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[drapekings]

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[imaginedreamwrite]

Exile: Part 5

Exhaustion had befallen you, even after spending a night passed out in a bedroom that was larger than the entire cottage you had lived in with your guardian; exhaustion had clung to you like ivy to a wall.

It was your last-ditch effort that had brought you to this position; it was your last chance to escape a fate you hadn’t wanted, that had riddled you with continued strike of tiredness that had made it nearly impossible to move.

You had languidly opened your eyes, blinking softly as you peered around the room while you were tucked beneath finely sewn and embroidered blankets that trapped heat around you as if it were an oven made of the softest material known to man. You were lying in the bed that was as heavenly as you had expected from a man like the king, nothing compared to the beds stuffed with straw that you had slept on, and you were sure this would be on luxury you would miss when you went back to the cottage.

Still, it hadn’t mattered how impressive the delicate embroidery was nor the soft material of the bed beneath you; you were going to find a way out of here.

You were going to escape the king’s clutches, and you would return to your home in the dense wilderness. You would repeal all the luxuries he had become accustomed to and go back to your roots and the forest that had offered you so much more than what was here.

Your last-ditch effort to lose him before you had arrived here would not and had not been your last attempt to leave. However, it had complicated how easy it would be for you to not only leave but to navigate your way back to your home.

You were not in the slightest familiar with this territory here, even if you had been…

A lifetime’s experience tracking and hunting, navigating the forest and avoiding the creatures who could have quickly taken you down if there were ever a need for food, you wouldn’t have a clear idea of how to get yourself from the castle to the cottage without being spotted and taken.

It appeared that even though the king’s arrogance and irritability, the majority of the populous were loyal to him. And by that extension, since you were made to be his wife and queen, that loyalty would likely be part of your downfall.

If you were spotted in one of the many villages by anyone who could have and would have sent word back to the king, you would be done. Your escape plan would be squandered.

As delightfully horrific as the idea was, you were destined to be here for the foreseeable future until you could have either gathered enough supplies to make the trek or, at the very least, secured yourself a mount to make the travel more accessible.

Realistically, even if you had wanted to make the trek now, with winter quickly setting in, you would likely freeze and be lost in the snowstorm that would barrage the region. You would be done for before you had gotten far enough, and that was the fact that had settled itself in your mind.

Until you could squirrel away some supplies and have the necessary tools to survive, you would have to remain here under the gaze of the kind while trying to retain your distance.

If only you hadn’t had that damn mark, he could have worked it out with the replacement for his first wife. If only she had remained on his radar, then you could’ve been left behind; you could’ve stayed away and lived your life without responsibilities you didn’t want.

When you could no longer lay in the far too comfortable bed under the blanket that felt too warm and too dense, you had carefully thrown back the covers. You pushed yourself to sit up, gazing around the room that was almost as incredible as the views around the castle.

While you had expected thick drapery and heavy cloth banners of the king’s face everywhere you had looked, you were pleasantly surprised not only to see a lack of his face but relatively light and airy linen covering the doors that led out to the balcony and a picturesque and uninterrupted view of the mountains beyond.

Your irritation with not only where you were but with who you were trapped, albeit somewhere in the castle, you had stood and immediately crossed the distance to the balcony.

You had yanked on the drapes and part the linen and stood before the balcony doors that had been your only barrier between the room you were in and the exterior. You hadn’t even attempted to open the doors and step out in the pre-winter weather; instead, you had studied the snowcapped mountains with interest and admiration.

It had been a long time since you had seen the mountains, indeed seen the hills, and you had almost forgotten how breathtaking they could be. It was delightful, seeing the rugged beauty as they stood against a light grey background, and you had been transported from a place of carefully crafted containment to a place where you were a lone visitor to a chalet, to an escape where you could bask in the beauty of the strongholds so close, yet painfully far.

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” The hair on the back of your neck had stood when you heard his voice, and you had quickly swapped your admiration for irritation at the sound of the king as he spoke to you, but furthermore, you had felt indignation for the man who had taken you.

Without wanting to give him too much attention, you had glanced over your shoulder and studied him. He had replaced the royal blue tunic and the crest for something much more straightforward and something much more freeing to parade around the castle in.

You had briefly noted the way the white shirt had tightened around his biceps, accentuating the strength that he harboured, and the slight silver threading throughout the garment had brought out the green in his eyes. His hair was almost slicked back save for a bit of coif, and while he had shaved recently, you could see a small nick in his chin that had likely come from a blow during some training session.

It had seemed that you were out longer than you had expected.

“Are you hungry, wench?”

“Why? Are you going to poison my food?” You sneered and turned away from him, glancing at the fleetingly beautiful mountains, briefly wondering if you could head northwest instead of heading back to your cottage.

“Why would I poison my queen?” His voice had rung in your ears, and you were tempted to stride toward the doors and fling them open to see what he would do. However, you knew that he would just as likely throw you back onto the bed and hold you there.

“Starved.” You whipped around and came to face him, watching him lift the silver cover that was keeping both of your food from being seen, and as you had started to move toward him, he had plucked a few grapes from the vine and held them out in his hand.

“I need to keep you healthy.” Steve had commented, rolling the grapes in his hand as you slowly sank into the chair before him. “The doctor who had come to check you over after you pulled that stunt-“

“Not planning on having a family anytime soon, are you?” You jerked the tray toward you, the swift action earning a scowl in return.

“When the time comes, we will have a family-“ you had cut him off, leaning forward as you flashed him a dirty look, your teeth gritting before you spat your accusation his way.

“Unless you are planning on holding me down-“

“I would never assault my soulmate like that.” Steve slammed his fist against the table, and you had nearly jumped out of his skin when his eyes darkened as he studied you.

“You think I would be some hideous and disfigured beast, some animal who knows no bounds-“

“You’ve proven me wrong, haven’t you? Kidnapping me. Chasing me down and binding my hands-“

“You hid from me! You are mine, and I am yours! We are bound-” He growled, the tension in the room growing thick, as his eyes had grown wider and the blue had become more akin to the manic and violent waters of the dark sea.

“We are nothing!” You countered and stood abruptly, kicking the chair back as you faced off against him, your nails digging into his palm.

“You have just decided that I was yours! You decided to rip me from my home! You decided to hunt me down like I am nothing but your toy!”

“You show such little respect-“

“I see no one worth respecting.” You rolled your shoulders back and stood straight, holding each other’s gazes as that thick and electrified tension had crackled between you two.

“The only thing I see is a man who is hiding behind a shield, a man who is so obsessed and mad with the need to have something, someone who doesn’t want him; he is willing to lose his sanity in the process.”

“If I am losing my sanity, I cannot already go mad.” He quipped, the atmosphere of the conversation ultimately shifting in a moment, and as if nothing had ever happened, as if the two of you hadn’t just been at each other’s throats; you had groaned and rolled your eyes.

“Shut up.”

“Sit and eat. Your body is weak.” Steve had extended his hand toward the food, and you had been disgruntled as you picked up the chair and sat down again, closing yourself off as you grabbed a chunk of freshly baked bread and tore a piece off with your teeth.

“You will have a guard with you at all times.” Steve watched you, the light tones of his eyes returning, and he had copied you in the manner of grabbing food and eating slowly.

“I’m not a child.” You glowered, swallowing your bread and moving on to the fruit.

“You are my soulmate and my queen; you will have a guard at all times. Even if I am with you, you will have a guard.” Steve had reiterated, ignoring your protest that you weren’t a child, choosing instead to relay facts to you.

“The noblemen seem to think I’m making a mistake-“

“-you are-“

“-by choosing a woman who is wild and ill-mannered. No more than a beast.”

“Fuck them!” You growled under your breath. “No more than a beast? No more than a beast?”

“Y/N-“

“No, seriously…fuck them. I have spent my entire life in that damn forest learning to take care of myself, okay? And they…when is the last time they had to go out and hunt for their food? When was the last time they had to track down prey miles away and shoot it with a bow and arrow? Huh? A crossbow? Beast.”

“Forest wench,” Steve drummed his fingers against the tabletop, “while I am thrilled over your experiences in taking care of yourself, you are a queen now-“

“I am no queen. I am Y/N L/N, and I belong in the thick of trees, not behind castle walls.” You cut him off, ignoring his displeasure, again.

“You are going to be queen whether you like it or not-“

“So much for not holding me down. Bastard.” You rolled your eyes and glanced over your shoulder, watching the door handle turn before it was pushed open and a man who was dressed in the manner of the guards and knights you had seen earlier stepped into the room.

“Things aren’t going well.” He smirked and looked you over once before casting his gaze upon Steve. “Your royal highness-“

“Is he talking to me?” You grimaced and scrunched your nose at the wording he had chosen.

“James Buchanan Barnes, captain of the guard and now babysitter”

“What’d you do to piss him off? Take away his mirror?”

“Wench,” Steve hissed and curled his fists, “must you comment on everything?”

“The council is waiting for you.” Your guard smirked and then coughed lightly to cover up the sound of his laugh.

“I wish I could have stayed longer and listened to your foul mouth,” Steve had stood and strolled around the table until he was standing near you, with one hand resting on the back of the chair and the other on the table, “but I have business to tend to.”

“Good. Go.” You rolled your eyes and huffed. “Tell the council, with all due respect, that they can get fucked.”

“Such a tongue, wench.” Steve had used the moment of your distraction to offer you a sentiment you hadn’t asked for, yet couldn’t pass up. “Your guard, will take you on a tour and I will join you shortly.”

A tour, a chance to see how best to get the hell out of here.

[hells-relief]

a night in the garden

blah blah blah, i lost all motivation, blah blah. i wrote something i'm actually proud of, yeah yeah yeah.

Here's a cute, jane-eyre inspired fic i wrote about Vyn.

Words: 3.7k

I ought not be traveling alone in this garden tonight, but I found myself full of intrigue and delight in passing that I must stop and ponder. the violets cascaded over the endless edges of stone walls, so soft to the touch that they almost broke down by the heat in my palms.

"whose magnificent flowers are these?" I asked my tutor, Sir Wing. He looked at them with contempt and answered his pupil's question.

"they are Dr. Richter's flowers. Be careful around them, child. the only thing he is wilder about than flowers are women."

Attempting to heed my tutor's warnings, I looked at them wistfully over my shoulder. but I could not send the vision of the flowers out of my mind. Sir Wing droned on and on about law techniques, arithmetic, literature, yet the draping perfection of the violets is what held my long-wavering attention. I wonder what the man fully looks like who keeps these flowers in such a delightful condition.

I had heard about Dr. Richter, of course. the lone gentleman, ever stoic, whom many knew as the duke's son, long left his home to become a mental doctor- an alienist, is what Sir Wing told me. he was reclusive, and when I did see him in public, his keen eyes and shock of hair are what stood out beneath his smart black cloak. His eyes, as golden as an owl's, swept the passersby as if he were making a profile about each one to keep in the recesses of his enormous estate. and though his hair made him appear as if he had received a fright, perhaps by a conjuring, his white-blonde hair was natural; so was the rumor, at least.

After Sir Wing left, and I was alone in the house, I grabbed a journal and went to sit in mine own garden, not nearly as bursting with life and drapery like Dr. Richter's, yet still doable. with the light low in the sky, I wrote in my journal about nonsense- about my university classmate, Lucas, who was keen to be around me more oft than not; about my tutor, Sir Wing, who despite being not two years older than I, was teaching and tutoring me. I wrote about his long-kept stares that I could feel down the back of my dress as I worked on the university problems he wrote me, and if it wasn't for his own ambition and gentlemanly ways, he might've asked me to marry him already. but I wasn't ready; I am the eagle that dips into the water to grab what it needs, then flies away to safe-keeping, never to let anything drag me down. and besides, men never tend to keep my wandering attention any longer than it takes for them to ask, "will you marry-"

So, it was strange, that these flowers are what filled every crevice of my mind. and that is why I find myself pushing open the strangely-unlocked gate to the garden; I wanted to be enveloped in them, wanted to breathe in the endless stream of perfume that poured from each petal. I had a mind enough to know that it was wrong; it is not my garden, nor my flowers, nor even my friend to ask to come spend time in his garden. yet, my worst senses got the better of me. quietly and quickly, I picked up the hem of my cream, floral-lined dress and went to find a place in the garden that no one would find me; perhaps I could shrink, so small, into the belly of the flower, and live my days there supplying the bees with the pollen they so desperately wanted and needed.

"Miss, come take a look at this beautiful, blooming peony." my feet stopped in their tracks; one foot still in the motion of moving to make my escape towards a hiding spot. but hiding was no longer an option; for I was found out, dress in my hands, in the garden of a man I was told was dangerous. I had half a mind to approach like one does a poisonous snake; carefully, with no sudden movements. but then I thought, this is ridiculous; he is but a man, and I am but a woman, there is no need to fear.

"I do apologize, Dr. Richter, I-"

"you need speak nothing else, for the melody of your voice is enough to keep me alive until the end of my days. I have no need for musicians, or singers, or opera, or the theatre any longer; I have found what makes my heart sing." I felt my breath catch in my chest, betraying me. I still couldn't see him. the mass of flowers that surrounded me blocked my view of any other area of the garden, let alone another person; but he could see me, see me enough to know that I was near him, hear me enough to know that the steps I took mimicked his own that he used to get here. I felt... a little strange, knowing this man looked upon me as a subject in a cage, ready and willing for observation.

"I do truly think it is unfair that I do not know where you are, Dr. Richter-"

"Please," his melodious voice sang to me over the leaves. "Call me Vyn." Vyn, I thought, is a charming name for a man I know nothing about.

"I think it may be too soon for informalities, Doctor. besides, I know nothing of what you look like."

"but I am all around." I look, and still I see nothing but tall, towering flowers. "these flowers are an extension of myself; the prettier parts, shall I say. not all who know me, know me." this man speaks in prose and riddles, whether to confuse me or to intrigue me. I decided the latter.

"I have no mind for what is acceptable and beautiful or ugly and unacceptable; I know only what I am. and I can only know who you are when you show him to me." there is silence, so much so I begin to wonder if he had retreated back into the estate, to leave me locked within the garden until morning and the proper authorities came.

"come find me." he says in almost a whisper, yet I am holding my breath waiting for him to say something, anything to me that it feels like he is speaking directly to my heart.

"yes." I whisper back, and my feet begin to make noise for me, stepping around every corner of the garden. a lady really should not be running after a man; it isn't proper, and all know the man looks for the woman, but I could not help myself, for I was struck spell-bound by this unknown ghost of a man. I felt everywhere I looked; I could find glimpses of him, but never anything concrete. a footprint here, a rustle of flowers there, but nothing real enough to make me exclaim, "aha! I’ve found you, you slippery snake of a man."

"You are going to have to try much harder than that to find me, miss. I am used to hiding from the world."

"and why is that?" I hissed as I spun around in a circle, looking for the source of the voice. yet, still I found myself alone. "you are a handsome man, you have a worthy profession, and your father is well-known. why do you keep yourself locked up, like a prince in a tower?" I hear a little tsk-tsk from behind another wall of vines and flowers, but this time, I see a pair of shocking golden jewels staring back at me. I run up to the wall of vines, and take a long look into the almost hypnotizing eyes that raked my face. they shone like the morning sun, their irises full of swirling sunbeams.

"isn't it so, in that story you are referencing, that the princess is forced into the tower against her own will? imagine a world where the princess is a prince, and chooses to lock himself away, to never be hurt, to never be misunderstood, and to never be judged." the eyes look down at the dusting of leaves at their feet. "I am used to being judged, misunderstood, feared for what I know and who I am. It is easier to... resign myself to a lonely, but safe fate."

"then why let me in?" I plead with the golden eyes. "why let me into your garden to see a glimpse of you?" the golden eyes fill with an emotion I hadn't seen on them yet: cunning, mischief? whatever it was, I was almost drunk on the look in his eyes.

"you are not the only one who has heard about the other, miss." I get it now; knowing was the look in his eyes. "the young lady who goes by nothing but Rosa. Studying law under the esteemed Sir Wing, acquaintances with the ever-mysterious Lucas Pearce. Why, I even heard you helped Sir Hagen get off a murder charge. Many have been talking about you around this city, surely you must know."

I blush, and finally pull myself away from the irises that had me locked in place. of course I knew everyone was speaking about me, and not in a good way. I am the lone woman, one who defies all odds and glances from disapproving men. I did not want to know what men behind closed doors had to say about me; I did not feel like losing myself to them, and their opinion mattered naught to me. still, the thought of this man hearing about me from them filled me with dread.

"I didn't know you were one for gossip, Dr. Richter." I used his full title now, for I could no longer assume his intentions good. maybe his plan was to lock me in this garden, to take the burden of me from the man-filled society.

"there is no need for that, Rosa, for I hear what they say and pay no mind to it. lest you forget, I find myself to also be the topic of conversation amongst those groups." with my eyes still locked on my feet, I did not know what to make of his statement. I know myself that gossip can be impossible not to listen to. I had not a fond thought of the implications of his words.

"still, Dr. Richter, you must empathize with the feeling of knowing your name has graced the lips of many who would never admit it to you outright. it still does not sit well the first, second, or thousandth time."

"ahh. but you see, this is where you are wrong. it does not hurt the thousandth time, if you do not let it." out of the thick leaves and flowers comes an outstretched hand, looking far too delicate to be real. the fingers are long, and there is a simple, engraved gold band on its middle finger. I cocked my head and looked at the ring, wondering whether he wore it out of habit, or whether it was used for special occasions; I felt that every aspect of him was a mystery that I needed to figure out. my hand poised over the hand that sprouted from the wall like a rouge vine.

