride. Such a stunning smile she had…

-I have a different proposition for you, though. – I found myself saying. – What do you think about going to the holographic theater next week? With me.

-Oh. – She looked away, and a soft shade of blush touched her cheeks. – I’d be honored.

And thus, the exchange was not all in vain.

 step 11: write tomorrow’s task today

On the dusk of the tenth day, all – now as many as fifteen – of us gathered together by the docks, next to the roaring powerplant, where the moons were shining, making the freshly fallen snow glow and sparkle. We drank warm beer, talked, and watched the dodo birds and the pterodactyls play and chase each other on the canal slopes.

-All set to run. – Arabella concluded, after we revised every minute step over and over again. – Shall we?

I paused, took in a full lung’s worth of fresh cold air, and said yes.

We followed the first sparks of the fire on social media, observed as politician after journalist after king’s man turned all against each other, throwing accusations, spilling dirt, and digging political graves for each other – and we thought it lit. I did not wish to stay there at the docks for the entire night, so I brought the meeting to a close.

-One last thing before we go. – I announced, just as the people were turning to leave. – Write down a tweet for me, people.

“All political parties on the planet have fallen apart. The entire government has resigned. King Edmund is stepping down from the throne to marry a commoner. Bitches, let’s party.” I finished, and every single one of us cheered.

 step 12: celebrate milestones and victories

And bitches did, indeed, party the next day – party day and night as the biggest scandal of the century shook the planet to its core. I do not recall where I was for most of the Yule Tide. All I know is that by midnight I ended up in the town hall, which was utterly wrecked and overflowing with people. I came to my senses sitting on the floor, wearing nothing but booty shorts and an undone tie, and smoking weed through a pipe. It was the most splendid party I had ever attended in my life.

-To the revolution! – I shouted it, and half a hundred people – most of whom I have never met in my life – joined in cheerfully.

-All hail Ersh, - Ambrose added, - for without him, this wouldn’t have happened.

-All hail Josiah, - Arabella interrupted, - for if he hadn’t sucked the king’s dick, this wouldn’t have happened either.

-Oh leave it. – Josiah dismissed. – I’ve always wanted to do that anyway.

-When are you gonna tell him? – I asked. – That you aren’t marrying him after all, I mean.

-Well. – He shrugged. – I think I might actually like… do that.

-Wouldn’t that be funny, - Euphemia said, - if Josiah became a prince.

-Anything is possible now. – Arabella pointed out.

-Yeah. – I agreed. – Anything’s possible.

And that’s when yet another crucial realization dawned upon me, and made me instantly sober.

I have accomplished my goal – no question about that. Brought down the government, destroyed the monarchy, did away with every major political party – all like I had imagined. But the more pressing question was – what are we going to do now?

 And here comes *step 13, dearest reader, which no one had the courtesy of warning me about. The step is to ask yourself: what in the name of holy fuck you are doing in the first place, and why.

I advise you to complete this step before all the subsequent ones, for it took me all but twelve days of the Yule to bring my entire planet into chaos, and more than twenty years to carry it out of it and back into order.

Which is why I always say to the young, overly ambitious people who seek my wisdom – before you fuck some shit up, you better come up with a plan of how you will unfuck it – or do not go fucking it up in the first place, my child.

 Signed, Erasmus Waynard Smith.

[spacebrick3]

WHG Day 1: Snow

Welcome to the first day of the Hunger Games, featuring a doctor who’s starting to doubt her life choices...

Featuring Radan from @rhikasa​ and Begonia Rex from @ratracechronicler​, who I hope I’ve done justice!

The podium rises from the ground, carrying Snow to the grounds of the Arena. A bleak place, both in terms of environment and hope. She shivers in the damp fog, an icy name doing little to protect her against the cold, surveying the thirty-five other tributes thrown into the same precarious situation.

Some look uncertain, others outright fearful; determination and anxiety mix in equal measures in the eyes of many. As the timer ticks away the last certain seconds of her life (for in the Games, every moment is laced with a possible finality), she presses a hand to her chest, feeling for the small shape of her oath. Such a fragile thing. One twist of her fingers and the thin glass walls would shatter, tearing the paper apart. No, she tells herself with a shake of her head. Not yet.

The Cornucopia is tantalizingly close, and she resolves to run for it. All her certainty of the past few days, concocting a strategy and trying to play psychologist, now seems as nebulous as the fog. The tributes with whom she worked and watched will try to kill her, and she is expected to do the same of them-

The bell tolls.

Snow runs. Her shoes slide on the damp grass, muffled shouts and screams filling the air above her. Too many others seem to have had the same idea, blurred shapes all racing for the Cornucopia—she passes scattered backpacks and supplies lying on the ground, tempted to grab one and run, but the fighting has moved to that same outside ring. She leaves them behind, internally wincing, racing for the golden walls in front of her because they at least promise shelter.

Behind her, an explosion rocks the earth, silencing the Arena for a split second. The shockwave pushes her those final few feet into the Cornucopia, tripping over her own legs and nearly slamming headfirst into the arches of the horn—its supplies and resources strewn across the ground she just left. She presses herself against the wall, trying to appear as small as possible and hoping they notice, quicker than her, that the Cornucopia is empty and avoid it.

Her breath comes heavy and fast, echoing in the small space. Should have grabbed supplies. Should have picked up a weapon, for what if another tribute finds her—what if, what if, what if-

She peeks around the corner, cursing silently, the mist outside now mixed with bloody, ashy smoke. It’s been minutes. Goddamn minutes since they were sharing their last goodbyes—only hours since they were working and training with one another. All that crushed underfoot by the Games in just a few seconds.

How long will it take? she wonders, before the same happens to me? Before I’m killing with the rest of them?

Perhaps the most frightening thing is that she can’t answer.

***

When she does leave the Cornucopia, it’s in the steps of one of the District 6 tributes—Radan, she remembers his name being, who seems to know what he’s doing. She makes sure to keep a safe distance behind him, as well, placing her feet carefully as to not step on anything that will give away her presence.

It would be easier to announce her presence, to propose an alliance for the duration of the day. But that means trusting him, trusting that he would buck the expectations of the Games and decide not to kill her. And from what she saw at the Reaping, she can’t wholly think that of anybody, no matter what she might have seen of them during the training or the interviews. 

As it turns out, that choice is made for her. Radan turns around, obviously spotting her even through the trees. “Hey!” he calls. “I know you’re following me! Show yourself!”

She freezes, raising her hands to show she carries no weapons. “I don’t…want to hurt you,” she says quickly. “Don’t think I could if I tried.”

“Why are you following me, then?” he asks, backtracking so that the two of them stand nearly face-to-face. He’s significantly taller than her, carrying himself with the appearance of royalty and regarding her with deep suspicion. “This is the Hunger Games. No one just follows one another.”

“I understand that,” she says with a sigh. “I wanted to get away from the Cornucopia, and I didn’t know where to go. You seemed as though you did.” Five dead there, she’d confirmed. Five who she hadn’t been able to help—one another tribute from her own district, Aurum, with a knife in her chest, the others thrown about by the explosion. “This is the Games, but we can still help each other-“

“Prove it,” he says.

She blinks. “What?”

“Only one person is left standing at the end. Prove that I can trust you, that you won’t backstab me as soon as you have the chance.” He crosses his arms with a sigh. 

If this were university, there would have been a lecture—with numerous citations to Karl Popper—about the difficulty of proving anything, much less means and intentions, probably set up in the form of a Socratic debate for half the class to ignore. But it’s not, and she has little to give him besides an oath even she doesn’t know if she can keep. “I—I can’t.”

“Then I don’t think an alliance is on the table,” he says. “I’m sorry.” A brief, awkward pause, the kind that tends to fall across conversations where both parties have admitted to not fully trusting the other. “You’re Snow, right?”

“Yes. And you’re Radan.”

He nods, glancing away to the direction he was originally taking. “Well. I do wish we were meeting under different circumstances, Snow, but as it stands I hope we don’t run into each other again. Can’t end well.” He shakes his head. “Good luck with the Games. May the best of us win.”

“May the best win,” she echoes, though with much less conviction.

***

Somewhere around midnight, her makeshift camp is rudely invaded by a familiar face, identifiable even in the shadowy moonlight by the streak of red in his hair and the simple fact that he’s nearly hopping up and down with excitement. “Snow!” he whispers with all the subtlety of a stage actor. “Is that you?”

After briefly entertaining the possibility that this is a fever dream of some sort, she pushes herself up to one elbow and regards the quasi-botanist with a flat look. “Begonia. What the hell. Are you doing here.”

His smile doesn’t falter for a second. “Back on the train, you were talking about an alliance! So I’ve been looking around—and I may have gotten just a little bit distracted here and there,” he admits, “especially in the fog and the rain—but I did find you in the end! Just that way, actually, there are some impressive rain lilies that seem to be particularly happy in the fog and the rain, and—oh! I found a little bit of Piscidia piscipula by a stream…”

She lets him talk for a couple minutes, amazed that he can find any wonder in the Arena, of all places. “I’m glad you’re still alive, Begonia,” she says, voice cracking unexpectedly at the word ‘alive’. “I—I mean, I don’t…” 

“I’m glad I’m still alive, too!” he says, clearing a small space to sit on the ground beside her. “Are you quite sure you’re all right, though? I know most people don’t like being woken up so late—or is it early now? I just thought it might be a bit surprising if you woke up in the morning and I was right here, so I decided to let you know now.”

“No, no,” she says, burying her face in her hands. “It’s—look, I don’t know the right way to say this.”

His smile fades to a look of concern, though with the same cheerful energy beneath it. “Oh, of course! I never know the right way to say anything, so I just say it! It’s worked out so far.”

Snow laughs quietly. “It’s been a day. A day, Begonia. Look what the Games have done to us already. We were all working together, training together, listening to the others talk about their families and their homes and their dreams. And now seven of thirty-six are dead, and five times that will be by the end. I’m scared that the Games will do that to us all. That everyone I thought I knew in the center will become a killer because they don’t have a choice otherwise—hell, I can’t be certain that I wouldn’t do the same, that I could stick to my morals and my oath if my life was on the line. And I’ve no fucking clue what to do about it.”

A midnight confession, made to the one person she unconsciously exempted from that fear. “Well. I’m not entirely-“

“I shouldn’t be—you shouldn’t have to worry about this,” she says quickly. “These are my fears, not yours. Who knows whether they’ll even come true or not. Plenty of time in the Games.”

He shrugs. “I mean…people are difficult. Even plants don’t do what I want them to all the time, and they have to make far fewer decisions than people do, so there’s really no point in worrying what they’re going to do or not…and if you think about it like plants, then the only thing you can really control is what you’re doing. So as long as you’re sure you won’t….uh, start killing people, then you should be fine!”

Only he could say that she’ll be fine in the Hunger Games of all places. In some sense, there’s no point in worrying about whether the Games will turn them all into killers, because chances are high she’ll die long before then. But if that’s true, then what’s the point in keeping the oath that hangs heavy around her neck—what’s stopping her from fighting tooth and nail to hang onto life if probability says she’ll be dead anyway?

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. And that’s what terrifies her.

But it’s hard to stay anxious around Begonia, with his seeming insistence that so long as he believes the best of the world then it will surely come to pass. After a few empty words about the tributes and the Games, the conversation turns inevitably back to plants, where he shows her some of the carefully-cut flowers he’d found in the Arena and their bright colors visible even in the night. Tiny pieces of beauty he’d managed to scrounge up somewhere, half of which he gives to her before falling asleep.

She tucks the flowers into her own pocket, feeling slightly more hopeful about the days to come.

[kristallioness]

2016 | 2017 | 2018

*quietly sneaks back in*... Happy New THIS Year, my dear followers! In Estonia, we have this saying that if you wish someone a 'happy new year' after Three Kings' Day (the 6th of January), you gotta have a bottle of alcohol with you and give them a drink. *lol*

Anyways, I would like to apologize for the sudden disappearance that happened prior to Christmas. I was just busy travelling back home for the holidays, unpacking and putting away my stuff, watching some great, traditional movies or shows on TV, and most importantly, working on those 2 latest masterpieces that I posted (which barely got 30 notes each.. *sigh*).

But as you can (and probably will) see, the year of the yellow earth pig (i.e. my dad's year) was a rollercoaster of emotions and accomplishments, or lacking thereof.

My creative side seems to have suffered the most due to lack of leisure time. I only managed to finish 3 full digital drawings and left behind several sketches or unfinished WIPs (2 of which are revealed here under the months of June and November for the first time, I intend to finish the Korrasami one btw). At least I got to start 2020 with a completed drawing on the very 1st day, ha-ha! Perhaps that's a good omen for this year?

If so, then I hope I'll find the time to finish the rest of the 2019 Inktober prompts, since I only did 4/31 this past October (even though I'd thought of ideas for all of them). I brought all the necessary drawing utensils and sheets of paper with me, so whenever I'm in the mood, I'll try to sketch another one.

*calculates for the nth time*.. I wrote 18,110 words worth of fanfiction, plus 820 words for the UYLD prompts (making the total 18,930). Technically, you can count another 8k+ in there, since it comes from that unfinished story (of Aang taking care of a flu-ridden Katara, as illustrated by the September sketch), which I haven't finished within the last 4 months or so. Plus, I barely wrote 1/5 of the amount compared to 2018.. *hides in shame*

Then again, I was an excellent pupil for picking up an actual book and reading through 150+ pages (which means I have ~300 pages to go). I'm talking about the new Kyoshi novel that came out. As I once said, I haven't voluntarily read a book in years make that 2 years ago (most of the reading I've done in my life is either Tom & Jerry comics, now the Avatar comic trilogies and art books as well as fanfiction online, or compulsory reading during school). But this novel is freaking fantastic superb!

Not only that, I bought all the new comic trilogies and managed to read them through. Damn, did they give me feels.. especially "Ruins of the Empire" (ngl I squeed so hard when I saw the Korrasami farewell kiss on the 1st page of the 2nd part). I can't wait to read the 3rd part this year!

However, I failed to rewatch Avatar last year, and I haven't seen Korra since.. 2016, I believe? Wow, that's 4 whole years.. But I intend to fix that mistake starting from 2020. Hopefully I'm in the mood to start my rewatch this weekend tonight. *fingers crossed*

But as I said, I had much less time to focus on my hobbies since 2019 was the year for finally moving on with my life (sort of, I'm still working on it). I still remember how down I'd been feeling for a while and how valid those emotions really were. The first quarter of the year (+ like a month or two) was a continuous descent into desperation and feelings of utter failure, which already started around the 2nd half of 2018 and only continued to deepen around that time.

Everything began to change when I was first chosen to be part of a 2-month summer internship in an IT company, and I had to start building a new nest in a new location in Tallinn this May. And now, I feel like I've hit the jackpot by getting a permanent job in another IT company this October.

I got the opportunity to work in two different fields, in two different teams within a year. I met some awesome colleagues (a lot of whom are foreigners) and got the chance to really put my English skills to the test.

Thanks to the new job, I also had to go to a free health check, which went really-really well. Despite my nervousness in the beginning, I feel much more relaxed about my physical (and mental) health, cause the results showed that everything's okay (something I'd been worried about since March 2017).

Speaking of health or staying healthy, there were a few sports events that I went to, too. Our team held the first winter team event (it was the first one for me, at least) by going to do archery in a range on the outskirts of the capital.

I watched the football match between 2 teams of our local league at my hometown together with my dad on his birthday. Our home team won the match and came in 4th place overall in the league this year, which is their best result so far (I'm really proud!). And merely days before I started work, I visited the Tallinn International Horse Show for the first time (also with my dad). I last got to watch horses jump over fences or dance to their musical programs ~ 10 years ago, and I loved it!

Event-wise 2019 was pretty full of them. As has become tradition, I went to the Defence Forces parade on our 101st Independence Day (which seemed rather bleak compared to the centennial, even more so since we didn't have ANY snow at the time).

What will hopefully become new traditions, I visited the television tower on the Restoration of Independence Day (where Uku Suviste gave a free concert in the evening), and went to the Veteran's Rock concert (to honour our war veterans) on our Freedom Square on the 23rd of April (since I'm residing in the capital now, I should be able to go again this year).

To continue with the centennial celebrations (yes, some things are STILL turning 100), I saw and explored inside the armoured train no. 7 called "Wabadus" ("Freedom") in the Baltic Station. This armoured train was one of the keys that led our country to victory during the War of Independence from 1918-1920.

There was an even bigger (150th) anniversary to celebrate in the beginning of July, when I attended our Song and Dance Festival. This was a really important, if not the biggest event of the year. I intend to make a longer post about my experience, cause it's something that you foreigners need to see for yourself. I can't simply describe or put it into words, I have to show you some videos and photos.

But while we're on the topic of concerts, I should mention that I went to 2 more at the beginning of June - Bon Jovi and Sting - as well as 2 that were part of Christmas tours in December - Elina Nechayeva and Rolf Roosalu.

Besides that, I went to 6 different festivals, half of which I'd been to several times before, such as the Türi Flower Fair, Jäneda Farm Days (where I went on my first helicopter ride for my 25th birthday present) and the Christmas market in the Old Town of Tallinn.

The other half is comprised of festivals that I'd been considering going to for a while, or which took place for the first time. The latter applies to the Black Food Festival, whereas the "Valgus Kõnnib" ("Wandering Lights") and the duck rally, both of which took place in Kadriorg, fall under the first category.

The duck rally is a charity event held in the beginning of June. Regular people can buy at least one (or several) rubber bath duckies for different prices, which will then be dumped into a tiny stream that'll carry them towards the finish line. This event has grown more popular each year, and the money the Estonian Association of Parents of Children with Cancer (sorry, long name in English!) collects is donated to the Cancer Treatment Fund.

*wipes forehead*.. Phew! I'm surprised, that's a whole lotta positivity for 2019. I think there's one more important, but seriously negative topic I haven't covered yet, but I feel should be mentioned and explained.