"and how do you not let it, doctor? how do you not let it infect every pore of your being, and fill you up with a dark, poisonous gas?" my hand shook beneath the moonlight, and it gave away the fear and hurt I was feeling, even though I did not want to show it. I heard a deep chuckle from the other side of the seemingly impenetrable wall of vines.

"My dear, it is simple, so simple that you already hold it within you. I, meanwhile, only have one trick up my sleeve." suddenly, his hand raises up to meet mine, and he grasps onto it with a gentle, yet domineering grip. Suddenly, a man is born from the wall of vines. he moves through them, like the vegetation opening up around him was a cloud, moving and forming around his body. as he came out of the leaves, he chuckled again. "hello there."

The beautiful syntax that was flowing from his lips, however poetic or dreamy, was lost on me as soon as I saw the vines part. I attempted to coerce my brain into a coherent thought, even one that might say "Rosa, your mouth is agape, please close it", yet I could not. the man standing before me shocked me to my core. His long, silvery hair, the center of many a conversation about him, was wavy and thick, gleaming and glistening in the night; but those that gawked at his locks had not yet seen what I was looking at, because had they, they would know that is perhaps the least interesting feature to gossip about. his features looked like they were painted with the thinnest brush imaginable, with the way the delicate features seemed to be made out of a fine ink. his nose flowed well with his face, with its upturned end. The shape of his face looked like a man who had lost some weight, but the structure of his bones carved out the hollows of his cheeks, eyes, and neck. and his lips- I should not be looking at his lips, it is impolite, my brain finally managed to speak back to me- looked angel soft, a light dusting of pink over them, with what looked to me like worry marks scattering the lip; they look similar to mine own. He was smartly dressed, a deep royal blue jacket hung from his frame, with a smart, button up shirt underneath it. the blue mixed with his golden eyes and white hair made him look regal, imported almost, as if he had stepped off the pages of a novel about some far off land.

but beyond the features and the smart clothing themselves, what truly kept me agape at the mouth was the way his feelings played off of his face. I felt as if I could read him like the pages of my favorite novel, yet every time I looked at the page, it was a different language, one that was not my own. When he stepped through, something familiar rippled through the surface of his face: fear, anxiety, cockiness? I had no idea. but now looking at me, his face conveyed more of a... curiosity, that I was sure of, but something else as well... and it was then I noticed the pink building under his cheekbones, and the way his eyes moved from my eyes to my lips...

"hello." I managed to stutter out through dry lips. I was finally able to tear my eyes away from the enchanting man that was in front of me, and I turned my gaze to study the shoes I wore. "you-you did not answer my question, Doctor." my teeth worried my lip subconsciously; Rosa, you are getting away from yourself. he is just a man, I thought sullenly. I was right of course; all men had a... way about them, you could say. they were not terribly ingenious with the way they went about things, and they were easy to read. I, of all people, should not be flustered by men. I dealt with them on a daily basis, and found them to be terribly slow. after reminding myself this, I looked him in the eyes- those golden, swirling, intoxicating eyes- and steeled my resolve. It is almost as if he could read me, as well, and knew the conclusion I had drawn of him.

"ahh, Rosa. Your lovely face hides nothing, yet is not transparent: more like I am looking at an opaque partition that hides your true thoughts from me. however, I do believe I can wager a guess: perhaps you think I am like all the other men that frivolously gossip about you, or that waste their time with trivial matters, but I can assure you neither is true. simply, I am a man that has decided that my worth and who I am is not defined by what they say. I simply... don't allow myself to care."

"that is easy for you believe," I scoff at him lightly. "what they say about you does not dictate where you go, who you see, what you can achieve." I feel a gentle, almost quivering hand interlock their fingers with mine, and I look at his gold-ringed hand. "there is no way I am able to escape it. I do not even know why I am divulging all of this to you; there is no point to be downtrodden by things you cannot change." Doctor Richter squeezed my hand gently, and brought another hand to curl a strand of my chestnut hair back into my twist.

"it can still hurt. it can still be something that affects you. That is not pointless," as he spoke to me like this, I was reminded of the fact that this is something he practices in- it was probably not uncommon for him to hear people lamenting to him about their problems. "but I am telling you, dear Rosa, that just as weeds can grow through stones or Lilies of the Valley survive a winter storm, so can we thrive under impossible circumstances."

"we?" I said in almost a whisper. I was suddenly painfully aware that the night sky had started to twist and transform, lights suddenly peaking over the edges of the greenery. I felt a deep pang of sadness, like the night was taking something special from me. I looked into Doctor Richter's eyes, and I felt tears start to prick behind mine. he quickly took a hand, plucked a flower from a nearby bushel, and tucked its stem behind my ear. I felt a small prick, and realized that it was a red rose.

"My dear, as long as you will be willing to entertain my company, I promise you I will stand by your side. Hiding or no, I cannot allow you to continue to brave this alone." I could not even describe how I felt hearing those words leave his rosy lips. for so long, I felt misunderstood, an object for others to gawk at, such as a two-headed calf behind a set of iron bars. Even the men around my person left me feeling something like a porcelain doll. but Doctor Richter made me feel like I was a living, breathing heroine, someone who had come out of the rubble singed, but not burnt. "even though this is the first time I have laid eyes on you, I feel as if I have known you for an eternity, like some part of me was missing, and I have found her. I want to know you- not what others say about you. I hope that you will feel the same way, and I suspect you do, unless this is a wonderful yet tragic misunderstanding."

I am speechless. men have come, and they have gone. they have asked for my hand, and I have pulled it out of theirs with a wipe on my dress and a look of disgust. yet, this man, this ghost, has kept my attention all night long. I did not know how to respond, so I gave him a slow nod of my head, eyes looking up at him. he closed his, and a small smile played at the edges of his lips. a deep breath swept through his body, and ruffled his coat and the sleeves of my dress.

"You must be off soon, I presume." I started to bow my head, but he took a gentle finger and propped my chin up to meet his eyes. "I am sure you do not want to cause Sir Wing worry." I saw a flash of something behind his eyes as he mentioned my tutor's name, and I tilted my head as his words rang through my head again. the only thing he is wilder about than flowers is women. I pushed it out of my mind as I resolved to believe nothing of what others say about him, as he promised he would do for me.

"yes, I believe I should go now."

"do not forget me, Rosa. For I am unsure I will ever be able to banish the image of you from my mind."

and with that, I turned around and ran. retraced my steps, and closed the gate behind me. walking along the streets, I avoided glances as well as I could, and slipped back into my home as quietly as I could, though no one else resided there but I. I felt as if I made noise, the magic would be gone; the carriage would turn into a pumpkin, and I would wake up, like it was all a beautiful dream. my eyes fluttered close, and I slipped into a deep unconsciousness.

***************************************************

I awoke from my slumber to a knock on my door. ahh, Sir Wing, as punctual as ever. I looked at my body, and noticed the cream dress I wore last night was still on, with a subtle green stain all the way around the hem. ahh, so it was real. as I changed into a simpler, regent red dress, I remembered Doctor Richter's words from last night. I know things can sometimes be said in the night that are not necessarily true, I thought to myself. maybe I should just pretend that nothing happened.

I hurried down the staircase, and threw open the front door. Just as I suspected, Sir Wing was standing there, however, he held a vast bouquet of flowers wrapped in brown paper, with a twine string holding it all together.

"S-Sir Wing, I appreciate the flowers, however-"

"They are not from me, child," he spoke in an almost angry tone, and I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. "there is no name on the card." I look at the flowers- poppies, daisies, lavender- as they contrast again Sir Wing's suit coat: bright, punchy colors nestled against a black, tweed coat. my fingers find the card, and pull it out. written in elegant, yet messy cursive reads:

Rosa, I always keep my promises. take this as a promise that I will let you see me- I am anxious to show him to you. be at peace, my rose.

[emitheduck]

Queen’s Daughter (Anakin x Reader) pt 2

Queen’s Daughter (Anakin x Reader) pt 2

Prompt: Arranged space marriages suck but Anakin is trying his best to break it up (Queens Daughter pt 2??)

--

“That’s too loose. Tie it up again, this time, tighter.” 

“Mother, I think it should be fine.” (Y/n) sighed, the wind getting crushed out from under her as the woman behind her pulled back on the corset tighter.

“That’s much better. You have to look your best, it’s your wedding day after all.” The Queen smiled, clapping her hands together. “Before you complain, you know that this is only the best solution.”

(Y/n) bit her lip, bowing her head down as the maid worked to smooth the dress before she had to put it on. “Yes Mother.” She said, hearing her mother leave the room as she talked about some kind of preparation for today.

“My lady, would you like me to loosen the corset slightly?” The maid asked, not waiting for an answer as she already worked to make the garment looser. “We know that you aren’t fond of the wedding, but some good will come out of it.”

“If I’m honest, I would rather not talk about it. I’ll have my whole life to think about it anyway.” She sighed as the maid helped her step into the dress. For something that looked like simple white fabric, the dress must have weighed almost the same as she did. The beadwork just seemed to weigh it down, as well as the drapery of a sash that went around her elbows.

“I can do the rest myself if that’s alright.” (Y/n) told her, watching the other woman nod and step out of the room. She grabbed the crown she was given for today, fixing the veil that was attached to it. Picking up the skirt of the dress, she slowly started to walk out of the room.

The weather outside was beautiful. Alderaan was already such a wonderful place, and now it will be forever remembered as the place where she was forced into a loveless marriage because her mother decided it was the best thing to do. 

“There she is, I have been looking everywhere for you!” A voice exclaimed causing her to stop, frozen in her tracks in the hallway. 

She turned, clasping a hand over her mouth out of excitement. “Obi-Wan! What are you doing here?” She gasped, throwing her arms around the man as he went in for a hug. 

“News about your big day traveled fast, and the nicest thing we could do is come to congratulate you.” He smiled, lifting her up slightly in the hug. He would never tell her she was heavy, but of course could see she was drowning in beads and fabric.

“We?” She asked as they pulled away from the hug.

“Did you really think that I wouldn’t come either?” Anakin asked as he turned the corner of the hallway. He looked her up and down, trying his best to keep his composure in front of the other man.

(Y/n) tried her best not to cry, biting her lip as she slowly walked over to Anakin to give him a hug. Having to face the person you truly love while dressed and ready for your wedding was the worst feeling in the world. 

Obi-Wan sighed under his breath, shaking his head. “I need to find the Queen, and I’ll be sure to find you before the ceremony.” He told them, noticing how neither of them moved from their embrace. “Anakin, don’t do anything foolish please.” He mumbled before he stepped away from them. 

“You look beautiful.” Anakin whispered to her, leaning his head down on her shoulder and placing a gentle kiss on her neck. “It hurts so bad, to see you dressed for a wedding that’s not ours.”

She closed her eyes, resting her hands on his chest. “If you keep talking, I’m not going to be able to hold back any more tears.” (Y/n) told him as she looked up at him. 

He wiped away the tears falling on her cheeks gently. “I know. You can say the word, and I can try my hardest to get you out of this.”

“Anakin, you know what would happen if they found out about us.” She told him, leaning up to gently kiss him. She leaned into him, her hands snaking into his hair as his found a spot on her waist. 

“My lady? My lady?” A maid called out as she walked down the hallway, causing the two to pull apart. “It’s time for the ceremony and your mother asked me to find you.”

(Y/n) nodded. “Thank you. I’ll be on my way.” She told her as she watched the maid bow before going back the way she came.

Anakin reached down and held (Y/n)’s hand. “The least I can do is walk you there.”

“Walk me to one of the worst things that will ever happen to me.” She told him, squeezing his hand a little tighter as they got to the throne room. “I really wish I didn’t have to do this.”

“I know.” He told her, knowing that there was not much he could do about stopping the wedding but he was trying his best to imagine would happen if he was in fact able to stop the wedding. 

The two stopped at the door, Anakin giving her one last kiss before he opened the door and left her waiting to walk down the aisle as he joined Obi-Wan.

(There will be a part 3, and that will be the last part!!)

MASTERLIST

[darganwattsbirchmoregroup]

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If you do look at non-traditional career routes, though, do be sure that your job will include event planning. While some administrative assistants (for example) spend a good percentage of their time managing travel, setting up luncheons, and handling logistics, others spend most of their time on record-keeping and purchase orders.

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According to Dargan Watts, 6 Ways to Break Into Corporate Event Planning are:

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2> Office Support:Administrative support personnel may manage event responsibilities, plan and executes departmental and client-specific meetings, handle travel arrangements, and more. They may also work with outside hospitality vendors, track outside services budgets, etc. With the focus on strong organizational skills, many event planners start their path here and transfer into other event planning roles. Some administrative jobs are more likely than others to offer planning opportunities, so do ask questions before taking such a job with the expectation that you'll get experience with event planning.

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[hedgebtch]

FEN! Live From Fillory.

So today we're gonna talk about weather, 'cause that's what Earth people do.

They talk about weather when they don't know what to talk about.

What the fuck is happening?

I was going to the grocery store.

Oh my god, he's so excited to be here, he can't even contain his excitement.

Who are you talking to? There's no-one here.

There's service here?

Why am I in Fillory?

Did the surges bring you to me?

Well, since you're here...

I have not done a lot of Earth travel myself. Do you have any travel tips?

Tell me your ways.

You think I... travel on planes?

Do you travel by train?

I see that you have a very versatile wardrobe.

You have a little scarf that's very sexy.

Everyone can travel.

I didn't wanna come here.

Oh, is that what that face is? It's disappointment?

This face is trying to get the fuck away from you.

I don't... want... this...

Oh, who dat? Is that my man?

That's my husband. He's very handsome.

What the fuck is going on?

You're kind of invading a private moment with me and my drink right now.

Oh, I love being a part of your private moments.

I just wanted to gaze into the middle distance alone for like thirty seconds. Do you think I could have that?

Look at that middle distance, my god.

People always say 'how do you have such a good marriage?' and I say 'Space.' It's always good to be on literally different worlds.

I think I hear the noise of the majestic Lorian beetle. You know what that means?

Oh my gosh, he's so excited, he can't even open his eyes.

[Groaning].

What is my pet peeve?

Don't- we don't talk about that.

What's my favourite food?

Your favourite food is probably something really obvious and basic, like, you know... potato chips.

Rawr!

My favourite food is Mucksday feast. It's JUST like Thanksgiving but instead of turkey and mashed potatoes, it's actually massive possum and raw potatoes.

Oh, wow. A delicacy.

What is my star sign of astrology?

Woo!

What is your star sign? God, I don't know. Like... inverted hippopotamus scrotum upon a full moon rising?

I'm a Pisces.

You're a Pisces? Well, I guess that makes sense.

Are we celebrating something?

I don't know what you're talking about.

I'm always celebrating.

You're hurting my face.

Today, I'm cleaning out my closet. I want to tidy up, I want to ignite happiness.

I want to CLEAN UP THIS DUMP!!!!

Everyone comes to you for advice.

I thought you could help me clean up and help me find things that ignite happiness.

You sound... not excited.

The things that are hardest to get rid of are the ones you have sentimental connections with. And I have sentimental connections with every knife.

This knife, I, uh. First time I stabbed a child. I was also a child.

Ooh, I've never smelled my knives before.

She's so curvy.

Why would you want to keep this?

Why wouldn't I want to keep this? It's a knife.

Goddamn excellent point.

I have a lotttttttt of drapery.

I just keep telling myself I'm gonna do projects and I'm gonna do arts and crafts, and it just never happens, you know?

If you hold that too long, your soul will be ripped out through your nose and kill all your beloved friends.

This does not ignite happiness.

I won't even thank that one.

I've gotta say, this is probably my third favourite magnifying glass.

I'll keep that one.

That's log baby!

God, I love alliteration.

Let's ask her some questions.

This is not a microphone, I've told you that like five times.

This is a microphone if I say it's a microphone.

Who the fuck are you talking to?

You have fans?

Is that like... a surprised or a proud thing?

I love beautiful women. Mostly you.

Can I touch you?

I'm asking myself why the fuck you haven't thought of something better to ask me.

Oh. Plot twist.

All the things you could ask me... you choose to ask me what the fuck I'm wearing?

Is that demeaning? I'm so sorry. I've only read the 1993 November issue of Hip Bone. I think I'm a little behind.

You do look.... GAH! Aces! That's an Earth thing, right?

I love you. Maybe too much.

Those your muffins or are you just happy to see me?

I just wanna touch your muffins.

It's time I try your muffin.

I see no soggy bottoms.

Well, it smells like a muffin.

I mean, I'm not above eating bad muffins.

Well, slap my ass and call me Umber.

What are you doing? What the hell is happening?

That’s my phone, I’ve got three bars.

You guys are from Earth, you know how technology works.

So! Anyways! This isn’t about me - well, it is, but.

I’ll let you keep that book open, ‘cause I feel a little scared of you.

You’re more of a Joy, you’re more of a Whoopi, I’m definitely Barbara.

I’ve never experienced that word. Whoopi like whoopee cushion?

How do you feel about the magical surge that’s happening-

Let’s tell the people, what are we trying to solve?

Oh, yeah, let’s just solve it. Let’s just fix everything and save the world, just like that.

Ooh, it’s so easy. It’s so simple.

God, I love this positivity!

You always spell your name with an exclamation mark? I kind of like that idea, actually.

We are trying to fix the surge and save the world right now, so can we just focus on that?

I’m so uncomfortable right now.

Can I touch you?

Careful, she hits.

Are you defensive?

We’d like to delve into your personal trauma and past and what brought you to this place.

The reason why we work so hard at saving the world is so we don’t deal with our personal feelings. Have you not learned that by now? We SHOVE it down as FAR as we can, and we OPEN A BOOK and we say “HOW CAN WE SAVE THE WORLD?!” And then we just KEEP. ON. SAVING IT.

What do you guys think about… interrelations with animals and humans?

On Earth, it’s kind of frowned upon.

Wait, what do people do here?

I mean, do you want me to go into detail..?

I would take some details. It’s been a while.

You know what’s worrying to me though, is, uh, sexting in Fillory.

There’s something very uncomfortable about saying “fuck me daddy” right to a fuzzy bunny.

Questing creatures only ever choose white males. Why is this? Is it like that on Earth, or is it kind of the opposite?

Every time I come to Fillory, I try to track down the unicorns, and I know that there ARE unicorns here. I’ve seen them in books, I’ve just never found them. And there was a time when I was really depressed and I wanted to move to Fillory and work on a unicorn farm, I just don’t know where they are.

Sleep paralysis! Another thing that’s hitting Fillory because of the magical surge!

No one will ever fucking answer me about the unicorns.

[missameliasmithers]

The Aforementioned Sokai Demon AU

“I Was Dead When I Woke Up This Morning” 

-Sora gets possessed by a demon and seeks out the mage (Kairi) that is rumored to work miracles

Read on AO3

“Well, well,” his demon hummed. “What do we have here?”

“Be silent,” Sora mumbled, valiantly attempting to fight the lush creeping to his cheeks. “Slink back into your shadows.”

The hunter had spent the better half of the lunar phase in search of her –and two winters before simply chasing whispers. The sages and holy-men had been next-to-useless, the herbal women ineffective, and the soothsayers charlatans. She was his last hope.

He had heard rumors once or twice in passing before the possession, of the apprentice mage who appeared saturated in light. Gifted, he’d heard, blessed with an old magic. Capable of great feats.

Another cheat, he remembered assuming.

Now however, with the clawing talons of this monstrous darkness embedding themselves deeper into his soul, now he would try anything.

The nearer he got to her village, the more murmurs he caught. A miracle worker, some said. A gift from the Gods Almighty. An angel of innocence and health. The best white mage in millennia. He just hoped she was as good as they all claimed.

He found her hut with no trouble, not because of its size or splendor –as it was a humble lodging—but from the throng outside her door. Thirty heads was his estimate, and since he never had been one to mill about in a queue, he trotted off to the tavern to lose some hours in a bottle.

He returned as the sun was caressing the horizon and abided in the shadows of a maple as he waited for her final patrons to leave. He was rewarded two sun-marks later, when the hutch opened and a middle-aged woman stepped out, bowing and throwing exuberant praise over her shoulder as she left. A smaller figure in hooded red robes followed her out, waving farewell to the departing woman before snuffing out the lantern beside the threshold.

Closed for the night.

But one more patient.

Sora pushed himself off the tree and glided toward the mage’s hut. The soft rap of his knuckles on the door could barely be called a knock, but it served to alert his presence.

The robed figure was on the far side of the room –which was not a great distance considering the size of the dwelling—stooped over a large, open tome on a modest wood table. At the sound of his entrance, the figure raised its covered head.

“I’m sorry, but I’m closed for—oh!” She stopped in her tracks when her eyes landed on him, apparently as startled at his appearance as he was with hers.

She was certainly not what he had been expecting. He had envisioned this mage to be a withery old woman, or at the very least someone his senior. The face that greeted him from under the hood however, was a fresh-faced woman, perhaps a year or two beneath himself. She had ruby hair and shining eyes that seemed to glow and pierce him in the lamplight.

There was nothing outwardly spectacular about her –though admittedly she was quite visually striking—yet she emanated a sort of… light. No candle adorned her, nor did she wear crushed pearls as the court ladies did. A natural warmth seemed to seep out of her very being, and it made Sora want to move closer. To bask in her.

The demon in him roused in piqued curiosity and uncoiled like a serpent around his heart.

“My shadows are yours,” he rumbled. “You want her.”

Sora’s blood was on fire, racing to his chest, his face, his—

“I want no such thing.”

The demon huffed. “Are you not yet sick of denial, hunter?”

Sora allowed himself a steadying breath to keep his voice from wavering as he finally spoke.

“I realize you’ve stopped seeing patrons for the evening,” he said, “but I could not wait until dawn.”

“I can see that,” the woman said, her tone light despite the his rather impolite intrusion. “I don’t blame you. With that creature rasping in your ear all day, I’m sure I’d be tired of it as well.”

Sora’s eyes widened. “How did—?”

“I can feel the darkness from here,” she said, gesturing at his torso –at his heart. “You’ve got an impressive demon inside you, stranger.”

“Sora,” he said. “My name is Sora.”

“Kairi,” she supplied. Stepping from behind the table, she gestured to the tea table in the centre of the room. “Sit down, Sora. Let’s talk about your demon problem.”

“I would have you know this beast is not of my own making,” he told Kairi over a cup of Camilla.

She smiled. “I sensed as much. How did it come to find you?”

“The tale is brief, though rather grim,” Sora said with a sigh. “I had been out on a hunt and was tracking a boar through the wood. Midway through the brush, a new set of prints appeared –these belonging to a human. It is not uncommon to find travellers lost on the trail, but these were speckled with bloody drops.

“I do not consider myself a man of highest virtue, however I could not in good consciousness leave a wounded man alone in untamed timberland,” Sora said, tracing the rim of his cup. “I followed the tracks and came upon a young page collapsed in the thicket. He appeared to be my year, with a soft face dirtied and blonde hair tangled. His chest labored with breath and his eyes went wide upon seeing me.

“He told me to leave. Begged me to turn around, but crimson gashes littered his forearms and chest, and I could not bear to leave him in such misery. I tried to bandage him, but he protested. ‘I did this to myself,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to rid him of this realm. You must leave while you can!’”

Sora’s throat burned as Kairi continued listening patiently. “I did not understand him at the time. I believed his injuries were causing delirium. I kept trying to help. I attempted to heft him over my shoulder, but he pushed me away. ‘Please leave,’ I remember him saying. His words are forever ingrained in me. ‘I cannot hold him back much longer.’

“And still I stayed.

“Tears began to form in his eyes. ‘This isn’t how it was supposed to happen,’ he said. ‘He was supposed to fade. Now he will persist in you. I’m so sorry.’ And then, with tears staining his cheeks, the page took a final breath and expired.”

Sora inhaled, long and shaky, before letting it out. “My memory after that moment is spotted and full of fog. The last clear recollection I have is waking up in my cabin with a pain in my head and a strong feeling of nausea. A laugh that was not my own rumbled deep inside me and I haven’t been able to be free of him since.”

Kairi offered him a genuine look of sympathy. “That sounds like a dreadful ordeal.”

“Living with him is worse,” he replied.

“We’ll remedy that in time,” she said. “You have a powerful light inside you, Sora. Keep it lit and drive this demon back.”

Sora winced. “I’ve been trying. It’s been getting more difficult to keep him contained. He’s getting stronger. Takes control more often.”

Kairi reached forward and rested her hand on his. “I will help you.”

That enchanting warmth that thawed his bones earlier returned at the contact of her palm. It trickled up his veins and calmed his frayed emotions. He delighted in the pleasant calm.

“Normal exorcism will not work on this form of demon, I’m afraid,” Kairi admitted, setting down her cup. “But I believe if we draw out your light, it will drive the creature from your body.”

Sora put down his cup as well. “How do we do that?” he asked.

“A kind of meditation,” she said, rising to her feet. Sora followed suit. “I will try and share my light to boost your own, but it may take a few tries.”

“I’m willing to try,” the hunter said.

“Come with me, then.”

Kairi led Sora to a different section of her home, this new room simple and modest as the rest. Draperies and shelves lined the walls, and a small pedestal with cushions lay in the middle. A pleasant scent wafted through the air, a sweet incense.

Without hesitation, Kairi climbed up and took a seat on one of the pillows. She gestured to the remaining one across from her.

“Please have a seat.”

Sora did as he was told and once comfortably situated on the cushion, he looked up at Kairi for further instruction.

Her reassuring smile sent a summery rush through him as she outstretched her hands and turned his over.

“It is important that we maintain physical contact during this meditation,” she explained, grazing her fingers along his upturned wrists as she rested her hands on his. “Our auras will be linked during this time and if our contact is broken, we will be left unbalanced. If you are left weakened, your demon could very well take control, perhaps permanently.”

Sora gulped. “Okay.”

“Are you ready?”

Sora raised his head and met Kairi’s gaze. There was no uncertainty in her eyes, rather a proud determination, as if she hadn’t a trace of doubt in her mind that he had the power to vanquish this darkness. It made him feel strong.

He nodded resolutely.

“Then let us begin.”

He was in an unfamiliar land.

All around him was night, yet the moon and the stars had abandoned the sky. The ground beneath his feet was fashioned from glass, glittering and colourful like the windows of a cathedral. The air around him was thick, but he could not decipher what with. He tasted something sweet, but detected sourness and bitter flavour.

“She’s quite something, isn’t she, hunter?”

Sora whirled around to find the image of himself, vastly the same as a reflection, but mutated and contorted into a more twisted version. His normally brown hair had been inked in charcoal, his skin ashed, and his eyes an uncomfortable yellow.

“Leave me alone, demon,” he hissed.

“You are the one who called on me,” the black creature said. “You and that charming mage you are so infatuated with.”

Sora’s face reddened. “I am not infatuated.”

“Foolish boy, you cannot hide your emotions from me,” the demon said. “I am in every crevice of your mind. I know your thoughts. I know your desires. Though I must say, this was a surprise. Who knew you had a tinge of darkness to you as well?”

“You’re the darkness in me!” Sora growled.

“I had thought the same until recently,” the demon admitted. “There were a few times in the past I thought I saw a glint of shadow in you, but you always stamped it out. Now though, oh now it’s abundantly clear.”

Sora scowled. “What are you talking about?”

“I do not blame you for it, of course. It’s quite natural for a healthy male such as yourself. Even a demon such as I cannot begrudge an attraction to a woman so alluring.”

The blood drained from Sora’s face. “I’m not—I don’t—”

“Lust is my favourite deadly sin after all,” the demon continued. “It is a little absurd that a pair of pretty eyes and the brushing of a hand is enough to evoke this strong of a reaction from you, but I’ve seen worse in my years. At least you haven’t released in your britches yet.”

“You’re what’s absurd here!”

“Come now, as I said, it’s quite normal. That light of hers is delectable, after all. I can’t wait to have a taste.”

Sora glowered. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re wavering quite a bit,” the demon grinned. “Just a little longer and I’ll be able to devour that lady myself.”

Sora grasped for the beast, but stumbled through his haze. Turning on his heel, his attempted to punch him, but was awarded the same result. “Don’t you touch her!” he cried.

The demon smirked. “There it is.”

The hands resting below the mage shifted, but held contact. Sora’s fingers inched along soft skin, gently caressing Kairi’s palm as they moved higher to her wrist. The movement caused a smile to tug at her mouth even as she maintained the meditative link. Such an innocent touch, but one that reminded her of a tender presence.

And then the fingers clenched around her wrists possessively and Kairi’s eyes flung open to see a pair of golden eyes.

“Hello, pet.”

“Demon,” Kairi replied.

“Vanitas,” he corrected. “It is a delight to meet you in person, Princess.”

Kairi frowned and the demon chuckled.

“Do not act surprised,” Vanitas said. “I have lived far longer than you mortals can imagine. I could tell the moment my host laid eyes on you that you were a Princess of Heart. I can feel your light surrounding this entire town. Very impressive.”

“How are you here? My and Sora’s light should have kept you contained.”

“That’s the funny thing with light, Princess,” Vanitas said, using his grip on Kairi to pull her closer. “It always casts a shadow.”

“Not if it shines from all directions,” she retorted.

The demon brought his face besides Kairi’s nudging her cheek with his nose and moving his lips to her ear. “And you believe two beams will be enough to eradicate the darkness? I’m afraid not, love.”

Kairi squirmed as a scorching-hot tongue traced her jaw. “Release me, foul creature.”

“Whatever for?” Vanitas smirked. “Both myself and my host are thoroughly enjoying this.”

“Sora would never—”

He nipped her neck. “You have quite a lot to learn about men, my dear.”

Kairi continued to struggle as the demon laved attention to her skin.

“I can’t remember the last time I tasted something so delicious,” he mumbled. “I ought to sever your connection right here and take control of this body, but I am loathe to drag myself away from this feast.”

The mage’s heart stopped. Sora was certainly out of balance if his demon was in control. If Vanitas let her go, their link would break and he would be trapped, a prisoner in his own mind.

Reaching deep into her heart, she concentrated her light. She dredged up every positive thought she could muster, the kindness she sensed in him, her empathy for him and his plight, her desire to save him from this beast. She wrapped it up within itself, folding light into light and sent it soaring through the link.

Please, she whispered, please let this soul find balance again.

When Sora came to, his tongue was licking a stripe up Kairi’s neck.

Springing away, he yelped an apology and ducked his head. His face burned and his mouth held the curious taste of—

“Sora?”

Timidly, he raised his gaze to meet Kairi’s. Her face was flushed and her eyes were searching.

“It is you, isn’t it, Sora?”

“Of course,” he said, blush still flaming. “What happened?”

“It, uh…,” she started, “it didn’t work. Are you feeling alright?”

“Embarrassed,” he said sheepishly, “but otherwise, I’m fine.”

Kairi nodded and closed her eyes for a moment. “I can still feel your light, just as before. Can you sense it?”

“Um.” Sora took a moment to analyse himself. His soul weighed the same as it did when he arrived –not as heavy as it was the day of possession, but not as light as he would like. Still, there was that brightness that lingered inside him, the one that flared whenever he helped people in need, or watched a sunset, or look in Kairi’s eyes.

“Yeah, it’s there,” he concluded.

Kairi looked relieved. “That’s good.”

They sat in silence for a moment.

“So it didn’t work, huh?”

She shook her head. “Not this time.”

Gently, Sora grazed his fingers over hers. “Would you mind if we try again?”

[hlwim]

Not All of Me Will End [3/3]

Summary: Nothing remains of her but what must be left behind. Tags: Character Death, Cancer, Tragedy, Angst, Bittersweet, Post-Canon Pairings: Royai, Edwin, Havolina AO3  ff.net

who tells your story

From the peak of the roof, Ed can see the long and lonely stretch of the rail line disappearing into the mountain. He still loves the cool whisper of its whistle far-off and heading in, but it doesn’t fill him with a longing for the road the way it used to. He’s a husband now, and teacher frequently and village councilor sometimes, and soon—alarmingly soon—a father.

The nearness of coming change is what’s driven him up a ladder, to straddle the shingles and, with nails clamped between his teeth, to patch holes and join new trestle to old. The house is getting cramped—the front half’s a real clinic now, with a proper doctor hired in from Rush Valley and the automail shop having swallowed all the basement. They get patients and clients and more visitors than they reasonably have beds for, and three months now Winry’s been asking when he’d get around to building that extension. He tried putting it off until Al was back, because of course alchemy will speed the work, but excuses are excuses are excuses.

“I’m not holding my knees closed for another four months!” she’d said, jabbing dead-center of his chest. “You’re plenty handy at carpenter work, and you’re owed about a million favors in town.”

And this was true—Ed never liked charging for his services, as the dregs of his state stipend are enough to keep them flush for ten lifetimes. But people around here insisted on showing gratitude in practical ways, like extra pounds of meat from the butcher or hand-wrought yarn for Granny’s knitting. Ed had had a crew up for most of the day: boys that hang around after class to hear his stories and poke at the holes, and the girls who spend summers baling hay and shearing sheep. In the space of a morning and an afternoon, they’d raised walls and laid the floor and wedged in a dozen or so windows. He sent them off to their homes for supper and admonished them not to return tomorrow, knowing anyway that there would be a cart of eager hands on its way back by dawn.

He sets the hammer against his knee and leans back, breathing deep. The breeze carries to him the quiet lull of church bells, and then Winry’s voice.

“There’s a telegram come for you,” she calls up, as Ed slides down the ladder and tosses his work gloves over a rung. She’s getting slower, huffing and waddling adorably, which Granny keeps mentioning is a sure sign the baby will be along any day now. “It came in with the invoices, but I didn’t open it.”

“Brigadier General Mustang,” Ed snorts, raggedly tearing the envelope open with his thumb. He only reads the first line before his fingers go numb, letting the delicate carbon sheet flutter to the ground.

“Ed, what is it?”

Breath seems suddenly hard to come by—though not from exertion.

“It…”

He wants to read it over again and won’t.

“It says Riza Hawkeye’s died.”

He has to be the one to tell Al. No telegram is going to find him in the chaos of the Chang clan’s village. It takes long enough to connect a call—Ed listens to the tick and buzz and tick for a good twenty minutes, and he holds the telegram flat beneath his hooked thumb and index finger. The words flash disconnected in his gaze: regret and informand Hawkeye and died. Funeral tomorrow—the telegram was a day late in arriving.