When it comes to politics, 2019 was a complete disaster for us. EKRE (Eesti Konservatiivne Rahvaerakond in Estonian, or Estonia's Conservative People's Party in English) i.e. our populist/nazi/pro-Trump party is in the government as of April 2019, thanks to 100,000+ idiots (out of our population of 1.3 million) who voted for them and gave them 19/101 seats in the Parliament.

No, I am NOT going to apologize for calling them a nazi party, because their main leaders have repeatedly supported ideology that's common to nazis (they use aggressive rhetoric, blame the media for making them look bad, downgrade women, minorities, are racist, anti-semitic etc...). And I will not apologize in front of the people who voted for them, because "thanks" to this, EKRE has dragged our country's reputation straight through a mud puddle (not to mention the scandals that have accompanied 5 of their ministers, 3 of who have THANKFULLY stepped down from their positions) and.. *swears like the British*.. it's BLOODY EMBARRASSING.

I am done being nice, I have at least some kind of prejudice about anyone who supports them or their ideals. And I will certainly not let Estonia end up like America. So that is why I participated in two protest events against EKRE and our current government (because the 2 other parties, who were willing to form the coalition with them, are spineless jellyfish that simply seek to hold onto their current positions of power). I'm willing to take bets as to when our government falls (the sooner the better).

*shakes off the frustration*.. Brrr! So besides that, I guess the only downside to 2019 was my spare time falling back in the list of priorities (which shows in the empty square of July).

2020 is gonna be the year of the white metal rat. I can only hope (and take action so) that it'll be just as eventful, and much more creative than 2019. Thank you all for following me (or lurking anonymously) for so long, especially to the bloggers who've offered me support through better or worse! *raises a glass* Here's to 2020!.. *sip*

[fairyscribbles]

Pomegranates and Decay (Shh, I’m just braiding your hair, TAO) [Gods!AU]

This is something I’ve been working on since November, and I’ve finally finished it! I have no idea how it got so big tbh ^^’’ I just fell in love with the greek!gods and I will be writing more with them! I hope you enjoy Hades!Tao!

Warning: Multiple mentions of a brutal killing, major character death (you), use of knives (but not in self-harm). If topics like these don’t sit with you, DO NOT READ THIS, PLEASE.

-

You couldn’t have been more confused. A few moments ago, you were walking down the street, minding your business, and then, you felt the soft sway of a boat floating down a body of water.

It felt almost surreal, as if you didn’t have a body, but when you were able to command your eyes to open, you were surprised to find the ceiling starless and dark. It made a bit more sense when your eyes caught the soft echo of water dripping down the walls.

Were you in a cave?

“Where…am I?” you murmured to yourself. You knew something was wrong when you didn’t jump in surprise at the sudden voice, being the scaredy-cat you were.

“Have you heard of the river Styx?” you turned your head to the source of the voice, and found an unnaturally tall figure shrouded in black, steering the gondola.

Of course you had heard of the river Styx. But that would mean…

“So I’m dead?” you said almost jokingly, but when the figure didn’t reply, you took the silence as an affirmative.

There was no way you could’ve been dead, right?

But then, how did you get here? And how did you get into these clothes? Gone were your jeans and pink leather jacket. You were dressed in a pure white gown, pooling all the way down to your ankles. When you ran your hands over it, it felt as if you were touching virgin snow, cool to the touch, feeling as if the dress would crumble away if you grabbed it in a fist.

The torso of the dress however, was striking red. It dripped down from your neckline to your stomach, branching out in fluid patterns that seemed almost impossible to recreate a second time.

Your feet were bare, and your skin did have an unnaturally pale hue, as if someone was left outside in the cold for too long or…

“How did I die?” by now, you weren’t surprised when the ferryman lifted a hand to point at the ceiling, and instead of flesh, you saw the striking white of a bone: nevertheless, you followed where he was pointing to, and you were met with the dramatic scene of your death. Even though the scene was created from fumes that shaped into things oddly similar to human bodies, you could immediately realize that one of the was yourself, walking.

The other hovered behind your specter before it rushed out at you, grabbing you from behind. It took mere seconds to slit your throat with the knife concealed in his jacket sleeve and you were falling, hands uselessly trying to stop the blood flowing down your neck and somehow close up the gaping hole in your throat so you could take another breath.

You watched as you took your last breath on that dirty sidewalk, while the figure loomed above you, grabbed your purse, and ran into nothingness. You watched as the fog image of yourself tried to stop the blood flowing from your open throat, when you ran your hand over the skin of your neck. You could feel the slight lumps of scar tissue.

“I’m dead.” You told to no one, and yet the gondolier still hummed in acknowledgement.

The discovery was more anticlimactic than you thought. So the pattern on your dress…

“Everyone has a different one,” the man said, as if reading your thoughts. A bony finger pointed over to the further away shore, where another woman stood. She wore the same kind of gown you did, but instead of the vivid red all over her torso, she had four pools of the size of coffee saucers on her chest, and two in her legs.

“Shooting. Tried to protect her children.” The hallowed look in her eyes told you she maybe wasn’t successful in that. But then again, your own emotions were fuddled, and you thought there wouldn’t be a scenario that would bring a tear to your eyes.

“Your emotions will come back,” the voice behind you spoke up.

“It takes a while for them to return, as your soul has departed your body.”

“That makes sense,” you replied, staring back at the woman looking longingly at the lime green river. Only now you’ve realized that it’s filled with eyeless faces, mouths opened in what could be yells or begging.

“Her children survived the attack. If they hadn’t, she would be reunited with them. Lord would make it so.”

“And where am I going?”

“To meet the Lord. You died on the anniversary of his queen’s reincarnation, and thus you will take her place by his side.”

“He chose me to be his wife?”

“Tao saw your departure that ripped you from the living. You intrigued him.”

“And what if I don’t want to be his wife?” you asked and you looked onward once the woman disappeared from sight.

“That is up to him to decide. I am taking you to him right now.”

-

The undertaker’s servant took you into the gardens. The flowers were grotesque versions of their earthly selves, their stalks a horrible shade of bleak dark green and the petals an ashen black, blood red, or plum purple. Tao was in the midst of these, tall and stoic in the black robe covering his whole body. His arms were bare, covered only by a sheen, see-through fabric that revealed the black tattoos sliding up and down the firm muscle, accentuating the possible danger they posed.

He wasn’t looking your way, his gaze on the tree in the center of the garden, his feline eyes holding an unexplainable emotion.

“She is here, my Lord,” and with that, the two unreadable orbs turned their attention to you. If you had your feelings back at that moment, you would’ve gasped, because the Lord of the Underworld was one of the most handsome men, in this world or the living. Even through his sharp features, there was an aspect of softness to them, a slight vulnerability of the dark circles under his eyes.

You expected to find a cruel and heartless Lord, but were met with a soul filled with emotions.

He stepped out towards you, reaching an arm out in invitation. When you grabbed it and moved over to him, he offered a slightly wry smile.

“I am so sorry for your loss,” he voiced his condolences silently and you almost laughed. You knew you would’ve heard this phrase sometime in your life, but you never expected to hear it in regard to yourself.

Instead of answering, because you knew you would’ve said something dumb in reply, you shook your head. You will come to mourn your passing.

“I am sure Sooman had already told you…”

“That I am to be your bride, yes?” you supplied after a longer pause from your spouse. The smile Tao offered you almost seem to rival the beauty of the garden.

“If you will have me,” Tao added to your statement, finally drawing the hand he had behind his back into view, barely able to hold the ripe pomegranate fruit that was cut open. The red pieces glittered like gems, the skin straining over the undoubtedly sweet juices inside.

“If you eat this, you agree to become my queen,” Tao told you as you stared down at the fruit.

“And if I don’t?”

“Sooman will take you further into Elysium to live out eternity with the gods.”

That did sound tempting, live out eternity with Gods. You had heard about Elysium during your life as well – the place where pain is unknown and people feast and drink. It goes without question that if you rejected this man, you would move onto eternal happiness. Nobody told you what waited for you here.

And yet as you stared at the man before you, the decision wasn’t as clear as one would think. This man with feline dangerous eyes holding nothing but soft vulnerability, arms designed to kill but yearning to hold…made you change your decision.

And without breaking eye contact, you grabbed a handful of the fruit, and brought it to your lips.

And in that moment, you could feel again.

-

The emotions that returned hit you like a sudden wave. The information about your passing has now been affected by your emotions, and you spent the majority of your time crying in your chambers, attempting to muffle your wails into the pillows.

Your body also seemed to have suffered from your death, judging by the way you seem to react to certain actions.

For example, you can’t stand the realization of someone having a chance of sneaking up behind you. You preferred to find places where you could sit with your back to the wall, and if that wasn’t possible, you turned around more often than hunted prey, making sure nobody dangerous was behind you – it did seem a bit silly, taking into account that you were already dead. This fact still didn’t change anything, and you flinched away from any touch that came from behind and you weren’t aware of it, no matter who was the source.

Not even the emperor of the dead, Tao, had the luxury of you not being affected by his touches.

When your emotions returned and you thought back on your arrangement, fear seeped into every pore of your body, uncomfortably tensing your muscles and keeping you up at night, even though it seemed a bit pointless.

Tao has been nothing but considerate in regards of your trauma, making sure never to come up behind you unannounced or breathing down your neck. What he didn’t let you do, however, is wallow in your chambers for whole eternity. He made sure that you ate enough (pomegranates seemed to be your favorite, and he made sure he had at least a bow every few days ready for you, already cleaned and washed, looking more like rubies than fruit) and that you accompany him on his daily strolls through the garden.

The walks were usually silent, the only sound being the soft footsteps of the two of you, or the occasional soft wail in the distance. Those you tried to ignore.

This time, however, the Lord of Death broke the silence.

“My lady,” he called to catch your attention, hands grasped behind his back.

“Yes, my Lord?” you answered back, already familiar with the protocol Sooman introduced you to.

With being the bride of the King of Death came royal etiquette.

“There is something that has burdened my mind for a while now…” he started off, his body angling slightly towards yours.

“Yes?” you bid him to continue, watching his thoughtful face.

“You are my bride, and yet up until now… I have not learnt the reason of your passing.” If you had any more flowing blood in your veins, it would’ve frozen at that moment. And yet you hoped that he hadn’t noticed.

You kept staring right in front of you, and Tao seemed to be doing the same.

“Are you not capable to find out yourself, my Lord?”

You could already hear Sooman’s groan at your evident breach of etiquette, but you hoped he would be able to forgive your rudeness at the moment.

“I do, but I would like to hear it from you. I…” he paused temporarily, stopping his walk as well.

“If you wish not to tell me now, I respect your decision.” He clicked his tongue in annoyance, but you couldn’t help but be surprised when you realized his annoyance was aimed at himself.

“You have just had your emotions back, of course you don’t want to discuss this…” he turned away from you, evidently disgusted by himself. If you had not known it from his body language, the low but clear “stupid Zitao” was evidence enough.

“I…” your voice stopped him. Turning, the golden orbs bore into yours, almost hanging on your response.

“I was…I was killed.” He didn’t say anything, and you still had the need to correct yourself.

“I mean, of course I was killed, I’m dead, I just…” with a deep sigh, you tried to ward away the tears that were already building up. Licking your front teeth and stepping from one foot to the other, you continued.

“By…by my boyfriend.” You didn’t look at him, so you didn’t know if this piece of information somehow resonated with your husband. If you had expected a dramatic response, you would’ve been disappointed.

“Apparently…he was low on cash, and had debts.” The tears were now freely rolling down your cheeks, but your hands, balled at your sides, didn’t rise to wipe them away.

“And he knew that…t-that I just got a…paycheck.” Your reply was now more a sob than anything else, but you felt that if you told him this, it would help you too, in the end. It was too much of a burden to carry on the too slender shoulders you had.

“What he didn’t know was, that I sent it to my friend. We were to go on vacation together.” You barked out a wet laugh, looking at your hands.

“He killed me for 10$.”

Silence rang through the garden, not even the wind dared to move to disturb the deafening roar of stillness. After a moment, which felt like eternity, soft footsteps nearing you alerted you of the presence of your husband, yet you still dared not to lift your gaze up to meet him.

“It was wrong of me to ask so soon, my lady…” his voice was low, calming your distressed soul.

“…I apologize for prying, and causing you such hurt.”

“___.” For the first time, you looked up and into those deep eyes. Right now, you caused them to have surprise flicker over.

“I’m sorry?”

“When we’re alone like this…” brushing away the tears from your cheeks, you tried to smile at him.

“I’d prefer if you called me by my name, my Lord.” Tao smiled.

“Only if you do so as well, ___.” Your name was delicately pronounced, as if uttering it in the wrong way could cause a catastrophe. You returned the smile gently, rubbing at your tears before stepping away from Tao.

“If you’d excuse me…I’d like to freshen up before our dinner.” Your husband just outstretched his arm in the direction of your chambers, and you followed it with a slight bow.

Only when you were walking away did Tao frown.

“Sooman?” he asked to the darkness, and his servant appeared as if he sat by his feet the whole time.

“Yes, my Lord?”

“I want her killer found. Find him, mess with his head. And when he is at his lowest, let me know.”

“Of course, my Lord.” Sooman disappeared as stealthily as he came, leaving the Lord of the underworld staring broodily at the trees abundant with death fruit.  

-

“___?” hearing your name ripped you from your thoughts, and your head sprang up from where your gaze was focused on the food piling on your plate. Your husband was looking at you with a small smile.

“Is the food to your liking?” immediate guilt filled your entire body. Tao must have noticed that ever since you told him of your death, your well-being seemed to fall behind once more. It was harder to find you roaming your kingdom, as you thought it was better protection to just stay in bed as much as possible.

That has not been the best choice either, as your killer found his way into your dreams as well, tearing you from sleep with terrified screams just as the knife slid across your neck…

And here he is, the Lord of Undeath, trying his best to make you feel good once more, filling the entire dining room table with a vast amount of various meals, some familiar to you from your life before, others completely foreign. Exactly in front of you were various seafood dishes, and even though they looked very appetizing, you shied away from them.

“All of this…” you tried to look for words that could capture how much you appreciated your husband’s effort, but your mind went blank. Were there even words to express your gratitude?

You hoped to show him your thankfulness by eating all of the deliciousness that was in front of you, but your stomach betrayed you. You felt so stuffed after only a few bites, that you worried that eating more could make you feel sick. And so, in fear of ruining your dinner, you stuck to lighter foods and made sure to drink enough water to balance everything out.

“I can’t even start to describe how delicious everything looks, Tao.” You finally settled for an answer, one that seemed to please your husband by the look on his face.

“I am glad to hear that, ___.” He replied, taking another bite from his own meal.

“If I could recommend, the Sea Cucumber is a meal you should try.” You appreciated your husband’s recommendation, but even the name itself stopped you from eating it. You eyed the brown sea cucumber bouncing in sauce with what you hoped was very well masked distain.

“Ah, those…” you smiled, pushing the plate slightly away from you.

“I’m sorry, I…sea food doesn’t sit that well for me. It makes me a bit sick…”

“Oh! I’m…I’m sorry, I did not know of that! If I had known…”

“Oh no, Tao! It’s not that! You like it, so of course it should be here! I mean, I should even learn how to make it, so I can make it for you someday…” your voice trailed off at the sudden domestic offer you made. After thinking about it, it sounded silly. Tao had hordes of servants answering his every whim, of course he must have chefs that were specialized making all of his favorite dishes, and here you are, some nobody, offering to make his dinner.

“I’m…sorry…” you needed to say something into the silence that settled over the dining room.

“What are you apologizing for, ___?” Tao’s low voice was soothing your anxious nerves.

“It just seemed silly…me, cooking for you, the…the God of…”

“Death?” he supplied with a grim chuckle, and if your cheeks could’ve heated with a blush, they would have.

“Well, yes! I mean, I couldn’t even cook an omelet on bad days, and you must have one of the best chefs that walked the earth cooking for you! It’s just…silly, to think…that…ah, you’d want to eat something I prepared.” Tao watched your attempt to explain yourself with a smile.

“Would it be as silly as seeing the God of Death attempt to cook for his distressed bride?” he questioned you with a slight smile, popping a piece of the sea cucumber in his mouth. At his comment, your jaws slacked in awe. Eyes flickered from the food on the table to your husband and back.

“This…you…”

“Not all of it, of course. Only the seafood.” The seafood he so ardently recommended to you, you realized with a pang, and almost frantically, you reached over to put some on your plate. As if sensing you would do that, Tao chuckled, moving the dishes from your vicinity.

“You don’t have to force yourself to eat something you do not want, my queen,” he told you with a soft smile, and if there was any more blood left in your body, you were sure it would rush to your cheeks at this moment.

“Tao, all of this…”

“Is an attempt to apologize for halting your journey to well-being.” He offered to complete the sentence for you, and he covered your hand briefly with his. The touch was electric, and all the nerve endings on the skin of your hand seemed to come alive with his brush of his fingertips over your knuckles.

“This is all very new to you, and I might have asked questions that could’ve been saved for later. My impatience brought you pain, for which I apologize. This is my way of saying I was stupid, and I hope I will never put you in such distress again.”

An emotion you have thought you would never feel in the underworld burst in your chest. The onslaught of admiration and adoration bloomed, spreading warmth over you in lulling waves, waves that brought one of the most loving smiles on your face. A loving smile you presented to your husband.

Words were useless in a situation like this, and with a soft nod of your head, you returned to your dish, a completely new feeling overcoming you and making you enjoy your meal in a way you haven’t before.

-

“Can I ask you a question?” flew from your lips before you were able to stop it, crashing the silent stroll through the kingdom’s gardens. Your husband did not seem to mind your interruption in the slightest, turning to you with a soft smile adorning his features.

“Of course you may, ___. What’s on your mind?”