Mei Chang’s grandmother answers, and Ed has to negotiate with the little Xingese he knows to be passed from house to house and reach his brother. Al answers with a breathy laugh, expecting happy news.

“I can’t remember the last time I saw her,” he says, voice cracking.

“Me either,” Ed replies quietly. The kitchen is black with night, and the light switch is too far for him to reach. “I think it was Central. Their engagement party? She looked so happy.”

“She did.”

There is a long silence where they can both cry, quietly, connected even through this distance.

“I’m going to have to decide soon, aren’t I?” Al asks helplessly. “I can’t have two homes forever. When I’m here, I feel like I should be there. And I should be, now, of all times…”

He takes a shuddering breath.

“I can’t believe she’s gone. Just… someone else we didn’t get to say goodbye to.”

Winry refuses to be left behind, so Ed pays extra for the private sleeping car, where cushions keep her from jostling left and right with the train’s sway. They’re west-bound, to some spit of a village called Wellesley and then ten miles farther. He’s received the instructions from Jean Havoc, who answered the telegram’s indicated number with a thick sigh.

“How long was she sick?” Ed had asked, twisting his empty hand against his leg.

“Not long,” Havoc said. “But too late to do anything about it.”

“How is he?”

“Bad. You’re probably going to miss the funeral, but there’s a thing after, at their house.”

“We’ll come.”

He expects the platform to be busier and maybe wreathed in black drapery, but it’s a little place hardly bigger than Resembool’s station. There are two benches inside, empty and facing the only window—rosette, perched high in the roof beams.

The village is small and packed densely, houses circled close against the encroaching trees. Half the streets are paved, but enough mud has tracked across the cobbles to paint them the same indistinguishable red-brown. Ed hates the car ride, for the way the poorly-upholstered bench forces them tightly together. The temperature seems to rise as they crawl farther and farther west—he’s the first to step out of the car when they arrive, and humidity nearly knocks him back against the fender.

The front door of the house is closed, and it seems no one is waiting to let them in.

“It’s lovely,” Winry says, huffing her way out with the help of Ed’s hand. “Except for the trees, we could almost be home again.”

Which is bizarrely true—unlike the wattle-and-daub look of West City or even the river-stone cobbles of Wellesley, the Hawkeye house rears back symmetrical and clad in white, imperiously simple in its understated decoration of blue paint on its shutters and doors. The windows look mottled in the sunlight: glazing thicker at the bottoms of each pane and fogged up, with the vaguest of colors and shapes moving behind them. He expects somehow for the house to extend up into the clouds, but it stops after two stories, beneath a slate tile roof and a chimney that lists against the tide of winds high above the trees.

Ed helps the taxi driver stack their bags on the grassy pavestones.

“Do we go and knock?” he asks, but Winry is already halfway up the walk. The door opens before she can reach for the knob—Jean Havoc on the other side, looking somewhat narrower than the last time they saw him, in his dress uniform and black sash.

“You made it,” he says, leaning in to Winry’s greeting hug. “I hope it wasn’t too hard.”

“It was nothing,” Winry says. “But we’re not imposing?”

“No, there’s plenty of room to stay. Someone’ll get your bags upstairs. We thought—”

He sighs, stepping aside to let them pass. The house is many degrees cooler than outside, despite the quiet hum of the implied crowd further in. The hall extends straight through to the back of the house, splitting two rooms on either side, and it is lined with tastefully sparse chairs and hanging lamps.

“We thought, it was better he wasn’t alone.”

“Where is he?”

“Kitchen, I think. Führer's receiving in the sitting room here. If you’re hungry or something, there’s food set out banquet-style, so help yourself.”

“Is—is she…?”

Ed can’t quite form the thought into words. The air is dense with cold and feels closed, dusty, disused.

“We buried her this morning,” Havoc says. “Real nice place, by some trees. Rebecca and I were here the day before she—”

It’s a visceral reaction, a wince that travels to a shudder.

“She didn’t want people to see her like that.”

“I wish we could have said goodbye at least,” Winry says.

“You did. Last time you saw her—whenever that was, that’s how she wanted you to remember her.”

At the far end of the hall is a closed door, puzzled together out of narrow squares of glass. The garden beyond bounces sunlight off its leaves and paths, tainting the white paneling green and yellow. No one outside—the wind that bothers the treetops can’t reach the ground, and the world enveloping this house is motionless as a painting.

“Let’s go on through, and you can get some food,” Havoc says. “I have to get back to Rebecca.”

He heads for the front room, and they follow. Winry keeps a hold of Ed’s hand.

The room is too crowded for furniture—he can guess at the location of a chair by the awkward gap between mourners, but for the most part, the memorial is standing room only. A sea of dress uniforms broken by the occasional black hat or short veil. The führer is sequestered behind his guards on the far left and snuffling into a handkerchief, surrounded by a crowd of lower officers Ed doesn’t recognize.

“Let’s go over to Mr. Armstrong,” Winry says. “Didn’t that other man there with him used to work with General Mustang?”

“Falman, yeah. He stayed up at Briggs after the big fight.”

Lieutenant General Armstrong is concealed by her brother’s broad, bowed shoulders, and she keeps one hand resting habitually on the hilt of her ceremonial saber, but her frown seems a different inflection.

“Hello, Fullmetal,” she says. “They weren’t sure you’d make it.”

“Gave up that title a few years ago. Now I’m just Ed.”

“Of course, Edward.”

Alex, gravelly and grave as ever, turns slowly to bring them into the small circle.

“I hope your journey here was not particularly arduous, considering your current condition.”

“Oh, I get into more trouble now than I did before,” Winry says with a small smile. “Lieutenant General, ma’am, I’m sorry for your loss.”

“It wasn’t really mine.”

But her gaze doesn’t quite connect.

“Captain Hawkeye was a gifted officer—one of the finest I’ve had the privilege to serve with. She performed her duties as adjutant admirably, and she left me with a decent replacement.”

“I try my best,” Falman says, briefly tipping his wine glass. “It all happened so quickly towards the end—I saw her only a few months ago, and part of me was so certain this was all a hoax or a big misunderstanding. She never wavered. Never looked ill. It’s madness that she’s gone.”

“I gather it was a family affliction,” the lieutenant general says. “Her father died in a similar way, although I understand he had a little more time.”

Ever so lightly, Winry touches the back of Ed’s hand.

“I think I’d like to find a place to sit down.”

She won’t want company, but it’s as good an excuse as any to duck out. Winry finds an empty seat in the corner, on some antique-looking lounge, and she waves him aside.

“Go on,” she says. “Plenty of people around to get me whatever I need.”

He bends down to kiss her hairline and then straightens up again, catching the eye of Heymans Breda across the room.

“He’s not going to thank you for being here, but it really means a lot to him, to have us all around.”

“Havoc told us not to make arrangements for lodging,” Ed says, keeping his wrist straight and grip firm. Breda’s always been a bit of a hand-crusher, but Ed’s grown enough now to equal him out.

“Plenty of bedrooms,” Breda confirms. “Falman’s gotta go back with the Armstrongs, and the führer should be leaving any minute. But me, Havoc, you guys, Rebecca, and Gracia are all set upstairs. Not that you have to stay—if there’s something more pressing back home.”

“No,” Ed says. “We’re here, and we want to be here.”

Breda jams his hands back into his pockets.

“So how’s it been, being back home? Kept man—you miss the road at all?”

“A bit,” Ed says with a shrug. “But not enough to go out again. Al’s stories are enough for me.”

“His name’s always coming up in reports from Xing,” Breda says. “He thinking about making the move permanent?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think he could be away from home like that. I think he likes going between. Especially now, with little niece or nephew on their way.”

“Congrats, by the way. We put your postcard up on the wall at work.”

Ed thanks him, and they fall silent for a while.

As predicted, the führer is gradually making his exit and filtering the crowd of most unfamiliars. Ed shifts slightly, half-wishing he had left his hair down to better hide his face. His gaze falls on a collage of photographs littering the wall to their right—shots of buildings and crowds and the insides of pubs he’s never seen. Only one of just the two of them that he can see: embracing in a snowfall, surrounded by friends.

“When were they married?” he asks.

“Right after they moved here. They were planning on a long engagement, until she made major and got moved out to Central as Armstrong’s proxy. Sounded like it was only a few weeks away, when…”

Breda grimaces.

“I hate this. I really hate it.”

They watch the führer and his guards file out. The old man walks heavily, leaning most of his frame on an ornate stick, gold-tipped and dark wood.

“Granddaughter’s fucking funeral, and he still has to show off his trophies.”

“That’s seditious,” Ed says, eyebrow raised.

“Who gives a shit? He’s gonna retire in a couple months anyway, and then we’re under Armstrong’s thumb.”

“Really? Not…?”

Breda shakes his head.

“So who would take over Briggs?”

“Whoever’s next in line, I guess. Funny how we put in all this work, and nothing changed.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Ed says. “A lot of people down around us are talking about organizing district conventions.”

“That should be fun to watch,” Breda sighs. “First woman führer in the history of this country, toppled by democracy.”

The entourage passes by Armstrong, but she doesn’t glance, keeping that imperious chin high in the air. She doesn’t look bored, exactly, but contemplative—as though always waiting for the start of the next engagement.

“I should go find him,” Ed sighs. “Tell him… whatever the hell you’re supposed to tell someone.”

“Look for Gracia. He’ll be nearby.”

She is found not far from the closed kitchen door, and she hugs him long enough that Ed can still smell her perfume after she steps back.

“It’s Mrs. Cotter now, actually,” she says, a bit sheepish.

“Oh, that’s—”

He stutters his way through it.

“I’m so happy for you. Is he… here?”

“No, he stayed back home to mind the shop. We have a bookstore together. He—”

She half-smiles.

“Herman and I met at a social group for widows and widowers—he lost his wife young, to sickness, and all of this… it’s too close for him still.”

She falters a moment, and then brightens again, like instinct.

“He’s really a wonderful man. They didn’t have children of their own, but he loves Elicia so dearly. And he likes Roy, and he liked Riza, too, but—someone had to run the shop.”

“What about you?” Ed asks. “Are you alright?”

“Maes was different,” she says, after a pause. “It was sudden. There was a lot we hadn’t had the chance to talk about, and there was so much left… undone. With this—with Riza, and with Herman’s wife—there was time. Decisions and plans that could be discussed.”

“Hard to know which one’s worse.”

She smiles again and gently squeezes Ed’s hand.

“He’s just in the kitchen. He needed some time away from the crowd, but you can go in.”

The door is heavy and seems only recently white-washed. The kitchen beyond is dazzlingly bright and decorated with jar after jar of wildflowers. Roy Mustang sits at the table with a faraway look in his eyes, one hand upturned and held loosely by Elicia. She has a canvas and palette set out and idly paints a quiet meadow scene.

Ed pulls out a chair, and as he drops into view, Roy blinks, suddenly focused.

“Have I seen you already?” he asks. “It’s been such a long day.”

“No, we just got here,” Ed says. He feels obligated to speak softly, to half-smile with sadness and temper his gaze with gentle understanding—but that is not, and has never been, how they were with each other. “I’m really sorry, Roy. But I wish you’d told us.”

“It wasn’t on purpose this time, I promise.”

“Yeah, Havoc said as much. That it’s how she wanted it.”

Roy nods, and beneath his elbow, Ed can see the glint of silver.

“You smoke now?” he asks. And Roy looks down, following the point of Ed’s finger, surprised almost to see the lighter.

“No,” he says. “It was hers.”

Something is engraved on the front, but it’s probably rude to ask. Elicia mixes blue and green on her palette.

“Where’s big brother?” she asks.

“He’s in Xing. He couldn’t make it back in time.”

Her nod is as slow as Roy’s was—she still wears her hair in twin bunches, but it’s long enough now to plait over each shoulder, and she doesn’t bother to look up. Her brush moves the canvas slightly on the polished wood, but she doesn’t let go of Roy’s hand.

“You know you can’t call me little brother anymore,” Ed says. “I’m gonna have a baby soon.”

“Mommy told me. She said you’re having a girl.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Well, I know it,” Elicia says. “I know everything. What’s her name gonna be?”

“We’re still not settled on one.”

Roy has returned to the blank stare—although it has shifted to the window and the empty garden beyond.

“I should go out,” he says, wearied by exhalation.

“Grumman just left,” Ed offers. “It’s probably safe.”

Elicia lets go without a look upward, focused solidly on her artwork. It’s encouragement, not callousness, as Roy closes his eyes and then stands, scraping the chair back. Every movement seems drawn up from a deep well of pain.

“Winry’s here?” he asks, focusing on Ed. They’re the same height now, but the hunch of shoulders shortens Roy—his uniform is hanging so horribly loose.

“Yeah, in the parlor. She needed to rest her feet a bit.”

He feels, half-heartedly, that he should offer a shoulder for Roy to lean on, but, soldier that he is, Roy straightens up, takes a breath, and steps through the door with shoulders square. No one notices—or at least they all have the courtesy to pretend otherwise—and Roy exhales, eyes focused on the floor. He still holds the lighter tight between his fingers, little flashes of silver catching Ed’s gaze now and again.

Winry is alone, but someone’s brought her a glass of water and a plate of little pastries. She smiles at seeing them and Ed smiles back, half-relieved, before realizing that Roy is no longer beside him.

He must have looked up at some point, and landed his gaze squarely across the room, on an over-large portrait of Riza Hawkeye. Ed can’t remember if he himself had noticed it until now—the führer had been standing in front of it, with his coterie of hangers-on, and Ed had always done his utmost to never again attract the attention of military men. Maybe there’d been a curtain draped across it.

It is clearly a depiction of Riza—blonde hair, brown eyes, pointed nose and chin, sharp jaw—but something about it is fundamentally, unshakably , flawed. He remembers a piercing gaze that could read a room and every man’s intentions in ten seconds flat, a quirk at the corners of her mouth that betrayed the arrival of a rare smile, and a squareness to her shoulders, as though she couldn’t fathom any posture but parade rest. The woman in the portrait wears Riza’s face, but she isn’t. Distant, demure, wrapped in some old-fashioned frock the color of sour milk. This woman sees nothing, feels nothing—sits silent and unblemished, pressed like a dead flower between sheets of cracked wax paper.

“Why?”

Roy is ash—unable to break the painting’s stare, knuckles white, swallowing hard against the tears watering his eyes. Gracia materializes at his elbow, arms ready to brace him from dropping like a stone.

“The führer wanted it out for display,” she says quietly. “I tried to tell him no.”

“All her pictures—”

“They’re safe. We’ll put them back up.”

“It’s not real.”

His voice breaks barely over a whisper, and Ed looks away, half-ashamed and unsure why. It seems most of the guests had the same instinct—only Breda and General Armstrong are watching, silently angry in their own separate ways.

“That’s enough for today,” Gracia says. “You don’t have to do anything else. Let’s just go upstairs, alright?”

He is, in so many ways, diminishing by the second. He speaks to no one as they move back through the parlor to the hall, and Ed has a vision suddenly of a hammer suspended by spider silk above a sheet of glass.

Winry slides her arms around his shoulders as he sits heavily on the cushion beside her.

“Everybody said the service was nice,” she tells him.

“But it wasn’t her?”

He feels her shrug and leans into it.

“Funerals are more for the people left behind. They’ve always been.”

A door closes somewhere upstairs, and Breda crosses the floor, seizing the painting at the corners. It lifts awkwardly, and he turns it to lean face-down against the wall, exposing an expanse of white paint and a series of empty nails.

The house empties in a trickle not long after—enough will be taking the same train back to Central that any residual mourning can be wrapped up at the station. Havoc takes up the mantle of awkwardly gracious host, shaking hands at the door and thanking each guest for their exit. Rebecca gathers Winry up to deal with the kitchen. They’ve been eating small plates all day, with no time to stop for a proper meal.

“Come on,” Breda says to Ed. “Let’s put things back the way they were.”

The portrait goes first—they carry it into the cellar together, to the pile of paper wrapping and snapped twine that had clearly been protecting it from view.

“When was this made?” Ed asks, draping the scraps as best he can.

“Couple years ago, I think. I guess he had one made of her mom once. Riza hated this thing.”

“They didn’t put in the scar on her neck.”

“Does that surprise you?” Breda sighs.

“No.”

The oil lamp hanging from the ceiling is set too high up—the shadow of a floor joist cuts sharply across the face, from cheek to cheek.

“I’d hate it too,” Ed mutters.

There’s several couches and tables to carry up and arrange, rugs to unroll, and lamps to dust off and plug in. Sunset floods the room as Ed adjusts the final cushion, frowning, and Breda stands at the empty wall with a handful of photo frames.

“I don’t know what order they were in,” he says, when Ed joins him.

“Does it matter?”

“I think it did.”

They try—the position of each nail gives a hint at the pattern, but something in the arrangement is definitely wrong to Ed’s eye. The muted swirl of colors, when viewed from a distance, are unbalanced, but he can’t think how to fix them. There isn’t even a common theme in the photos themselves to act as guide: flowers, rainy street scenes, crowded bars, books spilling from shelves all take equal space in simple frames. Breda gives up with a shrug.

“That’s gotta be good enough.”

Dinner is stew and bread at the table where Elicia’s left out her paintings to dry.

“I’m going to give one to Herman,” she says, kneeling on her seat to reach equal height with the adults.

“Can I have one?” Ed asks.

“If you pay me,” Elicia says with a shrug.

“Hey, I have to save money for the baby.”

“That’s not true. Uncle Roy says you’re loaded.”

Breda laughs, and smiles slip across a few other faces.

“You were an alchemist like him,” Elicia accuses. “And he said alchemists get lots of money from the military, so you’ve got lots of money to pay me.”

“Darling, please,” Gracia scolds, biting down her own smile. “It’s rude to discuss money at dinner.”

“Someone’s gotta fund that tuition,” Havoc says quietly.

Winry reaches beneath the table and squeezes Ed’s hand. He wonders if she’s thinking too of similar quiet moments of levity after a hard day of mourning. After Mom’s funeral, Granny had made them dinner and tucked them in and read funny stories from the newspaper until they all fell asleep. He’d felt wrong laughing, but it helped some.

Havoc and Rebecca are sorting through stacks of condolence cards and telegrams at the opposite end of the table, organization as soothing instinct. One pile is for strangers, diplomats, and sycophants—and a much smaller pile for the few that merit response, although Ed doubts Roy will be writing them himself.

“Poor kid,” Havoc sighs, setting another telegram on the response pile.

“Fuery?” Breda says, and Havoc nods.

“Where is he?” Ed asks.

“Middle of the Aerugian sea. Testing long-range communications. Still has six months on the tour.”

“That’s awful.”

Havoc nods at the piles.

“Especially now.”

Having picked the chair nearest the hall, Ed is the one to see the front door creak open, though Havoc hastily excuses himself to greet the newcomer—a large, stately-looking woman wrapped in black furs and a veiled hat, who sets down a pair of polished cases and envelopes Havoc in a hug.

“That rotten bastard had all the rail lines shut down like he was the only one who needed to be here. Where’s my boy?”

“Upstairs.”

“His mom,” Breda says quietly, to Ed’s unasked question. “Call her Christine.”

She leaves her bags for Havoc and takes each step heavily.

There’s no call for nightcap. Everyone is tired—Gracia collects plates as though to wash them, but Breda stops her.

“This isn’t important. It can wait for morning.”

Elicia leads Ed and Winry upstairs to their room: a study at the end of the floor, with desk and chairs pushed against the wall to make room for a low bed. A fireplace is set between the windows, but only as facade. The grate has been bricked over, and the old opening covered by a decorative screen.

“Mommy and me are next door,” she says. “Other side’s a bathroom and then Uncle Roy’s room. You got enough blankets?”

“We’ll be alright,” Winry replies for him. Elicia kisses them both on the cheek and closes the door—she has to use both hands and walks backwards to manage the weight.

Ed can’t find sleep. Winry hardly has a choice in the matter, barely settling on the mattress before she’s out. He doesn’t mind, though, loving the sweet openness of relaxation that smoothes every wrinkle of worry from her brow. He sets a hand on her belly to check, but really he hopes the baby will let her sleep.

Unfamiliar houses at night always seem to belong to another world entirely—he steps with care, knowing he has no chance of predicting which footfall might produce a creak. Every door is pulled shut, and there’s no sliver of light beneath any to betray whether he’s less alone than he feels.

Breda took the the sitting room for himself, and Ed hesitates at the top of the stairs, waiting in a long silence until the radio is switched off, and the rustle of fabric and cushions has stilled. He will not be able to explain to anyone who asks what he is doing, or why it must be done now, when stillness has closed over the house.

He at least remembers that the door to the basement is inside the kitchen, and that a box of matches is sitting beside the oil lamp at the bottom of the steps. It’s as cold as he’d expect, and he curses himself a bit for not bringing shoes. His automail foot might not mind, but the flesh one is burning on the dusty flagstones.

The portrait has already shed some of its paper veil—there must be a draft down here—and the peaks and valleys of paint pick up the lamp’s approaching glow and begin to glitter.

Again, he thinks, it’s not really Riza. Just the ideal of her: a porcelain mask with her lips and nose and something like the serious tilt of her brow. He’d only seen her hair down a handful of times—never styled in such old-fashioned curls. The dress as well is an oddity, lace and low-cut and gathered at her shoulders in little puffed sleeves. It reminds him a bit of Winry at five, in the church dress she ruined with mud.

Too much is missing. That thick line of flesh on her neck which stretched from ear to clavicle, the little spray of freckles perched at the end of her nose. She even had a thin scar on her cheek—he presses a finger to that stretch of canvas, knowing it’s wrong, knowing that he is diminishing what was intended as perfection. But hadn’t Breda said she hated it? And of course she would, knowing better than anyone the futility of hiding from all the ugly little truths she had to carry with her every day.

Ed wishes the artist had painted her looking away. The effect of unreality is greatest in her eyes, its eyes, with that dead stare straight forward, soulless and immobile. He would expect the sensation of being tracked—but shifting left and right, the pupils don’t seem to move. Fixed, forever. He wants to look over his own shoulder, seek from the shadows what must be lurking, what must be holding that frozen gaze, but he won’t.

She looked like this and not like this at the end, he’s certain—though he couldn’t bear the idea of asking, when the memory of his mother’s face is swimming so close beneath the surface. The stitched-shut eyes, the puffy dusting of powder to hide her already sinking features, the hands linked by fingers that were too stiff to bend right. It fills him with an aching hollow to think of Riza the same way. Like a scissors set beneath his ribcage and sawing straight across.

He cannot remember the last thing he said to her—it may have been as simple as good night.

Before leaving, he turns the portrait to face the wall, letting the shreds of paper spread limply across the floor beneath.

Only an hour of rest—then he’s up again, defeated, braiding back his hair and sliding uncomfortably into yesterday’s clothes. The sky outside is just beginning to gray, and he doesn’t want to bother anyone with running water. Breda’s still asleep in the sitting room. His snore rattles the glass a little, and Ed smiles, nudging into the kitchen door.

Someone else is awake. The coffee on the stove is warm, and there’s fresh crumbs of bread beside the butter dish. An apple core, perfectly cylindrical and neat, rests upright on the counter, just beginning to brown. But nothing else in the kitchen is disturbed—the chairs are pushed in, the dishes stacked in the sink, the empty jars lining every window sill sparkle with dust. Ed takes an apple for himself and pours a cup of coffee, not bothering to reheat it first.

The house seems to have gotten smaller somehow, overnight. The steps between the study upstairs and the basement could have covered a quarter mile, but now he hesitates even to lean against a table, as though the smallest scrape of sound will jolt everyone sleeping on the other side of a fragile curtain.

Haze dabbles the garden. The sun will have to work its way up through the trees, so lingering shadows fill the lawn like fallen leaves. Ed stands as close to the windows as he can, staring blankly through the mottled glass, thinking of nothing.

It takes a moment to notice the little bistro table sitting outside, one of its chairs askew on mossy flagstone. There’s a mug on the table, and an empty plate, and half a folded newspaper spilling from the cushion. Early risers always seeking solitude of some kind—he can smile at this, knowing it now so intimately himself.

From the right, Hayate suddenly enters the frame, trotting purposefully, sniffing out a path. And, behind him, swinging a stick to throw and be fetched, is Roy: gaunt, pale, grayed out and wavering through the window, like a branch caught beneath rushing waters. He whistles, and tosses the stick high, and then he returns to the chair and the table, neatening up his discards and pulling a thick leather satchel Ed hadn’t noticed, from the seat of the unused chair.

Their eyes meet through the window, and Roy raises a hand, either greeting or goodbye. Grateful he’d thought to put on his shoes, Ed crosses quickly into the hall and then outside, breathing the dewy air deep and coughing.

“Hey,” he says, wary.

“Hey,” Roy replies. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No. I didn’t sleep much.”

Ed feels the sting of rudeness. What does that matter? Roy only nods, and Ed half-expects his head to shear from his neck completely, like tearing wet cardboard.

“I didn’t want to bother anyone,” Roy says. “They all did so much yesterday. Figure they need their rest.”

“What about you?”

Roy glances down at the satchel, slung over his opposite shoulder. There’s something inside, something bulky and solid.

“That part hasn’t hit me,” he says. “I know it’s coming. Grief is exhausting, and your body doesn’t know what to do but sleep—but I’m not there.”

The yet doesn’t come. They stare at each other, fifteen feet apart, shoes sponging up every bit of water clinging to the grass. Ed feels a knot balling up in his stomach, and Hayate comes trotting back from the brush, happily depositing the stick at Roy’s feet and leaning against his leg with a contented huff. Roy’s fingers drum against whatever’s in that satchel.

“Listen—” he says, and stops himself with a grimace. “There’s something I need to do.”

Ed’s fingers go cold.  He shoves them into his pockets, hoping to hide the blanch.

“Could I come with?” he asks, knowing either answer is pointless to his intentions.

“Yeah,” Roy says, as a little awful smile flits across his mouth. “I think she’d like that.”

They go on wordlessly. Roy leads, stepping into the brush while Hayate gallops back and forth, more interested in the worried birds than the stick Ed helplessly tosses ahead. A twinging part of him worries about poison oak, so he follows almost directly in Roy’s wake, figuring he’ll at least get some warning this way.

The trees rise up fast around them, dense almost as soon as they leave the lawn. It’s not too dissimilar from the forests at home, if a bit thicker, and Ed is warmed by the sudden rush of memory, of trailing along behind his mother while she scoured the forest floor for blackberries.

Distantly, crows scream themselves awake and are answered by the trill of songbirds irritated at the interruption. Vaguely, Ed can see rodents scampering through the branches and starting fights over the meaty rinds of not-quite-ripe walnuts. The branches overhead protected everyone from the night’s rain, and the air as well feels thinner and cooler threading through his lungs.

Roy stops suddenly and points up.

“Do you know what that is?” he asks, and Ed can see a small, sturdy lashing of planks jutting out from a tree, maybe fifteen feet up. No ladder, but the greenish remains of rope hang from one corner, hinting at past ascensions.

“No,” he says.

“It’s a deer blind.”

Roy is smiling, eyes fixed on the wood.

“She built it. And then it collapsed, so she built it again until it stayed up. She never had anyone to tell her how—she learned it all in books. What to do.”

“How old was she?”

“I think seven or eight. It was before I met her, anyway.”

Ed feels a little strange for having assumed the place belonged to Mustang—which of course made little sense in the context of Mustang’s money and the sparse living style Ed had seen of Hawkeye’s apartment in Central and, later, her quarters up at Briggs. He’d always felt a kind of kinship in pragmatism with her.

Of course Roy is city-bred—it shows mostly obvious in his shoulders and the casual disregard of his stride. He’s moved a few steps, close enough to rest a hand on the tree’s mossy bark.

“Sometimes I’d climb up with her, when I was bored or her father was in one of his moods. I’m sure I always ruined hours of work—drove every animal in a square mile far away with the noise I made climbing up. But she liked it. She’d ask me to read sometimes. So I’d bring whatever text I was studying and just drone. I don’t know how it didn’t drive her crazy.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“What?”

“You grew up together.”

Roy shrugs.

“Sort of. I asked her father to take me on as his apprentice in alchemy, and he agreed.”

Ed cranes his neck up, as though he could see the top of the blind with just a shift of perspective.

“Sometimes I’d bring her food, if she’d been out a while. We’d climb down at night, and she’d always stop to check her traps before going. I never understood how she could see, but I think she just had it memorized.”

Roy laughs a little—he looks down, and Ed follows, seeing now the narrow, clear path of dirt sheltered by overgrown weeds. They turn back and walk on, and Roy eagerly points out various landmarks that barely rise above the overgrowth. A split-rail fence where she used to walk and balance and then overtip in his waiting arms, a jagged boulder which marks the end of the property in only a technical sense, a tree that forks half-dead and points on one end to a deep pool.

“She said we couldn’t go too far,” he says, pausing to whistle Hayate back. “I never found out why, but I think she was just messing with me. She did that a lot. I knew nothing, and I was a fun target for teasing.”

He breathes deep, with a ragged half-smile.

“We’re almost there,” he says. “Over left.”

The path slopes down and turns craggy—Ed follows Roy’s cautious lead in picking his way down the jutting stones and roots. Somewhere very nearby, a creek is whispering its way through pebbles. Roy stops about ten feet down the incline, jostling between the satchel and Hayate’s thumping tail, and he pulls aside a section of hanging leaves.

“Here,” he says, nodding at Ed to step through first.

On the other side of the curtain is a strange, squat room lined in crumbling stone and mortar. A few wood beams remain of a roof, and flowered ivy grows thick as thatch across. Part of the collapsed wall on the eastern side forms a narrow shelf, and Ed can see a series of dirty glass jars and small animal bones strewn across it as decoration. The stream must be nearby—it echoes quietly around his ears.

The floor is half stone and half dirt, pitted with moss and soft under every step. Pollen perfumes the air, and the haze of coming sun swamps the small space.

He feels—enveloped. Warm, solid, as though the air could take shape and form itself into comfort. The quiet here is reverent, a stillness so close to the peace of an undisturbed pond moments before a pebble stumbles from the shore and breaks the surface.

“What is this?” Ed breathes.

“It used to be a mill,” Roy says, dodging. He nudges a patch of moss, revealing the cool glisten of old leaves beneath. Decay, but a sweetness of promised renewal. These ruins sit untouched by rot.

“A mill?”

“Probably a hundred years ago. They dammed the river up in town, and all the little creeks like this one dried up. You can still see the wheel outside.”

He points, and then indicates the shadow of a long pole past their feet.

“They’d hook a donkey to a harness, and he’d drag the wheel into the water and out, as they needed.”

Roy goes silent, and Ed nods.

It’s a nice place—this deep in the woods, truly indistinguishable from home. Here, Ed can conjure the memories of stick forts he’d built with Al as easily as if he could step back through that curtain of vine and find his baby brother, mud-splattered and impatient to play.

“This was her temple,” Roy says quietly. His voice is thick—he’s staring down at the leather satchel on his hip, and Hayate leans patiently against his leg. “When she was little, they taught her about Xerxes—how they had a hundred gods, and all the gods had temples. But she got it wrong. She thought—she thought that the people built the temples first, and then waited for the gods to show up.”

There’s the slightest streak of blackening against one wall—a fire she built as she built the blind? Where she might have sat and she might have watched, willing the effort to be something less than vain?

“So she made this. She’d used it before, as a place to rest during a hunt or as a shelter when her father was in one of his moods. But she thought it would do good as a temple—she planted those vines and cleared space, and tried to assemble an altar.”

Even now, gone, Ed cannot picture her as anything but the woman she was. Full grown, she parts the veil and passes through, solid determination painting her face as she gently twists the flowering vines around the roof beams, as she gathers wildflowers into the glass jars, as she arranges the littlest bones into the vague shape of an invented summoning ritual.

“But no one ever came, of course. So she gave up on it. She kept using the place because she needed it, but she said it sometimes felt a little like failure. When she first brought me here, and told me, there was so much disgust for herself in her voice… but I thought it was the sweetest thing I’d ever heard.”

The satchel unbuckles beneath his careful fingers, and then Roy is lifting a small vase into the air—a flat, reflectionless glaze stoppered with a dark wood lid. No bigger than a milk jug, and hefted so perfectly in the cradle of Roy’s palm. He catches Ed’s stare and nods.

“Yeah. She told me, when it came down to it, what happened after was my choice. Funerals and burials—she said whatever it was, I’d be the one who had to live with it. When she wanted to come back here, to—”

The tiniest little split. It had happened, it was happening, even now. Even with all that she was, contained in so small a space.

“To die,” Roy finishes, as though the word might pull all his insides out. “I knew immediately this is what I wanted.”

“Did you tell the old man?”

“No,” Roy says. “He thinks he buried her next to her mother and the man they both hated. He has no right to this.”

A sentiment Ed can find no fault in.

“I always thought we’d…”

A tear escapes, twisting towards the corner of Roy’s mouth and then disappearing down his chin.

“I thought if we had a daughter, we’d bring her here.”

He rotates the urn around in his hands, gently caressing the surface.

“This is where you should be,” he says to it, and then steps forward, clearing a little space between the jars and bones, and he nestles the urn at the center.

The sun follows them back to the house, tracing their steps and silence. Even from the edge of the lawn, Ed can see movement inside the kitchen. Winry will still be asleep, and hopefully it’s early enough that no one will have thought of sending a search party.

Roy pauses at the table on the patio, still with its dirty plate and folded newspaper.

“I wonder,” he says, “if I could ask you a favor.”

“Anything.”

Too quick—Ed winces, hoping it won’t fester into regret.

“She spent a lot of time writing. Towards the end.”

“Memoirs?”

“Some of it.”

Slowly, imperceptible maybe from the right distance, Roy is beginning to crumble. It’s over, and it’s just starting to catch up with him. Without a thought, Ed sets one hand on his shoulder and the other on his arm, and he guides Roy to sit in the empty chair, clearing the cushion of the other for himself.

“She had so many ideas,” Roy says. “Things she wanted to say, things she wanted. Not for herself—for everyone. The future of the country.”

The last he says like he’s quoting something. Tears fill his eyes and spill over—more blind now than when he crossed through the Gate, all those years ago. Ed wonders, idly, fleeting, if she’ll wait for him there, if she’ll rise and meet him with hand outstretched, all time and distance collapsed to the infinite they still step through and see together.

“I can’t look at it. Not yet.”

A ray of light hits his eyes directly, and Roy blinks, shutting it out for only a moment.

“But it’s not right to hide it. Everything she wrote is important, and people should see it.”

The door behind them opens: Gracia steps outside with a cup of coffee, approaching them slowly.

“I had ulterior motives putting you and Winry in the study.”