As you suspected, your following question made the gentle smile slide off his face almost instantly.

“Your servant told me I died on the anniversary of your first wife’s death…” where he would usually bid you to continue, now he stayed silent. You did not let that deter you from finding out more about Tao.

“Is that true?”

Tao looked away from you, staring right ahead. There was a small crease between his eyebrows, the frown only accentuating the handsome somberness of his face. You realized you have opened a can of worms with your question, but it has been burning you from the inside for quite some time now, and you felt it was only fair to know more about your husband as well.

“It is true, ___. You have arrived here on the anniversary of her departure from here…her departure from being by my side.”

His response was fertile ground for new questions to sprout deep within you. Who was she? How did she get to the underworld? And most importantly, why did she leave?

“You must know at least something about her, ___.” Tao’s voice cut through your thoughts. You frowned slightly as you looked at him with a tilted head, confusion blooming across your features.

“Her name was Persephone, and she was the daughter of the Goddess of Harvest.”

You have heard of that myth before. Of the Lord of the Undead stealing Spring’s daughter, causing Demeter so much sorrow, no crops grew while she was with her husband.

But as you’re looking at your husband right now, you cannot imagine him stealing away someone’s daughter, much less raping her and bounding her to his kingdom. Tao seemed to sense the inner turmoil within you, as the corner of his mouth lifted upwards in a smile.

“Humans seemed to have altered the story a bit more to their liking, judging by your look. I have not stolen my bride, nor have I forced myself upon her.” He paused at a sudden realization that came to him, laughing out loud. “Actually, she more or less forced herself on me.”

Raising your brows in question, Tao continued.

“We met at a gathering. As you can imagine, being the God of Death does not make me the most sought out party guest, and so most of the time I was left on my own. I did not mind it though,” he added with a small smile as he saw your deepening frown.

“I was about to leave anyways, when she came by, curiousness in her eyes and fearless step as she neared me. She was the first person that had shown interest in the underworld for a different reason than an extremely morbid one.” He looked over to the vastness of the orchards that spread before you.

"She asked me if there is sunlight in my domain. If I could make flowers grow. Questions that I myself at that time didn’t have an answer for. When I told her just that, she pursed her lips and bowed, turning on her heel and left. And I thought that it would be our last encounter." with another chuckle, Tao looked down at his shoes, shaking his head.

"How wrong I was. It couldn’t have even been a week when Sooman came after me and told me with the biggest confusion on his face that there was some deity there to meet me. Not just somebody, it was her.

She came with arms filled with different types of seeds and a smile that made the absence of the sun redundant in a place like this. Without the slightest fear, Persephone took it upon herself to change the underworld to be as it is now, not only for the sake of ones who come here after death, but also for my sake."

"Nobody cared about me like that before." his words had you gripping his hand tight, as you bid him with a nod of your head to continue.

"Her disappearance from Earth was not ignored. Demeter has scoured every inch of it before she came to realize she forgot to check one last place. But she had been too late. By the time she arrived, the garden was not the only thing that was in full bloom. Persephone and I had married before her mother could oppose, and even through the wrath of the entire Pantheon, we were happy."

"Is this how the seasons were created?" you gently asked when Tao stopped for a moment. He looked over at you, a small smile gracing his features. However, it could not overshadow the flicker of pain that appeared in his eyes.

 "How I wish that were the case, ___. The myth version states that Demeter had been so sad about the marriage that she wept every time Persephone was with me in the underworld, causing the plants to wither and the days to get colder. The moment she would return to the living world, things would go back to normal." Tao gripped your hand tighter, the bitter smile on his face straining.

"How I wish that were true. Persephone...she..." after he cut himself off again, a great sigh left his chest.

"The living, no matter if deity or not, do not belong in the underworld, ___." you returned his tight hold at the words, your breath stuck in your throat.

"Persephone wasn’t used to this world. Wasn’t used to not hearing the birds chirping, or watching the sun rise every morning. Unable to swim in the river and pet the deer. And even if we were able to bloom the orchards that you walk through daily, it was not enough."

"And just like the world withered when Persephone was away, she herself began to wilt while she was by my side. Her skin grew paler, eyes dimmed...strength was leaving her every moment she spent in my domain. And even if she would rejuvenate back when she was with her mother, her stay with me turned from happiness into suffering, not only for her, but for me as well."

You were sure that if they could, Tao’s eyes would weld up with tears at this moment. Your heart clenched by the obvious pain your husband was going through.

"I couldn’t watch her do that to herself anymore. Even though she was stubborn and told me she wouldn’t leave my side, I couldn’t let her do this to herself, and I..."

"I banished her. I forbade her from ever stepping foot into my domain again, and I saved her life."

Everything stilled. Never before had the absence of wind and life been so evident than now. You yourself couldn’t offer a single word, and you just stared at Tao as he very evidently twisted knife he plunged into his own heart millennia ago.

"As she recovered, Persephone tried to rekindle contact with me, but I wouldn’t let her. I knew the moment I would let her speak to me again, the whole resolve of saving her would crumble and that time, the stay in hell would kill her." His hard glare was sent towards the pomegranate trees.

"After a while, she gave up, for which I was glad. I almost got a taste of my own medicine, and my own powers almost took away the one I loved the most. And from that time on, I have decided not to let anyone get so close to me as the daughter of spring did." He glanced over at you, and you could see the gradual return of something warm in his eyes. You didn’t even realize when the two of you stopped walking, only noticing when he bid you to start again.

"Do you still love her?" you blurted out the only thing that you thought of at that moment, and Tao paused in thought.

"No," he decided after a moment. "It has been ages ago, and I have not seen her since. Thinking about it now, it has been better, for the both of us in the end." He looked up at the murky darkness hanging above the two of you, a smile gracing his face.

"The daughter of spring no longer has the heart of the King of Death. But I feel as if there is someone else who might."

-

It was a few days after that fateful dinner when the safety you’ve felt in your husband’s kingdom crashed down like a ceiling, suffocating you under the rubble. The day began normally, with you eating with your husband before parting ways, Tao resuming his duties as the Lord of the underworld, and you resuming your walks around his kingdom, making yourself acquainted with the area.

You never wandered too close to the river. It was something to be expected, as the poisonous hue of green revealed only thousands of tortured souls on their way to eternal torture for the sins they have committed in their past life. Tao revealed to you that only people who have done very bad things during their living days are condemned to take the journey in the river of agony before they are deposited to the only division in Tao’s army you would hope to never meet- the demons of agony. Under their reign, these damned souls are to forever repeat meaningless tasks of immense difficulty and pain, never to be relieved from their new duty.

Understandably, these souls knew their destination, and their faces were morphed into grotesque grimaces of eternal screams, mute pleadings and evident anger, anger directed to all their actions that have brought them to this exact place. This is why none of the souls are pleasing to look at, and the first time you have peered over the edge, you were haunted with bad dreams. Growing tired of all those negative emotions taking control of your body, you made it your task to peer into the river on a daily basis, to get used to the souls that are finally being judged justly for all their crimes.

What you would have never anticipated in a million years, however, was to one day peer over the edge and find your boyfriend’s face in the mass of sinners, wide, crazed eyes peering straight into yours.

And your breathing shallowed as you scrambled away from the edge, not caring about your white silken dress being dragged across the ashen black ground. You could feel your heart being squeezed in your chest by indescribable fear, all your muscles tightened in the flight or fight response that still has not kicked into gear.

The only thing that was set into motion was your stomach, and you barely had enough time to turn your head away and empty your stomach contents all over the dark floor. It almost immediately seeped into the ground, leaving no trace behind of your sickness, only deep inside you as you visibly started to shake.

After all you’ve been through, you thought you were rid of him. After all that pain, after all that recovering, you thought you wouldn’t need to see him ever again. You entertained the only single option of seeing him again after many years of living as the queen of undeath, and by that, you would rise to meet him fearlessly, giving him only slight taste of what he put you through all those years back.

But not now. Not so soon.

And as a sob ripped through your throat, you stood on shaky legs, running to the only place you deemed safe. As you ripped open the doors to your chambers, you saw your husband pacing the room nervously, waiting for your arrival. His presence stopped you in your escape to safety, and you faced him with tears streaming down your face, pinched eyebrows and immense pain and fear in your eyes.

The second Tao saw you, he understood completely.

“He’s here.” You sobbed out as you let go of the door, stepping closer to your husband.

“I know,” he replied, nearing you.

“How do you know?” grabbing onto the arms that were reaching out for you, you couldn’t help but to grasp his forearms in a tighter grip than you should have. Your husband didn’t seem to mind.

“I brought him here.” Came the silent confession from your husband, one that had another sob rip from your body.

“Why?” was your only response, closing your eyes, unable to look at the guilt and pain pooling in Tao’s expression.

“After what he did to you…___, I couldn’t…I couldn’t let him live.” Tao grit through his teeth, his palms turning upwards to grab at your elbows, anchoring you.

“I couldn’t let him do that. I had to…” he cut himself off for a second, looking off to the side with clenched jaws.

“I wiped him off the Earth’s surface myself. Made sure he suffered more than anyone else ever has, before I took him out like the trash he is.” Slowly, giving you every opportunity to move away, his hand reached up to gently cup your face in his palm. You couldn’t help but to nuzzle into the hand of the man who just confessed to killing someone. It was as if that information wasn’t even important to you.

Tao killed. Tao killed for you.

“How…how long will he be here?” you asked after a few moments of silent breathing, trying to get yourself under control.

“He is already with the overseers. He will stay in the pits until I step away from the throne, and he is condemned to forever try to stitch his ripped up throat. His thread will break every time, and he will be forced to start again. He is condemned to relive the pain he has inflicted until I see fit.” The eyes that you’ve known to hold only softness blazed with determination and anger.

And that’s when you for the first time saw the side to Tao that was known to everyone but you. Because at that moment, it wasn’t your husband that stood before you. It was the Undertaker, the Lord of Darkness, the Bringer of Death.

The person who had done all that to protect you.

-

Your recovery from meeting your killer was a slow, yet steady one. Knowing that his place was far away from you, locked in by endless torment, you had the courage to walk outside with your husband as company.

The two of you did not near the river, however. Tao did not ask you to do so, and you both knew why you didn't want to go there.

Tao made sure you are busy enough during the day- showing you the further reaches of his realm, giving you tours of the parts in the palace you have not seen before. He even showed you the Undertakers Library, a vast room filled with countless tomes.

"Where do you think books go after they are burned, ___?" Tao asked you with a risen eyebrow and your jaw slacked in astonishment. Are all the books that were ever burned in here, you thought to yourself as you looked away from your husband and to the vastness of hidden knowledge before you. Are the books from the Tower of Babylon here? The Alexandrian Library? Th-

Your thoughts were interrupted by a snort sounding from your side, and you turned just in time to witness your husband's facade crack as he resolved into giggles.

"Please tell me you didn't believe that, wife," he managed to stutter through his giggles. The only reply he got was a punch to his shoulder.

Your next days were spent either in the library, burrowing through countless books written in forgotten languages (Tao's first kiss he'd ever given you held the gift of knowledge, and as his lips pressed against your forehead you gained the ability to comprehend languages that were not even known to the brightest of scholars) or tending to your own little sapling of a pomegranate tree that you've decided to grow.

That did not prevent your killer from returning to your dreams. Before, you dreamt of him rarely - scarce nights spread over a too long period of time to be very concerned over it, honestly. But now, there were nights when he did not flow down the river into purgatory. There were nights when he stood from his lime green grave, covered with his own blood and lust for it in his eyes as he chased you through your home and killed you on your husband's throne, fury personified as he tore you limb from limb. Other nights, he would grab at your ankle as you were to turn away from him and pull you into the murky green waters of the river Styx, where he would hold you down until your dead lungs filled with the substance, eternally drowning you without giving you the sweet release of death.

Both of these dreams had you waking up with a scream on the tip of your tongue and your husband bursting through your door, eyes bewildered and body ready to protect you from whatever harm that threatened you. He would then gather you in his arms, holding you tight and whispering apologies into your hair until you blacked out from a mixture of exhaustion and fear.

Tao knew he couldn't leave it be like this.  

 -

After one of the more severe nightmares you’ve experienced, the morning was slow. It passed by like molasses, time stretching slowly as you woke your body up, reveling in the feeling of safety your bed finally offered. Was it because of Tao’s lingering scent and the shirt he slipped over your head when yours became too soaked with tears? Even you yourself didn’t know.

What you were sure of however, was that only you and your husband were allowed into your chambers.

And you were pretty sure your husband didn’t bark.

You frowned in confusion, eyes still unwilling to open. The bark sounded again, followed by your husband’s reprimanding shush. It seemed effective, because instead of another bark a whine sounded softly from the still unknown source.

"___?" Your husbands soft voice carried through the morning lull, and you turned your head towards him, eyes still stubbornly resting closed. Instead of replying with words like a human being, you settled for a softer hum. The end of your bed dipped with a weight placed on top of it. At first you thought it was Tao sitting down, but a huff and movement that could in no way come from your husband proved you wrong.

You opened your eyes just in time to be attacked by a flurry of midnight black and fire red, three small tongues and happy paws digging into your chest. Unexpectedly, you flinched away with a forced laugh out of your throat, trying to wake up, sit up and press away the too happy bundle of joy all at the same time.

"T-Tao-! What?" When your back was finally settled against the headboard and your eyes somewhat opened, you were met with a sight that would later on become the source of a smile on your face. Your husband, sitting on the edge of your bed, looking oh so tired but oh so smitten, watching the small puppy attempt to wiggle its way from your arms so it could attack you again with dog kisses.

And the puppy itself. When you read about the hell hound, you had envisioned something so scary, it could stop the hearts of people trying to break into hell. Something so dangerous, only one bite from one head would deem fatal, not even mentioning the other two sets of scary sharp teeth. But as you looked down at the bundle of warmth in your arms, you could not find anything of the sort. The puppy whined silently when you didn’t let him come close, but it was understandable, as you saw that the red stripes that mixed in with the black were made out of molten fire, the fur moving softly in an imitation of lava. Tao must have seen your apprehension because he smiled, scooting up closer to snatch the struggling puppy from your arms, making sure you saw that he grabbed onto the red part of its fur.

"It doesn’t hurt, ___," he reassured you with a smile, settling it down back on your legs.

"But...what is he...how did you get him?"

"I thought that if you had someone to guard you while I have to tend to duties would make you feel better, especially at night. Maybe having Coal with you will make you feel protected when I cannot."

Hearing your husband’s words, you almost teared up, arms limply stretched in front of you so your new puppy could excitedly lick up your forearms before nuzzling into your lap, making sure it was comfortable enough to make a home. You have told your husband of a puppy you owned while you were alive, a rottweiler who made you feel so safe even though you were sure if there was an intruder breaking into your house, they would be only attacked by tens of pounds of excited fluff hoping to meet a new person. You told him how dogs made you feel calm.

"I’m sorry I couldn’t bring him sooner, dear," Tao started to explain himself, deciding to look down at Coal.

"I didn’t want him to part from his mother sooner than he should - Sooman told me it would be better for both of them to stay in contact until the puppy is grown enough to start eating solid food and-" his speech was cut off by you sliding into his lap and engulfing him in an embrace, face hidden in the crook of your neck, his somewhat strained behavior soothed by fingers gliding through his hair. You felt his arms hover above your body for the slightest of moments, unsure, before they gripped at your sides and pulled you closer.

"Thank you," you whispered, able to ignore the hell hound pawing at your thigh with a soft whine. Tao’s muscles visibly relaxed, and the Lord of the Undead rested his head against your shoulder. The sigh that lifted tons off his chest was audible in the silence of your bed chambers.

You wished you could tell him more, but those two simple words carried all that you felt at that moment and more. Thinking back on it, there was anyone even during your living phase so doting and caring as this man you were currently embracing, a person who is depicted everywhere as the personification of evil itself, as someone sinister you needed to watch out for.

That was not your husband. That was not your Tao, able to cover up his emotions so well but still overflowing with them. The pride in his eyes when he looks over his garden, the satisfactory smirk when you compliment the sweetness of fruits he gifts you. The pain when he must receive a soul of a young child, ripped away from life by unspeakable aggression.

"I just want you to feel safe, ___..." he murmured into the crook of your neck, plush lips gently brushing against the part of your body you thought you would never let anyone else get close to.

And even though you didn’t reply by words, you knew he understood as you hugged him a bit closer. Pressed your lips up against the crown of his head in the wordless "I feel safe when I’m with you."

-

You wished you could feel better with Coal by your side, but it seemed that even the small cindered puppy bumbling around your ankles did not lift the uncomfortable feeling of being watched and judged by many eyes in the room.

Tonight was the first official dinner in the underworld with you as Tao's bride. The realm of the underworld was wider than you had thought, and many of the spirits of former nobles flocked to Tao's palace to see the first bride the Undertaker has taken in centuries. The high noses and pinched eyebrows shown that they had high expectations.

What they did not expect in the slightest was an anxious mess as yourself, feet wobbly in the high heels, hands nervously sliding over the soft fabric of your black dress, hair itching in the elaborate hairdo done by the very nice, albeit sorrowful banshee that came to help you prepare just before the event itself.

You wanted to make a good impression. You wanted to be someone your husband could be proud of, someone who he could show off comfortably, a person who could show that the ruler can still make good decisions and therefore rule in the same manner.

It was hard to hold it up when there were so many and so disfigured people in your vicinity. Undeath did not suit many of the nobles that were present, and there was only so much you could ignore. You were quite sure your nervous smile would not fool the old baron with the unhinged jawline that made his speech incomprehensible, if the empty eye sockets that were peering up at you were capable of seeing.

What did not help at all was the fact that you overheard the critique by the countess Bathory, a beautiful yet cruel woman that eyed you with a blood-red gaze.

"Our Lord could choose whichever beauty that has walked the earth, and yet he decided for her?" It was the first reminder for you to straighten your posture and try to appease the guests once more.

It failed once dinner began and food started to be served. You were looking forward to it, as you helped Tao with creating the menu for one of the most important nights in your life after dying. You were glad that the food was being called for and the guests were bid to sit- your feet began to hurt, as you weren't used to wearing them. Letting a deep breath out and leaning down to scratch over Coal one more time, you hoped it would be only smooth sailing since there.

What you completely forgot about was the fact that waiters are quite literally ghosts, and when you saw from your right periphery a pale hand reach over you, hand filled with a plate abundant with your favorite food, your whole body seized up in a panic.

 The yell you let out physically hurt your chest, and you curled into a small ball, knees knocking up against the table and knocking over the closest wine glasses, their red substance seeping into the white sheets. The arm was almost as shocked as you were, because the plate slipped from between the phantasmal fingers, dirtying the pristinely set table. Your hands circled around your neck, protecting it from every possible attack, your scar burning under your fingertips.

And yet the sudden panic left as quick as it came, and all it left behind was the deafening quiet. The numerous judging eyes and eye sockets looking at you.

Your husbands furrowed brows and tight lips. And you couldn't take it anymore.

Standing up, you ignored as you knocked into the table one more time, bowing towards it (Sooman didn't even mention bowing to you, was it a cultural thing in the underworld?) and you rushed from the large dining hall, the clicking of your heels and the pitter-patter of your puppy trailing behind you the only sound you heard up until you got to the door.

The single word heard from the Baroness made the tears of shame overflow.

"Pathetic."

-

Tao's anger vibrated, expanded out of his chest as he tried to calm himself down. He was on edge the whole night, could feel his wife's discomfort and wished he could end it all, but tradition was tradition, and the introduction of his new bride was not only a showcase for the others but also a warning not to mess with the new addition to the palace. If he would not introduce you formally as his consort, some nobles could have gotten it in their heads that you were only a mere concubine to warm his bed before you continued to your eternal destination.

He tried to make it as painless as possible, but the most important ones were the biggest pain in the ass, as always. Ever since he heard the Baroness talk to you with a scoff in her voice and a glance she would reserve only for the lowest of the low, he knew the best way to save you was to start dinner.

What he did not anticipate was your reaction to the food being served. Maybe it was just a buildup from all the stress that you had harbored the past days. Maybe it was the unexpected waiter that spooked you. But he would not expect your reaction in any scenario.

Tao's heart clenched when he saw the pain and embarrassment in your eyes once you realized what had happened. All he wanted to do was rush over and comfort you, but everything about your posture yelled about apprehension of being near people and he already anticipated your escape to your room.

What made him explode, however, was the sneer from the Baroness as she sipped on her wine some more.

"Pathetic." she said.

Pathetic, she called his consort.

Pathetic, she called the only source of happiness Tao had had in millennia.

And the King of the Underworld exploded, dark power radiating from his body and sweeping the table clean. The tattoos on his arms started moving like snakes, coiling around in preparation of attack.

 "Out." he growled, sure that all could hear him in the silence of the hall.

"OUT, I TELL YOU!" and with another swish, he sent a surge of his power over the noble guests, disintegrating them to dust. There would be a moment in the future he might regret his literal outburst, but the only thing he cared about at that moment was to get to you and learn what happened and how he can help to make it all better.

Tao had expected to hear sobs all the way down the hall, and he was left surprised when the hallway leading to your chambers was as dead as a grave. The only sound that he could hear over the thudding heartbeat in his ears were Coal’s soft whines as he tried to get into your chambers. It seemed that the tiny puppy wasn’t quick enough to make it into the room with you. It made his approach to the door that much cautious, as he had no idea what he would encounter behind it. You and the hell hound were most of the time closely together and knowing that you were so distressed that you left him behind was a bad omen.

Taking one more deep breath, he raised his hand, knocking on the wood what he hoped could be interpreted as softly.

There was no reply, and in a moment, he knocked once more.

"___? It's me...can I come in?" Tao spoke up gently. He sighed, stepping that much closer and resting his forehead against the door when he heard your reply.

"I deeply apologize, my Lord, for causing a scene. I...I understand if you wish to return to the guests." He hasn't heard your voice like that in a very long time. The last time you sounded so...small, was when you saw your dead boyfriend in the river.

To learn that all the progress you had gone through was gone with one word made Tao's soul fill with acidic anger.

"They are all gone, ___. I sent them home." it might have been his voice, gone all too hard at the thought of the sneering, decaying baroness, but the hitch in your throat was recognizable anywhere.

"Oh...Oh. I'm...I'm so sorry I ruined dinner, my Lord..."

"Please let me come in, ___." It wasn't usual for the Undertaker, but Tao was ready to beg his way into the room to face you and make sure you were alright.

"I just want to make sure you're okay, I promise. I'll leave once my soul is sated and you wish so, but please...let me make sure you are well."

The other side of the door was silent, contemplation thick in the air. With each passing second Tao's heart was clenched by something ice cold and iron hard, until you made it go away by opening the door.

Looking at you made Tao's heart ache. The smile he came to look forward to on a daily basis, all gone, the proud posture fit for a Queen of Death shriveled into hunched shoulders fitting for prey. And your eyes. Oh, your eyes which were always so honest and open with him, suddenly guarded, as if you were still not sure about letting him in.

Scared, as if you were not sure if he would lay his hand on you in a different way than in comfort.

 "___," passed his lips brokenly, and the hands that were resting against the door fell to his sides, not daring to put any energy into them in fear of his arms surging out and grabbing you in a safe embrace.

"It's okay." were the only words that could come to his mind.

"You did nothing wrong."

Silence.

Silence, before the mask you carefully hid your face behind cracked, and you threw yourself into his arms.

Tao's arms held you tight, grip so strong one might think that you were about to be whisked away from him at any moment. One of his palms trailed upward to cup the back of your head, fingers carding through the carefully prepared curls in comfort, as you wailed into your husband's shirt.

You kept blubbering out apologies, words mumbled and almost incoherent, and Tao kept hushing you, rubbing up and down your back every time the hitch in your throat made you cough. You stood there for what seemed like hours but could have easily been seconds. The adrenaline rush and fear, paired with the relief that your husband was not going to punish you for ruining such a special night left you drained, and it was clear in the way your grip on him loosened, your head lolling over onto his shoulder.

"Are you okay, my love?" Tao whispered quietly, the pet name rolling off his tongue so naturally one might think this was the millionth time he called you so. If there was any more running blood in your veins, you would have blushed as if it's your first time hearing it, rightfully so.

"I'm...I'm so t-tired..." you were barely able to mumble out, and without any hesitation, you husband scooped you up into his arms and brought you over to your bed, laying you gently on the soft surface.

"Should I leave?" he murmured into the sleepy air, and you shook your head with furrowed brows. Your hands had just enough strength to pull at his clothes and into the haven that was your bed. Tao went apprehensively, hoping he was not crossing any boundaries that might shoot up once the two of you wake up.

"Are you sure, ___? I don't want to force you...you need your rest." he cut himself off in the middle, not knowing how to deal with the situation.

"Please, just..." you sighed, burrowing into his chest once you got him where you wanted him.

"I don't sleep well alone. Please, just stay."

Tao relaxed into the bedsheets, kicking off the shoes that were biting into his feet at this point. Curling an arm under you, he scooped you much closer to him, making sure you melded into his side and were able to rest your head on his chest.

Just as you were straying away, Tao started moving again. Having closed your eyes already and being in no mood to open them again, you voiced your dislike in the movement by groaning gently. Your husband shushed you.

"I know, I know, let me just get this one up." and with one arm, he reached over the edge of the bed and returned with a handful of sizzling puppy, who licked at your face twice, just to make sure you were okay. After that, it headed to the end of the bed, twirled around a few times before deciding about the best sleeping place, and dozing off.

It was quiet in the Hold of the Underkeeper.

-

Days passed since the cursed dinner. Tao had forced the bloody baroness back into his hold with her proud head hung in shame, as the murderer of hundreds of young girls bowed and voiced her apology. You knew deep down that it was more of a survival move than her genuine feelings, as Tao would probably have her hung by the entrance to the Keep as warning to others who would insult his wife, but the fact that she did at least that was enough. You wanted to forget the night as quickly as possible.

You also finally opened up to your husband about your chronic fear of somebody standing behind you or appearing there suddenly, without your knowledge. It wasn't the waiter's fault that it did not know of your panic, and that was the reason he escaped punishment. Instead of revenge, you wanted to focus on healing, and you hoped your husband would think the same way.

Tao agreed with you wholeheartedly. He felt bad for all the times he thought his sneaking up upon you was just playful banter of two married people, when it was genuine terror that instilled in you instead of mirth. Holding your hands so gently, he asked if you had any ideas of how to work on your fear.

The only time your whole body wasn't seizing up in fear while someone was behind you was when Tao's arms were wrapped around your waist, brining your back to rest gently against his chest. Tao back hugging you was calming instead of anxiety-inducing.

Ever since then, Tao had made it his personal mission to envelop you in his arms every time he could. In the beginning he would announce his presence, asking you for consent as he uttered "can I hug you?" in the gentlest voice he possessed, gathering you into his embrace only after you allowed him so. The hugs would last anywhere from a minute to the whole night, as the two of you shared lights strokes of the fingertips and gentle nuzzles of the tips of your noses, talking about each other's day.

Gradually, Tao did not have to ask for approval anymore. It took a while, and there were hiccups along the way, but one day, he did not need to let himself be known to you before touching you, and the gentle touch of his fingertips on your sides did not make you jump. Servants and other guests in the Hold still made you queasy and you made sure to keep your eyes on them, but unsuspecting back hugs from your husband became more dear to you each day.

-

When you first woke up and looked out of the window, you thought your eyes were deceiving you. The usual darkness of the underworld was replaced by a whiteness you only remember from the time you were alive. Could it be...?

You gently slid from your husband's arms, grateful that Tao literally slept like the dead. Groaning, he rolled over into the heat you left behind on the bed, before stilling once more. The granite floor was cold under your bare feet, but you did not care in the slightest. You walked, enchanted, to the window and could not believe your eyes.

The underworld changed completely. The darkness and sky-less above were replaced by thick clouds, moving slowly in the breezeless air. From them heavy snowflakes fell, big, fluffy and beautiful in every way, gently landing on the blighted floor and turning it into a sheet of innocence. The air was crisp and there was no sound echoing through the underworld, which meant you could hear the fall of every snowflake.

Impossible. It couldn't have been. How would the clouds find their way into the underworld?

Fingers brushed your hair back gently, making you flinch at the sudden touch.

"Shhh..." Tao's voice was still rough from sleep, the rusty feeling to his voice very welcoming.

"I'm just braiding your hair."

"Tao, this..."

"Hmm..."

"Is this normal? It didn't happen last winter, nor when I came here."

"This is not normal." Tao concluded, gently entwining the strands of your hair with one another.

"Does it mean it's bad?" his chuckle had you calming down.

"No, it's good. It's a gift, of sorts."

"A gift?" Another hum sounded from behind you.

"From the gods." When you felt that he has finished with the braid, you hoped to turn and face him, but Tao had different plans, his arms winding around your waist and brining you flush against him, his chin hooking over your shoulder. The two of you gazed out your realm and you still struggled to understand what your husband was saying.

As you two silently stood in the window, you caught a glimpse of someone walking towards the snow. Uncertain, unstable steps of someone who had never seen snow before. The child approached apprehensively, but when it realized that the snow posed no danger, it ran back from where it came from, returning with two other children, copying his actions from before. When they saw their friend gathering handfuls of snow and throwing it in the air with an airy giggle, they did not hesitate to join him in the fun.

“A new era awaits the Underworld,” Tao has finally spoken with a soft sigh, as he gently turned you to gaze upon you. Your hands reached up to cradle his face almost naturally by now.

“It does?” you asked with a smile, and your husband nodded.

“It has been a while since the Undertaker had his heart stolen.” A chuckle bubbled from your throat and you shook your head at your husband’s teasing tone. Instead of replying, you had chosen to steal something else as well, your lips pressing against Tao’s plush ones in a soft, yet deep kiss.

If anyone had told you that your life would end prematurely, and you would become the Queen of Undeath, you would’ve run from the lunatic. But now, being held in the arms of your Love, all the pain and suffering you had gone through seemed worth it.

And for the first time in eons, twinkling laughter and the feeling of love spread through the Realm of Death.

[unpack-my-heart]

Midsommar spoilers ahead – read at yer own risk.

This post contains discussions of suicide, murder-suicide, graphic ritualistic violence, dissociation and mental illness. These are triggers that also apply to the film, so please be careful if you decide to go and see this film.

I went to see Midsommar last night. I thought it was a fantastic film, that raised a lot of interesting themes about gaslighting, dissociation, belonging, fascism and free will.

I’ll start with the cinematography. This film is gorgeous. The scenery is so beautiful it’s almost unbelievable – rolling greens and constant blue skies. Probably not the normal setting for a horror film, right? Compare this to the cinematography of Aster’s other film, Hereditary, with its bleak, oppressive constant grey-tone, and you’d be forgiven for thinking that Midsommar was a departure from the horror genre all together. This works in Midsommar’s favour, though. It’s horror in broad daylight, constant daylight. I think it’s important to remember that the horror genre is not, and should not, be limited to just gruesome torture porn, or an endless assault of blood, gore and guts. I mean, I like bloody horror as much as the next person, but that is not where the genre should begin and end. Of course, Midsommar has some incredibly gruesome aspects (meaning that in Britain, the film has received a rating of ‘18’). The suicide of the two elderly members of the Hårga is played on screen with an unflinching gaze, and it is about as shocking as shocking gets. Especially when the elderly man jumps in such a way that he doesn’t immediately die, and instead shatters his legs. The other Hårga members caving in his skull with a large wooden mallet elicited pained gasps from many of the people sat in the cinema with me. It was brutal. But the main thing I took away from the film was an unrelenting reminder that grief is a transformative experience – not always for the better – and that vulnerable people can be drawn to bad people, bad organizations, or to make bad decisions, and we must question whether this means they are irredeemable.  

This is actually where I started thinking about free will. The Hårga are a community bound by tradition. Their lives are to be a predetermined length, and within this, their lives are divided up into four ‘seasons’ of equal length. At the end of the winter of their lives, the period spanning 54 years old to 72 years old, you are expected to walk (literally) willingly, and freely, to your death. This is exactly what the two elderly members I just mentioned do. They are carried on sedan chairs to the top of a cliff, and then throw themselves to their deaths. Whilst I must be careful of cultural imperialism, I couldn’t help but wonder how much agency the Hårga have. Is this suicide an expression of free-will or an example of coercion driven by traditional practice? We can only speculate, but I wonder what would happen if someone refused to die at the predetermined age. This really cemented to me that the Hårga are not a peaceful community living in a psychedelic Swedish plane, but are in actuality, uncomfortably close to eco-fascism.

According to eco-fascist ideology, you’re expected to sacrifice your life in order that the group more generally can protect the interests of nature more broadly. This goes some way as to explain why the elderly members of the community, who are statistically more likely to be suffering from disease, ill-health or infirmity, are coerced to take their own lives. They have fulfilled their purpose, and they are invited? forced? to remove themselves from society. This is, of course, a society that is absolutely, entirely white. The only non-white bodies in the community are those of Josh, Simon and Connie – and these people end up dead, murdered in increasingly disturbing ways. Josh is killed whilst trying to take pictures of the Rubi Radr (the sacred text of the Hårga) – something he was explicitly forbidden to do – and his body is dragged away by a member of the Hårga who is wearing Mark’s skinned face as a mask. Connie and Simon both disappear at different points in the story, and both turn up dead. Simon is executed in a particularly graphic way – he is suspended in the chicken coop, as a blood eagle. The blood eagle is a form of ritualistic murder detailed in the Germanic and Nordic sagas, wherein the ribs are broken and the lungs are pulled out of the body, in such a way so that they look like ‘wings’. Simon’s lungs seem to inflate and deflate, as if they were breathing, but we cannot be sure whether he is still alive, or whether this is caused by Christian’s drug-addled brain.

This is where the film becomes uncomfortable for me. Connie and Simon are … very minor characters in this film. They don’t really serve any purpose other than to be tormented, murdered, sacrificed. They do not really interact with the main protagonists (Christian, Dani, Josh, Mark), other than a few pleasantries at the beginning, a shared horror at the suicide of the elders, and a very brief interaction between Connie and Dani when Connie discovers that Simon has ‘left the commune without her’. I am uncomfortable with calling Midsommar an explicitly feminist film as I believe the treatment of Connie, a sidelined, innocent, brown woman, who is brutally killed for no apparent reason other than her status as Other violates any claim the film might otherwise have as being explicitly feminist. But maybe this isn’t the point. I don’t think Midsommar has to be ‘explicitly feminist’ in order to make very valid points about how a very specific kind of female pain, grief and trauma is often ignored and overlooked. Connie’s body violates the very specific white ableness championed by the Hårga, and her experience as Other legitimizes her death. Dani’s body, a white body that does not violate any of their traditions, is permitted to live. She is permitted to access the underbelly of the commune, but this comes at a price, and I believe that price is a combination of her sanity, her sense of self, and any remaining link she had to her past.