“So you need an editor?” Ed asks.

“Only if you’re willing.”

“I’m honored that you asked.”

Gracia crosses to his side, glancing at the empty bag between his feet.

“So it’s done?” she says, rubbing gently between his shoulders.

“Yeah. Ed came with.”

“It was beautiful,” Ed says with a nod. “It felt like the right place.”

“I’m glad.”

“I’m tired,” Roy sighs. “I think I’m going to sleep now.”

He rises with a sudden heaviness, as though his center of gravity has suddenly rushed upwards above his heart. Hayate curls along beside him, a brace to rest against once or twice on the long walk back inside the house.

Everyone else is up and filtering through the various rooms, maintaining a reverent silence. Even Winry, having folded the bed linens neatly at each corner before heading into the bathroom. Through the walls, Ed can hear alternately the thrumming chant of water rushing through the pipes and the indecipherable murmur of Elicia’s voice.

He closes the door and crosses to the desk pushed up against the wall. Too dark or too distracted last night to notice, he sees now the cascade of papers spread across its surface.

This cannot be disturbed just yet—he feels this commandment sharply, so instead he simply looks. Leaning over, scanning his gaze across the jumbled words, picking up only flashes of the sentiments contained within. A torn shred, somewhat standing free of the pile, makes him turn his head against his shoulder to read more closely.

It’s a list—of titles, by his guess. Anarchist from the Deathbed, Non Omnis Moriar, Rights of the Amestrian Citizen: strong, stout, even a little seditious.

The chair is still pulled out a little ways, and with a bit of effort, he manages to sit without moving it. The window on his right pours sunlight across the desk top. A pen lies between his hands, he realizes, tossed against a seam of parchment and then rolled back to rest in a crease, sideways, careless of a dribble of ink, as though any moment she might return and take it up again.

He sets his fingers along the grooves—she was right-handed, and held the tip between three fingers, leaving her little finger to trail on the page, to guide the lilt of her writing.

He holds it just the same. He breathes. He pulls the first, the last, of her words forward, and he begins to read.

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on this earth.

“Late Fragment” by Raymond Carter

[veridium]

Short Fic: A Captive Audience

Summary: Olivia is tasked with a mission to Val Royeaux to secure materials for Mage experiments, studies, and healer’s inventory. Cassandra elects to accompany her, and finds that her woman has more in mind than just Inquisition business for her first trip back to the Capitol since joining the ranks. 

Author’s note: HAH will I ever get sick of writing this pair? NO. 

Characters: Cassandra Pentaghast, Olivia Sinclair

--

Even with the escort of the Seeker herself and several Inquisition scouts, Olivia had found her way out of all their sights in order to track down a location of particular interest. Cassandra herself couldn’t understand why she would want to vanish -- this was only supposed to be a deal negotiation for materials and inventory, something Olivia could be trusted with above all else. Why go incognito? Was there trouble afoot? Did something happen to her?

Oh, if something happened to her, Cassandra would have more to report than she originally predicted. 

“Seeker,” a Scout came running up behind her as she awaited intell, standing stiffly by the docks. “We traced her down to the arts district, just southeast of here.”

Cassandra’s brow furrowed as she folded her arms. “That is preposterous, she has no business there for the Inquisition.”

“Sister Nightingale’s notes on her says she used to be a dancer, could she perhaps have an old friend she wishes to visit?“ The Scout postulated, trying hard not to provoke the Seeker’s infamous temper. 

In that moment, Cassandra linked a possible theory together for why she would stray. The arts district -- redundant considering the pomp and display the Capitol had in spades -- housed many structures, one of which being a stage for the Opera. Perhaps it was the same one Olivia used to occupy during her days in school, before she sent herself to the Circle, back when she was a simple young girl being pushed irrevocably into a life of serving noble tastes for beauty and allure. 

“I know why she is there. I will recover her, no need to send people,” Cassandra rubbed the back of her head, gazing one last time out at the water before she garnered the energy to go wandering down further into the Capitol she found so exhausting and pompous. 

It took about a half an hour to enter the arts district of Val Royeaux, but when she did, it was impossible not to know. Painters, musicians, and poets lines the streets which were slightly shaded by richly-colored tapestries connecting structures together. In corridors and alleyways there was artworks and ceramics for sale, from various cultures and aesthetics. Their incongruity contrasted with the overwhelming style of Orlesian architecture and clothing. Then, she stumbled upon an overbearing structure -- gold enamel and sculptures of scantily-clad women and men, and lion heads crowning the columns. The roof seemed like one big rotunda, with mosaic glass lining the insides of the walls and supportive beams. She knew, then, that she had found her destination. 

Entering the main foyer, she became quickly fatigued at the number of doorways and hallways she had to choose from. Surely, an Opera house’s doors all led to the same giant room, why make it so labrynthine in nature? Eventually, she chose one of the front-facing ones, hoping the straight-forward path would yield the right result. Stray couplings and groups of Orlesian nobles watched her from the wings and corners as the Seeker of the Inquisition made her way into the one place they would surely never find her. 

But, for Olivia, such impossibilities would humble themselves. 

Entering the Opera chamber, Cassandra was humbled by the zealous décor of the space: the audience chairs seemed to go on for a mile, and the stage itself was broad, embellished by priceless-looking curtains and drapery. Everything shined either pearlescent gold or white, with the Orlesian blues accenting wherever they could. On either side of the stage, two more Lion’s heads roared out to the populace of concert-goers. Though, in this moment, that audience was one bewildered Seeker, trying to find her ally and lover who seemed to have a penchant for unexpected detours. 

Amongst the tide of blue velvet-lined chairs, Cassandra spotted one head: small, but full of ideas waiting to be expressed, surely. It was covered in a black hood, part of her traveling gear, and dyed to her personal taste. Olivia had been slowly but surely transforming into a woman of contradiction: a smiling, giggly person who decked herself out in black and had an interest in all things arcane and mysterious. Today, an exception in her behavior happened.

Cassandra walked her way down to her, taking care not to announce her presence. Part of her was curious, after all, as to why Olivia would take such effort to be here if she had such painful memories from it. She also noticed that she was seated closely to the front row, though not directly within it. 

“Olivia,” Cassandra said calmly as she arrived next to her, standing in the walkway between the two sections of seats, “what has gotten into you?”

Olivia sat with the posture and awareness of a lady, her hands folded poised on her lap, her back relaxed and straight as it rested against her seat. She did not look away from her gaze at the stage, which was open and cavernous almost, intimidating in its own way. 

“This is where they were sitting. I can almost see them, smiling and nodding.” Her voice was a melancholic monotone, the breathing on her lips shallow as she was lost in her daydream. 

Cassandra tilted her chin with confusion. “Who are you referring to?”

“My parents, Cassandra. This is where they were seated for my debut. It must be, what, six, seven years ago now?”

Cassandra’s chest hollowed as she realized just why Olivia took the risk in coming here, diverting from the Inquisition guards and causing a rather concerning stir. She sighed, then, and made her way to her, taking a quiet seat beside her and electing to keep her company for just a few moments longer. The Inquisition could wait that much. 

“You’ve given the Scouts quite a fright. It is impressive that you managed to steal away without so much as a trace,” the Seeker remarked, placing her elbows on the armrests.

“They were hardly difficult to deal with. They don’t think much of me anyway,” Olivia grinned on one side of her mouth, her body rigid and stubbornly locked in her place. Nothing would move her from this spot before she was ready, not a Scout, not an Inquisitor, and not even a beloved Seeker. This was her moment, her stolen reprieve. 

“That is not true, Olivia,” Cassandra feigned sincerity, but, she knew Olivia was right. They all adored her kindness and sweetness, but when it came to dealings of a more precarious nature, Olivia was always taken as a docile and unassuming person. She had been taken for a sheep when, in fact, she had just as much Orlesian lion in her than any kind of energy. She was capable, and deceitful when necessary. 

She sighed under her breath, feeling the looming weight of responsibility and daylight on the wings. 

“I never thought I would be back here again, after that night. I was so humiliated. Mother wouldn’t stop crying, Father was torn between comforting me and her wailing. My dress and tights were ruined, and I had sewn it all by hand.”

Cassandra knew that in this moment, the best course of action was to listen to Olivia as she mourned a life she had lost long ago. It wasn’t often that she opened up like this, without trying to lighten the mood immediately afterword. But no, this time, it lingered in the air: her sadness, her regret, her pain. It was here to stay, and she would leave it here in these halls, never to return after this. 

“I can hear the song, too. The one I had practiced dancing to for months. My feet ached and bruised, my hair tightly pinned to my head in slick waves and curls.” She then rose from her seat as if she was being called to approach the stage. Stepping out of the row, and encroaching on the stage’s edge, she slid one leg over it and mounted it. Rising to her feet once more, she continued her trek to the middle of the vast stage floor. The airy daylight that shown through the open-air columns illuminated her surroundings. 

Cassandra watched, but did not move. Something about this moment beckoned her to be still and witness. Olivia had her back to her as she scanned the backstage looming in front of her. 

“The curtains pulled while I was turned away from the audience. I was here, front and slightly upstage. I wore a snow-white leotard with glittering fabric all up and down, a frilly skirt around my back and waist. The singers were off to the side, closer to the Orchestra. My face was painted gold, as if I were one of the plastered sculptures.”

Olivia’s narrative voice echoed from the stage outward, demonstrating the proper acoustics of the room. She then turned to face the audience, eyes out to the very back of the room, where she had been trained to spot. You weren’t supposed to make willy-nilly eye contact with everyone in the seats, least of all your loved ones. Such breaks in character were frowned upon. Yet, Olivia broke protocol all those years ago. 

“I tried my hardest not to look,” a soft, bittersweet smile cracked on her lips, “but Father was smiling so big, it was like he was his own spotlight.”

“What exactly caused you to have your outburst with your magic? Were you afraid you’d fail?” Cassandra asked aloud, projecting her voice across the distance between them.

Then, she heard a laugh, as Olivia’s shoulders softened with defeat. “I was...I was anything but. In fact, I was so happy that I couldn’t contain it. My powers reacted to the joy that I felt within my nerves, the thrill...it was too much.”

“You lost control due to happiness?” Cassandra asked, astonished. Such a story was rarely heard from a Mage, at least in her experience.

Olivia shrugged. “Emotions are emotions, Cassandra. We think the sorrowful kind are the most dangerous, but, we forget that it can be the ones we feel when we are most empowered that can cause the most trouble.”

Olivia turned her gaze down to where Cassandra was, her eyes losing their luster as she realized all over again that her Father was gone from this world, and not sitting there, where she knew she would see him. Her smile faded, too, as she felt self-conscious over her romantics. 

“You...” she chuckled with embarrassment, gathering her hands in front of her waist, “you must think me such a silly little fool for indulging in this.”

Cassandra stood up, then, and slid out of the row where she had been positioned. She walked until she was directly in front of Olivia, down on the level of the front row, close enough to touch the surface of the stage with her hands and forearms. Without a word, she reached her hands upwards, inviting Olivia to come down from her pedestal. Olivia watched her, and she grinned seeing her invite her back down.

Quietly, Olivia crouched down a bit, placing her arms on top of Cassandra’s and gripping onto her shoulders as she let her bring her back down to Earth. Feeling the Seeker’s grip cradling her waist as she did so, made her feel like she was once more the nimble and petite dancer being brought down from a lift. 

But she was no dancer anymore, and her partner in this exchange was no accompaniment in some choreographed routine. She was her lover, and they were caught in the real world that felt stranger and more fantastical than any Operetta story could ever depict.

Feeling her feet on the floor, Olivia kept herself close and in Cassandra’s hold, maintaining eye contact. Cassandra was hard to read in this moment -- was she unsympathetic to her? Or was she being scared off my the nostalgic temperament Olivia displayed? Her concerns washed away with a tide of relief as the Seeker pressed her lips to Olivia’s forehead, lingering there as she pulled her in closer. 

Olivia closed her eyes, feeling her insecurity be embraced and redeemed.

“My love,” Cassandra said as she pulled her into a hug, “never feel ashamed for your choice to acknowledge the past. It has made you who you are, and for that, you deserve your chance to gain closure.”

Olivia could feel the emotions bubbling within her heart beg for expression. She wanted to cry, laugh, run away, and stay forever, all in the same moment. She rested her cheek against Cassandra’s shoulder, holding onto her lover’s strong arms as if they could realign stars and heal the most fatal of broken hearts. 

“Thank you, my darling.” She pulled away, taking her lover’s hands into hers. “I am sorry for scaring everyone, though. That wasn’t my intention.”

Cassandra laughed, looking back out at the rows of seats, and towards the door from whence she first entered the chamber. “Perhaps someday you can bring me here when we aren’t busy securing contraband for the Inquisition. Maybe, then, there will be a performance to watch.”

Olivia shook her head, a sorry smile forming on her face. “Cassandra, I appreciate your tenderness, but I have no desire to be under this roof for another Operetta again.”

“Are you certain? I hear Orlesian Operas are quite the experience.”

“I know, I was in them. Ambassador Montilyet would love to, I’m sure, but I am quite done with such fanfare for one life. I prefer adventure that I can feel, and not simply watch as people pretend to experience it.”

Cassandra leaned onto one hip, surprised once again by Olivia’s moods and opinions. 

“Very well, how else would you prefer we spend our free time?”

As they walked up the alley towards the exit, Olivia leaned into her lover’s side as they held hands tightly. “Oh, I don’t know, the usual: defeat evil, make love like fiends into the morning, and experiment with explosive substances.”

Cassandra suppressed a most surprised laughter. “Alright, but hopefully not all at once.”

[drapeworks]

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[moosey-scribbles]

Title: Wayward Son Pt.1 Ship: Shimadacest Rated: E Words: 1835 Complete: 1/? Summary: Exile isn’t quite what Hanzo expects it to be. Honestly he figured he’d be dropped in the middle of a crumbling ghost town without any sort of ability to find his way home. He really hadn’t imagined he’d be dumped somewhere where the wind was gritty with sand and the ground scalded his bare feet during the day and left him trembling at night.

Exile isn’t quite what Hanzo expects it to be. Honestly he figured he’d be dropped in the middle of a crumbling ghost town without any sort of ability to find his way home. He really hadn’t imagined he’d be dumped somewhere where the wind was gritty with sand and the ground scalded his bare feet during the day and left him trembling at night. If he had to guess, he’d say he’s somewhere in the Arabian Peninsula. He has no good reasoning why, aside from the fact that a few of the “terminated employee” folders had various places listed, the most common being Al Kali. Genji had gone there only a few years prior, and now as the firstborn wheezes at the base of a dune, coughing dry into his palm, he wonders vaguely how long it had taken the younger to die here.

He picks himself up from the scalding sands a few moments after the thought infects him and pushes his hair back off his forehead, wincing at the tight sensation of his sunburn. He’s not sweating anymore, which worries him, but he can’t find it in himself to let the desert swallow him without a fight, as tired and pathetic as the struggle may be. He’s already survived three days of this with his jacket wrapped around his head and if he could just find a water source he’d be just fine, thank you very much.

Hanzo meanders for a few hours longer -- or at least what feels like a few hours. For all he knows it could be minutes; the wind covers his tracks fast enough that he can only see one or two steps behind him and he grows increasingly aware of the continued emptiness around him.

He clicks his tongue on the roof of his mouth and glances skyward, noting where the sun arcs in the cloudless sky with a grim purse of his lips. It'll be going down soon, plunging him back into the nearing freezing temperatures and forcing him to try and burrow in the cooling sands for heat trapped in by the stars. But by this point he’s not sure if he’s going to make it regardless. Even as the temperature drops, the ache in his overheated bones only seems to grow hotter, stinging and tensing impossibly taut under his skin.

When he lays down it isn’t because he wants to -- it’s because he can’t bring himself to stand any longer. He swallows against nothing but sand and spit before he’s horizontal, gazing out across the blinding sands and simmering heat. The last thing he sees before he succumbs to the last moments of his consciousness is the outline of a lumbering beast far in the distance. Probably some sort of desert beast, having waited until he stopped moving to skin the flesh from his bones and crack him until his marrow stains the sand.

//

When Hanzo finally comes to, it’s not to the excruciating pain of being torn apart by fangs sharpened on rock and bone, but rather to a cool cloth on his forehead and soft, rippling water submerging him up to his chest. There’s soft music -- something familiar that he can’t place -- playing on a radio a few feet away, and as his blurry vision comes into focus, there’s a white hooded figure in a silvery grey bodysuit hunched over a small fire. There’s a scent in the air -- meat of some kind that he doesn’t recognize -- and it causes his stomach to rumble angrily below the surface of the water.

The bedouin goes still for a few moments, still facing forward before they prod softly at the hot coals. Around the person is what looks like burlap -- a tent of sorts with a hole cut in the makeshift roof showing nothing but the dark, clear skies through drifting smoke, but it’s not a traveler’s tent, it seems. It’s large; not something you could put up and take down in one day. There are colorful linens draped around, and vibrant fruits and flowers line makeshift tables. Countless pillows of varying fabrics with different stitches, patterns, and pigments line the ground and stack in a makeshift king’s bed in the far corner.

Hanzo shifts again under the cover of the water, focusing in again on the nomad with nervous eyes. After a moment he realizes he’s naked, the soft weight of his cock shifting over his thigh alerts him of it, and he moves quickly to settle his hands over his shame. The water trickles and splashes with the displacement of his hand, and the Bedouin pauses again. It’s as though the person is thinking, considering whether they should speak or not. Their body language suggests it. Hanzo holds his tongue for a moment longer, unsure if he should argue his placement or be grateful for it. He could, after all, end up abandoned a second time in the desert, and although he’s a prideful being, he isn’t totally stupid. This is a chance he didn’t have prior -- a possibility to escape.