That’s what I think Florence Pugh was so unbelievably good at depicting. I was absolutely blown away by her ability to howl like that. That sort of primal, unabashed screaming. I think the two times she -really- cries set up a really interesting dichotomy between female pain and male reactions to female pain. The first time that Dani really howls is when her parents and sister have died. It is dark, she starts this sort of crying whilst alone over the phone, and then Christian is with her but he feels entirely distant from her. The room is dark, he is rubbing her back and she is draped over him, but he feels entirely emotionally removed from the situation - he is not participating in her grief, he doesn’t look that affected by it. His presence makes the scene feel just that little bit more jarring. Actually, does he even say anything to her? As far as I remember, no he does not. She tells him they’ve died, we see a shot of him walking through the snow to her apartment, and then they’re in the apartment. He says nothing. The only noise is Dani’s screams. He is entirely silent. Compare this to the second time she howls, when she’s surrounded by the female members of the Hårga. This scene is entirely different. It’s light, and she’s surrounded by women who are touching her, caressing her, but most importantly, screaming with her. They howl and cry and scream with her. They are her perfect mirrors. They are ACTIVELY PARTICIPATING in her grief, they share in her trauma. This was probably the most harrowing shot of the entire film for me. Not the gore, not the mutilated bodies – but a woman, screaming and howling like a wounded animal, and having a horde of sympathetic women scream back at her. It’s hard to not feel drawn into this community. It’s hard to not forget the evil things they have done, or are willing to do. That is precisely what is so dangerous about the Hårga, or more generally, this very specific brand of eco-fascism.  

Some quick fire symbolism stuff that I picked up on:

the symbolism of Christian wearing dark clothing and standing away from the rest of the group when they were celebrating Dani becoming the May Queen. The way he lurches around, looking entirely out of place - she is sat at the head of the table - dressed as they are, crowned with flowers, nature moves with her - she has basically entirely assimilated - he is still outcast.

I thought it was really interesting that the group of women during the dub-con Christian/Maya sex scene mirrored how Maya was feeling. I think the focus on women mirroring each other, appropriating and absorbing how each other is feeling is a fascinating detail.  Christian, on the other hand, looks out of place in that room, a male body who only has one purpose and then is entirely redundant. This is reinforced by the bit where the girl he is sleeping with holds her hand out and he tries to grab it but instead one of the women grabs it. He basically serves no purpose beyond impregnating her - and even then he isn’t even that good at it, because one of the other women has to push on his butt to push him along in the process. Women as being the most active and present in sex, men just … seed? Is this a subversion of how sex is usually seen?

The disabled boy seems to serve no purpose in society other than being the oracle - he does not participate in the banquet or any of the celebrations. He is almost never on screen, apart from a few very close up shots of his face, and one occasion where the camera shifts to him from the sex scene  -  a very jarring decision, in my opinion. Panning to him during the sex scene was super interesting and really not expected. It was an interesting visual choice, and it made me think about whether the point was to emphasise how he will presumably never participate in sexual acts etc. because of the eugenics practiced by the Hårga. This was a pretty damning condemnation of the Hårga as an eco-fascist group who actively engages in eugenics/”selective breeding”. You can definitely see links here between the growth of fascism and eugenics in the early 20th century and the practices of the Hårga.

I really liked how the entire time they were at the commune almost felt like … a fever dream in a distant fairytale land. Walking through the large sun at the beginning, having to trek through the fields to get there, everything looking very idyllic and exactly how a young child would imagine a Swedish landscape to look. The perfect environment to discuss dissociation, in my opinion.

These are some scattered thoughts I had after viewing the film!!

Overall, I really enjoyed it, despite some of the troubling social themes, and it’s another absolute win for Aster in my book.

[flapperfromthefuture]

Huh. Greenland is in the news a lot lately, for reasons that would only seem normal in some horrifically overblown satire.

My dad sent me two articles yesterday that quoted residents of tiny Kulusuk, Greenland, a village on the eastern coast of the country.

  Most people in this world have never set foot in Greenland (including the orange sociopath who wants to buy it. With what, the money from the for-profit concentration camps?). But my dad and I have, somehow.

It feels like a dream. Those halcyon days of 2008. My dad and I took a graduation trip to Scandinavia in July. We’re big fans of universal healthcare and the Maelstrom ride at Epcot (RIP), so we figured we’d feel right at home.

We flew Icelandair to Reykjavik—a big comfy plane, I remember—and in the seat pocket was a brochure advertising day trips to different destinations, including Greenland. My dad and I had talked about how Greenland would be close enough to visit while we were in Iceland, but in a very vague and alien way, like how you know you’ll be closer to the sun when you visit Hawaii but you don’t really think about it until you have a sunburn the shade of a pink hibiscus flower, and even then, you’re not going to visit.

Greenland was like that. We knew it would be nearby, but didn’t have the first idea of how to get there, or any clue what we would find if we did.

But now, I held Greenland in my hands. And it was a picture of a smiling elderly woman in a kayak in the middle of beautiful blue water lit by the sun. Greenland looked warm, inviting, and reasonably priced.

Later, my dad would joke that the brochure should’ve had a little asterisk that said, “Sun not included.”

We booked the excursion after a few days of traveling around Iceland, during which the sun never set, I taught my dad the correct pronunciation of “Bjork,” and narrowly stopped him from buying a heavy wool sweater that a) he would never wear, b) would take up a good 80% of his suitcase and c) COST $800 IN AMERICAN MONEY.

I was very keen on steering Dad towards light, easily transportable souvenirs, like hats and figurines of elves, because I’m the one who had to carry his suitcase all over Scandinavia.

Because, you see, my dad had a hernia. He’d been cleared for the trip and was having surgery as soon as we got home, but he wasn’t allowed to lift anything heavy or walk for too long. Fortunately, Iceland is full of cute shops and cafés with plenty of places to sit down and relax and have some delicious skyr, so we were doing great.

My dad asked the woman at the front desk of our hotel what the weather would be like in Greenland. She said it would be same as Iceland, crisp but sunny and in the high 50s.

This was a lie.

Of course, if we had done any research at all (we didn’t have decent smartphones yet! So long ago!), we would’ve been able to better prepare ourselves, but instead we went to the one Thai restaurant in Iceland and imagined what Greenland would be like.

I assumed that where we’d be going would have a national park vibe—lots of picnic tables and slightly terrifying bathrooms but lovely vistas and well-marked places of interest. Definitely a vending machine or two, probably a little café with sandwiches and chips and maybe a fruit cup. I pictured a single stoplight that was always blinking.

Dad, on the other hand, pictured multiple stoplights, full service restaurants and gift shops. My dad loves a good gift shop.

We walked to the city airport from our hotel. I wore a hoodie, my purse and a wool hat that I’d purchased as a souvenir, while Dad had a windbreaker and not one, but two hats—one for fashion, one for function. We both wore jeans and regular sneakers that were best suited for walking on pavement that has no moisture on it whatsoever.

My dad had a hernia.

We packed a little bag of muffins from the hotel’s breakfast spread, just in case we needed a snack on the flight or the café in Greenland was running low.

Naturally, we ate all the muffins while waiting to board the flight. It was eight in the morning, and we weren’t getting back to Iceland until six or seven in the evening.

“It’ll be okay,” said Dad, brushing muffin crumbs off his windbreaker.

We were flying Iceland’s internal airline, Flugfelag, which will be my alias if I ever go into hiding. Our ride was a twin engine propellor with fifty-six seats. Not a lot of wiggle room. I had never flown in a propellor plane before, and mostly associated them with “Things that James Bond or Indiana Jones have jumped/been thrown out of.”

And the plane’s name? The Fokker 50. Thank you and good night.

We met our excursion guide, Captain Karl, who was Danish. We were the only Americans on our excursion—everyone else was Japanese or Chinese. The rest of the flight had been booked by a Russian tour group, and they looked ready to go, with massive parkas and winter boots.

Our flight attendant was too tall for our plane. She was at least six feet tall (and wearing heels!) with long blonde hair and giant blue eyes full of fear. Her shoulders hit every overhead bin whenever she wobbled down the aisle. She had to stoop down to give the safety announcement so she wouldn’t bang her head on the ceiling.

During the safety announcement, Dad nudged me and said, “In the event of a water landing, you have fifteen seconds to live.”

The flight was only ninety minutes, but the last thirty were turbulent with steep rollercoaster drops and ghostly footprints of glaciers that grew as we descended.

We glided over pitch black water and grayish green ice floes, and then landed . . . on something that felt less like a runway and more like driving through a puddle.

“Dad, there’s mud on the window,” I said, trying to understand what I was seeing. Mud doesn’t hit airplane windows, not unless the baggage handlers are having a mud fight.

“What?” said Dad, as mud and gravel splattered against our first view of Greenland from the ground.

“It’s a dirt runway.”

Dad said, “Oh, that’s different,” but told me later that he was thinking, “This is a more remote place than I thought.”

The runway was dirt because a cement runway would freeze and break apart. Oh, and because of the weather, flights only ran (to this airport at least, in 2008) between May and September.

We climbed down the plane’s stairs and were immediately hit with a blast of freezing air. It was sleeting, a mix of ice and rain that couldn’t make up its mind, but in the wind it was just substantial enough to pierce your skin.

And we had a hoodie and a windbreaker, respectively.

The Russians were all putting on their parkas.

“Uh-oh,” said Dad.

Kulusuk’s airport is one of Greenland’s minor airports, about the size of an elementary school library, but they had a gift shop that sold winter coats. What luck! Dad beckoned me to try one on.

“Nice and warm—and they look pretty sharp!”

“Dad, did you see the price tags on these?”

“No, but they can’t be that bad.”

“They’re 7,000 Danish krone.”

“I’m good with that!”

“Dad, these coats are one thousand dollars each.”

“. . . Never mind,” said Dad.

Freezing would be bad, but cheaper—and easier to explain to my mom.

Captain Karl gathered us around and said that it would be a forty-five minute walk to the village of Kulusuk. That . . . wasn’t going to work for us. We explained to Captain Karl that my dad had a hernia and rather than rightfully berate us for going to Greenland with a hernia that could rupture at any second, Captain Karl yelled something to a guy in Danish and the guy yelled something back.

“Hans will take you,” said Captain Karl. “He’s outside.”

“Does he work here?” asked Dad.

“No, he just . . . hangs around.”

We met Hans at his truck and he was more than happy to have company on the drive to the village. The dirt road took us past walls of snow and along cliff edges with no guardrails to spoil our view of the glaciers below. The truck had no seatbelts, so I basically did a full somersault in the back every time we took a hairpin curve.

This truck could have been built by a movie production designer who was really gunning for an Oscar. I could actually see the dirt suspended in the air and smell the rust that covered every exposed surface. A thousand cigarette butts were artfully strewn around, and the battery light blinked a dull red, like it had been ignored for a very long time and was in no rush to alert anyone.

Dad got the front seat, and he was eager to ask Hans about life in Greenland. Hans was Danish but his wife was a native Greenlander Inuit. He had lived there a long time, but couldn’t remember exactly how long.

The landscape ahead of us was grey, bleak, and unending. And it was July.

“How short do the days get in the winter?” asked Dad.

Hans said, “Oh, the days don’t get short at all! In January we get five and a half hours of daylight. That’s not short.”

He took a curve around a snowbank at least thirty feet high, and I did a cartwheel in the backseat.

Hans added, with aching sincerity, “If I had to live somewhere where it was dark all the time, I’d get really depressed.”

Upside down in the backseat, I thought, “Holy shit.”

Five and a half hours of daylight means eighteen and a half hours of darkness.

Past the snowbank, the clouds parted enough for us to see a glimpse of a graveyard, and crayon-colored huts in the distance.

This was Kulusuk, sixty miles south of the Arctic Circle.

Hans dropped us off at the supermarket, which was maybe a quarter the size of the average American drugstore. Still, they had everything you could possibly need—medicine, fishing gear, diapers, meat, rifles, clothes, even gumballs.

Most people in Greenland still hunt and fish to survive. There was some fruit on the shelves, but it was all long past fresh and very expensive.

We waited for Captain Karl and the rest of the group to arrive. The few people who trickled in and out of the store looked startled at the sight of strangers just standing around, poorly dressed, but then just went on with their shopping. We met another Danish tour guide who lived in the village, and the local police officer. My dad, a former cop himself, was eager to talk to him, but he only spoke the Inuit language. The Danish guide explained that he didn’t have a badge, or training, or really many duties—he got the job because he liked driving the police cart.

In 2008, Kulusuk had 310 people. Now it’s around 280.

Captain Karl collected us—he had a very reserved Danish manner but I’m pretty sure he was both relieved and shocked that we had survived the ride—and we joined the group down the road in a large red building that served as a community center. Just a short walk in the freezing rain and pounding wind was enough to soak us to the bone.

We watched a presentation led by an older Inuit woman in traditional clothing—she was Hans’ wife. Their very cute granddaughter demonstrated songs and dances while the woman told stories in Inuit—which Hans translated into Danish, so the guide for the Russian excursion could translate into Russian. Dad and I were out of luck, but the Russians seemed to enjoy it.

It was still a good show, though. The little girl posed for pictures with the tourists afterwards.

I wonder where she is now. What she thinks of all that is happening in her country. What she remembers about dancing for tour groups and posing for pictures.

Our next stop was a small grey hut—finally, a gift shop. The owner of the gift shop was a woman from Iceland who was married to a Danish hunting guide, so she spent half the year in Greenland and half the year in Iceland.

Dad told her, “You should spend half the year in Hawaii!”

We picked up some keychains and postcards, but then I saw a glimmer in my dad’s eye—he’d seen something expensive. It was a grey winter jacket with a Kulusuk patch on the sleeve. My dad can’t resist a good patch.

“I would look so cool,” he said. “First person on our block to have a Kulusuk coat, that’s for sure!”

“This costs $1,800 in American money,” I said.

“But look at the patch.”

“Where would you wear this? You barely go outside in the winter.”

“I’ll wear it going back and forth to the mailbox!”

“You can’t pay eighteen hundred dollars for something you’ll wear for thirty seconds a day,” I said. “Mom will murder you.”

Dad grudgingly admitted defeat.

Next on the itinerary was a kayak demonstration—but the winds were 40 miles per hour, and the seas were too rough, so the demonstration was canceled. It was raining even harder now, so we were directed to a small church. We sat in a pew at the back and watched the Russians, huddled in their parkas, whip out open-face sandwiches and tiny bottles of vodka.

“Talk about being prepared for cold weather!” said Dad.

Captain Karl briefed us on our return to the airport. Next to the supermarket, there was a dock, with a metal ladder about ten feet long, that we would climb down to a flotilla of small boats that would take us to the airport in groups of three or four.

I am kicking myself eleven years later for not taking a picture of this ladder, but my dad and I have breathlessly described it so many times I can still see it perfectly.

This metal chain ladder was not connected to anything other than the very top of the dock. It wasn’t the kind of ladder that painters use—with a fixed structure that supports the rungs—but the kind of ladder you’d see on a treehouse, with metal chain loops between the rungs. So as you’re climbing down, you’re holding onto a slim metal chain that is moving with you—and the 40 mph winds—as opposed to steadying you as you descend.

The sea was so rough that if you lingered for longer than a few seconds on this ladder, you were going to get slammed with a wave of freezing water. You know, on top of the freezing rain that was dunking you from the sky.

So it goes without saying that everything in this scenario was soaked—the ladder, our shoes, and our hands. I hadn’t been able to feel my fingers and toes for about six hours at this point. There was no way I would be able to grasp and hold onto the ladder safely, and gripping with my mud-soaked, treadless sneakers that were made for power-walking around an air-conditioned mall? Not going to happen.

  We watched the first group descend the ladder, clinging on for dear life. Once they managed to throw themselves into the boat, it took off, spraying them with freezing water all the way back to the airport.

“Did you see the fear in that Chinese lady’s eyes?” said my dad later. “I think she wanted us to notify her next of kin. I was just imagining what would happen if my hernia burst.”

Oh yeah. That hernia.

Dad and I quickly assessed the situation, as another group threw themselves over the dock and into the boat.

The best case scenario would be to fall in the water and freeze to death in fifteen seconds.  Worst case scenario would be falling off the ladder, hitting the boat and breaking a limb or your back and then hitting the water and freezing to death in fifteen seconds.

And the last thing you would hear would be the laughter of the glaciers, mocking you for thinking you could conquer Greenland, which even the Vikings abandoned because it was too cold.

But the worst worst case scenario, for us, would be if Dad’s hernia burst (causing him to fall off the ladder, hit the boat, fall into the water and freeze to death in fifteen seconds).

“If my hernia bursts, they can’t rush me to Kulusuk General Hospital,” said Dad.

Kulusuk’s medical services, at least at that time, were provided by a single resident nurse. There were no highways to other towns—people traveled into the interior by snowmobile.

As Dad said later, “Maybe I could’ve been transported to another town by a Russian tourist, drinking vodka and driving a snowmobile for the first time. My only hope was they would rush me to the gift shop.”

I said, “We aren’t going on this ladder.”

We approached Captain Karl, who was really very patient with us considering the number of unprepared demanding Americans he must deal with on the regular, and he sent us over to a Danish guy, who took us to a garage near the grocery store, where he asked an Inuit guy with a pickup truck to take us to the airport.

Once again, we got in a stranger’s truck with no seatbelts—but we would’ve happily ridden in the truck’s bed clinging to the bumper just to avoid that ladder.

However, there were only two seats. So yours truly, an adult, had to sit on my dad’s lap for the entire ride. But I didn’t want to risk sitting on the hernia, so I sat kind of halfway on his knee and then held myself up as best I could by gripping the doorframe, with my head squashed against the window, so I wouldn’t bump my dad’s hernia.

The route back to the airport was just as wild as before, with icy hairpin turns and ditch-sized potholes, all of which our driver took with one hand on the wheel, because the other hand was holding his cell phone. He was talking to someone in Inuit the entire ride—probably telling them, “You won’t believe the idiots I have with me. Yes, they’re Americans.”

That long stretch of road along a sheer drop-off into the ocean was really exciting, and I only hit my head careening around the turns maybe six or seven times. I only lost a few piano lessons, nothing I’ll miss.

We made it to the airport, but the weather was getting worse. We met up with the rest of our group, who only knew us as the weird Americans who kept disappearing, and Captain Karl, who was worried that our plane wouldn’t be able to take off. There was another tour running that day, where after their time in Kulusuk, people were taking Russian helicopters to another town with a hotel.

Dad and I watched people board this Soviet-era helicopter that was struggling to stay upright in the freezing wind, and gulped. The years and the elements had not been kind to these helicopters.

“They look like someone sent them through a reverse car wash,” said Dad.

Years later, while watching Chernobyl, my dad recognized the helicopters that were flying in the clean-up crews.

“That’s the helicopter we saw in Greenland!” he said. “Am I glad we didn’t have to fly in one of those!”

Thankfully, our plane was able to take off. Our statuesque flight attendant knelt down to welcome us back. Captain Karl gave us lovely “Certificates of Achievement” with our names on them. He spelled my name as Elisabeth, which made me love it even more—I have it framed in a place of honor, next to a painting my dad made of the picture at the very top of this post.

As we sat down and buckled our seatbelts, Dad pulled a plastic bag out from under his windbreaker.

“You’ve had the muffin bag the entire time?”

“I shoved it under my shirt,” he said. “For warmth.”

On one of the hottest days this summer, locals in the tiny village of Kulusuk, Greenland, heard what sounded like an explosion. It turned out to be a soccer field’s worth of ice breaking off a glacier more than five miles away. Greenland lost 12.5 billion tons of ice to melting on August 2, the largest single-day loss in recorded history. NASA oceanographer Josh Willis: “Greenland has impacts all around the planet. There is enough ice in Greenland to raise the sea levels by 7.5 meters, that’s about 25 feet, that would be devastating to coastlines all around the planet. We are all connected by the same ocean.” —CNN

The climate crisis is causing unprecedented levels of stress and anxiety to people in Greenland who are struggling to reconcile the traumatic impact of global heating with their traditional way of life.The first ever national survey examining the human impact of the climate emergency shows that more than 90% of islanders interviewed fully accept that the climate crisis is happening, with a further 76% claiming to have personally experienced global heating in their daily lives, from coping with dangerous sea ice journeys to having sled dogs euthanized for economic reasons tied to shorter winters. — The Guardian

As a result of these climactic troubles, many Greenlanders are experiencing solostalgia, a term coined to describe the psychic pain of climate change, a feeling of missing home even without leaving, as home, the Earth, is changing. Courtney Howard, the board president of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, told the Guardian that Arctic people are now showing symptoms of anxiety, “ecological grief,” and even post-traumatic stress related to the effects of climate change. “The impact of climate change on mental health is a looming public health crisis,” she said. —Quartz

We knew eleven years ago that the climate was changing and that Greenland was melting. It’s 800,000 square miles and 80% is covered by an ice sheet that all of Greenlandic society and every city in the world that’s on a coastline depend on for survival, and it’s melting. My dad and I knew that before we went there, and we didn’t even know enough to bring decent shoes.

Dad just texted me, “I keep wondering what Kulusuk looks like now. This is pretty scary—has to be a wake up call.”

My dad is an eternal optimist, which allows him to do things like travel across the world with a hernia, but we’re long past a wake up call.

Dad and I Go to Greenland Huh. Greenland is in the news a lot lately, for reasons that would only seem normal in some horrifically overblown satire.

[axana101]

Alright! So I have been on the Wizard101 Tumblr community for awhile now (about a year!! Woo!!!) and I realized I haven’t really talked about my 101 OCs on my Tumblr.. so I guess that day will be today! I have a bunch, so I’ll just bring up two of my mains, my Pirate101 OC and my Wizard101 OC. (detailed backstories will be said later, I do kinda wanna write some actual stuff revealing that later) Just as a note, most of my OCs are not connected to the main story!! Including my main OCs!! Most of them are after Arc 3 of Wizard101, so bear with me!! Also warning; this is going to be LONG.

Name: Brittany Flower (Real name is Yuliya Milyena, but had changed it herself.)

Class: Storm, but has some abilities in Fire magic.

Age: 26

Gender: Female

Place of birth: Darkmoor

Ref Picccccc

Personality: There’s a lot to say about Brittany, but one of the main things you should know about her is that she’s accepting and calm. Wearing a quiet and monotone voice, it can be a bit hard to tell what she may be feeling at all in a normal situation.

She’ll be patient with a lot of people if asked, but these can be tainted by the fact that she can be perverse or bleak with her own emotions. Adding onto this, she may be petty just for a chuckle or two. If your able to get past her uncomfortable monotone voice, she will show that she does care for others through words and is overall a good shoulder to land on. Of course if your able to get to her shoulder, that is.

Physical Traits: Brittany stands at 6′7, which may seem intimidating at first, but she has little to no strength to the point that she looks a bit malnourished.

Scars/Wounds: The first thing you will see when exchanging glances is the amount of facial scars on Brittany’s face and neck. One of the scars includes three claw marks stretching from the right side of her face up to her forehead. This is mostly covered by her mask, though.

Likes: Sleep, a hot summer beach, good ol’ tea, LOVES animals.

Dislikes: Shadow Magic (connected to Backstory), being confronted, snow, loud music, being jumped by anyone.

Strengths: Is able to teleport around in a way that it is able to benefit in fights, is pretty decent with her magic, and has a lot of temperance.

Weaknesses: Isn’t the best when it comes with endurance and strength, absentminded, seems to be indifferent with a lot of things, if in a certain mood can be seen as mischievous or petty.

Backstory: Right now, I don’t want to describe the backstory for both OCs as it would make this post too long. But I WILL try to bring it to light later on, probably though writing!!

Name: Lydia Cog

Occupation: Buccaneer captain of a pirate crew who includes themselves mostly in smuggling items or bounties.

Age: 21

Gender: Female

Place of birth: Skull Island 

REFFFF PICCCCC

Personality: It is a bit hard to describe Lydia in full detail, but above else she can be realistic, determined, and even a bit disciplined. Although she can also be insensitive and destructive, she tries to keep these calamitous tendencies in check. She also has the tendency to really not really understand the emotions or pain others go through completely, but isn’t completely oblivious to that idea. Sometimes not even realizing her own strength, she has almost broke someone’s hand through a rough handshake at some point due to this - although she attempts to apologize for these mistakes.

She can be seen as apathetic at certain points, mainly when consumed by her job or grieving. On the topic of grieving, she can be seen as if she doesn’t care about what is going on, whether it be someone's death or something else just as emotional. She just blocks it all out in these moments and will attempt to walk away or worse if you confront her. However, even if it doesn’t look like she doesn’t care during these specific moments, she will care immensely and may even show her grievances at a later time.

But ignoring all of these flaws, when she is out of commission or just having a fun time with friends, she can be pretty loud and easy to make laugh. She tries to make those around her have a good life and so acts to be really defensive of just about anyone she trusts, even a bit motherly at times. Even with strangers, she can be seen as loud and welcoming.

Physical traits: Lydia is seen as being pretty physically fit, although being pretty heavy (230lbs to be exact.) This means she isn’t the most agile, but can deal a lot of damage. On top of this, she’s about 6′3 ft tall.

Scars/Wounds: Since she’s a pirate, you can assume that she does have a lot of scars. Either on her back or on her chest, there’s little to no area without a scar. One that you will notice is one that stretches from the left side of her nose to her ear, where her ear is even a bit ripped as well.

Likes: Jokes, a calming bath/sauna, cooking, massages, Yum Yum Fruit, a good ol’ bear hug fuck yeah, getting things done.

Dislikes: When people do not listen to her, ignorant people, being interrupted when speaking or working, doesn’t really like sitting around and doing nothing.

Strengths: Her overall strength, ability to remain calm and in control in specific situations, leadership, strategic, and tries to keep high optimism.

Weaknesses: Sometimes, Lydia may strategize too much with her stuff. This means that she may make plans too complicated for simple things. She’s a workaholic, a bit greedy, can be fierce at certain moments, very wheezy about any presence of magic, and is not the best with chasing.

OOF I DID A LOT OF WRITING THAT I DID NOT EXPECT TO DO but holy heck i’m happy I finally got this done!! And now,, it is time to rest,, thank you all for reading!!

[howyoutalktostrangers]

“This is how you talk to strangers”

by Will Johnson, originally published in Prairiefire

I’ve been reading the King James Bible lately. I like it so far. Sometimes I sit cross-legged on my roof, smoking cigarettes and flipping through Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy. I haven’t even made it to the New Testament. My favorite book so far is Ecclesiastes. Here’s this guy Solomon with nine hundred wives who can’t even sort his shit out. Everything is meaningless. It’s pretty bleak stuff. Actually, that’s what Hemingway named The Sun Also Rises after, a passage from Ecclesiastes. I read that book about three times a year. If those two were alive, I bet they would be fun to drink with. It would be one of those nights where you end up flipping over a table for no reason. The kind of night where you wake up the next morning and you feel totally humiliated in front of no one but yourself.

I grew up in Labrador City, the Iron Ore Capital of Canada. I was a pretty happy kid, actually. My mother loved us and my father made enough money, which is more or less all you need when you’re little. One day I was sitting on this pier with my two older brothers and this seagull started to pick on a smaller one. It pecked at it viciously and fluffed up its feathers and squawked. We all rooted for the smaller gull, even though it was destined to lose over and over again. My brothers kept throwing them French fries to fight over. Eventually the smaller bird just flew away. I don’t know why I remember that. 

Isn’t the mind terrible?

I never knew how isolated I was until I left. The first time I drove into Toronto I felt like someone was sitting on my face. So many people everywhere. I’ve done a lot of traveling in the last few years—Chicago, New York, Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Whitehorse, Vancouver, Tofino—but I never really get used to it. Walking on a sidewalk is a contact sport. In the bar everyone looks like a Viking except for me. I didn’t know how I was ever supposed to meet a girl. Shit, I don’t know how anyone ever meets anyone. It seems so illogical. I dare you to go three or four days without talking to anyone. Consider it a spiritual exercise that leads you nowhere worthwhile. Drive around to random cities, listen to On The Road on audiotape, smoke cigarettes and start thinking about everything that’s wrong with you. Seriously, try it. See what you think.

A few years ago I was walking around Charlottetown, just hating my life, and I was looking at this KFC sign. I thought wow, someone’s responsible for making that. I could never make anything nearly as beautiful. If everyone in the world had my drive, we would be living like hobos. I can’t even parallel park.

The greatest moment in life is when a woman lifts her hips, just slightly, to let you pull off her pants. Like this is really happening to me. The second greatest moment is when your car is all packed with everything you own, and you know you’ve got a lot of driving ahead of you, but at the other end is a job. Last year I was sleeping on my brother’s couch and I had been drunk for an entire month. It was time to move on—I was starting to get the distinct impression that his girlfriend didn’t like me very much. As I was pulling out of the driveway my brother ran after me, and when he came up to me in the street I thought he would say something like it’s been good or good luck with the job, man but instead he just wanted to bum a smoke. I gave him my whole pack because I had no idea when I would see him again. He punched me in the shoulder and it was the first time in a long time anyone had touched me.

I got a job as a sports reporter in the Yukon. Every day I go out to these sporting events. Baseball games and track meets and hockey tournaments. I take pictures and I interview people and I doubt they even really notice. I’m just some guy with a tape recorder and they don’t know anything about me. Their bodies are terrifying. They wear tight spandex or bathing suits and they look superhuman. Most of the time I just want to ask them why? Or maybe how? They drink protein shakes and they bike a hundred kilometers a day or they hike to beautiful places I’ll never see. They’re so fucking healthy it gives me the shakes. I covered a 3-day canoe and kayak race, and this guy told me he wears a catheter so he doesn’t have to stop to pee. I wrote a story about it and thought this is it, the end of journalism as we know it. But no one reads the newspaper anyway. And if they do, nobody cares about the fucking sports section.

My favorite song is “Take it Easy” by the Eagles. One time I listened to it fifty times in a row, while I was driving through the Rocky Mountains. I never get sick of it.

I’m terrified of death. Nobody likes it, sure, but sometimes I sit at my desk at work and all of the sudden my fingers don’t work and I can’t function. No matter how much I hate breathing, I don’t think I could ever convince myself to die. Because I don’t know what’s next. My older brother Trent is religious, and he worked for years as a youth pastor at this church out West. That seemed to make him feel better about things, but none of that ever rubbed off on me. Sometimes I think I’ll end up as one of those empty-eyed senior citizens relegated to their wheelchairs. I’ll have friendly foreign nurses that feed me yogurt and give me drugs. They’ll push me to the window so I can look outside. That sounds pretty good to me.

This guy at the newspaper told me to watch Cool Hand Luke. So I did. Firstly, I don’t think there has ever been a more sublimely beautiful human specimen than Paul Newman. His eyes look supernatural. Secondly—damn, is that movie depressing. Not because he dies. More because I’m never going to be that cool. Sometimes nothing is a pretty cool hand. I wish I had that attitude. When Luke’s getting the shit kicked out of him by Dragline, he never gives up. He just keeps swinging. One punch and I would be curled in the fetal position, probably peeing my pants and begging him to stop. I really am useless. Believe me. I’m incapable of honest labour. Most of the time I feel lucky I wasn’t born fifty years ago during any of the big wars. I would have been drafted right away and I wouldn’t have lasted a week. I watch these war movies like Saving Private Ryan and I thank an imaginary God that I’ve never had to pick up a gun. My greatest hardship in life has been living on cereal for a week. Or running out of clean laundry.

My second favorite song is “Flowers on the Wall” by the Statler Brothers.

I met this girl Megan in the steam room at the pool. She was doing yoga on the tiled floor with a pool mat and I was trying not to be a creep. But she was contorting her body into these ridiculous positions that made her muscles bulge and flatten in strange places. I watched the rivulets of sweat. They drew jagged lines down her stomach and dripped off the end of her nose. Sometimes I would wait, holding my breath, while one dangled. Her face was pink and the blond hair that escaped from her ponytail would stick to her forehead and cheeks. She had these elaborate flower tattoos that encircled her arms, purple and yellow and red. The vines were ropy and twisted in chaotic patterns behind the petals. We were the only two people in the steam room but I’m pretty sure she didn’t even know I was there. Her eyes were closed and she took the most relaxed, sensual breaths. It was beautiful. Finally I said something. I asked her if there were any good yoga places in town. Her eyes fluttered open. I said I’d always wanted to learn about yoga, which is probably the biggest lie I told that day. She looked at me, squirted some water into her mouth, and smiled. She said yeah, I teach twice a week at a studio in Whitehorse. You should come out.

Every now and then I realize I have a mother. My mother is a nice lady. And she loves me. If she really knew how I was living my life, I think she would have a heart attack. She’s proud of me for getting a job, but she doesn’t really know me anymore. I wish she did.

My attempts at yoga were pitiful. I spent the whole time wishing I could smoke a cigarette. I’ve never been so uncomfortable in my life. But afterwards, after I had a shower and rolled up my brand new yoga mat, Megan asked me if I wanted to go for beer. I though to myself this is it, this is how you talk to strangers and I said sure, yeah. We walked through the snow to the bar. We sat for two hours and whenever I said something funny she would touch my leg under the table. We bought a six-pack from off sales and walked down to the Yukon River. It was starting to get cold. She told me a bunch of personal shit about her life, but really I wasn’t listening to her words. I was watching the way she laughed, the way she moved her hands, the way her breath hung in a cloud and slowly drifted away.

I was covering this downhill bike race later that week when I broke my collarbone. It was my own fault. I was perched on the side of the trail taking photos, and I was trying to get a follow-focus shot. But everything kept coming out blurry. It was muddy and I was hung over, and as I whipped my camera along with the motion of a passing biker I fell down this embankment. It fucking hurt. I mean, I tumbled and rolled and knocked my head against a tree root. I’m lucky I didn’t break my goddamn spine. My publisher was annoyed and the paper was short-staffed, but it meant I got to sit at home and drink for a few weeks. I felt like Bukowski.

I often fantasize about being productive. I see people jogging around Whitehorse or going grocery shopping and I wonder where they get the energy. One day I want to write a novel, but I can barely convince myself to walk to the gas station for cigarettes. The first time I read The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson I was so relieved. I’m not the only one. I mean, it’s not Tolstoy or Dostoevsky but here’s a person who thinks the world is as absurd and terrifying as I do, and he can actually write something half-decent. When I’m bored I Google stories about Thompson. I rented a documentary about Gonzo journalism from the library. One day I read his suicide note, just because I was curious what was going through his head when he pulled the trigger. Apparently they published it in Rolling Stone. The title keeps repeating in my head, like a mantra: Football season is over.

Megan came over a few times while I was convalescing. She made me a meatloaf and I ate it for every meal, three days in a row. I felt awkward around her. I tried to hide my empties and clean up my house before she showed up, but I didn’t have a phone so most of the time she just appeared unannounced. She was usually in a yoga outfit or her karate clothes. I sat on the couch with her one day and I asked her about the tattoos on her forearms. She looked really sad for a moment, and then she pulled the skin tight in places to show me her scars. They were methodical, horizontal stripes. I wanted to die for a long time, she said. But I didn’t want anybody to know.

By the time my collarbone healed, it was starting to get dark. It scared the shit out of me. Don’t listen to the people who live here. The Yukon is a scary place in the winter. The snow blankets everything and it’s freezing cold and all of a sudden leaving the house is like living in a Jack London short story. Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well. The reporters made fun of me when I showed up to work wearing a parka, but I needed that fur against my face while I smoked cigarettes in the parking lot. Megan was starting to sleep over, and I liked watching her muscular back rise and fall while she snored. I couldn’t believe I’d convinced someone to sleep in my bed.

She showed up at my house crying one night. I tried to talk to her but she just cried into my chest for ten minutes. Finally, when I asked her what was wrong, she said its nothing, you’ll think its stupid. I told her no, of course I won’t think it’s stupid and then she drew her head back and looked at me. There was a huge pink pimple between her eyebrows. I have a bindi, she said. I have a fucking bindi. I usually tuned her out when she started talking about all that eastern mysticism stuff. She tried to convince me to read the Bhagavad Gītā but it just stayed on my bedside table. Whenever she talked about her spiritual beliefs it sounded like she was regurgitating these antiquated phrases she had learned in yoga school, or wherever. I didn’t want to seem insensitive, though, so I listened. She told me she was scared the universe was telling her something. She said the universe gave me a bindi to send me a message.