“You need not hide.”

The voice under the mask is decidedly male, and painfully familiar. It speaks in his mother tongue with a rusty quality, as though it hasn’t been used in a long while. The words are meaningful and specific, sought after in thought and considered completely and wholly before they are uttered. The Shimada pauses, not willing to move his hands and expose his most intimate parts to some strange man who had undressed him without his consciousness.

“When you are cool enough, you may dry and dress. You’ll find new clothes set aside on the boudoir to your left. I must tend to my camel. You have ten minutes until my return and our evening meal.” He looks at Hanzo now, and the Shimada can barely swallow a gasp. Despite him being in his own residence, he still wears the entire mask, goggles strapped over his eyes and cloth hiding his lips. The bedouin stands slowly, brushing his hands off on his robes before he exits the tent.

Hanzo spends a long moment in the cool water, painfully aware of each second that ticks by. He worries. His captor has told him nothing of his intentions, and out here in the sand and sun, Hanzo holds no title. For all he knows he’ll be sold into slavery or into some sort of marriage. The culture of the circles who would engage in such an act were not kind, and he found himself worrying his lip in response.

Regardless, it was time to act. He needed to get up -- to dress before the man returned. He was at least offered that decency, and he would be a fool to let it tick by. He drags himself with disappointment from the cool water and into the air warmed from fire. If nothing else he can no longer hear the throb of his own heart pulsing his blood in rhythmic undulations above his eyes, and he drags the impossibly soft fabric over his scarred back gratefully.

The clothes on the boudoir are not his own. That being said they aren’t anything that worries him. They’re satin and flowing and oh so very soft. The trousers sinch with a thick blue ribbon at his hips and billow in wide legs until they clasp at his ankles. The top leaves less to the imagination, swooping low on the crests of his shoulders with light straps that lock it in place near his collarbones and ending high in the middle of the expanse of stomach to expose the divot of his navel. He’s aware he’s on display, but as far as things could be in the tent of a stranger in the middle of the Arabian Peninsula, this is going well.

He stays still for quite some time, padding back and forth on uncertain feet before the man returns. Compared to Hanzo, he’s not too large. Larger than him by perhaps a handful of centimeters, but he expected more. The Bedouin approaches him, and he truly wishes that he could see behind those colored goggles. Where should the burn of being watched tingle through him?

“Allow me a moment to serve dinner, then you will eat. You are hungry, I trust?” That voice feels familiar to him, but so so distant, and if it weren’t so obscene and outlandish, he’d ask the man who he is. Perhaps he was a servant that survived after exile -- somehow. The idea that it’s Genji crosses his mind but -- that’s been years. If his little brother did survive, he’d have flown to San Francisco by now and dolled up with all the parties and kingpins.

Bedouin, for lack of a better name, withdraws a blade from a pocket hidden in the folds of his robes and goes about shaving fine pieces of meat from the post in the corner of the tent -- where the scent had come from. Hanzo approaches slowly to see that there is an entire leg of lamb posted and roasting lazily over the flame from before. Beside him are two small plates and one serving platter, divided into pitas, vegetables, and a spot supposedly reserved for the lamb.

“I do not normally cook like this, you understand. The situation is simply uncanny enough to call for it.”

Hanzo doesn’t ask for clarification. Instead he waits for his host to finish cutting what he will, and he watches him begin to fill one of the pitas. Bedouin places it on one of the small plates and hands it over, waiting for the Shimada to take it before he moves on to another.

“You must not remain silent. I assure you, you are safe here. I should like to provide for you, if you would let me, until your strength returns and you insist on leaving this place.”

There is a twinge of knowing in the tone, and Hanzo’s brows furrow in response. He stays silent -- does not allow a moment for his own concern before the man speaks yet again. Chatty, this one.

“Though if you should like to stay, there is a place for you -- it would honor me to have someone so lovely in my company for as long as you wish to remain.”

Hanzo’s brows furrow to symbolize his uncertainty, particularly as a broad gloved hand finds the dip in his lower back and begins to lead him through what appears to be a small corridor in the tent. They pass through beautiful hand embroidered drapery past thick hemp that blocks the oncoming chill of the evening until they enter a spacious room, filled with thick pillows and the tune of a gentler, soothing music wafting about.

“Find a place that suits you, Ya Helo.” The Bedouin finds a plush space near the door -- so as to stop him is he tries to run -- and motions with a broad, sweeping hand at the rest of the space to allow his guest a choice.

[aliensnipe]

Tagged by: @soysaucevictim

Rules: Write the first 10 songs that come up on shuffle and quote your favorite lyrics from each. Then tag 10 people.

(I do not tag. I am tag-agnostic. But I want YOU to do this. Yes, YOU. Pleaz. =3)

I had to skip instrumentals, natch. They’re in italics below, if you’re curious.

Kenzo - “Sora ni Hikaru” (Neo-Progressive)

1. They Might Be Giants - “Fingertips” (Comedy / Alternative Rock)

I heard a sound

I turned around

I turned around to find the thing that made the sound

(...John and John, you utter trolls. X3 The ONE song (or series of songs... or series of three- to four-second musical phrases) that makes this meme break down. I could infodump about “Fingertips” all day, but we’re short on time, so just message me or something if you wanna know what I’m rambling about.)

2. Angelique Kidjo - “Try Everything” (Afropop)

Birds don’t just fly

They fall down and get up

Nobody learns

Without getting it wrong

(I’m really beginning to like Angelique Kidjo, but I need to track down more of her original work, because most of what I’ve heard from her is covers. Like, say, the above.)

Toby Fox - “Reunited” (Chiptune)

3. Serenity - “Wings of Madness” (Symphonic Power Metal)

Out on the silent battlefield

While the killing work is done

And the crimson haze is gone

Still lies the deadly sword I wield

And I’m dreaming of your face

Have begun to count the days

4. Eskaton - “Automute” (Zeuhl)

Je mate et puis j'imite

Ceux qui creent, ca m'epate

Moi je sais pas j'imite 

Je copie, j'automate

(...this is less “my favorite lyric” than “the one thing I can find a reference for with my utter ignorance of French”)

5. Rush - “Halo Effect” (Hard Rock)

What did I see, fool that I was

A goddess with wings on her heels

All my illusions projected on her

The ideal that I wanted to see

6. The Psychedelic Furs - “Pretty in Pink” (New Wave)

The one who insists he was first in her line is the last to remember her name

He’s walking around in this dress that she wore

She’s gone, but the joke’s the same

7. Joe Dolce - “Shaddap You Face” (Comic)

What’samatta you, HEY! Gotta no respect

Whaddaya think you do, why you looka so sad

It’s a not so bad, it’s a nice-a place

Ah, shaddap a-you face!

(...cut me some slack. It can’t be multi-layered prog rock and death metal alla time)

8. Yes - “Parallels” (Art Rock)

It's the beginning of a new love in sight You've got the way to make it all happen Set it spinning turning roundabout Create a new dimension When we are winning we can stop and shout Making love towards perfection

9. Elvis Costello - “She” (Singer-songwriter)

She may be the reason I survive The why and wherefore I'm alive The one I'll care for through the rough and ready years

Me, I'll take her laughter and her tears 

And make them all my souvenirs And where she goes I've got to be The meaning of my life is she

10. The Smashing Pumpkins - “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” (Alternative Rock)

The world is a vampire

Sent to drain

Secret destroyers

Hold you up to the flames

And what do I get 

For my pain

Betrayed desires 

And a piece of the game

11. Spock’s Beard - “Afterthoughts” (Progressive Rock)

To keep them out, I keep me in

‘cause they don’t get to hear the things I know

The bats up in this belfry 

Fly in circles ‘cause they don’t know where to go

12. Opeth - “The Drapery Falls” (Progressive Metal)

Pull me down again

And guide me into 

ah ah ah, ah-ah ah ah, ah-ahhh...

The Seventy Sound - “Bluephoria” (Library Music)

13. Premiata Forneria Marconi - “Geranio” (Progressive Rock)

Balla piano nella via Balla il vento della notte Balla un sogno che non c'è più Balla l'ombra della luna Sfiora il tempo la fortuna Balla piano, balla laggiù

(I don’t speak Italian, either, so this is the same situation as the Eskaton lyrics. Though I will say that these refrains are quite pretty in translation.)

Brand X - “Red” (Jazz Fusion)

14. The Psychedelic Furs - “India” (New Wave)

All the women form a line

Put your face upon a line

This is for the discotheque

This is stupid, I object

15. Alabama Shakes - “Gimme All Your Love” (Funk)

So much is goin’ on

But you can always come around

Why don’t you sit with me just a little while

Tell me what’s wrong

If you just gimme all your love

Gimme all you got, baby

Gimme all your love

15. Golden Earring - “Radar Love” (Classic Rock)

Radio playin’ that forgotten song

Brenda Lee comin’ on strong

And the newsman sang his same song

One more radar lover gone

16. Wolfmother - “Joker and the Thief” (Garage Rock)

Can you see the joker flying over

As she’s standing in a field of clover

Watching out every day

Wonder what would happen if he took her away

(...and they NEVER TELL US ALL THE STORY ‘BOUT THE JOKER AND THE THIEF IN THE NIGHT. NO, I’M NOT LETTING THIS GO.)

Gryphon - “Second Spasm” (Symphonic Rock)

17. Sonata Arctica - “My Land” (Power Metal)

My own land has closed its gates on me

All alone, in world that’s scaring me

I am here to prove you wrong

I’m accused of something, I live on

(...having been kicked out of home at a relatively young age, this song gives me Feelings)

Yes - “Mood for a Day” (Art Rock)

18. Yes - “Heart of the Sunrise” (Art Rock)

Love comes to you, then after

Dream on, on to the heart of the sunrise

Lost on a wave that you’re dreaming

Dream on, on to the heart of the sunrise

Sharp distance

How can the wind with its arms around me...

Sharp distance

How can the wind with so many around me...

(damn! Spotify shuffle really hittin’ the Yes tonight!)

19. Barclay James Harvest - “Who Do We Think We Are” (Progressive Rock)

All around we're travelling the universe Do we believe there's someone watching over us Can we be sure? Who do we think we are?

20. Rush - “Heresy” (Hard Rock)

The counter-revolution

People smiling through their tears

Who can give them back their lives

And all those wasted years?

All those wasted years

All those precious, wasted years

Who will pay?

[elinavitola]

'Sol LeWitt’s WD #719' drawn by me and Amanda Ziemele at 427 gallery was inteded as a purely artistic event and it is acompanied by text by Jānis Taurens. 

Mosaic “Sol LeWitt” In remote self-isolation in the countryside, where books have stayed in the city’s bookshelves and I don’t wish to use the internet, without small shell-shaped madeleine cakes to soak in tea made of linden flowers that aren’t even picked yet, I try—from what has been left at my memory's disposal—to assemble a mosaic: one of the many possible portraits of LeWitt. 1. White quadratic bone-like structures, but also wavy lines and bright coloured areas; drawings, drawings; and drawings that—following instructions—are executed by others interpreting the unexpressed (and inexpressible); black-and-white masked colouring-in clock design and the synagogue project; studies and notes as ready artworks; and solid, substantial, open-air sculptures / structures / “special objects”. These pieces of mosaic are too trivial and already worn out (pale and colourless). 2. I’ll start again: “when an artist learns their craft too well, they make slick art”—LeWitt’s 34th sentence on conceptual art (1968). Ingūna Skuja once said that for ceramists, “slick” is a positive, even praiseworthy quality, though that only points out that the grammar of the new art’s language is transgressive, breaking past laws, and “theatrical”, as Michael Fried would have said (and did so in 1967). 3. Structures just like structuralist structuralism and post-structuralism, “even though not completely dead”, are left in the past. Even if the new virus will create “structural changes”— a phrase that politicians have tediously worn out—then the basis of its consequences include shortness of breath and pulmonary edema forming in a human body. What is bodily in LeWitt’s structures and drawings? 4. Fragmentation. The Primary Structures exhibition opened at the Jewish Museum in New York on 26 April, 1966. In the small gallery eight (a former library whose neo-Gothic details were covered with black drapery), next to Walter De Maria’s literally caged ‘Cage’ (a work made from thin metal bars), was LeWitt’s cubic ‘3 x 3 x 3’ structure of 3 x 3 x 3 cubes, which would have been understood as secluded and self-sufficient—like a hedgehog—by the Jena Romanticists: “A fragment, like a miniature work of art, has to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world and be complete in itself like a hedgehog” (Friedrich Schlegel’s Athenaeum Fragment, 206). It was self-sufficient, and as if tuned out, for a moment, from the surrounding ecosystem (hedgehog), a case of art being from the global art world. 5. Even though the body stays here in the metaphor of the romantic that was Schlegel, in the context of LeWitt’s works, it wasn’t only a spectator’s body (and mind) that was needed to give meaning and scale to his processual structures and ideas, but in the moment, it’s the alienation of each one—an alienation from the seemingly organic unity that “late” (global and what not) capitalism is trying to present as instinctively inevitable, while simultaneously becoming fragmented but comprehensible, and able to be implemented, albeit at your home on an empty wall: a LeWitt drawing (tell them you’re in quarantine and the copyright agency won’t enter your room…). 6. But is there anything that I can’t instantly remember about LeWitt? What to fantasise about? Look, a shred of memory—he had a short text about the form of a ziggurat which—switching to city planning—would furthermore be better than the common skyscraper in New York (LeWitt had used ziggurat forms in several of his works). In some utopian past scenario, these kind of skyscrapers wouldn’t be hit by airplanes (it wouldn’t be so effective and easy), and we would be spared from the bothersome airport control system (but it’s not important—now we will travel less, and hike more around our homelands, besides which there will be less air pollution). Such a number of towers of Babel would most likely confuse god, and they could cancel the Great Flood, initiated via global warming; the mix-up of languages would be reanimated with the help of some super-google-translate system, because all the small and dying languages, such as Latvian and others, would become intelligible, and we would get rid of the emaciated lingua franca, the crippled English. 7. I remember lectures with quotes of memories of Adrian Piper—how she and Sol were ecstatic about Beckett—dialogues and situations without context (another “hedgehog-ist”) that fits so well with the unrepresentative literalism of the visual forms of minimalism. Every now and then, I have tried different texts by Beckett imagining examples of what they could have read, but in my opinion, the diagram with a slight time shift tracking the unsuccessful meetings of Mercier and Camier is still the best—these ridiculously absurd protagonists who share the name of the novel are immortal, because they find it almost impossible to meet and… get infected (to tell the truth, I must admit that by stubbornly repeating their arrival, waiting for five minutes, going for a walk, returning and so on, they do meet after 45 minutes). 8. Literature. I rifle through the book shelf at the country house in Latgale looking for inspiration, until I find the unread Old Curiosity Shop by Dickens as a Russian translation. From the first pages, I meet the gaze of a collector type, as if described by Walter Benjamin: “There were suits of mail standing like ghosts in armour here and there; fantastic carvings brought from monkish cloisters; rusty weapons of various kinds; distorted figures in china and wood and iron and ivory; tapestry and strange furniture that might have been designed in dreams.” 9. Lines that haven’t been seen even in dreams—if perhaps credited to some mad mathematician—is what someone might say about LeWitt’s drawings. Isn’t this the right time to look into your attic, in an old closet, at forgotten childhood memories, to turn to never before noticed people? Could it be a vocabulary for the new art whose grammar is yet to be found (or, whose grammar is only coming into being)? And could this young and unpredictably diverse art vocabulary—let’s indulge in the positive impulse, hidden in utopia—be the one whose influence will contort or knock down the ruling consumerist attitude and the critical art discourse, partly servicing it, and partly battling it? Kombuļi rural municipality, 31 March, 2020. Jānis Taurens

[aulistings]

Know About the Mechanism of Roller Shutter with Its Working Process

Roller Shutters Adelaide are the arrangement of interconnected supports that are commonly made by aluminium with disengagement in the between. The principal reason for existing is to offer upgraded security for premises by hindering any endeavouring a break-in of interlopers. Aluminium Shutters Perth can be the insurance of windows from daylight and even the warmth of shrubbery fires. When shutting, the supports of roller shade slide through the tracks on either side and once moved down ultimately, they fit cosily against the floor. When opening, the supports loop into a case that is on the mass of the structure.

Cheek Plate

The roller holding the shade in situ is upheld by 2 supporting cheek plates (likewise called finish plates). These cheek plates square measure made sure about the structure exploitation sufficient fixings to require the total heap of the shade.

Banner Post

The cheek plate is either welded to an edge or on to the most noteworthy of the guide giving the arranging of a banner post. The point of the banner post made sure about the structure to concede extra help and help the establishment of the screen.