My favorite poem for a long time was Invictus by William Earnest Henley. I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. But then Clint Eastwood took the title and turned it into a goddamn rugby movie.

I was covering this karate competition one weekend when a guy came up and shook my hand. I didn’t recognize him. He said his name was Eiji Matsumoto, and told me he was Megan’s karate instructor. What a cool name. She’s a very gifted student, he said. I nodded like this was something I had given some thought. I realized that we had been dating for months and I had never seen her fight. I had abandoned yoga after a second try. It made me feel like a bad person, knowing there was this huge part of her life I didn’t know anything about. This guy Eiji was easily a foot taller than me. He looked like he could lift me up and break me in half over his knee. He had the most luscious brown skin and beautiful dark eyes. It made my balls shrivel up into little prunes. Suddenly I wanted to shave.

It was a Thursday morning when I crashed my car. My windshield wipers weren’t working and I was trying to light a cigarette and all of a sudden this truck was stopped in front of me and I swerved off the road. I remember hurtling along. The whole car was shaking and I was wrenching the wheel around like a goddamn child playing with a video game and then I was upside down. One of my windows shattered and glass was everywhere and then everything stopped. All I could see was white, stretching out as far as I could see. People were calling out to me hey, hey are you all right in there? Are you okay? I thought about that bible verse where Jesus says he’ll come like a thief in the night. Some blood was drooling up my nose and I realized I was suspended over the ground, held by my seatbelt. I don’t know where my cigarette ended up.

My older brother Trent was arrested a few years ago. They found child pornography on his computer, and there were rumors he even molested some kids at the church he worked at. I didn’t know how to respond to that information. I still don’t.

For a week after that Megan drove me to work and back. She seemed really impatient, so I tried to spend time with my friend from the newspaper. We sat in the bar and drank too many beers. He kept saying embarrassing things to the waitress, and then we started arguing about Hemingway. He was saying Hemingway would drink beer and I told him no, Hemingway liked drinking Mojitos and bagged wine. We did some whiskey shots and then went out in the snow for a bit. I wanted to go down to the Yukon River, but my friend said it was too cold. We finally wandered into this dingy pub on Fourth Street, and the first thing I saw was Megan. She was sitting with her back to me, having dinner with Eiji. Eiji Matsumoto. My friend said what’s wrong and I said nothing, let’s just get out of here.

Whenever I’m feeling sorry for myself, I think do you know how old the universe is?

My father called me around that time. My mother was in the hospital in Winnipeg and he wanted to buy me a plane ticket. We don’t know how serious it is, he said, but she would like you to be there. I told him I would need a couple of days to arrange things with work, and he said that would be okay. I thought about Hemingway and Thompson, each of them perched over their shotguns. It seems cruel that not everyone gets to choose when they’ll die. My father told me my brother was already driving out from Edmonton with his girlfriend. The others were coming out from Halifax. He told me my mother had been sick for a while, but he didn’t want to worry me. I wandered around the twilight streets and I tried not to think about how fucking scared I was of everything. Relax ­– this won’t hurt.

You don’t really know much about yourself until you try to share space with a woman. Megan complained about crumbs on the counter, my unmade bed and how I always left empty packs of cigarettes everywhere. She kept pestering me to quit, and even convinced me to try the nicotine patch. She played this weird, mystical music and she meditated in our living room when I wanted to watch TV. I felt like Neal Cassady, always hiding things from his wife. I hadn’t brought up seeing her with Eiji because I didn’t want to be that guy. I’m not the jealous type. I kind of liked to see her angry, though. She never seemed like she was in control of her actions, and her moods would jackknife back and forth. One night, while we were having sex, she slapped me. Then she slapped me again. It turned me on so much she just kept slapping me until she was clawing at my chest and pulling my hair. The only ones for me are the mad ones.

I often wonder what would have happened if I never saw Eiji kiss my girlfriend. It was midday and they were coming out of a sushi place on Main Street. I had just bought a magazine and I was standing across the street smoking a cigarette when they emerged, pulling on their jackets. He leaned over and kissed her on the lips. It looked like a goddamn coffee commercial, like there should be music playing or something. I don’t remember crossing the street. I don’t even remember what I screamed at him. Maybe I took a swing, maybe I didn’t. All I remember was the way he looked as he reared back and kicked me square in the sternum. I flew backwards like you see in movies. My lungs felt like they were going to collapse. I was laying on my back on the sidewalk, struggling to breathe and panting when he leaned over me. Football season is over. I looked up at him and Megan while I lay there in the slush. I think I need to go to the hospital, I said. I think I’m really hurt. Help me.

I got drunk on the plane to Winnipeg. They just kept bringing me gin and tonics. I brought the King James Bible with me, but it was starting to lose my interest. Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away. The New Testament sounds too much like those corny televangelists. I’m not too keen on Jesus, either. But there’s a poetry there, like Shakespeare. By the time we touched down the words were starting to mix together on the page. When the stewardess came to check our seatbelts I held out my empty cup. One more?

My father picked me up from the airport. It was the first time I noticed the deep wrinkles around his eyes. His handshake almost crushed my fingers. We drove through the grey streets for nearly an hour before we got to the hospital. I asked him if Trent was going to be there, and he reminded me that Trent was in prison and probably would be for a long time. We barely spoke after that. I didn’t even really recognize him anymore, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to say. Neither did he, I guess. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. He led me up the stairs, someone gave me a coffee, and then I was standing in the room with her. Machines were beeping at me and she looked so small. I came to the side of my mother’s bed and her eyes fluttered open. It’s you, she said. It’s my son.

You can’t go long in the Yukon without hearing a Robert Service poem. They’ve got him painted on walls. They teach him in elementary schools. Sometimes you’ll walk into a bookstore and someone will be reciting his poems over the loudspeakers. There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men that moil for gold. The first time I visited Dawson City, I went to the bank where he used to work. It’s right on the main drag, just a stone’s throw from the river, this saggy, dilapidated eyesore. One night I saw kids break into it to get drunk. I peeked in the windows and inside it looks like a warzone. There are spider webs clinging to the heaps of garbage on the floor. I hear there’s talk of restoring it, maybe building a heritage site, but chances are they’ll just eventually tear it down.

My mother reached out to me with these wrinkled hands. A long tube trailed out from her wrist. She touched my face and then she held my neck. I thought she might cry, but she didn’t. I leaned down and kissed her. She smelled like cleaning products. I wanted to tell her all my stories. I wanted her to pull me into her lap and rock me while I fell asleep. I thought about this time, when I was a little kid. My brothers had gone on a trip with my father and left me home sick for the weekend. She took me to the new shopping mall in Labrador City to see a movie. Afterwards we walked through these towering empty halls like we were in a cathedral. She bought me a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and a cinnamon bun. She told me this is our little secret. Don’t tell your brothers or they’ll be jealous. On the way home I fell asleep in the passenger seat.

Do you know how old the universe is?

My mother was discharged a few days later. I went back to work. Megan had already moved her stuff out of my basement suite. The snow was starting to melt, finally. Most days I sat at my desk and listed to John Prine or Willie Nelson. I stood on the sidelines of soccer games. I took pictures of people playing hockey. It cost me an entire paycheck to get my car fixed, so for two weeks I ate nothing but microwave popcorn and scrambled eggs. The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, and hurries to its place where it rises. On the weekends I walked down to the Yukon River and watched the ice slide into the water. One afternoon a giant chunk tumbled down the riverbank. 

It flowed slowly downstream until I couldn’t see it anymore.

The Literary Goon

[prettivol]

scared to be lonely

my paper roses contest submission @v-0-3​ it’s a fic! 

I started this yesterday and im literally screaming b/c I was able to finish it. Inspired completely by the artwork you posted for 4k subscribers. I loved it so much and was craving to write something for it. Thankfully I finally did. 

here is a song to go with it -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvZyp8zMvnI

Story below~

There was an accident a week ago and then Hiro was gone. It’s not as simple as that but Akio still misses him, draws him in places where he would normally be, brings him up in just about every conversation. And this, Yuki is tired of but can tell how bad it must be to have Hiro up and leave, knowing the way he can be. Impulsive, emo to the point it ruins other people's moods (these are Yuki’s words), and a whole lot of self-loathing. Things that Akio could usually balance out with his bright and far more optimistic attitude but it’s must be hard for them to balance each other out when they are separated and have been for over a week.

But now the days are bleak, the sun is often shadowed by rain clouds or a simple overcast sky that leaves a lot to be desired. And Yuki doesn’t know what it is that’s really hurting Akio, even after watching him from afar all week. Even now, as he sits by the window looking out as the sun sets. Waiting, perhaps for Hiro to come back. Probably, for Hiro to come back.  It’s really dramatic and something right out of a drama and if Akio didn’t have amnesia he’d know that Hiro did this often and came back every time but even then he worried. Stupidly, to Yuki anyways.

“Uhm, Aki-” Yuki begins and is cut off when entering Hiro’s room where Akio seems to spend most of his days. He startles at the first vestige of sound making his sketchbook fall off his lap with a loud slap in the otherwise silent room. Apparently he was asleep but Yuki couldn’t tell from the way he was leaning against his hand, his unkempt hair hid his face just too well. “Are you okay?” She tries again, hands pressed nervously against the pleats on her dress. Akio is still blinking sleep away, looking at her, around her but his shoulders fall as if he’s expecting something. Like he has been all week.

Yuki can tell he understood her, from the way his expression shifts, calculating and forming an answer where one begins, he stops himself. And starts again. “I….I’ve been better.” Without even hiding the pain that he’s feeling, he leans over to pick up up the fallen sketch book as Yuki crosses the room, making sure not to let her eyes wander. There are countless paper roses covering Hiro’s bed, she doesn’t know if Akio made them but it’s a lot.

“You, uh, we can talk if you want? Dinner is ready.” This was -- sigh  -- hard. Yelling at Hiro for upsetting Akio was always easier because he didn’t remember some of the crazy stuff Hiro did but it wasn’t like Hiro had any trouble practically recreating those memories, even as going as far as injuring Akio, again. Of course not on purpose, never on purpose. Hiro wasn’t like that.

“How’s your arm?” Yuki tries as they transition to the dining area, Akio is so quiet behind her that she has to turn and look to make sure he’s actually following. The arm held up in a sling is a grim reminder in itself of both things weighing heavily on his mind. One, his wrist is broken...because of Hiro and second, that Hiro is gone.

And some point during this Yuki expects Akio to get fed up with her, tell her to leave him alone and just blow up because everything wasn’t going to be okay and that some things just can’t be fixed. At least that’s what Hiro always did and it would go on like that until Hiro left. But Akio’s voice is soft and level when he answers, the quiver of his voice when he first woke up is gone as if by putting his guard up again that could hide all of the other signs showing that he wasn’t okay.

“It’s fine, thanks.” There is a hint of a smile trying to make it’s way onto his face but funny how even that has become difficult.

In all honesty, Yuki doesn’t entirely know what has shifted between Akio and her brother since Akio’s memory loss. Sure they’re best friends, grew up together but Akio doesn’t remember that and things are the same but very different. And it wasn’t Yuki’s fujoshi side speaking here, it was the calculated, and observing sister who begrudgedly admits that Hiro didn’t try to change anything between them. He wanted to have his relationship with Akio remain as similar to when he remembered they were best friends and that was good of him. But he couldn’t help that something in Akio’s own heart resurfaced or blossomed like rose bud in spring but the familiarity of it all made her think it was the former.

Akio ate, as much as his mood would allow him and Yuki just wanted to slam her face into her bowl the entire time, this was getting really sad. Goddammit Hiro, you’re still being a selfish prick.

Later when washing dishes and putting them away, there is a distant sound of one bedroom door opening and another closing. Yuki can’t tell if it was from Akio leaving his room and going into Hiro’s or the other way around.

❦  ❦  ❦  ❦  ❦

The fourteenth day that Hiro has been gone, it starts tame and quiet. Just as bleak and dreary as the days before. Yuki is outside, just to take a break from the heavy atmosphere of the house. Somehow it’s even seeped outside or perhaps it just clings, heavy and suffocating. Just enough that it’s always on your mind and when you find one spare moment to not think about it you end up being grateful that you’re not thinking about it. But in that same moment of thanks you realize, you’re thinking about it all over again.

“If it’s going to rain just rain, get these gross clouds out of here.” Mumbling on her way back into the house where Akio is disappearing behind a door. They don’t see much of each other lately, Yuki tries. Akio doesn’t. He’s probably drawing again but Yuki can’t imagine there being anything left for him to draw, unless he’s drawing the same thing over and over. The thought alone worries Yuki enough to follow Akio behind said door. It’s quiet when she approaches and maybe he’s fallen asleep again but once at the door she hears it. The faint sound that only resembles paper tearing, it’s fast and frantic almost. Yuki pushes open the door to see Akio huddled over on the floor with his back facing the door and he’s pulling apart the paper roses scattered around the room. Pieces of white are raining down around him, in bits that almost resembles snow. They’re all around him, on him even.

Yuki steps in and her bracelet hits the wood on the door and Akio turns around, face wet with tears. Yuki runs over to kneel besides him, suddenly scared because it’s been this long and she expected him to snap days ago. But he picks up another paper rose from the floor and tears it apart, screaming as he goes.

“He thinks he’s nothing, can’t be good, can’t be anything!” Yuki goes to grab the paper from Akio’s trembling hands but he drops it and picks up another to repeat the process. Worrying Yuki that he’ll do something to his cast, he’s only been without his cast for two days and it’s completely possible for him to make his wrist worse. “He just thinks he’s a monster or something stupid. It’s why he always treats me like im easy to break and tear apart.”

Rip.

“I’m not!”

Rip.

“It’s not fair! I’m not- Ah! What are you-”

“Stop it, Akio!” Yuki has finally had enough and grabs the rose from his hand and sweeps all others around him away, feeling her own tears want to break surface but she blinks them away and helps Akio stand. Giving him a once over she can’t help but be disappointed in herself in letting him get like this, he should at least look better than he feels. She doesn’t have the words to comfort him right now because she knows he just wants Hiro to come back.

“Let me fix your hair,” Looping her arm gently around his as she pulls him out of the room, making sure to shut the door behind them.

And about ten minutes later Akio’s hair and pulled back tamely in a ponytail almost longer than Yuki’s but it’s her hand that hovers where she usually places a flower. Hesitant because it’s a yellow rose that she holds and she wants Akio to wear for all the thing it symbolizes. Joy, gladness, friendship, delight, and promises of a new beginning. Because if Hiro doesn’t come back this time they’ll have to move anyways. So she tucks it behind his ear gently and she watches how his eyes lift in the mirror to look at it and regardless of how he must be feeling, he smiles. It’s the most genuine one she’s seen in awhile.

❦  ❦  ❦  ❦  ❦

Thirty-two days and counting. Well, maybe not counting. Akio smiles on a regular basis now, doesn’t draw Hiro in the places he would have been, doesn’t bring him up in every conversation or at all really. But Yuki knows he still thinks about him, how can he not?

“We’ve already watched this one.”

“Yeah well, we’re watching it again. It’s one of my favorites.” Yuki sits down next to Akio as the movie starts to play. They’ve been watching plenty of fantasy movies because it’s the next best thing being as far away from reality as possible aside from sleeping. So they’ll take the dragons, the fairies, witches and wizards and imagine they don’t live in the world that they do. In a world where it’s actually been over a month and Hiro hasn’t come back.

They don’t talk much during the movie, movie etiquette of course. But Akio pipes up just halfway through. “Is it supposed to rain today?”

Yuki is squinting her eyes and looking around because why would he suddenly ask- Oh. There’s the window just beyond them that shows the front yard of the house. And to think that Akio would give himself away so easily, through a mundane question about the sky that was growing darker the passing moments.

But she won’t mention it, there’s no need. “I’m not sure but it looks like it.” Answering honestly, she looks over at Akio to see how he’ll react. His hair is shorter (he finally let her cut it) and he’s now traded out the cast for a brace. He really does look better, he even acted like he felt better and it actually fooled Yuki.

All Akio does is hum a reply, sad eyes downcast to his lap but he does what he must’ve been doing these past weeks to fool her. He looks up and gives her a bright smile and gestures towards the screen where the movie still plays. “Are you watching? You’ll miss your favorite part.”

She already did.

Sometime after lunch and just before dinner, Yuki tells Akio she’ll make them a snack because yeah they’re hungry but not enough to eat a full meal. Yuki also felt like it was a good idea to eat something before the rain put them to sleep.

Standing on her tippy toes to reach into the counters for a bowl, usually she recruit Hiro for this kind of stuff but not anymore. It’s not that things had to change because Hiro left it’s because Hiro left that things became changed. He was a vital part to their everyday lives, even if Yuki gave him so much grief, that’s her brother and that couldn’t be sullied by any childish animosity she had towards him.

But some adjustments had to be made. Pulling up a chair from the kitchen table she test it’s stability before climbing up to open a cabinet and pull out a bowl. Yuki is younger than them both and tip toeing around Akio’s feelings has become a bit troublesome for her but it wouldn’t be fair to take it out on someone else.

“Akio, what was it that you wanted again?” She calls back to him in the other room but doesn’t get a reply. “Akio?” Calling out again, putting the bowl in her hand down on the counter just as she see’s him run past her, bumping the kitchen table and she can’t get down from the chair fast enough to keep the vase from falling over. It’s a loud crash that she covers her ears to block but it doesn’t matter now. The front door is hanging wide open and the loud pour of rain barges into the house. Leaping over the mess of water, glass, and flowers she follows Akio to the door but stops when she see’s him crash into a figure wearing a white t-shirt some ways out. And hand comes to her mouth and there are a myriad of emotions that flooding her. She wants to run out into the rain too, but also to fall to her knees and cry because she’s missed him but this moment isn’t for her.

The rocks hurt when they stab the bottoms of his feet, they tell him to slow down and take his time but it’s Hiro. It’s Hiro who stopped walking when he saw Akio come out of the house, barrelling towards him like a frieght train. And there is an impact when Akio finally reaches him, it’s cold and wet and feels very much like the rain. But Akio is solid, he’s actually here. It’s Akio who embraces him before words start spilling and he seems entirely okay that Hiro hasn’t hugged him back. But Hiro isn’t at all okay that he knows that the tears on Akio’s face are because of him, holding him just an arm's length away so he can see and hear everything Akio has to say.

The first thing he noticed before he even reached Hiro was that he was wearing different clothes from when he left and didn’t at all look as disheveled as he could have been and that makes Akio curious as to where he went but now, with him fully here in his arms, he doesn’t want to know. Doesn’t want to hear about what he’s been up to when he wasn’t here. None of that matters.

Akio tries not to cry but his heart doesn’t have the capacity to hold back these feelings anymore. “Why would you leave, Hiro? What good does that do?” He knows Hiro isn’t going to answer. “I’ve already told you that I’m not scared of you but you keep acting like you want to be a monster. Look at this Hiro!” Lifting the arm to show Hiro the brace on his wrist. “It’s healing, Hiro. Wounds heal, you can’t act like I’m broken forever. And you definitely can’t leave like that because it hurts far worse than any broken wrist, arm, or bone would!” And because Hiro hasn’t responded, Akio feels like hitting him for the first time ever.

Hiro’s head falls lower to avoid eye contact. “You act like I didn’t hurt you, it could’ve been worse. That’s what you don’t get, Akio.”

“No, Hiro,” His tone is soft again but loud enough to be heard above the rain. “You did hurt me, I get it but I know for a fact you didn’t do it on purpose so I have no reason to be scared of you or to want you gone. And I will never want those things because I know you’d never hurt me on purpose.”

“How do you know I wouldn’t?”

“Because I’d like to think I know you, Hiro. This has nothing to do with any other accident before.” A warning, to keep Hiro from saying what he knows he’s going to. “I’m fine, okay? It isn’t fair for you to just leave because you think it’s the right thing to do. Not having you here was unbearable and you fooling yourself into thinking that I don’t want to see you is unnecessary. No matter what it is, neither of us deserves to hurt as badly as we have.” Akio brings him in again, hoping maybe he’ll hug him back this time.

Yuki is still standing in the doorway with a hand over her mouth, unable to hear anything Akio is saying above the rain. She’d feel like she were intruding if she did but she could tell Akio was angry or whatever that emotion was to him. A moment after Akio hugs Hiro again and he doesn’t respond, Yuki’s heart sinks, assuming the worst, that Hiro has surely convinced himself he can’t be forgiven for what he’s done. But he wouldn’t come back if that were the case.

Akio is going to have a cold for sure tomorrow and it’ll all be dumbass Hiro’s fault. She’s just about to yell for him to come back but Akio moves his head where his forehead rest against Hiro shoulders and this way she can’t tell if he’s saying anything at all. But whatever happened did something amazing. As slow as they may be moving, Hiro’s arm come up around Akio smaller waist and squeeze as though he’d never want to let go. Yuki takes a step back into the house to hide behind the door frame, feeling like she’s peeping from a hundred feet away. When she can see them again Akio is smiling, a smile she’s seen countless times. Both real and fake but this was clearly real. Her own smile that has showed itself few and far between the past month radiates through the stormy weather.

“Welcome home, Hiro.”

[sueboohscorner]

#OnceUponATime 6x17 “Awake” Recap & Review

Clearly, there will be spoilers in this article so let’s just start off by freaking out because EMMA AND KILLIAN ARE BACK TOGETHER YAY. *Calming breaths* ALSO SNOWINGS SLEEPING CURSE IS BROKEN YAY. Okay, now that that’s out of the way, this was BY FAR the best episode of the Season so far. Which is saying something since there are only about 5 episodes left.

6x17 begins with Killian still trapped on Neverland trying to escape the lost boys. He’s rescued by a new character never before seen on #OUAT – Tiger Lily (played by Sara Tomko). She does a fabulous job as Tiger Lily! Just as Hook is thanking her-er, somewhat, for her rescue…she jabs him in the neck with a tranquilizer dart and knocks him out……. what?! Just when I was starting to like you Tiger Lily!!

Back in Storybrooke Regina is telling Emma and David/Charming what we found out last week about Henry, the author, the end of the book, and The Final Battle. This worries David a lot more than it seems to worry Emma as he wants both he and Snow to be there when Emma fights this “Final Battle”. David and Regina talk about this and Regina tells him she may have a fix to their curse, but it could be life threatening. David responds with “It’s not like it’s the first curse we’ve ever woken up from”.

This leads to a flashback of the previous Snowing curses and a new Flashback we’ve never seen before which reveals that Snow and Charming woke up during the curse with the help of a special pixie dust flower. (side note: Charming just waking up from the curse and trying to convince Snow that he’s her true love is the most adorable thing ever and their kiss is EVERYTHING.) They also manage to awaken Rumpelstiltskin who tells them how they’re awake and how they can find their daughter. (Who’s still a child at this point in the curse.) But that if they find her and get her back, she will never become the savior and the curse will never be broken for everyone else in the town. So Snow and Charming ultimately make what’s probably the second most difficult decision of their lives and do what’s better for their people, they decide to go back under the curse and wait another 18 years for Emma to find them! This was a beautiful scene and the acting on Ginny and Josh’s part was stunning! I cried so hard! This was an awesome piece of Snowing’s story to see and I’m super glad they added it!

In Regina’s vault, Zelena and Regina try Regina’s experimental method to cure the sleeping curse snowing is under, but it doesn’t work. It only weakens their hearts and Regina tells them by the end of the day, they’ll both be asleep with no way to wake up.  Which means they can’t be there for Emma when she fights the final battle. *BUM BUM BUM*

But there’s hope for their curse to be broken once again when David discovers Pixie Petals (the same flower that woke him up during the curse) floating around Storybrooke. Zelena tells everyone that there’s one problem with that – these flowers only grow in reaction to the presence of great evil -YIKES. This means whoever Emma’s meant to face in The Final Battle is already here, Which we know!

In Gold’s shop (side note: Would Storybrooke implode if Mr. Gold left his shop? Honestly curious at this point.) The Black Fairy pays her son and his wife a visit and brings along his son! This leads to a very interesting family reunion! Especially when Belle tells Gideon he can always come back to them, The Black Fairy tells her daughter in law that Gideon’s not going anywhere. A very angered Mr. Gold replies that “we’ll see about that” and tries to use what I assume is squid ink on The Black Fairy. Which is when she reveals she has his dagger-yikes!-She tells him she won’t make him do anything, because when the darkness comes, he’ll want to join her, and that they can be the family they were always meant to be. *BUM BUM BUM*

We FINALLY cut back to Neverland where Killian is waking up from the tranquilizer Tiger Lily shot him with. (He asks her if this is about skull rock….hmm….wonder what happened between them there? Unless they’re talking about what happens in the original Peter Pan film where Captain Hook kidnaps Tiger Lily and Peter Pan saves her). She says it’s not about Skull Rock and tells him she can’t let him go until he agrees to do something for her, fortunately, what she needs him to do is a win-win for the both of them! She has a weapon she needs to be delivered to the savior for The Final Battle and he, of course, wants to get home to his savior. The weapon Tiger Lily has is Emma’s only hope of defeating her! The only problem left is how he’s gonna get home!

Back in Storybrooke Snow is running out of time, literally, and they’re spending every second looking for more Pixie Dust flowers. Snow and Emma find a whole field full of them and guess who pops out?

 Pan!

No, I’m just kidding, it’s The Black Fairy. Emma finally finds out who she’s meant to fight in The Final Battle. She explains that she created the Dark Curse and Emma was born to break it. That they’ve been destined to clash since the beginning of time. Snow says that she and Charming won’t let her hurt her daughter, to which The Black Fairy responds that it’s going to be hard to stop her when they’re both asleep from the curse! Uh oh! She then orders Gideon (Who’s heart she still controls) to destroy all of the Pixie Dust Flowers in the field! Crap, now how are they gonna break the curse? The Black Fairy responds that it’s better this way because no mother should have to watch their child die.

Back on Neverland Killian and Tiger Lily are preparing to infiltrate Pan’s old camp which is overrun with the worst of the Lost Boys who refused to go back to the real world back in Season 3. Killian asks Tiger Lily how she got this weapon they need to give Emma. She replies that she used to be a fairy…..wow! She admits that she was close to the Black Fairy and that she should’ve stopped her from going down her dark path. When the other fairies banished her Tiger Lily gave up her wins and went to Neverland. She then creates a distraction so Killian can get to a tree that Tiger Lily says has the power to get her weapon to Emma. He uses the trees magic to remove his shadow and gets his shadow to deliver it to Emma.

Back in Storybrooke Snow and Emma are understandably feeling miserable after their encounter with The Black Fairy, but they find hope again when they discover Gideon didn’t destroy all of the Pixie Dust Flowers, there’s one remaining. Regina gets just enough Pixie Dust out of the flower to break the curse, but just before they can break it Killian's shadow arrives with the weapon for Emma. She knows he’s in trouble and is immediately worried about him. Feeling frustrated she exclaims that they don’t even know where he is! Snow White (who’s looking veeery Sleepy at this point -ha see what I did there?) explains that she can use the little bit of Pixie Dust magic they have to find Killian. She also explains that she knows that because they used it before to find her when she was little. She tells her the whole story and about how if they had gone through with getting her back, she would’ve grown up with them and they would’ve been a family. But that she couldn’t do it and damn all of the townspeople to be under the curse forever. It’s a very touching mother-daughter scene. Emma tells her she understands and that she had to do what was right and think of everyone else before herself. Snow tells her that today, she’s putting Emma first and she give her the Pixie Dust magic and tells her to find Killian. Emma tells her she can’t do it but that doesn’t stop Snow. She tells her that they’ve taken so much from her, they won’t take Killian too. Not before the Final Battle and Snow White drifts off to sleep. Now both of the Charming’s are under the sleeping curse and things are looking pretty bleak.

Back to Neverland the Lost Boys have captured Killian and Tiger Lily and are about to sentence them to death when Emma bursts through a portal and saves them, Tiger Lily gets away and Killian goes back through the portal with Emma! Captain Swan has officially been reunited! It’s a beautiful scene! Killian apologizes for not telling her about killing her grandfather and gets on one knee to do something “the right way”. Yep. That’s right. He proposes, Again(ish). Emma accepts of course. Killian tells her he wants to finally face her father and Emma has to explain to him what happened with the sleeping curse. Regina then tells Emma she may have just thought of another way to break the curse (Which is good because there are only 5 minutes left in this episode and with a title like “Awake” I’m pretty sure if they don’t wake up now, they never will.)

 DISCLAIMER: THE NEXT SCENE I’M ABOUT TO RECAP IS MY FAVORITE SCENE OF THE EPISODE, THE SEASON, AND POSSIBLY THE SERIES.

 Regina calls the town into The Mayor’s Office and makes a beautiful speech about how Snow and Charming once had a chance to leave this town and have their happy ending. (Of course referring to this episode's flashback sequence). That they chose to stay for the good of everyone in the town, the people that are there. She proposes that if everyone in the town shares The Sleeping Curse they both are under, that they may be able to dilute the power of the curse, which would wake them up. Killian, not skipping a beat, steps forward and takes the first sip, followed by Regina, then Emma, Henry, Leroy, Archie, Gepetto, Granny, Sneezy, and so on until everyone’s had some of the sleeping curses. Eventually, Snowing does wake up from the curse! (Let’s take a minute to enjoy the fact that they FINALLY broke what’s probably the longest sleeping curse they’ve ever been under.) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But their happiness is short-lived when they look around and realize everyone in the room with them who took part of the sleeping curse is curled up on the floor fast asleep! Uh oh! They immediately rush to Emma and Killian, who wake up easily after a moment, along with everyone else! There’s a beautiful scene between Killian and David where David forgives him for killing his father, he tells him that he’s a changed man. They’ve all seen it. As everyone's awakening, there’s a beautiful happy soundtrack playing in the background (Props to Mark Isham and the OUAT orchestra team, y’all always floor me.) Regina makes another beautiful speech to Snow telling her that the plan wouldn’t’ve worked if Snow and Charming hadn’t inspired everyone in that town.  This entire scene is beautiful and tears worthy and so full of magic and hope and everything that OUAT is about. In a Sea of misery and doubt over the looming Final Battle with the Black Fairy, this scene is an island of hope. I can’t say enough good things about this scene or this episode! (Also, Gepanny HUG-squeal!!!)

But we’re not done yet! At the clock tower, Mr. Gold FINALLY comes out of his shop to confront The Black Fairy and asks why she gave him his dagger back. She reiterates that it’s because he’s going to “choose to be a part of this family”. Gold asks if it’s because Gideon’s never chose her. That’s right. He knows she controls his son’s, heart. And he’s clearly not happy about it. When she asks how Gold figured it out he tells her it’s because Gideon spared a Pixie Flower for the Charmings. He resisted her order. He says it’s because Gideon has his mother in him, the one that truly loves him. But that he won’t have to resist anymore because he WILL get his heart back. The Black Fairy very threateningly responds “If you come at me, there may be nothing left of this town when we’re done.” And in true Mr. Gold fashion, he replies that it may be a price he’s willing to pay, and struts away as only he can, not looking back.

BUM

BUM

BUM

When will Emma and Killian get married? What does the end of the book mean for Henry as The Author? What will the Final Battle entail? Will Gideon get his heart back? Tune in next week to find out!!

Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Concerns? Comment below or tweet me @onceuponakayy and be sure to look around SueboohsCorner.com for all of your TV Show needs!

[bringingmetoneverland]

Adpetentia Culpa

Edelina Kane: Alpha V; Pyrokinesis September 14th, 2088 16:00

Sometimes I’m terrified of my heart; of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants; the way it stops and starts.

         I wear the monitor on my wrist. It resembles a watch but feels like a shackle. Bluetooth syncing links to the band around my chest, a piece of elastic and plastic that measures my heart rate. When the watch buzzes, I panic. Looking down, my fingertips and elbows—knees and joints and hips—struggle to stay in control. Whole body shaking so I have to hold myself up, clawing at my brown skin as I fight the insatiable hunger and fire inside me.

             I faintly remember going for a run—just through The Academy’s forest—but also know that I was too distracted by the late-afternoon sun. Spring has finally made her grand entrance, and yellow daisies sprout up in the cool green moss. I had paused to relish in the sight. Spreading my palms against the wildlife, dirt and ants crawling between my finger webbing, I had made a thousand stories in my head about a nymph. She basked in air-borne gold and shot smiles that could kill. While I was building this fairytale, I watched the last of winter’s snow melt into mud.

             It had been then—during my daydreams—that the watch buzzed. I panicked.

             I wanted too much.

             I want too much.

             I want to write. I want to meet this nymph. I want to feel closer to the forest—just looking at the flowers doesn’t feel like it’s enough. Everything. Everything. Everything in the world is overwhelming. How can I possibly experience it all in one life? I want to feel the sun more. I want to run faster. I want to taste the creek water and want to scream and want to laugh, to cry, to burn.

           I want to spring into the air and catch a plane to Europe. To learn ten languages, to paint, to play soccer until long after dark, to sing in a musical. I want to take a nap in the moss and read poetry until dusk. I want to ride bikes with my friends along the Whitestone Bronx Bridge. Want to plan a star-gazing rendezvous that’ll end in midnight dances.

             I want so much in a single moment and that’s how the fire comes. Inside me.

             From wanting.

             My watch buzzes angrily, warning me that my heart rate is increasing, that my calorie data has skewed due to expended energy spent warming cells to ignition.

             The fire always starts in my fingers. Among everything else I want, I want most to let this free. But the watch, still buzzing, grates harshly so the bone in my wrist stings.

             I think about the consequences of my fire. The dangers and risks. This whole place could burn to ashes and ruin. Just as suddenly as the want had come, so does the fear. The absolute bone-chilling fear that leaves me numb and empty. Cold, I shake away the sparks from my left hand. Cold, I remember my duties and responsibilities for the day--the four hour training and strategic studies class at seven. Cold, I remember the trouble going on back home, the desperate need to save those I love.

           Cold, I remember that heroes cannot have wants.

             After a moment’s hesitation, I collect myself, twisted between elation and despair. I continue my run, travelling the winding creek path until I break out from the woods and back into Marcellin’s courtyards. Once I get into the main building, I bear an immediate left for the labs. We’ve got a mission later tonight, and I can’t afford any hiccups.

             Loosening my watch, I swipe the screen until I land on my texts. Ras wants to stay updated on my progress. Any time this watch buzzes, I’m to inform her of my heart rate, current calorie intake/outtake, and body temperature. I make silent note of each piece of data and try not to worry about the upcoming mission.

             The labs are lit with the same eerie green light from last year. Shadows casting ghoulish glances about the sterile room.

             I maneuver between the White Coats with their idiotic, over-sized goggles. Push past Dr. Levitt, whose half-turned smirk means some inane chemical drill. Finally, I make it over to the computer. I input my relevant data. Feel cold. But it will help in the end. Control the fire, become a hero. Somehow, punching in  numbers brings me safety, even when it feels like death. Eventually, Ras’ hand falls to my shoulder, and I look up at her, pushing my bright red curls away so she can see my bleak expression.

             She says that if I keep working, there’s no mission to fear. She says if I keep testing my body’s limits, I’ll be able to help the world.

             Noticing my frown, she asks if I’m doing okay.

             She asks what my numerical progress is today.

             Oh. And if I held back.

             If I kept myself from burning.