Roller Assembly The shade drapery is the order in situ by a full measurement roller, that is upheld at each wrap up by the cheek plates. The roller contains a steel tube with an empty engine fitted at one completion and a pole at the elective completion. Cylindrical Motor An empty engine is fitted into the screen's overhead barrel gathering. Standing out from the barrel is that the engine head which incorporates a manual abrogate eye (when a manual supersede office is incorporated), the electrical wire feed, and an attempt of limit changes to deal with the most travel separation of the shade window ornament. The engine is fitted with Associate in operational brake to convey the shade fixed once it's in its higher position. Wellbeing Brake This outward brake captures the drop of the shade if there's a disappointment inside the engine. If the engine's operational brake neglects to convey the screen fixed once it's in its higher position, or the shade dives at Associate in uncontrolled speed, the assurance brake can initiate and pass on the screen to a complete stop. The brake, when actuated, should be reset or now and again, supplanted. Partner in a completely fledged shade architect ought to perform resetting or substitution. U-CUP OR BEARING At the point when a security break isn't fitted, a U-Cup or Bearing is fitted to the cheek plate to help the barrel. Window Ornament The material that closes off the domain between the aides. This is regularly commonly created from steel or metallic component brace that interlock along. Cylinder and Link grilles square measure order along with by on a level plane situated bars. Overhang Cowl Likewise called the hood. The fitting of this is regularly commonly no-obligatory. It is created from electrifies steel and is prepared moved up to wrap around the cheek plates defensive the shade and barrel from the downpour and earth. The Bottom Line, It's all about the mechanism of Roller Shutters Adelaide. Hopefully, this guide helps you to understand the process of roller shutters, so you can catch an issue if it occurs any time. Read the full article

[arplis]

Arplis - News: Today, we’re excited to share the full reveal of our clients’ worldly and collected Dumbarton residence

Over the past several weeks, we’ve been detailing the interior design of this family friendly home, inspired by the colors of Ireland. Located on the quiet streets of Braeswood Place, this new construction home transports you to another place. Working with the team at Scott Fraiser Homes, our design marries our clients’ cultural roots with their love of travel and sports. Old World elements give the design a distinctly European feel while singular interior design details make it feel just like the homeowners. Our Interior Design Concept – Sapphire and Emerald The beauty of the Irish coast comes to life through the home’s bold color palette and thoughtful accessories. We were inspired by sapphire and emerald jewel tones, against an artisan touch of reclaimed wood. We created warmth and Old World ambiance by carrying dark wood throughout the home in a variety of ways. Welcome home to Dumbarton. The Foyer From the carved front door to dark hardwood floors and wrought iron accents, the foyer brings the home’s Mediterranean style exterior indoors. The Fen chandelier from Currey & Company greets you as you enter the foyer. Wrought iron branches delicately adorned with a single crystal celebrate the beauty of nature in a modern way. This chandelier is almost like a piece of art! The Dining Room The dining room is one of the first spaces you see in the home. We wanted the dining room design to feel distinct but visually connected to the foyer. We worked with Chris Kokinakis, an expert restorer here in Houston, to refinish the dining table. The table’s new stain, Brazilnut from Sherwin Williams, is a perfect match to the floors. Above the table hangs the Rainhill rectangular chandelier from Curry & Company. The curved back and Bramble finish on the legs of the Jessica Charles Denton chairs mimicks the architectural style of the front door. We selected a velvet Schumacher fabric for the side chairs and a Sacho fabric with a lovely pattern for the head chairs. Holland & Sherry drapery fabric in Mediterranean makes a bold statement in this sophisticated dining room.   Architectural inspired doors open into the home’s welcoming foyer Family heirlooms next to contemporary dining chairs give this dining room a collected feel Can you guess which one of of these doors leads into the family’s secret pub? The detailing on these Century Furniture chairs is fabulous! The Family Room We wanted the design of the family room to be an inviting space the family could use for entertaining, gathering, and play. This benchmade sectional was fabricated by our friends at House + Town. The espresso ebony stain on the inset wood base mimicks the door stain. We chose a high-performance Crypton fabric in a chocolate shade that can go the distance with any type of play. Pillows upholstered in Seema Krish fabric and a Sherrill Furniture lounge chair layer the design with rich color. The bench behind the sectional is actually made from the family’s existing breakfast table! We had it disassembled and fabricated as a simple bench. Versatile and conversation starting, the Columbus Trunk Console from Four Hands suits the home’s worldly, collected style. The Breakfast Area The open space between the kitchen and the family room serves as the breakfast area. A Restoration Hardware chandelier hangs above the pedestal table from Mecox. We choose upholstered chairs from Century Furniture in an opposing shape to add structural detail and balance to the design. Bespoke cookbook shelves in navy and beautiful wood grain shelves unify the kitchen and family room spaces. The Kitchen In the kitchen, subtle hints of gray in the tile soften the contrast of the sapphire blue cabinets and sleek white counters. A Matt Camron rug adds cushioning underfoot and character. The Four Hands stools carry the stain on the exposed wood beams in the kitchen to the fireplace mantle in the family room.   A large kitchen island means the whole family can gather in the kitchen for casual meals comfortably I love the blue paneling against the white walls in the master bedroom Gold plumbing fixtures give this master bathroom a feminine touch The Master Bedroom Blue and white have a powerful, calming effect in the master retreat. The Jaipur Rug in ‘Tear Drops’ reminds us of waves crashing against the sea cliffs along the Irish coast. Their bed is Century Furniture in a Lyon Metal finish. We love the little something different the out-turned legs add. We selected a Joseph Noble window drapery and a Holly Hunt drapery trim with a great hand and texture. The drapery allows ample amounts of natural light in that’s reflected through recycled glass discs on the stunning Galahad chandelier from Currey & Company. Our good friends at MM Lighting helped with the installation of the fans, track lighting, and ALL the flush mount lights in the closets. They have a fabulous team and a lovely shop located in Bellaire here in Houston. Amy Margolin is one of our good friends and has been in attendance at our fall fetes! The Pub The tucked away location of this special hideaway meant we could design a space that truly feels like an Irish pub. Rough-hewn brick, distressed leather, and herringbone hardwood floors feel rustic and cozy. Hues of espresso, navy, and emerald create a masculine, moody atmosphere. There’s plenty of room for the family to watch their favorite sports together on this leather sectional This leather recliner is the perfect spot for relaxing with your faovrite drink from the bar The space boasts a home theater with a widescreen projector and a pool table, but this room is more than a media room. There’s a large bar with bar stools and a pair of Irish green leather chairs intended to give them a central gathering spot. This room is decked out with everything they need! The Boys’ Rooms Ryan’s Room Designed for the oldest of the four boys, this bedroom is refined and sophisticated. A large desk offers plenty of space to do homework and a comfy leather recliner is the perfect spot for reading. The pairing of slate gray with lighter grays gives the room a moody, tranquil atmosphere. Teddy’s Room Soft blue and hunter green lend an energetic ambiance to Teddy���s room. Graphic pillows, plush toys and an eye-catching wall design are youthful and fun. We selected larger, high-quality furniture that can be can easily be transitioned as he grows up and will be appropriate for years to come. Henry’s Room In Henry’s room, bold blues and orange punch up the design. Graphic wall decals paired with glossy white furniture convey the sports theme without feeling too cliche. Reclaimed wood floating shelves imbue beautiful texture into the room’s otherwise sleek design. Hunter’s Room A large map wall mural gives Hunter’s room a global perspective and brings a sense of fun and adventure to the design. Industrial touches and classic plaid bedding marry old world charm with sleek modernity. The result is bedroom that’s youthful and mature.   A leather recliner and stylish wall hook make for a sophisticated reading spot The lines on the wall design in Teddy’s room are perfectly placed! Homework won’t be boring when you’re sitting at this desk A map wall mural makes a one-of-a-kind statement in this bedroom I love the timeless combination of brushed brass and black stone in this bathroom I hope you loved the full reveal of this sophisticated interior design project in Braeswood Place! The home’s classic architectural style and modern functionality give the family plenty of space to gather, play, and entertain. The post Final Reveal Friday: Emeral Isle Design in Braeswood Place appeared first on Laura U. #ProjectReveals

Arplis - News source https://arplis.com/blogs/news/today-we-re-excited-to-share-the-full-reveal-of-our-clients-worldly-and-collected-dumbarton-residence

[dunmerofskyrim]

35

The road went riverlike between long bones of rock and hills grey-green with brush. It followed the lay of the land, meandering down narrow valleys, cresting about the outermost edges of every rill and rise that corrugated the country before Senie.

Simra had never travelled this way. It was independent land; a backwater sworn to no Great House. He’d never had reason to stray here, and had reasons aplenty to travel no further. This road and this way tended eastward. Behind the mountains where the sun rose each morning lay Daen Seeth. A wide wet valley where two rivers ran. The Naddu and the long south-flowing Seeth, that tended from Dhalmora to Mournhold, and then through Dres lands to the sea. But between those rivers and down the Seeth was Temple heartland, the holdings of House Indoril. Best avoided, he reckoned. Best to be cautious.

In swaying pace they followed the track. Two guars, three riders; packs and a plodding pace.

The road was sand and grit underfoot, but the dirt itself was growing darker. Perhaps it was the wet weather: the sky’s attempts at snow, slurried and melting before it reached the ground. But today’s weather was clear, the sky tin-coloured but cloudless, and still the ground seemed darker.

Facing backwards on Tammunei’s guar, Simra chanced on the dry weather and opened out his book-bag, checking his maps one by one. His motions were lazy, tired. His eyes focused slow, taking moments more than usual to read the titles, annotations, the cartographer’s seals. But it was this or stare into space. He’d sooner fill his thoughts, at least as best he could.

The only map that showed this place was the oldest, the vaguest, the largest in scope: the Imperial Cartographical Society’s map, printed on the frontmost pages of his Third Era almanac.

“Ought to reach Senie today,” said Simra. “Reckon we’re in the fork now. Between the rivers.” Weeds and shrubs and heather struggled less on the slopes to either side of the path. Before there’d been nothing but scree, stone the colour of drought. “Map says we’ll find Senie where the waters meet.”

“Does it say anything else?” Tammunei asked. “What kind of a town is it, Senie?”

“No idea. Never been, heard no news. On the map it’s just a name. Then again…”

The map showed this land all but blank. Half-empty but for the to-and-fro of its rivermarks, the name of one town, written in Tamrielic, and all that hedged between hasty-drawn mountains, to north-west and south-east. A lie, that pale bare paper. In truth the country round Senie was folded and ridged, irregular as cloth let to fall in rucks and draperies. Strange and abrupt after the plains, where the sky had seemed more than half of all there was to the world. Here the world rose up to try and hide it.

“Then again what?” Noor put in from where she rode ahead.

“Nothing. Just a shit map is all. Makes everything look empty as everything else.”

“There’s nix in the hills,” said Tammunei. “Kagouti in the tangles of woodland. Their tusks leaves marks on the trunks of the trees and their foraging tills the ground. Groundbirds. Fat white grubs like living scars in the hollows of dead trees. Creeks and streams, newts and minnows. Water flowing under the earth. Nothing’s empty.”

“People?” said Simra.

“I don’t hear any,” Tammunei said. “I’ll tell you if that changes.”

After the sudden squalls and hard-biting breeze of the plains, they travelled low paths now between high places, and the air was calm and windless. More to hear, though. The murmur of trees and heather, and the stutter of loose stones, moving soil. The shriek of distant birds and all the creeping racing sounds of life carrying on, wild and unseen, beyond the edges of the road. This was the sort of wilderness that always made Simra uneasy. The plains were simple, empty, and all but all there was to know about them was there for the eyes to see. But here was a thick and speechless madness of life, impossibly to understand, with too much hidden for comfort.

Tammunei seemed to like it. He caught them humming to themself, adding harmony to a tune only they could hear. A gentle nod with every step of the guar they shared. By the shape of their shoulders, the shape of their silence, Simra would have wagered Tammunei was smiling. Close-lipped, a soft stretch on their heart-shaped face. He knew it well enough. Could picture it easier than stop himself picturing it. That worried him as much as the blind crests of the hills and highlands surrounding them; the dense shadows beneath the deepening trees.

The road turned a left and took on a gentle slope. Midday rose in the sky and then hid between the eaves of a sudden thick-wooded swale. Bare limbed trees and grey craggy bark. Flashes of lichen in warning shades of yellow. Whatever moved amongst the branches, the trunks, the roots, sounded like a rattle of spears, a clutter of bones. Between the high metallic sun and the woodland canopy, the world grew dappled in shades of twilight.

“…fuck this,” Simra muttered.

“D’you fear beasts or bandits?” Noor mocked him.

“Neither… Both. Fuck. This place. Just this place as it is.”

As the road levelled off and wended on through the woods, the dirt of it turned to mud. Water gathered here and stood, stinking, sucking at the feet of their guar. If not for the roots of the trees, Simra reckoned a heavy rain or wet season would have made it a swamp, and only the cold kept the air free of flies.

Moss thrived in the damp, and hung like hair, like curtains, like things squat and cloaked among the branches, deep green and heavy on the leafless trees. Mushrooms peopled the forest floor and the edges of the path.

“Wait.” Tammunei reined in their guar and Noor stopped too, angling her guar half-towards them, showing them its flank. “See those?” Tammunei pointed towards the bole of a great black-barked tree, a little ways from the path. The trunkbelly was ledged with red fungi. “Those are good to eat.”

Simra noted them. Shuffled off the guar’s hindquarters to land crouching on the pathdirt. “I’ll gather us some.” He went to Noor’s guar and untied a saddlesack, going to the tree with the bag’s mouth open. His legs complained, stiff and saddlesore, as he stretched them.

“Beeftongues,” Tammunei called from the saddles as Simra edged a shallow way into the woods. “It’s best to cut them away from the bark. They crumble if you break them off, and then they’re only fit for porridge!”

Simra took out his filleting knife and began to cut, filling the sack with tonguelike lolls of deep-red fungus.

With time the road broke away from the trees and the land began to level. A wide valley between farther flung slopes, terrain cut flat with mattock and pick, and shored with boards and screens of wicker. In the distance, terraces of shrubby trees. The air, the cold, the steam of Simra’s breath all blurred them, but they seemed more regular than wild. Orchards perhaps, or plantings of tea, fruitless and leafless in Winter.

Closer by, around the road, the country was patched together from scraps of plot and field. Wicker breaks split claim from claim. Paddies glinted dark and waterlogged beneath the afternoon sun, divided by banks of packed dark earth. Weeks, months from what ought to have been harvest time, grains and gram stood ripe and forgotten. Hackle-lo and mustardgreens – hardy leaves grown for colder months – lay ready too, between the crop-rows. A new reek hung on the still cool air. A smell balanced between a brewery, a tannery, a midden or a charnel pit, as the red droops of amaranth and white-furred fingers of millet began to rot in the fields.

Simra misliked it. Worse than the woodland, worse than the plains. He waited for someone else to say it. Waited and waited as the guar plodded on. But why would they? How would Noor know the time for sowing and time to get in a yield? Simra, cityborn, only knew from knowing what it meant. These were signs he’d learnt to look out for. Either this was a place where a sellsword could earn coin and their keep, or where a traveller ought to pass quick and faceless through, if they had to pass at all.

“There are bones here,” said Noor. “Unburied, riteless. Something’s wrong.”

Simra cursed his waiting. A prickle of irritation down his spine that he’d not been the one to say it. A dolt without eyes in his head, let alone a sense for the subtle, the spiritual — that’s what she’ll take you for now, Simra, and that’s if she didn’t already. But he set his mouth and straightened his back and silenced that thought as it came. Listened instead. Looked the land over.

To sunward, shapes that moved like nix chased each other between the rows of crops. The stems rustled and flattened as the animals prowled amongst them. Where the millet was flattened they cast long shadows as the haze and hills and sky and sun behind them turned all the colour of copper.

Sometimes a shack or hut stood out from the fields. Brick and adobe in red earth-tones with roofs of thatch. No smoke from any chimney; no light in any of their beady-eyed windows.

“There’s violence here,” Simra said. “Or the shadow left by it. Or the fear of it. This is land people have left behind. Livelihoods abandoned.”

“Why?” Tammunei said.

“Maybe they were running.” Simra shrugged. Not that Tammu would see it so much as feel it, through their back against his back. “Maybe not. Land settles and unsettles quick in Morrowind these days, I reckon. People claim it, lose it, get run off it. This is lordless land, as far as I know. No Great Houses out here to protect it, give their peasants a peace. And the small Houses squabble like growing siblings over scraps at dinner. Odds are as good that this is highborn work as it is that it’s outlaws, bandits. Either way, stinks of war, raiding, spilt out of Summer where it belongs and stretched through Autumn and after…”

“Will Senie be like this too?”

“I don’t know,” Simra admitted. “But it’ll be hungry, that’s for certain. Fuck…if I’d known I might’ve bought more rice.”

“You’ve never been one for charity before…”

Simra’s neck flushed hot beneath the folds of his scarf. “You don’t know that—… I mean, I didn’t mean…” He made a noise in his throat: a rattling sigh. “Fuck. It’d sell. We could’ve sold it. Three, four times its worth? Fuck, forget it. Useless to think what could’ve been anyway.”

The silence that fell after that was prickly, sour on Simra’s tongue as it was in his ears.

Dusk drew on. Here and there, among the shadows, what looked like a half-scythed field. Burst veins of irrigations flooded swathes of land. The hivelike shapes of grainstores rose up, empty no doubt, black against the setting sun.

As he called a magelight against the gathering dark, Simra heard running water. The slow crawl of a wide river. The last sight the sky allowed before it turned full-night was a tall flat plateau ahead, direct in the way of their road. Lamplights and spell-lights glittered and guttered there, scattered throughout the blackness of its looming shape. Walls, townwalls, fortwalls, and the glow of homes and hearths in what windows dared light them.